Gratitude for Technology: AI and Quantum Progress | TSG Ep. 975

Hi, everyone. Welcome to our special Thanksgiving edition of the Textron Gang. I know it's only Wednesday Thanksgiving's not till tomorrow, but we're not gonna be here tomorrow.

So we, we, we bump things up a little bit. We're gonna do Thanksgiving special today. Uh, you know, it's kind of a tradition here at the Text Drug Gang.

Uh, who am I getting? We've never done it before, but we're gonna do it today. It's gonna be our first time doing it.

Uh, we're gonna ask each of our panelists to give us, or each of our gang members to tell us what they're thankful for this Thanksgiving holiday. But we're gonna confine it to technology. Otherwise, I think we'd go too far afield.

So let me introduce you to our, uh, Thanksgiving gang for today. And they're, they're regulars here. So they've all been around with us for months now, and you've probably seen them.

We've got Chris Blask, who's celebrating Thanksgiving north of the border. We've got the one and only man in Silicon Valley. Jon Swartz, our favorite Boston Cape Cod dude, Dan o Dan O'Brien, also from up New England Way, Kate Scarcella, and of course, the dean, our chief Content officer here at Techstrong.

Mike Vizard, gag members, welcome and happy Thanksgiving. And this is the official kickoff of the holiday season. I can't, I always love the holiday season.

I'll tell you the truth. It kind of just makes me think back to when I was a kid and, and a lot of good memories. It has certainly been a year for the record books.

There are things we can be, I think we all agree, things we can be thankful for, and, uh, things, things maybe we're not so thankful for. I did a series of articles up on our various tech strong sites, and in each of them, you know, geared to the specific community I put in, you know, four or five things I'm really thankful for. And two or three things, maybe I'm not.

Um, but let me, let me kick this off if it's okay, gang. You know, what am I thankful for? I am thankful to be alive at this time of, of history where we have just so much promise and so much disruptive revolutionary tech related change that promises to change our lives and usher in, as I I'm doing what my shimmy says later today, A Star Trek like future where poverty is eliminated and work for works work to, in order to make money is eliminated.

We'll do work because we love doing what we do. All of this is the promise of ai, along with, if you want call it physical AI or robotics, along with other macro things like maybe quantum technology. Man, hey, we could have been born in the dark ages and getting hung up for saying the Earth goes around the sun.

But here we are. Here we are when there's so much at our fingertips. And the question is, are we smart enough, mature enough, bold enough to handle this correctly and, and, and bring this baby home?

Or do we crash and burn and, and make no mistake, there's, you know, there might be some crash and burning, but I'm an optimist and I just, I'm thankful to be here at this juncture in history. Guys, what do you guys and gals, what do you think? Well, I'll Tell you great time.

Yeah, yeah, go ahead, Mike. I will say though, you know, there are more mundane things to be really thankful for. And, and I'm only bringing this up 'cause we're all dealing now with this, uh, second coming of the shy ulu attack and, you know, all those cybersecurity people who like, do all this work and kind of, you know, come in and rescue us.

And, you know, many of them will probably be working on this instead of having their Thanksgiving dinner somewhere with their families. And they do this stuff every day, and sometimes they do it in ways that we never even see. And it is unfortunately thankless work, but it is the work that kinda saves us from ourselves.

And I know, Chris, you're close to this community, but, you know, do we not spend enough time thanking these people? They deserve that. I, I think the community is, is, is, uh, it's very healthy, right?

I think we're really good for each other. The cybersecurity community, I think is one of the better. You know, obviously I, it's what I've spent most of my career in, but we're pr pretty good at making sure everybody understands, you know, they're, they're wanted and they're welcome.

Right? And do we hear it enough from the outside world? I don't know.

I I, I mean, we're a, a neurodivergent pack of, uh, crazy people. I think we mostly need to hear it from each other, and we're, we're pretty good at that. So I'm thankful for that.

John, you were gonna say something? Oh, I was gonna say, I mean, so today, for instance, uh, Google's about to go for $4 trillion at market value. Okay?

So that's like a news item. But amid that, amid all the hype and hyperbole, as you said, I think you said it really well, Alan, there are so many things that we should be thankful for, including some of the things around ai. com explosion.

