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Exploring the frontiers of Technology and AI
Josh:
Imagine if bread kept all of humanity alive and there was only one oven maker.
Josh:
And each one of those ovens cost $200 million and they only make about $40 to $50 a year.
Josh:
And they're all based in the Netherlands.
Josh:
This is the reality of our tech industry. Your iPhone, your laptop,
Josh:
your smart tablets, your TVs, anything with electrical circuits is run by this
Josh:
mysterious company that sits at the top of everybody called ASML.
Josh:
Well, we've essentially built the civilizational Jenga tower.
Josh:
They don't own 99.9%. They own 100% of the lithography market.
Josh:
What is the lithography market? Well, it is kind of upstream of everything else.
Josh:
And I think that's what we're going to start this episode talking about today
Josh:
is this invisible monopoly that no one is really aware of that even exists.
Ejaaz:
Everyone thinks that the most important company in AI is NVIDIA.
Ejaaz:
And if you dig a little deeper, everyone says TSMC.
Ejaaz:
But the truth is, this company, ASML, is the only linchpin.
Ejaaz:
It is the most important company that the entire stock market is currently based
Ejaaz:
on. And they're based in the Netherlands.
Ejaaz:
And they do this really interesting thing, which is called EUV,
Ejaaz:
which stands for Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography.
Ejaaz:
It is a way to basically design very intricate patterns on chips that are used
Ejaaz:
to train frontier AI models and inferencing, and even on your mobile phones
Ejaaz:
as well, in a really specific way.
Ejaaz:
It uses a bunch of laser beams, gases, and stuff like that. And it's an incredibly
Ejaaz:
complex and expensive process.
Ejaaz:
And this hasn't been something that they've been able to crack or any competitor
Ejaaz:
has been able to crack for decades until this week,
Ejaaz:
where it was revealed that some ex-ASML engineers that were hired by the Chinese
Ejaaz:
government have been able to recreate a prototype of this lithography machine that they have.
Ejaaz:
Now, Josh, here's some crazy stats. This single machine costs about $200 million
Ejaaz:
to create and then to maintain even more.
Ejaaz:
The company itself is worth $400 billion and they only have a couple of these machines.
Ejaaz:
So if you do the math, if one of these machines get recreated,
Ejaaz:
you've now taken over $200
Ejaaz:
tens of billions of dollars worth of market cap and potentially even more if
Ejaaz:
you can create AI chips that are of the same level as NVIDIA.
Ejaaz:
And that's what China effectively has right now.
Josh:
It's funny because you hear the $400 billion number and it doesn't even seem
Josh:
that high for how existential this is.
Josh:
Like truly, they are the total linchpin when it comes to creating any sort of electronic device.
Josh:
And it goes, I wonder if that's part of the downstream reason why they haven't
Josh:
been disrupted thus far, because the opportunity isn't in the trillions, but it's coming now.
Josh:
And if it's not from China, it could possibly be coming from the US because
Josh:
a lot of people are coming and trying to tackle this all at once.
Josh:
So this is all amazing stuff. Ejaz, how were they actually able to pull this off?
Ejaaz:
Well, this is the thing. No one really knows. And there's kind of like a gray
Ejaaz:
area where we're like, maybe they stole the secret formula because Josh,
Ejaaz:
this entire machine weighs 450,000 pounds.
Ejaaz:
That is an incredibly heavy machine. And it is very, very complex.
Ejaaz:
And there are tens of thousands of people that are responsible for different
Ejaaz:
parts of this machine, the secret formula, which collectively makes up the makeup of this machine.
Ejaaz:
China somehow have got their hands on it. So there are some rumors that are floating.
Ejaaz:
One tweet here says, my sources on the ground says they stole the source,
Ejaaz:
like they used a bunch of other versions in the past decade.
Ejaaz:
And it goes on to explain how they've probably got moles.
Ejaaz:
And yeah, I mean, like people that they've planted within this company throughout
Ejaaz:
several years that have been able to take these secrets. It sounds very tinfoil hattie.
