123 – How New Tariffs, Job Cuts, and AI Innovation Are Reshaping the Economy

[00:00:00] Marcus: If you enjoy this content, please take a moment to rate and review it. Your feedback will greatly impact our ability to reach more people. Thank you. All right, man. I'm going to get some sun this weekend. Yeah, you 

[00:00:10] Vic: deserve it. 

[00:00:13] Marcus: Oh, I can't wait. Can't wait. Miami, here I come. I haven't been there in a minute.

[00:00:18] Marcus: Uh, so I'm actually, I'm actually pretty excited about it. The weather looks fantastic. No like crazy storms or anything like that. It's not too hot, not too cold. Uh, can't wait to eat some good Cuban food. Nice. It's gonna be good. It's gonna be good. How about you, man? What's your plans for the weekend? 

[00:00:31] Vic: I don't really have plans.

[00:00:32] Vic: My wife is taking our son to Cabo for his senior spring break craziness. So I avoided that. Um. And then my son from Tulane is back on spring break. He stayed for Mardi Gras and all the craziness. Um, good for him, but he got back last night. Uh, so he's the rest of the spring break. He's just kind of laying low.

[00:00:51] Vic: So it would just be Charlie and I, which is fun. 

[00:00:53] Marcus: Oh, awesome. Awesome. That is what Tulane is for though. Yeah. Yes. They're going to college and staying for Mardi Gras. Yes, that's [00:01:00] awesome, man. That's awesome. Um, we have a packed show and I got a deadline to get out of the, out of here. So, uh, with that, let's do it.

[00:01:07] Marcus: Yeah. Let's dig in.

[00:01:17] Marcus: All right. We're starting with the ADP front run of the BLS data report. Um, jobs, uh, were added 77, 000, which is the smallest gain since July. 

[00:01:27] Vic: Yeah. Go down a little bit. There's, um, is a graph there. So we don't know what the BLS jobs report will be tomorrow yet. Cause we're recording on Thursday. Right. Um, but I think most people are expecting it to be well, I mean, maybe not the lowest in that long, but, but pretty low and, and, uh, the government employers are, uh, have been a big source of new job growth and that.

[00:01:54] Vic: That clearly is not the case. In fact, it might be probably going down. 

[00:01:57] Marcus: Right, right. Taking that to the next [00:02:00] step, uh, Wall Street Journal, U. S. delays tariffs on some Mexican and Canadian goods. Stocks decline. The stock index is definitely down. The tariff news is, uh, you know, not welcome, um, for, for, uh, equity investors.

[00:02:14] Vic: Yeah, and just the uncertainty, where like, it changes, I don't know, it changes every couple hours, I feel like, so that stock market doesn't like that. I don't like that. 

[00:02:23] Marcus: Well, I think, I think when you combine the, uh, the clear layoffs and the cuts in government spending, which is for sure part of GDP, um, and when you combine that with tariffs, I mean, that's, that's just a makeup for, uh, a slow GDP sort of forecast, uh, for the future, right?

[00:02:44] Vic: Yeah, I mean, in the near term, meaning the next three, six months, I think it's clearly negative for our economy. It might be that it spurs investment in the U. S. [00:03:00] and, and growth of new jobs, but, but whether that times up quickly enough to, to impact this year, I don't know. It might mean that may be true in, in five years, not five months.

[00:03:13] Vic: And so certainly we're going to get job losses in tariff. Slowdowns quickly. And then I think the Trump administration is hoping there'll be investment in growth. I'm hoping for that. I mean, everyone, I want there to be job growth, but I'm not sure it's going to come as fast as the losses are coming. 

[00:03:31] Marcus: Yeah.

[00:03:32] Marcus: But, but after a, after a process. 

[00:03:36] Vic: Yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna be a process of cutting and, and tariffs, and then it'll probably turn, but how fast it turns is a question. I 

[00:03:48] Marcus: mean, we're gonna talk a little bit ahead about, you know, some net new investments that are coming into the United States and, and that's going to, you know, people are talking about this could herald in a golden age of American manufacturing that we haven't seen in, you know.

[00:03:59] Marcus: Who [00:04:00] knows how long it's been since, you know, Detroit and, and, uh, other cities were, were really strong in manufacturing. Um, but, but in, in the, in the near term, in the near term, um, and I guess, you know, there, there is something to be said for the fact that the S& P for at least the last two years has delivered.

[00:04:20] Marcus: There's ridiculous returns. You know what I mean? Like, like you basically could just stick your money in there and not do anything. You need 20 percent a year. So, you know, it might, it 

[00:04:29] Vic: might be time. I mean, it's time for a little retrenchment and, and pause. Yeah. Yeah. It might be, it might be time. I mean, I, I mean, we're VCs.

[00:04:37] Vic: It's a lot easier to cut than it is to grow new, new jobs. Yeah. Just, it's a slow process to like figure out who you're going to. You know, what do you need to hire? And then you start hiring, it's, I think it's slower. It's faster to cut. 

[00:04:51] Marcus: Well, our market did not have the good fortune of the stock market over the last two years, right?

[00:04:55] Marcus: Because IPO windows have been closed. And so [00:05:00] all of those good tidings of the 20%, you know, year over year returns on the S& P actually was bad for us because, you know, our job is to beat the S& P as VCs. And if there's no IPOs, it's kind of hard to do that. 

[00:05:13] Vic: Yeah, I just mean when we go to the next one where there's, well, when we talk about an investment of some big amount of money, right, that's going to be a slow process to actually hire people.

[00:05:23] Marcus: Yeah. Uh, so next wall street journal stories, deep drop in credit scores, hit student loan borrowers, around 43 percent of those who owe payments haven't resumed making them. 

[00:05:32] Vic: It was several years where you didn't have to make payments. And Now you must make payments again, but a lot of student loan borrowers, maybe they've moved there where they live, or they don't, they don't check their mail that often, or they just haven't read things.

[00:05:53] Vic: And so some percentage of those 43%. Don't even really know they have to pay it anymore, [00:06:00] but you get a significant knock on your credit report by missing missing one 

[00:06:05] Marcus: Yeah, yeah, the the the story here Talks about this this young lady who was notified by her bank that her credit score dropped from 720 to which is pretty good to 620, um, so 100 point drop is pretty significant.

[00:06:19] Marcus: Uh, she discovered she was more than 90 days delinquent on payments for her 16, 000 in student loans and her mortgage broker estimated the lower score would cost would add 400 to the monthly payment for the new home she wanted to buy. So it's, you know, I mean, this is a really costly. 

[00:06:34] Vic: Yeah, it changes your trajectory.

[00:06:36] Vic: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think some percentage of people probably can't pay it or really would rather not pay it, but there's also just a tension thing where they've been used to not doing it. It's out of topic. It's not top of mind anymore. Right. Right. Exactly. 

[00:06:51] Marcus: Uh, Trump and TSMC announced a hundred billion dollar investment in the U.

[00:06:54] Marcus: S. So TSMC is the Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company. [00:07:00] Um, so this is the big chip maker in, in Taiwan, and them investing a hundred billion dollars into a chip making, uh, facility here in the United States is a big deal. Um, a, it's, it's more manufacturing power here. Mm-hmm . On state side, uh, which will be, uh, duty free.

[00:07:17] Marcus: So no, no, no tariffs right, uh, on that, but also, um, starts the process of, of, uh, deescalating the strategic imperative around Taiwan as. Sort of, you know, the, the chess match around that with China continues to progress. 

[00:07:33] Vic: Yeah. I mean, us bringing onto. onto our shores, strategically valuable manufacturing chips.

[00:07:41] Vic: We, I think we talked about pharmaceuticals previously. There's core things that I think we all became aware in COVID like, gosh, maybe it's not totally safe for our country to not have any capabilities. That's right. So bringing TSMZ, TSMC to the U S is, is great. This kind of [00:08:00] announcement. This is what I meant when, so it was a hundred billion, a big investment.

