A Little Bit About Garik:

Garik Tate is an AI Futurist, Investor, and AI Strategy Consultant.

With a decade of entrepreneurial experience, he has founded and led successful companies in software development, outsourcing, and publishing.

His expertise lies at the intersection of AI, IQ, and EQ, getting his client’s businesses to achieve increased profits and ultimately get acquired at high valuations.

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

TRANSCRIPTION:

JP McAvoy: Hello, and thank you for joining us here today on The Millionaire’s Lawyer. We’re happy to have you with us. 

And on today’s show, we’ve got Garik Tate, who is an AI Futurist, Investor in AI Strategy Consultant. Great conversation that we have we’re at the intersection of AI, Blockchain IQ and EQ, for that matter. Here’s my conversation with Garik Tate. Garik, thanks so much for joining us here today. Happy to have you here reporting from Cebu. We’re just talking offline. That’s the second largest city in the Philippines. Is that right?

Garik Tate: Yes, sir.

JP McAvoy: The second largest city in the Philippines which is, well, what size is that? We know Manila is a huge city. What’s the size of Cebu?

Garik Tate: Depending on how you measure the metropolitan area. It’s definitely more than a million folks. I think it’s below 5,000,000 though. It’s around that number.

JP McAvoy: Okay. Originally stateside. I think you grew up seeing the Seattle area?

Garik Tate: Yep. Grew up actually in Whidbey Island,

JP McAvoy: Rainy times there. I assume there’s a nice rainy season in the Philippines as well.

Garik Tate: I described the area I grew up as 100 miles from where they film Twilight, and Twilight set there because vampires can chill there because it’s literally never sunny. It’s always raining all the time, so that forms a picture. There’s a dry season and a rainy season here in the Philippines. But right now, it’s been good weather so far.

JP McAvoy: That’s good stuff. Okay. And you’ve been there roughly 10 years? How long have you been over that side of the world?

Garik Tate: Yeah. And long story short, I moved out here when I was 18 years old. We started a family business, my brother and my father, a publishing company. Still running that business, and still doing quite well. But I’ve been here for about 10 years now.

JP McAvoy: 10 years watching it evolve and watching business evolve as well. Alright, I think that’s going to be part of our conversation here today, most specifically, the way you’re delving into AI, looking at AI. And obviously, we’re doing a lot of thinking on that end of things as well. What are you seeing from there? From the 1000 mile view, what are things look like from your perspective these days?

Garik Tate: You’re speaking in the broader industry, not so much the Philippines in particular, right?

JP McAvoy: Yes. AI (inaudible), and I think it’s here to stay. What the future holds for AI? What are we talking about?

Garik Tate: When we’re talking about AI, I think that the way it needs to be conceptualized is with a stork example. So the way that I talk to my clients about this is, what’s going on with AI right now is similar to the advent of electricity at the turn of the 1900’s. So when electricity was first broadly proliferated through society, we started being able to add it to just about anything to add greater work. In other words, it was a way of democratizing or making work/power/force significantly cheaper. So you could convert a hammer to a jackhammer, you can convert a sata power, so on and so forth. And now, we’re doing the same thing, but we’re doing it with intelligence. So now pretty much any part of our lives in which there’s a natural pattern of intelligence, we can now add these AI’s into which has both utopia and dystopia potentialities, I think we’re gonna be probably right down the middle. But that is really the way to conceptualize what we’re going through. I think that every technology goes through a hype cycle. I think that most business owners, especially in the area of tech, remember not too long ago just going through the hype cycle of Blockchain and how things rose and fall. I think we’re in a different situation with AI seeing these big players, the Googles and Microsoft’s going all in, because I think that they are rightfully seeing this technology. While it will go through more booms and busts, like it’s not going to be at this level of hype forever, it is really here to stay, and it’s making a real impact and feels realized today. So it’s here to stay, for sure.

JP McAvoy: And it’s interesting that you equated it to just turn a corner here to blockchain. How are you seeing it applied to blockchain? You’re not suggesting blockchains have been somehow not going to be used in a go forward.