Ejaaz:
But to kind of out and look at the wider picture.
Ejaaz:
China, if true, has built an effective
Ejaaz:
working prototype of extreme ultraviolet in less than five years.
Ejaaz:
And he compares it to the American venture capital space who have been trying
Ejaaz:
to crack the same problem for over a decade now, Josh, and no one's been able
Ejaaz:
to crack that 100% monopoly.
Ejaaz:
So the fact that we've finally made this breakthrough is awesome.
Ejaaz:
But the fact that it's also a Chinese venture that's been able to do this is kind of bearish.
Josh:
Yeah, well, I would say there is another competitor in the ring here.
Josh:
It's not just China that's trying to take ASML's market.
Josh:
It is also a company called Substrate, which recently raised a bunch of money.
Josh:
They were kind of announcing what they're doing.
Josh:
And their take on it is trying to reinvent.
Josh:
If you think of these fabs as printing presses, they're trying to reinvent the printing press.
Josh:
And their bet is that they are going to take an advanced x-ray lithography,
Josh:
like we mentioned earlier, but turn it into particle accelerators.
Josh:
This is really crazy, technically complicated thing.
Josh:
But I do want everyone to understand that they're working on it too.
Josh:
And it appears as if this monopoly is kind of being broken into two.
Josh:
One, of course, is China. One is the United States. We each have a leading company
Josh:
working on this technology to dismantle the singular monopoly.
Josh:
So who is going to win that race? I'm not sure, but it certainly seems right
Josh:
that you should be diversifying if we are so reliant on this singular,
Josh:
company for every single chip that we make across the board.
Josh:
Like you said earlier, NVIDIA is not the bottleneck.
Josh:
The TSMC is not the bottleneck. It is this weird company in the middle of nowhere
Josh:
that makes these chips. That is the actual bottleneck.
Ejaaz:
It just blows my mind how dependent the entire stock market is, Josh.
Ejaaz:
How your and I's investments are. The world is dependent on these two companies,
Ejaaz:
or in this case, this one singular company.
Ejaaz:
And just to highlight how important of an
Ejaaz:
opportunity this is if a company or country
Ejaaz:
is able to crack the secret formula you have
Ejaaz:
so many other companies that are focused on this samsung in fact has been
Ejaaz:
at this for over a decade with no luck they made some recent announcements this
Ejaaz:
week where they're creating a new fab that is going to focus on building two
Ejaaz:
nanometer cpus remember that's cpu not gpu so they're still about five years
Ejaaz:
behind getting to the same level that this company, ASML, is.
Ejaaz:
So if China has, in fact, cracked this, it would be a miracle.
Ejaaz:
We still don't know how they've done it, but crazy to see.
Ejaaz:
Moving on, Josh, I saw this tweet by Elon Musk this week, and I had no idea about it.
Ejaaz:
And you said, we have to talk about this on the show. Have to.
Ejaaz:
I love it. Walk me through it.
Josh:
Okay, this is called a mass driver. And a mass driver is not even a new idea.
Josh:
This was proposed in the 1970s at MIT.
Josh:
And one thing I found about sci-fi is that oftentimes, I mean,
Josh:
it could be wrong, but when it's right, it's very right. It's just right on the wrong timescale.
Josh:
It seems as if that scale and that time window is finally getting close to where we are now.
Josh:
So on screen you're seeing a visual of this crazy thing called
Josh:
a lunar mass driver it was so fascinating and he does
Josh:
when you were first reading it you were like whoa this is this is real and i think that
Josh:
was the reaction that i had too basically what
Josh:
is it's a giant solar powered electromagnetic catapult
Josh:
on the moon so you can fling cargo into space without
Josh:
rockets or fuel so if you imagine building this like
Josh:
really long track on the moon with superconductor coils you
Josh:
load it with chunks of lunar material and then it uses electricity to
Josh:
yeet them into space at 5300 hundred miles an
Josh:
hour with no rocket engines no fuel it's fascinating
Josh:
and why can we talk about this again all of
Josh:
the most interesting conversations that we're having recently are downstream of
Josh:
the fact that starship has been able to get actual mass
Josh:
to orbit for a low cost or the assumption is
Josh:
that this will happen in the next year so the idea is that you can go put this
Josh:
on the moon why the moon well because it has low gravity it has one-sixth the
Josh:
gravity of earth so you need to spend a lot less energy to throw stuff off there's
Josh:
no atmosphere there's a ton of sunlight for energy and naturally the question
Josh:
I ask myself is, okay, well, why should I care about this? Why does it matter?