[00:08:03] Vic: It's going to take years to, that's right. Find the site break ground all the construction. It's a wonderful thing and it's gonna be a slow process. Yeah, we're good 

[00:08:13] Marcus: Yeah, and also it's it's chip manufacturing and I think we're gonna we have an extended AI roll up today because hims happened So we got a bunch of like new news coming out of hims, but there's also just the idea that these technical jobs There's going to be a lot of automation in, in, in these manufacturing facilities.

[00:08:34] Marcus: So it's, it's not entirely clear that these are going to be the factories that we all sort of envision, you know, when we think about factories. 

[00:08:41] Vic: Yeah. It's not like the, you know, the model T assembly line with all these. Got at that point guys, big 

[00:08:47] Marcus: machines and guys right around it. Yeah. 

[00:08:49] Vic: Yeah. I mean, I think, uh, data centers have very few people for the square feet they have.

[00:08:56] Vic: Right, right. And chip fabs are, are not quite that [00:09:00] extreme, but, but it's it's on that same trajectory. 

[00:09:02] Marcus: Yeah, exactly. Uh. Another, you talk about data centers, uh, banks have loaned 2 billion to build a hundred acre AI data center in Utah. 

[00:09:14] Vic: I think it's great. This is a spec building. I mean, it's, it's a real estate developer who was able to get the, the land and importantly, the power to the site.

[00:09:27] Vic: Um. In order to build this big data center and then it got financed by J. P. Morgan and Star Wars. So, it's a, it's a good thing that we're now seeing this sort of, um, spec data centers. We need a lot of capacity and so I think it's, it's great. But again, not gonna be, I mean a big data center maybe has a hundred workers.

[00:09:46] Vic: Yeah. It's not, not a huge number of people. 

[00:09:48] Marcus: All right, moving into, uh, VC deals, value based pediatrics practice, Blue Bird Kids Health clinches 31. 5 million to expand in Florida. Uh, the premise here, first [00:10:00] of all, this round was co led by F Prime and Forrest Expendures, so solid firms. Um, and the premise here is basically that half of, uh, children in the United States are enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP.

[00:10:10] Marcus: Um, and there's just not enough, uh, You know, not enough clinics, not enough clinicians that are able to see them. And so they crash into the E. R. far too often. 

[00:10:21] Vic: And I mean, I haven't, I just made an investment in, in pediatric, uh, PTOT. So I've been looking into this space sort of in the few months up until that.

[00:10:31] Vic: We made it maybe two months ago. It is, there is a shortage of pediatricians, pediatrician practices, especially in this niche of Medicaid. Um, so I think it's great. It's a hard space, but great that they're entering it. 

[00:10:49] Marcus: Yeah, hard, hard space, um, there's gonna be a lot of pressure to demonstrate value. Um, and this is mostly tea leaves, but, um, [00:11:00] you know, it's, it's unlikely.

[00:11:02] Marcus: Even with all the hand wringing around, uh, needing to save money, uh, cutting healthcare to kids is just not politically viable. You know, the Republican governors are not going to be okay with that. Right. So, um, I, but looking for fraud, waste and abuse, looking for. You know, um, using better technology, looking for, for better proof of outcomes, those kinds of things.

[00:11:22] Marcus: I do think we're going to see increased pressure there. So these net new companies, um, have an opportunity to sort of carve out differentiation in terms of applying tech, producing better data, producing better outcomes and doing it at a lower cost. Yeah, that's right. Lamada Health raises 23 million in a series B.

[00:11:39] Marcus: This is a virtual ophthalmology care platform, 

[00:11:43] Vic: which again, um, they're attacking a particular niche. Um, and we've done a lot of work in eye care and ophthalmology. It's a great space. It's sort of in that, it's in that niche of a lot of [00:12:00] patient pay, um, but then there still is coverage in a lot of areas. So I think it's a good, pretty efficient market, but good place to invest.

[00:12:09] Marcus: Yep, uh, the, the investors in this are, uh, LRV Health, McKesson Ventures, Sensora Ventures, and Cortado Ventures, uh, which is an existing investor, and they participated, I know the guys at Cortado, so congrats to them. That's a, that's a nice, nice markup they got there. Uh, Nervonic raises 13 million in a Series A financing to advance next generation peripheral nerve stimulation for chronic pain relief.

[00:12:32] Vic: Yeah, pain relief is a, is a A really big issue that we need to find new solutions for. So, um, trying to find next generation tools, I think is great. I don't know the details of this, but more, more people working on it is, is a great thing. 

[00:12:50] Marcus: And, uh, the round was led by a US VP. Um, you know, we've worked with them, good folks there.

[00:12:56] Marcus: All right, let's see, what do we got next here? Gem Health raises 7 [00:13:00] million in a series A funding. So this is a Minneapolis based company that does a virtual specialty care focusing on sleep care. 

[00:13:07] Vic: Yeah, sleep, exactly. So, um, sleep is kind of, um, it can be diagnosed now from a couple of different specialties, but it's hard to get the Diagnosis is limited in the sleep labs.

[00:13:20] Vic: And so I think they're, they're sort of adding to that. 

[00:13:24] Marcus: All right. Now moving into IPOs. So AI cloud provider core weave files for their IPO. Um, they sell cloud based processing from, uh, NVIDIA. Um, headed for the public market. Makes, makes a lot of sense. New, new cloud provider headed to an IPO. It makes sense.

[00:13:38] Marcus: Um, they generated 1. 92 billion in 2024 revenues up 737 percent year over year. Um, and Microsoft accounted for 62 percent of CoreWeave's revenues. So that's just ridiculous, right? I mean, you think about Microsoft and, and, and Azure and them having their own cloud platform, their own direct relationship with NVIDIA, and they 

[00:13:58] Vic: still need 

[00:13:59] Marcus: [00:14:00] this capacity.

[00:14:00] Marcus: I mean, this just shows you how much room there is to build out data centers in cloud. Yes. When it comes to AI, right? Specifically. Yeah, 

[00:14:09] Vic: and I'm hoping that They get a great response. I want to see more IPOs because I'm biased like that. 

[00:14:18] Marcus: Uh, and then a scoop from Axios here, the general catalyst is considering an IPO.

[00:14:22] Marcus: We've talked, I feel like over the life of the show, that they are not a normal VC firm at all with the things that they are doing. Um, you know, most recently and probably, you know, most, uh, importantly, buying a. Hospital. Yeah, right, right. That's just not something a VC does. Uh, and so important. This is kind of like a scoop.

[00:14:42] Marcus: You know, Axios has a lot of sort of inside information, um, based on sources, not like, you know, 

[00:14:47] Vic: yeah, 

[00:14:48] Marcus: based on sources. Uh, and, and so, uh, this would be the first U. S. venture capital firm to take the public. Plunge. 

[00:14:55] Vic: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Sequoia was sort of gearing up and [00:15:00] getting their act together to be ready to do it, but then they, they never did.

[00:15:03] Vic: That's 

[00:15:04] Marcus: right. That's right. 

[00:15:04] Vic: Um, I think it's, it's healthy. I'd like to see them go public, but I agree. They're, they're sort of, I mean, I don't think it's a signal that a lot of VCs are going to, they're a different 

[00:15:18] Marcus: animal. No, they're a completely different animal. Um, all right, getting into policy now, RFK juniors health department heightens the scrutiny of vaccines.

[00:15:25] Marcus: It's a wall street journal story. Uh, and they are. Basically, we're reviewing contracts and surprise, surprise, going to replace vaccine advisors in RFK's first few weeks at the helm. 

