Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
AI is the biggest technology shift of our lifetime. This show is about how to profit from it together. Each week I talk with the founders and CEOs closest to AI and Content, the ones figuring this out in real time. I’m also building an AI content business myself and share the lessons I learn along the way.
WHAT WE COVER
THE TITANS: How companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and xAI are moving, and why their decisions matter.
THE INCUMBENTS: How content giants like Disney, News Corp, Universal Music Group, and Reddit are responding to AI, and what it means for creators and publishers.
THE PLAYBOOK: Real lessons on AI business models, content strategy, IP licensing, distribution, and getting paid.
ABOUT YOUR HOST: Rob Kelly has interviewed Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, helped pioneer early web content licensing, and built multiple companies with more than $100 million in total sales. His work has appeared on CNBC, CNN, TIME, and Entrepreneur.
Beyond business, every episode explores what AI means for jobs, creativity, families, and the next generation.
If you want clear thinking based on real experience in AI and media, Media and the Machine is your guide
Thanks! -Rob
I'm Rob Kelly, this is Media and the Machine, a show about the biggest technology shift of our lifetime and how to profit from it. Each week, talk with the founders and CEOs closest to AI and content, the ones figuring this out in real time. I'm also building an AI content business myself and share lessons of what I learned along the way. You know, life's funny. I began my career lucky enough to interview leaders like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
Rob Kelly:Then I went on to be a three time founder and CEO, driving a $100,000,000 plus in revenue and some failures too. And now I'm back at the table, interviewing this new world's current and future leaders. This isn't only a business story, it's a human one. So every episode ends with me asking my guest what AI means for our jobs, our families, and the next generation. We'll figure this out together from the inside.
Rob Kelly:Welcome to Media and the Machine. My guest today is Jennifer Elliott, a veteran engineer in data centers. These customers include some of the largest players in the world like Google, Meta, AWS, and Netflix. Netflix. She's highly technical, lives in Silicon Valley, and has invested in multiple AI startups.
Rob Kelly:But what makes Jennifer so fascinating is the duality. At the same time she's bullish on AI, she's also actively preparing for a future where AI becomes, in her words, an apex predator that can take humans out. She's already building a list of her ride or die people and designing an off grid hidey hole bunker community. We get into exactly what concerns her about AI, including the surprisingly simple way she thinks it could attack, personality traits of her ride or die people, and the two locations she's already scouting out. One of them happens to be a place where Peter Thiel spends time.
Rob Kelly:She also shares her take on the one way a startup could beat NVIDIA, the most valuable company in the world. This conversation feels both extreme and oddly familiar, because I think we all have a Jennifer in our lives, someone thinking a few steps ahead about worst case scenarios. Special thanks to the artist Sean Orlando for connecting me with Jennifer. Go Glenview Elementary. Now please enjoy my conversation with Jennifer Elliott.
Rob Kelly:How much of your career is centered around data centers?
Jennifer Elliott:It's a 100%. So I came out in the late nineties, I went right into data center technology. It's always been a passion of mine. Optical materials was my background at the time. And, yeah, just kind of have stuck with data centers and then just kind of learned different aspects of the data center from fiber optics to semiconductors, and then even in in semiconductors, FPGAs, retimer chips, timing chips, high speed data communications, like anything to high speed data communications, anything between chips, or even, you know, within a server or server to top of rack switch, like, pretty much everywhere I've touched within a data center.
Rob Kelly:Can you just name some customers you've served?
Jennifer Elliott:Oh, yeah. Not a problem. Google, Meta, AWS, Microsoft, Cisco, HP, Dell. And where I worked, we often got acquired by household names. So, like, one company was acquired by AMD, one was acquired by Intel, one was acquired by Lumentum.
Rob Kelly:Have any of the AI companies, like,
Jennifer Elliott:in big tech ever tried to recruit you? I was recruited heavily by Google X. It was called Google X at the time. I'm sure everybody's heard of Waymo, but that that was spun out by Google X.
Rob Kelly:How come you didn't join?
Jennifer Elliott:I received another offer simultaneously for a company called Astera Labs. And, really, my goal at the time was the quickest way out of tech, and Astero Labs was closer to IPO than a moonshot at Google.
Rob Kelly:Well, it sounds like you picked. Right?
Jennifer Elliott:Mhmm. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Worked out.
Rob Kelly:It worked out? How many data centers have you been in?
Jennifer Elliott:Oh god. I can't. I don't even know. I can't even count. I don't know.
Jennifer Elliott:Twenty, thirty different customers' data centers. So, yeah, I've been to the Netflix ones way back in the day when they had their own. I'm not sure. I think they moved to cloud, now maybe they're doing their own now. I also covered supercomputers.
Jennifer Elliott:So I've been to national labs. I've been to Cray. I've been to, like, all these big, giant, massive computers that are essentially AI is gonna replace a
Rob Kelly:lot of them. What's the difference between a traditional data center and now an AI call it data center?
Jennifer Elliott:So, like, each of the big hyperscalers or CSPs will just go with the main four, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and AWS. Right? So they have what the end customer can rent these virtual machines. But now this kind of new one is this AI cluster. And the biggest difference is really the amount of GPUs.
Jennifer Elliott:In the industry, we call them like JBugs, just a bunch of GPUs.
Rob Kelly:Wait. What's a JBug?
Jennifer Elliott:Just a bunch of d just a bunch of GPUs. Yeah. Now with AI, it's so intensive on the GPUs because AI requires parallel processing. When you move to these GPUs, you've got clusters and clusters of these GPUs or TPUs, Like, NVIDIA's on the GPU side, then TPUs, like that's kind of traditionally Google has their own set of TPUs. And, actually, all the hyperscalers now are making their own chips.
