[00:00:18] Happy to have you along, my fellow tech enthusiasts. I've decided that this new AI assistant is not for me, but I think it's for Jay because Jay's a Google lover. Happy to have you along. I'm Sam Bushman. This is TechWatchRadio. Let's start with kind of a controversy. We keep an eye on tech so you don't have to. Brought to you by NetworkProvidersInc.com. When you want a strategic partner, when you want an embedded tech team to your company, think NetworkProvidersInc.com. The website for the show, NPITechGuys.com, radio, video, and more.
[00:00:47] Spread the word, would you please? Hi, Jay. Hey, Sam. How's it going? Are you going to load up Google Spark? You're not going to do it, Sam. I'm going to call this thing Sparky, and I'm not doing it. He's an electrician. No, he's an AI. Oh, he is? Google's advanced AI assistant. Okay, so not just AI, advanced AI, Jay. Oh, yeah. They're super AI. It's part of their AI ultra subscription. Now, let me explain something. Google was falling way behind, folks.
[00:01:11] They were almost dismissed as not a player, and now they basically came back with a thunderous catch-up, if you will. They kind of got one up by open AI. Yeah, it's like a horse race, though, Jay. It's interesting. You know, you think some horse is out of the race, and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, my gosh, they're around the bend. They're gaining on so-and-so. Yeah, that's what the AI race is like right now, though. Yes, sir. Anthropic. You've got Grok. You've got Google Gemini.
[00:01:36] You've got co-pilots in there somewhere. They're way in the back. I don't know where they are, but they're around. But now Google wants to launch this $100 a month subscription, and it's going to introduce Spark as an AI assistant. It's an innovative cloud-based agent designed to immensely and securely integrate and manage tasks across Google's core services like Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, as well as third-party applications such as Adobe, Spotify, and more.
[00:02:03] With capabilities ranging from drafting emails to creating dynamic study guides, Spark operates autonomously, facilitating complex digital tasks without direct access to local files, ensuring privacy and security. Well, I don't know about that. Most people's life now is in the cloud anyway. If you're a Google Sheets, Google Drive kind of person, you don't even care what workstation you're on. All your stuff's out there anyway. So it's saying, well, it doesn't have access to your local files. It doesn't mean anything if you don't have any local files, right?
[00:02:33] Good point. Yeah. It's set to transition personal and professional digital interaction. It's going to feature new connectivity through Android Halo interface, enhancing user oversight on ongoing tasks. Available initially to trusted testers, Spark promises a robust 24-7 AI companion, reshaping how users interact with their digital ecosystem. I will not be doing this, though, Sam, because the number one right off the bat is it's too expensive. They've got to...
[00:03:03] $200, right? No, it's $100 a month. $100 or $1,200 a year on top of what you're already paying for your Google suites and your... $100, I like that. Yeah. I'm not going to pay that for a digital assistant. They should roll that, like, right now. Compared to a real assistant, that's nothing, buddy. Well, okay. That's a fair point. But compared to Chad's GPT, which is my digital assistant, by the way, I pay $20 a month for.
[00:03:31] Yeah, and they're saying that's not sustainable and that's going away soon. Well, it hasn't gone away yet. So in the meantime, they need to compete. I pay $100 a month for Claude, but I do a lot of coding that justifies it. Okay. I can see that. And I can see the value, especially in coding. But to have somebody jot off an email for me or coordinate my flight schedule or something, I don't know. I just don't see it. I don't have a personal assistant either, so... Here's what they're saying, though.
[00:03:59] This is a pivotal shift from simple search queries to a comprehensive, anticipative, AI-driven experience, my friend. That sounds like a lot of marketing buzzwords. Oh, come on. They're just trying to tell you how awesome it is, buddy. I don't see it. It's like the Lego movie. Well, then they need to have an introductory rate or something. I don't know.