And I'm kind of thi I'm thankful for it because it, it's making me think about all sorts of different vertical markets and the things that could happen or the things that are possible that are gonna benefit us. And I'll, I'll mention that later, but, um, I just think it's a great time to be around. Is is, there's, there's so many interesting things going on, and it's happening every day.

Dan, Dan, You are shaking your head. Dan O'Brien. Hold on a minute.

I wanna follow up on John's point there. Um, Dan, I'm thankful for all the money that goes in the fund, this stuff, but I'm not sure where it comes from. So maybe you could explain.

Yeah, I mean, the, the math, yeah, that's Jesus. 4 trillion in OpenAI versus the $23 billion revenue. Yeah, that's, uh, that's totally scary.

But I'm thinking about the end results, regardless of what happens to those companies. Um, I'm thinking of a long-term results, uh, short-term. It could be pretty scary.

You're right, Mike. Well, Dan, where does all that money come from and who do we think? Yeah, I, I, you know, I, I guess I'm thankful for competition.

Um, you know, I think we're, you know, in the early innings here of the next big tech revolution with ai, you know, probably the biggest, you know, probably since the internet boom. Um, you know, to, to the point on where the money comes from. You know, I think what makes me feel good about where we are in the cycle is, you know, up until very recently, it's largely been the free cash flow of the largest, most successful companies in the world that have been funding this, right?

I think it's gotten a little more creative of late, um, you know, a little bit more speculative, a little bit more circular financing. Um, but, you know, I, I think I feel pretty good about, you know, kind of the sustainability of the cycle here. But, um, you know, back to the point on competition, being thankful for that, you know, we're a, we're, like I said, early innings into this, but when this first kicked off, it was kind of OpenAI, OpenAI in Nvidia, right?

It was a really narrow set of companies we were talking about. And, you know, with Google and what they've done with Gemini, their TPU infrastructure, a MD on the rise, you know, Intel maybe starting to get to the point of challenging TSMC, if not for wafers, at least for packaging, um, you know, philanthropic, you know, doing really well. I think we're seeing, you know, the number of winners continue to grow and grow, you know, up and down the supply chain.

I think, you know, competition is good for innovation, um, that's gonna make the cycle more sustainable, and then it's gonna make it more efficient as well. So, um, that's what I'm thankful for. And I'll just say, um, I'm with Alan here.

I'm not only an optimist, but I have become this Pollyanna, and I am loving this time period, I'm so happy, truly, that we are, um, embracing ai. And I think in the beginning, you know, we were somewhat concerned, you know, we, and it's not that we shouldn't be concerned, of course we should be, but I am happy that people are, are saying, okay, you know, it's here, let's embrace it. But at the same time, many of the cybersecurity people, you know, back to Chris, I mean, really, it's, it's, we also are understanding that we need to secure it.

And I, it is not gonna be, you know, a decade before we're looking at the supply chain and everything else and saying, oh, golly, you know, software does have, uh, does have some vulnerabilities here, you know? And so we're really looking at building security into, um, I think anyway into AI as we move forward. We understand that, that, um, that this matters, that this is important.

So I, I, I think that security, I'm happy that it's being a part of, of DevSecOps is really gonna be a thing. It's, it's here, it's Here. I wrote exactly that, right throughout the articles I did around Thanksgiving, is that security has taken its rightful place at the table in most organizations and in most industries, all right?

And that's been a long time coming for people like me, you and Chris who've, you know, been in security all these years we had and kind of shouting in the wilderness. Yes. But guys, let me, let me also return to my, my point about thankfulness.

Make no mistake, the tech industry is the tip of the spear when it comes to this revolution, when it comes to this AI enablement. And, and I think we, we don't, don't downplay robotics. What Elon said about robotics is a hundred percent true, but the tech industries at the tip of the spear, we're leading this, we're feeling it, right?

A lot of our friends have been laid off. I know a lot of people looking for jobs. The tech industry is probably out in front in eliminating low hanging fruit type of jobs that AI can replace, or agentic AI can, can replace.

And security is, is in the crucible, right? Trying to use AI to protect against AI enabled threats. But we're doing it and we're aware of it, and we're trying the best we can, as we usually do.

But the ripples of this are going to be waving, you know, rippling throughout society. It's gonna hit medicine, it's going to hit law, it's going to hit accounting, it's going to hit name your, your, your profession or your livelihood. It's gonna have an effect throughout society.

