AI or Not

E026 - AI or Not - Christopher Lafayette and Pamela Isom

• Season 1 • Episode 26

Share episode

Welcome to "AI or Not," the podcast where we explore the intersection of digital transformation and real-world wisdom, hosted by the accomplished Pamela Isom. With over 25 years of experience guiding leaders in corporate, public, and private sectors, Pamela, the CEO and Founder of IsAdvice & Consulting LLC, is a veteran in successfully navigating the complex realms of artificial intelligence, innovation, cyber issues, governance, data management, and ethical decision-making.

What if emerging technologies could transform not just industries but entire lives? Join us as we sit down with Christopher Lafayette, a true visionary at the intersection of technology and humanity. From a unique upbringing shaped by a technologist father and a nurse mother to overcoming personal learning hurdles, Christopher's journey is one of resilience and relentless curiosity. He shares how these experiences fueled his passion for technology, which ultimately led him to establish a design firm during the pivotal era of the iPhone and Web 2.0. Learn how his initiatives like Gatherverse and Hyperpolicy aim to bridge the gap between tech and community, advocating for ethics and accessibility.

Explore the exciting landscape of augmented reality, AI, and neural networks that Christopher envisions will revolutionize scientific discovery and address global mission challenges. We'll highlight groundbreaking projects like Meta's Orion glasses, which pave the way for enhanced abilities and secure interconnectivity. Christopher discusses how Gatherverse has grown into a movement that places humanity at the heart of tech development, ensuring that the advancements remain inclusive and ethical. His insights emphasize the profound impact these technologies can have, particularly in supporting individuals with disabilities.

In an ever-evolving digital world, Christopher reminds us of the power of authenticity and resilience in career choices. His story challenges the conventional Silicon Valley success model, highlighting the importance of geocentricity and personal fulfillment over external validation. As we reflect on future technological horizons, the dialogue stresses the necessity of human-centric values in AI, strategic planning, and lifelong learning. Collaboration emerges as a recurring theme, urging us to prioritize human betterment and maintain real connections as we embrace innovation. This episode is a testament to the balance needed between technological progress and preserving our shared humanity.

[00:20] Pamela Isom: This podcast is for informational purposes only. Personal views and opinions expressed by our podcast guests are their own and not legal advice, neither health, tax, nor professional nor official statements by their organizations.

[00:40] Guest views may not be those of the host.

[00:49] Hello and welcome to AI or not the podcast where business leaders from around the globe share wisdom and insights that are needed now to address issues and guide success in your artificial intelligence and digital transformation journey.

[01:04] I am Pamela Isom and I am your podcast host.

[01:09] Christopher Lafayette is our special guest today. He is the founder of gatherverse and the founder of Hyper Policy.

[01:18] We met following his presentation to the Black AI Think Tank, which is a convening that I frequently visit.

[01:27] Christopher, I am impressed with you. Welcome to AI or Not.

[01:33] Christopher Lafayette: Well, first of all, I'd like to say thank you for this gracious invitation to be able to spend some time with you. I really enjoy the expressions that you and I have been able to share in together and really the pioneering effort that many of us find ourselves in, including yourself and helping lead this space when it comes to artificial intelligence as an applied science.

[01:53] Pamela Isom: Well, I'm glad that you're here. Will you tell me more about yourself, your career journey? And while you're talking about it, can you share some more about the gatherverse and also what's Hyper Policy all about?

[02:07] Christopher Lafayette: Sure.

[02:08] Pamela Isom: So, name's Christopher Lafayette.

[02:10] Christopher Lafayette: I'm an emergent technologist, humanitarian, raised by a technologist. My dad was a technologist after the military and he was a brilliant technologist when it comes to studying information technology itself. I would go to the university with him late night to just go listen to the machines or the servers if you will.

[02:32] I felt like my dad was a machine whisperer and my mom was a nurse. And so the combination of technology and service has always been in me for a very long time.

[02:44] I think one of the very first gifts I got when I was young was a robotic arm and for one of my uncles and my family, for whatever reason, has been very heavily into technology and we lived a number of different places.

[03:00] Born on a military base in Oklahoma, raised in my formative years in Europe and Germany and spending time in Texas and then eventually coming to Oakland, California, which is part of the Bay Area in Northern California, and seeing how it was in the 90s when it comes to the urban lifestyle and a lot of the violence and a lot of the different culture that's here that makes up not only Oakland but the Bay Area, I really got a deep sense of non uniqueness and got a real good sense of how many Just different people there are in the world, being how transient Silicon Valley, the Bay Area is, and people coming from all different backgrounds and walks of life.

[03:45] And so couple that with just a very different upbringing, you know, someone that in school, I was in special education for most of my schooling and attention deficit and I just had a different way of learning.

