Google DeepMind Insider: You wont Survive the AI-First Economy, unless... - Steve Brown

What this episode is about

Steve Brown, an AI futurist and technology strategist, discusses how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing business and the importance of strategic AI adoption for companies to succeed in the evolving "AI-first economy." With a background in high-tech and experience at Intel and Google DeepMind, Brown emphasizes that organizations that effectively leverage AI today will shape the markets of tomorrow.

Key takeaways

• Futurists forecast possibilities, not predictions; think of it as surfing on a wave of trends, not diving into crystal balls.
• AI isn't the job snatcher; outdated mindsets are. A shift to AI-first is the real game changer for businesses.
• Embrace AI as an engine of abundance, not a tool for scarcity, or risk being left in the technological dust.
• When leaders fixate on cutting costs, they're steering their companies toward a two-story Dorito bag future. Think bigger!
• The future we want and the one to avoid are two sides of the same coin—don't forget to flip it!

Who speaks in this episode?

• Charles (Host) · 19 min speaking
• Steve Brown (Guest) · 28 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Steve Brown, Google Deep Mind, Google LLC, Intel Corporation
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Google LLC, AlphaFold, ChatGPT
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Amazon, Target, Blockbuster
4. 20:00 – 25:00: AI Ultimatum, Google LLC, Amazon, Gmail
5. 25:00 – 30:00: Target
6. 30:00 – 35:00: Google LLC
7. 35:00 – 40:00: Google LLC, Opus Clips
8. 40:00 – 45:00: Google LLC
9. 45:00 – 47:19: Steve Brown, AI Ultimatum, Amazon

Notable quotes from "Google DeepMind Insider: You wont Survive the AI-First Economy, unless... - Steve Brown"

• Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it doesn't matter what you think, only what you can prove. Our guest today is Steve Brown, an AI futurist and technology strategist who…

  about Steve Brown · at 0:00

• World stood on our shoulders. not so much these days sadly and then more recently I worked for Google DeepMind at both companies I got to be a futurist so helping them to think…

  about Google Deep Mind · at 0:55

• There are about 20,000 different proteins in your body. and it was now able to do it in seconds accurately and that information is now empowering the medical research industry for the next 10 and 20 years and we will see new.

  about AlphaFold · at 7:54

• Them the example of internet first businesses Amazon great example right they were internet first business they came after retail and started to eat retail's lunch so what did retail do they became not internet native but internet first and.

  about Amazon · at 11:14

• Of business. They can't possibly do that. It's going to bankrupt them. Well, because Google realized that they're on an exponential curve and a gigabyte was going to be…

  about Google LLC · at 24:36

• Regarding the size of clothes and all that. One of my favorite ones of this is ironically target. Target would track using AI and using algos what you were buying like oh my…

  about Target · at 27:30

• I take, I take a keynote, I point it to a keynote on YouTube, Opus Clips, sucks it in, and creates lots of little clips in different, form factors, drops in subtitles for me automatically. I just pick the ones I.

  about Opus Clips · at 38:24

• Easiest way to find me is on my website, steve brown.ai. Nice and straightforward. And you can find my book on Amazon. It's called the AI Ultimatum. Oh, hang on. I have one.

  about AI Ultimatum · at 46:10

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Steve Brown — Person · Main guest · 3 mentions · first at 0:03
  Primary interview subject explaining what futurists do and how leaders should shift to an AI-first operating model, drawing on experience at Intel and Google DeepMind and promoting his leadership-focused AI materials.

Books & papers

• AI Ultimatum — Book · Primary recommendation · 2 mentions · first at 22:47
  Book written by the guest to help leaders understand and prepare for AI.

Companies & orgs

• Google LLC — Company · Business focus · 9 mentions · first at 0:59
  Mentioned as the parent company of DeepMind and a leader in AI technology.
• Google Deep Mind — Company · Business focus · 1 mention · first at 0:59
  Mentioned as a leading AI research company where the guest worked as a futurist.
• Amazon — Company · Case study · 5 mentions · first at 11:19
  Referenced as an example of an internet-first company that disrupted traditional retail.
• Intel Corporation — Company · Business focus · 1 mention · first at 0:45
  Mentioned as a previous employer of the guest where he worked as a futurist.
  In high-tech. Good head of hair when I first started, not so much now. I spent a long time working at Intel when they were the company to be at because the leaders of the…
• Target — Company · Case study · 5 mentions · first at 11:35
  Mentioned as an example of a company that successfully adapted to the internet era.
• Blockbuster — Company · Case study · 1 mention · first at 13:21
  Used as an example of a company that failed to adapt to technological changes.
  Netflix used to compete with them with DVDs and then Netflix realized, oh no, we need to become pivot to being an internet first company and we're going to let go of mailing people DVDs, go online, we're going to upset.

