A Little Bit About Roberto :

Roberto Capodieci is an entrepreneur and technologist. He grew up fascinated by computers from a young age and studied coding in Italy. Roberto has seen the technology industry evolve significantly throughout his career.

As an early pioneer in the blockchain space, Roberto has cultivated interests in decentralization, cryptocurrency, and their intersections with emerging technologies like AI. He offers consulting services and shares his expertise to help others understand and apply blockchain/AI solutions.

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TRANSCRIPTION:

JP McAvoy: Hi, and welcome to the show today. We’ve got Roberto Capodieci who you’ll hear ahead. Again, he’s coding roots in Italy. He’s seen grant all the way through the valley now where he continues to foster all things in Blockchain. Here’s my conversation with Roberto. 

Roberto, thank you for joining us here today. I guess originally from Italy, but you’re in Bali now. You’re speaking to us from Bali, aren’t you?

Roberto Capodieci: Correct. Thank you for having me on the show. I am in Bali, Indonesia, a tourist destination. And so if people go there for tours, why shouldn’t they go there and live there.

JP McAvoy: There you go. You pick paradise to live in. How long have you been there for?

Roberto Capodieci: 20 years, since 2004. It is good because we’re doing our power from Singapore, which is a good habit for Business and Technology, which is not far from Hong Kong and other interesting destinations here in Southeast Asia. It is a relaxed life, easy life. So it’s good.

JP McAvoy: It’s a good life, and you’ve done things the right way. So happy to have you here. Thanks for joining us. And I guess you grew up in Italy, right? Originally from Italy.

Roberto Capodieci: I was born and grew up in Italy. I grew up in Venice, in the mainland part of Venice in Italy. I know for those that are watching this and listening, I look like I’m 25. But I’m 50 this year. I was born in the years where there was really the starting of all the things in technology. But in a country that couldn’t speak English, I had this barrier with books and manuals. I was just wondering what it means. It’s been a very interesting library training with the language. I studied English by myself. In school, I had French. So I was forced to learn English to be able to access computers, which were my passion since I was a little kid.

JP McAvoy: From a very young age. What originally called you to it? Obviously from day one, you’re absolutely mesmerized by what you were seeing.

Roberto Capodieci: Yeah. I was about five years old when my father showed me his pocket computer, it was a Sharp PC 1211, I think. And he was asking, what’s your name? In Italian, obviously. So based on the answer, it was writing Roberto or Robbie, which was the short. It was saying, oh, I’m so happy that you’re here. I have no interest in talking to you. And I said, oh, my God, this thing is magic. I want to understand. So my father showed me the code. I confiscated this thing from my father. It was basic code. Basic as a language name in the terms of how you code it. And this took me so much. Then they bought me smaller for the first time. One of the first that existed in a spectrum, and I started learning, coding in a way that today, unfortunately, nobody lives anymore because computers were so slow. They have a little amount of memory that you need to be precise in your coding, don’t waste any lineup. So it was really an approach, and coding required a lot of intellect like writing on crystal. Very dedicated. Computers now are so powerful. The developer can write so bad code that they still run anyway. And really grinding my gears is something that I cannot tolerate because I like it when code is written properly.

JP McAvoy: It’s fascinating to see that evolution. And as you say, we’ve got a lot of very chunky code now. How are you seeing the impact of AI on, I guess the quality of the code that’s being produced?

Roberto Capodieci: Before even going to the things that are a very interesting topic, many when it comes to software development, I was hoping that IoT was bringing a new wave of good developers. Because the IoT device has a very small processor, very small electricity, and it requires it to be coded properly. But in a way, I’ve been wrong. So much bad code, so much worse code for IoT devices compared to the code that there is for application on the mobile phone, the computer because it’s developed in one state that never updated. In fact, most of the hacking of remote servers is arcing down to IoT devices. So many times, your refrigerator is spamming just because it’s easy to hack those IoT devices. We failed there. Yet with artificial intelligence, we are going to a moment where we will not need to be able to code anymore. So you don’t really need a developer. AI can do everything. You just need to have a good idea and explain it very well to the machine. And the machine is gonna write the code, compile it and do everything on its own.

