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What if the biggest breakthrough of our lifetime isn't simply another technology?
What if it's a new way of thinking
In this episode of Capability Amplifier, Dan Sullivan and Mike Koenigs explore a fascinating comparison between one of history's most important inventions - zero - and the rise of modern Ai.
Dan explains how the adoption of zero transformed commerce, science, mathematics, and civilization itself. Together, they discuss why Ai may represent a similar cognitive shift, changing how entrepreneurs think, solve problems, and create value long before its full impact becomes obvious.
The conversation explores why markets adopt transformational ideas faster than institutions, why entrepreneurs often recognize opportunity before everyone else, and why treating Ai as infrastructure instead of a novelty may shape the future of business, education, healthcare, and innovation.
If you're building a company, leading a team, or simply trying to understand where technology is taking us, this episode offers an insightful framework for thinking about what's coming next.
In this episode, Dan and I break down:
- Why Dan compares Ai to the invention of zero
- How cognitive breakthroughs reshape entire civilizations
- Why entrepreneurs adopt new capabilities before institutions
- Ai as infrastructure instead of just another software tool
- How innovation accelerates when thinking changes
- Why healthcare, education, and science may evolve rapidly
- The role of entrepreneurs in building the next generation of businesses
- Why history offers clues about the future of Ai
The future belongs to the people who learn faster, think differently, and build with Ai. Dan and Mike explore why that future has already begun.
TIME STAMP
00:00 - Zero was just the beginning
03:00 - Why zero transformed civilization
09:45 - Ai as a cognitive breakthrough
14:10 - Why resistance always comes first
19:00 - Ai, medicine, and scientific progress
25:10 - Entrepreneurship and behavioral advantage
31:20 - Innovation, competition, and global adoption
36:00 - Why Ai is becoming infrastructure
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Creators and Guests
Host
Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach
Dan Sullivan is founder and president of The Strategic Coach Inc. A visionary, an innovator, and a gifted conceptual thinker, Dan has over 40 yearsโ experience as a highly regarded speaker, consultant, strategic planner, and coach to entrepreneurial individuals and groups.
What is Capability Amplifier?
Join the eternally curious, interested, and interesting hosts, Mike Koenigs of the SuperPower Accelerator and Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coachยฎ, to amplify your capabilities, value, status, and authority on the Capability Amplifier podcast. Ever episode focuses on a new mindset, shortcut or deep thinking exercise that will improve your performance and lifespan. Learn more at: https://www.CapabilityAmplifier.com
Dan Sullivan [00:00:00]:
Iranians send out 150 of these little, little boats. They're very fast boats. And the US sent one bomber that dropped one bomb that broke into canisters, and each of the canisters broke into 150 little missiles. And they destroyed, they destroyed all 150 boats. And it happened in about three minutes. All AI.
Mike Koenigs [00:00:25]:
I am a significantly more capable, creative, fast thinking communicator who's more human because of the tool, not less.
Dan Sullivan [00:00:34]:
The academics, the popes, the government, it doesn't matter what they think about AI. The marketplace has already decided they want it. And the marketplace has got a lot more voters than they do. It's a done deal. The horses are out of the barn.
Mike Koenigs [00:00:50]:
The entrepreneurs, educators, scientists and leaders who treat AI as infrastructure, not novelty, will define the next century the way Zero defined the last five. The foundation is here. The only question is what you choose to build. All right, welcome back to another exciting episode of Capability Amplifier. I'm here with Dan, and Dan gave me something he's been working on. It's a big idea, and it's this notion of zero was just the beginning. And every civilization gets one chance to adopt its foundational technology. And Dan, you talk about two conceptual earthquakes.
Mike Koenigs [00:01:39]:
Why don't you just talk about Zero and AI? Because those are the big ones that you talk about in your paper.
Dan Sullivan [00:01:46]:
Yeah, well, first of all, just generally the coach, you know, our couple thousand strategic coach entrepreneurs who are in their program. One of the things that's happened in the, you know, since November 30th of 2023 is they AI has come into the world and they're all using AI, so everybody's using AI. And, you know, and it's too early to tell what really seems to be, you know, the major themes here, because you take any human being and introduce it to AI, you introduce AI to their brain and they do something different with it. So that's, that's what I've noticed before. There's no, there's nothing more dangerous to an establishment elite than a consumer with a new capability. Yeah, you know, just do it. So anyway, I've been looking at it and I've had a lot of decades on the planet and there's been a lot of new things over the decades. So, you know, I'm interested in it.
