A device that records your entire life? Yeah, sure great idea...
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That is, of course, rocking the markets globally. But that, dear listener, is by design. We want to give a little bit of time for this story, which is just changing so much by the day, and come with a more fulsome discussion next week. We have a great guest lined up to talk about it. And hopefully there'll be also a tad bit more clarity. But now, let's get back to the rest of this week's episode.

Hello and welcome back to the Times Tech Podcast with me, Katie Prescott, and you, Danny Fortson. Katie here in the city and Danny in the valley. Hello, Katie. Hello, good to see you. So what do you have for us today? I have a question. Go on. Have you ever watched Black Mirror and thought, this terrifying bit of technology that is ruining the fabric of society?

We should do that. This is a really embarrassing admission for a tech journalist, but I've actually never seen Black Mirror. Oh my gosh. I know, I feel like I'm going to get fired for admitting that. Yeah, keep that one, dude. Sorry. Well, so this obviously would answer my next question, which is going to be, have you ever watched the episode called The Entire History of You? It sounds really good, but no. So I've asked Chad GBT to summarize this episode for you.

Big spoiler alert for any listeners. For you, Katie, I will have to spoil it because it's important for what we're about to discuss today. Okay, spoil away. Go for it. Okay. So I've asked Chad GPT to make this summary dramatic. Insert tense music. Producer Callum Wong. Ahem. In a world where every moment is recorded through a brain implant called the grain. I'm serious here. Hold it together. Ahem.

One man rewinds his memories to uncover the truth about his marriage. But the more he sees, the less he can forget. And the truth tears everything apart. In the end, to forget is the only freedom. Did I sound like a dude who's like a dude in the movie trailers? Yeah, you could be in Netflix. There's another job waiting for you. Yeah, who knows?

So would you watch that? Would you watch what I just described? To uncover the truth. Yeah, it sounds gripping. Good story. Yeah. Question two, the grain, the device that allows Liam in Black Mirror to replay his entire life. What do you reckon? Do you think this is a good idea? Yeah.

Thinking you were bi? Rewinding your memories to uncover the truth about your marriage. I mean, it sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. I don't know that it's that different to what we're doing now, carrying mobile phones around. But maybe I'm wrong. Fair, fair. Well, today's guest I've been speaking to is Dan Siroker.

He's the founder of a company called Limitless AI. And Limitless have created something they call the world's most wearable AI. It's a magnetic brooch called the pendant. And according to their website, it remembers what you say throughout the day from in-person meetings, impromptu conversations, and personal insights. Personal insight. Wow.

Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. So. Many questions. What's not to like? Now, in fairness to Dan, Pendant, unlike the grain of Black Mirror, doesn't film what you see. It only records what you hear. And he takes issue with the Black Mirror comparison. But we'll get into that. Okay. Well, I'm desperate to hear what he has to say. Should we go straight into it? Yeah. So let's do it. Here he is, Dan Siroker of Limitless AI. Okay.

In my 20s, I started to go deaf. I have a genetic condition called otosclerosis. And when I tried a hearing aid, it was magical. And it was magical for a few reasons. One, I could hear again, which is great. But the second, which is this big insight I realized, is my hearing had gone so bad so gradually that I didn't even know what I was missing. For example, the first time I turned a faucet on after getting a hearing aid, I was like in shock. Like, that makes sound. This high-pitched sound. What's that racket? Yeah.

If you didn't know that faucets make sound, get your hearing checked. But yeah, you turn a faucet on and it makes this high-pitched sound. And like in that moment, I had this epiphany.

We are living our lives with biological limitations that we don't even realize are there. And so it put me on this hunt now, 12 years later, for ways that technology can augment human capabilities and give us superpowers. And that's what it feels like to overcome your biological limitations. That led me to memory. 90% of memories are forgotten after a week. It gets worse as you get older. Typically, people's memory peak when they're 20 years old. And then every year thereafter, it's worse.

So that's what we mean by overcoming your biological limitations, your mind's limitations, is to do the same thing a hearing aid did for my hearing, but for your mind, for your memory instead. So what is the thing? The thing that you are, for people who are not, who won't see the video, you're wearing this little kind of, it's about the size of a quarter-ish. Yeah.

that's kind of clipped, it looks like magnetically to your collar. That's right. Yeah, it's clipped magnetically to my collar. We also have a necklace that goes with it. You can put it on a little necklace. It's got a little, you know, jawbone design here. And the idea behind the pendant is it's a wearable AI device. You put it on in the morning, you set and forget it. I've worn it now every day, every moment of every day for months. And just like my hearing aid, I put it on in the morning. I can't imagine living a day without it.