JP McAvoy: That’s what it is, Roberto. We’re hearing more and more that the skill is going to be learning how to properly prompt the AI. That’s gonna be one of the skills that’s really, really valuable going forward.

Roberto Capodieci: It’s also getting less and less necessary. Meaning that with experience, this AI is understanding more and more what you want without having to have the best problem. So AI has an iteration for which the simple question is reiterated in a more detailed prompt, which is then injected to the model to actually elaborate the things you think it adds. Today, if you ask her to make a very simple, make a car in the desert, and he prepares a very long prompt, it makes the drawing more complex. It acts as an assistant in writing prompts, the AI itself. So that’s an interesting step. They just released yesterday to BT For All, which I’ve been spending the last couple of days on. I got it the moment that they revisited. It was live, the introduction, and I connected. I was there, it was impressive. It’s really mind blowing. Everybody compared it to the movie, for those that saw it which is (inaudible). It is very interesting for geeks as well because his relationship with this guy and his AI is so human. You can fall in love with it. So it’s an interesting thing.

JP McAvoy: It’s amazing. Yeah, I’ve played with it as well. I’m surprised that the intonation is in the language already, and the ways that you’re able to interact with it.We thought that this was, well, in the movies, something we thought would be years away, and probably not even come to be as it was portrayed in the film. But it seems like we’re getting very close to that already, aren’t we?

Roberto Capodieci: Yeah, correct. And then really, at the speed of light, if you think about the speed of the technology, it is progressing. We are really reaching the point of a vertical. I’m shocked that sometimes, I’ll take my iPhone in my hand to make a phone call and stop and think about how much technology, the reason these things I’m holding in my hand are so powerful. How many things evolved to a level that are incredible. We give so much for granted. We give so many things for granted. There is a little bit of warning on one side, and is also correct on the other because you don’t need to know how an engine works. But sometimes, people do not appreciate the evolution of technology in all aspects. I was at the airport and people were complaining because they waited 10 minutes more before they invented the airplane. You need to take a boat for three months to go where you’re going so be grateful that there is something that flies in the sky. It is the advances in technology. When they say it’s not rocket science, okay, so you see the rocket go into the sky, which is easy to compare with, when there is software and there is things happening behind like AI, you don’t see the rocket that goes to the sky. But the technology is even better. It is simply hard to appreciate it because you don’t really see what’s going on. So when you are an expert in the field and you start seeing a little bit, and then you can be an hour for nothing, other people say, well, that’s normal.

JP McAvoy: I don’t think people are aware of the extent to which AI is already being used on a daily basis. And you’re just describing the rocket science that’s occurring to go to where we’re going with it. It’s going to be absolutely immersive isn’t it? And it’ll be something that we can be consumed with 24 hours a day if we wish.

Roberto Capodieci: The evolution of many things, we think usually like the regulator, is at its lowest part of the technology revolution. The Bank still requires you to send the fax because the fax is the legal means, because the law has been made before the mail became legal. But sometimes, humans were slow to adapt. The schooling, the education system, how school works today makes no sense, whatsoever. When I was a kid, either you had an encyclopedia at home, or your uncle, your father, or your mother were very experienced and could give you the correct answer. Or you need to go to a teacher and the teacher needs to tell you and transmit this knowledge slowly during the day, and they sit in there. Today, the knowledge is all at the reach with a click of a button. So school should not teach anymore to keep the subjects. They should teach how to reach the knowledge. How to distinguish good knowledge from web knowledge. How to apply what they can learn online. Schooling should be just that. And now, if you think of a class of 20, 30, 40 kids, sometimes you gotta teach. They need to go at the speed of the medium one. You get the very intelligent kid is going to be super bored. There is going to be a challenge in a way that he’s been uncomfortable with. With AI, you can have less than that or customize for each kid at the correct speed to customize to their own interest. They look good, like to dance, you can teach them mathematics or to dance because dance is made of a matrix of matter. Like he’s a drummer, whoa, mathematics. And AI can do this today already. You don’t need to wait one month, one year or 10 years. 