Dan Sullivan [00:02:54]:
How does this compare to other technological breakthroughs? And I think this, this is a unique one because I think it's more of a cognitive breakthrough than it is a technological breakthrough. I mean, if you've been in the tech world, And Mike, you're the perfect person to ask here. You know, where all the technology that created AI was 30 years ago. Well, we had to do this first, and we had to do that first. And then this had to be combined with that, and then you needed capital investment here. And there were. There were 10 competitors, and two or three of them became the champion competitors. So a story.
Dan Sullivan [00:03:31]:
We know how that proceeds, but the big thing is a change in how people think about their thinking. That doesn't happen all the time. I don't think the Internet did that. I don't think that personal computer really did that. I think probably having a computer in a phone probably has done it more than anything else. So that's the main reason, as I have my coach audience that I have to talk to. But the other thing is I have a podcast series with Peter, Peter Diamantis. And Peter's, you know, Peter is very, very knowledgeable about who's doing what at the, you know, at the cutting edge of technology because his, you know, his business is bringing this thinking to a bigger and bigger audience.
Dan Sullivan [00:04:22]:
Okay. And so Monday, just, you know, were. On Friday, on Monday, I had a podcast and he said, you know, what do you think is a previous experience we've had in history where there was something that came along that was a mind changer, not a game changer, but a mind changer. When the mind changes, every game changes. And so, and I said, I've been thinking about that. And I said, it's not a technology. Well, it is a technology, but not as we would think about tech. It's not a machine, it's an idea.
Dan Sullivan [00:05:06]:
And the idea is zero. Now in the, you know, you got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9 numerals, and you have zero, okay? And I said, that's a phenomenal idea. And it was created in India long time ago. They didn't do much with it because it was sort of intellectuals who played around with it and they played games with it. Didn't do much with it. And then it jumped to the Arab countries, especially North Africa, on the Mediterranean, Mediterranean Sea, which was the busiest waterway in the world for trade. You know, north, south, east, west. There were a lot of these traders, and there was one island, Sicily, that in the 1300s really became the hot pot.
Dan Sullivan [00:06:02]:
You know, it was a hot spot for economics. It was fair, tolerant society. They had Islam, they had Christianity, they had Judaism, and they had whatever. And people kind of got along because it was basically very trade driven. It was driven economically. And the Europeans the people who came from Europe grew up in Christian society mainly they were stunned by the fact that the traders coming over from North Africa could do calculations instantly in their brain.
Mike Koenigs [00:06:39]:
Yep.
Dan Sullivan [00:06:40]:
And not only that, they could just do things. It's like watching what you're doing with AI right now, Mike. I can't comprehend how the person is doing this type of thinking and getting such a fast result. They couldn't do it. And so they said, how are you doing? And they said, well, this is our numbering system. The Europeans still had the Roman numerals as their numbering system tried to do long division in Roman numerals. You might get it in a month, you know, you might get it in a month and then it might not be really exact because what, what are you going to translate it into? It's XVI and everything else, you know. And so instantly they saw that if we can acquire this ability to have the nine numbers plus zero, then we can do zero, we can do one, we can do 10, we can do 100, we can do a thousand, we can do a million.
Dan Sullivan [00:07:43]:
And all of a sudden their brains just exploded. Zero was forbidden by the church. It was heresy because you were saying that nothing can have value. And it was, the whole religion was against it, the whole philosophy, but all the ranking in society was against zero. But the Sicilians had their, you know, they were, you know, they were kind of an entrepreneurial, flexible, flexible, tolerant. So they immediately established vast schools and they had 10,000 children learning this new system. And for the next century they were just a powerhouse because you can't do double entry bookkeeping unless you have zero. Because if you have minus five, which is a debt on one side, you have a plus five on the other, and all of a sudden the entire economic system change.
Dan Sullivan [00:08:39]:
Not only that, you can't have science unless you have zero.