The same is probably true for people with glasses. Could you imagine going around your life without glasses? Maybe there's some moments you would, but, and so the same thing happens with appendants. What the pendant does is it captures your conversations. You know, it could be as simple as a cute thing your kid said. I have three young kids and I capture cute things they say all the time.

to maybe an action item in a meeting, or maybe you're listening to a podcast like this one, and a few hours later, you think, "What was actually that point Dan was saying? "What was the analogy he was making?" And now you can ask those questions. Anything that's on the tip of your, if you've ever had this feeling of racking your brain, like, "Where was that? "What was that? "What did I hear?" Or you may be connecting the dots in your past. Now you can do that using a pendant to capture these conversations.

So in other words, it's effectively a listening device that transforms your daily life into a searchable document. Yeah, it's searchable, not just as searchable from like a full text search, but really powered by AI. You can ask questions of your past in a way you could never do it before. For example. Yeah, for example, you could ask it, you know, I ask every morning, actually, I've set it up to automatically give me a push notification.

where I have this prompt that says, my goal is to be better, to be a better coworker, be a better parent, be a better husband. Give me examples throughout my day of ways where I could do that. Give me one key takeaway. And it'll give you these magical moments that you don't even realize. Can you give me an example of something that the AI told you recently that kind of judged you and said, you need to do this better? Yeah.

Sure. Yeah. So I actually put this out when I was demoing this feature, when we launched these daily notifications, I ran it live on the recording for the first time. So you can actually even see my reaction when I see it for the first time. And the advice he gave me, the one concrete thing was, you know, you could give more praise to your team.

And it gave three examples from just that day where in standup in the morning, an engineer was talking about, boy, this is really challenging. We overcame this. And I responded with, okay, cool. And I moved on where I gave it specific language to, Hey, look, if you had just responded with that's how I'm really challenging, you know, really appreciate you putting the extra effort in that would light them up as a leader, as a manager, those moments of praise are things that I, you know, I know have a huge positive impact. People that lights them up and gives them energy to run through walls for weeks to come. That was a concrete

As a manager, as a leader, I could have done better. And I didn't know in the moment, I'm just moving on to the next thing. I'm not paying attention where, you know, you know, if you're, if you're watching a sporting event and you know, in American football, somebody throws an interception and,

And that quarterback is within minutes on the sideline looking at a printout of what they missed. What did they miss? Where was that safety? They're just watching the game tape on the iPad on the sideline. This is your game tape for your life. And many times, the ones that hit home for me are ways I could pay more attention as a dad, opportunities where my kid says something and I maybe missed it and where I could go deeper. And so, yeah, it's become a key part of it. It's a life coach for me. It's a work coach.

And until you have those concrete examples, you don't even realize. I bet you most of people listen to this and be like, I'm doing a pretty good job. There's nothing I could do to improve. You'd be shocked. If you just look at one day of your life and you could ask AI what you could do better, you'd be shocked at what it would come up with. And that's not for everyone. Not everyone wants to be better in life. But if you do, this is magic in a bottle. Feels like there's some judgment implicit in that. Well, not everybody wants to be better. Some people want to be not very good. I

I would say there's a spectrum of self-awareness and self-improvement. And I'll give you a very concrete example. When we launched this feature, it pissed people off. People got to push notification in the morning saying, how dare you? How dare you send me a message? And you know, if that's how they feel when they go back to the conversations they've had in the past,

and it kind of hurts their feelings that there are things they could have done better, okay, maybe we're not for them. But we would rather lean into the people who are wearing an Oura ring. They're trying to be better at what they do. And if they're open to that, this is not, most tech doesn't tell you ways you can be better. Most tech tries to play it safe. This is an example where we're kind of leaning into the edginess and the ability for us to help people because we think that's good for you and society. My kids are happy I wear the pendant because it makes me a better dad.

How, just, just because I think the mechanics of this, you know, so much of this is about design and how it kind of lands on people. As you say, when you launched a lot of, it made a lot of people angry. So I, let's say yesterday I wear dependent all day. The AI is surveilling. And then it comes back, man, when Danny was hanging out with his boys, he should have done this or that, or he could have done this better, whatever. I wake up.

What does that push notification look like? What do you, what is it called? Is it like your, your daily self-improvement notice? And is it, and how is that delivered? Yeah. So, so you said by listing device earlier and surveil just now, and so you're, you have a connotation here that I just want to address proactively, which is, I don't answer your question, but first I just want to say your privacy and the privacy people you meet with are very, very important. It is critical, critical for our product.

to do well for you and society at large. And I just want to head that off that like, this is not a device that's surveilling you. There's no AI sitting there like, you know, twiddling his thumbs. Ooh, I wonder what Dan's up to. This is a machine that you're asking questions of and you create a prompt where that prompt is the thing you're trying to extract from your past. And it comes back with a response. There's no, you know, there's no nefarious,

activity, the things, the conversations you have with others are shareable. You know, very often when I meet somebody for the first time and I say, "Hey, can I wear this thing?" It'll capture the conversation. I don't have to take notes. I'm happy to share it with you afterwards.

