AI That Works For You vs. AI That Works For Them

Chris Parker: Welcome to AI and I. This is a new podcast series and I am having a conversation with Doc Searls and I have to give him a lot of credit for this because when I met him in Amsterdam in 2012 in that conversation and also reading his books a probably before that and after that but but the some of these concepts of personal agency have just stuck with me and as I’ve been walking through through this this kind of this early age of AI, some of these things have been bouncing around and I and I finally formed it all and and and Doc Searls is one of the authors of the Clue Train Manifesto and um that was fascinating basically about just saying hey you know businesses stop screaming at us you know treat us like humans um marketing is an anti- conversation is one of the quotes that I took out of there and and in this age of of conversational AI I I was like, “Okay, you know, I’ve got to talk to Doc.”

And in the attention economy, which came out around 2012, um, and it was talking a lot about the project VRM, project vendor relationship management, and this is the thing that just got stuck in my noodle. Um, and Doc, you you created that movement at the I think it’s the Burkman Klein Center of Internet Society. Um, and vendor relationship management. It’s kind of one of those things that you can’t unsee because businesses have customer relationship management to manage their perspective of me, but we as consumers don’t really have a way yet to manage our vendors or our suppliers and and it’s kind like well it makes total sense when you think about it that and it’s you know how do we express our intention to the market instead of you know being just lambasted with all of this noise about stuff we don’t want. And one of the concepts in the intention economy, it was mentioned as far as like having a cyber twin or a digital twin. And I just have to bring that together with this AI and people talking about personalized AI.

So I’m curious, doc, thank you so much for a inspiring me earlier in my career and and you know having the chance to meet up with you and your wife Joyce in Amsterdam and and you know, marking this concept of you know, vendor relationship management from a perspective of of a consumer. um because I’ve carried that with me and it really kicked off the need for me to have this conversation in AI and I so maybe doc can you connect some of those dots like how did project VRM evolve into an opinion on personalized AI and is now the time that we can actually get this VRM concept really to have our cyber twin out there on my behalf like are we here yet that’s what that’s what I really like to unpack.

Doc Searls: Wow. Well, so let me just start with uh with the clue train manifesto because the the the clue train manifesto I think really got going when there were four of us having just conversations mostly on the phone. David Weinberger, Chris Lockach, uh Rick Lavine, and myself and um and we were just sort of complaining to each other on the phone, but about you know, hey, look that we were given this amazing thing called the internet, which just completely changed everything and had beyond enormous potential. It essentially changed the world right under us and and we thought entirely for the better. uh and uh and it wasn’t being understood that well and we weren’t being understood very well. It was like we took all of all these industrial age ideas about I mean if if you listen to the way marketing talks to itself about people we are targets to be acquired and managed and controlled and locked in as if we were slaves or cattle and and without irony. I mean they talk about us that way. We’re assets to be acquired. Oh, oh, by the way, we go through a funnel, a sales funnel, right? I mean, it’s insane and and it’s disconnected from us and who we are and what we really are. And so Chris wrote this little this little gift, a little um GIF um and sent it out and it said to the other others of us just because Chris is although he’s an incredibly good writer, a really powerful writer um he was really good at graphics and and it just said we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. We are human beings and our reach exceeds your grasp. Deal with it. and deal with it was in red.

And that that adrenalized us to let’s let’s let’s do like Martin Luther nail something up on the web. That’s why we called it um uh that’s why we had 95 thesis. It was on the on the Martin Luther model. We called it a manifesto because that Marx called his thing a manifesto. And it was mostly a rant and the first line in it was markets of conversations. And that was one of my oneliners. And that’s what it took. And it took with the marketers of all people even though it was an anti-marketing book. Um the good people in marketing I think said, “Oh great, we we get to talk with people. Wonderful.” Right? And what it what that ended up with, I mean, is everything got be got to be called a conversation. The political conversation, right? And and none of it really was. And in many ways, I think in the others, Chris is gone now, but I think David and uh Rick and and I agree that in many ways it was a fail. Um it it said the right things. It energized people. A lot of people got, you know, I mean, I’m glad it’s in the world and it said what it said. But within several years, we realized this isn’t working. And so I thought when I you know I had to have a project at the Burkeman Center um and it it it’s located at Harvard is hanging off the law school and at that time it’s called the Burkeman Center for Internet and Society. David Weinberger was already a fellow there. Um we both were named fellows there mostly on the strength of clue train and um and I have now had fellowships at four universities. This is one of them I’m at now in Bloomington, Indiana at Indiana University. They never would have let me in as a student, but I was a terrible student. I was a good scholar. I think I was just a terrible student. I wasn’t made for school. But anyway, that’s that’s a that’s beside the point. What um but you’re obliged to start a project. And I thought, well, let’s try and make Clue Train come true. Why don’t we do it with um why don’t why don’t we start a project around amplifying the agency of customers? Okay, let’s why don’t we take our side of this thing? I if if we’re going to be in a dance or you know real conversation with business, we need something on our side. Well, CRM, customer relationship management already existed on the on the seller side. And I was actually on a podcast called the Gilmore Gang um that Steve Gilmore put on um uh with with a with a guy who when I was describing this said, “Oh, you’re talking about vendor relationship management.” And I didn’t name it. He did. And and it took it took as a term among a very small group of people, but I had to name the project. So I called it project VRM. It’s still a conversation. It’s still going 18 years later. That was in 2006 06. So um and it was in September of06. So that was exactly was that 18 years ago? More 19 years ago. It’s 19 years ago. Wow.