Mike Koenigs [00:08:44]:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan [00:08:44]:
So astronomy, astronomy, geography, yeah, everything, everything becomes a matter of accounting. They can count. They can count. And we don't have AI in 2026 unless you have zero in the 13th century. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So between then, you know, between the adoption of 0 as the numbering system with the other nine numbers, I'm saying that you don't have any of the growth of economics, the growth of profitable, profitable nations and everything. You don't have any of that, you don't have any of the science, you don't have any of the other technology unless you have zero. So I think it's a mind changer.
Dan Sullivan [00:09:35]:
And I think that what's happening right now is A fundamental mind changer. Ten years from now, my sense, especially here in the United States, we're going to be thinking very differently.
Mike Koenigs [00:09:47]:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan [00:09:48]:
Especially about entrepreneurism, especially about investment, especially about innovation, especially about government, especially, you know, the whole thing. I think we're going through a profound once, you know, a once in history type of. Type of thing. I think this is huge, what we're going through. So that's my, that's my take on. And Peter was impressed with this. He says, yeah, he said, I've been thinking in terms of electricity. And I said, no, it's not a technology.
Dan Sullivan [00:10:23]:
It's a cognitive. It's a cognitive. It's a mind changer. Yeah. What's happened? And it's going to be very disruptive. A lot of people are going to be totally disrupted by AI. A lot of people were disrupted by, by zero. And it's going to be transformative.
Dan Sullivan [00:10:41]:
It's both disruptive and transformative.
Mike Koenigs [00:10:45]:
Yeah. So I'm curious, so when I look at the two, I'm curious about how long did it take for the zero to be cognitively understood on the whole. Because if I'm comparing right now, let's look at AI as the current big thing. And, and the number of people using AI right now is around a billion ish. You know, when you look at what chat GPT has in terms of registered users and then if you com, you know, compound that with Claude, like and Microsoft, those are kind of the big ones. And then of course people who have meta products like Facebook and Instagram or TikTok have AI capabilities whether they're intentionally using them or not. Again, I don't know what the actual use case is, but that's about three and a half years to reach a billion Percentage of the population that has access to some kind of compute, whether it's a phone or a computer, faster
Dan Sullivan [00:11:56]:
than anything else has ever happened ever. And, and now I think the chat GPT, Peter said he was talking, he wasn't talking to Sam Altman, but he was talking to. And they said, we think this can go 10 times in a quarter. Yeah, but it came out and it went 80 times in the first quarter.
Mike Koenigs [00:12:18]:
Yes.
Dan Sullivan [00:12:19]:
And the capital that, I mean, we're gonna, you know, it'll be a trillion dollars this year. The capital, capital investment will be a trillion.
Mike Koenigs [00:12:28]:
Yeah. Claude just raised another blob and they are just shy of a trillion dollar valuation already. And there are only two things standing in the way of even greater adoption. And really it's energy production and chips, which I'M of the delusional, optimistic point of view that AI will solve this. We have some practical physics challenges, but already because of AI being applied to stereo lithography, our ability to create chips that are even more dense in ways they thought was physically impossible is happening now, which I think again, these are the things that the straight line predictors will say something's impossible. And I always say, yeah. And there's no such thing as a straight line. Yeah.
Mike Koenigs [00:13:24]:
And the universe is built on top of chaos.
Dan Sullivan [00:13:28]:
Yeah. No, I mean, it's got people who bet. Well, the big thing, I will be used to solve all the obstacles to a. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Mike Koenigs [00:13:39]:
So power, food, medicine, longevity, all these things. And it's already happening.
Dan Sullivan [00:13:45]:
Oh, yeah.
Mike Koenigs [00:13:46]:
And we haven't even entered really practical quantum yet, which is truly a time machine. It allows these technology platforms to live outside of time and they don't follow what we would regard as regular compute physics. So there again, I'm just going to ask you the question because you had mentioned it's point number six in your document that both.
Dan Sullivan [00:14:14]:
Go ahead. I don't have to be linear here.
Mike Koenigs [00:14:17]:
No, no. So you talked about. Well, you already covered the five. And I'm going to just tell everyone
Dan Sullivan [00:14:24]:
what they are because can we have show notes? People can have this.