100% of the time, people are fine with it. I haven't had a single person say to me, "Oh, that's weird. Take that off. I don't feel comfortable." - You've had nobody say no? - Zero. Not a single person has said that. And the reason why is because the perception of a device like this is so different than the reality, especially when I can share the artifact. I can share the summary. I can share the action items. I can share the conversation. And that neutralizes it. Most people get afraid of recording devices when it's about control, when it's about canceling me. "Well, what are you gonna do with this voice?" You know, this conversation afterwards.

And when you tell them, look, is it just because I care what you say, dude? I want to know what you're going to say. I want to remember it. I've got kind of a bad memory. It'd be really great, you know, to be able to go back to it afterwards if it's useful. And, you know, maybe you say something serendipitously now that I might not remember later. And I just, I care about you and I want to remember it and I'll share it with you. Literally 100% of the time that has gone totally fine. The only awkward time was this

poker night where there's like 30 dudes and they're all talking shit uh and they're like one guy says hey are you a narc but that's about it literally every single moment every single other day for months this does not have been an issue but so since we're here because i was looking on your website and there's a lot about privacy and how important it is and how the lengths to which you are going to kind of ensure that this is kind of encrypted and nobody can hack it etc etc but i don't see

anything on there about what you just said, consent. And maybe I just was looking in the wrong place, but how does that work? Because if you're wearing that,

Is it on you as a wearer to be like, every time you have a conversation, every time you walk into the supermarket, every time you walk through the office to tell everybody, hey, I've got this listening device. Everybody cool with this? In other words, what is the system or is there one? Because it feels like right now it's relying on people to be very...

And most people just aren't that. Yeah. So we have a bunch of stuff in our help center all about consent. If you search for consent, we've got articles and articles. And the thing in the app, we teach users how to do this. And so I'll say a couple of things. One, there's a legal bar for consent. And then there's a much higher moral, ethical, social, behavioral, social acceptance bar, which is the one we want people to adhere to. And the two magical things that we have learned about that higher bar is what I did earlier.

I tell you why I'm wearing it. It's because I want to remember what you say. It's not about me trying to cancel you. And I'm willing to share it with you. Those two things, I think, are the magic ingredients to social acceptance. People are like, okay, cool. Like you're just an honest person trying to be better, trying to remember. And you're not going to lord this over me. This is something we have a shared artifact for.

We have found that that actually – we had all these technology solutions to this problem. We thought about consent mode and all these technology. We have built a lot of that. But we realized it's more of a human thing. It's more of a the way you introduce it thing and that is what unlocks the social acceptance. So when you talk about those, there's a moral bar of like just being straight with people? Yeah.

And then there's the legal bar. What's the legal bar? So the legal bar is in every country and state is different there. But part of the legal part is this notion of presumption of privacy. So if you're at a restaurant or if you're at a sporting event and you're in public, the presumption of privacy isn't there. And so the legal bar, basically all these rules are in consent kind of go out the window. You can, you know, just like today, you can go to the sporting event and take a picture of their phone. Oh my gosh, why are you taking a picture of me? You're out in public. Yeah.

So all the legal stuff happens when there is a presumption of privacy. In America, it's state by state. So in America, in one state, there's some states that are called one-party consent states where the person who's wearing it is the party. They have to consent and they're going to wear it. Then they technically legally don't have to say anything. Although we tell them, you should tell everyone. This is the reason why you're wearing it. And that's why I say it's a higher bar. Some states like California are two-party consent. So if you're going to court somebody else and there's a presumption of privacy, not in public, but a presumption of privacy...

You can tell them, hey, you have to tell them legally that you're going to record them and get their consent. And so that's sort of the legal bar. But again, that's much lower than the higher bar. And the higher bar, again, is just being a good person. It's being a good person. And then explaining the why behind the device. And most people, you tend to think, I mean, maybe you interview a lot of new people. Most people's worlds are pretty small. They interact with their family, their co-workers, their friends. It's not like 1,000 new people you meet every day. So you have a conversation the first time.

You explain what it's for. People get kind of curious. They kind of lean a little bit. And then from there on out, you have that presumption. Okay, yeah, this isn't going to capture the conversations. You're one of those new technology adopters who are doing this crazy thing. I want to remind you some analogies here. For most people listening, this is weird. Why would I do that? Imagine a world before Uber.

