Artificial Intelligence Overhyped

Kristian: You have your own brain. This brain allows you to think, function, live your life, enjoy your life, be with your family, be present, right? Do whatever you want to do. AI, in order for you to use your artificial brain, you need data centers. Yung brain mo na yun di mo siya magagamit on your own term. It’s like having a brain that’s having an open skull with your brain open.

Whatever they want to do with your brain, it’s up to them. My name is Kristian Quirapas and I’m a staff protocol or staff blockchain engineer. And my main work is to create different infrastructures that allow people to own their assets and own their data so that they can have a sovereign digital experience.

Philippe: In terms of the technology behind AI compared to blockchain, are those two different things?

Kristian: AI is more on I’ll render my knowledge to you. I’ll render my needs to you and that creates a dependency. Blockchain being decentralized, being something that not a single entity can control doesn’t promote dependency. It promotes sovereignty.

Philippe: People are so dependent on AI, they think everything that AI spits out is confirmed as the correct information and validated where it could be, like you said, manipulated. What do you think will happen in the next 3 years?

Kristian: In the next 3 years, I believe we’re going to go.

Philippe: You’re absolutely right. People are so focused on other things that are hype. It’s always the hype.

Kristian: Yeah, always the hype. For sure.

Philippe: And I know I know exactly how that turned out during those times last year. Was that a year ago? We’re used to. There was a lot of blockchain events happening, conferences, summits and all that.

Kristian: Locally. Yeah.

Philippe: Was that last year or two years ago?

Kristian: Two years ago, I think.

Philippe: Yeah. What happened there?

Kristian: Good question. So, in general, I did the same I did it the same way that you did, right? I tried to go out there and meet different people. And when I did go there to talk to different blockchain leaders, talk to different take like go to different blockchain parties and events, I realized most of them don’t really care about blockchain and they’re there for free food.

So it was definitely hype. That’s number one. And number two, that’s why I stopped that. What I did was I focused more on the technology itself and really dig deep into okay what can actually be done with decentralized technology decentralized protocols blockchain what why is it even a block, diba? Why did we sell for a block? What is the importance of that?

Kristian: And then I realized na unlike AI it’s not just hype actually. Picture this, right. You have your own brain. This brain allows you to think, function, live your life, enjoy your life, be with your family, be present, right? Do whatever you want to do. And that’s right for you because that’s your freedom. AI. In order for you to use your artificial brain, you need data centers, like big data centers, big hardware.

What blockchain decentralized technology showed to me was that there was a centralization of compute, right? So yung brain mo na yun di mo siya magagamit on your own terms, right? It’s like having a brain that’s having an open skull with your brain open and then whatever they want to do with your brain, it’s up to them because they own the compute.

Kristian: And if they stop offering you that compute, then you lose your artificial intelligence. So you lose your artificial brain. Protocols or decentralized protocols or blockchains on the other hand give that power back to you. Sabihin yung compute mo sayo and no one can stop you from using that. Using that compute the way that you want to using that for your goals using that for your mission.

That’s why for me, although the hype is down now for like blockchain, I’d say a lot of people are still pushing hype, mainly crypto, the underlying technology is much more important now to people than they realize because we’re moving towards a world where a lot of the computer, the technology, the hardware are centralized.

Kristian: And it’s not good for us because imagine right there was I think there was a moment where Iran was bombing data centers by AWS and people were using that compute right on their land and servers that were on those data centers probably went down. Now we’re moving towards a future na fragmented na yung mga countries.

If people are stacking up of artificial intelligence or their artificial brain and they own most of the compute then what happens to the Philippines then? So to me the notion of a blockchain and a decentralized compute infrastructure is still relevant. It’s not hype and I would say AI is the one that’s.

Philippe: In terms of the technology behind AI compared to blockchain are those two different things?

Kristian: Good question. Fundamentally, they’re not, right? They’re still compute. They’re just parallelized compute. They’re on a technical level, they’re both networks. So data go pass through different nodes and then those nodes compute those outputs, right? But they solve different things, right?

AI solves for I would say aggregation of information and helping you arrive to whatever you need as fast as possible. So when you pag nag chat ka diba you’re going to get that information fast. So it solves for that. It’s like a second brain that’s easy to browse. Blockchain on the other hand solved for a different problem.

Kristian: It makes it possible for you to own things on a digital realm and it’s important and it’s different because AI is more on I’ll render my knowledge to you. I render my needs to you. I won’t even think. I’ll just let you do the thinking. And that creates a dependency. Blockchain being decentralized, being something that not a single entity can control, doesn’t promote dependency, it promotes sovereignty.

That means what you want to do with your assets, what you want to do with your data, that is up to you. So they’re both networks, but they solve different problems. One introduces dependency and tries to create a dependency. The other tries to give you sovereignty.

Philippe: In comparison, it’s just apples and bananas. Two different technologies, two different purpose, two different control. But I like what you said. One is you take full ownership, full control, and the other one is just whatever you wanted to render it gives. Now, in terms of the quality of the data that AI is providing and blockchain is processing,

wouldn’t we say with blockchain it’s really about ownership and having a breadcrumbs of just to find out if the source is validated. But with AI, people are so dependent on AI that they think everything that AI spits out is confirmed as the correct information and validated where it could be, like you said, manipulated and provide you with the wrong information.

Philippe: Will there be a time where both these technologies will merge into one or be connected in some sort?

Kristian: For sure. For sure. So yeah, for sure. I do think it’s a good point that they’re apples and bananas. They’re meant for different problems in general. It’s just that I believe our bandwidth, our limited bandwidth as humans is isn’t solving for how to lead in the AI race. Cuz that’s what we’re trying to do, right?

We’re trying to maximize our involvement in AI and rather start asking the real problems like how can we maintain the compute sovereignty of the Philippines? How can we maintain the sovereignty of the protocols around finance, right? How can we become more transparent around finance?

Kristian: How can we reindustrialize the Philippines and start doing more exports, less service base, less dependencies, right? I just believe those are better problems to solve and have our bandwidth and resources put it out into right now, especially now because life sucks right now. Prices are hella high.

Than trying to win in the AI race where majority of the compute is already with other people. That means for us to reach their level, it’s going to take a ton of resources and it’s a race that’s that has already been won.

Kristian: And because that race has already been won, I think it’s much better to just let it run and then use the best tool that comes out of it than trying to focus all of our effort when we have pressing needs that are need solving. I think that clears it up. That’s my point. It can definitely interact though and create different systems that would help people. So yeah, apples and bananas for sure.

Philippe: For sure. What do you think that needs to happen right now apart from shifting our focus away from hype? Cuz like you said we’re at war with ourselves, with ourselves as well because what happens when the hype goes down for AI and we’re left behind again with still the high high cost of fuel high cost of energy generally high cost of retail stuff.

What do you think the Filipino people should focus on so that we could lead, you know, to a better future?

Kristian: I’ve been looking at different histories around how countries in general got richer. And what I found was that it’s actually very straightforward. I think it’s obvious for people. They just exported more products. Because if you export of course people countries in different nations will buy from you and that they’ll make your country richer.

So the past I would say year or more I’ve been looking at the landscape and seeing how I can build a physical product, start selling physical products and start aim for exportation in the Philippines. And I discovered a lot of problems actually. Number one, right? Your question is what needs to happen.

