Techstrong Gang – February 28, 2025

Hey, everyone. So are AI agents unionizing? I don't know.

You're watching Text on Gang. Hi, everyone. Happy Friday, man.

Where did this week go? It was a crazy week, but it went so fast. It's like a blur in my mind, but I'm happy for us to be here on Friday.

I hope you've got great plans for the weekend. I do. It's supposed to be nice down here in South Florida for a change, so I, I may even get out on the boat and do something.

But until then, we've got a lot to cover today on the gang, and we've got some of my favorite gang members on here with me. We've got our, this is the West Coast, east Coast, the coastal elite lineup, right? Coming at you.

But out on the West Coast. First of all, she is our, oh, editor, radio host, analyst, marketing guru, and everything else. Our favorite.

Lisa Martin. Hey Lisa, how are you? Hey, Alan.

Doing well. How are you? Very well.

It's good to see you out, out Pi I like, I like the look with the glasses and the stripes. It's happening. Thank you.

And I Can see it's Brilliant. Yeah, no, that always helps. Always helps.

Speaking of seeing Perched high at top Silicon Valley where nothing gets done without his purview of it, it's our editor at large, Jon Swartz. Hey, John, how are you? I'm good.

It was a crazy week and it was overwhelming, but as a wise man from Harrison, New York has said it beats the alternative of not enough news. That's right. Speaking of the Wise man of Harrison, New York, he is the dean of, uh, of Techstrong as well as Harrison.

He's our Chief Content Officer. It's also counting down the days to opening day at Yankee Stadium. Someone got him tickets.

This is true. Um, our Chief Content Officer, Mike Vizard. Hey Mike.

We might have, uh, some single digit weather here this weekend, but after that it's looking good Spring's here. All right. Spring Spring's Eternal and everyone thinks they're a World Series contender at this stage of the game.

That's true. Not not, not us Giants fans. Anyway, carry on.

I too, your record is still zero. Zero, John, just like everyone else. Alright.

I like you're up, you're tied for first. Uh, you're also tied for one day. Exactly.

Anyway, guys, it's a great Friday to be here on the, uh, segments we're gonna cover. Mike, why don't you kick us off? I teased it a little bit.

Are AI agents looking to unionize? Do they have rights? So every time we turn around lately somebody is launching an AI agent, and there's gonna be a debate about whether or not I need an AI agent from every software provider or whether I'll get something from somebody who has a platform that manages multiple applications.

But these things are gonna be pervasive, but it, a debate has emerged, and I think it got started with the folks at Workday when they announced that you could manage your quote unquote agents through their HR application. And that started this whole conversation about, well, is an agent gonna be an employee? Is this somebody I'm, or something that I am going to hire for X number of hours as a week to perform a task?

There are at least a half a dozen other models for paying for AI agents, including outcomes and, uh, traditional software licensing. But Lisa, this conversation is starting to pick up, and I don't know what you're seeing out there, but from my perspective, it's the wild mile west. It is literally, especially where Workdays is down the street from me here in Silicon Valley.

It's such an interesting topic because one of the first things that popped into my mind was, who's gonna pay the employee employee tax? But we're seeing role-based agents versus task-based agents doing a lot of jobs, recruiting expenses on the, on the part of Workdays Illuminate, for example, succession optimization. And a lot of these agents on that are working today are following step-by-step instructions like an employee would.

Um, Workday's, CEO, Carl Eschenbach, I remember him back from the VMware days, says, you know, task-based agents have to evolve into role-based agents. That's what Workdays kind of differentiating themself on, which contain this configurable set of skills that give them more autonomy and better able to support humans in their roles. But it does beg the question of are they going to be treated as employees with some of the tasks that are being offloaded from humans to them?

How are they coexisting together? It's an interesting debate. Um, op key also introduced a suite of AI agents to its lifecycle management platform for ERP applications.

Um, and the goal is to augment individuals. So I think there's a message there that needs to be really, really clearly defined from enhancing augmentation versus replacing on the human side. Alan, when I look at this and my, my cynical nature comes into play here, and I, software vendors have been trying to put their hands deeper into the pockets of businesses for as long as I can remember.

