Futuristic

We get into whether humanoid robots will fill Australia’s labour gaps and argue about whether AI will hollow out white-collar work.

In this episode of Futuristic, Cameron and Steve reunite after a three-month break to reflect on how far artificial intelligence and robotics have come since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. They chart the wild rise from OpenAI’s first conversational model to today’s trillion-dollar valuations, integrated browsers, agentic coding tools, and the dawn of humanoid robots. Along the way they weigh the “bubble” narrative, the myth of a job apocalypse, and the cultural impact of AI on everything from creativity to capitalism. The conversation pivots from nostalgia for the early internet to speculation about the next three years—when everyone, they predict, will be working with personal AI agents and, perhaps, living alongside household robots. The banter swings between philosophy, tech history, humour, and a few pulled hamstrings. Futuristic recording – Oct 30, 2025 Cameron: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Futuristic Podcast, episode 46. It is the 31st of October, 2025. The first time I’ve seen your face on a screen except on TikTok, Steve Sammartino. Since August 4th was the last time you and I did an episode, I did one with my old friend, Nick Johnson, principal of Toowoomba Ankin School on August 23. But we have not done a podcast for nearly three months, Steve. Not because there’s been nothing happening, just because there’s too much happening, and you’ve been too busy. Steve: Sounds so needy. I apologize wholeheartedly, Cameron. And, uh, the fact that you didn’t delete my phone from your contacts Cameron: No Steve: is revelatory, and I like it. It’s good. You’re a good man. And Cameron: revelatory. Steve: it and I missed it. Our chats because [00:01:00] every time I chat to you I get a little bit smarter. So I’ve been in Cameron: Same, same. Steve: and I’m glad we are going to, uh, unpack. Cameron: I’ve got less hair than the last time we talked. Not because it’s falling out, but just because it’s hard to tell with, there’s glare coming through my window. But, um, I am, uh, Sean Light so bright. Steve: And I just asked, when did you go gray? ’cause you got a really good gray mop there. When did it, were you one of Cameron: Well, I’m, yeah, I, I started going gray at 23. I’m white. I’ve been white for a lot longer than I’ve been gray, but Yeah. Steve: Blonde is area part of the Aryan Nation, Cameron: Or as the Mormons like to say white and delight them. If you wanna get into heaven, you need to be white and delight them. Steve: Do you? Cameron: Hmm. Steve: me. All right. Cameron: Steve? Um. In terms of what to talk about today. There’s been a lot of news in the last [00:02:00] three months and too much to catch up on, obviously, and I thought singers were coming up to the third anniversary of chat, GPT, which hit the world in November of 2022. It might be a good time to stop and reflect where have we come from, where are we today, and where do you think we might be three years from now? What do you think about that as a model, Steve? Steve: Perfect. It is the perfect time for a review. Three years. Things work in threes. It is the perfect time to review it because it’s been a pretty radical three years and maybe in some ways we’re in the [00:03:00] trough of disillusionment now. A lot of people are starting to ask questions. The bubble word comes up, which comes up with every technology revolution. And bubbles aren’t bad anyway. If a bubble bursts, the beneficiaries are usually the people because there’s been an excessive investment in capital and that can benefit all of us because the infrastructure gets built out and they overinvested and we need that. It happened with broadband cables and early internet and, and now it’s, it’s happening again potentially. And that’s good ’cause you want overinvestment because the beneficiaries are usually the wider populace when it comes to and technology Revolutions. Cameron: Yes. Look, there’s obviously a ton of investment, Steve: Mm. Cameron: ton of hype going into all things AI and robotics we’re to, [00:04:00] NVIDIA’s just became a $5 trillion company open. AI is suggesting they might IPO at a trillion dollar valuation. I mean, it is, uh, like bonkers stuff, absolutely bonkers. But I thought I would start this by pulling up the blog post that OpenAI put out in November, 2002. It was November 30th, so we’re about a month away from the five year anniversary. It was pretty simple. It said, we’ve trained a model called Chat, GPT, which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for chat GPT to answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests. Chat GPT is a sibling model to instruct GPT, which is trained to follow an instruction in a prompt and provide a detailed response. We are excited [00:05:00] to introduce chat GPT to get users feedback and learn about its strengths and weaknesses