[04:03] It was difficult for me to learn the way that others learn.

[04:06] On many occasions I was treated as if I were stupid, but my teachers are always kind to me. And when technology really began to boom in the information age or the ERA in the 90s, you know, I was part of that.

[04:22] And from the Oregon Trail generation to understanding what a Google search was and understanding information and pages and text pages.

[04:35] And really in this transition, going from to the bubble experience here in Silicon Valley to one day becoming my own entrepreneur and having a design firm.

[04:48] We launched a design firm the very month the iPhone came out. 2007 September. And we had no idea of the mission and the experience that we would find ourselves in.

[05:00] And then we didn't realize that the application renaissance had just arrived and applications ended up becoming what they became. And we had to naturally adapt to the environment of understanding the nature of applications and how that changed the web and then at the same time enter into what we call Web2, which is dealing with centralized social media.

[05:24] And so that also became a thing. But amongst all this, even in all of this, I was studying before this artificial intelligence with a real curiosity where it was. And at some point when I got introduced to xr, I mean, really got introduced to it, I just.

[05:42] It's just. It just became a very deep passion of mine to understand the artistry of extended reality and the science therein. And what does it mean for design principles.

[05:53] I found myself moving to Silicon Valley from the seat of my car. I was living out of a hacker space called Hacker Dojo, off Ellis, across the street from NASA Ames, in between NASA Ames and Google, along with so many other different hackers who would make and hack and break and code and disrupt and debate and all of that, and living out of a parking lot and bathing in the YMCA on Grant.

[06:19] And I really realized that Silicon Valley moves faster in technology than any other place in the world when it comes to the expression of technology may not move as fast when it comes to hardware, when it comes to Shenzhen, China, but we moved really fast.

[06:32] And at some point someone asked me to come speak at some event in Silicon Valley, and I spoke. And then more and more people asked me to speak at different events.

[06:45] I was doing A lot of social communication on LinkedIn. And I came to find that people were listening and I was listening to them and we were sharing back and forth.

[06:55] And once I found myself traveling and being traveled on a plane to talk about medical technology and immersive holodecks and all the things that come with that. Very much so in medtech and scientific discovery, with the things that we're doing with Oglab and Nvidia and Microsoft, I started to get a more of a national, international sense on what emerging technologies mean for a number of different people.

[07:21] What do applied sciences meaning what are emerging technologies and where are we at today? And then that's when I started to do a lot more writing years ago, a lot of writing about the ecohabitat.

[07:33] Defining what technology means, what does it mean when technologies pair and merge together on amorphous scale? What do they ultimately render out to what do they become through app post merge pairing and then technological convergence, when that comes together, all of that and amalgamations of things that have already paired together come together.

[07:52] What does that mean?

[07:53] And led me to a study of studying about 270 plus applied sciences to this day of the ecohabitat. And it's been a study that I've been holding onto and working on ever since.

[08:05] And I've presented that to different places around the world.

[08:09] Pamela Isom: And so what's that study?

[08:12] Christopher Lafayette: The ecohabitat. So understanding the nature of about 270 different applied sciences.

[08:18] Because within the ecohabitat all technologies abide and you'll have something like talked about XR technology. You'll have extended reality. It'll be flanked by AR VR for those that are listening.

[08:32] Augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, haptics, physio haptics, textile.

[08:38] Dealing with you say the metaverse as an, as a catch all virtual ecosystem of interaction and communication, then you may have, you'll have artificial intelligence. Well, what are the subsets of that?

[08:49] Machine learning and then subset deep learning and then dealing with all the different things that come with that. So you could deal with whether it's algorithmic structures. You could deal with Bayesian.

[08:59] You could deal with Bayesian constructs. You could do statistical models, monolithic compound models, ejectics. You could deal with a number of different things that cover that gradient descent and more.

[09:09] And so all that abides within a vertical sphere and it bifurcates and even more.

[09:18] Pamela Isom: I see.

[09:19] Christopher Lafayette: But what happens when those technologies actually come together in pairs such as augmented reality and artificial intelligence? I say augmented reality and a neural network.

[09:28] What does that look like augmented reality, neural network, computer vision and let's say concatenative synthesis?

[09:34] Pamela Isom: What does that look like when it comes to solving mission challenges? So give me an example and you can think about it and come back to it if you want.

[09:43] Christopher Lafayette: No, and look at what just came out recently with some of the outstanding work that meta's doing in sciences. Meta people don't realize that META has spent billions of dollars in research when it comes to extended reality.

[09:58] So when Mark Zuckerberg takes the stage and he brings up Orion, the glasses, which are unlike anything we've ever seen before, that in and of itself is a remarkable feat.