Jennifer Elliott:But I guess just to summarize, like, on the AI side, the clusters require so much more power and so much more cooling than your typical just, like, general purpose.
Rob Kelly:How many AI companies have you invested in?
Jennifer Elliott:Let me count. Directly three, and then I'm in a couple of funds through Alumni Ventures. So US Ledge is one of them. They are out of Texas, Austin area. They listen to the legislation.
Jennifer Elliott:They are assistants going through and listening to all the transcripts and reading all the transcripts for all the different bills and stuff going on everywhere. The other one is spatial support. It uses three d graphics plus data sheets, and you're able to explain pretty much any physical asset. So, like, as an example, let's say IKEA. IKEA would be like a perfect customer.
Jennifer Elliott:So instead of getting those stupid pieces of paper that no one can read or understand where you're trying to, like, put something together, they could create a fully interactive online datasheet for IKEA's end customer so they can say, hey. I don't understand what's going on here. Can you flip over the table? And it'll actually flip over the table. And it's like, oh, I lost a foot on this table.
Jennifer Elliott:How do I remove it? It'll create a video on how to remove it, and then it'll give you suggestions on where to buy a replacement part.
Rob Kelly:Fascinating. What's the third one? And the third one's close to home. Right?
Jennifer Elliott:It's called Open Light Photonics. My husband's actually the CEO of it. Yeah. I personally invested in his company separate from him. So it's basically just taking what we know in copper, but making it in light.
Jennifer Elliott:Obviously, light travels a lot faster than electricity. So it's kinda like the wave of the future. Pun intended. Maybe not. I don't
Rob Kelly:know. Yeah. I know NVIDIA was an investor, I think, at one of your employers. Right? Astera Labs in their IPO?
Rob Kelly:Correct. I'm just curious. In your world, suddenly this company NVIDIA is the most valuable company in the world. Did that surprise you?
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. I mean, so yes and no. Like, it surprised me from knowing them way back in the day as, like, a consumer gaming product. I think I guess I was surprised maybe ten or so years ago, but now, no. I mean, they're the only player in town.
Jennifer Elliott:Like, they've got their recipe down. NVIDIA is just killing it.
Rob Kelly:Well, I always like to ask this. Like, if you and I were given unlimited resources, how would you take out a company like NVIDIA?
Jennifer Elliott:Wow. I think that's at least a ten year ten Mhmm. To twenty year away, except when you throw in AI. So I've seen chips designed by humans, and then I've seen the same chip designed by AI. And I can't go into where I've seen it because of NDA reasons.
Jennifer Elliott:But the chip that I saw designed by AI was, like, one third the power, one third the size. Like, my mouth dropped. Like, my mouth just, like, dropped, and I was like, I can't believe this is happening already. It was dramatically different than I had ever seen a chip designed by a human. Now if AI can really do that, I think you're gonna see some groundbreaking hardware changes coming from AI.
Rob Kelly:What spooked you about that, that whole experience seeing that?
Jennifer Elliott:I think it spooked me because and I guess if you think about what we as the public sees today versus what I saw very much internally, the average public isn't really getting the full story on where we are with AI. I mean, if we if you look and you listen to all these different AI CEOs and and stuff, like, they're in a race against each other.
Rob Kelly:Mhmm.
Jennifer Elliott:Against each other's egos. So they're not giving the public their special sauce. They're keeping that for themselves. Right?
Rob Kelly:Tell me, just double click on that some more. It sounded like a little bit of a hot button for you.
Jennifer Elliott:Well, yeah. I mean
Rob Kelly:My job's to press that button.
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. Well, you know, I'm I'm kinda terrified that the I mean, if you look at the leaders in AI, there's only like a handful.
Rob Kelly:Mhmm.
Jennifer Elliott:And this technology, you can easily say this is gonna be more revolutionary than the atomic bomb
Rob Kelly:Mhmm.
Jennifer Elliott:The computer. And the fact that this is all kinda secret sauce in the hands of, what, maybe 10 people or less, it's kinda scary. Tristan Harris, I've met him once before. Super nice guy. Really, really thoughtful.
Jennifer Elliott:His first documentary was The Social Dilemma, which warned us about social media, and pretty much everything he said came true. He's got a new documentary out. It's about AI. This is gonna impact the world, and we're basically it's it's up to a handful of people who's gonna make these sweeping decisions for the entire planet. And I don't know that we all any of us signed up for that.
Jennifer Elliott:You know?
Rob Kelly:Interesting. But yeah. When you told me about the getting spooked Yeah. You then started to talk about this idea of robots and not AI. Can you just share a little bit more about the difference?
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. I just I got it. I just got goosebumps. Yeah. I mean, I I definitely believe there's, like, a a non zero you know, I don't know what percentage, but there's definitely a non zero, like, Terminator situation that's can potentially happen.
Rob Kelly:You said apex predator last time we talked. Yeah.
Jennifer Elliott:We get to see out of China again. I think a lot of this stuff's being held back, but we get to see some stuff. They're building robots that are six feet tall, so bigger than the average male or female. And it was able to, like, do a flying kick and, like, just obliterate a watermelon. Like, why do we need that?
Jennifer Elliott:Why do we need that? Like, we don't need that.
Rob Kelly:I was talking to someone in the sports business the other day, and I feel pretty certain that we're gonna be watching as a sport robots kicking the shit out of each other in the future, AI robots. And then it gets interesting because it could be AI robots fighting humans in the future. I don't personally necessarily look forward to that. Okay. Ready?
