Erica: Welcome to the Executive Function Brain trainer podcast. I'm Dr. Erica Warren.
Darius: And I'm Darius Namdaran. And we're your hosts.
Erica: Sponsored by the Executive Functioning Remedial Assessment, an online tool that quickly identifies challenges and delivers targeted strategies for success.
Darius: Sponsored by ivvi. Imagine turning your meeting's audio into a live mind map instantly. So. So you remember what matters. Well, try ivvi for free now at ivvi.app. That's ivvi.app.
Erica: Hey, Darius. Great to see you.
Darius: Hey, Erica. Nice to be back.
Erica: So what are we going to talk about today?
Darius: Well, something that I have been sort of using with clients doing executive function coaching, and in general, that really resonates with them, and I thought I'd share it with them. I just nicknamed it the three T's, Okay. Which is technique, tool, and team. And what the three T's are for me is that often our strategy, especially with dyslexia and adhd, is often the skills that we have don't match the way that we think or work, and there's a disconnect. And that's often the big issue is it's not that there's anything wrong with you or with us. It's just that our brain is shaped differently, and so you need a different tool to match that mind and that way of thinking. So what tends to happen is you can often solve certain executive function challenges with a different technique. And then let's say there's 10 different little challenges that you've got in life with Executive Function, just for a number, what I found is that maybe five or six can be solved with a technique. I'm just going to change the technique of how I use my calendar. For example, a lot of people, instead of typing into their calendar, when they use a technique of visually dragging a block into the blob, it's visual. And they're like, gosh, that really works for me, Darius. And dragging things around and having those blocks around, still a calendar, it's just a different technique, right? And then it's kind of like, oh, well, actually, I've tried this technique and it's a good idea, but I'm just not managing to stay consistent with that technique or it's not becoming automatic for me. And so then you move up to the next level. Is there a tool that can do it for me? Is there like an app or a software or a bit of hardware or some sort of tool that can help me do that? Because often tools are a form of embedding technique into the tool. It's like you might Have a certain technique that you use with your knife to do something, the way you angle it, but then you make a new knife, and you grind it down so that it's always that particular bit that you use. And you've created a new tool. So the technique leads to a tool. And. And so sometimes you might not be good at the technique, so you just delegate it to a tool. But then to a team. No, to a tool.
Erica: Oh. If the technique doesn't work, then you.
Darius: Elevate it to a tool. You delegate it up to a tool.
Erica: Yeah, I see.
Darius: So it's like I might not be really good at writing in a piece of paper and writing down my notes and rewriting them and rubbing them out and transferring them over. So I use a task management app that just rolls it over for me and does that, and that becomes the technique turns into a tool. Do you know what I mean?
Erica: Yes. Yeah. Or maybe you decide to use the tool of voice typing instead so you don't have to hand write. So that would be a tool. Gotcha.
Darius: And so what happens is you're like, wow, great. I've solved six of those issues with techniques, and I've solved three of them with a tool. But there's this last one that I just. I can't use technique. I can't use this tool. I'm not. Maybe it's a time management thing or something or whatever. It's just like, for some reason, I just can't get myself to do this. And at that point, you move up to team, and you say, look, I need to bring someone into my life onto my team. You know, if either your personal team or your business team or you just accept this is not something I'm very good at, it might end up being body doubling. Someone just sits with you while you do a particular thing and they do something similar, but it gets you done. Or they might actually do it for you as an assistant or an accountant or a bookkeeper, et cetera. I'm just. You might be terrible at doing it, so you give it to someone else. And so those three T's people have found very useful as a sort of mental model. What are your thoughts?
Erica: Yeah, I like it. I like the idea of breaking it down so that they have options. So if they're in a pickle,
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Erica: they can say, oh, okay, let me think about the three T's. Do I need a technique here, a new technique here, a new tool here, or a new team member?
Darius: Because each one kind of has a different level of investment as it Were adopt a little technique. It's not a huge amount of time or investment or whatever, but to adopt a new tool, it can be investment in time and attention, money even. But then to adopt a person into the team, that's another investment that you may not be paying them, but there would be some quid pro quo. You might do something for them, and they might do something for you. So it's still an investment.
Erica: I almost see, instead of like a ladder, I see it as almost like a cycle, because technically, the team new team member could introduce you to new techniques and to new tools. So you could almost look at it as like a cycle that that can continue. Because anytime you get stuck with your technique, tool, and team, perhaps you need a new team member that can give you a fresh perspective on the techniques and tools.