during the research preview usage of chat. GPT is free. Try it [email protected]. Then there were some samples of ways to use it. Limitations Chachi PT sometimes write plausible sounding, but incorrect or nonsensical answers. Well, I’m glad they fixed that. Uh, but. These were simpler times in November, 2022. Do you remember when you first heard about it and when you first used it? Steve: I was actually using GPT, uh, the, the model before, it might’ve been a 2.5 or a three, uh, through one of the APIs. ’cause the APIs were released earlier. wasn’t Grammarly. I’m trying to remember the name of it now. And it was, and it blew my mind the first time I saw it. Uh, when I went on to Chacha, bt I do remember it [00:06:00] being a super revolution, and we can remind listeners that they had a hundred million users in the first month, fastest adopted consumer product in history. also they’ve got 983 million monthly users now, which is pretty radical. You know, maybe one quarter of the internet. And a, Cameron: Wow. Steve: of people don’t have, call it unlimited data like we have in western markets. So you’d pretty much say if you’re in a Western market, you’re on it. Uh, it’s decimated search. I, I did say a statistic, which blew my mind on search. Now, if you’re a first page search on Google, first page search item, traffic is down. Reportedly just came out, uh, yesterday, 79%. And that’s two reasons. The first one is the AI dropped down summaries that happens in Google, which to their credit, they’ve adopted the reality of where they are. Unlike Kodak and said, look, people are going this way. We just have to adopt it and work out the business model later. [00:07:00] But also, I know that I use chat GBT 80% of the time when I once would use search. And I simply ask it for the live feeds of, tell me where you got it from, what happened today. And you know, those small prompts to make sure the data you’re getting isn’t just a hi historical construct. And it, it really has changed the way we use the internet fundamentally. And even though the last, I think the last maybe. Three or six months. A lot’s been happening, but nothing fundamental. I would say easy to forget how far we’ve come in those three years because the first version of chat, GBT when it was launched in, in November of 2022, remember that was an 18 month old database, and then it was six months old, and then now it’s live. It didn’t have code bases, didn’t have Dali, didn’t have image recognition, didn’t have video. It’s easy to forget that [00:08:00] it isn’t just chat GBT. It’s actually been really dramatic and we’ve almost been spoiled by the fact that every iteration, most of them, for 80% of that time in the past three years has been incredible and wowing. And maybe in the last few months, because we haven’t been wowed with the most recent iteration of Cha JBT, then all of a sudden, oh, bubble Bubble came out. Cameron: I’ve got an article here from the 5th of December, 2022 New York Times by Kevin Ros. He says, like most nerds who read science fiction, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering how society will greet true artificial intelligence. If and when it arrives, will we panic start sucking up to our new robot overlords, ignore it, and go about our daily lives? So it’s been fascinating to watch the Twitter sphere try to make sense of chat, GPTA new cutting edge AI chat bot that was open for testing this week. Chat GPT is quite simply the best artificial intelligence chat bot ever released to the [00:09:00] general public. It was built by open ai, the San Francisco AI company that is also responsible for tools like GPT-3 and Dali two, the breakthrough image generator that came out this year. Um, goes on to say that, uh, AI chatbots are usually terrible, but chat GPT feels different, smarter, weirder, more flexible. It can write jokes, some of which are actually funny, working computer code and college level essays. It can also guess at medical diagnosis, create text-based Harry Potter games and explain scientific concepts at multiple levels of difficulty. And, uh, you know, I always like to go back and read news articles from the early days of the internet, 93, 94, 95, and see how people were talking about it. Um, he finishes this article though by saying. Personally, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that chat, GPTA chat bot that some people think could make Google obsolete and that has already been compared to the iPhone in [00:10:00] terms of its potential impact on society isn’t even open AI’s best AI model. That would be GPT for the next incarnation of the company’s large language model, which is rumored to be coming out sometime next year. We are not ready. Now what they did come out with a week ago or so was chat, GPT Atlas, their chromium web browser. Are you using Atlas? Steve: No, I haven’t. I did have a look at it, but I haven’t gone to using it. Are you? Cameron: Yes. I’ve been using it exclusively as my browser since it came out and basically, you know, if you type something in. You open it up and you type some