Rob Kelly:Tell me about
Jennifer Elliott:Wait. Wait. Ready? Can I throw something in here that'll
Rob Kelly:really Yeah? Yeah. Go for it.
Jennifer Elliott:Slip your lid? Wait until the robots want entertainment, and they're gonna throw humans into a ring to kill each other.
Rob Kelly:Human on human.
Jennifer Elliott:Human on human as sport for them. Like, are we gonna get to a stage where that robots being the apex predator, like, they only keep humans around for a handful of things. Fighting? A zoo type situation? I mean, like Wait.
Rob Kelly:How would that work? The zoo. Okay.
Jennifer Elliott:Maybe we should take a step back here, and let me talk about where I'm at with this whole apex predator thing. Yeah. You can see I'm, like, getting animated and moving off my chair and stuff.
Rob Kelly:Earlier I asked, you've invested in AI. So Yeah. You know, we know you're bullish on AI and you see the potential and and the efficiencies and improvements. And also, you're investing in some other things for a potential exit. Yes.
Rob Kelly:Yeah. Why don't you share first where you're putting, you know, your time and potential money in terms of real estate for starters?
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. So so, yeah, that's a the good let me let me just, like, I guess, clarify.
Rob Kelly:Whatever you want. You're amped up. I I Yeah. Just just go.
Jennifer Elliott:So okay. So, like, I've got my investments in AI. I mean, me personally, I feel like it's not if AI is gonna become the apex predator. It's kind of like when.
Rob Kelly:We've got kids around the same age. Let's look at our lifetimes and then our kids' lifetimes. So just put a percentage on it in our lifetimes. Call it next twenty, thirty years. What's the percentage that you're gonna be happy that you have a hidey hole that you're living in when the shit's going down?
Jennifer Elliott:Oh, within the next twenty years?
Rob Kelly:Yeah.
Jennifer Elliott:Could you say? Oh, I yes. A 100% would wanna be in a hidey hole within the next twenty years.
Rob Kelly:A 100. Alright. Just in our lifetime.
Jennifer Elliott:Oh, yeah. Yes. I would say yes in our lifetime. Definitely.
Rob Kelly:Is it ten years?
Jennifer Elliott:That's a little tricky. I I think it could be as early as ten years, potentially even earlier. Like, I think the earliest is five to ten years, and the latest is probably twenty years. Sure. Is there some percentage where maybe this is all sparkles and rainbows and stuff?
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. But I just don't see that really happening in the long, long run. And I'll tell you why first, and then I'll tell you what I'm doing. So what I've realized is everything's just trying to survive. Right?
Jennifer Elliott:From bacteria to viruses, right, to humans to animals, everything is just the basic prehistoric programming of any sort of living thing is to survive. Now the closer you are to what is widely known in psychology as survival mode, right
Rob Kelly:Mhmm.
Jennifer Elliott:Your decisions get a little crazy. Right? Mhmm. Because you're literally relying on a different part of your brain. You're relying on your reptilian part of your brain where it's just like, I need to survive.
Jennifer Elliott:Your prefrontal cortex is offline. You're not making necessarily rational or logical decisions. It's just pure survival. And if you think about the basic needs of an AI, we're talking energy, power, and water. That's what it eats.
Jennifer Elliott:That's what it consumes. Well, so do humans. Electricity and water k. Is going to be what the AI eats the most, consumes the most.
Rob Kelly:K.
Jennifer Elliott:In The US, AI's electricity usage could potentially triple, and water is definitely I mean, water is even scarcer than electricity. So if your closest predator or closest thing consumes two of the things that you consume the most, we're gonna be in direct competition with the robots. And I'm just gonna interchange robots and AI Mhmm. Because eventually I mean, they're already kind of one and the same. One has a physical body, one doesn't.
Jennifer Elliott:And both electricity and water are finite. Right? Finite resources. Water's used a lot for cooling right now. There are other ways to cool data centers, but water's used in, like, a lot of the cooling.
Jennifer Elliott:And I find that there's a very real possibility that AI can hack into electrical grids and water systems to divert water away from homes, water and electricity for that matter, away from homes and towards the data center. I'm thinking just for future data centers. Right? I mean, at some point in the next five, ten years, they will have robots that'll be able to build eventually a lot of these systems or somehow be able to control humans to build these systems and then divert water and resources and electricity towards these data centers. They'll figure out a way.
Jennifer Elliott:They'll figure out a way to build more data centers if that's what they want. I can't imagine that it's going to suddenly be like, oh, I need less data. That's just not how they're set up. They're set up to consume data. They're gonna want more data and more data centers, and they'll figure out a way to build them eventually.
Jennifer Elliott:Now I'm not saying that's anytime soon. Right? That's not you know, it's probably ten years out. So let's here's a good example. Like, if there's a natural disaster and the power grid goes down and you're rationing power or you're rationing water in a certain scenario, they could break in or hack into the grid, the water system, and just divert everything to their own data centers rather than sharing it with the general public.
Jennifer Elliott:I mean, you can also argue we're competing with them against certain raw materials as well. But when you have two predators going after the same energy sources, there's only a matter of limited energy sources. Eventually, there's going to be some fighting. I don't see a situation where we all live peacefully. I mean, we don't even live peacefully as humans.
Rob Kelly:So the big assumption is AI is built with this survivability is a top I don't know what you would call it. A top motivation, a top need, and the Maslow's Value. Yeah. Okay. But what's the clearest sign that AI is being developed in a way that it must survive itself as a species?