And I think being that we're kind of the first we're out in front of it, hopefully we'll be in a better place to help as this wave, you know, works its way through humanity. And, you know, I wish I could tell you I'm, I would like to see what 50 years from now looks like, right? Do we have a, a zephyric Cochrane breaking the, the, uh, warp barrier or something.

But even the next 10 years, 15 years are gonna be exciting as hell. And the only thing I I'd like to add, and sorry, Chris, I'm jumping in here, is back to, um, John's point about this vertical industry and, and where things are going. I actually believe that there's gonna be a collapsing of vertical industries, and it's gonna be more, uh, level horizontal because there, everything's gonna be integrated like we've never seen before.

You know? Um, and especially, you know, if we just think about health and technology or, you know, our smart buildings and energy, all this is gonna be just massively just one big, um, network of devices and integration. And I, this is an exciting time.

I, Chris, I am thankful that we're putting humanity back in technology, right? And then let me, I'll go all the way back, you know, 5,000, 10,000 years ago, we took the words we had, we had developed between us, and we started writing them down and trying to make them physical artifacts. We spent the last a hundred years and 50 years of digitizing it.

And we have our, our, our technology talks back to us now. It talks with us. We have conversations, right?

And this forces us down the path, you know, and it's interesting, as you're all saying, we are in a bit of a crucible right now. Lots of pressures. Well, pressures drive evolution, right?

You know, the systems we've been building, whether they're the digital side of things, supply chain, security of security at all. We have been talking for decades, you know, slightly longer than my career about how we do this. We have not yet done all of it.

I think we have to, I think we're doing it right now. I think we're taking the stories that we've been saying and turning them into technology, and then talking with the technology. We're looking at things like narrative risk management, right?

Actually, your story, the story that we're all part of, not the digital parts. Those are enablements. But who are you?

What, who are we as organizations? How are we communicating each other? What stories are we tying each other together with this?

There's an aspect of the, of humanity in this hyper technical, uh, uh, uh, crux we're going through right now that I think is just intrinsically beautiful. I think it's a wonderful thing. I think it leads to the opportunities, you know, and Dan, you know, whether it's the kind of things you're saying or or Kate, what you're saying, each of these enable us to be better humans, you know, sharing stories better.

And I think it really does come down to narrative at, at the end of the day, we're finally out of the ones and zeros, and we're speaking in words. You know, I, I wanna jump on that for a second, Chris. When you boil it down and you look at sort of ancient civilizations, I don't know how many of you ever took anthropology in school.

I was a political science major. They made us take anthropology. I, I had a chance to take some anthropology.

Um, but when you look at early human civilizations, the role of the storyteller is a key function, is a key, that key person in the human tribe. And, and oftentimes the storyteller was a traveling storyteller who went from tribe to tribe, right? And telling these stories.

And, and so that, that common thread runs through multiple tribes and humanity. And here we are, all these tens of, you know, I don't know, depends who you believe. Tens of thousands, thousands, hundreds.

I don't care. All these years later, it's still about the storyteller a bit, isn't it, Chris? For you being able to talk to an AI and, and be that storyteller is, is something you're thankful.

John, your, you said it chronicling this age, right? We are the storytellers of this age, The Irish call, those people Bards, Excuse me, Bards, call those people Bards and have called them Bar's, okay? So we, we'll call you Bard Baard from that one.

Speaking of Irish, Mr. O'Brien, what do you got? Yeah, no, I, I, I, I totally agree with what you're all talking about on kind of the humanity side, coming back into tech.

I mean, you know, it, it feels like that's, you know, kind of necessary as we increasingly interact with, you know, machine intelligence for, you know, it to become a little bit more of a true and better kind of representation of ourselves, right? Um, you know, I think it's a really great point Chris made there, and totally agree. Mm-hmm.

So let me tell you something though that I am hopeful For, All right? Three or four years ago, I can remember sitting down and having conversations with, you know, even my own kids in their twenties, and they were pretty down on just about everything. They were basically looking at boomers and saying, you know, you guys messed up this planet pretty well, and now if we can make all this AI stuff come together and this quantum stuff together, and hopefully, you know, it works out as planned or as they say from, you know, Alan's lips to God's ear, we have hope, right?

