Technology, Connected - Is Your Personal AI More You Than You?

Episode Date: September 11, 2025

When it comes to Personal AI, Rob LoCascio knows best. Having spent three decades teaching machines to talk as the founder of LivePerson, he helped create the first commercial chatbots that shaped online conversation.Now, with Eternos AI, he’s working on the next phase of personal AI: teaching machines to remember us.Eternos builds personal AI models trained on your voice, memories, and values. These are designed to act as living archives of the self. The vision is twofold: a digital companion that helps you while you’re alive, and a legacy system that continues to share your guidance after you’re gone.It’s a project that merges AI ethics, data rights, and philosophy. If your thoughts can be modeled, who owns them? When your personality becomes software, is that preservation or replication?In this conversation, Rob discusses the evolution from LivePerson to personal AI, the architecture behind Eternos, and why he believes digital immortality will become one of the defining industries of the 21st century — transforming grief, mentorship, and identity itself.As AI moves from automation to imitation, we may be entering an era where the most valuable data is no longer what we produce, but who we are.Please enjoy the show.--Other ways to connect with us:⁠Listen to every podcast⁠Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠Follow us on ⁠X⁠Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠Read our ⁠Substack⁠Email: [e-mail]--Chapters:(00:00) The future of AI starts here(02:11) How AI is changing human connection forever(05:55) Where AI meets humanity(11:54) The story that sparked personal AI(19:50) Why you must own your AI before it owns you(20:10) The hidden vault of your data(22:31) Why voice is the next big interface(25:11) How AI will slip into daily life?(25:36) Can personal AI be monetized?(27:14) The fight to regulate AI(27:52) What AI means for being human(29:46) Will your knowledge outlive you?(32:05) How to build your personal AI identity(33:28) Writing the story of your life with AI--Peace and Love. Always. Mark & Jeremy

I called up Michael and I said, you know, I've got this technology and I think I can replicate you before you die. When we give up our data set to the machine, we lose our identity. You can own your own your own data. You can own your own knowledge. You can own your own self. You can own your future. And your, your AI is not going to replace you. Your AI is not going to try to take your job. Your AI is not going to try to harm you because it's your AI. It's not somehow machine from 2001 Space Odyssey. It's you. The Internet has connected us in the most beautiful way. and let us write. And I've been there since 95, so I've seen it. I mean, it's amazing,

and it has a beauty to it. But we're being programmed to get the clicks, and our little reptile brain is the cheapest way to get it like. The concept is that AI is an existential threat. The machine will take us over. We're going to lose our jobs. It's a very dystopian world. And on the other side is what I believe will happen, which is not dystopia. It's about humanity being at the base in the drive room, not being the whipping boy of the technology. Three days before he died, we said goodbye. And he told me, said Rob, just remember, I did this for me. Disruptors and Curious Minds, welcome to another episode of Thinking on Paper, where we unpack the future with the people building it.

Who are we talking to today, Mark? What are you excited about and where do you want the listeners to perk their ears up? The idea of personal AI, a personal AI, not trained on the internet, trained on your stories, your experiences, your values, your knowledge, your voice. a personal AI that could help you in life as it helps you in business and a personal AI that once you desert this land will remain on forever to to pass on those messages, to pass on those learnings to the next generation. Our guest is Rob LaCasio. He's the founder and CEO of Eternos AI. And just to give you a brief insight, I'm going to give you the vision statement.

You ready, Jeremy? I'm ready. Here you goes. We believe every individual deserves their own AI, one that reflects their life, values, and voice. AI should not replace us, but amplify who we are. The future of human connection lies in preserving not just information, but identity, memory, and legacy. Rob, welcome to thinking on paper. Thank you for thinking on paper with us. Thank you for having me here.

Back in 94, 95, you made some tech that really affected how everyone interfaces with the internet. You implemented the infrastructure for chat on websites, which is super interesting. That was quite a while ago. Take us from there and what you learned doing that. I started a company called LivePerson in 1995, but it was building websites. It wasn't called LivePerson at the time. And in 1997, I invented what would become, you know, one of the most pervasive technologies on the internet, which is WebChat for customer care.

And it was hard back then. It was still hard now. But getting people to convert and put their credit card in, even back then people didn't even know whether they would get anything. So I came with the concept of was, why don't we put a human at the shopping cart and have them chat and help provide trust and guidance? And obviously, the rest was kind of history. I built a pretty big company, took it public, I grew it to a little over half a billion in revenues. And then I left two years ago. And there's always been some connective tissue in my life around humanity and technology.