And there was always this case that says, we're gonna price this based on value to you as the company. But, um, is this just another effort here by the software providers to kind of experiment with a different business model that maybe drives more revenue to them, but increases our total costs in ways that are not really sustainable? Look, software software companies wanna make money.

Like girls want to have fun, right? As someone once saying, but that, that being said, this one's a little different and, and it's been tried before, but the, I think the value prop here is by using these agents and, and this bleeds into our B block, by the way, by using these agents. Are we lose, are you using less people?

Because when you look at most businesses, their most significant costs are people. I mean, I've been a founder and a leader, you know, of companies for executive companies for many, many years. Your biggest cost are people always, unless you're so in something very, you know, manufacturing intensive where, uh, uh, supplies cost, but it's mostly people.

So if you are telling me that the, the right metric to measure these agents' value is my decrease in people cost. Well, that's, that's not productivity. That's not, you know, that's a whole different scale, if you will.

And, and I think, you know, it's, I think people are gonna swallow it. I, I, as a matter of fact, I think a lot of business executives already have swallowed it. They're already thinking, oh, this AI's gonna let me lay off a couple of heads.

I'm gonna have people, and, you know, they're wrapping their hands in, in glee. But, um, so that's, that's the metric here. And this, so it, and, and for the first time, this truly is potentially true, right?

I mean, this, this could be a reduction of workforce. If I was just, we were talking off camera, read a Gartner report, you could see a reduction in workforce of five to 10%. And wow, that's, that's significant.

That pays for a lot of these agents. Now, of course, the devil's in the details. Is this agent really, are these agents really going to replace people?

And then, then the issue is, are they employees? Right? So look, in legal terms, an agent is a very specific legal entity.

When an agent acts on your behalf, you are liable, right? He's your agent or it's your agent. Similar thing here, right?

What about the liability of what agents do? Is that gonna be the software producer who produced? The agent's gonna be liable?

Is it gonna be you because he's the agent is quote unquote employed by you? Are you gonna be liable for it? Right?

This opens up kind of a whole new can of worms for lawyers there who are also rubbing their hands and glee. Lawyers love to get new cases of first impression here that we can, you know, run up the flagpole. So I I, I do think th this is, uh, in some respects a brave new world, right?

If you are a fan, fan of robots in Asimov, you, you can take some lessons and cues from it. But, you know, the, do we need to put limits on what these agents can do, right? We, you know, agents don't get sick.

They could work 24 7, uh, you know, until they don't. Right? Why do agents have feelings?

Do agents dream? Uh, well, nice Philip Dick reference. Yeah.

And you know, this, this is, so, there, there's no timeline on this, but this is the end game. Alan, you were spot on. You know, Salesforce and Nvidia are discussing these things called digital workforces.

I was just talking yesterday with a friend of mine who does consulting work with Salesforce. He, he, he's considered within Salesforce and a Benioff whisperer, which is the reference to Mark Benioff. And with, even within Salesforce, they've developed a couple of these concepts.

One of them is called the Quiet Erosion of entry level jobs. So they're convinced that these AI related jobs or tasks will replace the lower level jobs, and they're actually referring to the agents as ES or virtual employees. So we've got this, we also have this idea, I mean, not to get too, too cynical, but the federal government, what's happening with Doge, et cetera, I think some of the tasks they, they're gonna try to find a way to replace the tasks of humans within government agencies with agents.

I think Amazon's gonna do this with warehouses. They've, they've made it clear they, they're dropping breadcrumbs everywhere. The, the only question is the timeframe, but I think it's inevitable.

And I think we're gonna see a lot of loss losses of jobs where people can't adapt, which will create all sorts of union issues, all sorts of culpability issue, corporate governance. It's gonna be wild. You know, I'm sorry, go ahead, Mike.

In theory, You can argue the other side of this though, right? So it's pretty clear that we or may not have enough workers, 'cause the boomers are gonna retire and there's not enough air folks running around. So maybe we do need to have AI agents handle more things.

And maybe the definition of what it means to be a, a worker, let's say knowledge worker is replaced by somebody who's, you know, a knowledge orchestrator or a supervisor, and they are handling more things, um, through their team of folks. And then we're all more collectively productive. But we may not have as many people in the first place.