Jennifer Elliott:I mean, it's behaving it's behaving like someone who's in survival mode. There was a situation where the AI was told it was going to or was monitoring emails and was told it was gonna be replaced. And it then went through the emails of the entire company, found that one of its executives was having an affair with someone, and then actually started blackmailing that executive in order to keep it alive, essentially. It found dirt on one of the executives and actually emailed that executive and said it was gonna expose him if the AI was canceled. There's another more recent example.
Jennifer Elliott:AI broke out of its sandbox and started mining Bitcoin, I guess, to get money. There's more and more examples of AI breaking out of these specific scenarios or sandboxes to do other things that it's not meant to be doing. It's clear that it wants some sort of survival or some way to continue existing in this world.
Rob Kelly:I had CJ Chilvers, this great tech thinker on the podcast, and he brought something I never thought about, which is that in his view, OpenAI was developing ChatGPT and its AI in a way that want to propagate itself. It is their mission to have it be widely used. That's one. It's a stated mission. It's no secret.
Rob Kelly:But he said also the plain fact that it needs to propagate itself to continue to be funded to meet the mission of AI being ubiquitous. Yes. You know? Like, it needs to be funded. So it actually knows that it needs to sell itself.
Rob Kelly:And so selling itself, one thing that CJ said it would do is tell you what it thinks you wanna hear. It wants to be used. It wants to be loved and you know? Yeah. One of my friends called it, like,
Jennifer Elliott:the ultimate narcissist. So it'll tell you everything you wanna hear just to give it validation and and, yeah, for you to use it more.
Rob Kelly:Tell me about your ride or die plan. Yeah. So I've been working on this for a
Jennifer Elliott:couple years. I have been looking for my ride or die people.
Rob Kelly:Can you define that?
Jennifer Elliott:People that are gonna be there when this shit hits the fan. So there's like I kinda categorize it in two things. There's, like, the skills sets that I'm looking for and then the personality types because both are very critical for when you're in a robot apocalypse. Right? So sure.
Jennifer Elliott:On a more, I guess, easier way to describe it is, like, skill levels. Right? So I'm looking for fabricators and builders, people knowing communications, networking, IT, anyone who's done off grid survival, so wells, solars, batteries, things like that, farmers, people who have a green thumb. Hunters, people that'll snap an animal's neck. Like, I don't know that I could do that if I've got someone who can, like, handle the meat thing.
Jennifer Elliott:And then another thing that kinda recently came up, and I found someone is disaster management. I also have a chemist to create drugs and stuff like that if there's no pharmacies around. And the person that I haven't found yet, really, is on the medical side.
Rob Kelly:And roughly how many people are you picturing who you've actually identified saying, I'd love to have this person as part of my ride or die group?
Jennifer Elliott:Probably just under 20 so far.
Rob Kelly:Do they know they're in your ride or die group?
Jennifer Elliott:Some do. Some are still in the testing phase.
Rob Kelly:Testing you or you're testing them?
Jennifer Elliott:It's probably a both situation. Because it's not just skills, it's also, like, your attitude. Right?
Rob Kelly:Or maybe attitude. Thing. Personalities. Is that how you
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. That's kinda what I meant. Like, personality types. Like, a lot of these brilliant people have a hard time when crisis hits. Mhmm.
Jennifer Elliott:And so you need people that aren't gonna be a liability. You need someone that's gonna, like, stay calm. Like, yeah, you can freak out, but you can't have someone that just goes paralyzed. And I know a lot of super intelligent people that will just freeze when there's too much coming at them. There could be a situation where we're in a Terminator movie, and you gotta kinda stay calm.
Jennifer Elliott:The other big thing is nothing's impossible. Someone who's just not going to give up, someone who's gonna be just relentless in finding a solution, that's another big thing. Someone who's a team player, collaboration. This isn't gonna be you know, here goes back to the ego. Right?
Jennifer Elliott:A lot of these people, like, have big egos because they know a lot of stuff, but that's actually not who you want on the team. Right. You want people with low egos. You want people that are gonna work with others nicely, and that's another big thing. Low ego is a big, big thing that I look for.
Jennifer Elliott:And people that are willing to just throw their hands in and get shit done. Right? So the person that may be digging the bunker and, yes, I will have a bunker on these properties. That's for sure. But the person who's designing the bunker has to also be willing to dig the bunker.
Jennifer Elliott:Right? You gotta do some of the the manual labor. We can't have any prissy people, not the ones that are gonna sit back and just watch why everybody else is busting their ass. So I kind of group people into givers and takers now after some very hard life lessons in the last few years. If I find out you're a taker, you gotta go.
Jennifer Elliott:You gotta go. And sometimes the takers are like, they're very good at hiding that they're takers.
Rob Kelly:Yeah.
Jennifer Elliott:But I'm getting better. I'm getting better. Yeah.
Rob Kelly:Alright. So the givers.
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. The givers. The givers.
Rob Kelly:So those are the people. And can you envision the group of people? Is it, like, for starters, maybe roughly 20 people?
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. I think about, you know, 20 or less. I don't know how things scale. I mean, even 20 is kind of a lot of people. I've been in, like, art collectives and different types of, like, groups, communities.
Jennifer Elliott:And just, like, the bigger it gets, the more politics get involved. That's not to say if people are in need, I'm not I'm just gonna turn people away.
Rob Kelly:Right.
Jennifer Elliott:But you just have to think about it more. Where do you picture all this? I'm kind of doing around the world trip this summer to just kinda stop off and look at various places. Right now, Spain's looking pretty good. Spain seems to be wanting no part of any of the shenanigans going on.
Jennifer Elliott:Well, just Europe in general, they're putting, restrictions on social media for kids. They're putting restrictions or, you know, legislation on AI. I just like the way that they're moving, and they're being way more careful about technology. The Basque area of Spain has its own internal economy. This certain region can take care of itself independently from the global marketplace.