[10:09] To be able to put that much technology in such a thin frame and to be able to have it multimodal in its capacity. I think they're llama 3.1 or 3.2

[10:22] and to have it do object segmentation with SAM2, I believe they have integrated into that.

[10:28] And to look at that world in a completely different lens, what that means for scientific discovery, what does that mean for agricultural scale, what does that mean for real life observations?

[10:40] Especially thinking about the nature of predictive models that I know that Ian LeCun talks about when it comes to the JEP or the world model, the visualization, curing and intaking real life data, it's a really big deal of what that can mean for the scalability of predictive models.

[10:59] Pamela Isom: And so even with those glasses, not just having AI in it in a.

[11:04] Christopher Lafayette: Camera array system lens, but also having.

[11:07] Pamela Isom: The capacity to project an augment on.

[11:10] Christopher Lafayette: Top of objects, in a lot of ways the world's become machine readable.

[11:14] And being that the world's machine readable and the cloud and cloud infrastructure is, be it that in May, we've never been more connected around the world and we never had this much power and a microcosm, you know, when we deal with microchips and we deal with, you know, Arduino, for crying out loud, or dealing with the Raspberry PI, integrating that into a technical system or hardware and being able to pair that with other different emerging technologies, bringing that together, pairing that up on a morphous scale.

[11:44] Pamela Isom: We don't necessarily know all the things.

[11:45] Christopher Lafayette: That will come by way of the merge pairing. And so that's part of my study of 270 technologies plus that's good.

[11:52] Pamela Isom: I'm involved with some work around advanced research and what we're doing is we're looking at the various ecosystems and trying to drive more secured interconnectivity. And so we've got so Many endpoints, so many ecosystems, so many technologies.

[12:16] And it's kind of like what you described here. So that's all good, right? So many endpoints, all of that, but they're not always designed to work together. And then when they are designed to work together, there's that security realm.

[12:33] So where I have been blessed to work is digging into the secured layer of these ecosystems so that we can bring these emerging technologies together. And I absolutely love it.

[12:48] Like, I'm happy right now because I'm, like, working in this space because we've got to figure this out. Right. So I love the example that you gave about the glasses.

[12:57] I love those glasses. I see those. I'm a big proponent taking care of those with disabilities and advancing their abilities. And I think that those glasses are one way to advance a person's abilities.

[13:14] Right. So even if the site is. If the site is there and it just needs some amplification, those glasses are superb for that. So I do like those, the example that you gave.

[13:28] And that's a very timely example because we have to take care of the different perspectives, the different styles of learning and the different abilities. So I'd like you to. To go back and tell me about Gather Verse and Hyper policy.

[13:44] What's that all about?

[13:46] Christopher Lafayette: Yeah. So at some point, my travels and writings and lessons, if you will, I realized, I would probably say when I got back From Brussels in 2019, I was attending an event.

[13:59] I went to several different events in London and Brussels in France.

[14:04] And when I got back, I remember writing publicly that I'm more impressed by the people that build the platforms than the platforms themselves.

[14:11] Platforms come and go, so do people. But the innovators and the visionaries behind these brilliant technologies, I became more fascinated in what inspired you to build and innovate. X, Y, Z, if you will.

[14:24] And so in 2021, and we've become reversal in the past two years, in the past 30 years. Right.

[14:35] Because of the disruption of the pandemic. And look at us down and communicating, which is now normal. And the Metaverse was really taken off then. And I came up with the seven standards of the Metaverse, which is not eat, dealing with accessibility and education and quality, community development with the emphasis on safety, privacy, wellness and ethics.

[14:58] And I really wanted to intersect that with humanity and emerging technologies. So Humanity first was the first standard.

[15:07] And I came out with the seven standards of the Metaverse. It took off. A lot of people are using an ieee, stuff like that, and presentations and all that.

[15:17] I said, man, why don't I Create an event. And I'll just do one event, and I can get some people I know that may want to talk about this or not, and maybe we'll get about 20 speakers.

[15:27] And I said, man, I bet I get about 400 people there. I'll make it free. I said, what do I call it? It's like, you know, I'm gonna gather these people together.

[15:35] I said, yeah, I'm gonna call it in the metaverse.

[15:37] Pamela Isom: I'm gonna call it Gather Verse, Swerve.

[15:41] Christopher Lafayette: And put it out there. And we were supposed to have this event. I. I announced Gather Verse at the end of November into December.

[15:50] We had the event set for February.

[15:53] By the time January came, we had maybe. We had a lot of speakers applying. And by the time it ended January, I think we had over a hundred committed speakers.

[16:05] And we had, like, at the time, we had realized. And I realized that this is becoming a brand.