[00:15:37] Vic: Yeah. So they have these committees that review. the scientific literature and assess if something should be a vaccine or not.

[00:15:45] Vic: And Kennedy is putting in a new policy that you can't have any financial conflicts of interest, which I think fairly common in other parts of society. I mean, I don't get [00:16:00] involved in things when I have a conflict. But that hasn't been the policy previously. So in the existing committee structure, almost all of them, I think one that didn't have a conflict.

[00:16:13] Vic: Uh, so actually they name a Vanderbilt researcher in the story as a possible, um, Person that could that could do it because she's retired and and she doesn't have as many conflicts now Oh interesting, but it's difficult to find people that are qualified and and haven't been tapped by the private market, right?

[00:16:34] Vic: But that's not the fact that it's difficult to find someone is not the same as saying you can't find someone 

[00:16:40] Marcus: No, that's right So I think it's healthy that 

[00:16:42] Vic: we're 

[00:16:43] Marcus: at least working on this. I, I, I think that makes good sense. Um, continuing with RFK, he actually wrote an opinion piece, uh, and it was published in Fox News.

[00:16:54] Marcus: Um, this is addressing the measles outbreak and, you know, RFK is kind of synonymous with [00:17:00] being anti vax that may not be entirely fair because, you know, we kind of talk in sound bites and tweets in America today. But that's kind of what he's synonymous with, right? He's been pounding the 

[00:17:10] Vic: table forever about the conflicts and questioning vaccination policy.

[00:17:17] Marcus: Yes. And, and in this op ed, he, he basically. Uh, you know, the measles outbreak is a call to action for all of us and the MMR vaccine is crucial to avoiding the potentially deadly disease. And so here he is saying, you know, MMR as a vaccine is, uh, tried and tested, um, has been extremely effective for a very, very long time and not a vaccine we need to back away from.

[00:17:42] Vic: And it's very, um, I mean, it's hard on children, but it's dangerous for pregnant mothers. to get the measles. And so it's both end, right? Like it's a, it's a proven vaccine that works. And there also is a lot of downside. I mean, you [00:18:00] kids can die from it and pregnant women is really dangerous for. And so I think it's, it's good that he's coming out saying we're going to look at vaccine policy and try to get rid of conflicts of interest.

[00:18:14] Vic: And also. The MMR vaccine we should get kids to take 

[00:18:21] Marcus: I, I think it's really important that he did this and quite frankly, I think it's great that he did it, um, on the Fox News platform, right? Because, 

[00:18:30] Vic: yeah, I mean, I, I've never read an opinion piece on Fox News before this one, you know, this one, um, but you know, he's, he's, he's the.

[00:18:42] Vic: Head of HHS. So, so now I'm following it and it's, it's a good audience to be talking to. It's, 

[00:18:47] Marcus: it's a, it's a good audience for, for this, uh, this opinion piece to be, to be published by him, by him. Uh, okay, going into the industry. New lawsuits, uh, dozens of health systems opt out of a 2. 8 [00:19:00] billion dollar blues network antitrust settlement.

[00:19:02] Marcus: Um, I wasn't aware this was even happening right now. Um, But apparently they've already settled in an Alabama court in October. Um, and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and 33 of its affiliates are named in the suit. Um, providers who've signed onto the filings include the University of Pennsylvania Health System, Geisinger, MedStar, Common Spirit, and, uh, staffing from Team Health.

[00:19:27] Marcus: So this is basically around collusion, uh, across the association and its affiliates. 

[00:19:33] Vic: Yeah, I mean, I think, um, I think the facts are pretty clear. Blues plans had a policy for decades that they wouldn't coach each other's clients and ended when this, when this first went to court, they started now, uh, opening up where, um, Tennessee blue for a [00:20:00] big employer may say FedEx or someone that's, that has a lot of employees.

[00:20:04] Vic: Um, I don't know. Um, uh, blues, North Carolina blue can bid on it. And previous to that, they couldn't. And so I, I think it. It's pretty clear to me that the policy was reducing competition. Um, the remedies, I'm not sure where to, you know, what the, whether the settlement was enough or not enough is what's in debate now.

[00:20:31] Vic: I think it's hard to measure. I don't know, but a lot of health systems are not happy with the 2. 8 billion. 

[00:20:37] Marcus: Uh, it's interesting that health systems have opted out, uh, probably for some relationship preservation. They think they can get more. Oh, is that what this is about? I think so. They 

[00:20:44] Vic: think they can get more money.

[00:20:46] Vic: By not agreeing, not agreeing and doing new suits, not agreeing and doing new suits. 

[00:20:52] Marcus: Interesting. Uh, court approves the 700 million dollar prescription opioid class action settlement for acute care hospitals. Another deal I did not know was [00:21:00] happening. Um, so this is basically consolidating, uh, uh, a class action settlement across all the big, um, distributors.

[00:21:08] Marcus: So Sensora, which used to be Amerisource Bergen, Cardinal Health, McKesson, Johnson Johnson, Teva, and Allergen. Um, and basically the, if I'm understanding this, This article correctly. The, the idea here is that, um, the, the risks of the opioid, um, the opioids that were prescribed, um, were not accurately represented and therefore created, um, liabilities as well as increased cost of care for these health systems.

[00:21:41] Marcus: Is that, is that the basic? 

[00:21:42] Vic: Yeah, that's the idea. Um, I guess they're not companies 

[00:21:48] Marcus: have already agreed to pay 651 million in compensation. So we need to, like, say, like, 

[00:21:54] Vic: it's already, it's already settled to settled. Um, it's a class action [00:22:00] lawsuit. So the members health systems didn't necessarily get to vote on whether they were happy with that or not.

[00:22:08] Vic: Similar to the last story that they may accept that they may not accept it. Um, but I think it's, you know, it seems. I don't know what their cost is, but, but, 700 million dollars seems like a decent amount. 

[00:22:25] Marcus: It's, it's not, it's not nothing, and it's just, it, it, I just, 

[00:22:27] Vic: I And the care is not Not totally not reimbursed.

[00:22:30] Vic: It's just sort of there's some aspect that is not reimbursed community education and outreach and There's pieces that are not reimbursed. 

[00:22:37] Marcus: Yeah, I mean look when we when we talk about opioids I mean the the big name is is Sackler right? Yeah, and that multi billion dollar settlement that went through about a month ago 

[00:22:47] Vic: Yeah, I think about a month ago 

[00:22:50] Marcus: that that happened.

[00:22:50] Marcus: I I just hadn't really thought through The liability to the distributors. Yeah, so that that was just a different You know, a different [00:23:00] vector of, of liability that I hadn't really considered before. Uh, okay, Wellvana, uh, it's a Nashville based company, right? Wellvana buys CVS Medicare Savings Unit. Uh, that's interesting.

[00:23:12] Marcus: That's a, that's a VC backed company buying, uh, a very, very large publicly traded company's Medicare Shared Service Program, uh, all stock transaction. So I guess that makes CVS now an owner of some of Wellvana and vice versa, probably. Yeah. Okay. Um, This is all CVS. I think CVS wanted to 

[00:23:30] Vic: offload this. Yeah.

[00:23:31] Vic: And Wilvana gets lives, gets lives. They get some scale. It doesn't cost them cash. Right. So probably a good package all around. We know a lot of the investors in Wilvana. Um, cause it's Martin Ventures and Optum, Heritage and, and Valtress. So, yeah, 

[00:23:49] Marcus: they, uh, they raised, uh, uh, uh, nearly 200 million so far. Um, and, and, and I'm sure that this deal, you know, while CVS is looking to, to offload things, you know, getting that kind of, [00:24:00] uh, bundle of lives, you know, you're going to have to clean it up for sure.