Darius: I like it. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's kind of like sometimes you don't know what you don't know. And when you bring a team member in, often that team member is like, oh, I've been using this. And you go, oh, that's interesting. I didn't know that.
Erica: That's right. That's right. So it's almost like the double helix idea of like a spiral staircase. So you're constantly growing, you're getting better, but you want to mix it up.
Darius: Yeah. And again, it's not necessarily. And. And they're not like the ladder is one way of looking at it, but yeah, the circle. And they're also all concurrent as well. And you got technique, tool, and team. You might be doing a certain technique using a tool as part of your team. They might all three being used at once as well.
Erica: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's nice because if you think of it as a circle, and perhaps the circle has lines traveling to each one of them like a little triangle in the middle.
Darius: Yeah.
Erica: And have the arrows going back and forth. It's kind of a nice model.
Darius: The other thing I wanted to introduce to the conversation, as usual, is AI. And the thing is, I've had this just amazing experience over the weekend with AI that is just relevant.
Erica: Can I ask you, is that a technique, a tool or a team, or all of the above?
Darius: It is literally all of the above. And the team element is the more important one in. In it is that I'd say over the weekend, since Friday. And the drop of cursor 2.0.
Erica: Tell me, what is cursor 2.0?
Darius: So. Well, let me finish that sentence and then I will. So it makes more sense since the drop of cursor 2.0. I now feel I've just experienced what agentic AI is, what an AI agent could do for me, and B, feel like they're part of my team rather than a tool. Do you see what I mean?
Erica: I do, yeah.
Darius: So what Cursor is, it's a code writing software, okay. That developers use. And what they did was these developers at Cursor, they forked, which is basically copied an open-source code editing tool called VS Code that all most, lots of other code editors do. Which you're allowed to do. Yeah. And then what they did was they enhanced it and adapted it the way they wanted, and they introduced an AI chat interface just like ChatGPT but on the side. Okay. And the difference is that instead of ChatGPT being in a window and separate from all your information, it has access in Cursor to all your code for your, the project you're working on as a developer.
Erica: So you must be a protected platform.
Darius: Protected from what?
Erica: So that you're not giving away all your secrets.
Darius: Yeah, pretty much. They say that they're not training on the code and things like that. They give that assurance that they're not going to train on your code or take your code or whatever. But that's still to be kind of worked out in the wash, to be honest. If I'm being completely. Everyone's kind of like, yeah, not so sure about that. But I mean that's their promise and they are keeping it. And so they're definitely not training directly on your code. Okay. However, as an AI, you don't need to be training directly on the code. Often what's more important is how you code and how you think through this things, what your technique is.
Erica: Yes, interesting. This is a very interesting example of how you could use it
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Erica: for a technique. Yeah, interesting.
Darius: So basically, so this tool is basically like a software for like you would use, let's say if you're writing a document on a blog post on Word or Pages or something like that, and you had a chat interface on the right hand side and it helped you write that document, but not just that document, had access to all of your documents and everything that you had done so that it could give you feedback and adjust it and so on. Okay. But it's for code bases. Okay. So the bottom line is these guys are kind of cutting edge, okay. And what they've done is they've got what we're used to, which is this useful tool, which is ChatGPT equivalent, helping you edit your code. Okay. And it's Acted like a good tool, but it's just done the jump towards being a good team member. And the reason is what happens is they've created a new interface and what happens is you sort of summon an agent, okay. So you create an agent inside of it and you say you are a website coding agent. And what happens is this is the way I like you to do website. You're used to doing on this platform, you're used to doing on that. And, and it's got access to all of your website, everything that you've done, back end, front end, and so on. And it understands what you do and you create a set of rules for it to follow and you kind of onboard it like a member of staff. You create a set of rules and it's job; I like you to behave in this way when I call you as my web developer. Okay. And then, and the importance of this is that as you're doing the web development, say or writing a blog post or something, you write things in like, please remember I like it like this. And it goes, oh yeah, I remember. And it creates memories into its, its history and its instructions that Erica likes it like this, you know, da da, da, da da. And it starts to be more responsive. And what happens is they've created a new file structure called MDC which is different than Markdown, which is a set of rules. And AIs are now getting set up as a set of rules. Now the important thing is developers are using this, right? And they've got like; you are now a bug writing developer and that's a different skill set. Or you might be an accessibility developer. That's a different skill set and lots of different skill sets.