Kristian: Number one, the cost of business and the time it takes for us to start a business locally is very hard. That’s number one. Number two, for us to start exporting, we need tools, we need machineries, we need infrastructure, for example, electricity and those are costly. That means we need budget, right?

We need if you want to jump start that definitely the government will have to jump in and help out to stimulate that industry. And then the third one is education. I realized na for example I was studying semiconductors the other day like I think four months back 5 months back. Ang sabi ko, kausap ko yung friend ko na galing , magaling siya sa mga IC and semiconductors.

Kristian: And then we were talking sabi ko “Nasan na ba yung mga iba nating semiconductor engineer diyan or IC designers? Where are they?”. They’re a handful, right? They’re the qualified ones to actually make designs only a handful in the Philippines. So, for example, if we’re aiming for semiconductor export, who will design?

In these times di ka naman pwedeng mag import ng player eh, diba? So, that tells me that we need to educate. And the third missing variable is really education. Okay. So number one is, ay number two is yung government help. Number three is yung education and then number one is export. Do more export.

Philippe: With Pax silica coming into the picture, I know it’s not Filipino driven. It’s just an agreement between one superpower to one dependent nation. Sad to say that’s us. Say it provides jobs, provides opportunities locally. But still the control of the exports and the profitability of that partnership is not given to us.

It’s in full control of one big superpower. We’re more like we’re more of a backup nation if you think about it because we all know that China needs to take over Taiwan and they’re the number one semiconductor producer manufacturer for 90% of the whole supply of the world and if that goes if that gets invaded by China who’s the next best thing in Asia.

Philippe: Of course, they look at the Philippines. We have the skills. We have the talents. Our labor is still cheaper compared to the labor in the US. We speak English fluently. So, no cases in loss in translation. No cases at all, right? All the manuals, all the SOPs, all the agreements are all in English.

But still, we’re not in we’re still dependent on that policy that’s going to happen. It doesn’t mean that we’re going to be the number two manufacturer of semiconductors. It just means that somebody aided us with an opportunity that we have no other choice but to grab. Because we have no control to say no. We don’t need you to manufacture semiconductors.

Philippe: To me, I believe it’s still a good thing because we can’t come up with these opportunities without them proposing it. Say the US didn’t say, “Oh, we want to let’s say they never offered Pas silica.” I don’t think in a million years we’ll be able to get that type of idea where why don’t we produce or manufacture semiconductors.

I don’t think that’s going to ever happen. Okay. There might be some ambitious startup companies there, but I don’t think the company will be able, like you said, subsidize the whole project. I love it that you think that semiconductors is one great product to export, but does it have to be a physical product in order to export? Aren’t we already exporting services?

Philippe: Through BPOS’s. We sort of exported our OFWs. Our OFWS are our exported product, but that’s that render service renders other nations. And in fact, OFWs is still even with the rise of VAS, BPOS, and other rendering services OFWs in general is still the highest money making entity that the government has produced since the 80s7s. It’s still people.

Because until such time where robotics and robots and humanoids can take over household cleaning or hospitality. It’s not going to happen until I would I’m looking at it 5 years from now. You can buy humanoid for $10,000 right now in China. 50% cheaper than what Tesla is offering or what other companies offering in the US.

Philippe: 5 years from now, that number can go down to maybe you could afford a humanoid for $3,000. Which is still it gets cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. Then what happens to our service industry? So I agree with you that it has to be a physical product. Let’s keep aside semiconductors.

Give us two more options in what we’re capable of producing or manufacturing the Philippines that you think that we have to export.

Kristian: Good question. Semiconductor is pretty high-tech.

Philippe: Do we need to go high-tech? Can we go down to basics? Is there something Is there a product that you’ve seen that maybe could be a plant? Could be certain type of retail?

Kristian: Yeah. There are two that I think we could definitely export. Machine parts that’s one. For example while trying to build things myself in physical products I was browsing marketplace because it’s cheaper and looking for different tools and machines what that taught me was we actually have a lot of machinists a lot of handcapable people that are now being utilized with machines and these are really passionate people.

How can I say they’re passionate? Because they have a lathe, they have a mill, they have machines in their house and for you to be able to commit to that means you really care about your craft, right? So yung mga machine parts like metal gears, shafts or mga mil parts, different metal parts, we could do that as an export definitely because we had the skills.

Kristian: I do believe we have the skills does that. You can see a lot of reels where they do exactly that. That’s one.

Philippe: What about resources in parts of parts, machine parts? What about raw materials and to create those parts? Do we have enough raw materials for that here?

Kristian: What’s good with the Philippines is we have natural resources. What I realize is missing is refinement. So the processing so for example in semiconductor we have the we have rare there we have quote unquote rare earths that are raw in the Philippines but like nickel but the issue is right even copper right but the issue there is that it’s really difficult to refine that natural resources.

So most likely we’ll have to take that and export that to other people and then take the. So I definitely believe we have the resources. Refinement and the processing I don’t think we have that right now.

Philippe: But you didn’t mention that it’s a good thing that you mentioned these types of resources that we have because if only the government was focused on taking charge of those resources we’d be richer. And when I mean richer, when I mean richer, apart from stealing from us, from the Philippines, from the citizens, they could even be richer exporting resources, right? So, we are rich.

Kristian:Yep.

Philippe: Not sure if you’ve heard about this. Okay. I’ll discuss is there’s this one thing that’s been going around for the last decade. They call it the black gold, but we’ll circle back to that. So, we talked about semiconductors. We talked about machine parts. Give us a third one.

Kristian: Third one is easy, food. We’re an agriculture company. I do believe we’re still, we have an opportunity to export these food sources as packaged goods and then export them. For example, ube is hype right now.

So we can do plays like that. Innovate around that create food processing machines that would be intelligent or AI driven. We could definitely do that. That’s one. If I were to, let’s say, start exporting physical goods, if I wasn’t a tech guy, food is definitely my entry point.

Philippe: Are you aware that we’re the number one exporter of pineapples and bananas?

Kristian: Nope. But I’m not surprised.

Philippe: Del Monte and Dole, right? Dole for pineapple. Del Monte exports a lot of I want to say vegetations but fruits in general, right. So we got not sure if it’s corn but I know it’s pineapple and bananas – saba. Oh a third one I forgot, coconut. One issue though it’s privatized so it’s only the company that benefits from it.

Yes we export it and we could exponentially increase that export a 100 times but only those private companies benefit from it. But you know what’s good because I’ve seen a documentary by Dole and Del Monte. Because they’re great at exporting and producing pineapples and bananas and whatsoever, right?

Philippe: The people around them, they’re the ones who are picking the pineapples, the farmers, the workers that’s under them. Gabi ang galing. They created a community around the business. So meaning around the farms, for example, a pineapple farm, everyone involved there is part of a community that was built by the corporation where they have schools,

they have accommodations, they have water resources, food and everything’s built within the self sustaining. They don’t need to I wouldn’t say import or get or get resources from other cities or other provinces just to maintain these farmers because they have hectares and they have a lot of farmers and people in agriculture where they need to feed and they.

Philippe: I mean they have communities as large as 10,000 people full-blown communities. Imagine their children get free education. They get free water. They get discounted goods and food and everything just to keep them happy. They give them a really nice of course their livelihood is the farm and all that.