You got in, and I told you, look, I've got an idea for a company. You're going to get into a random person's car that you were matched with on the internet. Random person. You've never met this person. They're going to, you're going to get in their car and they're going to drive you. You don't know who they are. You don't know where they've come from. You don't know if they've got a driver's license and they're going to, you manually ratchet on the internet within minutes. Like that would have been shocking. And the first time you ride an Uber ride, you're like, well, this is kind of,

need. So all your perception, your concerns, your fears go away as soon as you try it. And the same thing is the truth of the pendant. As soon as you feel that magical moment of being able to go back to a moment in your past and see the ways you could have been better or done better or even just remember something that you would have otherwise forgotten or that

That cute thing, the first time your kid says, I love you, that was one of the first things we got from a customer. It's like, hey, I was wearing this pendant with my one-year-old on a swing. They turned around and they said, I love you for the first time. They were able to capture that moment with a pendant. No other device could do that. You can't take your phone out quickly enough to record it. Those are serendipitous moments you're going to lose. And so then you realize, okay, wow, this world is a better world and I can't imagine living without it. Right now it's just America.

No, the whole world. Yeah.

in the UK in terms of privacy, consent, et cetera? Yeah, I'm not an expert on the UK. I have seen, though, that America tends to be actually more restrictive and more legalistic here. And even socially, it's like even the word consent is actually a very loaded word. There's a lot of other connotations for the consent. It has nothing to do with reporting. So that brings in sort of this baggage that

this conception that I do think creates a very, again, very high perceived concern, but reality when you try it is not there at all. You look at countries like Korea where phones in Korea, they have a button right on there to record the phone call. And that's totally fine. You just have, oh, I want to record this call. It doesn't do the beeping thing. It just records the call. And people realize, okay, cool. I'm going to phone call. So it is, you know, it is kind of this social control artifact. It's actually, the roots of it are in the government surveillance has nothing to do with me capturing this government. It's the government. It's protecting you from your own government surveillance.

You know, that's why you need one party consent. So the government can't surveil you. So and has very different, you know, so it all depends on the history of the country and, you know, what they're comfortable with. This episode of the Times Tech podcast is sponsored by Vanta. Let's talk about something that might be keeping you up at night. Cybersecurity. According to Vanta's latest state of trust report, it's the number one concern for UK businesses. And that's where Vanta comes in.

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I want to talk about the business a bit. So you when did you launch this company or when did you start this whole thing? So this company actually is five years old. We started with a very different idea and we pivoted out a few times. We just and we, you know, we announced the pendant October 23. We're now just delivering on these pendants. So it's been a while since we announced it, built it. We've mass produced it. We have a whole factory building.

set up in China, mass produce these things, shipping them out now. So we've got thousands of these going out, you know, every week. Well, that's what I was going to say. So how many are like out in the wild and like how far along in that kind of trajectory are you in actually getting this out in the world and kind of, because that's,

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, right? Yeah, I would say we unequivocally have product market fit. And having now searched for that for five years, it feels really good to be able to say that. Oh my gosh, we're out in the desert looking for ways to get there. And this is not my first rodeo, so my first company, Optimizely, it actually got product market fit very quickly. So I have not been used to spending years and years of my life

trying to build something that people want and failing. Uh, so finally I think we've achieved that. And, you know, obviously there's degrees of product market fit. This is not, um, you know, chat GPT that's got hundreds of millions of users in a few months. Uh, but, but it's, it's tapping into something really human. And, um,

We've been thrilled with the results. You know, we've got thousands of these out in the world today. People are using it every single waking hour. That was a, that was kind of a bet we made that this isn't just a tape recorder. This isn't just a tape recorder in the cloud. There's a lot of products out there that you can, you know, you can use voice memos. You can just, we, we sort of made this conscious bet.

If we build a product with this premise that people are going to set and forget it, they want to carry it and wear it without having to annotate their day, without having to turn it on and off. It just sort of organizes your life for you. That's something I didn't mention. It sort of organizes everything you've said and heard into this life log where it's a hierarchical view of the conversations you've had. Our bet was like that would resonate. People are busy. They want to put it on in the morning just like I put my hearing aids on in the morning. I don't think about them throughout the day.

I don't really think about the pendant throughout the day. It's capturing what's going on. And if I need to, you know, I can tap it stars a moment and sort of remembers it. It's a cute thing. It gets it, but passively it just captures my day. And that premise has really, really paid off. I think people really value that they're busy. They want something that's going to help them be a little bit better. And, and we can do that. Is there, what's the gender breakdown? Um,

of people buying this thing? Is it most, is it mostly dudes? It is mostly dudes. Uh, that is a good question. I'm curious why you ask. It does skew male. Um, and that might be a byproduct of just social media. And like, you know, I, I'm not on Instagram or other, I'm mostly on Twitter slash X and that's now skewed very male. So I do think that's more of a byproduct of where we've been. Um,

We had a couple of early adopters use us and put videos that went viral on Instagram. So maybe that's where we're getting more of a gender split. But it does skew male, yeah. Personal question. Are you married or have a partner? I am married, yeah, with three kids.