[00:04:25] So I'm not going to jump in feet first on that or head first, I should say, at $100 a month. If I throw in a wearable... Hold on. If I throw in a wearable, are you going to be in? I don't know. Probably not. No. But... Yeah. There's a revolution. Revolutionizing wearables, Jay. Google's AI-powered glasses are back. Did you see this? Yeah. But it's not Google Glass. It's not that anymore. I know. That's because that was a failure. You got to name it something different to give it another chance for survival. Right?
[00:04:55] Right. The meta glasses seem to be doing well. So Google has got a new glasses. They introduced this in their I.O. conference in PC World. And our PC World covered this. Google's innovated Gemini-powered smart glasses. A decade after the Google Glass fiasco, they're revisiting this concept with a prototype that blends sleek design with practical AI functionality. They're made by Samsung.
[00:05:22] They feature a discrete camera, touch controls, lightweight frame, seamless integration of Google's AI assistant for dynamic real-world interaction. So despite some limitations like basic HUD, heads-up display, and ongoing concerns about battery life and privacy, these glasses represent a significant step toward mainstream adoption of smart eyewear. They say. Yeah. When you talk about battery and privacy, you've just destroyed the project, Jay. Well, I know.
[00:05:50] And, you know, meta glasses are around right now. And you see people recording and doing stuff with this. Right now, the latest trend is I have seen these guys that have, you know, a little tech van or whatever, and they go into popular shopping malls and places like this. And what they're doing is they're disabling for, I don't even know how much, 50 bucks or whatever. They will take your glasses and disable the red recording light in it so that they'll actually open it up and disconnect the LED. Yeah, so that way you can't tell when somebody's recording. Exactly.
[00:06:18] So they can walk around and record, and you don't know, you don't immediately go, oh, those are smart glasses. You think that it's just normal, and you kind of disregard it, and they can surreptitiously record more. Okay. Here's what I say, though. I don't think these things are ready for prime time. I think there are glasses that are getting closer. I think eventually they will have wearable tech like this that becomes very functional and usable. They've got to work on privacy concerns. They've got to work on battery life. They've also got to work on usability. But I'll tell you, this is an interesting little twist on this.
[00:06:45] Jay, I know a lot about the disability world as a blind person and stuff like that, right? And I'm telling you that sometimes, believe it or not, blind people kind of lead the way on certain topics. And this is one of them. So blind people led the way when it comes to voice assistance. And at first, it was just the blind needed it. Nobody else did. But then when cars wanted to do navigation, the garments and everything else, they're like, oh, wow, this is great. We want it to talk to us, too. Well, that really advanced things for blind people because now everybody wants that capability.
[00:07:13] And once the development cycle kind of goes the rounds, then that can be deployed in all kinds of places. And so the blind benefited significantly from that. Right. And the society benefited from the blind kind of taking the lead on that, if that makes sense. Well, the same thing is kind of true here now. Now, they have got, for example, if you get the latest iPhone, you can run magnifier and you can tell magnifier to read to you what's in front of you. And you can literally point your camera at things and it will describe everything that it sees. Right.
[00:07:41] So you can walk into a room, you can point your camera and it'll say, hey, piano with a piano pinch. Or it'll say girl sitting on couch. Or it'll say, you know, this and that. And it gets more descriptive as it gets smarter and better. And it isn't perfect, but I mean, it works surprisingly well. And if you're a blind person and you navigate places by yourself or whatever, it's pretty neat to pull that out. And it says, you know, hey, Starbucks sign, if you know where to point and you can know that you're at the Starbucks like you think you are or whatever the case may be.
[00:08:07] And so this is an example where the blind people are kind of leading this tech because just imagine rather than pointing my iPhone, just imagine if I had glasses on and I could just look, point my head towards something and boom, it reads out to me in a little earpiece and tells me things. And I mean, you're getting closer to vision, even though it's not exactly. Vision and as the eye gets faster and can describe more. So you're going to see specific uses. Now, blind people like me, I want the best version of these glasses.