But they give them what comes with that is a great deal of benefits where oh libe na edukasyon ng anak mo, libre na kayo sa mga ayuda, libre na kayo pag may nagkasakit diyan, free medical. Hindi naman HMO pero they have their own clinics, micro hospitals where someone gets in an accident they don’t need to bring them to the city to treat them. Nandun na.

Philippe: That’s what’s great about these corporations. They really take good care of their their people, you know. There’s another one. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of Aboitiz the corporation Aboitiz here, they have the same ano it’s an industrial area somewhere up north. Not sure if it’s in near Panga or somewhere, but it’s up north.

And then it’s an industrial sector. They built their own community as well. But there it’s a little modern. It’s a little. Kasi yung mga workers don medyo upper level. They’re not farmers. It’s an industrial area kasi. Not sure what they’re manufacturing in there, but it’s really more of factories, but they’re communities. They have their own restaurants.

Philippe: They have their own fast foods. They have their own, you know, and they’re like, why live in Manila where you could live here and work here and their quarters. Na ano siya na featured ni James Deakinn. Na feature niya. He just went there, made a documentary, a short documentary about the group. Ay grabi, the Aboitiz Group grabi they take care of their own talaga.

Yung bed bunks nila and yung accommodation, ang ganda. Para siyang, how do I say three star hotel. That’s why people are happy there and it’s clean and they don’t need cars, healthy walking, or bicycle. It’s very ano refreshing and all that. They said they don’t need a lot of people came from Manila to live there to work for them.

Philippe: Because libre ata electricity, libre yung food, no hindi naman libre yung food pero very cheap yung retail products nila, grocery and stuff like that and their families are their free education schools and all that. Imagine these companies can do pockets of small communities and we can’t do that for our own nation as a whole.

Whatever happens if if imagine what happens if our government subsidizes the whole nation for that. Would probably be one of the leading Asian countries you know doing something good for us.

Kristian: Yep.

Philippe: What if education was free for all? I’m not talking about government lang, public. I’m talking about everyone, right? If I want to study rocket science and if we want to beat SpaceX to the moon or Mars the government should oh hell yeah let’s do it first we’ll be on Mars, diba? We can’t even export one fruit subsidized by the government.

I mean come on we have the coconut, right? Was that Philcoa? What’s that Philippine? What’s Philcoa? The Philippine coconut authority. The hell we have a covenant authority, right? What’s their sole purpose of these operating as an independent public corporation, right? Public corporation meaning we’ll produce it but they’ll gain from it.

Philippe: It says it is a statute of the department of agriculture and focuse on empowering coconut farmers modernizing production and driving inclusive economic growth. Yes, economic growth. Modernizing production, I doubt it. I would say yes, we are modern if we see the farmers like flying their drones. Oh, coconut ko ‘to, diba. Bai, okay bai.

And then you see one other farmer and he’s like programming the tractor like, oh, time to shave off like three hectares of this and plant seedlings and all that, right? I wish we were that modern for in the future, right? Now I want to circle back to what I was what what I mentioned earlier. Right. Have you heard about these black pods? They call them the black gold of the Philippines.

Kristian: Black pods?

Philippe: Yeah, black pods.

Kristian: Nope.

Philippe: Okay, let me give you a general idea. Think of it like a gold mine in the Philippine Sea. So deep. Very very very deep. Malapit sa, hold on let me just do a quick search, okay. It’s near the Mariana Trench.

Kristian: Lalim nga.

Philippe: Very. But they say they consider it as black gold.

Kristian: Interesting.

Philippe: Yes. And it’s literally they call it pods kasi you know those documentaries you see like they eat pods off the sea. Pero these black pods are like circular in shape kasi. Ganun siya. You look at the floor, the seafloor. It’s like half a ball coming out. And it’s just not one. It’s it’s a lot of these. Multiply that to like hundreds of thousands.

You look at the floor and there’s like a, sunod sunod sila. They’re trying to shut off the media for this because when one of the research parang exploration sea exploration submarines and there’s this corporation who is known they have the technology to go deep underwater and start testing.

Philippe:You know they get materials they get samples off the seabed they test it they see if it’s a new species or anything like that. And when they tested this black one, they took one, started testing it, carbon deposit pala siya. It is literally fuel, energy, it’s just like gasoline but shaped into a ball. And if you harvest it, you process it that is the next big thing after crude oil. Crude oil.

That’s the next crude oil. Kasi when you say crude oil, it’s unrefined petroleum. You know the black goo when they say, “Oh, we have oil and everything.” the oil that they suck out of this of the sea and land and all that, that’s not purely it’s not the thing you put in your your car.

Kristian: Yep.

Philippe: You refine that and you get like seven other raw materials out of it. You get diesel, you get gasoline, you get kerosene, you get a lot of stuff, a lot of properties. And that’s why you people are rich countries are rich like Saudi Arabia, the US, Russia, China because they have crude oil.

And they’re selling to the market and now because nauubos na daw they were looking at these black pods. Same with one black pod, you could reproduce more than one single barrel of crude oil and more products as well. So there’s an abundance of these pods.

Kristian: Interesting.

Philippe: Where? Near the Mariana Trench. Where? Philippine Sea. We’re not the only nation, we’re that’s not our only area of responsibility, but there are other places too. But the Philippines is the most easiest not to get to, but because wala namang masyadong laws, well meron for the coral reefs and that. But the problem is one, we don’t have a technology to go down ourselves and extract it.

Two, something you mentioned, we don’t have refineries. Three, we didn’t even discover this. We don’t have exploration teams that goes down in subs and see, oh, what’s going on here? All we have is someone free diving 50 meters and that’s it. Just for the fun, just for the sake of it. But our government lacks not only in sea exploration but oil exploration in general.

Philippe: We do, but who? Under a private company. Petron? Sila yung nag exploration. Petron is the only one with a refinery in the Pinas. Ramon Ang, diba? And they refine 1 to 2 million 1.2 million barrels per month which is it doesn’t what’s 1.2 million barrels per month.

Kristian: Ubos agad.

Philippe: Ubos yan in a few hours if they sell it. And they’re only producing 1.2 barrels or 1.2 to 1.5 barrels per month. And guess what? It’s not for us. They export it to sell in the market. Those fuel doesn’t come to us.

Kristian: Interesting.

Philippe: But like I said, let’s go let’s go back to the pods. We don’t have technology. We don’t have submarines to go. We don’t have the will to go explore. We don’t have the interest for that.

Kristian: The will. No will.

Philippe: Exactly. But there’s an abundance in those pods. And imagine if we did all three,we’d be the richest country right now. You know,

Kristian: We can export them too, no.

Philippe: Exactly. What comes after exportation? When we exported a lot of these let’s say we mine it, we refined it, we sell it, we export it, What happens next after that?

Kristian: After exportation?

Philippe: Yes.

Kristian: Dependency.

Philippe: The world will depend on us. What does that mean? Sign of power. If we could export that then reinvest the profit into defense, right? Into our army, into our economy. We were heading to be tiger economy five seven years ago.

Kristian: Yeah I remember that.

Philippe: Without anything, huh? Without anything. What if we had this with export?

Kristian: True.

Philippe: We’ll be the most powerful nation in Asia.

Kristian: That’ll be cool for sure. The only thing I have in mind is isn’t it going to end the same way? Is it renewable? That’s a question eh. If we harvest that renewable ba siya? Because if not then it’s going to end the same way. So wouldn’t it be much more important to focus on renewables today?

