Robert Scoble on AI Agents, Autonomous Tech, and Our Rapidly Approaching Future

TODAY'S HIGHLIGHTS: Huge Day in AI

Robert Scoble joins the AI Biz Hour with Andy & John

Robert Scoble shares insights on how AI agents will transform business and daily life

Practical AI applications for coding, content creation, and personal projects

Government contracting opportunities and AI funding grants

Google's Gemini and other AI agent platforms making significant advances

Join Robert Scoble’s Free Unaligned Newsletter

INTRODUCTION:

Today's AI Biz Hour featured technology visionary Robert Scoble, who joined hosts John Allen and Andy Wergedal to discuss the exponential growth of AI and its implications. Scoble, known for his early tech adoption and Silicon Valley insights, shared his perspective on how AI agents will soon become ubiquitous, transforming everything from how we write code to how we interact with the world. The conversation on the AI Biz Hour ranged from practical applications of today's tools to speculative discussions about brain-computer interfaces and what the coming years will bring.

ROBERT SCOBLE'S KEY INSIGHTS:

New AI Agent Platforms

"We're getting major new agent platforms like Flow With or Google Gemini.

That's gonna change everything".

These platforms enable automation of research, email management, and complex tasks.

The release of multiple major agent platforms in a single day signals unprecedented acceleration

Autonomous Vehicles

"Tesla and Waymo are going to take over next year"

Waymo customers repeatedly tell him: "I don't want to own a car anymore"

Prediction: Uber will be significantly disrupted within 3-4 years

"If the Waymo can get me there, why would I want to get in a car and drive it?"

Brain-Computer Interfaces

Current Neuralink devices are read-only but write capabilities are coming. Mentioned alternative interfaces: "I saw a company from Boston that puts a strip behind your ear". Bold prediction: "You'll have a Neuralink on in 10 years". Cognitive security will become critical: "You're going to want another AI in between Elon Musk's AI and your brain"

XR and Spatial Computing

Shared his Apple Vision Pro experience: "I was in Yosemite National Park, but the guy talking to me was cut out by the AI"

Mark Zuckerberg's upcoming glasses will allow control with thought: "You just think about firing a gun, and you're firing"

Future glasses will have brain sensors to understand emotions and intentions

Robotics and Automation

"By the end of next year, machine shops are going to be completely automated"

Optimus robots will be in Walmart and other retail environments within years

"If you're running a Walmart, you need a robot by the Coca-Cola pile"

Biological Computing

Discussed Cortical Labs growing 900,000 human neurons on chips

"I'm the opposite of Neuralink. Neuralink puts a wire on the human brain. I'm growing the human brain on top of the water"

Future biocomputers may assist AI agents: "You'd probably want one of those in your house"

Future of Work

"AI is going to get rid of our middle managers"

"We're all going to go to the park and play frisbee with each other"

On why billionaires still work: "I tried sitting at home and doing nothing. And my wife got angry at me"

Human-AI Merge and Consciousness

Philosophical discussion on AI's ability to think versus pattern matching

How humans will change: "Our kids are not going to look at the world the same way we did"

Potential existential crisis: "What does that mean for human beings, if you're stupid and you can still do a lot of things?"

Human Advantages

"Our brains are still very, very powerful compared to what an NVIDIA data center can do"

Our ability to connect disparate disciplines and experience "divine inspiration"

"We still have a lot of new things to do, right? We still have a lot of old things to do"

AI for Learning and Tasks

AI can teach complex skills: "It taught me how to take apart an electrical motor on top of the motor"

Translation vs. language learning: "Why would you want to learn French if you have a translator?"

"Maybe being stupid in the future is okay. Because it'll teach you how to do things."

Robert's Publications and Lists

Recommended his book: "The Infinite Retina"

Follows 28,000 AI industry professionals: "You can watch the future happen here on X"

Using these lists as resources for AI agents: "I built them for the AI agents"

Changes in Human Memory and Cognition

"I had a phone when I was a kid, and I've memorized my best friend's phone number. I still remember it right now."

Current vs. future generations' cognitive differences: "My son's brain is different... They don't know what I'm talking about"

"They learn to read them right on YouTube. They know YouTube really well in a deeper way than I'll ever know"

MAIN INSIGHTS:

AI Agents Transforming Business

Robert Scoble highlighted the explosive growth of agent platforms: "We're getting major new agent platforms like Flow With or Google Gemini. That's gonna change everything because you're able to automate everything. You can have it look at your email, you can have it do research, you can have it design a new drug for you."

These changes are happening faster than most realize. Scoble stated, "Nobody knows what's about to come. Next year autonomous cars are going to take over—Tesla's coming next year. I'm gonna wipe that Uber over the next 3-4 years." He predicts companies like Waymo will completely revolutionize transportation, with most customers telling him, "I don't want to own a car anymore."

John Allen shared how he turns Grok into a functioning agent: "What you do is you say, step one: go on Reddit and search forums about this subject and find the pains, desires, and dreams of people talking about marketing or SEO. Step two: cross-reference that with this keyword list. Step three: execute a plan for how to directly talk to their pains and desires."

Government Contracting Opportunities

Gov Bid Mike highlighted the massive $7 trillion government market opportunity available to businesses of all types. "If you are an AI startup, there are SBIRs available at sbir.gov/topics for AI startups, quantum computing, XR - there's a variety of things," Mike explained.