Mike Koenigs [00:14:28]:
We are. I'm going to give you the show notes. And the good news is I can not only do show notes, I'm going to show you the notes which were Dan's core points are both our arrivals. Both arrivals were imports, not inventions.
Dan Sullivan [00:14:47]:
Yes.
Mike Koenigs [00:14:47]:
Both dismantled, mantled the reigning cognitive infrastructure, which is happening with AI.
Dan Sullivan [00:14:54]:
Yep.
Mike Koenigs [00:14:55]:
And then both triggered institutional resistance before acceptance. You talked about the Church.
Dan Sullivan [00:15:01]:
The Pope came out with a, you
Mike Koenigs [00:15:04]:
know, a warning anti AI thing.
Dan Sullivan [00:15:06]:
Yeah, well, they did against zero too. So Pope to Pope to Pope. Yeah, yeah. And you know, I read. I just read the report on the Pope's warning about AI.
Mike Koenigs [00:15:19]:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan [00:15:19]:
I said, how much does Pope Leo use AI? I mean, does he use perplexity? Does he use. I said, if he's not using AI, it's not worth reading what he thinks about it. They both exponentially accelerated commerce. And that's already happening.
Mike Koenigs [00:15:42]:
Yep, yep, we're seeing that.
Dan Sullivan [00:15:44]:
Both question, both redefine what intelligence means. That's happening for sure.
Mike Koenigs [00:15:50]:
I. I think that that gap is that if that's what terrifies most people, is anyone who's using it sees the gaps initially. Tools of the elite. I get that. Here's the thing.
Dan Sullivan [00:16:03]:
But the fact is it's democratizing Faster than anything in history, right?
Mike Koenigs [00:16:08]:
Yeah. You think about how long it took to propagate online modems, PCs in the Internet compared to what AI is doing internationally and outside. Like, because the nature of AI is it can understand any language and translate in real time. Language isn't a barrier anymore. And certainly when people say, well, price is a barrier, you got to take into account that in India you're paying rupees compared to dollars. Everything you're getting is at a discount. It's the same with Starlink. It still might be out of hand, but the cost of an Android phone is tiny over there.
Mike Koenigs [00:16:47]:
So the relative cost and, and in three years and then restructuring labor and professional skill, this is a for sure. And I just look at, I don't know if you've recently been in or have been in a Waymo or if you've been in a self driving Tesla recently. The quality of the ride in a Tesla has improved dramatically in the past six or eight months. So much so I giggle like a little girl. Vivian and I were out this last week and we are our regular Tesla is too old to have self driving, but we were in a newer one and good God, it was so good I was laughing like a little girl. And what most people don't realize is every time a Tesla is out driving, it's capturing data so robots can do stuff and tracking the behavior of humans and the entire physical world. The reason why robots are going to be here so fast is because all the training is happening so rapidly. And okay, and then both enabled previously impossible scientific leaps.
Mike Koenigs [00:18:00]:
I think we've touched on that. But then here, ethical, philosophical anxiety and infrastructure, not technology. Why don't you just talk about your perspective on the ethics and the anxiety beyond the religious ones?
Dan Sullivan [00:18:17]:
Yeah, well, I think the big thing is that. You know, and it's certain and this is an issue because this is where it really enters into the political realm, political realm. And you know, I'm not, I'm not negative towards politics because that politics deals with human nature, you know, and, and the why politics is good from a good sense is that you can make social change without violence. And that's the big thing, almost all change. If it's lacking politics, you're going to have extreme win or loser violence, you know, and like that. And you know, and violence, especially if it leads to injury and death is, it's always a loss. It's never, it's never a plus, never lost. But one of the big things is that what I'm seeing right now is how far do we allow the decision making of the algorithms to go into touching areas like medicine, like, especially medicine.
Dan Sullivan [00:19:36]:
I think medicine is going to be the really, really big one. And, you know, war, one of the things that's interesting, nobody talks about it, but the Iranian war, I mean, everybody's got political explanations of the war. And everybody who hates Trump says this is a complete disaster for us. But if you go inside Iran, they've been set back 15 years in the first three days, you know, set back. They lost their entire leadership class in the first half hour, you know, and people say this is a disastrous war. And I says, it's three months old today, three months old yesterday. The Americans have lost 14 and 14 men, you know, and I think they're all men. 14, 14 men.