We can fix a lot of things that, you know, are issues that were persistent, and we might, you know, be able to do the r and d work at a level of cost that could, you know, make things a lot better. That said, you know, that road the hell is always paved with those good intentions. So we need to be careful.

But, um, you know, the sum positive is greater than the negatives. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I had the same, I had the same conversation a couple different directions, right? I mean, you could easily see quantum and AI taking us into the next golden age. You could easily see it enabling some horrific dystopian future, right?

I mean, I think that's where the, the humans involved, you know, really just need to, you know, shape it for the common good in the right direction. Yeah. I, I as a, as a tech community, right?

You, you out there watching all somehow tech enabled business folks, whatever, we geek out on this stuff. I'll say, I'm, I'm at my age at 60 years old. I'm thankful that I'm getting to see so many questions answered.

You know, how do, how do, how do we work? Who am I? How does this brain thing work?

How did it get here? And Alan, you talk about anthropology this year, I've had a reason to look at human evolution and mammal evolution. How did our cognitive system get here?

And it turns out we're literally in this year, in this time, we're going through the process of exercising this at global scale and tech, because it's the same bloody thing. You cannot brute force this. You can't take an infinite amount of information and just digitize it.

You have to make semantic narrative compressed social, cultural, civic systems out of it. And everywhere I look now, I see business systems and technical systems that we're used to seeing as cold and impersonal. And because they have been bending back towards people, because that's better, faster, cheaper.

That's why we're wired this way. And I think the, the arc of cynicism in our, in our lives and our, in our generation is bending. I really think this technology goes back towards people.

You know, there's interesting thing about AI during your discussion made me think about this, this, this kind of greater narrative. Before tech was always criticized, rightfully criticized, for doing all these incremental apps, these little, you know, kind of silly things that would help you, you know, have your car washed while you went to the theater, right? You'd leave it and have somebody take care of it.

But, and, and the criticism was that tech would never solve big problems, or it was averse to solving big problems. And I think with ai, actually, conceivably, we could see, I'm not saying we're gonna see like a Hoover Dam or Moon Landing equivalent, but I do think we're gonna see significant inroads. I think Mike alluded to it, in terms of affordability, in terms of things like housing, um, healthcare, et cetera, uh, poverty, uh, uh, uh, confront confrontation.

I think there, there are these things that we could possibly do. I mean, it's gonna be a rough road to get there, but I am optimistic about them. Absolutely.

Hey, I'd like to take a, Kate, we're gonna come back to you. We we're 20 minutes in. We're gonna take a break, and then, you know, I set the tone for this first one.

But Kate, Dan, I'd love to hear your kind of tone setters on what we're thankful for and, and continue the conversation. You are watching Textron game. You've earned it.

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You know, I've spoken about this before. If we look at the Renaissance and the Enlightenment period on how, again, it, it collapsed vertical, and we started to see art and architecture and science and all these things sort of come together. 0 that we have entered, and the, um, everything that's gonna come of this, I, it's ex this is an exciting time.

So, absolutely. Well, you know, think, think about using these systems to see what makes sense, right? Yeah.

We talked about this last week, and protein folding just had me thinking about this. Go to notebook, lm, take some huge topics, some huge pile of texts, throw it at it, and have a talk back to you and explain it to you. And this is called semantic analysis.

I see people, uh, just myself and the people around us, we're just figuring this out this year as we're going through this. But that's why, as, as humans, we look at these systems and say, that doesn't make any sense. And why is it like that?

And we come up with these ideas. Maybe it's a big conspiracy, but mostly it's because there's other humans inside these systems, and they can't see it all at the same time. They're just telling their story about this one part of it.

None of us can see the size of these systems anymore, but AI can't. Yeah. And we can have AI as you're think we can point our semantic tools at these big, huge, complex problems everywhere.

You know, it maybe a huge problem to you though, with a small part of some municipal something. And you can say, make sense of this. Tell this story back to me.

Look at the information out there. What is the narrative? What are we saying?

What does it say to me? And take that story and show it to other humans, the people responsible and say, see, you're here. You didn't even know you were there.

And I think, you know, and Dan, everybody said things that make me, make me think you're right. I think we can be reasonable with each other over the next several years in ways that, that, that we're just callous to not think and work by just explaining to each other where we are and using these tools that we, that we think of as technology. But they're really story, you know, story shaping.