Erica: The agent is really the team.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: And you're defining their expertise.
Darius: That's right. And so you define the team members. So if you imagined, let's say, let's make something much more relatable, let's say you were a YouTuber or a content creator, you wrote blog posts. Okay, well you've actually got quite a few hats on when you do that. Okay, so you've got to write the blog post, but before you write it, you've got to also brainstorm ideas. And sometimes you need to go and research and think through, oh, I'm going to go through my notes and just pick out some of the things I had. I got this quote and so on. Oh yeah, that's right, research it. You maybe brainstorm it out and create an outline. Then you write it and then you proofread it and then You've got to think about what images you put in with it, and then you've got to publish it, and then you've got to check that it's working on the website and all the links are working. Okay, so those are seven things, but they're actually seven different roles that if you had a company, one person would be doing different ones of those. Lots of them, but different specific skills. I'm a copywriter, I'm a proofreader. I actually post up and check that it's working on the website. You might have three different roles. And so what you do is you create those three different agents that know the way you like things done.
Erica: So now, which platform is this that you're describing again?
Darius: This is cursor 2.0. Okay.
Erica: Where is cursor 2.0? Is this something you can find online?
Darius: Well, it's a bit geeky. Okay. So it's not necessarily what maybe our listeners would. Would go and do, but so what.
Erica: Would they use that we could guide them towards?
Darius: Well, what I'm. Why I'm saying this is they may not be able to do this just yet. Okay. Because it's quite techy to do it. Okay. But what's for sure is in the next three to six months, there will be these kinds of agents that are so much easier to do on ChatGPT or on Claude or some other company.
Erica: Right. It's coming down the pike. I mean, I know that I have a membership for ChatGPT, and I was able to use an agent maybe for
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Erica: 15 questions, and they said, that's all you have for a month.
Darius: Oh, so you used an agent. What do you mean by you used. I've not used agents in ChatGPT. What do you mean by that?
Erica: I did they have this option of being able to use an agent, and it. And it was really, really helpful until it just said, oh, that's. You're done. You can't. So, I mean, I think the agents, hopefully you're able to use them more than so many times a month, but they don't tell you how many times. It just all of a sudden, they're like, all right, you're done.
Darius: Yeah.
Erica: And it's not like you're done for the day, which would be helpful. I'd rather them just say you could have one a day, one question or.
Darius: Whatever you're like, done for the month?
Erica: I was done for the month, probably. And that was with a membership, the one that's around $23 a month.
Darius: Yes. So, like, the people who paying $200 a month for it will get more of that. But what they've done, to be precise, is they have the agent that you worked on, okay, spins up a whole computer. You know how you've got a MacBook there, right? You've got a CPU, you've got an operating system, you've got software, you've got Chrome, it's got one of those.
Erica: So it's got its basic own. You get your own little operating system, but only until you reach your limit. And then that's it.
Darius: Yeah, so it's kind of like, if you think about it as someone that you outsource to, like maybe you've got a consultant agent and an outsourcing person, they've got their own computer, they've got their own expertise, they've got their own. And you give them a job, they go away for an hour, a day, a week, whatever, come back and say, oh, here's my result. And there it's done.
Erica: Yeah. I'll give you an example because I had a company contact me, they were interested in purchasing some of my assessment IP intellectual property. And I used an agent to figure out whether this was. These people were legit, you know, so they went and did all this research for me and came back and it was, it was really cool and really helpful and definitely better than just plain old ChatGPT. But so I look forward to that coming.
Darius: So it's absolutely crazy to just go through that experience. I went through that experience over the last four days, and I've literally just been coding for like 12 hours a day. Okay. Even over the weekend, up till two at night, I can't code. Okay. But this is the first time with an agent that I've been able to say this is the outcome that I want and define it. And we've got a list of things that we've got to do within Ivy and that are on my developer's list. And he just never gets around to doing those things. And often there's mid-level tasks, like I want this button to do this because it's just a bit nicer for the users to use it. You know, it's not like a core architectural thing, but it would take him like 2 hours, 3 hours to do that, 3 hours to do that, three hours to do this, et cetera. And that's a week worth of work. I sat down and gave it the specifications, this agent that I created, and we got eight of them done. Literally a week's worth of coding that I'd have to get my developer to do. Done. And it wasn't just like that magic. I had to work hard to get it done.