Today, it can be done like this. Homeschooling should completely change the way that is done. No more mom or dad, that they really don’t remember how to do those equations in math because for so many years, they never did it. Try to explain it to the kid now. They can exactly customize the learning to the taste of the kid, to the capacity of the kids and get the best out of it. So we already have the tools. So many incredible tools. And we are still far from using it because we are slowly evolving compared to technology.

JP McAvoy: It really is. As you say, changing so quickly. How long do you think it is before we’re interacting with androids as we move around society?

Roberto Capodieci: Robots, I think 2024 is the year of a robot. The ICO, the NFT, AI, 2024? Robotics. I think we ended up with whoever it is some potential robots that people use or in the production line, which is different from a robotic arm that was pre programmed to do fixed movement. We’re talking about the arm with AI behind it that chooses what to do best. It’s very different. Because in terms of robotics, we made a lot of progress. We have the artificial muscles, we have a robot (inaudible) with the engine to make noise. But there was never a brain behind it. Developers were there trying to bring the best out of these mechanical parts that are very dumb on their own even if he is super advanced. Now, they manage AI to control the mechanical part that can bring incredible aspects because they learn as they go, so they learn by imitation like a kid that is just born. 0 to 3, to 4, kids just look at the violence and copy it. Doesn’t matter what you’re telling them. Beautiful and scary at the same time.

JP McAvoy: Not in the dystopian sense, but scary to think how it’s going to be, how long before we have that sentient being that people are saying is on its way.

Roberto Capodieci: This is such a definition that is not so precise. There is no precise line. I have experienced GPT that already gave me a very huge question mark on top of my head. You can program GPT to go in a loop, or you say something and apply. I was doing this. We were 20 loops inside. And between one test loop say something and typically get out of the loop, and were very concerned about what he said against that give me life suggestion on this topic. There’s nothing to do for what he was programming. But unless there was an operator on the other side looking at my conversation, if it was just repeating itself, that’s the reaction that a human being has. No, a machine that is programmed to do a certain set of tasks. On a couple of occasions, I was really perplexed. Because as a developer, I go down the rabbit hole in how these things work. Okay, the fact that they say that it shows the best reward that is next to the previous one is a little bit of BS. This is a very high level explanation, but it’s not really the explanation. But when you go down to the neural network, there are beautiful people that live technically oriented and want to learn in neural networks. There is this Romanian professor, a very young guy actually, that makes YouTube free lessons in how to code Artificial Intelligence with JavaScript. So in the browser it is called (inaudible). People can go and research. It is super interesting because you start understanding the mechanics of how things come together. What is the pattern and the synapses if you want. They’re created for the best solution, which is not really the next best word, but it should follow a certain pattern. You should not go out completely. 

Obviously, when you have a million, billions of potential synapses, you know what these triggers are. But at this point, you are a brain. It is the brain in the works like, this is now a gray matter. Or pink is actually our brain, but the mechanics are those. There was a very interesting scientist, I think it was our guest or somewhere else, who said, If GPT is a brain, he can watch all the things that our brain can do. So do we have a telepathy capacity as human beings? As a kid that was forced to go to mass by my mother, I was not interested. So in those 45 minutes, I will look at somebody and turn around, you know that there’s somebody’s looking at you. But it’s not scientifically explained. There is a little bit of an area of the brain that lights up when somebody looks at you. It is sort of telepathy, right? So it is about language science. And this guy will say, okay, I’m asking GPT to do these things. He was spending time, and he had a very interesting example. GPT will just take you seriously instead of trying to do mental tests. Things that are not just so interesting because we don’t really know what is the final count when they go to something super powerful.

JP McAvoy: We just don’t know. We’re on the precipice.

Roberto Capodieci: But they don’t know as well. They don’t don’t understand that what they come up with can come out to something like this, which is interesting, scary, beautiful.