[00:08:33] I don't want all the other hype that they've got, but I do want some functionality there. And so you're going to start to see that. And blind people are putting together some of these tech tech aids that are really valuable and really helping at making a tremendous difference. So you're going to see the blind lead. Then you're going to see society back for different reasons. But yet all boats are going to rise as a result. Yeah, I could see that. And I definitely see the use case for that in selected areas. Like I even think that the original Google Glass with a heads up display seems like it would
[00:09:03] be more effective for things. I mean, especially for sighted people, I think I would rather have, you know, if I'm walking around a city I've never been in, I'd rather see text prompts attached to buildings or whatever or directions than a bunch of noise in my ear, like trying to describe everything or tell me. And most of these are driven that way in a sound feedback kind of way. I don't, I think personally right now, I mean, they're selling well because they've gotten the price way down compared to what Google Glass was when it came out.
[00:09:32] So the Meta glasses are selling well, I see them all over on TikTok, AI glasses, you know, for 50, 60, 80 bucks a pair. So they must be selling decently to have that many out there. But I think it's kind of a toy or a novelty at this point. I don't know that. I don't know that. I will tell. Here's what I do know. We thought the watches were going to be nothing and wow. Yeah. I mean, there's significant drawbacks to a watch. I mean, you're like having to charge it every day, but people get over that. They're still popular as I'll get out now. Well, that's true.
[00:10:02] I'm wearing one right now. But at first you kind of thought, what's the value, right? I did. Because, you know, before this, I used to wear a self-winding, was it Samsung? No. Anyway, it doesn't matter. But you never had to charge. You never had to do anything with it. It always was just a watch and it did its job.
[00:10:21] But the fact that you can see messages, you can answer stuff hands-free, it gives you like a second cell phone and a second way to, for example, I use this all the time. I use my watch to find my cell phone and my cell phone to find the watch. So it's pretty. Yeah, good plan. Pretty interesting. But, you know, when you get enough use cases. And his wife uses her cell phone to find Jay. Yeah, that's right.
[00:10:46] You know, with enough features, you could justify, oh, okay, well, I have to charge this thing for an hour or a couple hours every day. Okay. But, I don't know. The glasses, I don't see it. Here's the other thing. For example, I wear contacts. Because I wear glasses. Jay, hold on. Stop, stop, stop. Eventually, the glasses are going to be contacts. Well, yeah, we've heard that. But where are you going to put a battery, right? On a contact. Where are you going to put a battery? Come on. Oh, it's going to be on your body somewhere else for some reason and wirelessly, you know. Yeah, that's still way off in the future.
[00:11:16] If at all. It is, but they've got that where your phone, your phone can charge without a cable. But listen, I don't wear glasses because I don't like glasses. I don't like them on my face. I don't like them fogging up when I go from outside to inside. Yeah. All these other reasons. They get dirty. They get stuff on. You have all the same problems. You're like, you're wearing glasses for somebody. You're right. Who may not even need glasses. And it's just, I don't know. I don't see the. The question becomes how slim, how simple, how wearable can they make it? How, you know, what? There's all kinds of tidbits to this.
[00:11:45] And I'm just telling you right now, you're going to see this market move forward because Elon Musk has said he wants to basically create blended humans or whatever you want to call it. Hybrid humans where you've got. Cyborg. Cyborg kind of mixed together. Right. Yeah. And so when you do that, then the question becomes, how are you going to do it? Are you going to put a chip in the back of your head and the back of your hands? Are you going to wear glasses? Are you going to wear contacts? How's that all going to come down? And that's really one of the great questions we still have to deal with. When we get back, I want to tell you about the 80-20 rule. It's being applied to AI now. Everything is AI, baby.