Philippe: I’m on you with that. But maybe it’ll run out for another century. Maybe, maybe. But true enough it will end, supply is going to end. No, true enough. But maybe by a century from now because right now our consumption of I’m not talking out of ano huh out of this I was reading some insights and data and everything.

If we have enough right now our consumption of fuels all right is sort of fluctuating in a sense where we’re requiring less and less of it. Because of electric cars because of people of the of countries adapting to electric vehicles and even the aviation they’re trying to adapt to into electric. Imagine a plane running on electric like a Boeing 79747 whatever model that is, diba?

Philippe: Like 100 tons of aircraft flying in electric, is that even possible? Thrusters talaga yan, right? But imagine it’s all electric, right? Where’s the source of electric coming from, diba? Either burning coal either burning steam or creating steam to produce energy or heat and everhing, right? But the issue right now if you think about it harvesting the sun, wind and motion.

Let’s talk Pinas lang. let’s talk Philippines lang, I don’t want to talk about other nations. Other nations are like year decades advance over us but in terms of the global consumption of fuel they’re requiring less and less of it. Okay we still require like maybe 100 billion barrels per day for the whole world to consume fuel but it’s growing less.

Philippe: Maybe tomorrow it’s not 100, it’s only 98 million barrels nalang per day and then it goes down to 50 million. Why? Because we’re using more electricity.

Kristian: That’s interesting. Is this recent recent data?

Philippe: It is recent data.

Kristian: Could it be possible that people are just not traveling more because gas is more expensive?

Philippe: That’s also one idea. It’s a different factors also. They’re stopping to like for example the time na last, let’s talk about Pinas lang. When the war happened a few months ago everything went up, right?

Kristian: Yeah.

Philippe: Everyone was like what the, right? They go out to the streets and they’re like no one’s traveling nobody’s traffic true enough yeah. But since then gas prices from 100 pesos per liter is now down to 79 and it’s going to go a bit down but that’s going to be our new normal na, right? But I’m talking about the different times what we’re spending for crude oil in 2026 is going to be different of what we’re going to use it for in the year sabihin nating 2056, 30 years from now.

30 years from now maybe stuff, maybe our products are in orbit na. Maybe we develop or manufactured stuff for products to go in orbit. Maybe 30 years from now, gasoline cars will be like, “Wow, collector’s item.” The children of AI, born with AI. AI is going to be like I have a Yaya who’s a humanoid. You didn’t have one before? Wow, that’s weird, diba?

Philippe: Maybe gen whatever generation that’s going to be. They’re going to be like, “What? You didn’t have humanoid before? What are you from the ano from the stone age? But it’s going to be under new normal.

Kristian: Yep. Could be possible.

Philippe: Right? And everything’s going to be running in electric. And maybe, and maybe these pods will last for another century, but still it’s an easier source of fuel to manufacture cuz number one, we have the refineries. We already know the technology to refine it, right? And it’s going to produce more byproducts as well which is very beneficial. These days, solar panels are not as efficient yet. I’m only talking for Pinas.

You buy a solar panel, you put it on your house, everything. It’s not as efficient, right? Back in the day, you need like a whole field of solar panels just to power a house. Okay, 2026, that whole field went to, oh, we only need one quarter of that field now just to power a house, right? Maybe 10 years from now, solar panels are going to be a little more efficient, diba?

Philippe: Siguro yung ganito na lang, solar panel, it could power your house. Diba, it’s going to produce so many megawatts of energy. It could produce and you could store it in something that small. All I’m saying is that 30 years from now, those pods are going to be used for something else kasi everyone’s running on electric.

Everyone’s running on the future like future technology and everything. That alone maybe don’t need it for thrusters in space. Bring rockets. Up to now, nobody has solved gravity yet. Nobody. Not even SpaceX.

Philippe: I don’t want to jump into science and all that but what I’m trying to say is nobody has figured out how to go against gravity without thrusters without a push without a force. We’re talking about can you levitate this because it gravity doesn’t. Kumbaga you need to find out what the anti-gravity equation is for this to go up to space without thrusters needed.

Kristian: You need superpowers.

Philippe: Hindi naman superpower, anti-gravity formula lang naman, diba? One issue with these pods though, if they start harvesting that, okay, we’re back to fuel dependency. If that finishes over a century, diba, we’re not around.

But guess what they’re going to do? Siguro by the time in a century, bro, maybe they already figured out to run things even without electricity, baka with water na lang. Water. Have you heard of the inventor, Filipino inventor who

Kristian: Yeah, I’ve seen that yung parang ginamit tubig for his engine.

Philippe: And that’s real. That’s real. I’ll tell you why. Now, right now. There’s this guy who creates content, he’s a Russian guy, I believe. He’s so into superheroes. He’s so into the Iron Man thing. So, he built his own Iron Man suit for the past six years.

Kristian: Damn.

Philippe: The works and everything. How did he power it? Water. He’s still testing it right now. He powered it with water. This amount of water daw he did some crazy. There’s some crazy thing going on with water. Parang he splits the hydrogen and this and he gets pure hydrogen and it powers the suit. Maybe we don’t need this in the future. Maybe we just need water.

It’s there. You go to any. We’re surrounded by it and it’s what water is like 80% of the world. Everything else is land. You go everywhere, water is everywhere. Yeah. Going back to these pods. We have a black gold mine happening, waiting to happen. It’s just not happening right now with that company, exploration company, because America’s against it.

Philippe: Oh, they’re not against it. They want full control of it, but the other neighboring countries don’t want. So this corporation is quite in they’re sort of they don’t know what to do because should we listen to the US or should we listen to the UN or should we listen to these the Russians are threatening us they were this and that. So it’s been on hold for quite a while.

More than 10 years na. More than 10 years. There’s a whole documentary about it. I’ll send you the link. And I just can’t believe that it’s sa atin it’s within reach, nandiyan lang siya. It’s just a little too deep.

Kristian: Another problem of technology, no?

Philippe: I don’t think it’s technology. I think it’s whoever is controlling the government. They’re the problem. Diba? We have the money, the technology is out there we could buy it. Maybe it’s not

Kristian: But if you buy it, you’d have to rely on them then, diba? But not produce the same dynamic.

Philippe: What’s worse, doing nothing or doing that?

Kristian: Doing nothing or doing what?

Philippe: Buying technology, them controlling and at least we have part of it, being part of it, taking the initiative to get those pods or let’s just say look at the pods and be like, oh, let’s just wait till someone gets it and sells it to us.

Kristian: Depends, depends. It’s very complex.

Philippe: Can I give you one example? Did you know that we, do you know in Vietnam you know that we’re importing rice from Vietnam? You’re aware of that?

Kristian: I’ve heard. Yep.

Philippe: No, we are. Who taught the Vietnamese to plant rice? Do you know who? Us Filipinos.

Kristian: Interesting.

Philippe: You know what’s so interesting about it? We taught them how to plant rice and to produce rice and manufacture rice so that we could buy from them.

Kristian: And if they hate us, for example, just hypothetical situation, where’s our rice?

Philippe: Exactly. We’re still. Imagine we’re importing rice.

Kristian: Right. So.

Philippe: You go to the grocery store pa. NFA imported rice. And we gave the knowledge. We gave that knowledge.