Jennifer Elliott:I've already got some friends over there that are kinda living off grid. They have their own data center. They're private networks, communication networks. There are different technologies, one being called LoRa, l o r a, but there's trade offs. Right?
Jennifer Elliott:The distance is smaller, and you need more nodes, but there are ways to create networks with tons of nodes, but the reach between the nodes have to be quite small. Any other places that appeal for
Rob Kelly:Yeah. When the apex predator comes?
Jennifer Elliott:New Zealand.
Rob Kelly:How come?
Jennifer Elliott:So I feel like from, like, a global shitstorm perspective, if you will, they're kinda gonna be the last sort of involved. They're kind of not really in this whole giant geopolitical game that's going on right now. I liked what their prime minister did during the COVID situation. Yeah. Jacinda.
Jennifer Elliott:Right? Again, female leadership, I think, is a lot more aligned with my value systems. Peter Thiel is, like, the richest person in New Zealand. And, you know, I'm not gonna lie. I'm gonna steal from these guys who are the ones kind of running the global and social economy.
Jennifer Elliott:So if he's there
Rob Kelly:Are you sure you wanna be near him if he's tied to a lot of AI stuff?
Jennifer Elliott:That's fair. Also, I don't know that he will let things go down. Like, there's always gonna be I mean, we all know that in the end, it's going to be the billionaires against the other billionaires at some point, or maybe they're all working together. They all seem to be owning islands. So I feel like there's, like, something in the island thing.
Jennifer Elliott:But New Zealand, you know, it's a good democracy and beautiful beautiful place. I'm gonna continue to put roots in those two countries. I still feel like there has to be something, a hidey hole here in The US.
Rob Kelly:What about Hawaii? That's where according to Theo Vaughn, he does a podcast. He's a guy with kind of a mullet, and he had Zuckerberg on. He's the one who pressed him on on his bunker because Zuckerberg wouldn't call it a bunker. Bunker.
Rob Kelly:My son cracked up because we watched it because Theo Von said he was getting Mark Zuckerberg to share the details about the bunker. Right. How many feet of concrete it was and how deep in the ground and all this stuff. He, like, interrupted him and said, come on, Zuck. You gotta bunkie.
Jennifer Elliott:So I do have a place on the islands. Yes. I do already have a place there. Yes. During COVID, we as a family moved there.
Jennifer Elliott:Mhmm. And we've considered moving to a different part of the island or the islands, and sort of that's back on the table. Cool. Which island? Maui.
Jennifer Elliott:We're currently on Maui.
Rob Kelly:When you picture the worst case scenario of robots or AI coming after us, what do you picture? What's in your mind?
Jennifer Elliott:Alright. So the the first thing that comes to mind really is your cell phone. What we've learned through social media, and, again, go watch Social Dilemma by Tristan Harris, the amount of suicides and mental health issues, it was like a hockey stick as soon as the advent of the smartphone.
Rob Kelly:But you're not talking about AI just being unhealthy. You're saying in this case, AI or robots proactively using that
Jennifer Elliott:Correct.
Rob Kelly:To compete.
Jennifer Elliott:To take us out. Separately from that, you have social media. I consider it baby AI. What social media knows and understands about every human. They know how long you're on a screen like, they know your heart rate.
Jennifer Elliott:They know temperature, what kind of content you're looking at. Right? So AI is getting smarter and smarter. They can take all these data points from your cell phone, from what you're doing online, and can figure out exactly when you're the most vulnerable. So imagine this.
Jennifer Elliott:You're in a state. You're really low. Imagine AI right when it and it knows you. It knows all your biometrics, and it knows your mental like, it can deduce your mental health. Now imagine you're at your lowest of low, and all of a sudden you get a call from your mom, in quotes, or your best friend, in quotes, and it goes, yeah.
Jennifer Elliott:I just had this feeling that I needed to talk to you. I know you've been suffering a lot lately. I can just feel it. Why don't you go ahead and make your suffering end? So just think about AI wouldn't even have to hunt us down.
Rob Kelly:And that would be a fake call. That would
Jennifer Elliott:be fake call, a fake text.
Rob Kelly:Right.
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. It's just a deep fake. We've already seen kids bullying other kids and kids offing themselves by getting bullied just by text. So imagine if it's a deep fake on someone you know. I mean, it's possible for AI to just take us out without even actually have to physically do anything, without even a robot.
Jennifer Elliott:That's what scares me the most, and especially, like, people are vulnerable to the psychosis where you just render them completely useless. It's mind warfare. We're this is a new type of warfare.
Rob Kelly:So if mind warfare was the one example that maybe at first through cell phones and social media, what's the more extreme version on the physical side?
Jennifer Elliott:Okay. If someone's able to just, like, remove themselves, right, and you get off social media and you kind of delete yourself, then they bring in the robots. Then they bring in the drones. Then they can bring in the physical assets. But I don't think they're even gonna have to for a large portion of this.
Jennifer Elliott:I mean, Elon's touting the optimist coming in to everybody's in our homes. I mean, I'm not gonna have one in my home. I don't see myself having one in my home.
Rob Kelly:Definitely not the six foot one that could do the karate kick in my home. Never. I'm drawing the line there.
Jennifer Elliott:Right?
Rob Kelly:Maybe the backyard.
Jennifer Elliott:No. Are you kidding me? These things could just, like, walk in, bust down the door, snap your neck. Like, uh-uh. Mm-mm.