And I think that's what's been important to me. I'm not a pure technologist. I guess I came out of more of a liberal arts background and did English literature, is one of my majors in college. And there's this point of humanity, I think, makes technology beautiful. I felt the highest bar of AI would be replicating a human being. We were the leader in conversational AI and millions of conversations with chatbots and what we call agents today.

And I was knee deep in it and I don't see a business there. And I felt that it was time for me to look into the future and I saw the replication of human beings, that there would be a different type of AI than this big, giant model that's powering agents and agentic. And that's a different philosophy that I have about how I think AI will play out. One quick question before we get into what you're doing today. What makes a great salesperson? And how are you able to automate and scale some of those things using AI? That's an awesome question. And I'll tell you the truth of it. A great salesperson or customer support rep like any profession. and I met thousands of them.

They're just so passionate about people. And in themselves, they're really deeply connected to the idea that the technology is just a massive connective tool for them. Surprisingly, it doesn't really work with chat and messaging and chat bots. At our best customers, 40% of all interactions were being done on a messaging automation or chat versus phone calls. It tells us a lot. And the average was like 10 to 15%.

We dealt with the largest brand. in the world, the biggest airlines, and if you chat, air message you were using this technology, I created. But they still, people gravitate to voice calls. And I was like, why? Because the voice calls were exactly what they were supposed to be, is I want to hear a human. All the information's on the internet, I see everything on our company's website.

I still want to hear the human reinforced to me in a human way that what I'm thinking about is right or wrong. That still stands today, doesn't it? That's why this whole agentic software thing, I'll tell you where I think it's going to go, it's going to go nowhere. And you can see on Salesforce, they're out there with their agent force. There isn't much going on there. There's not like massive change because they're replicating generalized data sets.

They're applying it to a chat interface, which I invented, which does not work for scale. It just doesn't work for scale. So I was always on the hunt for what is the interface to AI. And there's so many things I tried at the company. And it wasn't until I left that I was able to clear my mind and take a little bit of a breather from on the wheel of making it work to what is really the interface to AI. And that's what I've been most focused on. Recently we've had a few guests actually building customer service agents in the

agentic web. I don't know what their pushback would be. Perhaps that's 1997. It's 2025. Things have changed in terms of the technology. Have they really that much? No. I'm like the godfather of this technology for better or for worse.

It came out of me. I built a business off it. And now we're back to, I laugh at it because in 1990. The same chat window that's out there is the same chat window that everyone's tried. And that's an interface. And it's ridiculous. It can't be that something from 1997 just never had its day. And now it's ready to have its day.

It's not having its day. I invented it. I nurtured it. I grew it like a baby and put it into adolescence. And I realized it's not going anywhere. It's like the kid that doesn't leave your home. It's just not scaling. And you'll see it because even when chat GPT, I mean, what extraordinary technology, right?

Amazing technology. but I always love when they do their demo days, you know, and they show their demos. It's like, we've got this thing and it's the newest intelligence. And then Sam Alman goes to a chat interface that was from 1997. Like, I don't know any technology that's sticking around since 1997, except this thing that I created and I really feel like it should just go away. It's the most ridiculous interface for where back then it was so cool. Why?

Because we had websites. The interface website was a web browser. It fit that thing. It was unique at the time. Like, it's the best we could do. It's like this chat window. I didn't even have video running on websites in 97. So I'm saying is that there's no imagination happening.

If you're an inventor or something like that, you just feel like you got to get away from it. And that's what I've been able to free my mind because I do believe I have a mission to provide this crossroads between humanity and technology. The current concept is that AI is an existential threat. The machine will take us over. We're going to lose our jobs. It's a very dystopian world. And on the other side is what I believe will happen, which is not dystopia. It's about humanity being at the base and the driver of it, not being the whipping boy of the technology.

Rob, we talk about this every episode. No matter what technology gets rolled out, humans are still the users of that technology. Humans still have human tendencies. And where we need to be empathetic, we need to be globally cooperative, we need to work together to benefit the whole of people. We still haven't figured that part out. And it's like, no matter what tech you put in front of that, we still got to fix. I have this board member live person. It was Peter Block.