[16:15] And we had over 100 speakers. We had over 10,000 attendees.

[16:18] And I realized that people really want to talk about these things. So gatherverse, now, we've done 27 global summits. Our community has grown exponentially, whether we email them or whether we.

[16:33] Part of our different social platforms that are around there, if you will.

[16:36] But we've had that many events, that many summits. We have a number of summits that are coming up. Third annual she summit. That's coming up. Our third annual AI summit.

[16:44] We have our fourth annual gather summit. Each of those have over 100 speakers each just about.

[16:51] Pamela Isom: Okay. And the thought is to allow folks to get together to share their experiences, their goals, their desires in the metaverse. Or tell me more about the intent.

[17:06] Christopher Lafayette: Yeah. The intent for gatherverse has long been that we wanted it to be free, and we wanted it in a place where people can centralize together and express and cover a litany of different topics dealing with humanity, intersect with emerging technologies.

[17:23] Pamela Isom: Okay.

[17:25] Christopher Lafayette: And people show up. Every single event, every single event, every single summit. And we just announced our food and money summit, and applications are coming, and those will be well attended.

[17:38] And the strength that I've come to appreciate over time. So what are some of the things that I picked up along the way? But gather versus that. You'd be surprised on who has what to say.

[17:49] I know that we typically look at speakers or people in pain. I don't want to differentiate that, because here I am, a professional speaker. I get that. But there's people that are working in their kitchens and in their garages at home.

[18:01] Pamela Isom: They've got something to say.

[18:03] Christopher Lafayette: Yeah, they do Incredible things to contribute. And they're very smart, they're capable to speak. And I've gained so much from them.

[18:13] Pamela Isom: I've gained more from. I can honestly say I've gained more from our speakers, our community at gatherverse.

[18:19] Christopher Lafayette: Than any other event in technology I've ever attended.

[18:23] Pamela Isom: And it doesn't take away from other technology events. But when it comes to humanity, emerging.

[18:30] Christopher Lafayette: Technologies, no one does it better.

[18:32] Pamela Isom: No one does it better because we, we do it more than most event.

[18:35] Christopher Lafayette: Platforms and we're very thorough.

[18:38] Pamela Isom: But what we've done is we've democratized it up.

[18:40] Christopher Lafayette: We don't just select a few speakers and just say, hey, come, we want to hear from you. And so.

[18:45] Pamela Isom: And we've had people there that had a difficult time.

[18:47] Christopher Lafayette: They've never spoken before.

[18:48] Pamela Isom: And I get that they're not as entertaining as some speakers that are, well, well versed. You. They'll say one line, Pamela. They will say one thing. And it's game changing. So let people speak.

[19:02] Christopher Lafayette: It's a different type of setting, but it flows and works well for our community.

[19:06] Pamela Isom: What's different about this setting besides the diversification, which is a good thing. Is there something else that's different?

[19:13] Pamela Isom: I guess one is, is just that. Go show me another platform on the world that's as diverse as Gatherers. I can't find it. When we had our first event, people were like, how'd you get so many women to speak?

[19:23] And I. People kept asking me that over and over again. I was so busy I didn't have time to address it. And then after the event, I remember being on a.

[19:31] I remember being on a clubhouse because they invited me to interview. We did four days for our first event. I was so tired I fell asleep and I woke up late to go attend this interview.

[19:41] It was almost like I had five minutes to get on and I just sat there and waited in five minutes and I fell asleep. I was shook. I woke up.

[19:48] I'm so sorry, Emily. I can't believe. But we just got to this four day massive summit and that was one of the things I interrupted. Like, how do you get this so diverse?

[19:57] I think you manifest and attract what you manifested. So looking at the. And when we say diverse, it's. It's a number of different things. Also, it's trans metropolitan, transcontinental. There's people from around the world that come this week.

[20:13] I mean, from remote areas and in a lot of ways.

[20:16] Christopher Lafayette: Pamela, there's a really good interview that came up. I say interview, but a segment by Bloomberg about the paraphrasing, but a billion people are about to come into the.

[20:27] Pamela Isom: Tech scene, meaning it was referring specifically to Africa, that now that there's certain places in Africa that now have broadband access and connectivities.

[20:36] Christopher Lafayette: Starlink or what have you, Hawaii, WI Fi. They're coming.

[20:41] Pamela Isom: They're here.

[20:42] And we're getting a lot of those people that are coming in that have barely had WI fi and they still. And we can see them struggling with their WI fi.

[20:50] Christopher Lafayette: Oh, you're in Africa. Okay, not all, but a lot that.

[20:53] Pamela Isom: Happens in Europe, too, happens in the States.

[20:56] Christopher Lafayette: But we hear them.