What does your wife think of this? Great question. My very first thought when I had this idea for the pendant many, many years ago was fear. I was terrified my wife would hate this idea. And so she's very honest, very like she's my both my biggest fan and I think most honest critic. I've told her many startup ideas, including many crazier ones than this. And I told her this idea. What do you think of how I wore this device? It captured conversations.

And my fear was she would hate it because now I would finally win arguments and she would lose a few. And it turned out it was the opposite. She, I think before I did, realized the power...

of clarity, of that conflict and miscommunication comes from misremembering. Oh, no, you didn't say you were going to do that. Oh, I did say that I was going to do that. When you have a record, when you have a conversation, you can go back to it. You have this magical ability to remove ambiguity, to remove miscommunication. And so she saw it long before I did. And she's the most private. If she watches this, she's going to be

So she's the most private person I know. She doesn't want me to talk about her. But like that was actually the first people who I talked about this idea and kind of lit me up. It's actually maybe this is better for relationships in society. Well, I was going to say, because to your point, often conflicts are, well, you said this, like, no, I said that. And like, I feel like, you know,

Being right doesn't mean you always, quote unquote, have won the argument. And so I'm just wondering, like, how this fits, like, have you used this to solve conflicts in your own life? Because there is that kind of, let's call it a misalignment of like the record around what was actually said or not said. I will give you a very concrete example. I tweeted this out six days ago.

Me, you said you would do your homework right after dinner. My six-year-old, no, I didn't. Me, do you want me to play back what you said from the pendant? Six-year-old, okay, fine, I'll do my homework. So one example of getting your kid to follow through on commitment when there's no ambiguity in what was said

You know, that was a small example, but I do think, you know, he should know that when he says something, his words should be impactful. And he can't just make it up and change it after the fact. And the pendant can help hold him accountable. So this is one small example. If you ever struggle getting your kids to do homework, get a pendant.

And how much money have you guys raised? 33 million from great investors. First investor was Sam Altman before he became Sam Altman, although he's always been Sam Altman. Then first round capital did our seed round, or I guess pre-seed. Then Andreessen Horowitz did our seed and NEA led our Series A. Do you think you're ever going to get past the Black Mirror effect? Because, I mean, I'm sure you've been asked a version of this question a billion times, and I'm sure you've seen the...

The famous episode where I think it's in the eye. It's in a, it's a recording device in someone's eye and they, their whole life is basically one long video recording. They need guy goes back, sees there was a little something between his wife and a friend at a dinner party. And that leads to a bunch of questions and ultimately comes out. She's cheated and he ends up like alone, depressed. It's all very dystopian because he's like, I can see the evidence. Oh, anyway, um,

It gets to that idea that I think, you know, a lot of companies out here, there's a question of like, well, can we build this thing? The answer is often yes. The next question is, should we build this thing? Do people want it? Is there or is this going to be too creepy? Whatever it may be. So.

How do you guys think about that kind of social piece? Is this a thing that people are actually going to want beyond like a very small core of enthusiasts? I will tell you with 100% certainty, this is the future. I have felt the power. 100% certainty. There will be millions, if not billions of people on this planet wearing this or one of our competitors in years to come. Why are you so convicted? Because of the fundamental...

insight I have, having now worn it, is that we all live our lives with blinders on. We don't even realize it. Once you feel what it's like to go back to a moment I just, you've had from your past, that you didn't realize you were living life to its fullest in the moment,

You can't go back. I cannot imagine a single hour without that. I've had now, the only time I've not worn this is I have this founder form every, it's off the record, two hours once a month. I feel naked. In fact, in that meeting now, I'm so dependent on this capturing it. There was a conversation about a dinner in New York and some people said who they're coming, I just assumed the pendant would capture. I forgot I wasn't recording it. No, you could argue, okay, is that good for my brain? Is that to be able to outsource this? But the same thing is I don't know people's phone numbers anymore. I just type in their name. That's fine, whatever.

So I'm convinced with 100% certainty that millions, if not billions of people will wear this. It's early and every new technology goes through these phases of shock and awe, just like self-driving cars, people are terrified. And now you try it a few times, like that's kind of amazing.

So it is – I think the dystopian views from Black Mirror are interesting, but there's some fundamental issues I can nitpick that particular episode, one of which is the fundamental conflict comes from this idea that the wife captured these cheating affair with others and then lied about it. Whereas like if you know in a world that there's a track record, just like with my wife now, I don't – I know that, hey, if something was said, I have a record. I can go back to it. I don't lie.