He's the foremost authority on community and connection. He wrote a book called Community. Governments have used it. Large corporations have used it. Iceland restructured its government after the financial crisis using his frameworks. Extraordinary guy. I remember being with him at a conference which Peter Thiel would have every year at Sundance. We had our first cocktail party.

I'm sitting there with Peter. What do you think, Peter? And he goes, well, I've never met a group of people who's so sure what they're doing is going to save the world. And then he said, I got a question for you. I said, what is it? He goes, is what we're doing here creating better community? I'll never forget.

I just thought, no, not even my company. And I tried to bring it to my culture internally, but my technology wasn't doing it. And I looked in that room and I said, if that's the ultimate question to answer, and I believe it is. Community and connection is what we should be doing. That's how humanity progresses. No, I don't think we're doing that. How much do you think social media has failed or passed that mission statement in your eyes?

It started out good like most things, and then it became, you know, it's obvious. I mean, I have young children, and it's a very destructive thing. It's not bringing us together, and that's the weirdest thing. The most branded tech of social is dividing us. The Internet has connected us in the most beautiful way. and let us write. And I've been there since 95, so I've seen it. I mean, it's amazing and it has a beauty to it. But we're being programmed to get the clicks, and our little reptile brain is the cheapest way to get a click, you know. And I think people are sick of it. And actually, people are getting sick.

And I'm in a position in my life right now where I can go out in the world and do things a little different. I prove that I can build a company. I'm not 23 years old and trying to figure it out. You know, what I'm trying to figure out is can I take my knowledge, my resources, connections in the world and apply that to a company that can bring people together that can celebrate humanity's ability to harness the technology, not be run over. And AI is the worst. It's a continuation of the mistrust of tech. And consumers and users that we call them consumers and users, but let's call them people. They see Open AI and they see these companies. And the way that AI is playing out is that there's only five companies in the world that have the resources to actually be leaders in it.

And it's so bizarre to me that a transitionary time in history is going to be led by five of the largest companies from the past. It's not normal. And everyone who works in those companies has worked for the other company. It's just like this weird, strange collection of 20 men. It's like the cabala over there of like, and I respect it. And by the way, I respect all of it because this is people building big, building companies that's scale is hard. I know this. So you have to respect that. But where do we want to go with this as people? It reminds me of the internet. It was obvious that this was going to be scaled. We're at the same

place. AI feels like scale. But the difference is unlike that movement, that change was that it just reflects us. Why we're so excited about it is it feels like it's kind of like us. It's got a human in it somehow. It took our data sets and is using them to talk to us. We have to think of this a little differently than the past technology changes. Our hand is in that tech. They have my data set to make it powered, but I don't have any real control over it. This makes no sense to me. It's our data set as a collective, and that's how these companies became what they are today. But we have no say in these companies. Previously, I was thinking about, you know, the highest form of AI would be a human being replicated. How do you really talk to in the machine and think it's the person who created it?

The first personal story is my father died nine years ago and I have an eight-year-old daughter. And it was just weird to me that no one could talk to my dad. And like, even though with all the tech we have, the second part, which was more interesting, is I have a friend who posted on Facebook who I worked with when I was at live person. And I didn't know this, but he was dying of cancer. And he posted on Facebook, his name is Michael bomber. I'm dying of cancer. I'm saying goodbye to everyone.

I've gotten probably three months to live. The platform was like 70% there, and I already thought about replicating humans. So I called up Michael, and I said, you know, I've got this technology, and I think I can replicate you before you die. And he was like, oh, that's what I was thinking. I was thinking the same thing. And I was hoping this could be, but I didn't see anyone doing it. So we started this partnership. So we recorded about 25 hours of his life stories.

We recorded his voice and made it an AI voice. And I'll never forget this. You know, I packed it up, shall we say, on my. My laptop flew to Germany where he lived when we were done with it. And I opened up my laptop and I said, Michael, talk to Michael. And he asked at first the typical questions like, what was my favorite this and that when I was a kid and nailed all the questions. But then he asked it a question that he knew was not in the dataset.

He asked a like a life question. Could you give me advice? And the AI gave him advice exactly the way he was thinking. He would give the advice. And it was bizarre. He goes, I can't believe this. It's reasoning the way I was thinking. But I know the question's not in my data side and put it in there.

So he kept doing that. He's like, oh, my God. So he calls his wife in Annette. And Annette starts talking with Michael, the AI. And she starts asking questions. She then says to it, how did you feel the first time we met? And his AI in a very loving voice and this gentle loving voice says, you know, I fell in love with you the first time I saw you.