Erica: So you're doing the higher-level reasoning part and it's doing the low-level coding part.
Darius: That's right. So it's executive function, but you have to have.
Erica: You have to be in charge. You have to be the functioning executive
Darius: You do.
Erica: You have to be the conductor.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: Which requires attention and focus and reasoning. But, you know, I'm sure you could always use something like IBVY to help you reason through it so that you know exactly how to conduct an agent, so to speak.
Darius: Yeah. And you've got all three elements of working memory happening at once. Okay. You've got of executive function, you've got working memory, you've got inhibitory control, you got cognitive flexibility, and you've basically got to exercise all three of them with the agent. Okay.
Erica: It sounds to me like, you know, what it's doing is its expanding your working memory, your inhibitory control, your cognitive flexibility, but you're still in charge of it.
Darius: Absolutely.
Erica: So you are still the functioning executive, but you now have an expanded, expanded way of processing.
Darius: Yes. And the relevance to the three T's of technique, tool and team. What you don't know is that when you've got the team member, I
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Darius: would sit down and I'd say, look, I've got this conundrum, okay, with the app is that the conundrum was with mind mapping apps, you've got these branches, okay? And they can go to 2, 3, 4, 5 levels deep, okay. And what happens is you can collapse the branches to level one or level two, okay. So it maintains your focus. But sometimes you don't want to collapse a whole bunch of information. Sometimes you just want to hide certain branches and keep other branches. So for example, there might be all the branches, all the nodes that relate, that I've starred, okay. But in different places at different levels. I'm like, I would like to just hide everything else and just show me the 10 stars out of the hundred branches. Just show me that. And we've been racking our brain. How do we make this happen with the mind mapping app? Because there is no mind mapping app in the world that can do this. Okay? So I'm sitting there and I'm speaking with the AI, the agent, as it were, who I've said to them, I've said to, you're not allowed to make any more new code. You're Only allowed to use what's already in our code base but just come up with useful ideas that we might not have thought about. Okay. Because it's kind of. That's inhibitory control. Do you see what I mean? Like, sometimes dealing with these agents is just like some young turn that goes, oh, I went and made this, and I went and made that, and I went and did this, and I got the result you want. You're like, oh, my goodness, that's all resources. I've got to maintain all of this. I don't want to maintain all of that. I just wanted that one result. And why did you do all of that when you've got something on the shelf that could do it much easier? And AI tends to be like that. It doesn't have that inhibitory control. Do you know what I mean?
Erica: Right. It's too wide of a net.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: It's not focused enough. Doesn't have that discipline on what you want.
Darius: That's right.
Erica: Yeah.
Darius: No, it's maybe focusing on what you want. Okay. Which is like, I know you want that. You told me you wanted that. Well, I created these three big things to create. Give you that one. You're like, yeah, okay, I wanted that. But I wanted it, so it'd be easy for me to use it and not get in the way.
Erica: I've got. I've got a good metaphor. So I want you to make a meal with the ingredients that I have, not with ingredients that I don't have.
Darius: That's right. Yes.
Erica: I don't want to have to go to the grocery store and get all these wild ingredients that I might even not be able to get. I just want to make a meal right now.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: With the ingredients that I have.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: So how can I do that?
Darius: That's.
Erica: So in other words, it's a master remixing all the options.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: You know, finding all the pathways to the same location.
Darius: Yes, exactly.
Erica: So it really expands cognitive flexibility. Oh, my God. I never thought of that. That is actually the fastest way from point A to point B, and I never saw that.
Darius: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it also. What happens is you start realizing how much assumed knowledge you've put into your request. And it's like dealing with staff is such a great trainer for how to manage people. Okay. How to manage staff. Because in the future, you don't need to be a prompt engineer with AI. You need to be good at writing specifications, good at defining what your requirements are. So I might have said, oh, AI, make me a meal. And it's like, oh, right. Okay. I looked up Jamie Oliver's latest recipe. I went to the shops; I bought this lamb roast. I got this, I got that, I made it all. And I put it out there. And here's your meal. And you sit down, you go, oh, my goodness, you just spent a hundred dollars on. On a meal for one person. And it's like, oh, right, I'm sorry. So you don't. I like it. But actually, there was food in the fridge, and, you know, I really want someone who cooks meals for me that actually I could keep them cooking meals for me. But this, this is one and done. I'm never having you cook meal for me again because it's so expensive. And that's kind of what it's like with dealing with AIs. And so you kind of need to have this clarity of mind to say, look, this is what I want. And that clarifying what the plan is.