Products & tech

• AlphaFold — Product · Case study · 1 mention · first at 7:55
  Highlighted as a breakthrough AI product from Google DeepMind that revolutionized protein structure prediction.
• ChatGPT — Product · Case study · 1 mention · first at 5:23
  Discussed as a popular AI tool that people commonly associate with AI advancements.
  Going to start to build that inside your existing company? How do you become you're not going to become AI native because you're not but you can become AI first and I give them the example of internet first businesses.
• Opus Clips — Product · Recommendation · 1 mention · first at 38:17
  Recommended as a useful tool for content creators to automate video clip creation.
• Gmail — Product · Case study · 1 mention · first at 24:24
  Mentioned as an example of Google's foresight in understanding exponential technological growth.
  Understand that the example I give people is back in the day when Gmail was launched. People thought Google were nuts for giving people a gigabyte of free storage with their…

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it doesn't matter what you think, only what you can prove. Our guest today is Steve Brown, an AI futurist and technology strategist who helps leaders understand how artificial intelligence is reshaping business, work, and competitive advantage. Steve has proven that companies that learn to adopt AI strategically today will define the markets of tomorrow. The show starts now.

0:23 All right, welcome back to the show, Steve. I'm excited to have you on the show man.

0:28 I'm glad to be here. We had a little pre-in what a couple of weeks ago and I thought, "Oh, this is going to be a fun one."

0:33 It's going to be fun. So, for the four or five people on the planet who don't know who you are, let's give them a little bit. Who are you? What are the best things you've done?

0:41 Uh, let me see. I spent 30 years or so in high-tech. Good head of hair when I first started, not so much now. Um, I spent a long time working at Intel when they were the company to be at because the leaders of the world, the technological breakthrough people of the world stood on our shoulders. um not so much these days sadly and then more recently I worked for Google DeepMind um at both companies I got to be a futurist so helping them to think about the world 5 10 15 years from now and how they want to try and shape it and I've been on the speaking circuit now for I don't know 10 years or so uh I've done over 500 keynotes on five continents and I help people understand AI and the consequences and the opportunities it presents for transforming business, education, and society more broadly.

1:30 So, there's a lot you talk about there. That one second. We talk about a futurist, and one of the things you've said multiple times that you don't go hide in a room and smoke something and then come out of it. You're actually using

1:40 I wish that was what I had to do. Yeah. So much easier. What does a futurist do? If you're not going out there and just rubbing a crystal ball, or at least here in the United States, we had that the magic eightball that you spin around and that thing pops up say it may may be possible. What is the difference between a futurist and someone who's just pulling it out of their tus?

1:58 A futurist doesn't make predictions is the first thing. People think that futurists make predictions. What a futurist does is look at trends, how those trends play out over time and then looks at how those trends will collide in the future to make things possible. So it's about understanding what will be possible in a certain time frame. It doesn't mean it's going to happen. It just means the technology trends are going to the point where this will be possible. the people trends, the business trends, and you're looking at the confluence of those at some point in the future. And you're fundamentally trying to ask and answer two questions.

2:32 What's the future we want to build? And what is the future we want to avoid? And they're flip sides of the same coin, but they're both important questions to address. Of course, you know, perhaps if we had addressed that when we were thinking more about the social media, people thought about the future they wanted to build. Oh, people will share information and recipes and and didn't think so much about the future we want to avoid. Um, which is the situation we're in today.

2:54 Regrettably, people when it comes to AI do have a very specific future they're terrified of that they they're trying to avoid. Most people when they talk to me about AI, they're thinking, "Oh, it's it's chat GPT and I'm going to be fired and I'll have no jobs and I'm going to be living in a two-story Dorito bag." Let's let's get the elephant out of the room first and have that conversation. Is AI going to be the extinction of employees? not in the short to medium term, long term perhaps and maybe that's a good thing and we can talk all about that. um the opportunity and it also my answer depends on how leaders behave

3:31 um if leaders stay stuck in a 20th century mindset of well I use technology to cut costs improve productivity and automate as much as possible and that's what I need to do for the shareholders to create long-term uh value right which is their fiduciary responsibility they need to shift their mindset to instead be thinking How do I use AI to build an AI first company?

3:59 Um, accelerate and um elevate the people that I have and amplify the human capital so that I can I stop thinking about growing my company 10 or 20 or 30% every year, but now I'm trying to grow 10x or 20x per year because I'm using AI as the engine and wrapping my people around that engine. leaving scarcity behind because most leaders and managers, they're managing resources. That is their job, right? They're managing headcount, they're managing dollars, they're perhaps managing some capital um and equipment, and they're trying to make the best results they can out of that. If you put AI at the heart of your business, make it the engine, now you can operate in this world of abundance. It's a different way of thinking that most leaders haven't got yet. if they stay stuck in that 20th century thinking and they just automate away the people, yeah, it's it's it's not a happy ending.

4:57 Um but if if we if we use AI to amplify the impact that organizations are able to have uh and to amplify people and to do more rather than thinking about how do I do the same with less um then medium to to to short term I think things look pretty good for for employment. Well, I think one of the things you just brought up there is important because you come into organizations not to teach people how to use chat GPT, but you teach people how to fundamentally change how they run organizations with an AI first model because it's not a debate anymore. It's not like this may or may not happen. You know, one of the examples and I steal quite a few examples from you and I will give you credit where credit is due is you talk about that the robots that are made today and AI of today is the worst they will ever be ever. They're only going to get better going forward. And one of my the one of the examples you

5:49 gave that I just fell in love with was there was a u I'll let you do it. The the medical one that went from 10 days to to two. Can you tell a little bit about that one?

5:59 Um 10 years to 2 days, right? Yeah. So this was um uh an AI called from Google called co-scientist.