Josh:
And the reality is the economics of making this a reality are pretty staggering.
Ejaaz:
Yeah, I was looking into the math before we came on the show,
Ejaaz:
and the Falcon 9, the old rockets from SpaceX, costs about $3,000 per kilogram
Ejaaz:
to get mass into lower Earth.
Ejaaz:
Starship targets $100 per kg, which is a massive, massive reduction.
Ejaaz:
And so if you were to use a lunar mass driver powered by solar and running continuously
Ejaaz:
with zero propellant, well, an early study in 1979 estimated that it would cost $1.
Ejaaz:
So the point here is that the cost of bringing mass back and forth to Earth
Ejaaz:
into low orbit space, it would come down to minimal, would come down to zero, which is just insane.
Ejaaz:
So then the question becomes, well, what does that timeline look like?
Ejaaz:
And the post goes on to describe that we're roughly going to target the mid
Ejaaz:
2030s to have something like this functioning.
Ejaaz:
So, Josh, this is something that's going to be pretty much realistic and achievable
Ejaaz:
in our lifetimes and not far off when we're old men.
Ejaaz:
Relatively when I was quite young, within like the decade, which is just insane to think about.
Josh:
Yeah, we filmed this episode about SpaceX and their IPO last week,
Josh:
and I would highly recommend watching it because the idea is that SpaceX going
Josh:
public and getting the resources required to go and build an outer space really
Josh:
changes the fabric of reality that we live in today.
Josh:
Like these sci-fi concepts that have been ideated on for the last 60 years almost
Josh:
are able to be put in reality from at least a first principles perspective,
Josh:
where if you're able to get this amount of mass payload to orbit on the moon, ideally,
Josh:
you can turn that into one of these mass drivers that then offsets the global
Josh:
economy in a way that is the thesis for this universal high income,
Josh:
where if you can get this abundance of resources back to Earth cost effectively and efficiently,
Josh:
well, that really disrupts a lot of the financial systems we have today.
Josh:
And it gives us this level of abundance that is almost inconceivable to someone
Josh:
who doesn't read sci-fi on a regular basis.
Josh:
So to me, this is exciting because one, the math checks out and it's really just a matter of
Josh:
making the right set of decisions over the next decade or two to turn this into
Josh:
a reality where we do have a moon base and then eventually a martian base and
Josh:
we have ai supercomputers in space and this world of space is just starting
Josh:
to be unlocked and it's going to unlock so many unbelievable ways that we can take it.
Ejaaz:
I i like your point on uh abundant energy being the key to unlocking future progress josh i was
Josh:
Listening the only thing that matters yeah.
Ejaaz:
I was listening to this interview with Demis Hesibis on the Google DeepMind podcast this morning.
Ejaaz:
And one of his key takeaways was, or one of his learnings rather,
Josh:
Was he plays AI models like a game.
Ejaaz:
And this game is to solve certain sub-routes is what they describe, or what he describes.
Ejaaz:
And he describes a sub-route as something like solving AlphaGo.
Ejaaz:
And if he solves that game, then the AI model is able to solve other games.
Ejaaz:
And he said, he was then asked, what's the most important sub-root to solve
Ejaaz:
right now, Demis? And he answers with one word, energy.
Ejaaz:
If you can create abundant energy, you can create an infinite type of progress and world.
Ejaaz:
And on the topic of Google and on the topic of energy,
Josh:
We have an update.