In this episode of **Futuristic**, Cameron is joined by his old friend **Nick Johnstone**, Principal of Toowoomba Anglican School, to explore how **AI is reshaping the future of education**. They dive into the role of schools in a world where every student might have access to unlimited knowledge in their pocket, how teachers’ responsibilities may shift toward mentorship and motivation, and whether schools are even necessary when AI tutors can personalize learning better than any human. The conversation ranges from the challenges of managing devices in classrooms, to what employment might look like in a post-AI economy, to whether robots might one day replace teachers. Along the way, they touch on the social role of schools, legislative drag, the fate of universities, and even sneak in a nostalgic chat about Alice Cooper.   Cameron: [00:00:00] welcome back to the Futuristic, uh, I’m doing this today. My name is Cameron Reilly. For new people doing this without my usual partner in crime, Steve Sammartino, because he’s off doing a keynote somewhere, said he couldn’t make it as is his usual want. But, uh, I’m being joined instead today by an even older friend of mine than Steve. I’ve known Steve 20 years. Nick and I go back 30. Five years, probably. How old are we? 55, 83. Nick Johnstone, principal of Toowoomba Anglican School. Uh, recently crowned, uh, the principal of Toowoomba Anglican School. Previously principal of other schools, but yeah, Nick and I go back to grade eight. In Bundaberg and, uh, I, I, I invited [00:01:00] Nick to come on. I sent him an article I wrote recently on some of my thoughts and prognostications about the future of schooling and education in a world of ai. And Nick gave me some great feedback and I said, come on and let’s chat about it. One of the things, welcome Nick, by the way, welcome to the show. As people can tell, I took all of Nick’s hair over the years and, um. Nick Johnstone: at some, at some point we had equal hair, but that didn’t last for very long. Cameron: No, it didn’t last very long as I recall. Um, one of the things, I’m gonna blow some smoke up, um, your backside for a bit. One of the things I’ve always liked about Nick is, uh, you know, Nick and I, uh, you know, science tech guys always have been, and Alice Cooper, uh, science Tech, Alice Cooper. The Beastie Boys, you know, um, bit of Van Halen. Uh, Nick and I used to, I remember, uh, when David Lee Roth came out with, uh, Yankee Rose, you and I dancing at the school, [00:02:00] discos along to that, trying out testing out our high kicks. How’s your high kick going these days? It’s good. You’re staying limber. Nick Johnstone: in the Hemi. Cameron: Good. Yeah. Yeah. Um, no, in all seriousness, Nick, um. In terms of a, a principle I know is very pro technology and it’s, you know, I know you work in sort of the, the, the private school religious sector yet have remained pro tech on the front foot, very, um, on the very aggressive in terms of figuring out how to integrate. New technologies. So it makes you the perfect person to come on and talk about this. Um, before I hit you with a barrage of questions though, Nick, um, why don’t we start by, I’ll ask you to give the audience your. Current application of [00:03:00] technologies in your schools? Like what, what are you doing today? We can talk about the future in a minute, but let’s talk about how you approach technology in your school today. What, what your attitudes are. Nick Johnstone: sure. Um, I guess that, um, I, I, I’ll take a slice maybe the last five years. ’cause I think probably going back further than that doesn’t have, um. translatable ability into the future. But in the, in the last five years, um, I see the opportunities of technology in education being transformative, I’ll use that term. I know it’s a fairly large in the context of to today’s society, but, so in my immediate last school, Bishop Drew College, where I was, uh, head there for, uh, almost seven and a half years. Uh, our aim was to go from a relatively traditional. of education. So we didn’t have a learning management system in the school. Um, we had, um, [00:04:00] a relatively recent, uh, laptop program, but we wanted to create more than that. We wanted to create opportunities for kids to work in the online environment, um, but also in the asynchronous environment as well as the synchronous environment. we set up, um, uh. A system where the kids basically could have access to the class content. There was tutorials built into those, uh, processes as well. Uh, that was the first part of it. The second part of it was we wanted to amplify that. we actually established an online school, uh, that’s called Horizons, uh, and in the first instance it was set up so that it could create greater flexibility for students within our current. structures. So for example, instead of running a class before school hours or after