Garik Tate: No, I wouldn’t say that. Actually, I was just on another podcast where we were talking a lot about the problems that AI poses, how it’s going to decrease the marginal cost of things like spam and things that are really degrading to our civilization. How it’s going to decrease the cost of doing that even more than is already. And I think that the solutions that actually, funnily enough are a lot of Blockchain technologies. And so I think that that’s a really good timing that both technologies are hitting the maturity levels they are at the time that they are because I think that there, at least in some parts of our civilization, living in a post truth world, etcetera, etcetera. It’s quite handy to have a more mature technology with Blockchain. So I think it has a lot of applications in the future. I’m talking more about the hype cycle and all the investments that are going into it on things that maybe they shouldn’t have.

JP McAvoy: It’s interesting that you just said post truth another whole podcast into itself. But I want to just take another moment on Blockchain, which platforms and networks? Do you think it’s Bitcoin? Do you think it’s Aetherium? Where will things be built?

Garik Tate: Funnily enough, my view on this has been pretty Bitcoin maximalist. Not so much in philosophy. I think that when it comes to Bitcoin maximalist, there’s definitely a logarithmic curve where if you are just a few steps over the right, you get pretty insane pretty fast. But I would say in broad strokes, there’s a lot of wisdom to it. I believe in what (inaudible) says when he says that Bitcoin maximalism is probably the most underground philosophy that’s going to change the world. I’m misquoting him. But it’s something to that effect, where it’s a little bit on people’s radar, but really isn’t going to have big ripple effects. And so I will put myself a bit in that camp while not nearly as zealous as others.

JP McAvoy: Describing though how that is the underlying shift, if we can call it that. But the underlying way that perhaps we’ll be doing things as a consequence, can you speak to what that possibly looks like?

Garik Tate: Talking about AI and Blockchain together?

JP McAvoy: Let’s start with the first with Blockchain and AI together, and then we’ll move to just AI generally.

Garik Tate: Well, I think Blockchain adds a really important piece of the puzzle when it comes to AI, which is AI’s ability to emulate reality. So the phrase that I think unlocks us is fit neural nets are to biology, what math is to physics. So you can describe and simulate physics with mathematics. And you can also describe and simulate biology with AI, because they’re using similar Darwinian mechanics. And so because of that, all of a sudden, a lot of things before were quite a biological fight baked into reality that were hard to fake are now much easier to mold, to simulate which is a fancy way of saying to fake or to lie about. And so I think that the Blockchain technology provides a pretty strong backdrop where it is impossible to fake, at least on a code level. And so I think what’s going to emerge is that individual actors will not be able to hide their reputations, and we’ll be able to track actors more effectively across platforms. And therefore, be able to better tell the good actors from the bad without them being able to fake their identification. So I think that has a lot of benefits in the society we’re heading into. I think that this might be the reason why Sam Altman started Worldcoin, which I believe is not something I’ve looked into. It’s not something I can say endorsed, because I don’t know enough about it. But I think it’s actually a coin doing exactly what we’re talking about where it’s putting your identity on the blockchain.

JP McAvoy: It’s interesting you say that. Again, I don’t know a great deal about it. But from what you’re saying, yes, Worldcoin is one such attempt to have verifiable individuals or players so that we can go back and see, are they a good actor or a bad actor. But certainly, everything that they’re doing can be traced. Again, we can talk about a whole podcast on that as well. Well, the practicalities of that, whether it’s something that’s desirable or not. But that certainly is one thing that Worldcoin is attempting to do, Sam Altman and the group working with that. And I think others as well. So it’s gonna be interesting to see, as this evolves, as you say, as this matures, we begin to see this new way of doing things because technology is empowering us to do just that. And I like your analogy to electricity with the use of AI. The shifts are more, generally, when we’re talking of how it’s going to evolve in other areas. Can you give some thoughts or some predictions there? So again, we just talked about how it will intersect with Blockchain and some of the advantages, I think, as you identified doing that. How else will AI be used, and how will it empower other areas? So in addition to Blockchain again, I know I’m asking for very broad predictions here, but that’s part of what we’re doing here. We’re trying to predict what things are going to look like in the future.