I always wanted to be an orchestrator. Do I get a baton with that? No, no.

That's different. It's an orchestra. Um, so Mike, you, you are right, but you know, I'm reminded of a, a discussion we had earlier this week around the Apple $500 billion announcement.

It's gonna create 20,000 jobs. That's about 25 million a job. Um, and by the way, I'm going to, I spoke about this Thursday on LinkedIn live yesterday on my shimmy says, but the bottom line is, you know, we talk about opening data centers and factories and all these things, but when the jobs in those data centers and factories are handled by agents, you're not creating the amount or the type of jobs that they may want in the heartland here, right?

Those good assembly line jobs in those factory positions, agents may do that. Robots are going to do that. And so, you know, do we come to a, a Star Trek kind of world where humans really don't do menial labor and don't do physical labor?

And, you know, and quite frankly, even a lot of service mental tasks can be handled by agents, AKA writing software and, and all of these things. So, well, what do humans do? We, we can't just get fat and walk around on those chairs, right?

We talked about this with Wally. What do we do? Have I not told you my favorite stupid it joke before?

You know, what's the future of the data center? It's, it's, it's one guy and a dog. And the dog is there to keep him from touching anything.

It's gonna be a boy, it's gonna be a boy and his dog, another science fiction reference. But you know, that you're, you're right, Mike, there's gonna be a, there already is, uh, in the, especially in the healthcare industry, a lack of doctors, optometrists, dentists, so, so AI in a sense, and these agents and robotics will actually fill the gap there. So there is a, there is a good side that benefits all of us, but I just think, I mean, I just think that the problem is, given what our oligarchs in tech are doing these days, it's very hard for me to trust anything they say or any, any of their intentions.

They're building these data centers. They're looking at ways to move forward in robotics, in ways to maximize profits. Because that's all I really care about, in my opinion, that at this point in time that might change.

And it's so kind of where we're moving in terms of job displacement. And you're gonna see more union activity, uh, around this and more strikes or threats of strikes. So You think it's more displacement versus, excuse me, augmentation or enhancement?

'cause I see it, I, I guess I look at it from a different lens, um, from a messaging perspective and what really needs to be very crisp there to explain how these agents are helping humans. But it sounds like you guys are thinking more, there's gonna be more displacement than there is enhancement. Well, we talked about this previous show where we were, um, you know, given Andreessen some grief about some of his comments.

But one of the things that he said is, we're gonna burn down the economy first and then rebuild it. Well, that's all right. Burn down the economy without a plan though results in a massive amount of disruption.

And it's not too long before E even with a plan, the Pitchforks are outside the White House. Even with a plan burning down the economy is going to create lots of disruption. And when you're an oligarch sitting on a couple tens of billions of dollars, you, you can ride it through Mr.

And Mrs. America who are voting for this, I think are in for a bit of a, a rude awakening. And, and we'll, we'll see where, where that goes.

Um, I mean, but, but here's the other flip side though too. I've never seen progress stop be for, for feelings, for feel goods. Progress rolls on and it stops for no man or woman or worker or country, country or economy.

And if you could, if you could do it, they will. And I, I will, let me pose inevitable, another scenario. When you hire somebody, you're actually hiring them.

And there are 15 digital assistants that they trained and they are, you know, a small army of people and agents that are, are as the new employee that you're hiring. And when they Leave, oh yeah, they're all through egos. Yeah, they're all through egos.

But, but let's be clear, there's a difference between digital agents on our Salesforce who are gonna go do digital task on the net or on your network for you versus robots that have AI embedded and are doing physical tasks, right? This is, this is a PI movement here, right? Where, where, where they're attacking menial, physical task, not attacking, but potentially replacing menial physical workers at the same time replacing what's called them brain workers.

Well, let's go to the, let's go to the bean block 'cause that's where we're going. Absolutely. All right.

You know what? That's a good one. We'll, we'll, uh, we're gonna take a break here on text and gang.

You know, I always wanted a Jetsons flying car. It looks like I'm gonna get rosy. First.