[20:57] Pamela Isom: We're giving expression and voices, and that is technology.

[21:02] A lot about what technology is. And I hear so many people, Pamela, say, I'm going to be the next metaverse. I'm going to be the next metaverse. We're going to be the next.

[21:10] Or the next. The next Silicon Valley.

[21:13] You don't have to be the next Silicon Valley. Be what you are. Because a lot of what we have to consider is geocentricity. The inspiration for where I am is so unique to the world that we can't duplicate that even if we wanted to.

[21:28] Pamela Isom: So let me tell you what I'm taking away from what you're saying. First of all, I love your background. I love the fact that you are an achiever and an overcomer.

[21:38] That was instilled in me, and I just recognize it. But what I also hear you saying is represent. Just be yourself and represent, and that you've provided a space for people to represent, and I think that's special.

[21:59] I want people to see that. Yes, you are an emerging tech leader, but you have created a space for others to just come and be themselves, talk about how they're using technology, but more so you don't realize how much you are helping someone until you show up and represent.

[22:21] And so I like that. And I also appreciate the fact that you told your story.

[22:27] So as a little girl, I'll never forget this. Right. So we were not well off. Right. So it doesn't matter. Right. But every year, you know about the fair, and then when the fair would come around, you go to the fairgrounds.

[22:42] Okay? So I had a big brother. So my big brother took me and his daughter, my niece, to the fair.

[22:50] And there was this game.

[22:53] And so I was playing the one with the water gun. So you shoot the water out the gun and it starts to fill up that balloon. Right? So it filled out that balloon.

[23:05] I mean, from the time I started, just like the minute I pulled the thing, the trigger on the water gun, it started. It hit right into that thing's mouth and started filling up the balloon.

[23:17] So here's what I did. I got to the very end when the balloon was about to burst. That was the goal. But I didn't know it as a kid. I didn't know what, what, what.

[23:29] So the balloon is. I'm ahead of everybody, right? And the balloon is filling up and filling up. And here's what I did. I stopped because I started thinking too much.

[23:38] I stopped. I started thinking about, okay, well, what's next now? Well, what do I do? What do I do? So I was looking, looking here, looking there, and my niece kept going in hers verse and she won the prize.

[23:51] And I'll never forget. Exactly. So I'll never forget that my brother, my big brother went and grabbed this great big old teddy bear because you get this teddy bear. And he gave the teddy bear to my niece.

[24:05] And he looked over at me and said, you should have kept going. Next time, keep going.

[24:11] Today.

[24:12] I keep going.

[24:14] I keep going. I think back to that story. I can get frustrated. I'll keep going. Why? Because the blessing is right there.

[24:23] You're so. I just want to let you know that I appreciate you and all that you're doing. And it resonates.

[24:31] Christopher Lafayette: What does that mean, though? Talk about keep going.

[24:35] Pamela Isom: Not taking that foot off the gas for me.

[24:39] Pamela Isom: What does that mean for me? It means that when I get frustrated, we all have frustrations, we all have doubt. You don't get discouraged and go and decide to stop going.

[24:55] You just keep going. It doesn't mean that you don't have sense enough to know when to. When it's time to move on to something else. It's not that I don't let obstacles stop me.

[25:07] They may be there, but I'll figure out a way to overcome. So in the private sector, for instance, I decided to go to the federal government. Join the federal government.

[25:20] Well, some would say, why wouldn't you stay in the private sector? You were. You were kicking it. So why would you go into government and give up? Blah, blah, blah, right?

[25:31] Big money, blah, blah, blah. But that was my choice. That was my choice. And when I joined the federal government, I decided that that's what I wanted to do for the time that I was there.

[25:42] So there are challenges that I experienced when I was in government, but I never looked back and said I should have stayed in private sector. What I did was I decided to do what I wanted to do while I was in government.

[25:55] And then the time was going to come when I was going to be ready to go back to private sector. And that's what I chose to do. So for me, it's understanding what keep going means.

[26:04] It doesn't mean that you don't have sense enough to know when it's time to move on, but it means that you think about it and you just don't fold up your hands and just become depressed.

[26:16] And if you do become a little depressed, you get right back up because that's what we do. That's just what we do.

[26:24] So think about your story. Suppose you had just not persisted.

[26:30] So that's what I mean by that, and that's what I do.

[26:33] Pamela Isom: What does it mean to lead an AI?

[26:36] What does that mean today? To lead, to guide, given the ubiquity of artificial intelligence, the number of different studies in different places and spaces within this vertical that we can study, what does it mean to lead and to pioneer to scale where no one else has scaled before with this.

[26:53] What's that look like, Pamela?