Dan Sullivan [00:20:32]:
I said, what other war can you accomplish this much? And my sense is the logistics, the putting the bombing missions together and everything else, all AI. I bet this is the first sigh where AI was totally on one side with the Israelis and the Americans and not on the other side at all. I think they didn't have AI. What they had two American destroyers who were going through the Straits of Hormuz and they, Iranians send out 150 of these little, little boats. They're very fast boats. And the US sent one bomber that dropped one bomb that broke into canisters, and each of the canisters broke into 150 little missiles. And they destroyed, they destroyed all 150 boats. And it happened in about three minutes.
Mike Koenigs [00:21:31]:
Geese.
Dan Sullivan [00:21:31]:
All AI.
Mike Koenigs [00:21:33]:
Yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan [00:21:34]:
So, yeah, you get the thing. The other thing is the inequality of people. People who have AI, people who don't have AI, tremendous inequality. I mean, people have talked about inequality before. You haven't seen inequality. Like you're saying.
Mike Koenigs [00:21:50]:
Yeah, and I would say this will piss some people off, but it's. I just think it's the truth. It's behavioral inequality. What I mean when I say that is. AI is available and accessible to almost anyone. Just like a podcast. You can either be consuming TikTok and Instagram content and looking at stupid stuff and engaging in literally stupid behavior, or getting the equivalent of a PhD by listening to podcasts and watching YouTube videos to learn any skill imaginable. And there is no language barrier border any longer.
Mike Koenigs [00:22:35]:
It's just making good choices. And I do think there's a civic, what I call a utilitarian responsibility to quality education. And I didn't say the word public education because I don't want to get in a discussion about how you slice it But I think civilization has a responsibility to educate its populace. It's good for everyone. But in the case of AI, there are no practical barriers or borders anymore. At least in the US anyone can get a free mobile phone and service to consume content. And there are, I understand there's behavioral issues, but overseas what I predict you're just going to see is a new form of AI generated wealth because the commerce is possible, the communications is possible and the creativity is possible. And when you talked earlier about medicine, I think if you're wondering well how is it really going to affect or why doesn't it affect the sooner or how is it going to equalize medicine? And the mere fact that with a quantum computer we'll be able to simulate a population of a hundred like a billion humans doing an fda, the equivalent of an FDA trial in a simulated environment that can be fact checked.
Mike Koenigs [00:24:14]:
In other words, de hallucinated by secondary and tertiary AIs running the same tests in different environments in probably hours, days or even weeks instead of a decade. And that is where we're going to have the breakthroughs is our ability to simulate reality without worrying about humans screwing it up or someone with a glove with poop on it. It's like one dumb accident can mess up a complicated test. I'm oversimplifying for purposes.
Dan Sullivan [00:24:52]:
No, and I would say just because Babs and I are so involved in you know, health related, health related issues that the greatest breakthrough that's occurred. We've been at it for 35 years. 35 years. We've spent a lot of money, a lot of time doing. But it's in the diagnostic testing when you get a top to bottom, head to foot, we get it three times a year complete by top to bottom. The ability for it now to detect tendencies, not actual existence of anything disease, but a tendency towards something that if you don't pay attention to this five years from now it's going to be that. My, my sense is that we're reaching the point maybe in 10 years where the only reason why you will die is either because there were no tests or the tests were too late, the tests were too late, or dumb accidents.
Mike Koenigs [00:26:06]:
Yeah, but I understand what you're saying.
Dan Sullivan [00:26:08]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so. Or you know, high risk taking or anything like that. You know, I think that anything. And yeah, and I, I think right where we are now in 2026, by 2036, what we consider normal is going to be radically changed.