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Contact us today and tell your story to the world in the most powerful way with Techron Group. All right? So as Alan noted, we are talking about robotics and robots are coming to the home.

Meta has signaled that it wants to build robots that will do everything from wash your car to do your laundry. And well, what could go wrong with all that? But, um, Alan's point, we are seeing these, you could argue a robot is a form of an AI agent, and it's gonna go do menial tasks.

And to this is part of that pincer movement. But what happens to all those folks who are doing those various tasks out there? I don't know, and I don't know how far away these robots are, but I can think of a few dozen things that might go wrong, including, well, is that robot sharing data about what's going on in, you know, your laundry with some AI somewhere that then is gonna pop it out somewhere in an interesting way.

Will, you know, littles, what was little Susie doing with her boyfriend and the, when they were supposed to be doing homework is suddenly gonna pop up on a screen somewhere? I don't know. But Shades of Monica Lecy, um, only if you check the box that allows your robot to share that information back with meta headquarters solely for the purpose of improving your laundry.

But, uh, no one wants to air their dirty laundry on Techstar gang. But, you know, look, guys, take a lesson from the internet. What industry led the way in breakthroughs on digital, uh, commerce, on video over the internet and everything else, the porn industry, they're liable to lead the way in this robotic industry as well, right?

And I could only imagine what all hell breaks loose here. What John, I'm sorry. Oh, It's like a West World reference too.

I mean, Yeah, yeah, yeah. A little west world. That was, if you remember that.

Yeah, that was great series speaking. Well, we'll come back to this, but, but you don't need a pretty guy Beefcake guy or a pretty woman robot to wash the car, do the laundry, do your rosy like Jetson's, Rosie's, you know, electronic maid, do that kind of stuff. They don't even have to actually be humanoid, right?

They don't have to have two eyes, and you don't have to look humid. Whatever the most efficient form is to complete the particular task. I, I think the question is, and it's similar to the digital agent, are we gonna have many different robots that are single function robots, car washer that services multiple houses or something like that?

Or do we have a jack of all trades robot, the English butler, so to speak? Who? Or Rosie, right?

Who, who does runs the dishwasher, runs the washing machine, washes the cars, tidies up the house, folds the clothes. Um, you know, the beauty of it is, is if you've been following what's been going on in robotics over the years, and for most of us it's just watching how nimble the robotic dog is, right? You could take out a, a leg and he still figures out how to balance himself and how fast they run and how, you know, how much progress they've made in, in these robotic, uh, you know, mechanisms and, and mobility.

But then you marry that to true ai, right? To a really good AI that that's programmed to do certain tasks. Sky's the limit.

Sky's the, I mean, think, think of, do I need, you know, one of my big things is if we, if we deport 12 million immigrants, all the fruit that's rotting in the, in the fields and, and you know, John and Joe Smith from Kansas City aren't gonna go out and do farm work. Well, if I got robots to do 'em, that really helps. That really helps.

And I think We're a long way, we're a long way from the single purpose or the multipurpose robot. So I think we'll get there in phases. We'll have single purpose robots, then we'll wind up with this multipurpose robot.

But, um, this is not all that far off in the sense that, you know, there are reports that the Chinese are building millions of robots already. So It's, you know, it's, it's also, I mean, it's also happening here. There's a startup out here called physical intelligence, and one of its major investors is Jeff Bezos.

And there are videos of what these specific robots do, some wash dishes, some sort and box, uh, items. So it is going in that direction. I actually, when I recently went to Carnegie Mellon, the um, PhD students there were showing me their robots that did things as, as, as weird as like picking apples outta trees, um, using sound rather than visuals.

Um, it's, it's happening. And a lot of the agriculture companies are working with the Carnegie Mellon folks about raising crops and picking crops. So, you're right, Mike, this is a lot of specialization before we go to the multi-varied robots.

But it, it, it's happening. I mean, it's just, I just don't know the timeframe. And again, with meta, I don't know if this is a concept they're talking about and how far along they are.

I guess it depends on where they, where they are. But physical intelligence actually is something that I think you're gonna see elements of that being used within Amazon and their warehouses within a couple years. Definitely.