[26:55] Pamela Isom: And that's a good question. And I have the same question for you. What does it mean to lead in augmented reality? What does it mean to lead an emerging tech? But let me give you my perspectives first.

[27:07] So the first thing I don't do is I don't try to impress folks. I'm very real. I'm trying to solve problems. So for me, leading in the day and time of AI, AI is there for me to help solve problems.

[27:22] There's a lot of problems in the world. You got issues with inequities. And there are so many use cases where we can use these tools for that purpose. We got data that's strung about that we can use AI not just as a consumer of data, but to help to aggregate information so that it can be valuable.

[27:43] We've got so many use cases. So in the day and time of leading, I'm about. I remember a conversation that I had last week with someone and I talked to them about guiding and steering the use of AI.

[27:59] And not just to use the tools just because, but to use the tools to drive productivity, to generate productivity, to generate revenues, to reduce costs. So look at how we can use these tools for those purposes.

[28:14] And don't just be a user of the tools. Be an inventor, be an innovator. Look at how we can aggregate, like you mentioned earlier, tools to solve basically zero in on the mission.

[28:27] What is that mission? And then how can we help to address the mission with tools? And AI is not always the answer, but for me, I love Leading in the era of digital transformation where AI is at the center as I see so much potential.

[28:46] But I have the same question for you. What's it like to lead in the day and time of augmented reality?

[28:53] Christopher Lafayette: Yeah. For me, this is, this is a question I ask myself, not just in augmented reality, but as a shepherd of bringing people with a sense of compassion and care when it comes to innovation.

[29:09] Because I realize as a technologist, Pamela, that all of us are about to be outdated and our understanding of technology compared to these capable models, let's just call it what it is, AI is about to surpass us in a dramatic fashion in the years, months and years to come, when it comes to its capability and their capability, understanding technology, it.

[29:32] Pamela Isom: Makes sense to realize and to just stop and reflect for a second to say, we can't have startups in perpetuity.

[29:41] We must move forward. We've gone from the agrarian age to the industrial. We're not building agrarian. We're not, we're not building like we were in the agrarian age. We're not building like we were in the industrial age.

[29:52] Once the life was done, it was done well.

[29:56] Pamela Isom: So I agree. So the thing is that, you know, it's interesting because I was talking to project managers and I was informing them that, you know, you have this secret sauce.

[30:09] Everything needs a plan, we need plans. And so it may be agile, it may be quick sprints, but we need the planning. And in that planning there needs to be ethics and governance integrated in those plans.

[30:26] So I love emerging tech and cybersecurity, cybersecurity, ethics and governance. That's what I see. And there should always be a sense of values. I always believe that.

[30:37] So emerging tech is advancing and we'd like it to get to the place where, where it surpasses us, but I don't want it to get to where it surpasses us.

[30:51] Because I think that humanity is so important and I think that humanity should be at the helm. Human agency matters more than technology. That's how I feel about it.

[31:06] Pamela Isom: Technology will never supersede humanity. It can't, because we still carry the. We still carry the human code that's been passed down through the agents of dispensations itself, through procreation. It can never do that.

[31:18] In order for it to do that, it would need all the time through the ages and dispensations itself to procreate and do the things that be able to make that happen.

[31:27] So they can't do that. You would have to buy time. It's just like there's a 50 year, a 50 year old barbecue grill in Lockhart, Texas and they tell me it smokes some of the best food in the world.

[31:37] I can be a trillionaire. But you know what? You know what I can't do? I can't go duplicate a 50 year grill.

[31:46] Pamela Isom: Yeah.

[31:46] Pamela Isom: In order for me to duplicate a 50 year old grill, I need 50 years. I can't buy that.

[31:51] Pamela Isom: Yeah.

[31:52] Pamela Isom: So when we start talking about this level of innovation and technology, for me this is again, this is about the intersection of humanity and emerging technologies. To realize that I'm in ground zero for AI.

[32:05] This valley, this Silicon Valley I live in and have for years and spoken around and I know many people in this valley, many wealthy, many poor, many brilliant and incredible capable innovators from around the world that come in and out of here.

[32:20] Let me tell you something, there's a whole entire workforce filled with unemployed people right now.

[32:25] And us as technologists, we are still students.

[32:31] And at some point our technology will begin teaching us that's real, that's the reality for AI leadership right now for me is how do these innovations bring towards betterment. And that's what's going to be the big push.

[32:46] Scientific discovery, medical discovery. We're working with Nvidia and Microsoft right now with our onglab platform with tremendous relationship with them. It's the biggest startup platform for AI ecosystem in the world.

[32:58] There's none bigger than Nvidia, Inception and Microsoft for startups. And they just announced that they paired together and was focused their focus and they said we want to work up startups that are working with science.

