The AI Future Has Arrived: Here's What You Should Do About It

If you just look at the rate of change and the rate of new models coming out and new techniques Yes. It doesn't seem like we've hit the scaling wall. And again, if you if you believe that, which I happen to believe, and you just project forwards, this stuff is going to get better and better. Yeah. Hello. This is Dalton plus Michael. And today, we're gonna talk about AI.

It's officially blowing our minds. AI is working. What have you seen? Yeah. If you were watching this video, you probably also agree that AI is working. You have the knowledge. But are you leveraging this knowledge? Like if you are living in the future yourself, what should you be doing differently knowing what's coming?

Right? How can you prepare for the future? What's interesting is that we've seen stuff like this happen before. You know, we lived through the first static web pages. We lived through the dynamic web apps. We lived through smartphones happening. We lived through Bitcoin happening. Knowing that this is not a fad but a trend early is maybe one of the most strategic things you can know.

So like, if you're watching this video, you have a gold mine, literal gold mine, of insight on how the world's going to change. And if you sit on information, you're not gonna able to take advantage of it. If you change something right now or more than one thing right now, you might look back ten years from now and say, oh, wow. Like like, my life worked out. Like, that was really really great.

So let's go through some of the things you should do. Just to kinda give you some mental context, we can look back in time a little bit and we could say, imagine that you were using the first web browsers and you were using the first websites and you're like, oh, this is a thing. Imagine Yeah. Most people didn't have the web. No.

But there were there were some folks that were very early on that stuff and they had a lot of extra leverage. A lot of leverage. Right? Imagine you were one of the first users of Gmail and you were like, oh my god, like a really responsive dynamic web app that's just like instantly like, oh, crap. Imagine you were the first users of iPhone. Yep.

Imagine you were one of the people who saw Bitcoin come out its first year. Yep. Like, these are the kinds of like like Yeah. Like, were ways at the time with the benefit of hindsight to leverage that information Yes. To profoundly improve your lives or impact your lives. Right? Profoundly. Yes.

And you were like, oh, this seems like a good thing and you and you acted on it, it can completely change your life. So you are early. Let's talk about what you should do. Yep. Right? So first, if you were ever interested in starting a company, I can't really imagine a better time. Yep. I would argue that like most of the best companies were created after this kind of tech sea change.

Yep. Seeing the sea change and then dreaming what we could do with it. So, like, if you were ever inclined to start a company and people are saying to you, oh, this, like, AI thing is overhyped or, like, oh, there's too many. It's like Yeah. No. Again, you you can look to history. You needed there to be enough users and the tech to get good enough for internet startups Yes. To really take off.

If you started an internet startup in '94, '90 '5, that would have been too early, think. Yes. But it was much better doing it later. Same with all these other platform shifts is there's now enough of an install base. There's now the models are actually good enough. The tools are good enough. The inference is good enough. Yeah.

It still is like a good time. You can build applications that were unimaginable. And like, you know, we won't go into too many details, but like we literally have seen YC companies be transformed in the last six months. Yep. Like businesses that weren't working like Started working. Started working. And margins that were underwater are now suddenly positive. Yep.

Customers that were lukewarm are now like, you're selling me magic. I would like to buy more of that. So don't let the haters like like was like like imagine the haters that were like, don't buy Bitcoin. It's a fad. It's like Yeah. It's gonna go to zero. It's like, like Not, you know, like expensive. That was expensive advice to follow.

Exactly. I remember having a friend being like, Blackberry will never lose to iPhones. Like, oh, I'm like, you know, like, dude, like, don't listen to those people. Let's say and, know, of course, we should throw in a plug. Right? YC applications are open, you know, there are four batches a year. So, we can certainly help if you're interested. Let's say you don't wanna start a company.

Probably should be considering where you wanna work Yeah. Knowing this knowledge. I would think really hard about where you choose to work. Yeah. You wanna work somewhere that is adopting these tools Yes. And is going to benefit from the adoption of the tools where you could be surrounded by people that are, very smart at adopting AI tools Yes.