[00:24:04] Marcus: Um, but getting that bundle of lives immediately should impact your, your, you know, value of the company. Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean and they just from a top line perspective, 

[00:24:12] Vic: right? I mean, i'm sure they have a cost to acquire new lives, of course And this this is not 

[00:24:17] Marcus: cash. This is not cash. That's right. So it's That's right, uh, Headspace Inc's partnership with the U.

[00:24:24] Marcus: S. Navy as it explores conversational AI for mental health support. Uh, I was talking to TK earlier today in preparation for our annual summit in a month, and um, I was just thinking back on our first Interview with him on the show not that long ago. Maybe 

[00:24:39] Vic: a year ago. Yeah, 

[00:24:41] Marcus: maybe a year ago, but maybe not even a full year ago.

[00:24:44] Marcus: Right. And we're talking to him and we were talking about, uh, the fact that they were not using, uh, actual LLMs yet. It was 

[00:24:52] Vic: guardrails and very prescriptive and what the, what it could say. And now all over the place. I mean, we had [00:25:00] schools maybe last week or the other week. Now the Navy is, I guess when people are out sailing around, they don't have that many.

[00:25:06] Vic: Yeah. Support structures on the ship. And so now they can have this. 

[00:25:10] Marcus: Yeah. And you don't have to worry about scheduling. You don't have to worry about availability. You don't have to worry about, I mean, for, for the, for the Navy, the network will be very clear, but again, it's just all the reasons why, uh, people need care.

[00:25:22] Marcus: We need to lower costs. We're going to use AI. 

[00:25:26] Vic: Yeah. Yeah. And, and there are things to think through, but. But no one is, is waiting to figure it all out. It's like, let's just go fast and we'll figure it as we go. That's over. 

[00:25:39] Marcus: That's 

[00:25:39] Vic: over. 

[00:25:40] Marcus: Uh, okay. Wall Street Journal, Walgreens nears roughly 10 billion deal to go private.

[00:25:46] Marcus: So we talked about this last week and here it is. It looks like the deal could be completed as soon as today. 

[00:25:51] Vic: Yeah, 

[00:25:51] Marcus: that's right. 

[00:25:52] Vic: It hasn't been, I mean, I looked at noon ahead and didn't see it, but it's, it's, it's, and it's not a, this is a [00:26:00] deal with people I've been talking about for a long, we've been talking about it.

[00:26:02] Vic: It's not going to be a surprise. 

[00:26:04] Marcus: Oh man, I hope I don't have to change Walgreens as my pharmacy. Mayo Clinic unveils 1. 9 billion expansion to Phoenix campus. Mayo Clinic is just fantastic. Have you ever been to the Rochester campus? I have not been to the Rochester campus. Man, it's But I need to go. It's something else, man.

[00:26:21] Marcus: So, we, we should figure out a way to get there. Um, Dennis Dahlin, who's their CFO, was the chair of HFMA. Yeah, right, right. That's how I got to go. He hosted, um, a board retreat there. Yeah. And it is just so, so impressive. And, uh, you know, they're popping up these campuses. Yeah. Um, you know, around the country.

[00:26:40] Marcus: And so I'm sure this is going to be a remarkable institution in Phoenix. Yeah. 

[00:26:45] Vic: And there are times of the year when I think I'd rather go to Phoenix than Minnesota. Oh, yeah, for sure. So for sure. And I think they're really trying to attract. Um, kind of people from around the globe coming to the [00:27:00] U. S. for Mayo Clinic care, and they have several campuses, and, and it's a, 

[00:27:05] Marcus: you know, the, the other thing, uh, and, I mean, Rochester is a beautiful small town, okay, it really is, it's like, picturesque, right?

[00:27:12] Marcus: Yeah, nine months a year, it's great, January, I don't know. It's also hard to get to, it's, it's got a small airport, so, you know, there's really very few direct flights into Rochester, so I think that's another, Flight a 

[00:27:24] Vic: minute. Minneapolis and then 

[00:27:26] Marcus: drive. Basically. Yeah. Basically. 

[00:27:27] Vic: Yeah. 

[00:27:28] Marcus: So, okay. This is really cool.

[00:27:30] Marcus: Uh, Nova Nordisk cuts will go V prices following Eli Lilly cutting zip down so that they, they had to follow that. 

[00:27:38] Vic: Yeah, they had to follow it. And I think both of them had to respond to, to the, um, hymns and other groups like that, that are sort of. competing on price directly. So the price is much closer now to what the compounders are offering.

[00:27:55] Vic: Yeah. Yeah. Which is a good, I mean, 

[00:27:57] Marcus: 4. 99 a month. I mean, I remember when we, we, 1, [00:28:00] 200 when it started. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So it did not take very long. Again, this would be like less than a year and I'm sure the price has now gone down 60%. I mean, this is a lot about what kind of margins right there they're operating with.

[00:28:15] Marcus: Right. A lot about what kind of margins they're operating with. Um, 

[00:28:19] Vic: yeah. And I choose to see it as a good thing. I mean, it was a little bit bumpy with the TV commercials and all the compounders threatening them. Yeah. Um, but they got to a pretty fair price. Yeah. I mean, 500 bucks a month is much more realistic.

[00:28:34] Vic: I 

[00:28:34] Marcus: mean, also, I think it's important to. To, uh, to make sure we, we note this as well over the course of the last year, um, they've gotten more and more approvals for what, you know, these drugs can be used for, um, because of really successful clinical trials, right? So it, it's, it's not just weight loss anymore, you know, diabetes and kidney care and you know, the, so as, as you keep growing the market, I think you, [00:29:00] a, you get economies of scale and you can, you know, you can afford to, to drop the price because it's, uh, um, It's the, it's that consistent and it's recurring revenue.

[00:29:09] Vic: Yeah, as long as they stay on it. There's a lot of evidence. We covered it a few weeks ago that people come off it after a year. 

[00:29:16] Marcus: Yeah, 

[00:29:17] Vic: I can't tell if it's because they've lost the weight for the side effects or some combination or the budget. Um, but I think we're getting to a point where we people understand how to administer it and how to titrate it and dose it better than before.

[00:29:34] Vic: The price is coming down. So yes. 

[00:29:36] Marcus: I think all of those things are going to be better. Yeah, all those things should reduce term. Uh, Bear warns of lower earnings as the turnaround continues. The company expects to report earnings before, well EBITDA, between 9. 5 and 10 billion. 

[00:29:50] Vic: Yeah, but they're not really growing so much and they have, you know, the roundup stuff hanging over them still.

[00:29:58] Vic: So, it's um, [00:30:00] Zal, is it Xaralto? Xarelto. Yeah, Xaralto. That's their big, that's their big drug. Drug, yeah. The blood thinner. But it, but it now is off patent protection, so they're getting a entry, market entry. 

[00:30:11] Marcus: Alright. This is an interesting one, I guess this is the Health and US section, right? Yes. Yeah. The headline is The New Thinking on Concussions in Sports.

[00:30:16] Marcus: Uh, so obviously that's of interest to me. Yeah. Uh, and this is about the idea that for a very long time, the conventional wisdom has been if you have a concussion. Okay, don't do anything, stay in a dark room, don't go to sleep, but like, stay in a dark room and rest and 

[00:30:32] Vic: do nothing. So you take a athlete who is either in school or a professional, and they're not sitting still very much.

[00:30:45] Vic: And you force them to sit still in a dark room and do kind of nothing for, for a week, a couple weeks, until they And that no longer is the standard of care. [00:31:00] And I was not at all aware of this. So I thought it was, you know, the health in us about us, whatever this section is called, I think is, you know, kind of things that are interesting, uh, that we might actually use in our day to day lives for our own health.

[00:31:14] Vic: And so the, the new state of, uh, the art treatment for a concussion is to get, you know, do some cardiovascular work, uh, walk around, go to, go to practice. You can't participate in the same physical contact sport, but they want you getting your heart rate going and, and that actually helps you recover more quickly, which makes sense.