And it went on a little bit. And we all started to cry. I mean, we literally, because she was sitting there knowing her husband's, he's leaving. He's transitioning to party. And yet this AI is there. We did a demo with someone who's, he's actually a big newscaster. We're made an AI of them. And it was 10 minutes into him talking to it.

And he just stopped and he said, I don't know how to feel about this. We've had many customers where this is, and I, like, we nailed it. We like nailed the thing. And I was like, this, I've never cried at a demo. And I've never saw a human feel reflected in technology in my life, 30 years of doing this. So I was like, we did it. Now we have more to do, but we got some place that I've wanted to get with the company. On thinking on paper, we've got this new thing where we let something sit.

So let's just let that sit so listeners can think about that. The data set, you said those 25 hours of voice recordings, is that it? It's not trained on anything else. It's just your data set. And you don't have to do 24 hours. We have an AI that'll ask you questions based on about 150 questions. It can go many different ways depending on your interest. But it turns out there's a couple of key aspects to storytelling.

If we look at the brain and follow it against AI, there's chips, obviously, and there's the brain with power. But there's neural connections in the brain and there's neural networks in the underlying technology for AI. There is language and there's large language models. Okay. And then the next step up, there are data sets of stories, and then there are data sets of things that are edited and put on the internet. These are very different data sets. Because of what I saw a live person, a lot of unstructured conversations between contact center reps and humans, I felt that there's this data set that's not captured in the world.

It exists, but mostly in our head. If we can get it out of our head, non-edited, which is people recording their knowledge, this data set, It has imprinted in it many different interesting things. It tells us a lot of how you make decisions. It tells us a lot about, like, there's these four archetypes that Carl Jung described about how we go about actions, the lover, the warrior, the magician, and the sovereign. Each of these represent whether you're going to innovate for,

or are you going to action your way out, or you're going to create connection. But we move forward by telling ourselves stories, sometimes good or bad, then taking an action based on that. story and moving forward or backwards and these are encoded in the data set and this data says much better than the data set that's being trained for the large language models which are predominantly edited things they're written edited things we were working with like writers now and creative people and if you look at a writer like a well-known writer has books out in a 300-page book they may have thousands of hours of recordings or hundreds of hours of recordings of hundreds of hours of recordings that that book is based on Those are really interesting for AI, not the book. So what we're trying to do is you can't get that data aggregated.

It's not to be aggregated. It's my personal data set. And we want to give a home for that. And then for people to be able to control it, use it, and then potentially monetize it. And that's really what we see in the company today. If I use your platform, I do my 25 or 20 hours, however long it is, of storytelling. Jeremy does his. These are completely separate identities living in completely separate parts.

with no cross of data. Right now we're at the point of the split of general purpose models and personal AI. And what you're also seeing is like devices starting to come out, recording devices. Like even Open AI, they're going somewhere with this idea of recording. You know, they bought Johnny Ives company,

but you'll see they want to be able to record this data set. I wake up in the morning, I have ideas. There's so much data that we never record and that's what makes AI actually more human. It's what makes AI more powerful. Now, in their world, they want to get their hands on that dataset and get it into their models. And in my world, I want to safely give you a place to store that data to use that data, to better the way you're using AI, and to share it if you'd like to. Each of us as individuals have an X factor.

Capturing that in AI, allowing you to control it is where I see the future. When we give up our dataset to the machine, we lose our identity. That's what's happening right now. This is not the future of AI. One thing humans are really good at is self-preservation. Like, we don't like to ultimately disappear. And yes, the current narrative is we will disappear, not as physical beings, but our knowledge beings will disappear.

And every day we use the internet, I don't know if people know this, but like I talk to pros, we work with lawyers and doctors and stuff, and they go, oh, my God, chat CBD gets smarter every day. I use it. It's getting almost as good as I am at doing my job. And I'm like, yeah, because you keep using it and you keep giving it your data set.

And it's just taking it. And it's this regurg to say it's not smart. It's your smart. But you gave it and they go, oh my God, I can't. You're right. I keep giving it my work. I keep uploading my work to it. Yeah, wake up.

They created this ultimate mouse trap. It's like, it's so provocative. It gets smarter. It doesn't get smarter. It's not a machine that gets smart on its own. It's a parasite of data. And, and it's not like I'm seeing there thinking, oh, the world's ending.