JP McAvoy: Exactly. The new definition is scary or beautiful. We’re on the precipice of something new. And it’d be interesting to reflect back on these types of conversations to see how it has evolved, like what it’s gotten? The fact is we know what’s coming, and so we’re trying to hopefully do it from the best place with the best, I guess, with the best information, and really training with the best data. You’ve heard people like Elon say, we did and understand that this is going to occur, it’s gotta hear the good end. The light and the dark.

Roberto Capodieci: If they already come out with something like a sparkle of intelligence, they will not (inaudible) immediately. If you have a product everybody’s buying, even if you already have the product that you can release one year on, you just stare at the competition, but you wouldn’t release it one at a time because that’s how you monetize. You burn yourself if you just go and delete the last version when you have a chance to release three, four more versions between now and then. So until you hear that somebody’s doing the same, then boom, you do it. As soon as you see that GPT with GPT For All. You can see Google the day after the demo that they do the same thing. And the first demo was a fake, which was audible in the noise of how to do something like that. But now, someone seems to be in the correct direction.

JP McAvoy: Yeah, I think that’s there. Now, what happens when they speak of subsequent releases. But at some point, I believe the thinking is they’re going to just lose control of it as well. All right, is it not going to just take on its own, if you want to call it. I’m already getting into philosophical things here, but take on its own life at some point here.

Roberto Capodieci: I ran a lot of models on my own computer. This model is called Meta Llama 3. I have a powerful computer. But it doesn’t need to be powerful. It runs perfectly. With the previous version, I can easily ensure as they go better and better with the close source models. The open source model is gonna catch up very fast. So they’re already small tools, which is this small device, they connect to your computer, you can ask to do different things. So they take control of your computer remotely and use AI. But we’re moving there, and I think robotics is the biggest application so we’re gonna have a lot of practical, physical tools that are controlled. Tesla was one of the first examples. It is a self-driving car, right? And also a house appliance or something like this.

JP McAvoy: We’re gonna see all these things. And then I guess one of your expertise is, maybe we’ll shift the conversation to the use of Blockchain for this.  So that intersection, I think that’d be one of the places that we see an interaction. Where do you see the growth of that field?

Roberto Capodieci: Yeah, I’m interested in decentralization before blockchain was even discovered. When there was BitTorrent, there was a Peer-to-Peer network to download files and things I was interested in. I wanted to ask the protocol to make a decentralized file system, and I’ve been cultivating these. Interested in the centralized system. So for people to understand the evolution of technology, I think it is important to understand that after the Industrial Age or however you want to call it, we entered into the information one. Which means we went from analogue to digital, from the VHS to the DVD, from the cassette tapes to the mp3, all those evolutions. And with the internet, we can stream and distribute these things. And digital means such a quality that the copy is identical to the original. In fact, the music movie industry, we’re not so much concerned about VHS or cassette tape. Because after two or four copies, the quality was gone. So people will buy the original. But when digital comes out, you make a copy so they become a little bit more concerned. And the thing is with an mp3 file, I can make 10 copies and give them to friends of mine. And you don’t know which is the original one, right? So the big evolution, the biggest important thing that the Blockchain broke in use for the cryptocurrency, but use for many other things as well is that in this era of a copy and paste on digital, you can create something that is unique. I can now make a copy based on my Bitcoin and give it to you. If I could do that, Bitcoin was worth zero, right? 

So once I give you my Bitcoin, I don’t have it anymore. So with NFT, you make a piece of art, you can copy my JPEG, but who is the real owner? So the Blockchain allows you to say who is the owner of this monkey. And here is the biggest revolution, which means that you can put the title ownership of your car in the Blockchain. And then selling the car means just transferring this title to anything. Any real world asset, you can asset those things. So there are millions of use cases that are very interesting, which we didn’t evolve enough to understand and apply. Because culturally, we haven’t grasped the value of this thing yet. I do a lot of shedding in this respect, but nonetheless say what is documentation flow, what is quality, the cryptographic signature, etcetera, etcetera. The Blockchain has and removes the man in the middle with Bitcoin. I can send somebody Bitcoin, I don’t need to go ask it to the bank, transfer with a bank, or something like five different transfers. Because if I transfer currency from another country to another bank, it becomes like a lot of messages. You cannot do it during the weekend because they need to be operating. So the pain from a third party for what you do. Same with a car. If I want to sell the car, I need to go to the office where they have the registry, etcetera, etcetera. If it was on the blockchain, I can do it directly. So removing the man in the middle in a lot of processes, while guaranteeing the quality of the security of the transaction of the process is essential for the situation like Artificial Intelligence and is the biggest project and working on now is decentralizing the old mechanic. Because if you think Google is having an official intelligence that removed white people from ships, trying to be politically correct, they become very excessively compared to others. And on the other side, you have political agenda that are happy to talk about one political question.