Erica: What I hear you saying or how I'm processing it, is that we almost need to teach people how to use AI to help us with the three T's. How do you use AI to define
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Erica: a new technique?
Darius: Yes.
Erica: How do you use AI to help you find a new tool? And then how do you use AI to find new team members or to be a new team member?
Darius: Yeah, absolutely.
Erica: But even find one. I mean, technically, I'll tell you when. When I had to get a lawyer for that situation I told you about earlier, where someone was interested in my intellectual property, I used AI. I said, find me great lawyer. And it was funny, when I was interviewing everybody, the last thing I said to them, I said, I'm going to tell you something that you're going to be very fascinated to hear. And they would always say, well, what's that? I found you on ChatGPT. And every one of them were like, no way.
Darius: Really?
Erica: No way. I was like, yep, I did. And they were like, wow, how did that happen, I wonder? I'm so curious about that. And I was like, did. Just popped it in. You came up.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: You met all of my qualifications or most of them? Most of them. Some of the people I crossed off myself. But, yeah, you guys came to the top, so what do you know? Isn't that a nice thing to know? And they. They were all, like, really excited.
Darius: Yeah. I'm not surprised.
Erica: And some of them were just really small firms that. Yeah, they weren't. Some of them are big firms. Some of them were small firms.
Darius: Interesting, interesting. So do you know there's a new term for how you got search engine Optimization. They've got a new term for AI optimization. I can't remember what the term is, but what's happened is, and this is very surprising, okay, how do you optimize your website or what you do for AI? Okay, and the answer to that question has emerged to be how many FAQ questions and answers have you got on your site?
Erica: Artificial Intelligence Optimization. Aio. AIO or Generative Engine Optimization. Geo.
Darius: Geo. So we've got SEO and geo, there's, there's new words, acronyms building up. But what is so surprising, I had thought the websites that had the most context, the most information and so on, I would go through and read them all and give you a good answer. But they don't do that. What they do is they're lazy. Okay, so if you have a question, a legal question that says how, how do you deal with a company whose approached you to buy your IP question, and then there's a chat, there's an answer that is underneath it that says the best way to deal with this is to ask them clearly what areas they're interested in and what they want to use it for. And then look at this and look at that and do that and one paragraph answer. Okay? Just like an FAQ, it might not be a big, long FAQ, but it's written like that into a blog post or question and answer explicitly. The AI will trawl the Internet looking for those and then when it finds three, four or five of those, it will aggregate those answers into the answer it gives and use those five Q and A's as its reference. Isn't that amazing?
Erica: That's very interesting. That is amazing. That is amazing.
Darius: So I had thought it would go for a big blog post, distill it down with lots of good answers in it. But that takes tokens. That takes a lot of AI tokens to do that. So their shortcut that they programmed into these now is to go and find the actual answer from human beings to a similar question posed.
Erica: That's fascinating. It's interesting. I'm just going to go back because I just had this thought that when I did look for the lawyers, I did it through the agent.
Darius: Oh really?
Erica: I wonder whether that's why I got, I, I really got a mixture of small and large firms. Whether if I had just asked Chat GPT whether I, I, it would have been different. It would have been an interesting study to do to ask both an agent and ChatGPT to see what the results were.
Darius: Yes, absolutely. That would be fascinating. The same question See what got. Oh, now that's the other interesting thing that's happening in this whole world of agents, okay? It's completely crazy, Erica, completely crazy. But what happens is, let's say you give it a task, okay, and you run, you spin up one agent, okay. You can spin up two to run separately from each other on the same information and compare their result, okay. And you can spin up to four and compare their results because they will not be of the same quality.
Erica: Interesting.
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Erica: So then again, you have to use your own analytical skills. So you know what's fascinating to me, what's really bubbling up for me is that in order to be a really good AI manager, meaning that managing AI, you have to have really great analytical reasoning skills.
Darius: Yeah, you do.
Erica: I mean, and the people that have great analytical skills are going to be the ones that are these top creators or I don't know if you call them creators, but probably creators, entrepreneurs. They will be able to kind of master manipulate AI in ways that other people won't be able to.
Darius: Yeah, I mean, I'm experiencing right now it has made me more intelligent, I felt more intelligent over the last four.