Mike Koenigs [00:26:33]:
Yeah, I, I think, I think the robotics is going to greatly bend that our perception because Right now a Waymo in a self driving car is already normal. I think the shocker, if you've been in Miami recently, they've got a lot of robots on the, in the roads, you know, on the sidewalks, delivering food, etc. But you, you know, getting back to your paper here, you just talk about how history doesn't rewards civilizations that debate transformative ideas the longest. There's that saying about Europe, you know, the, the US innovates, the you, the Europe legislates and. Yeah, but it'll be interesting what happens with various governments and also what China does because by their very nature, in order to manage their people, suppression and censorship is part of the game of which AI makes that easier to do.
Dan Sullivan [00:27:51]:
And here,
Mike Koenigs [00:27:54]:
depending on your brand of cynicism, you may or may not say the same about the US But I'm just curious about your take ultimately on right now. The general feeling is us is ahead of the game somewhere between eight and 18 months. Probably ahead of China at the moment.
Dan Sullivan [00:28:18]:
Yeah, well, I don't know what that means. So. Ahead of what?
Mike Koenigs [00:28:23]:
Well, right now our ability to generate compute and better software platforms that do more faster is better than the Chinese models. And of course we've been regulating what kind of chips they get. I don't really believe that necessarily because you know, we can move.
Dan Sullivan [00:28:46]:
Tell you something.
Mike Koenigs [00:28:47]:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan [00:28:48]:
You know why we're gonna win?
Mike Koenigs [00:28:52]:
I can guess what you're gonna say, but I want you to tell me.
Dan Sullivan [00:28:54]:
Our Chinese are better than their Chinese.
Mike Koenigs [00:28:57]:
There you go. That's good. I haven't heard you say that.
Dan Sullivan [00:29:01]:
Well, Nvidia is all Chinese. Yeah.
Mike Koenigs [00:29:04]:
Taiwanese. But yes, they, they would definitely make a, make an art. Yes.
Dan Sullivan [00:29:10]:
Remember the moon race between the United States and Russia or the Soviet Union? Yeah. You know why we won?
Mike Koenigs [00:29:17]:
Our Russians were better than their Russians.
Dan Sullivan [00:29:19]:
No, our Nazis were better than their Nazis.
Mike Koenigs [00:29:22]:
Oh, that's harsh.
Dan Sullivan [00:29:24]:
No, it was. There were 300. We basically took their V2 program and they just, you know, they were guilty of enormous war crimes. I mean they, they killed 30, 40,000 people in the factories. Wernher von Braun was a war criminal. I mean he, he, you know, he would have been at Nuremberg and they would have hanged him, you know, and everything like that. But you know, we were in competition and we needed. The Russians didn't do anything with their Nazis.
Dan Sullivan [00:29:55]:
The US they took them to Huntsville, Alabama and they. So the big thing is that I'm not going to get into, I'm not going to get into the Chinese thing, but the, their whole system doesn't Encourage the amount of innovation. But the capital formation, they don't have entrepreneurism the way we have. They don't have capital formation. They don't have the, you know, I mean, they show you what they want to show you when you go to China and it looks like they're very advanced, but they, they don't let you see what they don't want you to see. You can go anywhere in the United States and, and the other thing is things move around in the States. You know, like the states that have been the biggest states and the most powerful states are also more highly regulated and higher taxed. And now people are just moving.
Dan Sullivan [00:30:55]:
They're more moving their capital, they're moving their talent, you know, they're moving their opportunities to other states and. Yeah, but I remember, you know, I grew up and in the First World War, Imperial Germany was the most powerful country and the imperial Germans were going to be the winners and they got beat. And then in the Second World War it was Nazi Germany was, you know, Nazi Germany was much better organized. The Japanese were much better and that was over. And then the Soviet Union and then Japan was going to be the country of the 21st century. And then that went away. And then the European Union was going to be. And now it's China.
Dan Sullivan [00:31:38]:
We're down to one right now. There's only one China and my sense is that ain't going to happen.
Mike Koenigs [00:31:46]:
Yeah, well, there's one thing I know not to bet against the guy who studies his history.
Dan Sullivan [00:31:53]:
Yeah.
Mike Koenigs [00:31:54]:
And.
Dan Sullivan [00:31:54]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think our, I think our Chinese are going to be better than their Chinese.
Mike Koenigs [00:32:01]:
Well, it's better environment, that's for sure. You just have to ask the ones that you meet over here and also
Dan Sullivan [00:32:07]:
the ones stock options are a lot better.