JP McAvoy: You know what the agenda is.

Roberto Capodieci: Always training. Nobody know what they’re doing, unfortunately. So if you decentralize these things rather than one big data center with a thousand computer, you have thousand people that have one computer at home, and each of them can be putting whatever they want inside even extremist things, unless all thousands are extremists, which means is what people is, and then you take it as, but if it’s mixed enough, then you can have an agent that can extract the medium and the old things, self educated to be average, and in case where you have the most democratic opinion, the most correct response. So Artificial Intelligence, for the power that it represents, is going to need to be decentralized because it needs to be by the people, for the people. And now by a large corporation that is friend of somebody else and said, as much as is also true that he can become a business. A big law firm investor has a 50 years of history of documentation or court cases, training artificial intelligence with all the past, all the things and then selling it as a service or artificial intelligence that is cheaper than sitting with a lawyer at the table. Based on their own experience, they need to protect the model. Because it is their value, it is their a worth, it is their investment, and it is their business model to make money. So not everything has to be open to everybody. There’s a good reason for which some models should be closed and protected. And other models to open. 

Let’s say that I’m Italian, Italy has a huge quantity of cultural and historical things. We have museums that the Italian government invested in creating a model in its history and art experts. It should make it for the people, for everybody, it is not needed to keep it close. But if the intelligence of a country is working for an investigation or whatever, then keep it close because that’s your tool to work. So there are different solutions. Some stuff needs to be decentralized. People need to be centralized in the hands of the person that did the investment or some distributed between a group. There are different possibilities and needs, and I respect them all. But for daily use, knowing that myself, my wife, my kids are using a model that they rely so much on, my wife is incredible. For Valentine’s Day, I received this letter (inaudible). She doesn’t speak English very well, though. But the idea is, I don’t want these providers because they are sponsored by a sponsor company that sells cereal. To convince you to use cereal every morning was the best thing for your health, which it’s not true. You know what I mean? We know we’re bullish as humans, we’re gullible. We can be manipulated easily by somebody as an intelligence that has all the knowledge or the humans put together, it needs a million times faster thinking is very easy like if you speak with a tree. It’s a little bit the same thing. Maybe the tree can run away.

JP McAvoy: Well, it’s interesting. First of all, I hear you saying the strength is into decentralization, which is fascinating to think if it’s decentralized enough. Then you’re right, it’s gonna protect some of the natural frailties in the system itself. And I’m looking at some of these projects that are building these things, it’s difficult to see what the future holds. But you’ve got these projects that are trying to build on chains. And I guess a lot of them have, one of the ways they’re trying to find it, I guess you have to be concerned with how it’s being funded. But for some of the projects that are building on chains, I’m thinking of things like Bittensor and things like that. Are you familiar with those? Are you familiar with some of the companies that are trying to do it on chain and have launched the currency. Do you see any of those? Are you familiar with that type of model?

Roberto Capodieci: I’ve been through things in Blockchain since the zero literally, and they never did an ICO. I never did things like that, because I hardly find them ethical. You cannot print money and then pay people with the money you just printed. So when you say, oh, my God, but there’s the worth going 70 miles to the. So it shouldn’t be like this, people that are less literally too may fall for it is true. Let’s say I want to open a bar and I pre sell coffee cards, each coffee is 50% of the price because you’re buying them now that I still haven’t built the bar, and then use the money from the coffee card that I’m selling to build the bar. People should understand that you may be at risk. I mean, never open the bar, and they lose the money. But it can be convenient because for a big office, they buy thousand of cards, and they give me enough money to audit

JP McAvoy: Yeah, I hear all that. Some of these actually have to be, you would think to actually create something that is going to come to fruition.