But like, there's a, an alternative. You can own your own data. You can own your own knowledge. You can own your own self. You can own your future. And your, your, your AI is not going to replace you. Your AI is not going to try to take your job. Your AI is not going to try to harm you because it's your AI. It's not somehow machine from 2001 Space Odyssey. It's you. You are AI. And that's why I named the company, you are AI. You are the AI. You are the best AI. You are the best part of AI is you, because you're powering it. Let's unpack some of the this because there's a lot of interesting. My wheels are spinning like crazy about this. So Mark

illustrated the example of like, hey, I want to put my, I want to create an AI of me. So I would, I would get with you. There'd be a segmented, a walled off area where I could upload my information. There's probably a contract or an agreement between me and you that says you can do this. I can do that. If my kids at any one point want to pull the plug because it's gone, hey, wire, there's the ability to do that. Talk me through that. Basically, You have, we call it a vault. So you have an area to put your data in. Most of our customers, we have over like 300 customers now.

We have, we call it professionals like doctors and lawyers and people using it to put their knowledge in and let others interact with it so they get scale on their time. And then we have a couple of enterprises that are using to replicate their best employees. And those best employees then help train and support others as like coaches. So it's all about humans are awesome. We're taking the best of you and you can replicate yourself and do things with The first part is really interesting. It's that it wasn't something we designed, but people came in originally for the use case of legacy, a baby boomer, let's say, I want to put my data in. They started to use the AI in their daily life. And so they were chatting with themselves. And it was really fascinating. So they're using it like a general AI, but it's them with a different brain. And it's highly contextual. So they find this to be like the best AI. And then we connect a world model to it, like an open source world model. So it's all low. So you can get access to world knowledge, but it has your context to it.

So it's like your brain connected into the world, but it's your controlled brain. Let me just make sure I understand. Here's the vault. Here's a connection to world model. World model information comes in. No information goes back out. That's correct. So like there's questions that go out, but we don't allow the base information to go into these things.

So the bottom line is it's your data. It's your data set. I event, we're not doing it right now. We have a thing called the human life model, which is more like we understand how to take your unstructured and structured data sets and make them represent you. But we don't create models yet. There is a future where you will have your own model. We'll train a model.

It's just expensive. It takes time. And it's fixed when you should do it. You have to keep training it every time and people are putting in data every day. But I do see a world where we're going to all have our own models. They're localized. They can live under our devices. We don't need nuclear power in some giant data set and a giant data.

center. This is also something that's very, I don't think is the way to go. And these are commercials. So they can be commercially used. They can be used in your personal life. They go across the gamut. You said 300 customers, lawyers, doctors, they're using it. Is this voice activated or is this a chat interface? What does it look like and where is it happening? These are voice interfaces. They're a, what we call a voice to voice model. So you can talk to it and you can interrupt it. And it's, these are not like machine feeling, they're human feeling. And what we've been able to do is on the voice side is extract elements of the data set to understand, like how you communicate your thoughts and, and make it feel very much like you,

the rhythm of you and how you, how you process thoughts and speak about them. So yeah, there is a chat interface, but most people use the voice interface. We are working towards, you know, your photo and real, realistically, like we could be here. I'm moving more towards characters and avatars, although we can do this. It's hard to map very realistic stuff. It's also weird to be talking to yourself. One thing is audio, but to be speaking to yourself and learning from a visual, hyper-realistic image of you is another thing.

Is this only on the Eternos platform at the moment? Will it be going elsewhere? Will it be able to take my personal AI and put it into my email onto my, my to replace my web chat on the thinking on page. Yeah, for example. In some cases, it's instances where people have put it out as a web interface and moving towards a, it's a platform. You can put it in different places, but we're kind of moving in a place where you can

aggregate your traffic into a much more called, like a better interface so that, because when you pop it out, which people do, it's fine. Sometimes it just loses its mojo, as in it's like a chat window again, on a chat. I don't think I like that. I picture every time you see a chat window pop up, you just go, oh my God. The best thing is when I see a chat window pop up with some startup and they think they've invented the new chat window. And I'm like, I can't believe this thing got funded. And I'm like, but anyway, yeah, so when I see our stuff being used in a chat window, I'm like, I can't believe this is happening.