Mike Koenigs [00:32:11]:
That's true, that's true. You get to take it out of there. So. Well, I'm going to bring this around home.
Dan Sullivan [00:32:19]:
Did I do number 10? Did I do number 10?
Mike Koenigs [00:32:21]:
Yeah. So number 10 was both our infrastructure, not merely technology, and zero became the invisible foundation of all western science and finance. And now you're saying it's the invisible substrate between healthcare, law, media, education, national security. And so I think we covered it in a indirect way. But do you have any? Any, Any.
Dan Sullivan [00:32:42]:
I don't have it. I don't have any. I don't have any other example in history because when it happened in Sicily, there were about 15 major economic centers in Europe. And the speed with which the 0 went from just Sicily to all these other cities was a matter of Months.
Mike Koenigs [00:33:09]:
Yeah, it was that fast. That's what I didn't get answered, you
Dan Sullivan [00:33:13]:
know, and that's when they were traveling by horse and boat, you know, so, you know, the other thing you have to take into consideration, you know, that they didn't have the communication abilities, they didn't have the transport, but as fast as they could move, they moved it. The idea went across Europe that fast, and it was just like that.
Mike Koenigs [00:33:34]:
Yeah. There's one other comparison that I just thought of as I'm listening to you. So all of the different ways the 0 was used was massive. And the funny thing about AI right now is this is both the opportunity, but also the confusion. When I talk to founders and go into companies and train them, I am amazed at how inconsistent the use is and what they're using. There aren't rules yet, so someone says, what's the best system I should be using inside my enterprise? The answer is they're all broken. And if you try to standardize on something, you're putting yourself in a tricky situation. And the people who get really good at AI are oftentimes using different methods and strategies.
Mike Koenigs [00:34:31]:
It's like, you know, how do you use a knife? Well, there's a lot of ways to use. It's. This is not a universal toolkit yet.
Dan Sullivan [00:34:39]:
Yeah. 1992. Good morning. American. Brett Gumbel. What's. What's dot com?
Mike Koenigs [00:34:48]:
Was it 92?
Dan Sullivan [00:34:49]:
92. Yeah. What's that?
Mike Koenigs [00:34:52]:
God, I didn't know it's that long ago.
Dan Sullivan [00:34:55]:
What's not? What's dot com?
Mike Koenigs [00:34:59]:
Yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan [00:35:01]:
What's the cloud?
Mike Koenigs [00:35:03]:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan [00:35:03]:
Where is the cloud?
Mike Koenigs [00:35:06]:
Doesn't matter. That's what.
Dan Sullivan [00:35:08]:
Yeah, yeah, awesome. So anyway, but my, my feeling is when, when is. Well, first of all, everybody's going to be using it because the products that they use, the electronic products and everything, they're all going to have AI. So everybody's going to be using AI. Everybody's going to be using AI. So, you know, to this day, I don't know how electricity works, but I use it all the time. I mean, you know, I've used it in 15 different ways since I got up this morning. So the big thing is that you don't really have to use it, but do you have enough people who are, what I would say, literate, AI literate, that they, they can use it for leadership, they can use it for exploration and everything else? I, I think It's Pareto's Law.
Dan Sullivan [00:36:06]:
20% of the players are going to control 80% of the game, you know, and so my Sense is it's not going to be equal. You know my three rules for my book Geometry of staying cool and calm is everything's made up. Nobody's in charge of the making up. And life's not, life's not fair.
Mike Koenigs [00:36:30]:
I quote you all the time you
Dan Sullivan [00:36:32]:
thought life hasn't been fair up until now. You ain't seen nothing yet.
Mike Koenigs [00:36:36]:
Yeah. Orders of magnitude.
Dan Sullivan [00:36:38]:
Yeah. I mean, yeah. Elon in a couple weeks is going to be the first trillionaire.
Mike Koenigs [00:36:44]:
Yep. And it'll be just like the three minute mile. The ones who subsequently follow.
Dan Sullivan [00:36:50]:
Four minute mile. Four minute, three minute mile. You know what the record is right now? 3:43. 3:43.
Mike Koenigs [00:37:01]:
Okay.