Ejaaz:
Yeah, bring it back to Earth. There we go. All the puns. We have some new news
Ejaaz:
from a Google-owned company.
Ejaaz:
Waymo, the self-driving car company is in discussions to raise more than $15
Ejaaz:
billion at a valuation near $100 billion, which seems pretty cheap to me,
Ejaaz:
but we'll get into that in a second.
Ejaaz:
But the most important part is being led in a round by its parent company, Alphabet, aka Google.
Ejaaz:
I don't know what to think about this because I thought Google was loaded,
Josh:
Josh. You would think so, right? That a company with hundreds of billions on their balance sheet,
Josh:
who owns the entirety of the company would want to just double down on their
Josh:
investment, but they have not.
Josh:
They are looking to raise another $15 billion.
Josh:
That signals to me perhaps a lack of confidence.
Josh:
Ejaz, do you have a different take? Because to me, I'm like,
Josh:
well, we just recorded an episode about this. Waymo is the clear loser here.
Josh:
Does Google recognize that and are they hedging their bet? Or is there something
Josh:
else going on behind the scenes?
Ejaaz:
Okay, so I'm trying to put my head into the head of Waymo's product division and his pitch deck.
Ejaaz:
What's he saying to justify a $15 billion raise?
Ejaaz:
Well, I'm guessing he's going to say, let's spend $10 billion of these dollars
Ejaaz:
to purchase more Waymo cars so we can expand our network.
Ejaaz:
The issue with that is each Waymo car costs $150,000 versus a Tesla CyberCab,
Ejaaz:
which will cost $30,000, maybe even less, because everyone else that buys a
Ejaaz:
Tesla can effectively add to the RoboTaxi network.
Ejaaz:
So I don't see a justification for the $10 billion.
Ejaaz:
Now, if I put my tinfoil hat on, Josh, I'm thinking the only reason why they're
Ejaaz:
taking external capital is to one, de-risk the venture itself,
Ejaaz:
and two, suck the capital out of competitors.
Ejaaz:
So instead of the venture capital money going to competitors,
Ejaaz:
it would go to Waymo to fund their expansion.
Ejaaz:
I don't really see how this is going to be sustained.
Ejaaz:
And, you know, listen, it's a great 2X for anyone that got involved in the 2024
Ejaaz:
round, but I'm not really kind of impressed by it, I guess.
Josh:
Boring. I mean, Waymo's got a long way to go if they want to compete with Tesla.
Josh:
And that's just the harsh reality of it, where there will still be a business,
Josh:
but is it capable of growing?
Josh:
I do not know. But that is not the only big fundraise we have this week.
Josh:
We also had news in our circular economy section of the show.
Ejaaz:
It's circling. It is circling like a bunch of vultures.
Josh:
Vultures ready to feast on an infinitely expanding bubble that has grown by
Josh:
another $10 billion this week as it relates to OpenAI and Amazon.
Josh:
Ejaz, you have been very bullish on Amazon. So please explain the bull case
Josh:
for this deal, at least. Why are they making this deal?
Ejaaz:
I am going to give you the bull case and then I'm going to give you the slight bear case. Okay.
Ejaaz:
So the bull case here is OpenAI needs a load of compute to train their AI models
Ejaaz:
to compete with the likes of Google Anthropic, which by the way,
Ejaaz:
they are still losing to.
Ejaaz:
No surprises there. If you were to guess or predict in January who would win,
Ejaaz:
you would say OpenAI and now everyone is shocked.
Ejaaz:
So one way to achieve that is, okay, what if I told you this,
Ejaaz:
Josh? What if I told you that you could get the same frontier level intelligence for 50% off?
Ejaaz:
Would you take it or would you leave it?
Josh:
I'm taking that in a heartbeat.
Ejaaz:
Okay, that is effectively what Trinium 3 chips, Amazon's latest AI chips,
Ejaaz:
can afford you if you were to kind of enable that via Amazon. But there's an issue.