We saw a lot of that at CES actually, sorry, guys from a, from an agricultural perspective, all the things that they're doing and working with robots to do special tasks, to, to aid the humans. Um, so that was a big theme at CES this year too. So there, there are lots of undocumented workers out there who are doing a lot of these jobs for about, I don't know, 15 to 20 bucks an hour, we shall say.

Um, so does the robot need to come in under that price, or am I gonna have to buy the robot? I mean, going back to our earlier conversation about these AM regions, you know, how does the cost of the robot get figured out? And maybe the robot will be too costly Spoken like a true coastal elite Mike, they're not paying those undocumented immigrants, 15, 20 bucks an hour.

Those people, you know what I mean? Come on down from Harrison Dean. Um, those people are getting five to $7 an hour, unfortunately, and they're happy to get it, and that's what makes that world go round.

But look, when you compare human labor to robotic labor, though, it's in a no win. The human can't win, right? Because the robot never gets sick.

It could break, yes, but the robot doesn't get sick. The robot doesn't take days off, the robot doesn't steal the robot doesn't hate you or love you or whatever. The robot can work 24 7 theoretically.

And over time that robot's going to get cheaper and cheaper as, you know, scales of economy kick in. So, you know, to say, oh, you know, there's a, there's a, a, a, an actual comparison of cost, I think hands down, eventually the robot's gotta win that game. But I'll tell you one area, no, But there is, there is, but there is, Ellen, just to be fair, there is a, there is a level of hesitancy among places like John Deere.

The initial cost, the outlay is Expensive. It's CapEx Prohibitive. Yeah.

Unless, unless you're a major company, it's, it's gonna, it's, it's gonna start with them. But yeah, you're right. The costs are, are dropping, but not exponentially.

So it's, it's that, that's the one thing humans Have going. I mean, you know, a couple of issues, number one, you know, who's really out ahead and is just besides themselves with this are, you know, to, to go back to the other day, we were talking about Ike and Eisenhower, our industrial military complex, because probably the first robots we're gonna see are military robots, right? Clone wars, warrior class robots who just follow orders, they don't have a conscience.

And, and that, that's a whole new set of, you know, potential problems we need to be thinking about. The other thing though is who really is gonna be the robot? Who's gonna make the robot that you buy for your house?

Who's gonna make your rosy? Is it gonna be a Google, a meta, an apple, you know, one of the mag seven oligarchs an Amazon? Or, or is there a chance for, uh, a new, a new class to rise, you know, a new group of US robotics?

Didn't they make the modems we used? Wouldn't it be great if US robotics came back and we, for our robots in the house? But, um, you know, there's an opportunity there.

And the question is, will the Mets of the world who are, you know, making noise and the apples and the Amazons making noise, are they gonna let new, new growth come in here? Right? And that, that's sometimes why you need a government to calm the, the market at, you know, pure market forces to make sure we don't get monopolized with this.

And we do have, uh, innovation coming from new companies in this exciting new area. You're right though. You know, you talked about, oh, go ahead.

Go ahead, Lisa. I, sorry, Jon. I was gonna say, I think that's a great point.

From a competitive perspective, how can smaller companies, those newer ones, leverage the, what the metas, the apples, the Amazons are doing from a robotics perspective to drive more innovation, to drive more competition, that's gonna help drive prices down as well. But Alan, you bring up a great point there in terms of where is this innovation? Where's the, we're seeing the, the leaders with some of those mag seven companies already, but it would be nice to see some of the smaller companies from an innovation perspective be able to bring up that competitiveness so that this becomes more of a, of a cost effective reality.

Oh, um, I'm just gonna say, me, me, you mentioned the military. That's a great example. I mean, in addition to the porn industry, the military has always been kind of at the forefront of terms of using technology.

And when you mentioned robotics, it made me think about 20 years ago I did this project with CNN and it involved UAVs and also remember the global Hawk of the Predator, these drones, um, there were emergency, there were underwater, uh, submarines that were, uh, robotic. They, they were done mainly to protect humans from in, in terms of war. Uh, right, right.