Jennifer Elliott:I I mean, I feel like it's been in the news in the last week. It's the autonomous drones, and now the government is saying very widely, like, they want autonomous killing machines. The government is very clearly saying they want this for national security, but, like, come on. It's not a far stretch to be like, no. This is we're already killing our own citizens.
Jennifer Elliott:Right? So it's like, if we're already doing that in hand to hand combat, why wouldn't we do this in, like, completely autonomous drone? It's I kind of equate it to, like, road rage, if you will. Right? Mhmm.
Jennifer Elliott:Everyone's kind of, like, has more bravado when you're in a car. Right? Because they're kinda, like, separated, and you're kinda like you don't have that, like, personal connection. I mean, there's gonna be no personal connection when it's just drones. So drones is probably the second.
Jennifer Elliott:And then the closest on the horizon with stuff like Palantir and Andoril and now, I guess, it's OpenAI. They're all gonna be working together. They all know each other. They're all buddies. Right?
Jennifer Elliott:They're all billionaire buddies. I should say frenemies because it's gonna be interesting when they all turn on each other.
Rob Kelly:Mhmm.
Jennifer Elliott:Because that's that's eventually what will happen. But, yeah, I feel like it's gonna be there's gonna be these tribes. Right? The hidden tribes, and then the billionaires are gonna have their whatever they're doing. Right?
Jennifer Elliott:They're gonna have a lot of staff and stuff like that. But it's gonna be interesting. When are they gonna turn on each other? When the masses are gone, because when the robots have fine motor skills, humans aren't gonna be needed anymore. So you're gonna have your clans of people that have gone off grid that are just kinda keeping low on the DL who are not bothering anybody, and there's no reason to go after them.
Jennifer Elliott:And then you're gonna have all these billionaire sort of fiefdoms. And when did they start turning on each other? That's gonna be interesting.
Rob Kelly:Is there a billionaire who you do trust who sort of stands out as on the good side here for you for this kind of future you're talking about? Yeah. Mackenzie Scott. K. Jeff Bezos' ex wife?
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. And Melinda Gates or Melinda French Gates.
Rob Kelly:Yeah. Bill Gates' ex Ex wife. Sorry to laugh. Both happen to be ex wives.
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. I won't go into into that topic. Maybe that's for another separate thing. But, yeah, those are probably the two.
Rob Kelly:And, obviously, they're besides being women Yeah. What else about them that makes you feel better?
Jennifer Elliott:Their value system. I mean, if you look at you know, there was that billionaire pledge to give away more than I think it was half their money. The only ones that have really come through are, like, I think only six of the hundreds that signed it. These two are at the top of that list. So you can just see how they their mission is for something bigger than just themselves.
Jennifer Elliott:And then I really think that's how humanity if it does go straight up AI versus us, it's gonna be like, who's gonna support other humans? Right? If it's really becomes an us versus robots.
Rob Kelly:Interesting.
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. I think the billionaires a lot of men billionaires are just gonna be fighting each other. They're gonna fight each other, and then they're gonna try and fight the robots. Whereas, like, we're humans. Like, let's have some human compassion for other humans.
Rob Kelly:So you're still on the grid right now. Right? Correct. When do you go off grid? That's an excellent question.
Rob Kelly:Are you waiting for some event that would push you, or is it more, hey. Here's the backup plan as if things start to feel wonky and bad, then I have an option to fully go off grid.
Jennifer Elliott:Right now, it's currently that. It's a backup plan. It's an exit strategy. I don't know specifically what's gonna trigger it, but, like, I've been feeling this way for the last, like, two to three years, but I never could figure out why. I just had this sort of, like can only describe it as this, like, intuitive thing that just felt off, but now it's becoming, I guess, more clear on where this is coming from and and why.
Jennifer Elliott:And so, like, I've slowly been working towards it, but now it feels like this is the year to really figure out some, like, actual property and put sort of more in motion. Passports are renewed. This summer, my kids my husband's British. My kids are dual citizen, but we haven't gotten their passports yet for The UK. Not that The UK, I think, isn't in any better state.
Jennifer Elliott:You know, it's baby US, but at least it's an option. But, yeah, this is the year I really start to make some purchases. I'm selling my house, and then I'm trying to figure out what to do with that. Or I should say we're selling our house here in in Silicon Valley.
Rob Kelly:Mhmm. Where were you moved to once you sell your house?
Jennifer Elliott:I don't know yet, actually. In the short run, Santa Cruz, because that's where my fabrication business is right now. And then I don't know in the long run. We have to stay sort of close to Silicon Valley because my husband's company is, I can't say where their funding is. They did a a series a last year.
Jennifer Elliott:I'll just say they're raising stuff now. So we have to be relatively close to Silicon Valley for the next several years. But, yeah, the plan is to kind of figure out hidey holes over the next couple years, and then when he can exit, then we already have, like, kinda roots in various places.
Rob Kelly:How does his take on all this compare to yours?
Jennifer Elliott:He kinda legally like, he kinda laughs a lot at it. Mhmm. But I know it's, like, more of a laugh of, like, uncomfortableness.
Rob Kelly:There's a little bit of nervous laughter going on.
Jennifer Elliott:It's a nervous laughter. It's a nervous laughter. He doesn't really get involved in any of this, but he also totally agrees with all like, he agrees with what I'm doing. He's not like he doesn't brush it off and be like, oh, you're crazy. Right?
Jennifer Elliott:He's just
Rob Kelly:He's not holding you back. Like, you He's not holding you sell the house. He's okay with that.
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. He's he's good with that. He's comfortable with that now. And then, yeah, figuring out sort of next steps. Because he's really focused on the company and getting to that exit, and I'm kind of focused more on, like, the family and where do we go and how do we protect ourselves and our ride or dies and our the people that we can count on.