[00:12:15] Even 80-20 now. We'll talk about it. I'm Sam. He's Jay. Remember, npitechguys.com is the website for the show. npitechguys.com. If you want a partner for tech, networkprovidersinc.com. This is a battle. A battle between truth and deceit. A battle between forces that would enslave this country in darkness
[00:12:43] and between a media that wants to present you with the truth. We are being censored. America's news outlets no longer provide the truth. 90% of news outlets in the United States are controlled by six corporations. The mission of the Epoch Times is to chase the truth. To ground all statements and facts. Theepictimes.com Cybercrime is exploding. Take Sarah from Sweet Delights,
[00:13:10] whose world crumbled after having to close with not being able to bounce back. Small businesses are prime targets, but the right strategies can keep yours safe. Jay Hill, CEO of Network Providers, has co-authored The Cyber Playbook Simplifies Cybersecurity for Business Owners with Strategies to avoid costly breaches and fines. Build a strong cyber attack response. Secure your business with key protections.
[00:13:38] Cyber threats aren't slowing down, but you can stay ahead. Protect your business. Ensure its security for tomorrow. Get The Cyber Playbook today at networkprovidersinc.com slash cyber dash playbook or call 385-446-5500 now.
[00:13:57] In an age where information can be overwhelming, the 80-20 chat GPT prompt emerges as a revolutionary learning tool, Jay,
[00:14:27] offering a quick way to garner knowledge on any topic that you want to instantly. So you know the 80-20 rule, right? You want to explain that real quick, Jay? Yeah, there's so many ways to apply it. The 80-20, 80% of your efforts, you know, take 20% of the time, and then the last 20% will take 80% of the time to complete. There's so many... And there's a balance where it's not really worth that last 20%, you know, 20% of value that you get out of 80% more time, right? Right. Okay.
[00:14:56] So that's the general concept. And I agree, it can be applied many, many different ways. But they're saying master new skills in minutes, discover the power of the 80-20 chat GPT prompt. And the method basically is rooted in the... And I didn't know this actually principle had a name. The Pareto principle, right? Pareto principle? Yeah. Focuses on establishing the crucial 20% of a topic that accounts for 80% of its essence or its benefit.
[00:15:25] And then basically... So Ben Patterson over at PC World saying, hey, let's apply this thing, using it to tackle things. And so what you do is you just create a prompt in AI that says, I want you to help me get caught up to something. I want to use the 80-20 rule. I want to get caught up on this topic. I don't need to know everything about it. Right. I don't need to be a rock star, but I need to quickly come up to speed like right now. Give me the core that I got to know to do it. And I've been using these kind of prompts or these kind of points, and it's incredible, Jay. You can really learn something very quickly. You can get...
[00:15:55] And I'll give you a quick example. I need to get some shirts for a business that I'm working on. And, you know, we're so small, I don't know where to get shirts. And I don't know how to do the minimums and how to get everything that I need to people to get the shirts done. I mean, I've done it before, but other people have been involved. And I just... I mean, it's just every time I do about it, it's like, I don't know what the latest, greatest, how they do it is. Right. I don't know what the sweet spot is for the price of shirts. Like, I don't want to get ripped off, but I don't want to buy a cheap shirt. How do I get a handle on this? So I just went to chat to me and said,
[00:16:24] Hey man, I need to be a rock star coming to shirts. I don't want to know everything, but I need to know the basics. What should I be paying for this kind of a shirt? What's the range? What should I look at? And how do I go about this? And it just laid it out for me, dude. Like three paragraphs. Now, do I know everything? Of course not. But do I have a good understanding to go talk to somebody who do know things to where I can intelligently be involved in the conversation? Absolutely. And do you say, give me the 80-20 in your prompt? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, dude. That's pretty good.
[00:16:51] I've got some examples of other common examples of 80-20 rule. And this is just five quick ones and this gets you your arms around it. So in business, 80% of revenue comes from 20% of customers. And that's a fact. In every business that I consult for in IT, by the way. Yeah. In productivity, 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. Yeah, I agree with this. In problems, 80% of complaints come from 20% of causes. And I don't think this is 100% factual, hard, 100% line.