Garik Tate: August 2023, we’ll see how it all plays out. Let’s plant some flax. So I think that one conversation that a lot of people are thinking about is job security and how this will impact different industries. And so there’s a few nuances I want to throw into that conversation. One thing that I think is lacking from that conversation, in many regards, is the fact that not only will new jobs be created, we have no idea what these new jobs are even going to be like. That kind of feels where the conversation stalls out for me when I hear even very intelligent people having to reduce themselves to sound bites, that’s where it goes, jobs be eliminated, and new jobs be created. Some factors that I think also get added into this beyond that stalemate is that a lot of jobs, we will find that demand increases with the supply, there’s a lot of things that civilization produces where we would love 10 times more of it if we could slay it. One fantastic example is developers. Hiring developers as a tech company is extremely hard, that’s why my company specializes in hiring developers as our core skill set because it is quite challenging. And so if now, developers became 10 times more effective or became 10 times easier to train a developer using these tools, or some mixture of the two. We would love to have 100 times more code, we would just love that. So the supply demand curve is constrained currently more than supply side. 

And there are a lot of historical examples of this. My favorite is the ATM machine. When bank tellers were doing their job, pre ATM, 80% of their time was spent pushing numbers. And when the ATM came out, you would quite reasonably think, well, we need only 20% of the bank tellers, goodbye golly, like 80% of their time just went away. But the bank teller profession, we actually want to hire more bank tellers after the ATM. And the reason is that the banks could open up 10 times more stores or five times more stores. However, you do the math, and they actually realize they want to know more people, not less. And so I think there’s gonna be a lot of industries where people are surprised that it actually grows in its employment metrics rather than decreases. I believe that developers will increase, I believe that customer support jobs will probably decrease. We probably don’t need 10 times more customer support than we’re already getting. I’m talking about customer support and things. I don’t know about artists, and that’s one thing I’m not as sure about. If we get 10 times more art, or 100 times more art, will we value artists much? But I think that it’s not going to be just a matter of an AI taking my job, it’s much more about the actors using the technology to become 10 times or 100 times more productive. And so all of a sudden, do we need 10 times more artists to produce the same amount? That becomes a lot more of the conversation.

JP McAvoy: Yeah, and you see that conversation. Well, it relates as well to developers. So as developers become ostensibly 10 times more powerful, are they writing 10% as the code? Is that code order of magnitude that much greater? Do we need fewer people?

Garik Tate: Actually, there’s a fun metric on that. I believe I might not get these metrics exactly right. But if I remember correctly, the Copilot program which GitHub has released is paid for by developers paying for it to help them write code with AI. And I believe that 50% of all code in the last few months has been written by the 10% of developers using it. So the developers have become dependent. You want to do the math, of course, there’s already an 80, 20 curve in there, but you have become five times more productive on some back of a napkin math. So it really is, on that level, it’s already playing out.

JP McAvoy: Yeah, we’re already seeing it. Has anyone done any analysis if the code is much better? Do we have an insight?

Garik Tate: I’m absolutely sure it has. I don’t think that I don’t have a number to quote you. I believe that the code is similar quality, but I don’t have some specific metrics that I can throw at you to back that up.

JP McAvoy: I’ve heard people describing that to empower a more junior developer to become much more skilled, I think that would make some sense. These really elite developers are finding that the gap between them and perhaps the next level of developer has been diminished as a consequence. Would you agree with that statement?

Garik Tate: I don’t think I would. I think there’s a really interesting nuance to this that actually segues into the second nuance I want to throw in, which is that, unlike before with the advent of electricity where different actors could be amplified. So in the factory assembly line revolution, you didn’t need to know how to assemble the entire car in order to benefit from the factories producing 100 times more cars, you wouldn’t necessarily benefit from that. But in a lot of these technologies, in fact, the people who are the best at their jobs are in many ways able to do that still the hard part of the job, which is to articulate what they’re looking for. Did the best experts in the fields know what they’re looking for? And then if they can articulate it, well then they create the best output. So the art that an artist can create or a professional photographer can create with mid journey is better than anything I’m going to get, except out of dumb luck. And so I think that there is still going to be a competitive advantage of the experts in the fields already. But this idea, because I’ve also heard of this, the people benefiting the most or junior folks, they’re catching up the most. I’ve heard of this. I haven’t found any metrics by which I would fully buy it, but it’s really interesting. So I think there’s gonna be kind of a back and forth on that for a while longer.