[33:09] That's exactly what we've been doing with them. And we've had gracious invitations for both of them to be able to join. In fact, Microsoft just gave us a shout out last week, which we're really thankful for.

[33:18] So when we start talking about where we're headed, it's the places and areas of what's been undiscovered.

[33:25] Pamela Isom: Yeah, I like that.

[33:27] Pamela Isom: Undiscovered country is where we're at. Undiscovered country is where we're happening. So in a lot of ways this technology, what we're seeing with these generative models, or seeing Genai diffusion models, what.

[33:39] Pamela Isom: Have you, Frontier models, advanced AI models.

[33:43] Pamela Isom: Yes, advanced AI models, JAPA models, rural models, frontier protected models, statistical models. When we see these models out here, and ones we don't even know about.

[33:53] Christopher Lafayette: Right.

[33:55] Pamela Isom: When we see this, especially the scalability, hyperscale, orders of magnitude when it comes to compute, the reality is that we have to start thinking about differently in a lot of ways.

[34:08] Less innovation of fundamental things and start thinking about the application of our innovations.

[34:16] Pamela Isom: Agree.

[34:17] Pamela Isom: And how that helps us sustain.

[34:22] That's key. And we built applications in the applications era and the renaissance.

[34:28] But those applications were tools.

[34:32] A lot of them, not all of them, but a lot of them.

[34:35] Those tools allowed us to hyperscale, to be able to help deliver technology.

[34:39] And with the cloud itself, remember, technology scales in increments, shifts and leaps, iterative scale increments. IOS update, Android update shifts. A new device is deployed on a phone, hmd, desktop, laptop, you name it a watch leap.

[34:59] Those don't come too often, but when they do, they affect all entire civilizations. A new iPhone doesn't impact all of civilization. A new iOS update or Android update doesn't impact civilization.

[35:09] The Internet that impacts civilization. Wi fi, civilization, cloud AI, the metaverse, on chain technology, things like that, that affects all that. So where are we at?

[35:23] We have the tools.

[35:25] We have the tools.

[35:27] So now we've been building the machine that's semi conscious intelligence.

[35:32] Once that gets up to PhD post level scale of human AI. Human level scale. Forget AGI for a moment, forget what we think about that. We can look more at theory of mind, self aware and super intelligence.

[35:46] Once it gets there, these machines will speak their own languages.

[35:52] These machines will deal with us in a way that we're dealing with them emotionally, expressively.

[35:59] I can literally imagine myself not too far away, no height, having a conversation with you as I see you with my eyes and human eye resolution scale.

[36:10] And that's not you. That is a representation of your avatar speaking fluently and concatenative and parametric synthesis.

[36:16] Pamela Isom: Yeah, that's not too far away.

[36:18] Pamela Isom: Rendered. Rendered. Right, rendered. Completely rendered. And the pixelation is near perfect.

[36:26] How will I be able to discern answer? I won't be able to.

[36:30] It'll have. No, we won't be. Will not be able.

[36:33] Pamela Isom: So that's why we're going to.

[36:35] Pamela Isom: Unless we have detection software.

[36:37] Pamela Isom: Well, so that's what we do. So that's when I go back to the human agency. Because the minute you relinquish everything to the machine, then you're setting yourselves up for issues that you don't want to address.

[36:50] Right. That you're not able to address. So if we keep the human, we have to discover what that human interception should be as emerging tech emerges. But that human agency must be there.

[37:05] If not, I don't. I need to know that I'm talking to an avatar. You need to know that you're talking to an avatar that represents me. You need to know that we need to know what we're dealing with.

[37:16] So I like, I love the excitement around where we are going with emerging tech but I also like us to be sober minded and keep the human agency. It's a discoverable element.

[37:30] Pamela Isom: I built a whole platform on that called Gather versus not hyper policy.

[37:33] Christopher Lafayette: That's, that's, that's the ethos of the.

[37:36] Pamela Isom: Mission on my work.

[37:38] So that's, I in the sacrifice has been real because people don't want to pay the money and what it takes to get that done. A lot of people don't want to put the capital, A lot of people want to hyperscale and put all the money into innovation and scale when it comes to 100% machine systems.

[37:55] But less, less about humanity. And that is one of the biggest flaws I've ever known in Silicon Valley is that you don't understand that to your detriment. And we usually in societal structures deal with the residual fallout once something happens.

[38:09] Even Professor Hinton, Jeffrey Hinton that just got a Nobel Peace Prize, he said it himself, he's been saying in his interviews and he just said it the other day, people don't do anything until they have to react based on something that went wrong.

[38:22] Then they'll start to worry about it then.

[38:24] Can I read something to you?

[38:26] Pamela Isom: Sure.