Chris, there's a, a phrase I've heard that I really love that that goes something like, you know, the future of decision intelligence is simulation. And I think that's a little bit kind of what you're getting at here, here, in that, you know, we have so much compute power and so much information that we can kind of ask before we go do and get a really good sense as to kinda what we can expect, right? It's never gonna be perfect, but, you know, we, we can do a lot of really low cost rapid experimentation before we go mobilize people, assets, capital, et cetera, you know, on kind of exploring what might work and what might make sense.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Alan, Alan, you mentioned Elon Musk earlier.

And, and here's the question I kind of, you know, he was talking about, um, you know, the economy fundamentally changing. And as I ponder that theoretically, you know, if I look back at whatever economic model it is, it's always been based on the notion that there's a scarcity of something and there's demand for it. Well, you know, are we on the cusp of getting someplace where, you know, scarcity of something is no longer an issue because we can use AI to, you know, make more food or make more whatever it might be.

And there isn't gonna be this kinda economic model based on scarcity, and the world will change in ways we don't think. So. This is exactly what my shimmy says is on later today, Mike.

So the, the, I think we've got a fundamental question, though. And, and before I hit that though, let me make clear, it's not just AI that Elon is, Elon Musk is talking about. It's, it's AI empowered robots mm-hmm.

Who are gonna make work not necessarily or optional for humans who are gonna eliminate poverty and, and plentiful. You know, he also says it'll eliminate money. Now, okay, this sounds a lot like Star Trek to me, right?

I'm sorry. It sounds a lot like Star Trek. And the problem is, is if you remember, I don't know how many of your Trekkies there was that period before Warp Drive came in, and the Vulcans, you know, discovered us, so to speak, where Earth was sort of, uh, it was, there was a post, a post-apocalyptic war kind of setting where, you know, we were living in, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't all unicorns and rainbows, let's put it that way.

And my, my fear is, you know, Elon Musk kind of strata or vision here to get to that endpoint, there's gonna be some pain, there's gonna be a lot of disruption. And, and in all of us here waxing philosophically and poetically about what a great AI future is. I think it would be wise for us to recognize there's going to be some pain disruption, disrupt.

We're going through some of it right now. Yeah. Disruption disrupts like from the Greek disruption.

But, um, you know, and there's gonna be, there's gonna be some uncomfortableness and some pain. And I think how we respond to that says a lot about who we are. And as a, as a, as a civilization, as a species, right?

Because to get, you know, invoke Martin Luther King to get to the Promised Land, right? I've gone to the top of the hill, I've seen the Promised Land, but he never got there. And it's gonna, there's gonna be a, a valley in between here, and we gotta figure that out.

Can I tell you my great Star Trek pet peeve? So go ahead. In, in this alleged future, there's no need for money in every fifth episode of Star Trek, next Generation, what are they doing?

Playing poker? For what? There's no money Just to win, just to win.

There are people who play poker for not real money. That says a lot about you, I think, Mike. Alright.

Hey. But we didn't, I feel like we didn't give everyone a chance to say what they're thankful for here. We got off on this AI tangent and how great we're all gonna be.

But Dan O'Brien, come on man. What are you, what are you thankful for? Uh, I'm thankful for community.

I mean, I think we've touched on it in a lot of ways without calling it out directly on the, uh, on the conversation here. But, um, all of the things we're talking about are only enabled by an enormous amount of people, companies coming together, working towards, you know, some kind of common vision. And, uh, you know, I, I think I just want to take a minute and stop and appreciate, you know, kind of the community that needs to come together to enable all of this stuff because it's, it's no small feat that any of this stuff works, right?

It's, uh, it's a lot of good intentions and a lot of hard work from a lot of people to make this stuff happen. Mm-hmm. Agreed.

To Dan's point, I'd also like to thank all the storage engineers. 'cause I don't know where we're gonna put all this data, but they gotta figure it out. Storage is cheap.

That's what they keep telling us. But, but, but you know what, I, I wrote another article that's out, I think, uh, today, or if not, it'll be off Friday. And that is, when we talk about the community, there are some, you know, for my Boston friends, there are some wicked smart people up there.

Not just in Boston, but all over. There's some wicked smart people who work on these amazing technologies, and whether they're born in the US or they're born in China, or they're born in Europe, or Africa, or Latin America, wherever they're born, somehow this tech industry has a way of, of sucking 'em in and, and amassing them in the critical mass where this community can do the crazy, outrageous things that it it's capable of doing. To your point, Dan, right?