JP McAvoy: Yeah. I think you’re quite right that way. And it makes it very clear that it’s important to become skilled at using these AIs. So I think that’s the one thing that anybody with an ounce of intelligence is going to realize, okay, I’ve got to learn how to use this, I got to learn how to be up on this. So how do we do that? What are some of the ways? You mentioned GitHub and Copilot, what are some of the ways that someone listening here may say, okay, I need to make sure I keep up? What are some of the things I should be looking at?

Garik Tate: I think a big chapter for a lot of people is realizing that you’re not going to be replaced by AI. You’re gonna be replaced by someone else who is 10 times more productive, and then they’re going to replace you using these tools. And we’ve been here in the past. There was a time when this white collar work was done without computers, and then companies invested 10’s of millions of dollars to buy everyone computers, and hey, you had to learn that new skill. Think or swim. So we’ve truly been here before. I have different advice for business owners compared to, let’s call them freelancers or desk workers. Should I dive into more of the Freelancer side or business owner?

JP McAvoy: Let’s go for the business owner? Some of the things the business owner needs to think of.

Garik Tate: Perfect. A lot of the clients I work with in this are small to medium business owners. So typically, under 100 employees. The first thing to do is similar to any digital transformation is to educate yourself and to lead by example. And I won’t talk too much about that. I think that people can grasp this relatively quickly.

JP McAvoy: Listening to this podcast as an example, right? People listen, and they’re learning. It’s happening right now. It’s happening in real time, so keep up. If you’re interested in keeping up, you have to do some of the work.

Garik Tate: Yes. I think what a lot of people get stuck in is the novelty points of not using it as much systematically in that workflow. And the only way you’re going to be using it systematically in your workflow, or I shouldn’t say the only way, but the most likely way is really scheduling in focus time. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve spoken with who say, oh, yeah, they hear that I’m an AI expert, or they know I’m an AI expert. I really gotta like to schedule that Friday afternoon. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that, that all Friday afternoon, I really carve out, let’s say, three hours to dive into this material. And when you’re diving in, I recommend that people do get their hands dirty, but they also look at examples. I think everyone will have their own mixture of learning here. But for most folks, I think there should be a 50/50 balance. Study what other people are doing, find examples you’d like to copy. And then 50%, just get your hands dirty and see what you can create. In that time, I would also recommend going beyond ChatGPT. So first of all, if you’re using the paid version, there are great plugins out there that you can be experimenting with. 

And I also recommend people to check out something called the Playground. The Playground, I believe it’s an open AI/platform. But you can find it if you were typing up ChatGPT Playground. You’ll get into the user interface that shows the back end of these tools, basically how the API works. And the reason why that is so cool is if you’ve spent a little bit of time learning that, with no code platforms like Zapier or make.com, you can then create automations with these technologies, which can get really crazy very fast. Because all of a sudden, if you get your inputs and outputs, you can add AI directly into your business systems without humans having to be a bottleneck in those processes. Another thing I recommend people do is check out various Chrome extensions. You have to be careful with these because there can definitely be a lot of scams or things that can steal your data. But I still recommend that people at least expand their purview beyond just ChatGPT because there are a lot of interesting tools out there that are running off of it but can help you out. Once you have dived into it yourself as a business owner and you’re leading by example, it becomes a matter of finding out where in your business then added in. Typically, most people or most business owners, I believe will find the lowest hanging fruit being one of five areas which are prospecting and sales, and this is where they might want to be adding in AI automations or AI tools in how they’re dealing with prospects, and how they’re moving people through their funnel, maybe customize templates. There’s a lot of applications there. The second area after Sales and Marketing is to be onboarding clients. Third is in customer support. 

So you can think of these three as in that funnel, where the fourth and fifth ways to add AI being adding employee training, or employee manuals as AI. And then number five is data transformation, which is typically data entry. But if you need to transform data or enrich data, those are five areas that you can add it in. If you don’t know where to get started, I recommend all business owners to create a diagram of their business and to track their, you should be obviously tracking your numbers very effectively and just see where in your business flow in your workflows more errors occur than you would like them to occur. But also, which areas have clean inputs and outputs. Because I think of all problems as inputs, outputs problems, the problem, of course, is that sometimes, the inputs are unclear. I’m sure you, as a lawyer, sometimes the advice you’re giving is far more than just, read this contract. You have to understand the context of speaking with the client. So it can be very, very challenging to hand these over to machines. But if there’s an area where the inputs and outputs are clear, then AI can really be added in quite effectively. So those are the methodologies I give to people and coach people through when they’re thinking about how to add AI into their business.