Roberto Capodieci: For example, and part of, sounds like a scam by the name. Because what do you use to pay what people that play? You can now take out of a box something that never went in the box. But if you have work done for something, if our project is a flight simulator. Flight simulator is not even a game. Because again, you may consider something you see that you play again. But the flight simulator, if you don’t know how to fly an airplane, you cannot move where you are. So it requires knowledge learning, and then you fly one hour, and you get one token. This token can be used to claim the property given a report, for example, rather than to get something else in the game. Now, if you want to sell this token, you sell it for what is worth one hour of your time flying because there is no other way to generate this token. They’re not printed out of nothing. So as a worker, as a waiter in a restaurant, and I get paid for my work. The money that I got in my hours or five hours spent at the restaurant, that’s the value of the money that I have in my hand which community used to buy groceries at the shop. The mechanics have to be identical. Then you can create an economy that is correct, safe and sustainable. So the work done by somebody needs to create the product, you give a token, the product has to have a value that can be sold to somebody for the token, and then you have a circular economy that can be better than those countries that keep printing money.

JP McAvoy: I think that’s theoretically to the extent that people are using existing currencies, that’s I think, theoretically what is occurring.

Roberto Capodieci: Because there’s always somebody that wants to cut the (inaudible), and is able to pay real money to obtain these tokens. The people earn a fly. So these people are gonna have actual cash to go into pizza with friends to supply their grain. But obviously, if you don’t have this perspective, then it’s limited to that. The beauty of Blockchain in gaming is also the fact that, let me explain the difference between Web2 and Web3. Because many people think Web3 is the Blockchain is Metaverse, but is now very clear. So in Web2, we’re going to a website. So we’re going to a server, and there is the HTML that is the Hyperlink Text Markup Language. I click somewhere, and I go to another website. So I created this worldwide web of websites that are interconnected, and I can follow this path. But me as a user and no part of this, I’m just consuming this thing. Web3 is the same thing. But whether my identity follows me along with his website, and whether the entity is cryptographically provided by a Blockchain. 

So what you can do if it is a game where I appear physically, if my identity says I have a green jacket and a blue hat, I changed five games, I’m gonna be always with the same avatar, maybe with a different graphic design. And even better if I earn one’s word, or the token, or whatever in a game and the other game is compatible, I can use this word that I had in the previous game, also in the other game, and I can sell it to somebody this word that either know I earned by fighting somebody else. There is more and more online. I have teenage kids and I see how important it is for them to interact with their friends online so much that they sit together in the same room but they interact sometimes. This is a very important advancement because before everything that was online was ending that. Other username in a website or password is limited to their website, it doesn’t follow me somewhere else. And then go to another website with another account, and another username and password. With Web3, it can be 3D virtual. It doesn’t really matter. Say I’m studying courses and there are different classes in three different universities then I go with Web3, I can collect the votes and bring them with me when I go around. Even to search for a job later because the cryptographic items that I collect, pull them NFT for simplicity of understanding for the people who follow me wherever I go. But for practical things in life, I’m driving, my driver licenses and NFT police officer give me a fine because I’m speeding and I go to court to pay. You can really bring around digital items that are unique that cannot be counterfeited, that the cryptographic signature is secure. So it is a huge revolution that comes on for these aspects of things with AI on top.

JP McAvoy: You and I were speaking offline, what’s the network that occurs? We’ll get to the spot where there’ll be interoperability that I think I was asking before, is it theory in the best place to be building this?