Kristian: That sucks. Yeah. I do believe there are. The Philippines has to start like grassroots building things and then creating things because the dependency will never end. Especially kung nandun na yung resources huh. If the resources are there, right?

We basically have an opportunity for different industries to be vertically integrated by domestic manufacturing, domestic jobs, domestic technology. But it sucks because we can’t get there unless we have the state backing us up and then bootstrapping those R&Ds so that we can start moving. It’s rough.

Philippe: I need to ask you uh

Kristian: to catch it too.

Philippe: I need to ask you, it’s not a personal question, but it’s more of a professional question. What are your thoughts about AI generally and why don’t you want to use Claude in 2026?

Kristian: Oh good question. Right. So I did I for context for everyone who’s listening. I did a post that’s that mentioned day end of not using Claude as a software engineer.

Philippe: I love that.

Kristian: Right. And it I got a lot of reaction. I’ve got some DMs around it. It’s funny, right? It’s funny why I’m not using Cla[ude. But the summary is specifically as a staff blockchain engineer, staff protocol engineer, the fundamentals of that is in a finance protocol such as a blockchain, your data is not just data. It’s directly the money itself, right?

Whatever is on the balance sheet on that data in the blockchain directly represents your money, the value of your asset. Now that informs us of one thing. Data integrity and the criticality of our work is way higher because data isn’t just information. It’s now directly your money. And why is this? Why haven’t I been able to use Claude?

Kristian: Because the standards are so rigorous that you can’t not know what’s happening. You can’t rely on someone to think for you because you need to as much as possible get to know how the protocol works as deep as you can because that ensures the safety of your data. So that’s that’s number one, right? That’s the first thing. So not a lot of people using blockchain.

Some people who do more on just yung front ends and the the dashboards, but not necessarily protocol. So I haven’t had a need for it. That’s why I haven’t been using it. Number two, every time that I tried using AI to bootstrap a project, like do a big project, it took me way longer.

Philippe: No way.

Kristian: Yeah. And the reason is I’m the type of person who asks questions around decisions. ‘Di yung parang if you give me a solution, I’m not going to just sit down and take it without asking the why. Right? When he gives me a solution, I’m going to be like, Bakit? ‘Diba? Why, why did you why is this your decision making?

And often times in those why questions nag ha-hallucinate, right? So what happens is that instead of me just going to the code, searching and then solving that problem, I would have to go to the code, try to solve the problem with AI and then start having more questions around the code of the AI.

Kristian: So obviously it takes more bandwidth, it takes more time because you got to have you got to ask those why questions. If you don’t ask a why those why questions, then you can’t reason around your code.

And if you can’t reason around your code, you can’t reason around your money. And if you can’t reason around your money, you can’t protect and ensure that it’s working well and that your money and your assets are safe.

Philippe: Wow.

Kristian: Yep. It’s number two. Do I not use AI? I use AI a lot more for information or intellectual compounding because it’s what works best at least in my current context. So I’m not fully against AI. I’m more than happy to where people use Claude, use Codex. I’m happy for them. It’s just that it doesn’t work for the context that I am in.

And that’s why I posted that because it’s a funny. Yun nga it’s something funny that people will get will probably hate me for saying that, but it’s true in my context. I haven’t been using it at all. I have been using AI to search like for example, okay, give me the the topics or the documentation for this, then I’m going to read through that and that helps me compound faster.

Kristian: But anything beyond that like bootstrapping a blockchain project haven’t been using it.

Philippe: It’s such an eye opener because using blockchain for sensitive information like money, right? Financial records and all that. AI probably if AI builds it, there’s a lot I I still believe that you think there’s a lot of vulnerabilities when AI built it. But I it’s such an eye opener because you’re right you have to ask them why.

Because in the real world AI is really more like crowd control, right? In a concert if you want crowd control security and you don’t want any incidents you hire bouncers. But somebody or someone in that crowd, in that event, can be a little drunk and go out of hand control. Bouncers can handle them. But what if they were like the National Guard with guns and everything?

Philippe: That’s my comparison. And you’re like the security, you’re like the security director. You’re like, why? Why do you need only two assets there to protect a group of 10? And because of the director of these bouncers, they’re like, uh one bouncer to 10, two is double. But you’re like, these bouncers don’t even have guns. So that’s how I see it, the way you describe it.

And true enough, since the data is sensitive, it’s vulnerable if AI does it. And I 100% agree with you on that because I’m pissed off with some people, especially business owners, who keep posting about, oh, I built the website in 5 minutes that my developer took in 5 months. Okay, so what’s your point? If you dig into how it was built with AI, it’s very vulnerable.

Philippe: Number one, they could build it with AI. They can’t deploy it. They still need someone to deploy it. Number two, long-term that website, yeah, it could be faster, but what about in terms of SEO? How will that work? You still need to find someone who I mean, okay AI can do it but doesn’t mean they have that strategy to work it for their specific business.

Kristian: Exactly.

Philippe: So I’m kind of I do understand what you’re saying and it’s such an eye opener because everyone’s hyped into AI. They want AI to control every aspect of their work and life. But I love what you said. You use AI for everything else but not this. Cuz you know exactly the importance of or differentiate between what’s important and what to use AI with.

And what AI can do generally in the stuff that you want to use AI for. Maybe that comes also the same way where should I let AI teach my son ABC or bring my son to school and teachers will teach him ABC. Who will grow, who will grow up, right? Let’s say you have a child, wag ka na pumasok dito nalang. Better than teachers, better than that.

Philippe: I think there’s going to be a problem with that child eventually. So I think that sets apart on what you’re saying because people right now are too they’re too quick to judge.

Kristian: Yep. Too hype.

Philippe: Too hype.

Kristian: The way people are approaching it and are hyping it are incorrect because fundamentally when we build systems we solve a certain problem. And life is complex because the only constant thing in life is change. So problems will change, needs will change, requirements will change.

One of the biggest problems of trying to bootstrap an entire project in AI is that AI doesn’t design for that. You can prompt it, but then when they output that code, it doesn’t design for your understanding of the humans. It doesn’t design for your understanding of the humans outside who’s going to use that.

Kristian: It doesn’t design for the humans who are going to read your code who are going to interact with your code, develop and evolve it. So dun pa lang there are problems there because if it’s not designed for evolution to continuously solve problems that are constantly changing then obviously there will be friction there.

And what does fiction does? What fiction? What you’ve introduced friction in a pipeline that’s supposedly have been figured out already. So parang you’re slower, it’s more expensive, there’s compute pa diba and then you degrade your brain. So there’s a lot of negatives that are happening.

Kristian: I do believe there are you know there are things that it could be very helpful for like search but right now it’s so hype that people are missing the point and the funny thing is AI is predictable. You don’t have to be an AI leader or you don’t have to be an AI thought leader because it’s predictable. Why do I say it’s predictable? AI will scale as compute scales.

You can’t be a first mover because you don’t control the compute. You don’t have the resources for it. That’s not your company. You don’t control the hardware. So, you can’t be a first mover, right? That means the best thing you can do right now is just to wait. Don’t try to be don’t try to hype AI or be a thought leader or position yourself as an AI expert.

Kristian: Rather let the compute scale and then in the end while that happens in the end just use the best one, diba? At the same time well because it’s so predictable and we know it’s going to scale with hardware and compute, diba? You don’t have to go deep into it, just let it happen, let it evolve instead what you’re going to do is improve your skill and then when the best AI comes use that to augment your skill.