[38:29] Pamela Isom: One of my most favorite passages and I actually have it here because I.

[38:34] Christopher Lafayette: Have it in my notes.

[38:35] Pamela Isom: Carmen McCarthy is a brilliant author. Brilliant author. He authored all the Pretty Horses, the Road. He wrote this novel about a man and his son walking on a road. And it was in a apocalyptic setting.

[38:50] There had been clearly nuclear fallout. Just disaster. You couldn't even hear birds anymore. Is really bad, very dramatic. And I read it years ago. You get to the end of the book, it just dramatically just stops.

[39:04] But this is the final passage which is one of the most powerful passages I've ever read. This is, mind you, people that are living in an era. Will the birds ever come back?

[39:13] Will we have the ecosystem of what we've had when it comes to supply chain?

[39:18] Once there were brook trouts in the streams in the mountains. You can see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins whippled softly in the flow.

[39:27] They smelled a moss in your hand, polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world and its becoming maps and mazes of a thing which could not be put back, not be made right again.

[39:46] In the deep glens where they live all things were older than man and they hummed a mystery.

[39:55] Some things we cannot make right again. And when it's gone and when it's done, it is done. There's no do overs. There is not a revolving door. And what we have to realize is this, the threat of AI and its capability, not as a standalone in its applied science that has a threat of itself, but when you pair it with other things and moreover, eco, culture, human characteristics that are permeated in anthrac technological ecosystems.

[40:26] When you pair it with humans. That's why we talk about the alignment problem.

[40:31] Whose alignment? Whose values?

[40:35] Pamela Isom: Right, exactly.

[40:36] Pamela Isom: You start talking about that. It's not about AI in an autonomous sense. It's AI paired with his mind, her mind.

[40:46] Now we start. And the weaponization therein, or the mind.

[40:50] Pamela Isom: Of those that mean well, those that intend well, those that are about ethical outcomes, those that are about equitable outcomes. And so we have to do what we. So it's emerging, right?

[41:05] So it's. It's a learning curve for all of us to guide the outcomes in the proper way. And when you're dealing with emerging tech, we have to be creative in understanding how we are going to do this.

[41:20] And it's a wonderful opportunity. It's definitely not something that we want to wait until it's too late. It's not the case. It's something that we have to get a hold of and address sooner rather than later.

[41:34] And then remember that it's continuous, which is what you're saying. So it's a continuous thing.

[41:39] I want to know, can you share words of wisdom or experiences for the listeners?

[41:45] Christopher Lafayette: Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration. Nobody could do it alone.

[41:50] Pamela Isom: We get so frenzied in this era of contestation that we forget to realize that we need each other to be able to build more than ever before. Why? We'd like to think we're as autonomous as we are.

[42:03] And I regard agency, I understand that. But the reality is that we're not as autonomous as we think that we are. We're all frail. We're very frail in life. Now is the most important time and ever in innovation.

[42:17] To be able to build together, to be able to create cloud consistencies for us to come together. There's all kind of frameworks that exist, there's all type of white papers and all types of manifestos.

[42:28] But bringing those in together, people through expression, through conversation, is one of the most important things we can do. We have to realize that we're about to be rushed with technology.

[42:42] That can speak as well and in some cases better than most.

[42:48] We don't want to lose human communication.

[42:53] That's my first one. I got two more.

[42:56] Pamela Isom: Okay.

[42:57] Pamela Isom: First one is don't lose human communication. My second.

[43:00] Every day you're given a new opportunity to innovate for betterment.

[43:06] There are those that are going to come to the table late and realize that this was the projected path all along. And there are those that realize that now, especially within our Global Gatherers community, our Hyper Policy team, we must now consider that the biggest priority in technical innovation is human betterment.

[43:28] That's number two.

[43:30] Number three is what are you doing with the time that's given?

[43:34] We only have salon to innovate.

[43:37] Think more.

[43:39] Push away from the desk, push away from the screens and the tech itself and realize that there's more that's happening within you.

[43:50] So much more that's happening within you than without.

[43:54] And how will you appreciate everything that's without? And you haven't even appreciated the magnitude of what's in as I've been told to turn our eyes inward.

[44:05] What's happening inside your own heart and mind.

[44:09] Pamela Isom: I agree. Well, hey, I want to thank you for taking the time to talk to me today and share your wisdom and insights. I am going to check into the Gather Verse.

[44:22] I haven't done it yet, but I'm. I'm coming. So we will see what we can do together or I'll see what I can do to support you and your initiative that you have going on.

[44:31] But I do appreciate you being here. You didn't have to do it. So thanks for taking the time out to chat with me today.

[44:38] Christopher Lafayette: Thank you.