school hours, we would give greater flexibility in the line structure of a school. So basically a student could have a spare, [00:05:00] but in that spare they would do another online subject that was run by our school. Um, with the plan of testing that through a, you know, um, better testing, lots of feedback from students and staff and parents to then, uh. Expand that model to externals. Uh, so that’s the process that’s occurring at the moment in that school. Um, I’ve changed schools in the last 15 weeks and I’m at Toowoomba Anglican School. Uh, and this school is at the start of, um, a similar journey in the fact that, um. They need a, uh, uh, a transformative learning management system that allows the students to have better access both, um, in class environments, but also giving them the flexibility of the day that they currently don’t have. I mean, we have a lot of partners, you know, um, external consultants and teachers coming in. The kids go out to TAFE and a variety of other programs for certificate. Pathways. We have relationships with the universities and those sort sorts of things as well, but we didn’t have a lot of those online [00:06:00] opportunities. Um, so that’s sort of the, the journey we’re on at, at in this school. But Cameron: And you’re a K to, you’re a K to 12, Nick Johnstone: yeah, we’ve got three year olds to 18 year olds. of Cameron: right? Nick Johnstone: at have had early years through to year 12. So, um, in fact my entire career has been. in K 12 environments. Cameron: Right. And, and your attitude towards, uh, devices and the internet in your schools, how, how do you approach that? Usually, I. Nick Johnstone: Yeah, it’s, it’s been an interesting one ’cause there’s been that sort of, uh, push back and forth on that. Um, I, I would say I, I’m pro devices. But I’m probably not pro phones in the adolescent context in school. I, I haven’t always been that way. Cam, I’ve gotta say, in fact, I remember speaking at a senior year’s, conference at University Queensland for probably [00:07:00] 13 or 14 years ago when mobile phones were first sort of a thing, is being able to use the, um, the inner science context, you know, all, all of our phones, you know. Have accelerometers and et cetera in them. And how can we use that to, not just, um, the communication style of education, but also, you know, can we use it in physics? Can we use it in biology? Can we use it in other, in other contexts of, uh, of, of maths and science in particular. Um, and, but I’ve, I’ve stood back from that now because of the distraction factor of a lot of mobile phones in class. I’m not one. That, you know, does the whole, um, uh, put ’em in a pouch, put ’em in a locker, never be seen again. Scenario, uh, we live in, um, modern world. But, um, the flip side of that is it’s all about teaching kids the responsibilities of having a computer in their pocket. Um, Cameron: Hmm. Nick Johnstone: And, and that when we all live in this [00:08:00] world, we can’t pretend that it’s not, it’s not reality. But I also subscribe to a fair bit of what a, what Jonathan Holt talks about in his work about just making sure the kids are appropriately ready for technology. Um, and there’s, I’m gonna say security and oversight without much restriction. I know, and that’s a spectrum there. I know. But, Cameron: Hmm. Nick Johnstone: that’s pretty much how I’ve, how I feel now and. I haven’t felt Al always felt that way. Cameron: I can imagine it’s really difficult as it’s difficult being a parent. You know, your kids are older than Fox. You know, you, I’ve got adult kids. You’ve got adult kids. Fox is 11, so he’s in that. Phase where he’s always on a device and you know, it’s difficult being a parent, a ProTech parent. Like, I want you to have devices, I want you to have technology. But at the same time, I know that it’s an absolute, you know, massive landmine and distraction and comes with a whole bunch of problems. [00:09:00] And then you’ve got a thousand kids to have to worry about how you manage that. So I imagine it’s a, an order of magnitude more difficult. Nick Johnstone: perspective. Um, I didn’t. Jump into the mobile phones for my children until they were 15. and that was Cameron: Yeah. Right. Nick Johnstone: a decision that we made as parents, rightly or wrongly. That was just a decision that we made in the context of our family at that time. Having said that, both of my sons used technology exclusively in their careers. You know, my youngest is a recording artist based in London. and, and my, my oldest works in, uh, rock and roll media and, and works in Brisbane. Um, and they need devices on them all the time. So, Cameron: Yeah. Yeah. Nick Johnstone: it’s the world we live in. Not every career is that, but I mean, know a lot of them are, Cameron: And of course you and I grew up in an era where, um, we had a computer [00:10:00] room at high school where we went and did computers and we weren’t allowed to have calculators because our teachers would always tell us, when you grow up, you’re not gonn