I mean, they'll be used for something else. I'm, I'm sure I already have been, for all we know. But the, the whole, the whole idea, the whole concept though, was to try to, as Eisenhower, you mentioned earlier, you know, a way to spend money on the military without spending it too much on people and, and more on technology.

Uh, as we kind of go forward in, into this brave new world, I think this is gonna be a massive exercise in marketing because the only robot that's coming into my house has to come from some brand that I trust. Right. And it's not just gonna be, you know, any random company.

It's gotta be somebody who I can feel like I can call up and say, come get this thing 'cause it's going crazy. No, but look, I, I'll give you, for instance, any of you guys use robotic vacuum cleaners in your house, IRobot. It's exactly.

Bingo. What a great story. The Roomba from iRobot was my friend Brad Feldy was an investor in that early on.

And that, you know, there was a long, it wasn't, it was one of those 10 year overnight successes, right? It took a long time to get that technology right. And it, and it's relatively dumb technology if you've used it, you know?

Right. But people, you know, that's worked its way in, is a brand that people didn't, didn't Amazon buy that one, John? Yes.

You know, now of course it's part Amazon I think have one in the, I think I have one in the attic somewhere. I think we stopped using it just 'cause Well, no, I have one here in the office. I brought it in from the house because our previous dog, Sandy used to hate it.

She'd chase it around biting it, and she cracked her canine teeth on it, and she had that fang look. So when we got the new puppy, now, I immediately took it out the house. 'cause I didn't need any more cracked teeth.

I had to pay for enough orthodontist work for my children. I don't need it for my dogs. But, um, yeah, I don't know how many people, I don't know how good they are to tell you the truth.

Dyson never came out with one. How good They good they be. Um, Mike brings it a great point on trust though.

Sorry, John, on customer trust, you're saying, like looking at, you know, the apples, the Amazons, the metas that, that we're buying products from and where we are the product versus somebody that's unknown. So maybe there's collaboration between some of these larger companies and some of the smaller ones to drive that innovation. But you bring up a great point.

'cause from a, from a marketing perspective, it's all about earning customer trust and retaining it. That's just table stakes to driving revenue. Mm-hmm.

And I'll tell you what, I trust Samsung a lot more than I do Hewlett Packard, you know what I mean? What kind of American are you? I'm kidding.

Guess American with good taste in terms of technology. Uhhuh Uhhuh, but they haven't, I didn't see them at the White House pledging a couple of hundred billion dollars. Well then half the Country today is young Then, then half the country's gonna trust them more.

I don't know. What can I tell you? Anyway?

Hey, let's take a break. We're going to come back. Little bye-Bye.

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It was kind of an amazing stunt. Uh, about a thousand or so artists in the uk music artists got together, released an album and there was no music on it. And they were basically protesting this law that's being considered in the UK that will allow anybody who has an AI thing just to use copyrighted content to train that AI and not have to actually compensate anybody.

And of course, all the artists in the UK are flipping out about this, and it's not just gonna be music, I suspect. But John, you've been following this for years now. What's going on here?

Yes. So it's more content creators against ai, right? It's, um, it is interesting, this concept of this, this album, which was called, is This What We Want?

There were a dozen recordings of empty studios and performance spaces and with the likes of Kate Bush, Annie Lennox. And I remember also a couple of weeks ago, Paul McCartney had talked to the BBC and he had said this interesting quote, he says, the truth is the money's going somewhere when it gets on the streaming platforms. Somebody is getting it, and it should be the person who created it.

It shouldn't be some tech giant somewhere. And, and, and again, what what's especially heinous to the artists of this case is that this considered plan or law, AI law, copyright law would allow tech companies to use copyrighted material to help train AI models unless the creators themselves explicitly opt out. And I think there are already laws there.

I mean, based on what I've read, there are, the copyright law already can covers this, but the fact is you have to actively protect your own rights, which is gonna be almost impossible. Um, the, this opt-out proposal's been met with scorn from opponents to say there's no evidence of a water type rights reservation process anywhere in the world. So I suspect we're gonna see this cascade beyond music and into film and into writing, into even our stories, into, into everything imaginable Again.