Um and it was a one-year project, you know, and I ended up being a fellow there for four years. But but the thing is that um no serious money ever got put into it at all. Um it is in fact anathema to business as usual as clue train was. Um and um but later you know I mean I mean but I was very enthused about it. I still am. I I wrote the intention economy in in 12 as you point out. Came out in May of 12. Um and it was from Harvard Business Review Press. They were very excited about it. Um, I got a nice advance that I’ve never earned out. Um, it was a worseller. Clue Train was a bestseller.

Chris Parker: Really?

Doc Searls: Yeah. It was it was a business it was a business bestseller and it still sells in like nine languages. Um, but and there was a second edition that came out in ’09. Um, uh, the intention economy did not, but it had several important effects. One was I only found this out last year that Tim Burners Lee who invented the web read it and he started the solid project based on it and he’s got a he’s got a chapter in his new book coming up um that is basically about the intention economy. Um so that influenced him. Um, a guy named Robert Thompson who was the managing editor or the publisher, I forget what it was, of the Wall Street Journal, fell in love with it and and I wrote what was the entire front page of the marketplace section of the Wall Street Journal under a title, the customer as a god, which I never would have thought of and I thought was terribly vain. And the giant graphic looked like a Dionetics or something with but but it was but the idea was that hey the customer needs to be at least an equal partner in all of these things. Um and the third one uh that that it influenced was Kai um which is uh uh all about open source personal AI and they made me the chief intention officer. It’s a it’s more of an honorary title than anything else. It’s a it’s a volunteer organization, but I I understand in my research that there’s many many many companies, initiatives, and projects that have been inspired or spun off of Project VRM. So So it’s it is alive in in various forms.

Chris Parker: Yes. And and it’s it’s it’s you know, it’s it’s it’s in the water. But the the a problem that we had early on and we still have it is that nobody wanted to call VRM.

Doc Searls: and never got a brand. And why do they not want to call it VRM? Well, because the other guy might call theirs VRM and they saw themselves, the the the companies that started up on this, the early ones, in competition with each other rather than in cooperation with each other. And so they didn’t make it a category. It never got to be a category. It may still be a category at some point in some way. Right now, it ain’t. And um but I think AI has a chance for that, right?

Chris Parker: But only if it’s personal. Um, I don’t know. Uh, there’s a a friend who’s very active in Kauaii named Steve Vitka who’s very strong on the digital twin. My digital twin is going to be out there in the world. And that may be something that we have. I I think that we could call it that except that I I think we need fiduciaries. We need representatives. We need agents that are smart and can help deal with complexity on our behalf. Um, and if you want to call them twins, that’s fine. Um, if they have fiduciary responsibilities, like they can sign a contract for us, uh, they can book a book a a hotel or whatever, that’s fine. I think we’re a very long way from that happening. I think we’re a much shorter way from having truly personal AI that is for our lives. But and by that I mean if you look at your life, your digital life, I mean we we we are to me this is like the biggest thing about life right now. We’re digital now. We’re not just we’re not just analog. we you know we we have these things that can we carry around with us and and that’s part of our lives. we extend ourselves um through these devices and um Marshall McLuhan said that you know um he’s quoted as saying this he didn’t exactly say it but it’s what he meant we shape our tools then our tools shape us okay so we are not only natural beings which we have been forever but we’re also digital beings now this is new it’s in its current form it’s maybe 5 10 years old since we got the smartphone and since connectivity bec became ubiquitous. We now presume it, but we need our own AI to run our lives.

Chris Parker: Yeah. What What do you What do you mean by personal AI? Because I don’t think you’re talking about personalized AI.