Roberto Capodieci: I’m going to answer like this. When the telephone was invented, each city implemented their own network for the phone inside the city. And they know pretty much every word, but the one city wants to put more voltage power in the lines, the other uses a different frequency. When you call from the city today, you need to go through an operator just to breach the audio manually. Slowly, they came to a standard for which this was automatic. I can dial directly the prefix of another town. And because we all use the same voltage, they all use the same system, the course can go through. Now, we’ll go through your internet so it’s a completely different example when talking about in the analogue age. So the need for Blockchain is slowly moving in the direction is that (inaudible), not just made by bridges which are a fixed, centralized computer that breeds one to the other which are the most, is a blasphemy in the decentralized world something that is because magnify completely what is the decentralization point of all. But the new platforms that came out are compatible. So understand the transaction of the other, sort of animal beliefs among the different blockchain. And slowly as we get the new version and new updates it is going to become a unique place where everything happens with more specialization in certain things. 

Ethereum has been a huge revolution. Huge revolution because it brought the intelligent aspect to the transaction. They don’t have to stay to explain. But the premises on which this is made are not the best in terms of stability and security. A lot of these people have lost a lot of money because they updated the virtual machine and the software for the previous version work, and the new version doesn’t work. The code wasn’t even okay. Or people publish some code that has a bargain issue and people search them in the morning. And now they say, oh, they can make a special contract that you can update the code. But if a single person can update the code, I cannot trust the system anymore. The point is centralized. They need to be stable. The actual solution should follow the normal evolution of a piece of software with their own alpha release, beta release, and then fix new releases people have said to us or not, and they should be coded in a much more complex application. Blockchain are moving in that direction. So we’re still at the moment that there’s some CD, and we don’t even have the phone system or the telegraph. Some are implementing a new one, trying to find the best thing. We are still in the early days because we didn’t have so many problems I think. Every developer, the one to enter Blockchain, finds Ethereum. Why should I go down the rabbit hole to see how the consensus mechanic is made? So nobody went there. Very few people. And secondly, because so much money to be made. People are interested in money so they focus there, very few are devoted to the evolution of technology to go down and innovate.

JP McAvoy: That is interesting from your answer to my question. I hear you say that, I recognise we’re early. But are you saying that the Blockchain does not yet exist? It’s going to be used? Because I have to question whether there’s a network effect to this. And that’s why Ethereum for lack of a better Blockchain is becoming the standard.

Roberto Capodieci: Either method of marketing at the end of the day. If people ask me Bitcoin as the worst security system, because proof of work is, you could not take Bitcoin simply because it’s so popular. Technically, it is possible to attack it, but it’s gonna cost you more than the money that you can steal by attacking it. So it doesn’t make sense to attack it. But now, because it’s secured, because he lives in his balance. In fact, a minor chain, the proof of work like Ethereum Classic has been attacked, which will take so much time because it was very cheap. The money you can steal is much more than the money that it costs you to do the attack. And proof of stake is nonetheless. Never happen attacks on proof of stake, but the theory is there. So whatever the Blockchain security is based on the value of the token, on the money, on the financial aspect, less you can use it for medical records for hospitals, for example, but nobody’s interested in the money aspect. So in that case, you need to use a Blockchain that is safer because people maintain it independently by the financial aspect to it. So you need to decouple Cryptocurrency from the consensus method in the security aspect of Blockchain. I’ve been stupid enough to invest fortunate money to build something like this by keeping it in the drawer because it’s still too early for something that is to come out.

JP McAvoy: You were looking at other chains, are you familiar with (inaudible) then? Have you looked into that chain at all? Because they’re looking to solve some of the things that clearly you have as well so I guess the conversation becomes, what is it going to look like in five years? What are we going to be using in five years?

Roberto Capodieci: I think that practical uses, for example, you buy very expensive clothing that can be supported by tailors worldwide, it makes more sense to have the warranty issue by the mother house in a Blockchain. So when you are in this small village, they don’t need to believe a piece of paper that you show them that can be fake, but they can go on the Blockchain and see the warranties. And they can also add the internal auditing. I replaced the bathroom these days, you will have a history of what happened. Another beautiful example, a company producing pipes. They produce custom pipes. People can ask about the material, the thickness, the diameter, every sector, a small QR code printed along the pipe to allow people to see exactly how to order the same pipe. 