Erica: Days or so of people because, because you actually have really good higher level reasoning skills. You're very analytical. I am too. So that's. That is probably my highest score, really high scores when it comes to analytical reasoning. And that's why I find a lot of these artificial intelligence systems extraordinarily helpful. But I can also see that those that have weak analytical skills really shouldn't use them because they're using them. They're not really capable of using them in a way that it's going to be helpful or to help them grow. In fact, it can help them not to grow because they get into the habit of just dictating. I want you to do this for me versus having it assist them in thinking for themselves.
Darius: Yes. And that's where this experience over the last four days. So when you're dealing with an agent now in cursor, there are three modes you go into. Okay. And these are really fascinating how they've emerged over time. Mode one is Ask, mode two is Plan, and mode three is actual.
Erica: That's really interesting.
Darius: And what's happened is they have had ask and act for the last four months. Okay. So we started with Ask, okay. Which is tell me about this, like ChatGPT. And it creates some answers and so on, and then you kind of implement some of those answers one by. You copy and paste it and so on. So that's Ask, give me some information. Then there's act, and it just does it. But what's happening is people are like, oh, my goodness, I've had to go in there and clean it all up and so on. It's just been a complete mess. So what you've now got is plan. Okay, so let's go back to the meal analogy. Okay? So you say, oh, I can't do it myself, I'm really busy, but could you have a meal on the table for me tonight? Just take, get it sorted, please. I'd really appreciate it. Make sure these are all my dietary requirements, etc. Just keep, keep it the way I need it. All right? Off it goes, does the big roast dinner, and it's just way too much. Now you say plan and you're not allowed to act. Just plan. And so what it does is it says, right, okay, here's my plan. I'm going to go and get Jamie Oliver's book. I'm going to find a meal, I'm going to go to the shop, I'm going to buy the food, I'm going to bring it back, I'm going to cook it, I'm going to serve it to you by seven o'. Clock. And you're like, oh, right, okay, hold on a minute. And you've just got those seven points. And you're like, no. And you answer, you got to take it out of the fridge. Okay? And it goes, all right, here's a new plan. I can see we've got some chicken left over from yesterday. We've got this tomato sauce; we've got a rice sachet. How about I do the rice and mix up the sauce and use these herbs and so on and make you a nice chicken stew on the. On the rice. Sounds great. Go do it. That's how it works now.
Erica: Interesting. Well, I, I'm looking forward to when it will actually do exactly what you just described. Because I would love to have a cook. I am not a huge fan of cooking. I mean, in a way, a pressure cooker is pretty close to that. You can just kind of throw everything in and then. And half an hour later you have like something that tastes like it was cooked over a day.
Darius: You're not going to like it though, Erica, because it's going to be built by Elon Musk. Optimus is going to be the one that does it for you. Realistically, in the next few years, Optimus, it's phenomenal. Have you seen this dance?
Erica: I've seen different things about how people try to push it over and how it's catches itself. No, I haven't seen a dance.
Darius: That's all kind of all. Yeah, boring, boring. That, that was impressive, but it's no longer impressive. But what they did was they
00:35:00
Darius: took the Optimus robot and over a couple of nights they played it music and also trained it on dance moves and ballet. And what it does is. What it does is as it's thinking, as it's being processed, trained, as it were, for those few days. What it's doing is it's replicating all of that in a virtual gravitational space and it sort of thinks and then it falls over and it. And it falls over and it. And it keeps practicing until it manages to do it. Okay. So it replicates the abilities it knows it has with the. With gravity and ground and so on balance practices. They switched it on. You should watch the video. It's absolutely incredible.
Erica: I have it sitting here in front of me and when we finish our podcast, I'm going to watch it. I can't wait.
Darius: And it dances beautifully. And the point of it is that when you're dancing there are so many subtle shifts and things like that that you have to counterbalance and, and so on. And there's so much happening that isn't just someone pushing you. It's like a very dynamic environment on one foot moving from different legs going sideways. It's not just hopping on one place and looking like you're dancing; it's actual dancing. And the point of it is that it's capability to move and also capability to learn and predict what it can do in that environment, what it can't do is quite remarkable now.
Erica: So yeah, it could be really helpful as we get older, I mean.
Darius: Yeah.
Erica: And quite possibly be much more affordable than having healthcare aid or something of that sort.
Darius: Oh, I can't wait.
Erica: And you know what? Just much more reliable. Anytime you need it, it could be there. It could clean. It could help you get to the bathroom if you needed to. If you are injured. It could. Yeah, it's. It's going to be. Yeah, it's. I think it's going to be transformational for the elderly.