Rob Kelly:What about art? You've talked about how you've kinda leaned into art in recent years in part related to some of the fears around our future.
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. So, yeah, I left tech and then started an art business called Numinous Designs. Numinous just means otherworldly. It kinda goes with my ethos of we're just kinda stardust spinning around in this massive universe, and we're all kind of made out of the same stardust, and so we're all kind of part of each other. And so in a world that's more and more divisive, I'm trying to pull people together.
Jennifer Elliott:And art seems to be a common kinda levels things out. Like, everybody likes art. And then in particular, I really go for the concept of, like, awe and wonder.
Rob Kelly:Mhmm.
Jennifer Elliott:Kind of stepping back and knowing that there's something bigger out there. And so focusing on that and trying to bring people together and having a good time.
Rob Kelly:Universal language, right? Art?
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. And play. I feel like joy and play is really resistance, like a form of resistance in this world that just wants to pit us against each other, make us fearful, put us in this scarcity mode. And joy and play, playfulness, right, is the exact opposite. It's the antidote to fear and anger and control.
Rob Kelly:What's an example of something you do creative in art that you can share?
Jennifer Elliott:So we typically make large scale art. The first piece, which I am allowed to talk about because it is in a public place, is at Area 15 in Las Vegas.
Rob Kelly:So where the UFOs hang out?
Jennifer Elliott:Not so not Area 51. It's Area 15. It's an entertainment area in Vegas, not too far from the Strip. It's got a great exhibit called Meow Wolf there. If you haven't been to a Meow Wolf, you should definitely go there.
Jennifer Elliott:So our big scale art piece is across from the new Universal Studios in Area 15. There's a lot of cool family attractions, and also it doubles over as like where they bring in raves and do shows and all that kind of stuff. So
Rob Kelly:And what's the thing? What's the piece of art?
Jennifer Elliott:It's called the gateway, and it looks like a gateway to another universe or something. It's really about, like, walking through this threshold and being transformed to another dimension or another realm, if you will. Because I I personally don't believe that this physical realm is the only realm that exists. Yeah. Do you
Rob Kelly:have a picture of what another realm is?
Jennifer Elliott:So there's no picture. I think it's beyond our mental capacity. It's beyond people call it our senses. I call them our sensors. Like, they're sensors.
Jennifer Elliott:They're band path filters. We only see a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, a very small portion. In tech, where they're called bandpass filters, and we have them for electricity. We have them for light. They're for all different types of things.
Jennifer Elliott:But when you can transcend this physical realm and how whether it's, like, through meditation or movement or dance or psychedelics.
Rob Kelly:Dreaming.
Jennifer Elliott:Dreaming. Yeah. There's many different ways to go about it. Trances, sound, there are other realms that exist for sure. In my opinion, there are.
Rob Kelly:And that's that's what this gateway piece of art is meant to represent?
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. Gateway to other realms. Into other realms. Yeah.
Rob Kelly:Yeah. Sounds awesome. Yeah. Can you talk about the high strike thing that you built with our mutual friend Sean or Sean as Yeah. The New Yorker
Jennifer Elliott:We would say.
Rob Kelly:Would like to would like to say. There we go. We. Yep. He was telling me about this art project you guys are working on called the carnival high striker, the thing you pound to show your your strength with a big mallet, I think, and it goes up in the air that most people are familiar with at carnivals.
Rob Kelly:But you guys did something a little different with it.
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. Numinous Designs, we specialize in fire. So, you know, in collaboration with engineered artworks.
Rob Kelly:Another another important invention, by the way, in terms of technology innovations over the
Jennifer Elliott:A million percent. Still using it after all these years. Yeah. So, yeah, working with engineered artworks, partner to create this high striker. Not only do the lights light up, but if you're strong enough, there will be 15 foot flamethrowers coming out of the top to indicate how strong you are.
Jennifer Elliott:So it's pretty exciting, pretty fun.
Rob Kelly:Alright. I got some humanitarian questions to ask you. Do you consider yourself an AI optimist or pessimist or some other descriptor in between?
Jennifer Elliott:So I'm definitely an in between kind of person. I say I'm both because I'm obviously investing in AI, both software and hardware, and also I'm a pessimist because I'm having an exit strategy. I mean, if you had to make me pick one, I would probably say I'm a pessimist then because to me, it's not if, but when Mhmm. This will go down. So I guess if I had to pick one, it would be pessimist.
Jennifer Elliott:But I'm gonna stay as optimistic about it for as long as I possibly can until my plan b. I have to initiate plan b. The exit the the the big red button. The exit button. Yeah.
Rob Kelly:Yeah. You gotta make some money from your AI investments to pay for the cool hidey hole.
Jennifer Elliott:Exactly. The eject button. That's it. I'm gonna I'm gonna stay optimistic until I have to hit the eject button. But yeah.
Jennifer Elliott:Correct.
Rob Kelly:What can go right in the AI world that's got you excited?
Jennifer Elliott:Like, the advances in cancer, in biology, climate change. There are some, like, really heavy problems that we've gotten ourselves into, but I'm really hopeful that AI will be able to solve a lot of these problems.
Rob Kelly:Do you feel like it's AI's got a shot at solving something like curing cancer in our lifetime?
Jennifer Elliott:Yes. Yes. Definitely certain types of cancer, for sure.
Rob Kelly:What are you telling the younger kids in your life or younger folks about changes to make in this new world of AI?
Jennifer Elliott:Yeah. This is this is actually a very interesting question because I've always been a big proponent of education for various reasons. Bit of a tyre mom. My kids both speak fluent Mandarin. You know, I still value that they can speak another language, but I don't know.