However, if you focus on AI, what are you going to augment? AI will improve, sure, but what are you going to augment? So, fundamentally, AI is a multiplier. There has to be something that you amplify. So if you keep hyping AI saying you’re AI this, AI that, what are you amplifying? There has to be a core value you’re amplifying.

Kristian: So what I believe people should be doing now if they want if you’re a normal person, you don’t own the computer, you don’t own the hardware, the best thing you can do is use the subsidized AI to intellectually compound so you get smarter so that your skills get better. And by the time that AI naturally evolves to the to its best form, use that to amplify what you already have, right?

Because if time is so scarce, then it’s not your job to try and figure out something that’s already predictable. Alam mo na kung saan papunta eh. It’s gonna scale. It’s just gonna get better. That’s not your role. Your role is to uncover the things that are worth your time. That’s not worth your time because you don’t have. Alam mo na eh kung saan siya papunta eh.

Kristian: Instead uncover your expertise, uncover the question the problems you can solve as a human being and then when it’s already you know when it’s right I’ll learn that in a day because it’s not hard to learn. People keep saying oh it’s hard to learn no it’s not I’ll learn that in a day and compound my work.

And while people are so hyped on AI for that decade, I’ve already been compounding 10 years worth of my expertise. And then by that time, I’ll take that AI, compound that 10 year expertise, and I’m more valuable and more multiplied by them. Make sense? So, it’s to me it’s like why are people doing this? Diba?

Kristian: You’re atrophying your brain by the time that AI is ripe, you’re not going to compound anything because you don’t have anything in your brain. You’re not valuable as a person. You don’t have you haven’t learned anything in that 10 years. What then?

Philippe: It’s an eye opener what you’re saying. And it to my surprise because people are so afraid that AI is going to take over. They lose their jobs, you lose their careers and everything. But what you’re saying is that it’s not going to happen if they just reinvest their time building themselves instead of being dependent on AI. It’s such an eyeopener coming from you.

Someone who is into technology, someone who’s into not only any technology but modern technology, future technology, blockchain. It’s amazing what I’m hearing. You know, you know, you know that it’s hype and you know what needs to happen for every individual. So every individual who thinks that AI is going to take over the world, they have to take the next steps to build their careers and expertise in their own way.

Philippe: In the next I know it’s fastpaced right now. People would say what happens in the next 5 years what, happens in the next 10 years. Let me ask you. What do you think will happen in the next 3 years?

Kristian: It’s complex because there are different factors that come in when it comes to different technologies. For example, the way I think about is in three tiers. Number one, I think about the domain. So like our domain right now is AI, artificial intelligence. And I think about the economics, which which is basically how does this domain interact with the real world, diba?

Sino yung maapektuhan? How does it flow? And the third one is the physics, right? It tells you okay what are the true constraints of this technology because it’s not magic right you need energy you need resources you need refined resources so and those things don’t they don’t move fast, right?

Kristian: Physical goods don’t move as fast as software because it takes a lot of time there are quotes there are timeline codes I’m going to coach you this is how long it’ll take, right? In the next 3 years, I believe we’re going to go back to the way we did things before, where humans are valuable again and people start realizing what AI is really for.

And look beyond the veil and realize that it’s helpful. For sure. But if you’re a normal human being, if you look at it, if you don’t own the data, you don’t own the compute, any time you can lose your brain. And the best thing you can do right now is expand your brain because you don’t own the brain.

Kristian: Expand your brain so that in 3 years you’re ready whatever happens. So in that logic, I do believe we’re going to start realizing that people are still the best.

Philippe: I love that.

Kristian: Even the. Do you know how hard hands are in engineering? I’ve heard I found this recently actually yesterday lang. Parang sabi ko. I was listening to an interview with Elon Musk and then he was talking about yung mga ano, yung mga diba may robots siya?. Apparently the hand is hard to crack in robotics, right?

You know, if not just the brain but the mechanics of a human being is a struggle. It means technology that could fully replicate the value of a human is really going to take a lot of time. So in the next three years, it’s not going to be as hype. People won’t say na we’re not going to have humanoid robots yet.

Kristian: I believe that’s going to take time and people are going to be diba still valuable especially tech, technology, right? A lot of people are are saying don’t do tech because it’s knowledge work it’s going to be deprecated. But again it’s not going to be deprecated because who’s going to produce the knowledge that these models have to train on?

The quality information that these models have to train on. What’s funny is like yung mga past months I’ve been seeing a lot of people, deads who are who go to me mainly for fixing their AI generated. So from a first person perspective, of course you’re going to I still I believe in technology the mistake about technology, but I’m starting to see that, you know, it’s not as crazy as people make it out to be.

Kristian: I think if you track the incentives, like macro incentives, it makes sense why people why certain groups of people are pushing AI so hard, it makes sense. But if as a normal and average human who thinks critically about his situation, it doesn’t make sense for most aside from just use the subsidized AI to in intellectually compound as hard as you can so that by the time that it gets too expensive or you lose access to it, you’re ready.

Philippe: Such a great advice. We all know that a lot of businesses are really now dependent on AI. Well, business has evolved. I know mine evolved, but it’s not every part of because I’ve I’ve seen a lot of entrepreneurs, they’re like, “Oh, we’re fully we’re fully optimized 90% process all AI automations and all that.

They only spend 10% for they fired like 80% of their their people and everything not knowing that when breaks down they’re back to basics. For the average person people think these days, especially here in Pinas, you know those AI apps coming where you can download, edit your picture, create a video, and all that.

Philippe: People think that’s the that’s what AI is. Typically, the average person. Someone working in the grocery. I could I could clone my face and have it talk just like not knowing that the there’s a privacy issue there. Right. And we look at that at scale with the masses because my elders use it and there’s wow I could create a movie put my face on that I’m an action star.

I’m just thinking about this in scale when there’s like hundreds and millions of people using that several AI apps isn’t it vulnerable in terms of their identity, their information. I mean, they don’t read the fine print. They never do and never do generally unless it’s really important to us. But what do you think the implications are 2, 3, 5years from now when all these software companies have their they have all the identities of these types of people?

Philippe: I think that’s the one thing like to me because once they have their information, they start pushing ads to you. And to the masses, you know how the masses are, right? They see a very interesting ad whether knowing it to be legit or not. But they never knew that they were targeted.

And because of them giving their data, they could rig elections, they could rig decision making, they could rig a lot of things. So what do you think the implications are apart from the things that I said if this keeps going on for the next 5 years?

Kristian: That’s deep. First of all, that’s deep.

Philippe: I wouldn’t just say deep. It’s a conspiracy question.

Kristian: There are a lot of ways I can take it. But the general mental model that I have patterns artificial intelligence to humanity, right? You make money on investing because you have what I call an information asymmetry. Because you know more about different people than other people, you earn more.

We can see this in jobs because fundamentally if time is scarce you would rather hire someone who knows more about a certain domain than you because it’s just you want to save your time, diba? So you hire people for the asymmetry in information that they have. Same as in investing. You win in investing or trading because you have an asymmetry of information because you know more.

Kristian: Now let’s pattern that into data and artificial intelligence which is very obvious right? If we’re talking intelligence and we’re patterning intelligence to human thinking then it makes sense to say that information asymmetry is to humans then data asymmetry is to artificial intelligence.