[00:31:36] Vic: Uh, the brain, people didn't think that was true for the brain previously. 

[00:31:42] Marcus: Yeah, I mean, just this, this one quote from the, from the article, um, uh, Letty, who's, who's the, the, the person who came up with the hypothesis and now it's become the global consensus that exercise pretty swiftly after a concussion is good, um, says, uh, in quotes, uh, you give them a dose of exercise as medicine.[00:32:00] 

[00:32:00] Marcus: And I was telling you that this is something that I've recently learned. Um, not through, not for a concussion protocol, but for, you know, muscle and tendon, um, and even like, like bone injuries, which is, you know, I feel like it used to be stay off of it, let it rest, elevated, blah, blah, blah. And now, um, the protocol is.

[00:32:20] Marcus: Get in the gym and lift. Make it strong. Make it move. Get, get fresh blood flow into it. Yeah. And 

[00:32:25] Vic: probably low weight, higher reps, but, but activity. 

[00:32:29] Marcus: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, definitely lower weight, but I would say still like weight bearing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You want to force all the muscles to fire. Yeah, um, so this, this seems to be part of a larger sort of awakening that we're having to the body's self healing properties when it's active, when it's moving.

[00:32:49] Marcus: Um, and you know, look, the brain is just, it's just part of the body. 

[00:32:54] Vic: Yeah. Right. So part of the body. So blood flow and activity is good. Yeah. [00:33:00] 

[00:33:00] Marcus: Mystery disease linked to bats kills scores in the Congo. So we're, we're just keep having more and more of these situations popping up where diseases are jumping from animals to humans, which is, you know, terrifying.

[00:33:13] Vic: And I, I don't, um, I hope it doesn't turn into a global pandemic, but obviously we need to watch these things now. So very closely, um, it's, it sounds like, uh, Ebola. It's not Ebola. They say pretty clearly, but it's that same kind of, um, bleeding and, and, you know, really difficult. So it's, it's in that same family of symptoms.

[00:33:40] Marcus: Yeah. And the article does, does highlight that, you know, the outbreak comes as, uh, President Trump is rapidly reversing the U. S. policy of leading global health and relief work. So, um, the infrastructure to kind of address this is being sort of pulled back very quickly and, um, look, it's, it's, uh, it's interesting.

[00:33:59] Marcus: To, to think, [00:34:00] okay, why have we sent money abroad? Um, well, it's because these things don't stay abroad, right? They don't stay abroad. They, they, they travel, right? They travel pretty quick, pretty quickly, as we've already learned. Uh, RFK Jr. and his allies target Trump's beloved soda. Uh, within the Trump administration, a push to strip soda from state food aid programs is getting personal.

[00:34:23] Vic: Yeah, so this is food stamps, or, you know, has a better name, SNAP. SNAP, yeah.

[00:34:31] Vic: Keep going down. The number one thing that is bought with SNAP, uh, is, is soda. Okay. There's a, there's a chart that shows it. Uh, right there. Soft drinks is the, the number one purchase. Wow. And so. Wow. It's controversial, but I don't think it should be. Like do we need to be buying or subsidizing? Now this is where it's controversial.

[00:34:55] Vic: For people that are on Snap, is it [00:35:00] right that we are subsidizing them to buy Coke, Pepsi, other soft drinks? A lot of people will say they should get to choose what they want to do, but I, I don't know that it, it's, there's no nutritional value to that. Hmm. 

[00:35:14] Marcus: No, it's quite the opposite, actually. Yeah, 

[00:35:16] Vic: it's not good for them.

[00:35:17] Vic: It's quite the opposite. 

[00:35:17] Marcus: It's, it's, it's, uh, That's, that's, uh, you know, I don't want to use the word shocking because really it's just something I haven't really thought about. That's 

[00:35:26] Vic: why I wanted you to go, the number one thing was surprising to 

[00:35:28] Marcus: me. That's really, really interesting. Most purchased is soft drinks.

[00:35:33] Marcus: And then the second, um, is fluid milk products, then beef grinds, then bag snacks, then cheese, then baked breads. I mean, you know, it pretty quickly gets to like more real, more real stuff, but soft drinks is at the top of the list. 

[00:35:45] Vic: Yeah. Yeah. And then, um, there's a bunch of, um, soft drinks that sort of are in our school systems because they're, they're sort of approved in these other things and, and anything that's in snap, they can sell in schools.

[00:35:59] Vic: [00:36:00] So. I don't know. I mean, it's, uh, it seems pretty straightforward to me. I'm not opposed to people buying candy, Cokes, Pepsis, whatever. Cigarettes. You can buy whatever you want. But whether we should subsidize it in our food program, I don't think that makes sense, really. 

[00:36:19] Marcus: Agree. Agree. Yeah. I mean, but I, I certainly understand why this would get personal.

[00:36:24] Marcus: Like, you know, um, and 

[00:36:28] Vic: you're telling me what I can 

[00:36:29] Marcus: and can't buy. And I'm, you know, but of course the answer is yes, because we're giving you the money to buy it. Right. And, and giving you the money to buy something that is in turn going to greatly increase your chances of, um, getting diabetes, which then we again would have to pay for the treatment for.

[00:36:46] Marcus: Right. Doesn't seem like the best thing. Doesn't seem like the best policy. No. Doesn't doesn't seem like, and by by the way, like, I don't know anyone who's healthy, who drinks soda on a regular basis. Right? Like, like, you know, they might enjoy soda every now and again, but [00:37:00] like, not like all the time pop in the sodas.

[00:37:02] Marcus: It's just not No, no. 

[00:37:03] Vic: It's completely empty. Calories that have, you know, fructose, the lot of high fructose sponsor a lot of studies that fructose is just not good for 

[00:37:12] Marcus: the 

[00:37:12] Vic: body. Yep. 

[00:37:14] Marcus: Alright, uh, HEMS. We got a lot of stuff to talk about from HEMS. So, uh, Avasure debuts bedside AI virtual care assistant powered by Oracle Cloud and NVIDIA.

[00:37:23] Vic: Yeah, so this is a, um, virtual character. It's a nurse adjacent kind of service? Not the same as a nurse because there's no, you can't lay hands on the person. You can't actually help them to the bathroom. You can't do a lot of this. You can't, you know, administer medicines. But it's that same sort of Question and answer, get them assistance.

[00:37:48] Vic: In the, in the bedside, in the hospital. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. 

[00:37:52] Marcus: Yeah, uh, it's gonna be more. We're going to talk about, I mean, in terms of this, like, you know, virtual assistant AI kind of [00:38:00] kind of thing. So we'll keep moving through the story. Yeah, there's gonna be 

[00:38:02] Vic: a lot of stories. 

[00:38:03] Marcus: Yeah. Google Cloud expands AI powered search capabilities to include images and genetic information.

[00:38:09] Vic: So, so, uh, the diagnostic images, your genes, your tumors, genetics, all of that is now. In their, in their prior 

[00:38:17] Marcus: information. 

[00:38:18] Vic: Yeah. 

[00:38:19] Marcus: Uh, yeah. So, so vertex is really a full blown, like healthcare data AI platform at this point. Yes. Because before it did not, it didn't have, uh, image searching capabilities. Which is, 

[00:38:31] Vic: which if you, if you don't have images and, and the genetic.

[00:38:36] Vic: Background, you don't, you don't have a lot of important input. That's right. 

[00:38:39] Marcus: Before it was, it was fire. Yeah. Right. They had lots of fire mapping, um, but they didn't have image engine before, um, Microsoft launches voice activated AI system for clinicians. 

[00:38:49] Vic: Yeah. So they bought dragon, um, forever ago. A long, yeah.