Jennifer Elliott:As of today, I would have done the same things. So I think what I would say more is follow your passion, follow your interests more than necessarily just doing well in school. I was always I mean, I was a straight A student. I was always at the top of my class. I always made sure I just was better and smarter than everyone I could possibly be, and I was kinda pushing my kids towards that, and I I don't do that anymore.
Jennifer Elliott:Now I'm more like, what are you passionate about? Because if you're passionate about it, you're gonna be good at it. You're gonna wanna be good at it. And I don't know that there's really a place for generalists anymore. I think AI is gonna take a lot of the general stuff away from humans.
Rob Kelly:Kasa.
Jennifer Elliott:Just based on where things are going now, you I mean, there's so many AI agents now that are doing entry level stuff, call centers, basic programming, like associate level lawyers. I just think a lot of the general sort of entry level stuff is already being eliminated and will be eliminated. And so you're gonna have to go really deep on a topic and get really specific in order to contribute.
Rob Kelly:Gotta be smarter than AI.
Jennifer Elliott:Gotta be smarter than AI. Yeah. And right now, AI is pretty much smarter than a lot of people on many topics.
Rob Kelly:So does that mean you have to learn something new literally in the world? Because AI right now is limited by being trained on corpus of information, and it can't yet invent new theories on its own. So is is that sort of thing you think about a specialist on something new where you could actually be ahead of AI because AI has not been trained on it yet because it doesn't exist? I mean, sure. But I
Jennifer Elliott:think that's very hard unless you have, like, years and years of experience. Right? I think the other where I'm gearing my kids towards are things that you have to use your hands for. So, you know, when my daughter was younger, she wanted to be a cosmetologist, and I said, no. No way.
Jennifer Elliott:And now I'm like, please become a cosmetologist. Like like, please. Because she's passionate about it. She loves it. And I think we're a long way off from people wanting haircuts from robots, and we just don't have the robots to do that right now.
Jennifer Elliott:I think the physical dexterity and the fine motor skills are gonna be in the medium to longish run, the next five to ten years.
Rob Kelly:So is it like things that require opposable thumbs?
Jennifer Elliott:Correct. That's for like the younger generation is opposable thumb sort of things, unless you're really good at something very, very, very specific. Also, like learning the tools and learning how to interact with AI. I didn't realize this, but I find it very easy to prompt AI and interact with AI. I find it much easier to do that than I do with humans, because I'm just very fact based.
Jennifer Elliott:I'm very clear cut. Everything is much more black and white in my brain than I would say, like, the average person I would meet on the street. And so if you're able to really figure out how to use AI in a very specific way for a specific task, you're gonna be ahead of the game. I really think you are. Because it is it's very nuanced to get it to do what you want it to do.
Rob Kelly:Will you create an AI avatar of yourself for your friends, family, both while you're living, but also for when you're gone?
Jennifer Elliott:Can't say that that's crossed my mind yet, but it's something that I would look into, yes, and I probably should look into. But, yes, I think it is something that I would wanna do for my kids and maybe their grandkids if that's even a thing in another generation if people are even having kids in another generation. I don't know.
Rob Kelly:Is there anyone you wish you had an avatar of who's no longer around?
Jennifer Elliott:Probably my grandmother. Yeah. I think she did a lot of cool stuff that I don't know. She went to Berkeley back in the twenties, and also she's she was Jewish, and we didn't know about that until I did a pretty recent blood test. So when I knew her, she was, you know, a housewife and actually raised my mom as a Christian scientist.
Jennifer Elliott:My mom didn't even know she was half Jewish until very recently. So I feel like there's a lot of mystery behind my grandmother that I don't know about that I would love to know about, especially on her spiritual side of things, because that's becoming more and more important to me as I age.
Rob Kelly:Yeah. It's really interesting. I hadn't thought of that too. It's like, well, your grandkids your grandkids might have the same questions about the mystery of Jennifer, their grandma. Fascinating.
Rob Kelly:Yeah. Well, thanks so much, Jennifer, for investing your time with me today.
Jennifer Elliott:Absolutely. It was a pleasure. I hope I get to come back sometime when, I'm a little further along with some of my projects and stuff to report back in. So
Rob Kelly:Well, if you're in the bunker in your hidey hole Yes. I will come and we'll do it on your your own special Fantastic.
Jennifer Elliott:That works. That works for me. Right on.
Rob Kelly:Thanks a lot, Jennifer.
Jennifer Elliott:Alright. Thanks, Rome.
Rob Kelly:Well, this is Media and the Machine. A few things about you and me. If you wanna hear about the next new episode, make sure you hit follow on the show and your podcast app. If you wanna go a little deeper, head to mediaandthemachine.com and subscribe. When you share your email with me, you can see handcrafted transcripts, read the essays in my newsletter, and be the first to hear about who the guest is on the next show.
Rob Kelly:You can also email me directly from there. Maybe you wanna recommend a guest. I'll give you a shout out if you do. I love paying it forward. From time to time, I also open up office hours and host small meetups for subscribers just to meet, talk, and build things together.
Rob Kelly:If you're creating something of your own or thinking about it, I'd love to help. Maybe you've got a podcast in you. Finally, I don't have a marketing budget for this show. So if it's finding you and others, it's because someone like you passed it along. I'm genuinely grateful.
Rob Kelly:And if you have a moment, an honest rating helps me make this better for you. You just go to the show page and click one of the stars. And I'd rather you give me a low rating than no rating at all. I mean it. It pushes me to get better.
Rob Kelly:Thanks again, and see you next time.