6:07 Mhm. And it was it's to help with scientific conjectures and trying to determine why something why something you're observing may be happening. what's the explanation for it? And one of the things that stumped scientists for quite some time was figuring out, you know, in a in a hospital environment um where you get things like Mercer and other things where you you have these rigorous cleaning protocols, but you can't get this bug out, right? And people are still getting getting sick from it. Why might that be happening? What's the phenomena? And it took scientists a decade to to come up with this idea that maybe things like Mercer, they're forming chains. They're forming they're linking into chains so they can actually crawl off surfaces and onto other surfaces. They sort of it's a bit like um prisoners tying sheets, bed sheets together to get out of their um accommodations, let's call them. Um same

7:03 thing. They were they were just using forming in chains and then moving around. And when they they presented this information, this challenge to Google co-scientist, it thought for two days and came up with the same answer. So you know, you go from 10 years of humans thinking about something to AI being able to come up with it in a couple of days. And you've seen many examples like this particularly in scientific research and discovery where another example from Google I was at deep mind when the we're working on alpha fold and doing the release of that to the scientific community and that crashed the understanding of the structure of a protein normally took four five years basically it was a PhD of one person spending four to five years of their life trying to decode the structure of one protein.

7:54 there are about 20,000 different proteins in your body. Um and it it was now able to do it in seconds accurately and that information is now empowering the medical research industry for the next 10 and 20 years and we will see new drugs and new therapeutics come out of it perhaps understanding disease paths for Alzheimer's Parkinson's and other you know debilitating conditions um and we'll see breakthroughs in the next 5 to 10 years around that because this AI was able to do all this decoding so this is just the start of what's about to happen.

8:29 And the reason I ask is we turn 10 10 years into two days. You turn four years into seconds. And the reason I bring this up is if you're in business, if you're trying to scale, if you're trying to get moving forward, this is what's already coming. This is the tidal wave. You're already sitting on the beach. You're going to have to to to survive this. You're have to know how to serve this and do this. And people are looking for tactical ways to do this because we're in different stages of AI for and and you said it really well. We've had AI for a really long time. This isn't anything new. AI's been around for an immense amount of time. You know, spam filters, that's AI. That's just it is what it is. When you're sitting there and you're looking at a business owner and you want them to be AI first, which is a completely different mindset, much like cuz I'm old. When the internet came out, there was a whole pivot that we had

9:13 to do. We're in that same pivot. What are the tactical things that you're sitting down with your clients and the people you work with say, "Okay, this is where you are. It is what it is. The roads used to be made out of concrete. They're now made out of water. you're going to have to change how you show up. It just there is no way around that. What are you sitting down? What are the first kind of four or five steps you say, "Okay, this is a reality. Let's start doing this."

9:33 Yeah, great question. So, a lot of my clients, you know, I show up and they they want to pat themselves on the back a bit and they'll say, you know, we we we have an enterprise license for co-pilot now, you know, like like this is going to make a difference. Um, and I said, well, good. That's good. That's great. Um, but that's not you're 1% of the way there. You the other 99% of the opportunity is still on the table. So, let's talk about what that is. And the first thing I do is start off with a thought exercise. Imagine an AI native company that is coming after you. They're wellunded.

10:12 They have the people, the talent that they need. They have access to AI technology. And once I'd explained the different types of AI because there are many different flavors the build as building blocks like Lego building blocks that they can start to to to put together to make business solutions. Once they understand those I say well okay if you were an AI native competitor if you were if you left this business tomorrow and you went to this AI native company what would you do to compete aggressively? What does that AI native business look like? AI native being you're building a business from scratch knowing everything that you know about AI and knowing about its capabilities now and in the next two years. What would you build?

10:55 Would it be the same as the business that you've just come from? Well, no. Okay. Well, let's talk about what that would look like and then how are you going to start to build that inside your existing company? How do you become you're not going to become AI native because you're not

11:11 but you can become AI first and I give them the example of internet first businesses Amazon great example right they were internet first business they came after retail and started to eat retail's lunch so what did retail do they became not internet native but internet first and target and Walmart and all of the big box companies that Amazon was coming after adapted and said they invented this whole omni channel idea, right, where you could buy online, return in store. And their focus was on, yeah, we're going to match Amazon capability for capability. We're going to go online and do all the things, but we're going to leverage the fact that we're not internet native. We're internet first. And that brings us some capabilities that Amazon doesn't have.

12:06 And the mantra in the industry, I used to do a lot of work with retail at the time was WACD. What Amazon can't do, they don't have a physical presence. And now they've bought Whole Foods and ironically they're now going to have big box stores of their own and go after Target. Um, but there's there's something about using the physical value you have today. There's there's something good about the businesses you have. Don't feel bad about it. But how do you then embrace AI to become AI first? And that should inoculate you then against an AI native attack. And that's the way I start them off.

12:46 So how does one do that, right? How does a company become AI first and do that pivot? Because yes, Target and Walmart and all of them adapted and they did have an internet presence and they said this is what we can do that other ones can't do. And other ones didn't like J C Penney and Sears and Kmart. they just they were too late to the game and they don't exist anymore, which is still wild to me. But it's going to happen if people don't adapt fast enough. What I'm trying to do here is give people that competitive advantage and I think that's what you try to do as well.

13:13 Absolutely. And it means you first of all have to let go of the past. You have to let go of today, the status quo. Uh good example of a company that didn't do that was Blockbuster. Mhm.