In episode 44 of Futuristic, Cameron and Steve dive into the dawn of the embodiment era of AI. Steve reveals he’s purchased a $16,000 humanoid robot — the K-Bot — to be delivered in December, marking his entry into the personal robotics revolution. The conversation expands into the future of open-source robotics, the potential for a robot skill-sharing app economy, and the economic implications of humanoid automation. Cameron shares his experiment with OpenAI’s new GPT Agents and explains where they fall short. They also explore a future where AI personal assistants act as bullshit detectors during major purchases like buying a car. Finally, Cameron reads an NPR-style retrospective on IBM’s Watson, drawing a direct line from symbolic AI to today’s LLMs and speculating on a future hybrid model. Also – Cameron launches his AI consulting business, Intelletto.    Cameron: [00:00:00] Okay, go. Gimme your intro. Steve: Steve. Austin. You gonna to say, gimme an intro again? Wait a minute. wait a Cameron: intro. Steve: Okay, I’ve got it. You ready? Cameron: Yeah. Steve: We Cameron: Give it to me, Steve. Steve: Oh, we have the technology. Steve Austin. A $6 million man who is better than every human in every way. In 1975, $6 million was required to build a humanoid robot who was the future. Now it barely gets you a wooden house with two bedrooms in a city in Australia. We’ve had a great reversal. First a humanoid was 6 million. Now it’s a house. Things are back to front. If you think you can predict the future technology sociology, then fucking think again. Welcome to the futuristic.[00:01:00] Cameron: This is, uh, the futuristic episode 44, recording this on the 4th of August, 2025, pre GPT five, the days before GPT five, which we’re expecting to hit any day now, but there’s been a big few weeks since we last talked on the show. Steve, you and I have talked off the show off air, but on air it’s been a while. Steve: private Cameron: What’s, yeah. Tell me you’ve got big news, Steve. Tell me your big news. Let’s, let’s start with that. Steve: I. robot. It wasn’t a $6 million, man, Cameron. It was a $16,000 humanoid. Sexless as far as I know, but I could be surprised when it arrives. We don’t know if it’s gonna have genitalia. We don’t know. But I bought myself a k Bott [00:02:00] which is going to be delivered in December now. Hey, still waiting on, uh, Elon’s Robo Taxis while they’re there now, so we don’t know, but, uh, it’s your first personal robot, open source, full stack in your hands. they’ve actually just, uh, got their second batch now. They’re 11,000. Mine was 16,000 with a few upgrades. It was $18,500 deposit. Tom my co-founder at Macro 3D, we want to code it to do trades work. Uh, that’s the main thing. And also mow the lawns and do the dishes and fold the washing. So. The robotics revolution, I call it the embodiment era of AI is upon us. Wow. We, Cameron: Wow. And you’re gonna take it on the road with you, get it up on stage, Steve: I want Cameron: do a bit of a Abbott and Costello routine. Steve: would really love to do [00:03:00] that. I put on LinkedIn a picture of me taking it through the airport and sitting next to me on a plane and lying down and going through the, uh, metal detector. They’re gonna detect a lot of metal in there. I dunno if that’ll wipe its memory or what’ll happen or whether it’ll glitch out, it’ll be interesting. And I think they are coming. Uni tree also announced a, Cameron: to buy a seat. Steve: well, I Cameron: Do you have to buy a seat for it on a plane, or do you put it in cargo? Steve: well, you wouldn’t be able to put in cargo because of the lithium ion batteries. So imagine you’re gonna have to Cameron: Hmm Steve: Otherwise, that’d be Cameron: hmm. Steve: we don’t want that. Cameron: That’ll be I, I can’t wait to see that you’re the first person in Australia to have a robot sitting beside you in first class. Steve: First class. Okay. Cameron: Come on. Surely you only travel first class. You’re Steve Santino, Australia’s leading futurist. Steve: I, I, Cameron: is too good Steve: travel business [00:04:00] occasionally. It just depends on the client really, to be honest with you. Cameron: on the gig. Hmm. Steve: occasional upgrade. Cameron: so let’s, um, talk about this in more detail. So you say it’s open source. What is open source? The software or the hardware or both? Steve: I think both. Uh, again, this remains to be seen, but you can, it comes, it’s standard fittings and capabilities, but you Cameron: Shouldn’t, shouldn’t, shouldn’t, shouldn’t, you know, be before you bought it, what you’re actually getting. Steve: world works is that you just buy things first and you cross your fingers and they make promises they often don’t keep, whether it’s autonomous vehicles or you know, any other elements, but it’s codeable and you can teach it things and you can also teach it through code, but you can also do it verbally and visually, uh, which is