I don't lie. I never lie. I know that there's an impeccable truth behind it. It changes your behavior in a positive way. You don't gaslight people. If you've been gaslit, you can go back and say, hey, hold on. What actually happened? So I think the benefits to the person wearing it are clear. The benefits to society at large is clear. But it's weird. I know it's weird. I'm not immune to that. It just sounds like what you're saying is like on this idea that millions and eventually billions of people are going to wear this thing. What you're talking about is because it's going to –

In that part of that bargain is changing kind of the fundamental nature of humans and how they interact. Yeah, fundamentally. It helps you in a way, just like glasses and hearing aids. Like, you know, you could live your life without glasses, but why would you? I could live my life without perfect memory, but why would I? And I think the thing that was a surprise to me was how clearly the disconnect between perception and reality is once you wear it. And the other major surprise, I didn't know how this would be received. I've been wearing it, the whole team wears it.

I was expecting maybe half my conversations to be awkward and it's every time I have to like, oh gosh, this thing. Turns out if you just introduce it in the right way and you explain the why, it completely neutralizes that. So once that, once I had seen that, I really, okay, the bar to this being accepted isn't,

that one-to-one kind of awkwardness. It's people getting over their own perceived concerns, just like the Uber. You try Uber one time, you get over the fact that it's a random guy from the internet. And that same thing is true of this pendant. So, you know, I hope it's us. I don't know if it's us. I'm sure at some point Apple and Google and they're all going to make these things.

And right now, the beautiful thing is we're in this window where it's weird enough that they're too terrified. They can barely even get their regular AI stuff to work, let alone this stuff. I think they're too terrified to even dip their toes in this. They're going to let us take all of the punches and all the tough questions from interviewers. I hope by then, you know, we have millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of users. And, you know, like the Oura Ring, you know, we've built a new category of technology that people realize, ah, there's some utility here. And I can't imagine living life without it.

Feel free – if this ages like milk, I would be very surprised. Whoever is listening, if the year is 2035 and there are not millions of people wearing devices like this, maybe not from us, maybe from our competitors, feel free to send me an email. Hey, Dan, this ages like milk. Your prediction was wrong. Your 100% confidence was ill-fated. I just think the – to your point, there is –

Who would have thought that 25 years ago when the internet first arrived, all of a sudden we'd be walking around with supercomputers that we're just obsessed with and staring at all day in our pockets. That then would have seemed like an impossibility.

You know, because it was like a big deal when Bill Gates said, you know, we're going to have a desktop in every home. People are like, no, that's crazy. So I'm willing to accept the premise that, you know, we don't know how things are going to go. But I think the fundamental issue around, oh, just like, you know, it's a bit like CCTV in the UK. So maybe this is an apropos example. You know, CCTV is literally everywhere in the UK.

You know, there's like the famous saying, like if you want to go through central London, there's never, there's almost nowhere where you can go where you're not on film. But this fundamental issue around consent,

And just relying on people to be good people about it and to be really assiduous about it. And every time they go and meet a new person, every time they're going out on a date, whatever, they'll be like, hey, do you mind if we record this conversation? But I am only doing this because I think, you know, I care about you. I just don't think that's realistic. But maybe I just don't have enough faith in humanity.

Yeah, maybe. I don't think it's a faith in humanity thing because I would even argue that what's the worst that could happen? Like, honestly, people have – there's this psychological trait people have that their whole world revolves around them. Like, what you say really doesn't matter. You know, honestly, what if somebody posts it on the internet? Like, I'm not cynical about it, but I do think people, they like to think they're more important than they really are and they like to think what they say is super important. Yeah.

And like, honestly, it doesn't matter. And also soon, if maybe you say something stupid and you're worried you're going to get canceled, an AI could have made it. AI automatic generating voice clones are just as good as humans. So honestly, even if we don't exist, we're going to live in a world where like what you say doesn't really matter. Like it almost like you're yelling into the, into a wind and nobody really hears you. So I just think there's so much, it's a little bit of, I think a Luddite mindset that like, oh, like, you know,

And it's also not the government. It's not sort of government surveilling you. And that to me is much more scary than your friend who just wants to sincerely remember your conversation with you. I much more trust my friends than the government with CCTV. And the fact that CCTV even...

That would surprise me more that societies would be accepting of that than individuals who are just trying to be better and remember what you say. So, you know, maybe I'm wrong. Who knows? I'll also just say this is the worst this technology will ever be. Every day it's getting better. Soon, by being able to capture what you say, there's a fundamental thing that I didn't mention that I think is important.