Ejaaz:
OpenAI is losing $12 billion per year now. It's probably going to ramp up even more next year.
Ejaaz:
And so they need to figure out a creative way to get their hands on their chips
Ejaaz:
without spending the necessary money.
Ejaaz:
Insert this idea. Amazon invests $10 billion in OpenAI, which they're probably
Ejaaz:
going to spend that money on Trinium 3 chips.
Ejaaz:
So this, which brings me to my bad case, the circular economy of these deals is insane.
Ejaaz:
Why? Because it's going to boost their valuations even more.
Ejaaz:
Josh, I don't know if you saw, but rumors broke this morning that OpenAI is
Ejaaz:
going to get valued at $800 billion and they're raising another $100 billion.
Ejaaz:
So I'm just like, what is going on here?
Josh:
Everyone wants in. And the merry-go-round continues to spin.
Josh:
The musical chairs continue to go around and we will see where everybody stops.
Ejaaz:
Yes. Cue Michael Burry meme. Cue Michael Burry meme.
Josh:
For those not watching, it's Michael Burry, and it's a quote with the Amazon
Josh:
investment would help OpenAI afford commitments,
Josh:
including from Amazon Web Services, which is ironic because Amazon Web Services
Josh:
is just GPUs and cloud servers and more compute.
Josh:
But Ejaz, you did mention a 50 percent improvement in your model.
Josh:
And for users of Google, whether you're a builder or a consumer,
Josh:
your model has just gotten 40% better and 50% cheaper overnight with Gemini 3 Flash.
Josh:
The best model in the world just got better. This one appears to be the best
Josh:
pound for pound model on Earth by a fairly large margin. And you have pulled
Josh:
up on screen the ARK AGI prize chart, which I love to look at because it's just clear.
Ejaaz:
It's a favorite chart, everyone.
Josh:
It's such a good chart because it shows like the Pareto frontier.
Josh:
And we talked about this previously where there is these trade-offs between
Josh:
cost and quality per token.
Josh:
And what you're seeing with that green line that goes straight up is that Gemini
Josh:
3 Flash is really on the most vertical trajectory out of any of these.
Josh:
So you'll see it falls right in line with GPT 5.2 high, but it costs less than,
Josh:
what is that, a full order of magnitude less per token?
Ejaaz:
Yes, it does. It's crazy cheap.
Josh:
It's crazy. Yeah.
Ejaaz:
I think the cool story about all of this, Josh, is the process of distillation,
Ejaaz:
which is, okay, you spend tens of billions of dollars to train a frontier model.
Ejaaz:
And then what you can do is you can distill all the intelligent components of
Ejaaz:
that model into a cheaper, more, like less costly model, and then scale that
Ejaaz:
out to whatever product that you have. And who has the most product distribution?
Ejaaz:
Google does. So if you can surface that to a bunch of different people,
Ejaaz:
let's say through, what's their number one product?
Ejaaz:
I'm racking my brain. Oh, of course, it's Google search with 5 billion users.
Ejaaz:
That would be an attractive proposition.
Ejaaz:
And guess what? With this update or a story that kind of went under the waves,
Ejaaz:
what we're going to highlight here is this domain called google.ai,
Ejaaz:
which now effectively embeds Gemini 3 Flash
Ejaaz:
into Google search. Now, there's a few steps involved here.
Ejaaz:
But the simple fact that you can now go to Google search accessible to 5 billion
Ejaaz:
different users and get access to AI mode with frontier level intelligence at
Ejaaz:
a fraction of the cost, I just don't see how Google loses this at all.
Ejaaz:
They have the moat, they have the distribution. We've said this multiple times
Ejaaz:
before. We've done a Google bull case episode. You definitely go check that out.