13:23 You know, Netflix used to compete with them with DVDs and then Netflix realized, oh no, we need to become pivot to being an internet first company and we're going to let go of mailing people DVDs, go online, we're going to upset some customers, um but we're going to leave these blockbuster people behind. So that that's what you're trying to do is think given the new technology, how would I deliver value in new ways? what are the approaches I need to do that? And so to become AI first, there's three chunks of of effort you need to go through. The first one is how do I use AI to amplify my people? And you want to ask questions like, if my best employee could be everywhere all at once, what would that unlock? Because that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to use AI to amplify people to to use AI agents to mirror the abilities of your human talent and to amplify them so they can effectively be everywhere at once.

14:25 So that's the first sort of question you want to ask. If I could use AI to offload all the busy work from my employees, what would that allow them to do that they're not they don't have time to do today? So think about how do I use AI to unlock the the the latent abilities and capabilities of my human talent, not to replace them, but to amplify them and with the goal of how could I have 10x the impact we have today, let's say a year from now or two years from now. So that's the first bucket of effort is amplifying your human talent. The second,

15:03 can you give us an example? Can you give an example of that before we lose people? like someone you've worked with like that, you know, this is what we actually did.

15:12 Um, it might actually be too early to give a good example of this. Um, just because agent technology is what we're really talking about here and we're in the early phase of Agentic AI. Um, and and a Genti is essentially it's a smart piece of software that that behaves like a digital employee and they're going to get better and more capable over time. But what you're trying to do is pair your employees with agents. And there are going to be three types of agents, by the way. So, let's talk about those and how you might um put them into your workforce. The first type of agent is an offload agent. It does exactly what you'd expect. It offloads a task from your employee. This is the freeing them up from the busy work, booking meeting rooms, um, booking flights, that kind of stuff. So, you're offloading. The two more interesting types of agentic AI are elevate agents and extend agents. Let's

16:13 talk about the difference between those two. Elevate agents partner with a human being. So that you you pair them with them and they're collaborating to elevate the performance of the of the person. Now notice I very carefully chose my language. I didn't say elevate the productivity. That might be one vector but elevating the performance meaning their productivity, their efficiency, their effectiveness, their intuition, their creativity, their decision-making abilities and so on. So you have to think multi-dimensionally there. So, how am I elevating the performance of my uh employees by partnering them with agents? And then the third category, more rarified air, but if you can get there, this is amazing. Um, partnering a person with an extend agent that extends the human's capabilities. So, they can do something they could not do before. So, let me give you a concrete example. Um this is

17:12 not a gentic tech technology but at least gives you this idea of amplification expanding creativity and productivity. Um generative design technology uh this has been around from Autodesk for some time. What it does is it takes the initial design that a human designer has created and riffs on it and it comes up with hundreds or thousands of variants of that design. and the human designer said, "Hey, I'm trying to optimize for this or that." So, a good example I talk about in my keynotes is the bulkhead design of an A320 aircraft.

17:47 Now, we're getting super concrete. Um, the skeleton that's inside that bulkhead is this weird design and and when you see it, you think, well, that wasn't designed by a human. And it wasn't, but it also wasn't designed by an AI. It is the result of a human and AI collaborating together. What the human does, they create the initial design. They specify to the generative design software which is AI based that I'm trying to it needs to handle 4 1/2 gs of of tension, right? Cuz the bulkhead is there to hold the fuselage together.

18:22 Kind of important. Um but it also matters on a plane what the weight is. So there's a reason that um that we don't have peanuts on planes anymore. much cuz pretzels weigh less and the airlines figured that out. United Airlines did a calculation that if every one of their passengers took ompic and lost £10, it would save them $80 million a year on fuel. So weight matters on a plane. So this generative design software then optimizes the design. It sort of riffs on it. Comes back to the human designer and says, "I put these all through simulation. The one that you want is this one because it optimizes for weight cost which is always a factor and it still gives you the tensile strength that you need to hold the plane together.

19:06 Now what's happening in that scenario? A human designer might have the luxury of the time to come up with three to five options and then run them through simulation and then okay we'll pick the best one. using generative design. Now you can explore a much broader design space. You can look at a thousand or 2,000 or 10,000 options. What you're doing is collapsing time and that's what you're trying to do in the second category that I'll come to in a second. But um you're using AI to one get you to a place you could never have got before.

19:42 The designer would not have come up with this thing on their own. So it's somewhere in this elevate and extend area. Um but the AI would not have come when it's on on its own either. It is the collaboration of a human and an AI working together. So companies that use these types of tools to expand the design abilities of their engineers, for example, um are able to explore much broader design spaces much more quickly and essentially collapse um time and money. And that's the second thing that organizations need to do is how do you as leaders, how do you create abundance in your organization? How do you create um more time to do things by collapsing cost and time, reducing marginal cost of design for example, but in any other uh realm so that you can free people up and get to the third stage which is stop defending your existing business and start thinking about how do I develop new businesses um to go serve new needs

20:53 in the marketplace. I think right there, stop defending your existing business is important because I think the J C Penney and the Kmarts defend it. Like, no, this is who we are. We're we're going to double down on this. Where the Kmarts and the the Targets and the Walmarts were like, nope, we have to change. Just it is what it is. The rules have changed. Amazon's changed the rules. We need to we need to change that. For most business owners, though, it is still like telling them, "Okay, I need you're you're a 2-year-old. You're a toddler.