[00:17:20] Yeah, but it's a good estimate. But it's 80%. It's 80% true. Software, 80% of users only use 20% of its features. That's definitely true with Office. That's actually maybe 90% use only 10% of the features. But yes, the point's right. And the last one is really good. And I see this all the time. In organizations and events, 20% of the volunteers do 80% of the work. Sad but true. Some good examples of it. Well, in our church too, we have this kind of idea where, you know, at church,
[00:17:49] there's families that you can count on to do everything. And we call them the 10 families. Yeah. And so at church, you know, you go to the 10 families when you want something done because one of those 10 families will get it done. If you go to other people, it's like a struggle, pulling teeth, difficult. You don't know what's going on. You go to one of those 10 families and buddy, it happens. They're the 20%. And they're basically the 20% of it. Yeah. So it's kind of interesting to make the point. But anyway, you can use it with ChatDpt and some of these agents. And this is an example where, you know, ChatDpt and some of these other agents are great, but they produce too much information, Jay,
[00:18:18] just because it can produce 3000 pages on something and make me, I mean, I can know the intimate detail of everything. That doesn't mean that's what I want or need. I'm going to try learning. I'm going to try using the, the 80 slash 20, uh, in future prompts and see if it, I want to see what happens and I want to report back, sir. Yes, sir. But I've been using it and it's great. Say 80, 20 rule though. Don't just say 80, 20, right? Because otherwise it might not understand. You got 80, 20 rule means something, right? Right. So anyway, I just want to make sure your prompts make sense for it. AI startups, Jay,
[00:18:49] check this out. Do you want to cover this one? This was insane. AI startups to stop hiring humans, billboards, ignite national debate over replacing workers with AI. San Francisco based artisan, artisan launched a viral billboard campaign, urging businesses to quote, stop hiring humans while promoting AI sales agents that automate prospecting, follow-up meeting schedules. They're scheduling. Anyway, it sparked a backlash and renewed debate over how quickly artificial
[00:19:16] intelligence is replacing routine white collar work. So I, I don't know if they intended for that to get the buzz. I mean, we're talking about it right now. no, no. The CEO now spoke out about this and he said he only did it to get the buzz. They really realized humans need to be at the helm. What they want to do is get humans out of the day-to-day footwork and they want to have humans be managers and they want the bots to do a lot of the legwork and a lot of the repetitive tasks. And anyway, he went on some talk shows and explained that all this is not a new topic either. It's been around for quite a while, but it's blown up recently because people are just,
[00:19:45] now that people are starting to lose jobs a lot more, people are going, Whoa, these people are causing it. And now there's all kinds of false information out there about this guy. He's just a bad guy and he's evil and he hates humans. And, and when you really follow up on this topic and study the interviews, he really candidly says we did it to get the buzz. Well, I would, I would call that a really believe it a hundred percent. No, we don't. He literally says that. I would call that a successful marketing campaign without question because no, you know, no news is bad news. And in that sense, and everybody's talking about it. Um, yeah,
[00:20:14] even if he gets a little bit of heat from it, it's that was successful. I think, I think it was more than successful. So the point is, it's been going on for quite some time. And, uh, the CEO says straight out, you know, no, we don't really believe that. Um, we don't believe you should just fire all kinds of humans, but you do might want to check out our incredible demo where we can have your humans do more and you might need to not need to hire people as quickly. And anyway, pretty sound when you listen to the interviews or the details, I just thought it was kind of funny and interesting, uh,
[00:20:41] how it turns into this big viral campaign. And the guy's like, psych, we don't even really believe that it sure worked well. It is funny. Joke's on you. It's just like, got them. Yeah. It's just funny. All right. I don't know how to respond to this. Jay. I do. What do they call this company? Hisense? Hisense. Yeah. A lot of people have Hisense TVs. They're facing federal privacy lawsuit over smart TV data collection. I got a Roku TV. I don't know if that's Hisense or not. It could be. I have a Hisense Roku TV. So yeah. Cause just understand my point is that Hisense folks,