So somebody does maintenance in the house and breaks the wall. And then inside, there is this pipe for five years. You clean it, and in that moment, you can order exactly the same thing. They did hundreds of consulting for these things. Companies doing x-ray components that are used in the airport for security, in the hospital for machinery or any other things, they have a factory to produce their product or installing machinery that goes in any corner of the planet. And they have no clue, maintenance down to them, what machinery they’re part of, etcetera, etcetera. So with a small QR code that allows anybody with a mobile, so you don’t need to onboard the system. You scan the QR code, you are a maintenance person, you can make 20 cents every time you update some information because they want to reward you. But at this point, the company has a very deep knowledge of where the pieces in the app that are sold are recycled, etcetera. So it’s beautiful. And you can do this with a Blockchain. You cannot do this with a centralized server because it has tons of issues. When something is in a blockchain, a lot of people can build on top of it. So another company wants to have a website, they show the distribution of sampling and so the supply chain works very well with these things. Things are now Cryptocurrency, but they really need decentralized mechanics. And people that use this application may not even know what is behind it.

JP McAvoy: That’s right.

Roberto Capodieci: So there was a kid using Facebook on his cell phone, I was asking the internet. Were you using Facebook? Facebook is now implemented. So you don’t understand that to use Facebook, you need to have an internet connection. Why is he so worried that his cell phone is connected to the internet?

JP McAvoy: Some of the things we’re talking about, we’re discussing here, a lot of people aren’t going to worry. But there are people that are focused on this, and creating this, and the people that are focused on are going to be able to, I think the course helped define it, which is in itself important. And then if they wish to benefit financially from it as well, there are surely business cases for this robbery. This has been a wonderful chat, and we could go on all day on the topics we’ve discussed here ranging from AI to Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies. But I could sort of say to leave people thinking about a couple of things. One is, what the next couple of years are going to look like in terms of this evolution, intersection of AI and Blockchain? And really, where the money is gonna go? Do you have any thoughts on what that actually looks like?

Roberto Capodieci: I put my 100 cents in robotics. Apply AI on robotics, and apply AI in general. So apply the AI inside whatever application we’ve been using. Even now, we’re having the call to record the podcast, the odd thing is there is a bottle for AI on the bottle. So he’s going to be more and more participating. So now, we have to trigger it with an AI. I received an email, I can answer, press the button and answer it with AI. Probably tomorrow I will have already prepared the answer. After tomorrow I will have already sent it. People start getting concerned too much.

JP McAvoy: Yeah, it’s just what the case is. It’s just fascinating to think. I look forward to checking in with you as to how it does evolve. What’s the best way for somebody to reach you if they were interested in learning more, some of the things you’re working on, perhaps also touching base with you on a consulting basis?

Roberto Capodieci: We can leave in the description my link to my LinkedIn, which is the social media for business. My shortest domain name to reach most of my stuff is rcx.it, like Information Technology or like Italy because I’m Italian. R-C-X, which is the short version of my name. So that’s the best two ways. But if somebody has my full name, Roberto Capodieci, there are only two on the planet so it is easy to find me.

JP McAvoy: There’s only one on the planet. And of course, we’ll have all that in the show notes. Thanks so much for that, Roberto. I love the end of these episodes with one thing that somebody listening can take with them through the rest of the week after this episode is dropped. What’s something that’s really made a difference in your life, something you’ve heard from somebody, or something that you’ve seen recently that if you were to pass on to others may be of assistance to them.

Roberto Capodieci: Nothing to do with technology. I’m a  lucky father of four. Becoming a parent has been the biggest revolution in my life, and fantastic. In technology, I will say internet decentralization and our digital intelligence, those are the three biggest steps. There are a couple that are free to have kids. The planet is repopulating, we need to have kids. So it’s also fun. It takes two minutes, but it’s fun.

JP McAvoy: Wonderful stuff. Thanks so much for your time here today. I look forward to next time we get a chance to chat.

Roberto Capodieci: Thank you for having me.