21:19 Congratulations. I need you to dunk a ball." They're like, "What the heck?" They they're they're begging for something proven. They're begging for something tangible that they can turn around and they're like, "Okay, well, I'm going to ask my my 12-year-old what chat GPT is." I'm like, "That's that's not going to work, you know." So, having that conversation, telling them, "Is it a is it a course? Is it a material? Is it where can they go? Where can they go into this idea and start learning and playing and understanding?" Because I think we're at the point a bit like climate change where things are changing. There's just nowhere the science points at it. um you know if you if you want to be somewhat politically correct like no we didn't necessarily cause seasons but we definitely gave it a Red Bull to speed it the hell up but people are like well we don't know what what to do and I think it'll go into the

22:04 idea of okay I know what I need to do but I what I'm not willing to do and that is a completely different conversation as far as the not willing people who are listening to this really simply you don't have to don't worry about it you'll be bankrupt you'll be gone you'll go be you is what so don't change but for those who actually want to change they're looking for something tangible and I hear this all the time when I'm on stage age. If I'm talking to people,

22:23 organizations, owners, business owners, the people you interact with, people that bring you in that say, "Listen, we know this is coming. There is a title wave coming. How do we do this right now? How do we educate our senior staff? How do we educate our junior staff? How do we survive?"

22:38 So, this is this is the need I identified a couple of years ago. It's why I created an online course for senior business leaders to help prepare them for this time. And I wrote a book, The AI Ultimatum. again designed for leaders to prep them on what are the different moving parts of AI? What are the different flavors in there? What is Agentic AI? How do I deploy it? What are the things I need to worry about? Um how do I deploy it successfully? Um what are the gotchas uh that that you can have? Why why have 90% of AI deployments today been judged a failure? Well, it's because XYZ. And I go into that and explain what you need to do to have successful deployments.

23:21 What's the role of physical AI robots in your um in your operations? If you have a physical component to your operations, and most companies do, unless they're a pure play SAS company, um you know, you're going to have some sort of physical element. People are shocked at how fast robots have matured and how quickly they're coming into our lives. you know, people will be selling robots into homes, humanoid robots into homes this year for $20,000. You know, a lot of people haven't haven't really figured that out yet. Um, so it's coming much quicker than they realize. The other thing I try and help people think through is that you have to, you know, you mentioned earlier that one of my mantras is AI is as bad as it's ever going to be. Robots are as incapable as they're ever going to be. They're just going to get better and better from here. there is an exponential curve that we're on and exponentials when you look

24:17 backwards look linear and then there's this wall ahead of you and you have to understand that um the example I give people is back in the day when Gmail was launched. People thought Google were nuts for giving people a gigabyte of free storage with their Gmail and oh yeah they're going to put themselves out of business. They can't possibly do that. It's going to bankrupt them. Well, because Google realized that they're on an exponential curve and a gigabyte was going to be nothing, you know, in five years time. So, you have to understand this exponential nature and plan accordingly. Yeah. I think that's what we talked about in the very beginning.

24:55 What took 10 years took two days. And you know, there's a lot of people have resistance to having robots in their house. And we have this conversation all the time like, "Oh, I'm not going to have a robot in the house." I'm like, "You see that little hockey puck that vacuums your house? That's a robot." So it just it's already happening and we just I don't I think that's one of the things that

25:10 having listened to your keynotes and having read your book, you talk about how AI is not new. We've been with it for a while. We talk about like junk mail and all that. Can you give examples to get people to kind of exhale a little bit because they're terrified of it right now. What are some of the examples of AI that we've already had for some time? Well, every time you open your email, there is an AI that sorts the spam from your inbox and it's just making predictions based on having been trained on literally billions of emails. It knows the signs of spaminess and it makes a prediction about whether it should be put into the junk folder or your inbox. And it it's good. It's, you know, it's it's accurate probably 99.9% of the time. So, you use that every day.

25:53 Let me give you some other examples. uh when you post a letter and you hand write a zip code on there, the post office for 15 years has used AI, a convolutional AI, that was what it was invented for by Yan Lun back in the day to read your scroll and turn it into numbers. So this is this sort of stuff has been around for a long time. I'll give you one more example. Um, in the retail world, if you're a chain store in apparel, um, you have to decide what products are showcased in which stores in which locations around the country or around the world if you're global and what colors in what sizes of what product lines am I putting in each store. And you're trying to optimize for sales out. And you're trying to minimize returns and, you know, stuff moving into the bargain bucket, right? and and being sold off for pennies on the dollar. Um, the reason AI comes into play here is it's optimizing based on historical

26:51 sales out data and it's understanding innately that people in different parts of the country have different tastes and they're different size profiles. You can't just have a bell curve. That bell curve shifts depending on where in the country you are. And so it's called assortment planning and it's been used for 15 years. Um, so you know AI in the form of machine learning to optimize business processes, it is running in the background of global business and has been for 15 years. What's new is the generative AI stuff and that's what's got everybody's attention. But AI has been around a very long time.