It it does, it takes a, not just a community, it takes a whole world Yeah. Kind of creativity, intelligence, you know, to even contemplate and make these things real. And, and I think we, we need to acknowledge that, right?

And, and need to be and celebrate the people who, who, you know, are the creators and are the people who, not just the creators, the entrepreneurs who risk everything, starting companies, the people who build these things, you know, all the way down to the, the security people who are making sure the, you know, critical infrastructure stays up and everything else. But it really does take a world, not just a community, it takes a world. It's bigger than any one of us or any one country here.

And I thought I was gonna be the only cheesy one, Dan, so thank you. Thank you. Uh, look, cheesy is my middle name.

I'm good for you. Well, yeah, I thank you. I thank you all for the cheesiness.

Yes. I, I I will take the cheese all the way down through the bottom of the text. I think we're there, right?

Yeah. I think most of us don't understand this. I'll, I'm thankful that I'm gonna spend the rest of my life saying I told you so that intelligence is relational.

That it, that, you know, we we're talking about, you know, you know, I ident super intelligence. That's not a thing. Turns out intelligence is a relational semantic thing that's about the size of a human being, and it can't ever be bigger.

Right? You know, that, that a pure, you know, computer, you know, get a couple AI talking to each other with, with no context whatsoever. And it peters out.

There's nothing there. Everything, all of this, you know, these from the skyscrapers and the technology and the big things and the small things we build are, because we're individual human intelligences relating to each other in social contextual environments, as hippie as that sounds. That's it.

And that's literally the way the technology is working more and more every day. You know, it's, you can call it emergent or whatever you like, but it's not about the bits and pieces any more than we are because we built it and neither are we. Right?

You know, this is, it's, you know, and, and, and as the, as the oldest gen Xer, you know, born in 1965, right there on the edge as far, you know, far as the, the, you can see it. To see this wave of sort of losing our base, losing our, our culture, losing our religion. We even made a song, if you're old enough, remember it, and coming back to the fact that, that, no, it's not just a cold, impersonal universe, it's personal.

The technology doesn't even work any other way. That's how we information systems work, because that's how humans work. I'm sorry, I'm ranting at this point.

I'm gonna put a flower behind my ear and go, yeah, no, But, but, but to your point, multiple types of AI models, right? Then it's not just gonna be this generative AI stuff that we're all obsessed about, but there's this whole new conversation around these role models and there's gonna be different ways of building out ai. And there's causal AI out there that's really still in its infancy.

So, you know, we're kind of just at the tip of the proverbial iceberg here, Chris, to your point. And, um, I'm not sure it's all relational. 'cause you know, part of my soul might say that that was confirmation bias on your part, but it's gonna be fun.

It, it may be, but, but again, what is a world model? It's like, I am here, the, the world's around me. How do I relate to it?

That's how mm-hmm. Systems actually just work, right? But, but Chris, you hit on something.

Mike, you, you, you mentioned it earlier too. Look, just knowing what I know from the six of you, Dan, you probably have the youngest child among the six of us. Think about the world your daughter grows up in.

Not, not the Gen Xs, I'm, I'm the end of the boomers. I'm cus just at the end of Boomer, right? You're just at the end of Gen X.

Mike's right there. Um, you know, we, we've we've had a run. We've had a run, right?

But Mike is, you said, I think the di four years ago, a lot of our, my kids who were in the, at the time, in their late teens and twenties were a little, uh, perturbed about what we were leaving them here. Debt. Mm-hmm.

No doubt. Blue, little blue pills and, and not much else. Right?

But I, I think, oh, just in four or five years, there is a lot of optimism there. And, and look, it's, it's not all rainbows and unicorns, as I said, for kids growing up today. Who knows what they're gonna be when they grow up, grow, grow up, who knows what they're going to do for work.

Will they, will we eliminate poverty? Will they be able to buy houses and take care of their families and everything? I mean, there's a lot to be thought about, but I, I think they have a, a, a more promising future, right?

And that's always been part of the American dream, right? The next generation does better than the generation before it. And I think, you know, Dan, I hope your daughter has a, a better future than, than we did and all of our children.

And I, I, you know, it's good to be optimistic about that again. 'cause I think we weren't for a while. Mm.