That you can learn from versus the folks that are just hoping this all goes away or that the AI good luck with that. Are lot of people that hope the Internet would go away. Yeah. Yeah. That was definitely a lot easier for business if e commerce didn't exist. That's right. A lot of newspapers. That was the plan.

You know? Anyway, you also wanna work somewhere where you could be mentored by the folks that are really excellent. Right? If you're just imagining this is going to be very important skills in the future and for how we live our lives. Yeah. Working in place where the tools are great and the people using the tools are also great and can teach you about them. Yeah. That is really smart.

Right? Again, imagine it's 02/2001 and you could work at a place like Google or another internet native company that was on the cutting edge of building internet software versus some insurance company or something. Know? Even if it's a programming job, there's very difference on how much you could learn and upskill yourself between those types of jobs.

And I'd argue that, you know, startups are adopting these tools faster than big companies.

So there's a really interesting question of like, are you gonna get more experience being a first ten or first twenty employee at a startup that's using AI versus working at that big company where using AI is a political decision and a PR decision and a bureaucratic nightmare, like be be careful because like the learning that's happening in startups right now is far outstripping what's happening in most large companies.

Of course, are exceptions but in most. Let's talk about skills. Right? I remember there was just always this funny joke, within the first year of the App Store coming out where some big company was hiring iOS developers and they were like, oh, you need to have five years of experience building iOS apps. And everyone was like, that shit came out a year ago.

Like but what's really cool at this moment is that, like, if you start learning today, you're almost at ground zero. Yep. And, like, there's so much leverage. Right? High school, college, post college, You know, you pointed this out when we were talking before. Dropping everything to become an iOS developer in 02/2010 was a strong It's a very smart idea.

Like, if you saw the iPhone come out, you're like, oh, this is cool. I'm gonna go to, like, boot camp and teach myself to code and become an iOS programmer. Yeah. That was a really good career move. Or if you were a web developer inside of a company and they were spinning up a new iOS team. Join it. A very move. Or just building an app on the side.

A lot of people built side projects. Yes. And that's how they learned to become iOS developers. Yes. And they benefit in tremendous ways. And I argue at any stage, like I said, pre college, college, post college, you can upscale yourself like I think another thing that's really cool is, again, is meta. You're probably watching this on YouTube.

There are amazing YouTube videos of explaining how all this stuff worked. And in prior major platform shifts, had to read books or Know people. You know, know people or go to the right school or something like that. You can go watch people building in public, building models, explaining how transformers work. Yeah. You name it. There's a lot of stuff that's open source.

And so if you are technical or aspiring to be technical, which you should be, go watch the videos and learn how all of this stuff works from scratch. It will profoundly help you for the rest of your life. I can't think of a downside to knowing how all this stuff works. No downside. Seriously.

And I think what's so funny is like all of the trends, tech trends that we mentioned or breakthroughs mentioned before, all of them happen in public. This isn't happening in some back room you don't have access to. Yep. The issue is people being skeptical. It's not that it's not available for you to learn. So no. I think that's that's incredibly prescient. Yeah.

There's no gatekeepers to learn this stuff. That's what we're trying to say. The only gatekeeper is ambivalence Yes. Or Or cynicism. Or cynicism or hearing, you know, negativity Yes. And buying into it. And negative people don't tend to get lucky. Nope.

You know, they don't tend to have, really great stuff happen to them Nope. On accident. So, you know, maybe lean into positivity on this one. Yes. We're giving you the hint. I would say next, become a user. Right? Like many of these products are available and, you know, I remember previous waves of technology where people were like, oh, it's not ready yet.

Oh, I'll wait. Like, oh, I don't need to switch. And I think this is different. You should be actively looking for better products. Like, mean, we remember when when Google came out and it was fundamentally a better Which is better. Web search product. And, like, there are a bunch people who are like, oh, web search, blah blah blah blah blah. And it's like, no.

People had access to Google got more done. And so if you've been waiting, sign up. And and it's worth the money. Yep. Like, it's worth paying money. I mean, when I was, a founder working on consumer stuff, I would download every consumer app that came out. Literally. And I would study every onboarding flow.