Dan Sullivan [00:37:02]:
Yeah. 3:43. There was a 16 year old from New Zealand who. 16 years old, he was racing and he did 346. He did 346. Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Koenigs [00:37:16]:
Unbelievable.
Dan Sullivan [00:37:17]:
Yeah. Well, and then Peter Diamanta said he went to the enhanced Olympics.
Mike Koenigs [00:37:23]:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan [00:37:24]:
Where you can use any kind of drug you want. But I don't think it's drugs. I think it's exoskeletons. It's like you're inside of an exoskeleton.
Mike Koenigs [00:37:35]:
Oh really? Because they're. Dave Asprey was talking about it yesterday and he, he said that the people who are doing this right now, they're using, they're not dangerous drugs. It's like the whole conversation about, oh, it's just a whole bunch of stuff. These for the most part are at least FDA approved. They're not like illegal substances. And they're peptides, they're things that are banned from use but non illegal. But he said there are some of the athletes who were beating their 10 and even 20 year ago records and you know, I'm just all for human performance as long as you are making a decision about your own body and I don't have to pay for it later. And what's great about race cars, the speed, velocity of innovation development is great for all of us.
Mike Koenigs [00:38:44]:
We would not have the safe, amazing, efficient vehicles we have today without racing. And as rotten as it sounds, we wouldn't have great guns and great airplanes if it weren't for war. It's just the fastest way to innovate and create transformative technology and the brains that make that happen. So I think the byproduct of what's happening with this exponential AI and I know it myself, I am a significantly more capable, creative, fast thinking communicator who's more human because of the tool, not less.
Dan Sullivan [00:39:28]:
Can I tell you something? It doesn't matter what the, you know, like the academics, the popes, the government. Government. It doesn't matter what they think about AI. The marketplace has already decided they want it.
Mike Koenigs [00:39:43]:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan [00:39:45]:
And the market marketplace has got a lot more voters than they do.
Mike Koenigs [00:39:49]:
That's right.
Dan Sullivan [00:39:50]:
Yeah. So it's, it's, it's, it's a done deal. The, the horses are out of the barn, the toothpaste is out of the tube. How did I finish off? I don't have the text in front of me. How did I finish it?
Mike Koenigs [00:40:08]:
It was. I actually already said it and I'll do it again. Here it is. Parallel demand on America today is not to manage AI cautiously from the sidelines, to embed it decisively into every domain where human potential has previously been bottlenecked by time, cost, and cognitive lim. And then the last one is the entrepreneurs, educators, scientists and leaders who treat AI as infrastructure, not novelty, will define the next century the way zero defined the last five. The foundation is here. The only question is what you choose to build. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan [00:40:44]:
Yeah.
Mike Koenigs [00:40:44]:
Well done, Dan Sullivan.
Dan Sullivan [00:40:46]:
Yeah. And, you know, so that's it. And you know, get better every day. Start using it and get better every day.
Mike Koenigs [00:40:54]:
Yeah. Yep. Dream big dreams and invent as fast as possible and the market will reward you solely your brain.
Dan Sullivan [00:41:02]:
And the more capable you become, the more ambitious you'll become.
Mike Koenigs [00:41:08]:
I like that self licking ice cream cone.
Dan Sullivan [00:41:10]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Koenigs [00:41:11]:
All right.
Dan Sullivan [00:41:12]:
So it's really interesting and you're a great role model, Mike. I mean, I stand in awe of you in this area and you earned your capabilities over many decades. I appreciate it. You took many risks to know what you know today.
Mike Koenigs [00:41:32]:
Thank you. I appreciate that. I receive your gift. And back at you. I wouldn't have the path, I wouldn't be on the path I am without you reigning me in providing amazing tools and reflections. So this has just been, this is my, really, my favorite collaboration is the one I have with you. So thank you for the gift.
Dan Sullivan [00:41:59]:
Thank you. We're amplifying each other.
Mike Koenigs [00:42:03]:
Let's keep on doing it. I hope you've enjoyed this episode as much as Dan and I have, obviously. And we'll see you in the next one. Again, make sure if you're not part of the strategic coach community, get your ass in there. It'll be the best business and personal decision you'll ever make in your life. See you in the next episode.