Which means whoever has the data as much data as they can will have as much asymmetry as they like and use that to win, right? Because if you know more information is symmetry. If you know more you win in different in problem solving because information brain artificial intelligence information data.

Kristian: So what can we say? What can we predict from that? A lot of things. A lot of things. And it explains a lot of why it matters that people use this or yield their data. Makes sense. At least you know to me make with that model mental model makes sense.

Philippe: Conspiracy theorists back in the day said let’s let’s talk crazy now. They said the government helped Mark Zuckerberg create Facebook so they could track people better. The main goal now since 911 is to prevent terrorism, terrorism in the US, future terrorism whether outside the US or inland.

So they said, “Oh, they help the government help build Facebook so that they could track people around the world much more easily”. Conspiracy theories lang. And then came facial recognition then privacy all this and everything that they bring out in Congress questioning Mark Zuckerberg or Tik Tok or whoever’s here or whatever. It’s just for show.

Philippe: And now sabi daw nila, right, here’s the crazy part.

Kristian: Allegedly.

Philippe: Yeah allegedly though. Allegedly the government helped, they subsidize and they help build AI models such as with open AI in the 10 years ago, decades ago and the technology was already out there decades ago before it even came out but it was only used by intelligence agencies like CIA allegedly.

And then that since everyone was catching up other startups was catching with other with AI itself they just made it public lang and they supported like open AI just you know to get the ball rolling just so that it’s not suspicious enough that they hid it from the public. Just like what happened with cancer or specifically a cure daw or a preventive cure with this pharmaceutical product, Ivermectin.

Kristian: Yep I’ve heard

Philippe: They found this out year 2015 daw it has large effects on cancer and CIA sorry 2015 they made it public but as early as the 2000s daw 2003 or 2005 they found out that this specific drug worked on cancer better than chemotherapy. It has a high percentage rate of ano parang not cure but prevention and also during the ones with stage four cancer.

It worked better than chemotherapy without all the side effects and they hid that from the public and made it available only in 2015. That’s why when the pandemic hit a lot of people were taking Ivermectin and it worked deworming siya eh. Deworming, and because a lot 50% of cancers these days are because of worms of parasites specifically, diba.

Philippe: There are worms in our bodies that feed on stuff. That’s what causes the cancer because we have worms in our bodies. Cancer is like a defense mechanism in our body. That’s why laging may mass yung cancer.

For example there’s may mass ka daw ng ganito because it’s trying to cover up the disease or anything into a mass and they cover it into a ball or whatever shape it is. And mainly those are worms. And Ivermectin is is a deworming. They use it for dogs back in the day, dogs, cats, and everything.

Kristian: Yung NPR nila like it was used for horses daw.

Philippe: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s why they get better and better. And they made ones for humans. So during the pandemic when it hit people used to take it. Without a proof without a proof of the world health organization all that because syempre they want full control another conspiracy theorist.

But all I’m saying is that they’re saying that AI right now since it’s out in the open it’s been being used for the last two decades now but commercially last decade lang with open AI right. And because they weren’t efficient enough to watch out of in Facebook daw, they couldn’t tell when is terrorism gonna attack next.

Philippe: So they invented AI so they could be more efficient enough to find out if there’s terrorism that’s going to happen in the future. Conspiracy theories lang. Allegedly lang daw, diba. But what if it were rumors? But what if these rumors were true? What would you, give me a few tips or give me a few warnings to the public to our friends, our families and everything.

Let’s warn them. Let’s warn them on what’s coming, right? Especially when giving away their data, right? Especially when depending so much on their day-to-day using, oh, let’s go to a field trip. Let’s use AI. Find our route, fastest route. Let’s use ways, Google maps and everything which is now powered with AI and define where we’re going every single day.

Philippe: Every single trip we’re going to that field trip. Kabisado mo na you don’t need AI to do it for you. Give us a couple of warnings, tips on how to not be dependent on AI and not give away our information so that they could take control of our lives.

Kristian: It’s a good question because I do believe that question matters, right? The data part matters. This isn’t specific to AI, but number one, fundamentally like this should be throughout your life. Only give what is necessary. It’s number one. Only give what’s necessary. You don’t have to give more information that’s not necessary. Okay?

That means number two you question if the data you’re gonna to give is necessary and number three as much as possible own your data. If you have local compute like may PC ka diyan or may rack ka sa bahay mo it’s better to use that than to use something that’s on someone else’s land or that is controlled by someone else especially with sensitive information.

Kristian: For example, although it’s gonna make my life very convenient, but I don’t do my finances with AI. I don’t send it on a chatbot and then I don’t because what I’m doing is I’m building my own inhouse with my own rack. I have GPUs incoming because I want to protect my data and own my data. They don’t have to know that. They don’t know I have to know my finances.

Philippe: So for the average for the average person?

Kristian: For the average person it’s just one and two which is don’t give information or data that is not needed and then number two just question if it’s really required yung data na ‘to kasi if di nila kayang magkaroon ng compute inhouse then just be very careful with your information.

Philippe: Do you think do you think the future of AI in terms of compute do you think it’s going to be inhouse for a lot of times because right now we have like OpenClaw. And right now we have like Claude is it Claude co-work or something where you install it on your your PC it does stuff for you. Is that I mean I’ve been hearing a lot of stuff about personal computing where are we going with this ?

Kristian: It’s a complex question because there’s a need and there’s a want, right? What do we want? What does the world want? The world look like with artificial intelligence in the future and what the need should be. So, let’s start with one. If we go back to our information asymmetry and data asymmetry model and pattern that thinking there, what do you think would a lot of the people in the world want to happen with AI?

Of course, you want to have more of that asymmetry. It’s obvious. We’re incentivized to have more of data symmetry because it helps you win. Obvious. Need, local compute. Why? Because you have the sovereignty of your intelligence. The same way you have your brain, you want to have your own intelligence with you, right?

Kristian: Because you want to be protected from what could possibly be done on that data without your consent. So obviously it’s a need for local compute to happen because it’s just much safer. But that’s hella complex too. Why? Because for I’m doing it right now. I’m doing a local compute cluster at home.

And that’s complex because this the the hardware you’re going to use comes from where? Other. And what can be done with those hardware? Whatever the they want. For example, someone wants to get information on the processing with a hardware that they created or they’re using, they can do that. They manufacture the hardware.

Kristian: So in that thinking because of how things are now it’s going to be more on cloud you know centralized but I do believe that we need to pursue local compute it’s just important for us to have sovereignty over our data and our intelligence digital or artificial intelligence going.

Philippe: Is it too late for the average person or the masses to shift?

Kristian: Nah, I don’t think so. I think it’s not too late for the average person to shift for sure.

Philippe: But they don’t have the expertise for in-house computing. They don’t know what.

Kristian: That’s what I’ve been doing actually. So, it’s not yet ready, but I’ve been moving towards helping people get local compute. That’s why I have these thoughts because I’ve tried it myself. I’m going through the motions myself. It’s not definitely not easy. It’s costly.

Philippe: So, in layman’s terms, are in layman’s term, are you building your own internal compute, your AI, your own personal

Kristian: Yeah I have a rack. I have a 22U rack at home. I have GPUs coming. I’m building my own AI. If I want to do my banking, I want to do it on my own compute. Not and not connected to the network, but connected to my local network lang sa bahay lang.

Philippe: Wow.