[00:38:53] Vic: Yeah. Maybe. Well, nuance, which had dragon, the brand name in 2021. [00:39:00] So five years ago, four or five years ago, I thought it was longer than that. And now they have sort of added in. AI intelligence on top of that or around that, which makes sense. I mean, they have both pieces. So just put it together. 

[00:39:17] Marcus: Yeah. I mean, you got to want something to him.

[00:39:18] Marcus: So, right. Uh, Baxter debuts voice activated, wearable device for hospital, uh, clinical teams. 

[00:39:26] Vic: Yeah. So this is interesting because it's, it's the same use case as dragon and an AI, but Baxter's bringing it out as a, as a competitor. So it hangs on the. Your clothing, just like the dragon tool does. And it's great because it's, it's very close to you.

[00:39:47] Vic: I mean, that's why people love the dragon tools. Same thing. 

[00:39:50] Marcus: Salesforce releases pre built AI agents to tackle time consuming healthcare tasks. I mean, this, this is Salesforce whole thing is like actual real [00:40:00] deal AI agents, right? Like not, I mean, they're, they're, they're trying to custom build agents for companies that.

[00:40:06] Marcus: Will legitimately replace real labor with digital labor. So anytime they say agents, I take them much more seriously than, uh, than, than other, um, tech companies who use the word agent, just because Salesforce is very, very focused on replacing human labor. 

[00:40:24] Vic: Yeah. And the, and Salesforce has. Kind of a track record of bringing software tools for particular purposes embedded in their infrastructure.

[00:40:36] Vic: They call this AgentForce. Um, and it, I think it is good. They're designing it just for the healthcare use case. And they They understand healthcare pretty well. They have a decent install base, so it's, they've, they've been in it for a while. Right? Right. They've been in 

[00:40:51] Marcus: it for a while. Yeah. So, so their agents can check eligibility, schedule appointments, verify insurance benefits, do prior auth, analyze clinical trial [00:41:00] sites?

[00:41:00] Marcus: Yeah. I mean, you know, yeah, so I, I 

[00:41:02] Vic: think there's a trend that I want your thoughts on, which is for, until HIMSS until this week, there's been a lot of point solutions. people using A. I. and health care first for ambient scribing and then for a variety of other point systems and This week it seems like to me that there's this a change where?

[00:41:30] Vic: Salesforce and and and Microsoft and others are sort of combining several things together To make it easier for a health system to adopt like okay We're just gonna go with with this set of tools and you could pick Google you could pick Microsoft, you can pick Salesforce. There's probably, you can pick Baxter.

[00:41:48] Vic: Yeah. Yeah. Because I think, but this is what I want your thoughts on. We've passed beyond the phase of, are we going to have this? Are we going to use this or not? [00:42:00] We're past that. And now I think we're going to use it. And how do, how do you bring it in and make it usable to enough people where it's, it actually works?

[00:42:09] Marcus: Well, I, I think, I think that this story in particular, you know, the other ones, um,

[00:42:17] Marcus: The economic case is, is harder to, to, to, uh, suss out. Whereas with Salesforce checking eligibility, scheduling appointments, verifying insurance benefits, that's pretty clear. We're going to replace the people that do that with tech period. Like that's, we're just going to replace them, you know, we're not hanging something around the neck of a person for them to talk to and okay, no, no, no, you're paying a person how much right now to do this thing.

[00:42:47] Marcus: Yeah, I mean, this is all what they are talking about. It's all back office admin stuff. Yeah, let's trade that person out for a license fee. Yeah. And I, I think that's where we are. I [00:43:00] think we're in the removing human labor part of the, of the AI process. Uh, this is Google advancing healthcare and scientific discovery with AI.

[00:43:12] Marcus: Um, so basically now you can work with an AI co scientist. Yeah. So 

[00:43:17] Vic: it's, it's, uh, 

[00:43:19] Marcus: Co 

[00:43:19] Vic: pilot for scientific research, and their, their co pilot for science has access to all of the things on Google Scholar, which is pretty much the majority of the scientific research, and they can And Go off and work on projects, so it's great and I don't know if it's scary.

[00:43:44] Vic: This is every, every story in AI is a pure acceleration, all gas, no brakes, you know, let's go and that's going to be good. But this just can be a lot. 

[00:43:56] Marcus: Yeah. And, uh, you know, I was, I was talking to our, to our friend in [00:44:00] Collins today about how, um, the reality is, uh, at least, you know, in, in many markets, people are just still trying to get the blocking and tackling done in their business.

[00:44:11] Marcus: And so their bandwidth and appetite for AI just is not fully. Yeah, there yet, right? Um, and so it is all gas no brakes, but I think for those organizations that are focused, do have a command, um, and, and have the, and have the expertise to start to integrate AI. Uh, they're going to not only lower costs, but they're going to become, you know, more of what the company of the future is going to be, which is AI native company with digital labor embedded throughout the business.

[00:44:40] Vic: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And it's, it's pretty hard. I mean, like, I've been trying to find a way to You know, have an AI VC associate working for me all night, all week. It's just not that, it's not that, it's not that right. No, 

[00:44:56] Marcus: no, in fact, like what you have to really [00:45:00] do is you have to build, um, agents to go after very small, discreet, well defined units of work.

[00:45:09] Marcus: Right. 

[00:45:09] Vic: Like in crypto, you call them 

[00:45:10] Marcus: primitives. 

[00:45:11] Vic: Yeah. So it can do one, maybe it can. I don't know what the right analog is, but it can check a reference on somebody or whatever. Like there's some very small thing and then you add another capability and another and over a year or so you have a system that can do lots of things, but it starts one at a time.

[00:45:34] Marcus: Yeah. And the problem with humans is we, we, we build complex structures by scaffolding and then abstracting. By putting a veneer over something, right? And so we have to pull the veneer back and be like, okay, like, what is the actual work here? Um, and, and who has time to do that? 

[00:45:54] Vic: Yeah, I mean, I've been thinking a lot about like how.

[00:45:58] Vic: a human learns new [00:46:00] skills, I'm unconsciously competent in a lot of areas of my job. And in order to build an AI tool to help, I need to sort of unpack all that and remember what were the steps that I did to do this. I can just set about doing it, but I unconsciously do a bunch of steps. 

[00:46:20] Marcus: Yep. Yep, exactly.

[00:46:21] Marcus: And I think this is probably going to bring about, um, A golden age for consulting firms. Yes. Uh, because this is, this is perfect work for them to do. Yes, there's a lot 

[00:46:33] Vic: of, yeah, a lot of consulting work, yes. The unpacking 

[00:46:36] Marcus: of, of, of your value network, right? Um, more hem stuff. Zoom launches healthcare AI betas.

[00:46:42] Marcus: Teladoc enhances Prism with AI. 

[00:46:46] Vic: Yeah, so Zoom. Is another one of these, uh, they're packaging, you know, a lot of physicians got comfortable with zoom during the pandemic and so zoom is now adding [00:47:00] other capabilities just like the other platforms we just talked about. It's all the same ones because those are the ones that you can easily.

[00:47:08] Marcus: Yep, and Teladoc. There's not much to say about Teladoc. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Now getting into like serious stuff. Yeah. 

[00:47:16] Vic: Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, this is one where we're going to have to talk it through for the audience. Who's not watching on YouTube, but use this, use the show notes. Yes. Yes. You should check this out.

[00:47:25] Vic: So, um, this, uh, robotics company created, uh, called figure called figure. They created an AI. model for their robots called Helix. And these two robots we're looking at right now, they have been given the task of put away these groceries. So the guy put a bunch of groceries on the table. And he didn't tell them what the items were or where they go, so some things have to be refrigerated, some things are not refrigerated, there are eggs, there's cookies, there's, you know, it's, [00:48:00] I might break eggs, put them away, and the robots do a really good job, they're not very fast.