Ejaaz:
But now they've combined the frontier model with this josh like this is like
Ejaaz:
they're like cannibalizing themselves in a way
Josh:
Yeah we're starting to get the answer to what do you do in
Josh:
the case of the founder's dilemma where what happens when innovation eats
Josh:
your core product and that's what's happening and google has decided to double
Josh:
down and fully lean into it and we are going to see how that plays out i mean
Josh:
this is google.ai this is not google.com so their core search product is still
Josh:
intact but i imagine and this is a transitionary period where they are testing,
Josh:
there is currently the AI mode button in Google.com's homepage.
Josh:
And it's only a matter of time until they're able to, until they commit to fully switching over.
Josh:
And then you have to ask the question, well, how are they going to support this business?
Josh:
And is it just going to be an effort to bleed out the results from all these other companies?
Josh:
Because OpenAI needs to make revenue.
Josh:
They must make a ton of money. And in order to do that, they're going to need
Josh:
to start implementing advertising and sponsorships into their products.
Josh:
Google has a very different business model. They are a behemoth.
Josh:
They have a tremendous amount of cash on the balance sheet that they can use
Josh:
to subsidize all of this compute and all of these AI needs that people need.
Josh:
So they have TPUs that are hyper-efficient. They have the best,
Josh:
most efficient model in the world.
Josh:
And they have no need to monetize urgently because they have such a huge cash balance sheet.
Josh:
So OpenAI and other companies that need to compete on this run are going to
Josh:
start to have to make some trade-offs here. Yeah.
Ejaaz:
You might be thinking as well, why doesn't Google just switch search completely to AI if it's so smart?
Ejaaz:
And the simple answer is they haven't been able to embed advertising and search
Ejaaz:
rankings into the model effectively yet.
Ejaaz:
So the same kind of experience where you see sponsored posts at the top of your
Ejaaz:
Google search results page, you can't quite do effectively with AI models.
Ejaaz:
It's a completely different beast.
Ejaaz:
And both companies, Google and OpenAI, will need to figure this out eventually.
Ejaaz:
I think all roads lead to ads. But the question is, at what time does that make sense?
Ejaaz:
If Google can hold out to your point and OpenAI kind of comes in first,
Ejaaz:
Google wins the moat because people just want to use an ad-free product. It is crazy.
Ejaaz:
But Josh, on the topic of OpenAI, did you see this news?
Ejaaz:
They've introduced...
Ejaaz:
Gpt chat gpt image 1.5 which is their answer to google's nano banana pro
Josh:
And as everybody knows we myself i'll
Josh:
speak for myself absolutely adore nano banana pro it is one of my favorite models
Josh:
of the year it is an excellent image generator and as i was looking through
Josh:
this announcement i was hopeful that this would be a better replacement it's
Josh:
built into the chat gpt app that we know and love and i think the reality of
Josh:
it is it is just not that good i mean in the video So if you scroll down just a little bit.
Ejaaz:
Or we start right here
Josh:
With this example. So for those who are watching, close your eyes.
Josh:
If you're not, what we're looking at on screen, and I don't even know if you
Josh:
should scroll down any further than this.
Ejaaz:
Is a post from Mr.
Josh:
Sam Altman himself, shirtless as a firefighter in front of a Christmas tree.
Josh:
And if you scroll down even further, it's actually a holiday calendar.
Josh:
And it's an example to reflect the quality, I guess, of the new 1.5 image model. It's good.
Josh:
It's not great it would appear as if nano banana is better after
Josh:
going through a bunch of examples nano banana pro still is good but what's
Josh:
cool about this is if you don't use google if you're not familiar with their
Josh:
uh work flow if you don't use gemini if you only use chat gpt you have a pretty
Josh:
good imaging model because this is built right into the app and what you'll
Josh:
notice it you guys is it's really good at faces so we're seeing on screen a
Josh:
picture of sam and ilia kind of a little sad at a party uh,
Josh:
it's pretty good it shows faces in a world where they didn't show faces before
Josh:
and they're fairly accurate so it's an attempt it is by no means a smackdown
Josh:
on the king nano banana pro but hey it's pretty cool and if you use chat gpt
Josh:
your image gen model just got much better listen.