And I would study everything about the service. I would study the viral loops and just constantly be trying to challenge myself to make sure I knew more than anyone else about what the new products were. Yeah. And so And what they could do. Yeah. And so there's again, I don't know why you wouldn't be looking at every AI coding tool that comes out or every workflow tool that comes out Yes.

And signing up and trying to earnestly use them and try to try to use them to get your job done, not just to research them as startups. Yeah. Be a real user. Be a real user. Get value. You're gonna learn. Again, you will be living in the future. Yeah.

And and I would say this, like, there is a bit of a learning curve. Like, remember teaching my dad how to use Google, and it was counterintuitive that every question he had for me on the phone, all I would do is type that question in Google and produce an answer. Like, that wasn't, you know, that wasn't intuitive to him. There are some learning curves.

Like, you know, I was I was having this, like, hilarious back and forth with an Elm agent, and I was realizing I am using this incredibly different than I use Google. Like, the things that I type, how I respond to answers, like, all of it is different. And I gotta be comfortable just kinda going a it's a small learning curve, but that's a learning curve.

And then maybe last but not least, don't do nothing. Like, think that's the like, maybe the meta point of this entire video. Change something Yeah. In response to this. Yeah. You know something that other people don't know. Yes. Capitalize on that knowledge.

Don't sit on it. Like it's the knowledge isn't gonna have any interest. You gotta do something with the knowledge. And then the earlier you do it, the more leverage you're gonna have. Now, a lot of people talk about the idea that maybe in this world being technical, being a programmer isn't strategic. What what do you think about that? Yeah. I mean, this is an opinion.

We we all don't know, but I think all of the tools getting better means that some aspects of being a programmer, like having all the APIs memorized. Yeah. Maybe, okay, that part is less valuable. But I would argue knowing how all of this stuff works is going to be just more and more of a premium in modern society. Yes. Because someone has to fix this stuff when it breaks.

And someone has to understand Yes. What the heck the AI is doing. Yes. Like to the extent all of your technical knowledge atrophies and you have no idea how this stuff works. It's just like a magic box. No. That is not a great place to be. And so in my opinion, really understanding how this stuff works at a low level will increase the value of you being a technical person.

Yes. Massive. No one else will know how to debug it when things go wrong. Yes. And just because you start using cursor to program does not mean that people that have never programmed before are gonna be programming just as well as you. And so again, know there's different opinions.

Maybe some people I've heard people predicting the death of programming as a career for many many many years more our lives before we before we were born. Again, maybe maybe, again, maybe I'm wrong. I just I wouldn't make that bet. I would bet on being extremely technical. Yeah. Just having a premium that will increase over time with the proliferation of these tools. Yeah.

And that has been again, backwards looking, that has always been the case. Yeah. And if you're not technical, I can't imagine I mean, it's always been strategic to work with someone who is a programmer. It's still incredibly strategic. Never has it been more important to have a technical cofounder if you're not technical. Last point here. Right?

We are seeing YC companies doing amazing things with the current models. We're kind of giving you a straightforward observation, not a prediction. But there is this question, is there another step change improvement coming? And, you know, let's push the issue of AGI aside. I think there's a big gap between step change improvement and AGI, but like, what is your prediction?

How likely do you think it is that we have another step change that'll be here in the next year or two years? It seems like we are not near the wall. And if you just look at the rate of change and the rate of new models coming out and new techniques Yes. It doesn't seem like we've hit the scaling wall.

And again, if you if you believe that, which I happen to believe, and you just project forwards, this stuff is going to get better and better. Yeah. And it already is getting it already works. Yeah. So Yeah. Hold on to your hat. Yeah. I think this is one of those moments.

We've seen it with Internet adoption or smartphone adoption where it's like when the products get good, they go through this s curve where they start getting good. And I think that smart founders would assume that these products or the tools they have access to will get better over time. And I I I hate describing where that limit is.

I think it's irrelevant really where that limit is, but like it's just an argument for why it's even more strategic to get involved today. Because like you're riding on a wave and almost everyone we know those who are successful found the right wave and rode it. And this is a good one. Alright. Great chat. Sounds good. Thanks.