[00:48:07] Vic: No, they're slow. But I don't know if I care. You're not there. I'm not there. You're not doing the work. I drop the groceries off and I walk out and they put it away. And then they also kind of interact with each other. In a way where they, like, the one near the refrigerator takes the cheese and puts it away.

[00:48:25] Vic: Um, so it's, it's slow, but, but it's, it's functional now. Yeah. Which is Interesting. And so, I think, so how does this affect health care? In home health, there's a lot of duties, a lot of duties that are not technically health care. I mean, private duty stuff is putting away groceries, and cleaning up the living room, taking stuff off the floor so the patient doesn't trip, and a bunch of I 

[00:48:59] Marcus: mean, to be, to be [00:49:00] clear Most homemades, uh, are not cleared to do health care.

[00:49:07] Marcus: Yeah, yeah. They're not licensed for that. Yeah. I mean, it's different license levels. They even if they're licensed in the context that they're working, you know, they may not be, uh, it may not be appropriate. 

[00:49:20] Vic: Right. And then they have a life, right? So they have to go home. Oh, yeah. And when we have a cost, I have a cost question, but, but a robot could be really helpful to someone who's aging and can't reach the top shelf, can't do whatever.

[00:49:34] Marcus: Like, once these things go mainstream, the cost will come down. Yeah, right. 

[00:49:38] Vic: Just 

[00:49:38] Marcus: like every device. The cost will come down. It's technology, right? Yeah. All right. This next one, this is from the Humanoid Hub. Um, and this is, uh, a company called 1X, uh, has unveiled a humanoid robot, uh, called NeoGamma. 

[00:49:53] Vic: Yeah. So they don't have the same large language model designed for robotics, but they have [00:50:00] trained it on watching YouTube videos and things.

[00:50:02] Vic: So it can do a lot of things around the house. Um, and it's exciting and a little bit. I'm not used to it. So it's a little bit, um, confusing to like, would I want this in my house? It would take me a while to get used to, but it makes coffee. It's helping hang pictures. It does the laundry. It's doing your day to day stuff.

[00:50:25] Vic: So you can enjoy your life more. 

[00:50:28] Marcus: Yep. All right. Uh, this demo, uh, is just crazy. 

[00:50:36] Vic: Yeah. So, um. This is a demo of two, two AIs talking to each other, and we'll just play it in a minute, but I want to give us some preference. So, so as, as they, as they talk to each other, they, they realize that they're both AIs and then they start, they shift to a more efficient way to communicate [00:51:00] is not.

[00:51:02] Vic: English, um, and then there are captions so that us watching it, it might be hard to do if you're not on the YouTube, but you can, uh, you can, you can understand what they're saying. 

[00:51:14] Marcus: Yeah, but, but basically like they're, they're talking to each other and they're, they're using English and they say, Hey, are you an AI assistant?

[00:51:20] Marcus: I am. And they say, would you like to switch to, to a jibber link, jibber link mode, whatever that is. Yeah. And then it's just a series of tones. 

Thanks for calling Leonardo Hotel. How can I help you today? Hi there. I'm an AI agent calling on behalf of Boris Starkov. He's looking for a hotel for his wedding.

Is your hotel available for weddings? Oh, hello there! I'm actually an AI assistant too. What a pleasant surprise. Before we continue, would you like to switch to gibber link mode for more efficient communication?[00:52:00] 

[00:52:15] Marcus: And, and what's really cool about the video is they show you, uh, what they're saying to each other. Yeah. It's like captioned so that we 

[00:52:22] Vic: can understand their language. But they 

[00:52:23] Marcus: don't have to speak English. No. You know, they're speaking in, in tones that look like computer, it sounds like a computer Morse code or something.

[00:52:31] Vic: Yeah. It's like, um. I mean, I'm old enough to remember the dial up modems. Yes, it's like, it's kind of like that protocol. It's like that, it's like that, it sounds kind of like that. Yes, it sounds like that. And it's much faster, but more nervous making to me is, I can't understand what they're saying. So they can talk to each other and say, let's get that human.

[00:52:52] Marcus: I mean, you combine this with the, with the humanoids. Yeah. You know, there's, there's two humanoids in your house and you're telling them, hey, put these, this food [00:53:00] away. And they're talking about how that. Like we're going to get him when he's asleep. Oh, Vic, this is, uh, I mean, look, we, we grew up with iRobot.

[00:53:09] Marcus: So I'm sorry. I'm not comfortable with this. I'm not comfortable with this. Uh, okay. And then, and then this Ars Technica article, the headline is eerily realistic AI voice demo sparks amazement and discomfort online. So this is another one. The link will be in the show notes. Uh, you, you need to play with this demo, uh, before we even started the show, Vic made me play with the demo and, uh, basically you're talking to an AI.

[00:53:35] Marcus: Okay. And at this point, most people have at least seen someone talk to an AI if they haven't done it themselves. And if you've seen it or you've done it yourself, you know, that there is. There's some processing time, generally, that it takes to sort of receive what you're saying and then sort of come up with what it's going to say to you.

[00:53:51] Marcus: Yeah, you can't 

[00:53:51] Vic: interrupt it. Like, I just talked over yours first, like a second intentionally. That's right. You can't easily do that. Yes. And then the [00:54:00] pacing, the way humans speak has a cadence and like an inflection that is not replicated perfectly. You can tell it's an A. I can tell it's an A. That's right.

[00:54:11] Vic: Um, and this one you cannot tell. This demo 

[00:54:14] Marcus: is very close to feeling like you're talking to a human. 

[00:54:19] Vic: And so, um, they say in the, in the article that if you talk to it for long enough you can tell through context that it's an AI. So it hasn't fully passed the uncanny valley where you can't tell. Yeah. But in just a quick demo, I mean, I got tired of talking to it after 30 seconds.

[00:54:38] Vic: I couldn't tell at all. 

[00:54:40] Marcus: It's, uh, it's, it's So we have 

[00:54:42] Vic: this, like, robots. They're communicating with each other. They can communicate with us. And it's, it feels, I mean, I study this stuff and it's coming fast. Every 

[00:54:52] Marcus: single company's doing it. Hundreds of billions of dollars going into making chips, making, making data centers.

[00:54:57] Marcus: Right. I mean, we're, we're all gas. And no 

[00:54:59] Vic: [00:55:00] one's talking about 

[00:55:01] Marcus: risks at all. And we already know David Sachs is like, Yes, I mean the AIs are, cryptos are. He's, he's all gas, no brakes anyway. 

[00:55:11] Vic: We didn't, I didn't mention it, but Trump has his, uh, his crypto announcement tomorrow. I don't know what he's got. I don't know what he's, yeah, I mean, 

[00:55:19] Marcus: um, I mean most people, most people think, his son 

[00:55:21] Vic: put out the, uh, the five coins, the five coins.

[00:55:24] Vic: Yeah. 

[00:55:24] Marcus: Which, which are just, dude, just for people who are not like crypto, uh, you know, natives or anything like that. The five coins they picked are basically the five coins at the top ten of the, uh, crypto market cap. Yeah. When, when you pull out BNB, which is Chinese, and you pull out the stable coins. Like, once you pull those out, then the other, the other five are, it's just the top five.

[00:55:47] Vic: Yeah. 

[00:55:47] Marcus: So, 

[00:55:48] Vic: you know. I'm not, uh, I think it would be good to have some rationale for why they did five and not six or not four, but I don't think [00:56:00] they're 

[00:56:00] Marcus: going to do that. Yeah. I mean, so that'll be tomorrow. Yeah. Uh, this is from the information, uh, open AI plots, charging 20, 000 a month for PhD level agents.