[00:21:11] you got to really kind of pay attention to know if you have one. Cause you might have a Roku and say, no, mine's Roku. Well, you still might have a Hisense. No. Yeah. Because Roku technology can be built into any TV. It can be in a Vizio or whatever. I just want to make sure people understand. Hisense is like Samsung. Right. Whereas Roku is like a technology added to a TV. And they call it a Roku TV only because it's enabled by Roku or it has that fundamental core feature, but yet it at the same time is made by somebody. I have a Hisense 58 and I actually have to replace it because the backlight is getting dimmer over time. But anyway, that's not good side issue,
[00:21:40] but I may replace it because of this. So a federal class action lawsuit was filed May 12th in Northern California alleged Hisense smart TVs used ACR technology to collect viewing data without proper consent. And I do think this is a problem. In fact, people are saying Walmart bought their Vizio brand and now you have to have a Walmart account in order to start up or use the smart features of your Vizio. And Walmart's using that, they say, or allegedly I should say,
[00:22:09] to brand and market and to pull that data into your Walmart account so they know how to advertise and target things. Not only adds on the TV to you, but what you're doing and where you're at when you're in the store. Using the app as well. So there's, there's a lot of controversy over this. And I do think this is an area where there may need to be some external oversight because they're, they're taking a lot of leaps and advantages of people. And people don't know this. They don't realize this. They're just buying a TV.
[00:22:39] They're just hooking up. Oh, it needs a Walmart account. Okay, whatever. It needs a Roku account. They don't care. Most of us do, including me. Yeah. Not, not that I want to do it, but if you don't do it, you can't, you can't play. Yeah. Otherwise your TV is a monitor, right? And you're like, come on. Yeah. It's like a EULA. Do you want to agree to it? Do you want to read it? That's right. I want to agree to it because I have to, I don't want to read it. I don't care. I mean, it's not like I even agree, but it is that I have to agree. Right. Yeah. Otherwise you can't use it with software and everything else. And I think there's a, there's a case to be made there with those EULAs that are, you know,
[00:23:07] 20 pages long that people can't even be really held accountable to that stuff. When nobody's reading it, they, they, they purposefully legally is it up to where you can't understand it. And so that people, and make it super easy to bypass. You know, I think that there's some issues with that too, but that's a side topic. Yeah, that's for sure. Anyway, the bottom line is I hope we get truth on this because I don't really like them spying on this and taking all these snapshots because how much of it's really just used to improve their advertising versus how much is used
[00:23:36] for other purposes that may be gets sold or maybe used against you in other ways. I mean, there's no limit to what this can be used by. And especially when companies that are, that are international companies are not even us based companies. Laws don't apply internationally the same with the way they do domestically. And so that's a big concern, Jay. Not only that, but there's a, there's a whole nother aspect of this. If you remember like Nielsen ratings, and if you volunteered to do that, you know, you'd fill out a book and you do the stuff you would get paid to do that. So I think there should be number one, more transparency. Hey, do you want to do this?
[00:24:06] But also there should be some, uh, if you opt into it, there, you know, maybe get some remuneration or get some kind of something discount off of, uh, uh, your Walmart plus or whatever. I don't know. But I, I think if you're getting core valuable data from people, you, you probably should be paying for it at least being more obvious. You can't just hide that stuff and monitor what they're watching. Come on. Anthropic got a ton of money in a big old booming round. Of funding. Now it's valued at over a trillion dollars.
[00:24:36] Wow. Thanks for watching. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Sam Bushman. He's Jay Harrison. We keep an eye on tech. So you don't have to network providers, inc.com, mpi tech guys.com, spread the word, share the love and make it a great tech day. Will you? Hey, thanks. Thanks. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm.