[00:00:19] Thoroughly confused, not a good thing in tech. Happy to have you along my tech enthusiast brothers and sisters. I'm Sam Bushman, Jay Harrison's with me. NetworkProvidersInc.com provides the funding for this broadcast. We're grateful to them. If you want to partner in IT, think NetworkProvidersInc.com from beginning to end. They've got your IT covered as a partner. Strategic Consulting all the way through the help desk. Every part of IT can be handled by NetworkProvidersInc.com.
[00:00:48] NPI TechGuys.com is the website for the show. Audio, video, it's all at your fingertips. NPI TechGuys.com, also available on X and YouTube and everywhere. Spread the word. Hi, Jay. Hey, Sam. How's it going? I'm doing fantastic, except I'm confused of this first headline is my problem. Yeah, confused. There's so many headlines. Yes, sir. Are we talking about Amazon? No, listen to this one. Okay. Robotics firms are rapidly automating.
[00:01:17] Isn't robotics already automated? Well, yeah, but robotics firms are rapidly automating the garment manufacturing. So with one California company replacing sewing entirely by gluing fabric together. Now, I don't know if that's quality or not, but that will make for cheap clothing. Wait a minute. They're not going to have sewing anymore? Well, that's the point is. So the negative is like, hey, maybe this is going to make cheap clothing, right? But the positive is. See why I'm kind of confused? People. I get it.
[00:01:46] The positive is that they think that this shift with robotics could bring textile work back to the U.S. I guess I've even lost more. So let's separate issues a little bit because I'm kind of slow. So first off, we're not going to sew. We're going to glue. Yeah. Can't we just create bots that sew? You would think so, right? You could certainly teach Chad GPT to sew. Come on. Claude can sew. I would think so. I don't think you want to cheapen it up. I don't think I want a T-shirt that's glued together. Well, and that's an interesting thing.
[00:02:15] At first, you and I say that because we're thinking of like Elmer's, right? Yeah. We're not really thinking of Elmer's, but I'm just saying that's kind of our mentality is kind of Elmer's. Like it's not going to hold. It's going to. But if they really learned to glue properly, though, and it really kind of fused and, you know, the fabric and I mean, it might actually even be stronger than sewing could be. Potentially, I would assume. Yeah, it could be. I just feel like you're super glue and not Elmer's glue and Jay.
[00:02:41] I feel like they're saying robotics will help us make textiles cheaper than we can do it overseas. So that might bring more manufacturing back here. I like the idea of bringing manufacturing some of it back to the United States. That's a great thing. So I got a question. Cheap clothing. I understand. We don't want cheap clothing. We agree. It's not Elmer's. It's super. Okay. But what I'm, my question is this though. Would you rather have manual labor in China or Korea or, you know, Vietnam, wherever, wherever, where people are actually making money or would you rather have it all robotics and
[00:03:09] nobody's making money because there's no workers, but yet it's in America. Well, somebody's making money, but it's not. Well, yeah, but you know what I'm talking about. Yeah. Worker, the rank and file that. Yeah. The owners and the whatever making money. The guy that has to work on the robots is making money unless the robot works on the robots. Um, but there you go. I don't know. I'm just saying what it's, it's kind of a hard thing when we discuss race to the bottom used to be, let's find the cheapest layer where we can find now it's, let's use AI and computing. And is that really cheaper, Jay?
[00:03:34] So if I pay a ton of money to get a big data center or a big robotics expense, you know, at first it's more expensive, but overall, will it really be cheaper? That's their play. But I don't know that they know that Jay. That's the gamble though. That's what they got to find out. Yeah, sir. Yeah. And I, you know, I don't know. I think that you might lose some craftsmanship with a human touch, but you know, maybe I've seen robotics do things like welding that put humans to shame all the time. I agree. And when you see some of those robotics and especially even if you go into like an Amazon
[00:04:03] warehouse or some of those kinds of things, I mean, you see some incredible stuff. Yeah. It looks like, I don't know if you've been to one of these. Have you been to one of these places? I've never been, but I've seen a lot of footage from it. Yeah. Okay. I've been in Amazon warehouses and I'm telling you, it is something to behold. I mean, it literally like moves boxes down, um, conveyor belts and they go under something and this happens and that happens. And I mean, it's just, it is a, it is an amazing marvel to, to, to witness and to be part of it's something. I agree.
[00:04:33] And I don't, you know, there's a lot of people that are really against this stuff. They're going, oh my gosh, nobody's going to have jobs. This is horrible. This is, I'm not one of them, Jay. I look at it as a very positive thing. And I say, yeah, there's going to be a lot of job losses because there's a big shift. It's like the industrial revolution or whatever else. Right. You know, the guys that all had horses and horse stables and everything else is like, no, we don't want you to have a garage for your car. Come on. Um, but I look at this and say, there's real positives. And what I think is people will get different jobs doing different things.
[00:05:01] Um, and the question becomes not if you'll be replaced, it's when you'll be replaced. And when you say replaced, your job might be replaced by automation or robots or whatever else, but what can I do different? So I started out as an it consultant literally 40 years ago, Jay on DOS computers. And my job was to actually write a menu so that people could choose their different programs on their desktop. And then when they ran their program to configure it and, and to do their printer and I, you know, I could do all their it, one company, one guy, just their it guy.
[00:05:30] They wanted to basically back up their database. And so I used modems back in the day and wrote these scripts that sent the database between these two locations. And then in the morning they woke up and their database was synced and you know, this kind of stuff was the olden days when I was in 40, you know, whatever years ago. Nowadays, I'm more of an AI automation consultant kind of guy. And I'm putting together incredible databases and systems and linked things. And I mean, what I'm doing is a hundred percent different. Jay, it's not even close. Yeah. And do you feel like you're a hundred times more productive?
[00:06:01] Uh, no, I feel like I'm more productive because I do more, but the landscape's so much bigger that I actually in some ways do less. So now I'm not the only it guy at the company. I'm the main it guy and I'm kind of an it manager or an it whatever. Um, and I manage the moving parts, but I have to depend on a lot of outside firms. A lot of, I mean, I work with the internet, so I work with the internet provider people, you know, I work with these databases and so I work with this company or that company.
[00:06:29] I mean, you know, there's a lot of it stuff to do. So I'm more of a coordinator and a manager. Now that doesn't mean I'm not a strategist. I'm a thinker and I'm a doer. I don't do less necessarily, but since there's so much more that can be done, let's just say this, I have a bigger piece. Yes, but a bigger piece of a way bigger pie. So I used to have the pie, but now I have a bigger piece of a much bigger pie than my little pie was in the beginning. Right. Does that make any sense? Yeah.
[00:06:56] I mean, it's kind of like what PCs did to, um, to business in general, uh, accounting and all these other firms, the stock market and everything else. People thought, you know, with the, with mainframes and then personal computers, it was going to, everybody was going to lose their job and that didn't happen either. Just created more jobs really. Yeah. And I think that's, what's going to happen here too. The jobs are going to be much, much different, very unique, but they're still going to exist. Maybe this Amazon video will kind of help. What do you think Jay? Well, we'll see.
[00:07:25] Amazon is taking a little bit of a different perspective. I think that's the company matures. Yes, they are. They are, um, you know, looking to fire customers maybe even. Right. Well, and that's kind of the, at first and the real discussion is why and how and what, and with all what Amazon's doing, but I mean, they keep growing and hiring. Right. It's an interesting video. Let's check it out. And if they're so, if they're so robotic in every way though, why are they hiring Jay? Because the jobs are changing. That's why. Check this out.
[00:07:56] Amazon is banning accounts at record numbers right now for a lot of different reasons, but there's one big one. And that is your rate of returns. How often you return things. Are you abusing Amazon's return policy? So what is actually happening behind the scenes at Amazon when you return items? According to a former Amazon manager, the company terminates accounts for behaviors, including requesting too many refunds, sending back the wrong items,
[00:08:23] or violating other rules, such as trying to sell copyrighted material. Cases are usually reviewed by a person after algorithms flag the user account activity as suspicious. Shoppers also are more likely to get flagged if they mark unusual reasons for their returns. For example, an account could get flagged if a customer says an item didn't arrive as described when the other 99% of customers who made the return did so just because they didn't want it. A former senior manager at Amazon stated that if a customer's behavior consistently deviates from the norm, they're not the kind of customer Amazon wants.
[00:08:52] They're not just watching you. They're watching other people who've ordered the same thing. And their algorithm, their AI has established a pattern of exactly what the return reason usually is. And if you're out there in left field, my box was damaged, but no one else's was. Even on that same run, that is a red. Amazon. All right. What do you say to this, Jay? I actually don't have a problem with it. I don't have a problem with it either, although I have had experiences.
[00:09:20] Actually, this just happened this month that we're in right now. I received a package from Amazon and the package was empty. Like it wasn't, I don't even think somebody stole it. I just think that, you know, maybe from the manufacturer or whatever. So you can only... Sometimes these automated processes that I mentioned, Jay, when it slides down that belt and it's supposed to go under this and drop something in. Yeah. Sometimes it might have had one box go through extra by mistake somehow. That's right. Like a printer feeds a document or something like that. I don't think there's anything sinister about that. I think it happens. And thankfully, it wasn't very expensive.
[00:09:49] It was just some like charging cables, like $7 or $8. But they just sent me an empty box, literally a package. So you can only do their automated system. You can't really talk to somebody, not easily anyway. And, you know, I did the return. And the only thing they could do was that you have to ship it back. And we're going to refund your money right now, but you have to ship it back. If you don't ship it back, we're not going to do it. So I shipped them the empty box back and I put a note in there. Shipped a box full of nothing. Good work, Dan. And I said, yeah, I was like, this is what you guys gave me.
[00:10:14] Well, then I got a notice on my account that said, hey, we got something from you or whatever, but you didn't ship this back and, you know, you're being flagged. And I just decided not to fight it. I was just like, whatever, it's $7. So I just got gypped out of it. But I'm like, come on. You know, so it's not perfect. And I hope, I think it's a good idea because I think there's a lot of people out there abusing it. And I think those customers should get fired. But they better have a little bit of. Well, get their accounts closed. Yeah. That's what I mean by firing a customer. Like, you know, if they're abusive of it.
[00:10:43] The days of the customer is always right is gone. They're using AI to prove that not to be the case. And the reason I say that I'm generally Ford is because I get that people are abusing the system. And I think that they've kind of created a mentality, though. I mean, I know that women, when they order things, they'll say, hey, I like these four dresses. I'm really only wanting to buy two dresses. But I'm going to buy four and try them and see which one fit good. And I'm going to send back the other two. Is that abuse or is that acceptable? Amazon has a specific policy for that. They have a seven-day try before you buy sort of thing, especially with clothing,
[00:11:12] where you don't get charged unless you keep it. And I think that's kind of a cool idea for people that are doing just what you're talking about. Now, remember, the customer is always right. That's only half the phrase. The full phrase is the customer is always right in matters of taste. So it doesn't mean. Oh, I thought it was when they agreed with Sam Bushman. Yeah, right. It doesn't mean they're always right. It just means, hey, if you think blue shoes look great, then you're right, buddy, because that's what you think. And that's on you.
[00:11:45] To try to create top-notch service and to try to not, you know, if there's a dispute, you're going to be the peacemaker and the kind person. And that's good quality service for sure. But anyway, the point is they're using AI to change this game. And people need to get used to it. And we need to start to behave in ways that, you know, makes sense. When you abuse things, you're going to get caught. And this is just another way they're working on making that happen. Quick pause. I'm Sam. He's Jay. And we keep an eye on tech so you don't have to.
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[00:13:39] Together, we can uphold our Constitution and ensure liberty and justice for all. Your community needs you now more than ever. All right, back with you live, ladies and gentlemen. I'm telling you, AI is taking the world by storm, like it or not. It's happening. There's no doubt about it. And, you know, half the stuff we talk about is AI these days, and people think, man, that's crazy. But you know what?
[00:14:09] It's affecting everybody's lives so much, it's impossible to avoid. It's kind of like Donald Trump when it comes to political news. It's like, you just can't not talk about it. Right. So that's what's going on, Jay. But there's an interesting twist. People are pushing back on AI. We've got two stories in a row that are kind of negative on AI. The first one, AI is losing the, quote, PR battle. The Epoch Times wrote this piece, and it's basically saying artificial intelligence may be advancing fast, but public opinion is moving in the opposite direction.
[00:14:39] More Americans are becoming uneasy about where AI is headed. Analysts say the industry could face major consequences if that, quote, mistrust keeps growing. I agree with that. They say critics point to concerns of a job losses, but I think we need to look differently. The question is, how do you reinvent yourself? How do you find a job in the new world, the new economy? And I'm an AI consultant, man. That's how I'm fitting my deal in. And I'm creating all kinds of automated cool stuff.
[00:15:07] There's new ways to make money you haven't even considered. Be creative, folks. Political bias is a concern. Privacy issues. The growing power of massive tech companies. AI developers are continuing to promise really revolutionary breakthroughs. But you know what? Workers are hearing something different. It's called replacement or flat-out canceling.
[00:15:29] The article argues, though, that the tech industry has focused heavily on hype and speed, but not enough on reassuring the public. And that growing disconnect is beginning to show up in public reactions. People are concerned. Political pressure. I mean, it's everywhere. And if the backlash continues, folks, it could slow down data center construction. Increased government regulation could slow things down. Anyway, it could be a big, big problem. What do you say, Jay?
[00:15:58] You know, I see this happening. You saw probably a lot of graduations are going on now, and there's a lot of commencement ceremonies. And when people are mentioning AI, they're getting boos. They're getting booed off the stage when they're talking about, hey, AI, you know, this and the coming age. You guys are graduating into this class. And there's a lot of people. There's a lot of sentiment on that side. In fact, that pushback of the negativity in AI, especially in entry-level job market, there was a Gallup poll that just came out.
[00:16:28] And they said 43% of Americans that are age 15 to 34 think it's a good time to find a job locally. That's down from 75% in 2022. So only 43% of Americans right now in that younger age, college age, graduate kind of bracket think that right now is a good time to find a job. And they're blaming it on AI. And that's true. There's a lot of that backlash. I submit that it's a lot like the dot-com bust, though. The reasons are different. The concerns are different. But the principles are really the same.
[00:16:57] AI is not going away anytime soon. Now, you might fight against it. You might slow it down. You might disrupt it a little bit. But I'm telling you, it is such a money saver. And it's such an advancement in capabilities that you just can't stop its progress, Jay. I agree. It's unstoppable. The genie is out of the bottle.
[00:17:44] Okay. At least in this kind of world of talk and podcasting and discussions. When it comes to the business world, I'm doing some things that are just amazing, Jay. Not that I'm amazing necessarily. But a good tech guy with great AI becomes a great tech guy. Absolutely. And a more effective tech guy. I mean, things that used to just take me. I just built with another buddy.
[00:18:11] I built a database program to deal with transportation and shipping and POs. And how do they handle all that, right? And a database probably would have taken me maybe a month or two to build in the old days. I literally built the whole thing in three days almost. Wow. It's working great. And it's partly because of AI. It's partly because of the advancements in online SaaS software that's just so smart.
[00:18:41] I mean, you used to have to define every field and every... What does the field accept in terms of data and what can it do? And all that stuff now just comes together in seconds. You could build websites. We built a whole website for somebody in less than a week together, Jay. True. Absolutely. That stuff just would not be possible without a lot of these awesome tools, many of them coming from AI. Well, they're building AI data centers. And that's where people are getting concerned too because it's costing a lot of money. And a lot of people are concerned about what's happening to the land.
[00:19:09] And will it be nice to live by one of these things? And people are really, really concerned. Utah, though, has become a big one. Many, many years ago, they built the big old data spy center is what they call it in Utah. The NSA and all that built that thing. Everybody was pretty critical because it needs tons of water. And we don't have a lot of water in the Rocky Mountains. So that was a concern. Well, now they got an even bigger one. Here's the deets. Then we'll talk about it. Right in your backyard, Tim. Oh, boy. Yes, sir.
[00:19:34] So, Utah has approved a data center so massive, it's going to be more than twice the size of Manhattan. It's being built in the empty desert of northwestern Utah, near Snowville, close to the Idaho border. The project is called the Stratus Data Center, and it's being pushed by Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank. But this isn't just one building. The full project could cover over 40,000 acres, an area bigger than Manhattan. That's around 62 square miles.
[00:20:03] For comparison, Manhattan is only about 22 square miles. Meaning this AI complex could eventually take up nearly three times the space of Manhattan. And the power demand is even crazier. The site could eventually need up to three gigawatts of electricity, roughly the output of multiple nuclear reactors. Environmental groups warn it could raise Utah's planet heating pollution by nearly 50%.
[00:20:28] Estimates suggest the project's power systems could consume up to 16.6 billion gallons of water per year. That's enough water to fill around 25,000 Olympic swimming pools, all in one of the driest states in America. So. Wow. I don't even know how to respond to that, Jay. That's massive. I see why people are freaking out, though. And what I think that AI is doing, they're losing the PR battle. That's true.
[00:20:53] But what I really think needs to happen is we need to kind of slow down and deliver this in ways that are meaningful. I mean, how many jobs is it going to create? We haven't even talked about any of that. How do we deal with the water? Where are we going to get enough water to cool that thing? Where are we going to get enough water to run it or whatever it's going to be? You know, people are worried about legitimate things. And if you want to win the battle, what you've got to do is help people understand this. Bring it on slowly. You know, you just can't dump it on people without the facts and have people be comfortable,
[00:21:23] especially when their livelihoods, their living, their health, their, I mean, I can keep going. All those things are at stake. You got to kind of expect people to go, wait, hold the heck on a second, buddy. You want to do 66 miles a what? And I'm thinking, why do we need 66, what is it, square miles? 66 square miles, yeah. Nothing about AI is slow, though. What the heck? You know, it's just rapid fire. And people are going to have to get used to it, I think, you know. But what does that mean, though? What do they need 66 miles for? I mean, that's so big, Jay.
[00:21:53] I know. Well, as I understand it, this is going to be in a valley. And, you know, they like to name the nighttime temperatures, you know, going up to like 23 degrees at some point. The daytime temperatures are less. It's really just that region. It's not the whole state. Some people mistakenly say this will affect the entire state like that. And it's not.
[00:22:15] But I think what they're doing is they're buying up this big area and they're getting all of the water rights along with it so that they'll be able to put in deep wells and pull stuff up. But, you know, a lot of that water, it's either going to get reclaimed or it's going to become steam. And, you know, you should see it as rainfall again. I don't think they're necessarily going to be polluting the water. It's as bad as it sounds when you really. And that's what I mean by educating people about what do they really need 66 miles for?
[00:22:41] Are we going to have 66 miles of massive lockdown buildings with computers in it? Is that? No, no, no. I don't think so. That's not what we're talking about. I don't think. And so it is about the water, the wells, about open space, about separating things, about fences for security and safety. I mean, it's all kinds of things. But if you gave people a little bit of an understanding, I think that the response would be a lot less negative. Than people think. And people need to also be educated about this. This AI stuff's coming.
[00:23:10] You can fight it and you can boo everybody off the stage if you want to. But at the end of the day, look, it's coming. So the question becomes, do you want to have the lights on in your house and make your microwave popcorn and watch your TV and then get on chat GPT or not? Yeah. I think it's also at a bad time. I mean, Florida is certainly in a drought, but the West is having a drought too. You know, Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam, they're at dead flow or whatever. They call it. Record lows. Yeah. And so it's kind of a bad time to try to roll something like this out.
[00:23:39] So it heightens the concern that people have about it. For sure. Anyway, we bring that up, folks, not just to go negative or anything else, but we really want you to understand this is what people are really wrestling with. And like I say, if you want to win the AI battle, you've got to explain it in terms people understand. You've got to explain people where there's a road forward for them in meaningful, productive, safe, stable ways. Okay. Anyway, looks like people are starting to pay more for internet service, Jay. Yeah.
[00:24:08] We've got a story about Starlink is going to be raising their prices. Their residential Mac service going up $10 from $120 to $130. Their portable stuff, even if you have it in standby mode, used to be $5 a month. Now it's going to be $10 a month. You know, with this announcement, I've decided I'm probably going to roll back my Starlink to a smaller plan. I'm not going to use the residential Macs anymore. All right. Well, we're going to end on that note for this episode, but I want to bring this up next episode too, because this is critical and affects a lot of different people.
[00:24:37] We'll dig into more details. Okay. Thanks for watching and listening to Tech Watch. We keep an eye on tech so you don't have to. Brought to you by NetworkProvidersInc.com. You've got a friend in the IT business. NPITechGuys.com for our website. Make it a great.