Darius: Absolutely, absolutely. Transformation.
Erica: I wonder, do you know what. What the timeline is on having something like that in houses?
Darius: Yes, it's going to be tricky because there's going to be so much demand for them. So basically, they will be able to be in houses in two to three years’ time quite comfortably.
Erica: Right. But I guess it. They'll be. The price won't come down for A while to make it probably in houses.
Darius: For 20 to $30,000, which is still very affordable in terms of.
Erica: Right. You think of it as someone. It's like for you, small car.
Darius: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Erica: Yeah. And when you're elderly, you don't really can't drive a car anyway. But then we'll have self-driving cars by then too. Yeah, we'll have something that's kind of thing.
Darius: Well, we already have self-driving cars. I mean, well, there's Waymo and then there's Tesla. Self-driving cars doing robo taxis with a guy just sitting in the corner doing nothing just for compliance. And they're doing absolutely everything, parking, picking people up, dropping them off, everything. Thousands and thousands of people every day are doing that right now in Texas and other places. It's just gradually growing. But the point with the robot and AI inside of your house is that first of all it will be an AI that does not connect to the Internet. It will be completely yours. That's what's going to have to be the case. It'll be a standalone AI that doesn't need to communicate with the cloud to make decisions or communicate with you. It stays in and the information that it gets stays inside of one particular zone in its mind that is offline, etc.
Erica: You know, as far as we know.
Darius: No, no, it's going to be. You're not going to allow them in otherwise. I think anyway, once they deal with the security conditions, what's going to be more remarkable rather than it catching you when you fall, which it will, if you fall, it'll be there. It will catch you when you fall. And the reason why I needed that last summer. You did; you did. And the reason why it will catch you when you fall is not because it was right beside you and it just caught you. It's because it could predict that you are about to fall. So for example.
Erica: Right, right. Like last summer would have noticed that my dog had seen another dog and was starting to run in the other direction, which gives it time to react and would be able to catch me when I fell.
Darius: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Erica: That's interesting.
Darius: And actually it would probably be more like a parent would be. The parent would be saying, I've noticed that Erica gets pulled by the dogs a lot. I'm just watching her.
Erica: It would have taken one of the dogs from me and it would have never happened.
Darius: Maybe. Or let's just say it didn't do that. That would have been sensible. But I've noticed the dogs are pulling
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Darius: Erica quite a Lot. And I've noticed that she comes off balance. She's now starting to get to. She was at 70% chance of falling over, 80% chance of falling over that, that time. And. And so what it might start doing is it might just walk just a little bit closer to you on a certain side on the dog pulling side, and just say, I'm. I'm here just in case. I'm not going to intervene, and so on. And then boom.
Erica: Yes.
Darius: You got pulled 90% and the arms out and caught her. Do you know what I mean? So I was just wonderful. I was in hospital the other day, right. And I had this interesting experience. I was walking up the stairs. My mom had had a stroke. It was really sad. But she's doing okay now. Really.
Erica: I'm sorry.
Darius: And there was two women walking down the stairs the other way. Right. The woman at the top of the flight of stairs stumbled. Okay. And she just stumbled forwards. Okay. And I was walking up beside her, and I immediately put out my arm, hit her in the waist and stopped her falling. And then I put my arm back up and carried on walking. She was like, oh, my God, thank you so much. You saved me from falling. And she probably would have broken something really bad, but it was just in an instant. And I said, I'm really sorry that I just instinctively reached out and touched you because I grabbed her. I didn't grab her. I just put my arm out like a barrier, and it stopped her enough for her to catch her balance. Do you know what I mean?
Erica: Yeah.
Darius: But what we've got wired inside of us is that instinctual response. Oh, that person happens. And it was complete reflex. Do you know what I mean?
Erica: Yeah.
Darius: And these models.
Erica: That was beautiful that you have that reflex. I think a lot of people have. Have really. They don't have that reflex anymore because they've been told not to, you know?
Darius: Yeah, yeah. Maybe they would have hesitated, and if they did, then she'd have fallen. But the robots will have those reflexes. But not just. Just a reflex in the moment, but like that robot, when you were falling over, say, it would have anticipated. There's a high chance Erica might fall at some point and then put her arm down and catch you, or maybe even just hold your arm while it was tugging and stop you falling and you might have turned around and go, Optimus, why did you do that? Stop interfering.