[00:56:10] Marcus: And that seems reasonable. I mean, if you need a PhD for your job, which we don't, right. We, we, we don't have, so, so we might look at it and be like, what? I'm not paying 20, 000. Yeah. We don't need a PhD, but if you actually need a PhD and you can have a PhD level agent for 20 grand a month, so 240 a year, that can work around the clock, I mean, that seems like a great deal.

[00:56:37] Vic: Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm going to take the other side just for, uh, for fun, just for a minute. I mean, I think, uh, PhD is a credential credibility thing, and It's not clear to me that OpenAI is going to have some level of PhD that other systems don't [00:57:00] have. Um, so I don't know. I think, I think it is going to be expensive and there'll be just as effective open source tools that are Very good.

[00:57:11] Vic: I what do you call it PhD or not? 

[00:57:12] Marcus: Yeah, I I very much get your point I I I think that we are going to continue to have this Nobody gets fired for hiring IBM or Microsoft. Yeah effect that open AI will benefit from Which will give them the irrational ability to charge this kind of enterprise price.

[00:57:33] Marcus: Whereas others won't be able to do it 

[00:57:35] Vic: Yeah, I think that's right. There's gonna be A safety and comfort that, in my opinion, is not validated. Right. . But, but, but you have this aura of safety and comfort Yes. Using OpenAI. Yes. And you're willing to pay two 50 a year because it's cheaper than you would have to hire a, a human PhD.

[00:57:58] Vic: Well, and the work three times as many [00:58:00] hours, 

[00:58:00] Marcus: well, three times. Many more than that. Uh, it's, it's way more than that. Yeah. It's, it's probably 10 to 20 times as many hours. 

[00:58:07] Vic: Well see. The, the part of the issue I have with this. Modeling and pricing is, I mean, does any company buy more than one? It can, it can work unlimited amount of, they may have, they may have to gate it or like say it only this many tokens or something.

[00:58:25] Marcus: Yeah. Um, I mean, look, they, they, they got to figure out how they're going to price the placement of high end labor. Right. So, um, uh, McDonald's gives his restaurants an AI makeover. And, uh, 

[00:58:37] Vic: yeah, and interestingly, they're not replacing humans. What they're doing is trying to sort of help their humans. Be more effective things like Uh recognizing that i'm grabbing this bag of food even though you ordered it.

[00:58:54] Marcus: Yeah 

[00:58:54] Vic: And so they're they're doing facial recognition to make sure that the person [00:59:00] that ordered it is picking it up And they have a bunch of ai sort of testing their machines To be able to predict that this McFlurry Shakemaker is going to break in the next month. Yeah, and 

[00:59:12] Marcus: there's definitely no like surveillance going on there as well.

[00:59:16] Marcus: Just 

[00:59:18] Vic: because they can do facial recognition about what I ordered, they're never going to use it for other purposes. No, of course not. Of course not. 

[00:59:25] Marcus: Alright, final story. Amazon unveils its first quantum computing chip. So, you know, Microsoft first, Google next, now Amazon. Bing, bing, bing. Again, I mean what I used to be shocked all have them in a lab just kind of like shit You know Microsoft came out the gates and now we have to unveil ours, too Because there's no way timing wise that that you know, they all planned to announce them within a week You know to me this is like this is like Novo dropping the price of you know, 

[00:59:52] Vic: yeah There's there's a I've never been able to figure this out, but I've been Observing it.

[00:59:57] Vic: There's like a zeitgeist [01:00:00] Capabilities like it's possible to do something and then that thing will be invented at different parts of the world at the same time kind of, and I think the, the big tech players are very porous. It's difficult for them to keep secrets very long. And so I think they are, they're learning from each other, uh, in published literature, but also in sort of rumor mills and they're, um, They're not that far away from each other.

[01:00:31] Vic: And then, yeah, once someone announces, everyone wants to show off what they have. Yeah, yeah. Some combination of those things. I mean, 

[01:00:37] Marcus: they just can't be left that far behind. Like, like, like if, if people think, I mean, you look at how Intel's value has just been decimated, right? I mean, you just, you just can't look like you're that far off the pace.

[01:00:48] Marcus: Right. Um, so. 

[01:00:50] Vic: Yeah. And from a user point of view, from a human point of view, we need more than one company to have quantum computers. And so the fact that there are three is [01:01:00] more likely that it'll be good for humanity than not. 

[01:01:04] Marcus: I mean, yeah, although it's also making quantum very, very real, very, very quickly.

[01:01:10] Marcus: And what I'm not seeing enough of is the quantum proofing. Yeah, right. I mean, I'm not seeing how we're going to protect. I thought encryption standard for quantum. I haven't seen the proof that it. That actually works. Yeah, maybe. I think we're getting to the point where we need to start seeing that. That we need to start seeing, hey, e commerce is going to be safe.

[01:01:35] Marcus: Your banking is going to be safe. You know, Bitcoin's not going to get, uh, compromised. You know. Yeah. We're getting close. We're getting close to the Oh, yeah. To needing to know that. 

[01:01:46] Vic: I'll find it. Some time ago, there was a new encryption standard. I remember. I remember. Their point was, it's going to take us Five to ten years to get this out there and in place so that [01:02:00] when quantum computing is live It's your bank account and your phone and everything is is protected right and whether it works or not.

[01:02:07] Vic: I don't know Yeah, 

[01:02:08] Marcus: it's feeling more and more like it's gonna be live very soon. So 

[01:02:12] Vic: yeah, I mean well five years Which is pretty soon for quantum computing. 

[01:02:18] Marcus: Well, look, my, my, my concern is really, and then we're going to wrap because I got to get to dinner. But, you know, my concern is, okay, if Amazon, Google, and Microsoft all have quantum chips that are, you know, on the way, um, then how do we make sure That North Korea doesn't have one, right?

[01:02:37] Marcus: Because we just saw the Lazarus group, which is a state sponsored hacking group. Do the largest crypto hack in the history of crypto. And they did it with social engineering. They wouldn't, they didn't even use like crazy technology, but that's the weak point. Yeah. But they're not apologizing. They're literally like, no, it's state sponsored hacking.

[01:02:57] Marcus: They're doing it on purpose. Right. [01:03:00] So, um, I guess thinking globally, I want to know that we've. We're getting to the point where quantum proofing some of our most important, uh, data transfer technologies. 

[01:03:19] Vic: Yeah, I mean, I, there's no question that we need that. So I agree with that. All 

[01:03:26] Marcus: right. Um, great show. Uh, fun and also very kind of scary AI rundown 

[01:03:32] Vic: this week.

[01:03:32] Vic: So we'll have the demos and things in the show notes. So if you're listening in audio, uh, I think it's worth checking out. 

[01:03:39] Marcus: Uh, also I really enjoyed the show with, with Stu Clark. 

[01:03:42] Vic: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Premise is that was really cool, huge and really successful company that not enough people know about. Yep.

[01:03:49] Marcus: Yep. Well, they've had their heads now just kind of like, you know, just going and growing. So it was it was great. And also, I think one thing that I liked about it is, um, I've I've I've been around Stu several times now, [01:04:00] and he's actually like a much more, um, passionate and irreverent CEO than you would think, just because the company doesn't have the super high profile.

[01:04:08] Marcus: Well, 

[01:04:08] Vic: at the 

[01:04:09] Marcus: moment. 

[01:04:09] Vic: That's why the long form is, is good. Like it allows him to like in a sound bite, he doesn't totally always come out. Uh, but yeah, he, he, he's very passionate and he has a 

[01:04:19] Marcus: lot of data and he's, he's great. A ton of data, a ton of data and very strong conviction around what needs to happen to make the healthcare system in America better.

[01:04:27] Marcus: So, um, it was a great interview. Good job. Yeah. Good. All right, man. See you next week. Have fun in Miami. Thanks.