JP McAvoy: Yeah. That’s really helpful. And it’s a good way to think, that’s good advice for just thinking of your business in general looking at roadmapping and then employing AI among other solutions to ways of improving the flow. You mentioned ChatGPT and the tools there. From a mobile perspective, people are doing things on their mobile devices. What tools are you seeing that are being used effectively there?

Garik Tate: It’d be honest, most of my interactions with these applications on the desktop, I’ve always kind of been resistant to doing too many things on my phone. I think it’s a little bit of a rebellion against social media. Not too many examples jumped to mind, to be honest. That’s a great question, though. But it’s hard for me to differentiate them. I haven’t given much thought to that taxonomy.

JP McAvoy: Yeah, interesting. And fair enough. You’re probably more productive. I just see people trying to use their mobile devices as well, and I’m contemplating ways, the most effective ways they can because it’s an extension with your device at all times, then making sure that you’re also able to leverage the power of the technology at all times. I think it’s another way. We spoke generally for the business owners, or the business owners can be doing, and you mentioned tools for the individual. Freelancer, what are some specifics for the freelancers?

Garik Tate: For the Freelancers, I would say it’s simpler, or I should say it’s more focused on carving out that specialized time to mastering these tools for yourself. And depending on your work, there’s always new tools that are coming out there. Just a few months ago, open AI in the non paid version was just released. I believe they call them custom instructions, but I think it’s better thought of as AI personas. So even the free version now, you can add custom instructions. And so one thing, actually just this week, I’ve had my team create a shared database of all of the custom, we call them personas, but all the personas that we might want to use AI with from copywriting, social media marketing, to content creation, to actually not just copywriting, specifically outreach copywriting, and then inbound handling. So all of these are different personas that have different requirements and training. And then that creates a shared knowledge base, our company can leverage. I recommend people to be diving into tools like that and seeing where they can add value to either clients or their organization.

JP McAvoy: Leading edge here, understanding how things are working and that shared knowledge will only amplify what individuals are doing as they learn or they continue to learn with the technology here. We mentioned your team, how is your team assembled? Is it mostly in the Philippines, or your working group around the world?

Garik Tate: We work with people remotely from around the world. But most of our team operations are based here in the Philippines, and we try to hire as much as we can directly here in Cebu with a local community as well. But there’s different things to it.

JP McAvoy: The world is getting smaller and smaller. I mean, as we have this chat here and we talk of AI, it’s fascinating to watch. And as it continues to develop, how do you think it’ll impact your own business and the growth of your own business in the future?

Garik Tate: I personally have been, I think I’m a little bit of a unique place because I’ve been obsessed with AI, at least professionally, for about six years. The reason why I wanted to start a software company and have built this branch of our business was actually a quote from the founder of Valve. He said that coding was nothing more than teaching the dumbest thing in the world how to be smart. So a computer is the dumbest thing that exists because it’s literally just ones and zeros. So one is I exist, zero is I don’t exist. And then you add Logic Gate and other things. So it’s more complicated than that. But on a fundamental level, it is the dumbest thing you can imagine. It’s just binary. And if you can bootstrap intelligence from that, I don’t think there’s anything in town that could be more exciting than that. And so the spear tip of that, or the top of that iceberg is definitely this game of AI. I’m all in and had been in a while for a while. In the last 11 months now, it has been really blowing up.

JP McAvoy: It’s tremendous. Well, we’ve now achieved that critical mass we all realize. So you’ve been out for six years, you’ve been a bit early to the party, which is great, obviously, that you have been able to get there. But I think everyone else is now arriving right there saying, yeah, there’s really something to this. If someone’s interested in learning more and chatting with you further, what’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Garik Tate: The best way to get in touch with me is just to find me on LinkedIn. You can search Garik Tate, and then just connect with me there. Say that you saw me on The Millionaire’s Podcast, and I’ll be sure to connect. And if you need help with IT consulting or with adding AI into your business, definitely reach out to me. You can also check out my website, or my company’s website for (inaudible) team, company specializes in hiring teams of developers and also product managers and designers, pretty much anything you need to assemble a development team. And that’s where you can find us.

JP McAvoy: That’s great stuff. And thanks for joining us here today, I really appreciate having on the show. I like to end the episodes with a conversation of what things are going to look like in a couple years time. So as we’ve mentioned New York 2023, if we’re talking 2025, what’s happened in the next couple of years? We revisit the show in two years time, what are important things to focus on right now to be where you want to be in 2025?

Garik Tate: Where I want to be, and this is more focused on the subjective, the big civilizational questions? All right. I think that in 2025, the major milestones I’ll be wanting to hit are, I suspect writing a book and probably just doing a few more podcasts like this. I think it’s a really good path that I’m on. And so I really feel like I’m in this for the long haul, and it’s gonna be doing a bit of a similar thing for the next probably seven years just doing with more and more interesting business partners and more and more interesting adventures. But yeah, I think this is what’s all in for.

JP McAvoy: It’s interesting. And I say two years, you say seven. Because for some reason, I think 2030 is gonna be a big year. There’s so many things that people are driving towards for 2030, it seems and clearly, you’re pegging that as a date. When you talk of writing this book, I imagine you can employ AI to do that as well, aren’t you?

Garik Tate: I think it could definitely be useful for it. I think that there is something interesting, though, about how the human brain triggers and gives reciprocity around attention. When AI was novel, every YouTube channel out there made their one video. This video was written by AI. It was a novel syllabus, so interesting enough that you would want to pay attention. Now, if you learn something was made by AI, you’re far less forgiving to it because it’s wasting your time, and it didn’t waste the creator’s time. So I did not waste the creator’s time. But now, it’s wasting your time. There’s no reciprocity, and you get quite upset quite fast, or at least I can speak for myself. And so I think that while AI can be a tool, ultimately, you have to take a lot of responsibility for making sure that the output is delivering the actual value that you want to deliver. So I wouldn’t say that I’m not planning and thinking about using it. But I think even a higher level of responsibility, if you do use it to make sure you’re not wasting people’s time.

JP McAvoy: We seem to, at least at this point, we value it less if we understand it’s been produced by AI. I mean, a response on ChatGPT, take it for what it is. It’s been something that’s been generated in a matter of seconds. And there’s certainly an output now, but it doesn’t have the benefit of the human life energy input. And I certainly know from talking to others, we need to obviously use the human input as well among other things, check for hallucinations, or make sure that what’s been generated is actually accurate. But then there’s also a quantitative or qualitative aspect to it as well aside, how do we know or what tools can we be using right now to determine whether or not something has been simply generated by AI?

Garik Tate:  That’s a great question. So that’s really revelatory in that question is coming back to that quote. We had said before about math as to physics as AI is to biology. And so they are certain in biology. We do find certain arms races where evolution takes things in a very strange direction because two species are competing with each other and you get these weird feedback loops. I think that we’re going to find similar areas where, I’ll say the game or the board is complex enough where there’s never going to become an equilibrium, where there will constantly be a back and forth of creating AI that detect other AI’s. And then those AI’s are then used to train those AIs to get better at faking, and there’s gonna become these weird arms races. I do, funnily enough at open AI has quietly rescinded their, I don’t know what you want to call it pledge or intention to create an AI detector for text. Because I think anybody who’s looking at on first principles level has to know that it’s doomed because text is a simple enough board game that will hit an equilibrium state. And that equilibrium state is not gonna be in favor of the detector, because the detector can be fed into the faker. So the faker is going to win that war. Will video go down a similar path? When you think intrinsically, probably yes. But I think it’s gonna be harder than a lot of people think for similar reasons why blue collar work is so hard to replace. Because reality is more complex than we give it credit for, and video theoretically is capturing a slice of that. So I think it’s a really interesting question. One, it’s going to differ from field to field. But that’s a first principles approach that I urge people to think about when they’re wrestling with it.

JP McAvoy: Great, great answer to a great question. You mentioned reality as well, subject for another whole other podcast. I really appreciate having you here today. Again, anyone listening interested in exploring these subject matters further, please do reach out to Garik. We’ll have all his contacts and everything in the show notes as well. I look forward to the next chance we get to collaborate, whether it be next week 2025 or 2030. Thanks again, Garik. We’ll see you next time on The Millionaire’s Lawyer.

Garik Tate: Thank you, JP.