gonna be the killer app on robots. I mean, one of the things that I really hope for is an open source movement within robotics. [00:05:00] Uh, we don’t wanna have closed source. You need to be able to train it in your way and maybe even the skills that you’ve trained your robot. I think that’s a great idea. might be the best car washer or the best on a work site or the best. Warehouse worker. I think that’s really important to get an extension of our skills based on what we teach it. You could have the Stevie skill that, uh, for gardening goes around the world. I, I just downloaded the, the Stevie Gardening, uh, app for my humanoid robot and it’s the best one. And we might get like a whole new app economy where human skills, which are incredibly varied, across all the gamut of things that we do physically, that I think that’s a really big opportunity. But it can only happen in an open source world. Cameron: I think that seems to be the model that Jensen Huang at Nvidia is pushing them into is to make the software free and open source, [00:06:00] uh, because he wants to sell the chip set that runs the robots. So I. I do think that will be one of the models that’s out there. There might be some that are closed and some that are open. Uh, well that’s very exciting, Steve. That’s, uh, that’s really huge. Do you know of anyone else in Australia that has a humanoid robot? Steve: seen a few out with gigs, but all of them seem to be pre-programmed. I’ve seen quite a few of the Boston Dynamics ones, the dogs and the Atlas, to do certain things. Uh, uni Tree just launched a new one, which looks absolutely incredible. It was under 20,000 as well, which is very aligned with Jensen Huang. two years ago we spoke about him saying, by the end of this decade, they’ll cost less than a small car and we’ll all have them. That seems to be very on track. capability, we don’t know we don’t Cameron: Uni tree are a Chinese operation, aren’t they? Steve: Kbo is Which, which, Cameron: yeah. Steve: is, is [00:07:00] rare and good. I Cameron: Hmm. Steve: have Cameron: it. Steve: countries, well, I think you wanna have as many countries as possible with this capability. I think, Cameron: Right. Steve: no, this is not a Cameron: So, Steve: It’s just you want as many as possible. Cameron: right. Yes. That’ll be the two main countries producing them, I imagine. Uh, be interesting to see how it plays out in the tariff wars. Steve: That’s Cameron: Two, getting a robot from China versus a robot from the us. Steve: And, and, Cameron: Well, Steve: yeah, I, I think that Trump, for other reasons is tapped into something that’s gonna happen, which deglobalization and reshoring and onshoring, all of, all of my clients are talking about securing up their supply chain to Nearshore and Reshore, with the ability of AR and robotics, not just those that we’re making, but then those ones that we make can actually help production locally as well. Cameron: hmm. But China’s gonna be the dominant manufacturer [00:08:00] of humanoid robots. I imagine. So. Uh, Steve: it’s not because they’re more capable. I think it’s because America and other Western markets have systematically eroded their own supply chain of all the, I’m gonna call it bits and bobs that went into cars and washing machines and all of that stuff where they no longer have it. And it’s not that we don’t have the capability to design and make them work, it’s that we don’t have all of the small pieces that go into any form of machinery in our local markets like we did in the seventies and the eighties. Cameron: I think China is making a massive commitment to leading the world and AI and robotics, though at a governmental level, they’re gonna think everything behind it and I don’t think the US is gonna be able to compete, quite frankly. But we’ll see how it plays out. Well. I don’t, I haven’t bought a robot, Steve, but I did do my first experiment with chat [00:09:00] GPTs, new agent that came out a few weeks ago. Now, at the end of last year when we predicted what the big story for 2025 would be, we both said AI agents would be the big thing. Didn’t make us that original. Everyone in the industry was predicting that. But I did get my Chachi PT agent, uh, up and running and did a project, which I’ve tried to code over the last year or so, several times unsuccessfully. And this was a, uh, a project involved with my investing podcast, QAV, um, to basically go out and find a list of companies on the A SX, look up the investor relations page on their website, download their most recent. Annual report or half yearly report, find the independent auditor’s report in that document and read it and see whether [00:10:00] or not the company has a qualified audit. Now, for non people that aren’t investors, a qualified audit means an audit where the auditor’s gone. You know, this company has some problems. So we’re qualifying, um, the, the green tick that we’re giving the audit. And that for us as investors, that’s an issue. If the audit