So anyway. We need to change the browser experience. Remove the browser to remove the chat. Well, eventually, if we play it all out, if I can just play it out the way I hope it goes, is that. you would never go any farther than yourself. So you're talking to yourself. It could be on an AI device. So there's some stuff like, let's say there's a device.

It's not the iPhone. But let's say it's purely made for AI. And you're talking to yourself and you're having these conversations. And you're like, hey, I'm having an issue with my Verizon account. At that point, I think Verizon would show up inside of you with their AI. You should never go to an endpoint. This is one of the things with chat, like going to a dialing an 800 number. go into a chat window, doing a messaging, conversations with the brand.

That's the past. I see is that you don't go any farther than yourself. The brands are there, that you could find in discovery, but there should not be an interface of you leaving yourself. But until AI becomes safe, controllable, and I trust it, I think we're kind of like not going to do that. Rob, let's talk about monetization because I don't know about you, I don't know about listeners,

but sometimes I get very, very, very tired of the sound of my voice. When I wake up in the morning, I don't want to talk to me. I don't want to get my ideas. I know my ideas. I know how I think. What I want is I want, who do I want? I was going to say, I want Jeremy in my bathroom, giving me those things. But can I pay someone really smart to be my personal AI so I don't have to speak and learn

from myself? Yeah, that's where I see the marketplace. We have these really interesting people, like I said, We've got this really well-known newscaster, and we've got a great writer. They may want to provide their AIs in a marketplace where you say, like, I want to wake up with this guy's AI because I want to talk about the news. Like, have him describe business news to me. You understand? Like, have him do that because he's the best ad in the world.

And I trust him. And his AI is a replica. And it is an authenticated replica of him. So, you know, it's not some faky chat bot doing the news. And maybe I want to wake up to that. And then there's another AI that gives me a little inspirational message. It's the Deepak Chopra one. if you like that stuff, or it's you, it's you guys.

So I see this is like that's the world we'll be in it. But I'm still there. It's stuff coming into my AI head and I'm still there, but it doesn't mean I have to talk to myself. But it all is going through my AI, it's called brain. And then you go on holiday and you want call Matt McCarthy to wake up with. Or as you go through your day, your tasks change and your AI accompanies you depending on what is happening in your day. I love that idea. That's really, really pretty special.

What happens if my doctor has this and I go to talk to the doctor bot? It recommends something. I go do it and something bad happens. You can't do an end point yet with an AI giving medical advice. It's just not allowed. This is more of like the education of other doctors on another doctor's specialty. One of our enterprise customers, it's their best sales agent trading other ones, but not selling because it's a life insurance company.

They're not selling life insurance on their own because it's very regulated. So the first part is just there's a lot of. lot of training going on of these experts to other experts to other others. And that's really where the business is today. Eventually, when there'll be more regulatory understanding of how to do this in a way, but you're right. It's a liability right now. You can't do it. Dr. Dugiehouser aside, this technology changes grief. It changes family. It changes the cultural dynamic of generations possibly. Like, how do you respond to that? Well, the grief one, we know because the wife of Michael bomber, we could follow Annette and we know Annette and still stay connected to her. There was just a lot

of pain and grief on the loss of her husband and that didn't change with the AI. And at first, actually, she didn't even really want to talk to it because it was just a reminder of the pain and suffering because he went through this cancer for many years. But then after that, it's not like he had over it. As time goes on, it's over a year, she interacts with it and talks to it and has these conversations with it, which is great because he like lives in some form as a reminder. What's more interesting, I think, beyond Annette, is like, he's got kids, he's got two sons, and they have kids, and there. And there'll be kids beyond that and kids there. When you get past that first generation of the people who knew it, or second generation, a new first second who knew the person, personally, it's so fascinating to me that, like, my great grandfather came from Sicily to America, and we don't know much about him. I know his name, Luigi, but I don't know much about he came here at 13. I don't really know much about what he felt. He arrives. didn't speak any English, and made it all work in Linton, New York, with his father and his two siblings. It would be such an amazing thing for me to talk to him and, like, would you go through?

And maybe the things he felt building a business is the things I feel. And it's so interesting to understand. Like, did my grandfather, he definitely had a major impact on my family's life moving from Sicily. But then emotionally, his thoughts, I was lucky enough, my grandparents lived around me when I was a kid and I learned so much to them. It's a modern-day thing. that everyone breaks up. Like, family split up pretty early now. Grandparents go somewhere. We go someplace to college.

And we lose the connective tissue to our past. And there's so many things that our past relatives learned about life that we lose. And we're probably looking for it somewhere else, like on the internet and social and other gurus where maybe your grandparents experienced, love, loss, all the stuff we're feeling as humans. And I could hear him tell me, what was it like? How'd you get through it? Would you do?

because I'm here, you know, but you can't do it. And so that's where I think there's a power to it beyond the grief stuff, you know. The timing issue is interesting, too, because like it's often not until later you have the wherewithal, the self-awareness, the knowledge, the growth as an individual yourself. I wish I asked my grandpa this question. Like, God, like, I have the insight to ask him that now. But when I was six, I was, you know, I wasn't there. Yeah. And the thing is, the funny thing about AI, unlike social media, is the best AI is or old.

people and the worst AI's are young people. And it's the reverse on social media because like I'm willing to put myself out and do things. If you, that more knowledge you have and that you, you have in your life knowledge, the AIs are extraordinary. Michael Bomber was, he was 60 when he passed away and he had 60 years of life knowledge. He got divorced. He had two kids. He had like, he had a life, you know, the good and bad, the ugly of it. But it was a beautiful life. And we, we got it into the AI. Interesting enough is that he did. When he, before he died, three days before he died, we said goodbye. He was in a lot of pain.

And he told me, he said, Rob, I just remember, I did this for me. I don't know who's going to use this. Maybe my wife won't even use this. But I feel at peace that I've left myself behind. And my hope is that, you know, future generations get the value of all this life I lived. And it was for something. Wonderful. Yeah, it's a purpose.

It's a purpose thing. Maybe you haven't figured it out while you're here. here, but like maybe there's an application of that purpose eventually. This is really interesting. This is really interesting. Even on a less profound example is a very common question on growth mindset. I wonder what 20-year-old Mark would have thought and done here. I wonder what 30-year-old Mark would have done and thought here.

And you can't, it's impossible to go back in your mind and actually feel and think what the younger version of you thought and felt and would have done. But with this, voila, you can. So this is more of a selfish line of discussion. But Mark and I have been thinking about this a lot. Like, there's a lot of knowledge that we've put together ourselves with this show, with these interviews, with some of the stuff we break down, with our tendencies, with the questions we ask. If we were looking at making, like, not a Mark or a Jeremy, but like a thinking on paper,

like intern. Like a Mark Jeremy hybrid. Thinking on paper, super intern, or whatever the heck it is, that where we feel, feed all the shows into it. We talk, is that an application? Is that something you're seeing? You guys have these data sets that are really interesting. A lot of it's been assumed into the engines already because they get them and then they

brought them in. And so they're kind of like scrubbed that you were behind them. Right. So if somebody asked a question about AI, it may have your data set in there and use it. Right. But it's more interesting if like you guys have a certain style. You built a podcast on a certain style. There's two of you.

And so it's really interesting if we took that data set and made this AI of you, you guys and and now you're up there as AI podcasters let's call it. The other things you may have had conversations even beyond this that have not been put out publicly. The other thing is you guys are people and you have your own life stories which are also interesting to put into the engine. And that's what would make it feel like, okay, you know, what we see with people like yourself is that if I looked at your life stories, there's stuff that got you here. And there's usually you're asking questions around things that you're curious about because of something your past. That's what we found. Like a lot of people don't show up with just like they show up with

their style because of something that is in their past. It's your hero's story. You know, you all have, back to the Carl Young. Yeah. No. It's the narrative. That's right. And you, we all have, if I ask you to my life story, I got here, I started here. I was nobody and I came here. I'm somebody. It took, I failed and I succeeded and I got here. Everyone has the same story because our brain uses it to encode. It's how we encode stories into our brain. That whole. That whole. whole narrative, the Joseph Campbell thing, they did studies on it. If you look at the brain and what's going on, activity-wise, it's like lit up when we hear these stories. So there's some way it was encoded to have these life stories, this style, the structure. And that's why we love

movies like that, so we love books like that, you know, based on the narrative. Last question, Kevin Kelly, what should humans be? What should humans be? Humans should be themselves and be individuals. That's what I would say. And then I know you, wanted me to leave a question, I think, for someone in the future, the next person here. And I would say, what's their belief in God? So how does it play into what we're doing here? Ooh, that could be a good one. That's all we have for today. Be curious. Stay disruptive. Keep thinking on paper.