Mike emphasized diversity of client success stories across multiple industries and noted the upcoming AI procurement rule changes in October 2024 requiring American-made AI technologies. For AI Biz Hour listeners, Mike offers a 10% discount on his government contracting services through getbiddata.com.

Practical AI Applications in Daily Work

Real Lucas explained how he uses AI for sales: "I use different AI engines for sales and marketing. I've written several text files that are my background files for different kinds of conversations and workflows. I have a little tool that I wrote that says, 'Read this before you answer every single question,' and it sharpens the answers tremendously."

Hoops described how AI improved his content creation: "I started realizing that I'm really second-guessing this output now. I might not even use this output. What I noticed was my writing and my method of thinking was getting better because of going through that process with the AI on a regular basis."

Alan shared remarkable progress with AI coding: "I knocked out a whole app, a full-featured, full-fledged sleep app, and I did it with just the AI agents. If there was an error, I would screenshot how it looked on my browser and send it via Cursor. After about a week, it started to sputter a little bit with complexity, but humans are going to be out of the loop on coding very soon."

The Future of Human-AI Interaction

Scoble painted a vivid picture of our near future: "In 5 years, you're going to be talking with AR glasses. Everybody will be. And you'll be talking to a virtual being sitting next to you on the couch, which is gonna be driven by AI. Your AI agents are gonna be feeding that virtual being."

He described his experience with Apple Vision Pro: "I put it on, turned the dial, and all of a sudden I was half into Yosemite National Park. I turned it more, and I was most of the way into Yosemite, but the guy who was talking to me was cut out by the AI, so I could see him but not the room I was in." This experience aligns with Apple's promotion of Vision Pro's immersive capabilities, which offer a seamless transition between augmented and virtual reality environments.

On brain-computer interfaces, Scoble noted: "We're heading toward a world where the AI is inside your brain. You'll have a Neuralink on in 10 years. Imagine Google Gemini or ChatGPT inside your brain, knowing who you are, interacting with you at the speed of your thinking." Current Neuralink devices are read-only, being able to interpret signals from the brain but not write to it yet, though Scoble predicts write capabilities will arrive within years.

FEATURED TOOL/TECHNOLOGY:

The Machine and Manus AI

Sharon and John discussed "The Machine", a new AI agent platform similar to Manus AI. Sharon explained: "It's what they call an artificial general agent. It can do numerous tasks, act with your APIs, and do whatever you explain to it. It's deploying sites for me now on Cloudflare because I was able to give it an API. That thing was sending emails on our behalf."

She added, "We're moving into territory where the AI really does tasks and does things well. You can really step away. Jan ”Clarity Coach” Carlos says, 'I could go do my stuff and just have Manus do its thing, and after an hour the task is done.'"

EXPERT CORNER:

Robert Scoble on Future Technology

When asked about emerging technologies, Scoble mentioned brain-computer interfaces beyond Neuralink: "I saw a company from Boston that puts a strip behind your ear. Does all sorts of fun things, like make you lean left or right, which will be highly entertaining in a flight simulator in the future."

He also discussed biological computing with Cortical Labs (which he referred to as "Clerical Labs"): "I put up the first video of a biological computer that's doing computation, and he grows 900,000 human neurons on top of the chip. He said 'I'm the opposite of Neuralink. Neuralink puts a wire on the human brain. I'm growing the human brain on top of the water.'" Indeed, Cortical Labs has developed the CL1, described on their website as "the world's first code deployable biological computer" using lab-grown neurons.

Addressing concerns about AI adoption, Scoble noted: "I've interviewed a lot of billionaires. Why are you working? You don't need to work. And more than one has told me, 'I tried sitting at home and doing nothing. And my wife got angry at me and said, if you don't get out of the house and do something, we're getting a divorce.' So, we gotta find new things to do."

He emphasized our continued human utility: "Our brains are still very, very powerful compared to what an NVIDIA data center can do. I think our ability to take information from one discipline to another in a way that divine inspiration, whatever you want to call it... I don't know if they're going to be able to do that, because they're really just mimicking patterns."

AI's Impact on Management and Work

Scoble shared his perspective on middle management: "AI is going to get rid of our middle managers," suggesting that as AI becomes more capable of coordinating and delegating tasks, many traditional management roles may be eliminated or transformed.

This concern is echoed in a Berkeley article titled "The Uncertainty of Middle Management Jobs," which states "As AI and automation advances rapidly, the role and relevance of the middle manager is at risk."

Similarly, McKinsey research on generative AI and the future of work indicates that while total job elimination may not be extensive, the nature of work will change substantially as AI takes over routine decision-making and coordination tasks.

QUICK HITS:

Andy shared a "meta prompt" to create better prompts - a quality tool to refine prompts for better outputs

Robert Scoble maintains lists of AI industry professionals on X that you can follow to stay informed

Cameron suggested asking AI to grade your content and then requesting a "12 out of 10" version to push beyond human thinking

John Allen shared that the AI Biz Hour newsletter will eventually move to a paid model but is currently free

Robert believes humans will still have advantages in connecting disparate disciplines and divine inspiration

CONNECT WITH AI BIZ HOUR:

Website: aibizhour.com 

Andy: @andywergedal 

John: @AiJohnAllen 

Show: @aibizhour

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