Kristian: Because I think that’s very important, right? Own your intelligence. You have your own brain. Own your artificial intelligence.

Philippe: And does your intelligence let’s call it PI, Let’s call it personal intelligence.

Kristian: Yeah. Right.

Philippe: Will this will your personal intelligence scrape the internet for stuff and just process it?

Kristian: Good question.

Philippe: For you alone?

Kristian: Good question. I’m more of a learn my needs and cater to that, right? Because again, this goes back to the information asymmetry model. Yung models kasi ngayon they’re trained on the average intelligence of the human, the human species, but we put it out there. That means the most part it’s general intelligence.

It doesn’t really fit to you, specifically. Yung needs mo, what you want to do. I’m more for I’m my own human. I have different needs. I have specific ways that things should be done. I’m more for training this fresh model to cater to my specific needs. I believe that’s more effective then and that scales better.

Philippe: Sorry to cut you off there, but I’m excited to ask you this. How do we get this to market?

Kristian: How do you get this to market?

Philippe: Yeah, because.

Kristian: Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that too.

Philippe: Okay, but hold on. What are the basis of this intelligence? Is it I mean, okay, it’s already intelligent. But how was this? Is this did you build this from the ground up or is it based on a model or based?

Kristian: Based on a model and then my plan is to teach it. So reinforcement learning. I had to go through this motions muna because the GPS are still coming but that’s my plan. So we’ll figure things out as we go along.

Philippe: Wow.

Kristian: It’s so expensive. Ang laki pala ng 22U rank like what the. I think ganito siya ka laki and it’s at home.

Philippe: What are you going to call your personal intelligence?

Kristian: Just PI.

Philippe: PI na lang.

Kristian: Kasi ang explanation ko nun was ano eh I was sabi ko you know what nakakatamad na e-compile yung bank statements and then plan around your finances. Sure, you can track, but I don’t want that. I own AI just to give me the kumbaga compute it for me, diba? But I’m unwilling to yield those personal information to a public model.

So, that led me to buy my own rack, so I can do that at home na kampante ako. Na okay, I’ve secured my own network. I’ve secured my own compute. I know that relatively I should be safe unless okay there’s some way there’s a hardware part there that extracts my information but other than that I’m relatively confident now at least.

Kristian: I’m safe to have my bank statements and then let it crunch.

Philippe: You’re building Jarvis

Kristian: Ang the only like question mark right now is how powerful can it get?

Philippe: Wow.

Kristian: With what I can get easily kasi syempre I won’t be able to buy yung state-of-the-art hardware for sure. So what I’m trying to do is just go to marketplace, find suppliers that are accessible to a normal person and then try to build that from there. And then the questions, the answers I get from there I’ll be able to use to give other people more local compute.

Okay. How much does it cost? Kumusta yung temperature? Kumusta yung management? What is needed? And now we have a business model. We have we have a business, diba?

Philippe: Yeah. Yeah.

Kristian: The second level of that is yung when you mentioned yung call centers. I was thinking about. Sabi ko damn. If ang vision ko is that smart people get amplified by AI not them yielding their talents to AI but rather getting amplified then it makes sense for call centers for BPO centered company to amplify the smarts of the Filipinos to do more.

So it makes sense now. Okay. Do you have a BPO company? I come to your BPO company. We will host our own models there so you can offer better services and then we can train these models on the processes that you do dun sa specific BPO company so you can do your job better and be amplified.

Kristian: I mean that makes sense, diba? Right? So sabi ko oo nga no we can take a failing BPO. Let’s just go to their door, talk to them and then you got compute. Yeah, we got we got this infrastructure. You might want to take a look at this and how it’s going to affect you. So imagine if we’re a BPO company, a BPO country, it makes sense. Why not? Let’s amplify that BPO centric country and then give compute, give artificial intelligence.

Philippe: And the infrastructure is already there.

Kristian: Diba? Then multiply lang natin, diba? If I were like if I was someone who had the power, diba? Parang oo nga no that makes sense. Let’s just amplify what we already have. BPOS’s give them AI.

But those are the type of thoughts I’ve been having. But yeah, I have to go through the motions cuz the BPOS are still company. And then from there makikita ko kung kumusta ba, stable ba, kasi there are those questions. But I do believe it’s going to be stable because apparently these yung mga servers they’re built for what we call high availability.

Kristian:
Yung high availability means may redundancy para kahit masira yung isa you can just replace while the other one is running. They’re built for that. So they have two batteries na pwedeng mong pag nasira yung isa palitan mo lang ng isa pero meron pang isa dun na tumatakbo, diba? So,

Philippe: Very modular.

Kristian: Yeah. Those are the things that you only learn if you try things. So, oh, why not? Let’s build a cluster at home and then figure out on your own. And from there, from you physically really doing the things, you can be more pragmatic and honest and realistic with your predictions on AI.

So, that’s why I have a lot of this more realistic view on AI because I’ve been going through the motion myself. ‘Diba imagine bro like BPO AI enabled BPO. Who, sabi bila oh knowledge work is going to be ano obsolete. Are you sure? Or are we just going to use AI to multiply our knowledge work? Are you sure people will stop evolving, are you sure? Are sure we’re gonna?

Kristian: Parang they wanna alam mo yun parang it’s so depressing people wanna believe that nawala na yung skills, yung mga nourished mo. Is that really what’s going to happen? We’re going to sit down and just. Is that really, diba? So I’m very happy to see that that’s possible local compute and then augment all the knowledge workers in the Philippines, especially since we’re service based. Right?

Philippe: What a great, grabe.

Kristian: ‘Diba? Bro, imagine if failing BPO company bro let’s do a sub parang let’s do a deal, okay. Since failing na kayo come in do this for you we share the profit I think we can do that. That could be sellable, diba? That could be a deal flow. Yeah, it’s been amazing. Kaya lang malaki siya as in so it takes space for sure.

Philippe: Well it’ll grow down it’ll grow smaller pero.

Kristian: Oo in the future.

Philippe: All I know is that with technology capacity gets bigger and bigger while hardware gets smaller and smaller.

Kristian: Yes.

Philippe: ‘Diba dati 10 MB was a whole closet cabinet right now. 10 gig, diba?

Kristian: Ang caveat lang dun is that if I remember I was talking to my semicon expert friend is that we’re at a point where semiconductor features are so small now that we can basically go smaller.

Philippe: Are they like almost atom size?

Kristian: Yeah, they’re atomic. So that’s another interesting fact because that tells us something about how the future is going. If hindi mo na kayang paliitin physically, physics wise di mo na siya kayang paliitin then the only the next step is you to optimize. What do I mean by optimize? There’s this thing called ASIC- Application Specific Integrated Circuits.

Kung di mo na siya kayang gawing mas effective by making it smaller then you need to make it more effective by removing some resources and then focusing on one on one specific use case. Kasi di mo na kayang e’increase yung resources eh. You can only increase the resources now for what for your use case by removing the unnecessary ones.

Philippe: I do understand that logic because yes because not every function is being used as much as the others. Same thing happened with from what I remembered when Apple shifted from Intel to their own chipset which is the M the M series.

Kristian: Yeah, the M series.

Philippe: So they made it more efficient and had it rebuilt it from the ground up just to focus on the things that and they took away the small things that Intel didn’t.

Kristian: Yeah. The same will happen for hardware. So that means we should start getting into the compute and hardware as much as possible.