27:28 It's interesting you bring that up regarding the the size of clothes and all that. One of my my favorite ones of this is ironically target. Target would track using AI and using algos what you were buying like oh my god this person obviously is pregnant based on data and they would send something say hey congratulations you're you're yeah you this example hey you're you're pregnant this is what's going to happen people would freak out they're like I didn't target knew I was pregnant before I knew I was pregnant so their solution was they just lied to you they sent you the same stuff they just changed the catalog they sent to you that had random other things so that you're like oh look it happened to have this and here because Target knew that so having the other idea that this based off behavioral science. This is based off behavioral economics. AI is just leveraging all those tools. It's already been happening

28:10 for a really long time. If you're just waking up to this, you're late to the game. So, what are some of the Yeah. So, what are some of the um industries or jobs specifically that you're like, "No, it's it's over. You need to retool right now." And then we'll talk about how to retool in a second. Um, I mean the most obvious ones that are going to fall, let's say, in the next 10 years, let's be generous with our timeline.

28:36 That's very generous. Accounting is probably a big one. Um, driving is probably another uh whether that is truck driving or, you know, taxi driving, that's likely going to evaporate. They won't go completely. There'll still be truck drivers who are driving in and out of the city because people feel more comfortable that way, but they'll drop it off at a hub out of town. It'll do the freeway journey. Um, a robot will do that. Um, and there'll there'll be still be some taxis around because some people will not want to go into a self-driving car, but most people will do it because it's going to be onethird of the price. So, you know, eventually we'll get we'll get we'll get over it and get over our worries and do it. So those are the those are some big ones. Um parallegals probably don't have much longer. Um anything that is about passing through knowledge or doing routine repetitive tasks is likely going

29:44 away. Um but you know in theory we should free these people who do these up to do different things. Accountants are very smart people mostly and you know why are they doing that kind of work that can be automated when those people could be showing up in society in different ways. Now I think you talk about this all the time where your job might be evolving not eliminating where you're saying hey I was an accountant I'm going to use this form of AI that helps me perform better instead of replace me. So it's a performance thing not a purge thing. So when you're going into that and you're having that conversation, how does an accountant, how does someone say, "Okay, this is what's going on." Because you've you've been there, right? You've been part of Google's, you've been part of Intel, you're you understand this better than most human beings. If I'm an accountant, which God bless you guys who

30:35 are accountants, um I don't care if I'm off by a penny. I just don't. I'll give you the damn penny. So, but if you're an accountant and you're like, "Hey," or you're in an industry that is headed towards extinction, how do you leverage how do you what are the tools that you can use in order to fix that?

30:52 I don't know what the specific tools are in the accounting world, but let's use it as a great example of how you might become an AI first accountancy business. At the moment, the the engine is run by people, accountants who, you know, they're they're using software tools, but they're still, you know, going through entering things, trying to figure out what goes where. Um, that very quickly goes away and you're able to shift from the engine being people and you're being limited by the number of hours in a day. you know, my accountant is no longer taking on clients because they can't handle anymore because they only have a certain number of hours in the day and days in the year. So if you could then shift to the engine of that business, the AI doing all of the accounting stuff, creating all of the reports, now you can free the accountant for doing account management, working with clients, perhaps taking on 10 times as

31:49 many clients because there's a consulting and advising and human connection part of being an accountant that is a smaller fraction of their job. But it's there.

32:00 If they make AI, they become an AI first accountancy. They put AI at the heart of their business. Now, they can maybe handle 10 times as many clients. And the accountants that do that first will put the other accountants out of business.

32:13 Yes. So, that's the thing. People worry about being replaced by AI. What you're going to be replaced by is other humans you who've built an AI first company to come after you and eat your lunch. So, one of the examples that I love with the AI one is um my accountant we do in my world's huge with cost seg it just is what it is because we just don't like paying taxes and there are many legal ways to to eliminate that. Uh and one of the ways that we do that is through something called cost segregation and for those of you playing at home with cost seg 179 and you'll figure it out.

32:46 But when it comes to cost seg we're like okay I have this I'm going to give this much money and my ROI on that's going to be zero. I'm going to give a million dollars to the government. My ROI on that is zero. So just that it's horrible. It's a horrible investment. Or I can go do ABCD EFG and get that. The problem is they don't know or have access to ABCD EFG. So my accountant we sat down and we said hey this is people who have these opportunities with cost seg why don't we use AI to compare the two and match turn into a dating game.

33:15 And then he evolved from just being an accountant to being a wealth creator and now it's business and how much he charges. they

33:22 right has exploded. So those are one of the tangible examples where you have to accept cuz he he had a lot of resistance. I mean my my accountant who I I love dearly uh is a little older than me and he's like I I don't have to I don't want to evolve. This is going to be painful and we had a very frank conversation. I was like what's more painful being homeless or evolving? And he's like you have to take it that seriously. I'm like yeah you need to take it that seriously. So they're not doing that. So, what are some tangible things that you've done when you've worked with your clients and you've seen that because I know you have very specific NDAs that you cannot disclose.

33:55 I do agree with you that wearables are going to replace phones. I think that's I cannot wait for that. But it means that everyone's going to be walking around with glasses. So, it'll be an excuse for me to wear glasses. But, you know, it's going to happen. God bless. What are some of the things that you've seen that you're like, I can't believe I wish people would know this and do this and go, I wish people wouldn't do this.

34:18 Well, part of it, I mean, I mentioned one already, which is thinking a sitewide chat, GPT or co-pilot license is, you know, you're there, you've done it.