LLMs are getting smarter and smarter, but still know nothing about you. Maybe they remember your chat history, but they don't know the conversations you have. Soon, Dependent will enable you to basically draft emails exactly like I would. So instead of me having to write from a blank piece of paper, it just drafts the email. Maybe after this conversation, it'll draft me an email to you saying, "Hey, thanks for having me on the pod. It was really cool. We talked about this and the other. Here's a link you should look at," knowing the context of what I've actually said and heard.

Eventually, it'll do the boring half of your job for you. I'm a big believer in LLM's augmenting human intelligence, not replacing human intelligence. And eventually, you should just do agentic behavior identically to me. And if we get to those use cases, oh my gosh, then how can you imagine living life without it? I don't know what to do with that. That's a lot. There's a lot there, right? There's a lot to talk about. Can we start with his enthusiasm? I don't think I've ever heard anyone who's so...

He's completely optimistic and I don't know what the word is. You know, he's sort of self-driven in really, really bloody believing in this thing. And he didn't seem to be able to, even when you were talking about the consent issue, see the problem. Well, the thing that struck me is he's both totally optimistic about, yeah, hey, just ask nicely and it's all going to work.

But also totally nihilistic as well. Just being like, well, in the future, there's going to be so much AI and nobody's going to know who's really saying anything. So you're not that important anymore. What you say doesn't matter. Yeah. You're just shouting into the wind. And actually, that's total nonsense. A lot of what people say a lot of the time matters a lot. It might not if you're just wandering around in your day-to-day personal life. Sure. But in the workplace, it's hugely important a lot of the time. People are dealing with really sensitive conversations. Yeah.

And the idea that it just completely depends on the individual wearing it to put their hand up and say, would you mind? Well, this is what I found so interesting. Yeah, because he was like, look, we tried all these different technological kind of fixes, we'll call them, to kind of handle the consent issue. And lo and behold, we couldn't figure it out or nothing quite worked. And so the solution we ended up on was,

Hey, person who's spent $200 on this device. Anytime you meet somebody, just say how much you care about them and you just are really trying to be a better person. And that's why you want to record this conversation. Like that's just so wildly unrealistic. It feels like to me. And the fact that like, oh, we couldn't actually crack this very, very hard problem. So we're going to shift the responsibility back on the user.

In a way that's completely informal and not trackable and not enforceable. It just, I was just like, oh. And very discreet. I mean, you could argue, well, he might argue, well, if you were going to record somebody secretly, you could do it any way you wanted. You could. And of course you could. But the fact is, this is actually deliberately a device that's made to do that. It's made to capture the whole of your life.

And if you think about Meta's glasses, they have a little flashing light because they record everything as well, can do, but they have a light that flashes to show that they are recording. You'd think that they would have designed something on the little badge, like a red light that went, bing! You would think. You would think. I also think it's just so interesting that this company is not alone. There's a bunch of companies trying to figure out what is going to be the AIA wearable.

The thing that's going to like supplant or at least become a companion to our smartphones or whatever. I mean, his prediction that in 2035, there will be billions of people wearing an AI microphone. What do you think about that? I can't see it happening. Can you?

But I do find it fascinating that he got money from Sam Altman before he was Sam Altman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because actually when I heard him talking, that was my question. I thought, wow, Danny's got an interviewed Tigger. It's certainly very positive. But he's got serious people behind him. Yeah, he's got real money. Real money and real people. Yeah, totally. And when I reported out a story on this –

So I talked to a few people and I found another company who he referred to that didn't make it into the cut. They're called Friend. Go on. Friend.com. Okay. And it's the same thing. It's like a little circular listening device, but you can wear it as a necklace. And the founder is 22 years old. And they put out this like 90 second ad. And it's all young people and it like opens with this like,

She's hiking. She reaches a peak of something and then she just starts talking to like, no, she's by herself. She's talking to nobody or whatever. And then she says something and then she gets a text and the text is from her listening device, her friend who has commented on what she said and

And then she responds. And then the next vignette is like somebody playing video games. And like the little friend says, oh, you're getting your butt kicked or whatever. Ha ha ha ha ha. The friend necklace. Yes. And then the third one is this woman is on a date.

And she was about to start talking to her friend, because I guess you can kind of touch it, which activates it or says something or whatever. And then she stops because she's having such a wonderful time on this date. And it's like, this is supposed to be this profound moment. But the whole point is, it's like an AI wearable friend that has a personality. It has a name.

And it listens to your life because you're wearing it as a necklace and then sends you text messages kind of throughout the day or whatever to kind of have a conversation as if your friend is with you. Do you think that our generation maybe has different views on privacy? I mean, is that one of the things here? Because the idea for us of walking around and recording our entire lives is terrible, right?