In this fast-paced episode of Futuristic, Cameron and Steve dig into a wild week in AI and tech. Cam shares how he stunned futurist Peter Ellyard by using ChatGPT to generate a bold, original idea called “The Other Year” – a radical, identity-swapping sabbatical for all Australian adults. Steve loves it, but the discussion spins off into a brutal critique of political cowardice, economic inequality, AI translation workflows, and the geopolitics of the AI arms race. From Neuralink trials to Honda’s reusable rockets, from AI-generated music to legal rulings on copyright, this one covers everything. Is AI stealing jobs or creating new ones? Are we on the edge of a superintelligent revolution—or just in a corporate lemming race off a cliff? Audio of FUT 43  [00:00:00] Cameron: Sure. My other, yeah. Uh, welcome back to the Futuristic episode 43. According to my notes, Steve Samino my, um, AI transcription engine in Descrip. Never, never likes having to work with your name after all these months and years of doing it. It’s likes So what? Summer Chi Chico, what Never gets it Right. Doesn’t get my name right either. So don’t feel bad. Steve: Look bias. Ai, ai, Italian racism is what we are hearing here. And I just wanna point that out, Cameron: Systemic. Steve: it’s systemic. Cameron: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Steve: the mob got us and now the technocratic mob, they’re after us Again, Cameron: What’s the Italian version of anti-Semitic? Is it anti [00:01:00] tic and. Steve: I don’t like logs. It’s, Cameron: Any wog. I called you a wog on the last episode. Steve: for it. We don’t, we don’t, we don’t like your type around here. Cameron: Well, it’s been a crazy week, Steve, um, in AI and tech and all of that. It’s just so crazy. But I wanted to start with something if, if you don’t mind. I mentioned last time that my friend Peter Ard, 88 years old, um, futurist, um, has was, was in Brisbane with his partner Robin. Had a lovely time with him, but had a lot of con conversations about I, uh, with ai, uh, shit, let me start again. I had a lot of conversations with Peter about AI and just realized that he wasn’t really getting it still. So I’ve, I’ve spent a lot of time in the last week in an email thread with him, um, encouraging him to think about it in terms of creativity and, um, and I. [00:02:00] I’m sort of acting as the intermediary between him and AI now. Um, and I asked him to give me a challenge to give to one of the AI tools to demonstrate that they are creative. ’cause his are, his question to me when we caught up is, do you think they’ll ever have imagination? And I said, they do right now. They’re creative right now. So he came up with this, uh, question that he wanted me to see what it could create, um, that was genuinely creative, built around some of his work. He has these things, he calls the six pillars of livability, and he wanted it to come up with, uh, an idea for how we could make Australia a better place by 2050 built around his six pillars of livability. [00:03:00] So I’m gonna walk you through this ’cause I, I think it was pretty cool and he was sort of blown away by this. My prompt and I used Chatt PT oh three deep reasoning model. The prompt was this, you are now a futurist whose job is to design a better future for humanity. Come up with one idea that is completely original and is not based on extending existing trends or technologies that would make Australia a more livable country in 2050. And fits in with the six pillars of livability, prosperity, harmony, inclusion, sustainability, health and security. Now, to be fair, it came up with a couple of things that I rejected early on. I was like, nah, that’s not really that original, that’s just an extension of other things. You’re just, you know, taking existing stuff and, and, and, you know, making it more extreme or [00:04:00] more advanced or whatever. So I pushed back and a, a couple of times, twice maybe. Then it came up with this the other year act a once in a lifetime state funded identity exchange sabbatical. Core proposal. Every Australian adult is guaranteed and required to take one 12 month other year, somewhere between their 25th and 55th birthday. During that year, they live, work, and vote in a host community whose demographics are as different from their own as an algorithm can manage urban versus remote, wealthy versus disadvantaged, migrant hub versus old settler town, et cetera. Think of it as compulsory whole life, cultural cross training. No uniforms, no bootcamps, no charity optics. Just swapping places long enough that the word them loses, meaning. Why it’s [00:05:00] new? National service exists. Military civic Peace Corps style gap years and couch surf exchanges exist, but there is no country on earth where a universal mid-career identity swap sabbatical is a legal right and obligation. It isn’t an extension of technology or an NGO trend. It’s a structural reboot of social experience built straight into