34:28 Um, you know, and some leaders that they think that's that's what it needed. they had to make this big investment to upgrade the seats they have with Microsoft and that that would be enough. Um, unfortunately it's not.

34:42 No. Um, what are the things I wished people did? I think for me I mean a lot of people just build building their acumen that the

34:52 the biggest thing any individual can do and that means any leader can do right now is to invest in themselves and boost their AI acumen. understand AI not at the technical level you don't need to do that but understand the different flavors of AI what they can do now what they will be able to do a year from now and try out AI tools so that you understand what the capabilities are and if because if as a leader if you don't understand what AI can do today you haven't played with this stuff you haven't had your mind blown with this stuff created an AI song um created AI video um you know done something like that where you think holy moly um then you haven't really fully internalized the moment so that's the that's the biggest thing I wish people would do is invest in themselves particularly if you're a leader by investing in yourself it's like put your put your oxygen mask on first so you can

35:56 help others if you want to be a good leader you have to show up completely differently in this moment. And that means you have to understand what's going on,

36:06 right? I I think it's for me it starts with the the two steps that you've outlined already, which is this is here. Accept it. Just accept it and then you have to pivot to AI first. You're an AI first company. Period. Full stop. No matter who you are, no matter what you're doing, you're an AI first first organization. What are some of the tools that you've seen that maybe people aren't using that you're just like, "God, this right now for where we are when we're recording this in in early 2026. This is these are great and these are some of the ones that I wish people would keep an eye on that there's just kind of these un undiscovered gems."

36:43 Yeah. I mean, it depends what line of work you're in. Um, a lot of people like Lovable as a way to create, you know, um, websites and code, do coding. um, Codeex, if you're, again, if you're in the software world, um, if you're a leading software company, whether that's Apple or Open AI or Service Now, you are deeply using AI coding tools to amplify the output that your uh, software programmers can can create. Um, they're not looking to replace their programmers at this point. If if you have a choice of well I can do 10 times the amount of code with a person now that I could a year ago. Do I need onetenth of the programmers or do I want to create 10x the amount of software? 10x the amount of software please.

37:38 So those sorts of tools I think are transforming anybody that is writing any kind of software. Um and there are some leading companies that are saying they are either already to the point where every line of the code that they're checking in for their new piece of software um is AI generated or they will be there by the end of the year. So if your organization has some some software component and you're not on that timeline, not on that path, then you're behind. Um, other tools I would recommend um I mean, here's a fun one for content creators. I really like Opus Clips. Um, are you familiar with it, Charles?

38:21 I am. I am. My team's having me do it. I take, uh, I take a keynote, I point it to a keynote on YouTube, Opus Clips, sucks it in, and creates lots of little clips in different, you know, form factors, drops in subtitles for me automatically. I just pick the ones I like and stick them to social media and it does it auto automatically. You know, it saves hours and hours of time and I couldn't believe how cheap it was to use. So, I signed up immediately. So, these are the types of things and there's usually a tool for anything that people are doing. You just have to find it.

38:54 Yeah, Google notebook is is one of them that I love. I'll take and I'm like, I do not have time or energy. Yeah, the end my own. I I do not have time or energy to watch thousands of YouTube videos anymore. So, I will use chat or whatever it is to tell me the top ranked or the most views regarding whatever that topic is. I will then copy those links, drop it into notebook. I'm like, make me a course. Make me a PowerPoint presentation. And it builds it all out for me. And I'm like, click, click, click. I'm like, cool. So, I'm condensing and I'm helping it with me performing. And I think that's one of the narratives you talked about before is not purging but performance.

39:26 And then, well, so we've talked about what's coming. I was going to say that this Yeah. tools like Nano Banana Pro. Um, people are using it to create slides now that look beautiful or there's a feature in Google Slides where you can beautify a slide and it turns something that you know you've tried to create as best you can into something that looks like it was created by a graphic designer and makes you look slick and polished. So that there's just little things everywhere and this is just the beginning.

39:54 Yeah, I think AI is the the original or the best performance enhancement we've ever seen. From there, we talk about, you know, this is what's coming and we've talked about the fear and we've talked about, hey, these are some of the things you can do to make it a little bit better. The difference is you're in rooms and have been in rooms of where it's going versus, okay, how do I survive the title wave? We get the for most of the gen pop, we look out and we're like, okay, big title wave and we can't see beyond that title wave.

40:23 You've been on the other side of the title wave. you've talked about and you've been in the rooms with Google and and with Intel saying, "Hey, this is where we're going to go." It's cute that they're trying to catch up with what we talked about and thought about doing 5 10 years ago. That's adorable. Let them try and catch up. This is where we're going in the future. I know you're limited on what you can share, but what are the things that most of the gen pop and the people like me who are like, "Hey, I'm kind of doing okay." have no idea about that where we're going. What is what is that stuff as a futurist that you've talked about? This is what's next.

40:55 So, I've got good news and bad news. Um, we'll start with the good news first. Mhm.

41:01 I I suspect that and we can then we can talk about the timelines, but I suspect that we are moving to the third phase of humanity.

41:11 And what I mean by that is the first phase was our survival phase. you know, stone age, um, hunter gatherer, subsistence farming, you're just trying to get to the next day and stay alive.