Ejaaz:
Call me a google bowl but like i don't think it's that impressive like we're
Ejaaz:
looking at 1.5 gpt 1.5 on the left it just looks so much grainier like like
Ejaaz:
the example on the ride by nano banana looks way more accurate.
Ejaaz:
Like you can see the physical expressions on Ilya's face as well.
Ejaaz:
It looks more like Ilya as this post claims.
Ejaaz:
I don't know if this is a zinger. And what's important about this is Sam initiated
Ejaaz:
Code Red a week and a half ago.
Ejaaz:
And since then, he's done something really impressive, which is divert all resources
Ejaaz:
towards number one, creating the best model, and number two,
Ejaaz:
creating the best image model.
Ejaaz:
Now, he succeeded on number one, releasing GPT 5.2
Ejaaz:
last week which broke all frontier benchmarks again surprise surprise um but
Ejaaz:
this image model he's kind of flopped so i i don't know if we've reached a point
Ejaaz:
where open ai still has the edge that they that they uh once had at the start
Ejaaz:
of this year um i i don't know it still leaves me uncomfortable i don't believe
Ejaaz:
that open ai has kind of nailed it just yet yeah
Josh:
They haven't but if you are again if you're a user go try it out it's better
Josh:
than it was before and if you're being too stubborn to go use gemini well this
Josh:
is the best image model on the block for you uh now i guess we can head over
Josh:
to a little more frontier science-y stuff.
Ejaaz:
Josh, how am I going to live forever?
Josh:
Okay, perhaps...
Josh:
I cannot tell you the answer to you living forever, but I can give you an answer
Josh:
to your organs surviving longer if
Josh:
they ever leave your body for whatever circumstances that might require.
Josh:
There is a brain-computer interface startup called Science Corporation,
Josh:
which we love, founded by Max Hodak, who is the former Neuralink co-founder and president.
Josh:
And they decided this week that they were going to announce they're moving into
Josh:
organ preservation and life support tech.
Josh:
Basically, it's like the hardcore biomedical engineering mindset used for brain
Josh:
implants is now being pointed at a different problem, which is keeping organs
Josh:
alive outside of the body for way longer.
Josh:
And I had to learn a lot before talking about this because right now,
Josh:
I didn't realize that organ transplants are in a pretty brutal race against the clock.
Josh:
Normally, they last like a day, sometimes less if you have lungs or kidneys.
Josh:
It's very expensive to transfer these from place to place. A lot of time it
Josh:
was done via like private jet or really like whatever fastest way you can get
Josh:
it from one place to another because the person receiving it is normally in
Josh:
very bad shape and the person giving it,
Josh:
the organs are just not capable of living that long outside of it.
Josh:
So what they shared today is this breakthrough in how they're able to use this
Josh:
fancy new device to actually preserve organs for longer to make them last for
Josh:
days and hopefully soon weeks instead of just hours.
Josh:
And i found it to be really fascinating just on the the
Josh:
scientific frontier front because again they're using ai in
Josh:
a industry that has not really used ai very much in the past to create these
Josh:
really cool new contraptions and you could kind of see an idea of what the photo
Josh:
looks like in this post here that can actually help save people's lives and
Josh:
make a big difference i mean traditionally it cost 250 000 for a machine that
Josh:
does this plus tens of thousands of dollars per use.
Josh:
And what they're planning to do is get that cost down to $10,000 and even less.
Josh:
And I think it's just a really fascinating exploration into what's possible
Josh:
in the world of science now that we're applying AI to a lot of these difficult problems.
Ejaaz:
Josh, to give you a kind of crazy example to demonstrate how important this
Ejaaz:
thing is, in a past life, I studied biology at university.
Josh:
That's right. You're a pro on this.
Ejaaz:
Well, I had a crazy opportunity to perform heart transplants between murine mice.
Ejaaz:
So these are like test lab mice. It was a pretty crazy opportunity.
Ejaaz:
I signed up for it, somehow got approved because I was studying biology at the time.
Ejaaz:
I love genetics and specifically regeneration of cells. So I qualified.