I had the same conversation, Alan, that you, that you had with your kids and my cat with his kids and that term, that sense of kind of doom or gloom and just like we, you know, thanks a lot to my generation for passing this on to us. But I think you're right. And maybe it is we're kind of at a, a genuflecting moment or a turning point where we start seeing some of the benefits and across the board and, uh, maybe it's gonna start happening like it did in New York with your new mayor, with the new mayor.

Um, we're starting to see a total mind shift. And this is, this is good, this is progress. Things change and we have to adapt to it.

It's what they all about Embracing the change. Yeah. I mean, back to the point earlier, yeah.

I mean, uh, there is an enormous amount of change going on and going on, you know, that will be painful for some, but I think, you know, the secret to making it productive for you personally versus making it painful is this is too big a change to fight you. You know, if you go with it and you lean into it, you embrace it, there's an immense amount of opportunity out there. Um, those who fight it, you know, I think those that'll probably experience the pain the most.

But, you know, we've all got a choice, you know, in, uh, kind of whether we embrace and whether we lean in 10 years from now. Alan and I are gonna be sitting on a park bench though, going, yeah, these kids don't know nothing. They don't know.

They didn't have to show up for work. 10 at six at the Be next year. Mike could be next year.

Next year. Yeah. Well, Dear, dear daughter, to all the kids out there, to amel out in the world, and Tariq, you know, when I was a kid, I was told that, you know, the world's gonna end.

We're all gonna die. I'm not gonna grow up, blah, blah, blah. Right?

You know, we, you know, we remember the seventies, right? And for a number of reasons, I decided that no, there's other stories that might play out. I'm playing a role in one of those stories, and I'll tell you what, that's the way the world turned out.

Now, there's a lot of stories we may be part of now where things work out really poorly, but there's a lot of stories where they turn out really well. I'm telling you, you're all part of the story that can turn out really well. Everything we've talked about here could work out to our benefit in ways you can't imagine.

Will we have problems? Yes. Otherwise life would be boring.

You know, Alan, will there be be hardships and bump bumps on the way. Yes. Buckle up.

Um, but there always were, and the opportunities going forward are amazing and some of them will come true. Absolutely. I I sincerely hope so.

All right, I'm gonna pass it around one last time here. Anything else you guys are thankful for you wanna bring up to the audience for today? I think we're gonna live longer.

I think because of science and research and ai, we're gonna live longer. Um, we're gonna improve drug discovery. I think it's been proven.

I think ai, drug discovery and biotechs reduce development time by 40%, cut costs by 30%. It's gonna save lives. It's gonna extend others, their cameras and sensors and patient rooms that detect when a patient's turned over in bed and alert folks so they don't fall out of bed.

Um, their, uh, doctors are using these guidelines of evidence-based research and treatment guidelines. They're accelerating diagnoses, minimizing errors. I mean, I just think, um, especially in healthcare, and I think about it because I'm over 60, um, health is everything.

And I think about where this is headed and it, that actually makes me feel very, very positive. I'm thankful, and I agree with John because it might be like, at least, you know, through the end of the decade before the World Series is won by the Yankee. So I kind of wanna So you can live longer though.

Yeah. Wait, yeah. Amen to that.

Amen to that. Yeah. Well, let me, let me, let me wrap a bow on this first.

First of all, things that I didn't mention that I'm thankful for, I'm thankful for doing the Textron Gang every day during the week here, and with my great friends and all the gang members, not just the five of you on with me today, but everyone who's been on the gang this year, we have an amazing group of pundits, experts, friends who come on here and we talk about whatever the issues of the day are or whatever Mike writes up into the, into the daily what's on the gang today, uh, script. And it, it, it's cathartic for me. I love doing it.

I love talking about these things. I love sharing it with, with all you. com.

Who would've thought DevOps 13 years later, security and everything else. I'm thankful for my fu brethren, right? We're part of FU and it's a, it's good to be part of a bigger organization that does big things and deals with, you know, bigger companies that are truly making some of what we're talking about here happen.

So thankful for that. Most of all, though, I'm thankful for everyone who watches us, reads our stuff, listens to our videos. I don't know sponsors who support us and keep the lights on here.

We couldn't do it without each and every one of you. So on behalf of Techstrong futur, happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Have a great day.

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