Erica: Right, right.
Darius: Or.
Erica: Or. Or could have even grabbed the dog, maybe, or.
Darius: But probably it would have grabbed you at the moment where you were falling and you realized you needed it now.
Erica: I needed that.
Darius: You did. And. And the interesting thing with all of this is the Apple Watch. Okay. A highly recommended.
Erica: That I did have on my hand and it was blaring that I had had a fall because as. But the audience doesn't know I fell flat on my face on my driveway and broke my cheekbone. And now I'm having to have surgery on my knee because I tore my ACL and meniscus but did numerous other things as well. So that was back in August. So, yeah, I mean, that would be great. That sounds. Anything to bring along that kind of secures your safety. You know, they have these things that if you fall, it notices that you fall and it puts up like a bubble around you. Yeah, that would be really embarrassing to have something like that. But, you know, after having a fall like that, you're like, I don't care if it's embarrassing. But yeah, my Apple Watch did. It just went. It was blaring like. And I just. I was really confused because I was not doing very well. And the woman that saw it happen came up and I just took it off my hand and said, can you handle this, please? Because I think they were calling 91 1.
Darius: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what's interesting about the Apple Watch in terms of this predictive ability, that's the key thing with all of this is AIs are pattern recognizers and prediction machines. And in your watch, you've got a thing with regard to your walking. It measures your steps, obviously, but it also measures your stability. When my dad was sick, I put it on his arm, and it could measure when he was getting more unstable on his feet and less unstable on his feet. And you can actually. It's got a chart which tells you what side of leg is getting weaker and what side you're leaning more towards.
Erica: That. What's cool about that? It can really define, like, you might be walking in a way where part of your leg is starting to atrophy because you're just not using it. And then if you're aware of that, you could be like, oh, then I just. If I push my feet, my toes out a little bit, then I'll activate that thing. So, I mean, it can help us to stay more in shape and to address our areas of weakness more consciously before you fall.
Darius: And that's the whole point. All these things are solved. I need one of those guys before you fall. By being prediction machines, you should.
Erica: You should sell those things because you just sold.
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Erica: Sold one to me.
Darius: Apple Watch. Absolutely.
Erica: I Have the Apple watch. But that, unfortunately that didn't catch me. It only told me that I fell and I was like, oh, thanks.
Darius: Well, I just hope the optimist comes out in enough time and you, you get over any Elon derangement syndrome or anything like that and allow you.
Erica: Well, I'm sure, I'm sure there will be, I'm sure there'll be lots of different options. He'll, he'll have the first, perhaps the best. Who knows?
Darius: He will definitely have the best. He'll have the cheapest and the most secure. And the reason is, I hope so.
Erica: We'll see.
Darius: He's really passionate about it and he can actually deliver on production. The value of these robots will be so high because they can do so much productively wise. So there'll be a lot of demand from businesses. Oh, I want a robot that can pack all these boxes, that can fix this, can put that in the car, can even drive it to a customer.
Erica: It's definitely going to have a major impact on people being able to. It's going to take people's jobs, basically.
Darius: It could, it could. That's what people say, certain types of jobs. For sure, it could. And it might also create a ton of jobs as well.
Erica: Yeah, let's hope so.
Darius: Just like the Internet's created a lot of YouTubers and bloggers and people who sell things on site and, and like teachers who can teach students. I mean, there's teachers who can teach students in class and they've got disability because they can do it via Zoom. They couldn't have done that before, couldn’t have done that 10 years ago. They couldn't have stayed home with their kid for half the day and then gone in and taught. They're creating teaching materials and posting them online and people are buying them and making a living from it and all sorts of stuff that's happened. So yeah, one job will die out, and another job will rise up, probably.
Erica: Let's hope so. What an interesting conversation.
Darius: That was good. Back to the three T's. And also AI is going to help us with those three T's.
Erica: Sounds good. So I look forward to our next discussion.
Darius: Great. See ya.
Erica: Sponsored by learningspecialistcourses.com Courses and resources that support educators and coaches.
Darius: Sponsored by Ivy. Imagine turning your meeting's audio into a live mind map instantly so you remember what matters. Ideal for students and managers with dyslexia or adhd. Try ivvi for free now at ivvi.app. That's ivvi.app. Thank you for joining us at the Executive Function Brain Trainer podcast.
Erica: Check out our show notes for links and resources and follow us on social media.
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