Today, Mike talks with Maarten Ectors, an award-winning innovator in AI, Web3, and next-gen tech, known for launching the world’s first blockchain reinsurance solutions. They discuss the transformative impact of AI on society and the future of work. Including what developers, coders, and technical architects can do to position themselves now to take advantage of the wave of AI innovation and new technologies. 

He also shares how AI is likely to impact the lives of less technical people like your parents and drastically change the way society works.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• AI  is on the cusp of replacing millions more jobs across numerous industries e.g. robotaxis will make human drivers irrelevant.
• When you add robotics to AI, the transformative impact accelerates e.g. what happens to the food industry if we print our meat and fish?
• In a few years, we will have unlimited energy, which is what AI needs to explode and rapidly transform society.
• Work that requires human contact or where human contact enhances the experience is not likely to be eliminated by AI e.g. hairdressers.
• Think about what needs to change to make the new technology viable. They will need developers to create the framework to facilitate that change.
• Get involved in DevOps for AI and Cloud.
• Understand how to make models that get deployed on the Edge in the cloud and can be scaled out.
• Big companies who put together small teams to solve a specific problem as spin-off businesses succeed E.g. Amazon pizza teams. 
• Most highly skilled work can be done gig style. AI could bring together a group of people with the right skills to solve a specific problem or build something like a super rocket. Once done, everyone moves on to another project.
• Generative AI is going to be a problem for coders but what it produces still needs to be evaluated and fixed by experts. That means you´ll still need coders.
• Technical architects are a vital part of AI technology development. Someone has to see the broader picture and make sure that is what gets delivered.
• AI speech recognition will transform lives in the next couple of years.
• Because AI is likely to greatly reduce the availability of work the structure of society must change radically e.g. universal income.

BEST MOMENTS

03:38 “The AI-enhanced worker will very quickly eat the market of the rest." 

9:19 "Do something that will require human contact." 

25.01 “A lot of companies now scale through technology, not through users, not through workers.

26.28 “They need teams that can do 500 different things in a small unit, not 500 people that are all the same.”

33.52 “The DevOps person that goes towards Edge or AI DevOps is going to have a lot longer runway than the person that just stays doing what they've always been doing.”

35.37 “Generative AI doesn't mean there will not be programmers, but I think the architects are going to become more important.”

36.42 “AI-enhanced experts is the model for the next five years afterward, it will depend.”

54.06 “If you don't have users adopting and an easy go-to-market, hence product market fit, technologies are relevant.”

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://candao.io/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mectors/

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distill practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

ABOUT THE SHOW

Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each