41:26 Thankfully, we got out of that phase and we've now been in the work phase where we work to, yes, survive, but also hopefully to to have a bit more than that, right? We have jobs, careers, we have a home if we're lucky. um we may get, you know, and you think about Maslo's hierarchy. We're trying to get up to the self-actualization at the top of the pyramid. And we've been in this phase some time. We have live in a capitalist society. We have money. Um we're all striving to be better, to live better lives, either for ourselves or for our children or both.

42:08 Um and we've been in this space for, you know, a couple thousand years. we might with AI be able to get beyond that. Um Maslo published a paper which which was not released during his lifetime. It was released postumously and he talked about there being another layer in Maslo's hierarchy beyond self-actualization where he talked he called it transcendence

42:40 where we're able to get beyond thinking about ourselves and our own self actualization and go to start thinking more broadly about other people as well.

42:52 Mhm. And so I think the opportunity with AI, if we can use AI to free us from work in the long term so that you free people to self-actualize at any level they wish, whether that is following artistic pursuits, scientific discovery, exploration, whatever it might be, whatever your thing is. Um we can move to an era. So from the uh from the survival era to the work era to the service era where we're able to do service, we're able to come together in groups, look at big problems and figure out ways to solve them. Look at small problems and figure out ways to solve them. Take care of our elders. Um explore the galaxy. I mean the the opportunity is huge if we can free ourselves from work. That's the the sort of Star Trek vision, right? Where AI has cured all disease or AI and scientists working together have figured out how to cure all disease. We all now have doubled our lifespans and hopefully

44:04 vastly expanded our our health spans. So we're, you know, we're living very comfortable, healthy lives into our 120s, let's say. Um disease is kind of gone. Nobody wants for anything because the AI agents and the robots do all the work for us. The cost of goods and services crashes down to effectively zero. You don't need to have much money if any money is still around to survive. That's the Star Trek vision, right? In Star Trek, you never see somebody with money. They're all helping each other out mostly. Um the Gene Rodenbury view of the future, not the Terminator James Cameron view of the future. that is within grasp.

44:47 Maybe we could get there in the 2040s. Maybe. Have Have you watched the news recently? That doesn't seem really likely. I'm just saying.

44:56 Yeah. But to get there, you have to go through a major adjustment. And we all have to let go of the our lives as we know it. And it's going to be incredibly disruptive if it indeed happens. And you know h how do you rewire the economy? How do you rewrite the social contract to make that vision possible? That is an enormous amount of work. And if it has to happen in just 10 or 15 years, I don't think we're ready for that.

45:29 Yeah. So, so what is bad news? That's the bad news. Oh, that's the bad news. Okay. I was thinking what's the bad Yeah. I No, I agree. I think we talk about this all the time. Even when I was in college, we'd have psychology classes and we're like and and philosophy classes and we're like, "Okay, imagine if we spent a third of the money we spend on trying to kill each other on trying to heal each other. Where would the planet be? What are we going to do?" And we're just going to hit that point where we have to decide it's going to be left or right.

45:52 And we just have to decide which path we're going to go on. And we can't control that. One of the things we can control is kind of how we educate ourselves, what we read and all that. So if if people want to track you down and get access to that stuff and see those type of information and they want to find more access to you, how do they find you? What's the best way to interact with you?

46:10 Easiest way to find me is on my website, steve brown.ai. Nice and straightforward. And you can find my book on Amazon. It's called the AI Ultimatum. Oh, hang on. I have one. Tada. Right there. That's where it looks like. So if you're looking for online, you can see it.

46:23 Perfect. Steve, I appreciate you so much. There's so many more questions I want to ask and haven't deep dive in. I think at this point we've kind of spooked the people enough they're like, "Oh, wait, hold on. There's a different way of doing it." Um,

46:33 I didn't mean to of it. Yeah, they need to. Yeah, it is what it is. You don't sit there and say, "Hey, no, it's not a tsunami. Just sit here and make a sand castle." No, it's it's a tsunami. You got to pivot. So, I appreciate it more than you could tell. Go out there, get it. Thank you for giving me a copy of the book in advance so I could take a look at it and read it. That was unbelievably helpful. I appreciate it and thank you so much for being on the show.

46:53 Hey, Charles, it was a delight. Um, you know, I I get to have lots of these conversations and uh spending time with you was a real treat. Thank you.

46:59 I appreciate it. That's a wrap on another episode of the Proven Podcast. The future isn't waiting and neither is AI. Stop fearing disruption. Start building with it. While others debate what's coming, you could be learning how to use it. Remember, if your strategy ignores technology, it was never built to

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Google DeepMind Insider: You wont Survive the AI-First Economy, unless... - Steve Brown"?

Charles (Host), Steve Brown (Guest).

What is "Google DeepMind Insider: You wont Survive the AI-First Economy, unless... - Steve Brown" about?

Steve Brown, an AI futurist and technology strategist, discusses how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing business and the importance of strategic AI adoption for companies to succeed in the evolving "AI-first economy." With a background in high-tech and experience at Intel and Google DeepMind, Brown emphasizes that organizations that effectively leverage AI today will shape the markets of…

What is mentioned in this The Proven Podcast episode?

12 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Steve Brown, AI Ultimatum, Google LLC, Google Deep Mind, AlphaFold, Amazon. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Google DeepMind Insider: You wont Survive the AI-First Economy, unless... - Steve Brown"?

The episode runs 47 min; the transcript is about 8,997 words in 91 timestamped sections.

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