It's, um, it's quite interesting in, in the amount of force that the artists in the UK took. I applaud because I think they're making the, the Labor Party, which is thinking of this plan, kind of reconsider it. And I mean, it's a story that's fluid, but I think there's been enough resistance where I think we might see some sort of action.

But again, this is something that we've seen in Hollywood with writers. We see it with voice actors. I mean, they're being replaced, especially voice actors.

That's one of the worst areas where you can replicate their voice and basically use the AI voice instead of the human and not pay the human. So again, it just spares repeating. I think it's a really important story, But it's also authors.

It's not just musicians, it's authors, it's artists, it's newspaper publishers. And then we have companies like OpenAI saying, Hey, we can't train our models without copyrighted materials. So this, this war, and you've mentioned some of the, um, of the big names Paul McCarney, Elton John, for example, as well as a lot of smaller artists.

And what I thought was interesting was that the 12 tracks on this album of silence spell out the British government must not legalize music theft to benefit AI companies. And they're really, these creatives are really speaking for, for, um, a all, all creative industries globally that we're seeing it obviously rise up here in the uk, but it's, it's the creative saying we need to be protected and compensated. And, but the big OpenAI companies saying, we can't train the models without your copyrighted materials.

So did the, so Alan, did the politicians sell out the content providers here essentially for money? Everybody wants to ride the AI train to quote some song, right? Everybody wants to ride the train.

But you look, the fact of the matter is there is a long bloody history of large companies exploiting artists for their own capital benefit, right? If you're familiar with the Bruce Springsteen lawsuit, uh, back in the day, several others now, we had a bit of a revolution with digital. All of a sudden those, the, you know, the recording, uh, industry, the, the, the record labels, they didn't, they stopped holding the power because everything was streaming and, and payments.

Now artists can get royalties directly from the streaming providers, Spotify's and so forth of the world, though there's still a place for labels. It's just not, you know, like what it was when we were younger, let's say. Um, but you know, th this is true now, I thought, John, that the, the after and the, the Hollywood strikes with the writers and actors that you could not use voice and duplicate one's voice without permission.

As a matter of fact, I believe it came out that when James Earl Jones passed away, he had sold the digital rights to his voice so they can continue doing Darth Vader and some of the other roles, you know, iconic roles that he played, that his voice is, is the role. And, and he sold the, the, he he, his estate sold that for a pretty penny. You know, similar to the Bella Lago case, which originally said you have a, artists have rights to their images, artists have rights to their voice.

Artists have rights, you know, to their likeness. Um, unless it's satire now. But this really begs the question.

I mean, think about what you said. Lisa OpenAI says, well, we can't train our models without copyrighted material. They acknowledge this is copyrighted material.

Well, thanks for telling me that. 'cause that's why I thought my copyright was valuable, otherwise I would've just let you use it. You know what I mean?

You, you hear people crying with two loaves of bread under their arm about why can't we use copyrighted materials so we can make money The honestly, the nerve, the nerve of them to actually make that argument and expect us to have sympathy for them. Have we gone bonkers? I didn't see them at the White House pledging him.

Actually he did, he did pledge money. Alright. He pledged money.

No tariffs. He could do whatever he wants, right? But honestly, where, what are we coming to here?

If copyright and IP means nothing? What's our beef with the Chinese? That was always the thing.

They don't respect our ip. Well, if we don't re you know, my grandmother always told me, if you don't respect yourself, don't let, don't expect other people to respect you. We don't respect our ip.

Other people won't either. So I say more power to these musicians and I'm, you know, it's funny how these things always take place in the e UK and the EU where they seem to still have a, a sense of, of individual rights. And they haven't sold out to the oligarchy quite yet, but more power to 'em.

So John will, the artists of which, you know, many have, are native to Great Britain and Great Britain has driven rock and roll and all this other stuff from, will they just leave that whole country and will they say, we're not gonna put our product and make it available in the uk 'cause it's gonna be stolen by AI companies? Yeah, that's a really good point. You know, that that's, you know what, in a sense it has happened before because of the taxation in Britain.

A lot of artists left the country relocated to France, Switzerland, United States to avoid that. So there is precedence. Um, and in terms of recording, you can record anywhere.

I think. I think that the, the British government probably is stepping back and thinking, Jesus, you know, what have we gotten ourselves into and trying to figure out a compromise. Like all these things, usually we try to do at least with, with so much power that's been represented by these artists.

But I think there's a a very good chance that they, that they lead. Yeah, I think it could happen. But, But, but practically speaking, okay, so they pick up and move to the south of France or to the Dakota building in New York City or whatever, right?

Does that stop the British government from allowing the AI companies to use their, their music to train their models to make good music? Well, I, I think, I think it sends a message to the government. And when you have the mega stars leave, which impacts an industry and the economy in a certain sense, maybe it does.

And maybe they sec they, they rethink what they, what they did. I mean, that's, I guess the leverage you have. But I understand your point.

Those, Those guys generated a lot of taxable revenue for the uk. So that will just disappear. And then their recording companies might just say, we're not gonna let any, any station or any outlet in the UK have the next album.

'cause the other stuff's already out. So that horse is out of the barn door. But anything new they could theoretically lock down.

And then maybe, you know, I don't know, Malta sets up and says, you know, Hey, we're gonna welcome all you guys here to live and we will have friendly courts for you to pursue these cases, and we will tax your revenue less than the UK did. And for Malta, it'll be a huge win. I don't know, I'm making that up, but theoretically, Yeah, no, I just, yeah, it's, I'm just gonna throw this out too.

Maybe I'm going down a rabbit hole. But the whole thing with, uh, Taylor Swift rerecording all of her albums in terms of owning the rights to that, I mean, I'm not, I'm not sure about the particulars, but the, the fact is, if you are big enough and strong enough as an artist, you can flex your muscle and have the fair amount of influence. Especially if you have somebody like McCartney who, when I lived in England, the joke was he made a a pound a second from royalties alone.

Um, this, this is, I mean, this has a lot of weight behind it. We shall see, we shall see, I, this isn't just a UK thing, right? Because what are you gonna do not allow the ais in the uk?

I mean, and what about the EU and the US and the brick countries and the rest of them? So what happens when the artists say there'll be no concerts in the UK either, because remember, you know, people wanna go to the experience and, uh, I don't really wanna sit at a concert and watch a digital robot. So, you know, there's a lot of leverage here, man, Just, Hey, don't knock it until you tried it, until you walked a mile with those shoes.

Talk to the porn guys. Um, but, uh, no, I mean, so that is one way that though, where like, I don't know if moving out of the country gets 'em what they want, but refusing to perform in the country. I think that'll put the screws to 'em a little bit.

Mm-hmm. That happened in South Africa. Remember all those Oh yeah.

Were no, no. Major artists would Go to. Yeah, yeah.

Well they tried, they tried it in Israel too. The boycott, divest, whatever it's called. I tried to pressure artists not to perform in Israel.

Yeah, if you live in the Middle East, you wanna see a concert, you're gonna have to go to Dublin. That's all there is too. I'd rather go there.

Um, you know, the, the thing too is the, the, it is just as you said, Alan, in Europe, they are, they do value copyrights, privacy. Um, they're personal data and they're so far ahead of people, they're so far ahead of us. Uh, I, I just can't imagine something like that happening in, in the US to this extent.

Not as long as they pledge some money for AI data centers. Yeah, I know. Um, all right.

Hey, let's wrap up our Friday. What a good, this was a good, this was a good panel today with some great topics. We hope you've enjoyed this at home.

We have, of course, our usual text on tv, uh, schedule right behind us here on the gang. So stay tuned right here on this bat channel. And you, you'll be able to see that.

Of course, you could also catch Textron Gang on Textron TV and watch past episodes. You can also catch in on our YouTube channel, our text drug tv, YouTube channel. It's on there as well as on your favorite podcast platforms, right?

It's probably being, you could probably, probably being used to be trained for that OpenAI thing too. But, um, but it's on Apple Podcast and Spotify and the rest. But until Monday, we'll be back with lots of great new content.

Monday. This is Alan Shimel. On behalf of Textron Gang and Textron, have a great weekend, everyone.

We're outta here.