But maybe if you're more used to growing up in a social media era where you document everything and you carry your phone everywhere, it's less of a deal. Your whole life is mediated by a screen anyway. And so the idea of like an AI friend, for example, that's constantly talking to you. And the interesting thing about the friend, and then we can get back to a little bit of this, but friend is, if you lose the device, you lose everything. There is no backup, i.e. it's kind of supposed to be like a person.

Oh, so it literally dies and that's it. Basically, yeah. Well, that's one of the things I like about technology is that it doesn't do that. Oh, well. But back to Limitless, I just think the...

I'm trying to figure out how they're trying to sell it because he's like, it's a life coach. It's making me a better person. It's making me a better worker or whatever. That bit was wild, by the way. What was that about? He goes through. I mean, I think he uses it because he's Tigger and optimistic in a different way to the way most people would use it. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, is this a solution looking for a problem? I mean, billions of people, I just don't buy it. Like, you know, millions of people, I don't buy it.

It's very easy to slag it off. I can see why recording all your life could be really, really useful. You know, like all of the work conversations you have. I know sometimes I speak to sources and I would love to be able to record what they say, but I don't because they don't want me to and it's not ethical, but I can see how, you know, or just generally when you're engaging with your kids, like I can see why it could be useful. I just, it, it,

it makes me feel really squeamish. And yeah, just the idea of like when he gave the example of talking to his kid and it's like, well, do you want me to go back to the pendant and see what you said about your homework? And it's like, do you want me to call up God and say, hey God, what did little Timmy say? It's also the idea in an argument with your partner that, you know, when you go, well, you said this, you said that. Oh, well, let's get the pendant out and check what you really did. So, yeah.

Most people know in that situation. Well, that's what I was saying. Even if you win, you're going to lose that argument. Just be right sometimes. Even if you remember full well, they're not. Yeah, you might be right, but you're going to be sleeping on the couch, my friend. Life is a bit more subtle. I found him quite endearing. Yeah.

It's like boundless enthusiasm for this idea. Well, the other thing I would say is that his previous company, Optimizely, I think that when you talk about getting backing from Sam Altman, Andreessen Horowitz and other companies, nothing will get you funded quicker than a previous success. So his other company did well. This is his next go around.

And so again, it kind of just, it's a little insight into how this place works. Silicon Valley is that even if your idea is totally Looney Tune, if you've shown that you can do this, if you've...

you're very likely to get money. People get their wallets out. Yeah, exactly. Maybe it is something that if everybody wore one and if there is that universality to it that he thinks there's going to be. I'm looking forward to you going back to him about the milk. Yeah, aging like milk. Honestly, I think it is going to age like milk. But if you knew everybody was wearing one, then it would make you act in a very different way, wouldn't it?

Well, that's what he's saying. He's like, you know, basically everybody would be different. And you're kind of like, okay, this is, we're doing, we're trying to do too much here. We're not changing humans. No. Because all of a sudden, oh, no one's going to gaslight anybody anymore. And no one's going to lie. And no, and you're like. It's like. What? It's quite sweet. Yeah.

Yeah, so I but but again, it's a little insight into the kind of that uber optimism that often you find in this place. He's an awesome I think he used to be based out here. But either way. So I thought it was a kind of a fun conversation. Obviously, it was a great conversation. Thank you for sharing it. So you're not going to go get you're not going to rush out and get one. That's what you're saying. Not quite yet. Not quite yet. Maybe when everyone else has one.

In 10 years time. How about you? Did he give you one? No, no. Well, he did. He encouraged me to like, you know, have a go. But I'm a real late adopter of everything, basically. Are you? Yeah. When did you get an iPhone? Oh, late. I didn't get my first cell phone, mobile phone until I was 20.

Five? At all. Not even like a dumb phone. No. My first Nokia brick was in my mid-twenties. Wow. Yeah. My best friend told me the other day she's still got her AOL account. Yeah, see, that's the thing. If you have an AOL account, there's a lot. You need to be conscious of what that says about you. I know. It's amazing. It's like having a Hotmail account. Or driving a really old car. No, that's fine. Before we go...

A very important bit of news to cover. What's happened with the tadpoles? Oh, the tadpoles. They're almost growing legs. Weren't they almost growing legs two weeks ago? I thought they were and it turned out that was poo. Put that on a t-shirt.

So I now put little bits of bacon into the tank and they go for it like devils. Wow. It's horrible. What are you going to do with all these frogs once they're frogs? While you're starting your coding company, I'm going to start my frog selling business. Oh, right, right, right, right. Massive demand. Yeah, yeah. Millions or billions of people will have frogs. They will. In the future. Everyone in southeast London. Ha, ha, ha.

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