Ejaaz:
And the TLDR is I performed four of these things and it failed 75% of the time.
Ejaaz:
The craziest part, the mouse I was transplanting the heart into was right next to me.
Ejaaz:
It was literally five inches away. And the fact that you had that failure rate
Ejaaz:
just goes to show you how crazily complex it is to keep these organs alive and
Ejaaz:
sustainable. Just a fun anecdote.
Josh:
It's really challenging. If you scroll down a little bit, we could kind of see
Josh:
what the device looks like in full.
Josh:
It's interesting. The thesis behind this was that, like, why can't you ship
Josh:
organs long distance like luggage would be?
Josh:
And what they wanted to do is create this backpack size system.
Josh:
So their prototype that we see on screen, It has integrated sensors for oxygenation
Josh:
and flow pressure or temperature.
Josh:
And it's this closed loop system that automatically adjusts depending on its outside environment.
Josh:
And it's really cool because traditionally it required something much larger
Josh:
than this. That was much more expensive. That was single use.
Josh:
That didn't allow these to survive for much longer.
Josh:
So just an interesting thing worth checking out. We'll add a link to it in the
Josh:
description if you want to read more.
Josh:
Just something worth paying attention to that health and sciences,
Josh:
thanks to AI, are becoming a lot more exciting.
Ejaaz:
It has been a crazy week for science in general, or rather sci-fi.
Ejaaz:
Sci-fi has had a big win this week.
Ejaaz:
Yeah, yeah. We've got the mass drivers. Elon's launching satellites to train
Ejaaz:
AIs. We're harnessing the energy of the sun.
Ejaaz:
We have got this crazy device that can extend the lifespan of organs.
Ejaaz:
And on top of it all, down on Earth, we have one singular company that has been
Ejaaz:
discovered, which is upholding the entire world right now.
Ejaaz:
Pretty pretty insane um that is the end of another roundup on the limit another
Ejaaz:
big week another another huge week huge week we have some
Josh:
Good weeks coming up too.
Ejaaz:
We have some great weeks coming up uh as is
Ejaaz:
normal uh of the end of the year we've we've got to
Ejaaz:
do some reflection josh you and i've been doing a bit of reflection recently
Ejaaz:
um and we have filmed a banger of an
Ejaaz:
episode which will tell you about the top wins
Ejaaz:
and most importantly the biggest losses in ai
Ejaaz:
this here and then of course you know
Ejaaz:
josh and i aren't short-term kind of thinking types of people we like to put
Ejaaz:
in predictions as well and we have a lot of big and bold predictions which i'm
Ejaaz:
pretty sure 99.9 of you guys won't guess at all uh for 2026 that's coming out
Ejaaz:
next week as well uh we're still going to be shipping episodes uh during the the holiday week
Josh:
So listen you can do your holidays but you still need to tune in you still owe
Josh:
us at least 65 minutes per week to listen to these episodes um.
Ejaaz:
Josh do you know what i am going to ask of people's new year's resolutions
Josh:
Um i'm going to hope it's to be to share limitless podcast with at least a hundred
Josh:
of your closest friends each i.
Ejaaz:
Am going to say no more josh read my mind
Josh:
There you have it uh it means a lot it's been it's been
Josh:
a good year we have some fun and different and interesting content like
Josh:
ijaz was mentioning earlier that's coming in the coming week so
Josh:
you're definitely going to want to tune in for that it's fun it's different ijaz actually
Josh:
wore a tuxedo in one of them so i promise you you're going to want to
Josh:
watch this to see why but it's it's
Josh:
really been fun it's been a great journey and it's all thanks to the people who are so
Josh:
generously leaving comments and sharing with their friends and we read almost
Josh:
almost everyone i try to there's been a lot which is a really good problem to
Josh:
have but trying to keep up with everything um the support really means the world
Josh:
so if you did enjoy this please share it with someone rate the episode five
Josh:
stars and thank you as always for watching and we'll see you guys in the next one.