citizenship. And it goes on and on and on. Has a timeline for delivery, how it would work legislatively, how it would be funded. Basically, a federal agency and trust fund, 0.6% of GDP offset by winding back duplicate employment subsidy schemes, a pairing engine. Independent algorithm balances 20 plus variables. Income, quintile language, background remoteness, climate industry, disability status. No one has sensed somewhere they medically can’t live cost and cover award wage paid from the trust. If the host employer [00:06:00] can’t home mortgage slash rent frozen by law for the year child option, families can move together or split with travel stipends, civic rights, temporary enrollment in local council and state electorates, you vote where you live that year. Return and certification completion internationally recognized cross-cultural competence license, a hiring premium in both public and private sectors. The bottom line is, instead of betting on gadgets or tax tweaks the other year, puts human beings into each other’s shoes, literally for a whole year. And lets empathy do the heavy lifting across prosperity, harmony, inclusion, sustainability, health and security. One bold never tried lever. Six pillars lifted together. Steve: Look, I cannot tell you how much I love that. That’s one of the best ideas I’ve ever heard, and I have heard similar things. It, it does come back to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, like it. And [00:07:00] it makes sure there’s a couple of stones in those shoes and they don’t fit properly. Or if you’ve had stones and shoes with holes in the bottom, you get yourself a nice pair of, uh, a dope pair of Nikes, as Zach Di Larocca said in one of his great songs. And ramble too. He had a dog pair of snake son. Cameron: Look, I was impressed and Peter, Peter was impressed and, and you know, here’s so two points about it. One is, well, obviously apart from the fact that I think it’s a great idea. One is the prompt was very specific, what it had to focus on and two. It came up with this idea in a minute. I mean, after I pushed back a couple of times on the first couple it came up with, like by minute three it came up with this idea that you, Peter, and I all thought was a great idea. Imagine if you i’d, I’d got it to come up with a hundred ideas over the course of the next hour and a half, right? Steve: And it points out something [00:08:00] important is that we have all the technology we need right now. to solve all of the world’s problems and human frailty has always been the issue, always will be the issue. And it reminds me of Hara, who I’ve got in my little thing to talk about. Noval Hari, who wrote Nexus and Sapiens, he said that it’s strange that we think that an AI will solve all of our problems. when the AI is based on us. He says, we, we don’t need AI to solve our problems. We need humans to do it. Now here’s the point. That idea is a great one, but. Humans still need to implement it and agree upon it. At this point, maybe the AI takes over and says, here’s where you’re going. An Uber and a, a humanoid robot arrives at your door and takes you away to this place and takes away all your wealth if you’re wealthy. I don’t [00:09:00] know, but the, the ideas are there and AI’s got great ideas and, and this is a super idea that would work, but Cameron: And it’s a bold, it’s a bold vision. And one of the things that we lack in Australian politics by design is bold vision. Steve: we don’t have any, we used to, hundreds of Cameron: Hmm. Steve: granted there was a whole lot of other problems, which we are solving social problems and Cameron: Well, a hundred years ago, I mean, Goff Whitlam, first seven days after he was elected, he sat down with his right hand man and basically crafted the plan for how Australia’s been living for the last 55 years. You know, just sat down and said, we’re getting outta Vietnam, free education, free healthcare, uh, legalized divorce, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Steve: a, a, lot of good ideas and the, the void of leadership and courage are the two things that are lacking in, in, uh, political society. And we’ve got corporate capture. And the [00:10:00] lobbying is, is, is a real challenge. The fact that South Australia’s outlaws lobbying is, is a massive move in the right direction. That’s the real biggest issue because we don’t get brave policies simply because our politicians are captured economically. If we remove that capture, then we get a chance for politicians to make decisions for the majority, right? And we, and we don’t Cameron: I think it’s also, I think they’re also just trying to be a small target, right? Um, if we don’t see anything bold, then there’s nothing to attack. If it’s just, eh, more of the same, then. Steve: they’ve gotta ask themselves the question. What are they there to do? You they there to make a difference or to just fringe dwell. Because what we’re getting is fringe politics, just small, incremental, nothing b