Doc Searls: No, at all. Not at all. Not at all. We have personalized right now. I I use Chat GBT every day. I use Claude. I use Gemini. Uh I sometimes use Meta Co-Pilot less than I used to. Um all of them. and they are remarkable. ChachiBT especially is I I wouldn’t call it scary. It’s more like it’s just a holy [  ] I mean what what you could do with it and as a researcher and I use it 99% for research. I don’t do any of the help help my personal life [  ] at all. I don’t I don’t want it to play that role. I did Dave Winer who’s one of my heroes and a friend uh who invented RSS and outlining and uh and presentation software to some degree and much more um said this about about chat GPT he said I don’t want you to be a friend I want you to be a computer okay be a computer and he said it obeyed it gives him computer answers now it’s stop trying to be a friend because it it it wants to flatter you all the time is that’s a great question here. Can I do this for you? And it always ends with that question. Can I can I do this next thing for you? I I want to just leave it there, right? And but Chachi PT5 is much better about that than four was. And I understand that they took a lot of the personal stuff out of four out of four when they went to five because people were killing themselves. Okay. They they got a pal that basically told him, “I’ll see you I’ll see you on the other side or whatever.” It wasn’t ChatGPT. There was another one. But but there’s there are cases and and there are cases where it gets too personal and uh but I I don’t want to go there. What I where I do want to go and why we need personal AI is that our personal lives digitally are you know our physical lives are in control. We we could do fitness, we can run, we can lift weights, we can watch our diet. I’m fasting today for example, right? Um uh and we have control over that. We know what we’re doing with that to a large degree, but our digital lives, what we subscribe to, our health, our our finances, our schedules, our, you know, you and I went through a schedule thing. You know, my my wife runs our schedule. She had to go out to California. Uh she, you know, we missed our last appointment. I’m not that good at that. I could use an AI for that. Okay? I could use But it’s not just that. It’s like, wait a minute. Like let’s say if we had personal AI when you and I sat at Joyce sat at a table with Martin Lind Fitzgerald and some other people in Amsterdam in 2012 if we had it there wait who were who were we with for that where was that in Amsterdam what was that for we’d have the answer because some do what AI we could do what AI does well no wait a minute I’m looking at unstructured data in these five different domains here’s your contacts here’s your calendar here’s your travels here’s your bookings, here’s where you stayed. This is all relevant, often important stuff, right? We do not have control over that. And the need for having control over it is not a commercial one. The the the the selling world looks at it that way. The marketing world looks at that. You’re on a journey all the time. You’re on the customer journey. Um it’s worth going into one thing that marketing says to itself. In addition to saying you live in a funnel, um they say you’re on a journey. Nobody thinks they’re on a journey. Okay. I I gotta pick up something from the drugstore. That’s a journey. But that I’m in this journey to like, you know, buy a product when I’m there or or whatever, you know, it’s it’s silly. But but uh a guy named Esan Kolski did a really is a in the marketing world, the CRM world, did a wonderful thing. He took the the journey that that marketing calls a circle like a clock that starts with you’re looking for something and then you’re considering it and then you’re buying it and you’re owning it and then you give it up and you get another one and that’s that’s it. He twisted that into a figure eight. And he said here’s the buy cycle and here’s the own cycle. That’s when you’re owning it. We’re in the own cycle 100% of the time, you know, and we’re not in the buy cycle 100% of the time. We’re in it like 1% of the time.

Chris Parker: So, doc, how being a uh uh an amateur marketer sometimes and and being very familiar with funnels and customer journeys and customer experience design and all those concepts, how would you recommend that businesses reframe that so they can still operate and sell stuff because that’s what businesses want to do, but be more authentically genuine about it. I think is that what you’re seeking? Appreciation of humanity.

Doc Searls: I think if we left it up to them, it would never happen. Yeah. We we need tools and services on our side exclusively that they’re working for us. That’s it. The closest thing we have right now to that is actually Apple. And um and speaking of conversation, the the the two biggest things that Apple did and they did it under Steve Jobs and they weren’t his ideas necessarily were Apple Care where you call a person and you get a person on the phone that can help you out and the stores where you go in and you walk and you talk to somebody and there’s a a bar at the back called the Genius Bar and there are people that know their stuff and they help you out. They made convers they made them their market. It’s a captive market. I don’t like how captive it is. Um but they covered those two fronts. As far as I know, they’re the only one doing that. And they’re the only one that at least postures and promises something about privacy and that they’re on your side for that. Unfortunately, they’re a very verticalized silo and we can’t generalize from it because they’re a silo. You can’t take what Apple put in a bottle and give it to somebody else. They’re that’s not working. But it’ll be good if they help out. I’d love to have them help. Um but we need something on our side. I think there are companies that could help with that. I think Visa is probably the biggest of those. They’ve already got our credit card, but we need something. We need we need tools and services that are I mean just simply personal AI give me a wonderful thing about all the LLMs and the rags and the models that we have that we’ve worked out on. Isn’t this great? I mean I love frankly that open AAI and Google and the others have created a corpus of everything they could possibly gather. Okay. Zillions and zillions of of data points. Now, that a lot of them are absolute crap and [ __ ] and but you have a way to extract from that the world’s greatest typicalities because that’s what they’re giving to you, right? There’s nothing but it’s typicalities in a way but it’s based on remarkably complete knowledge that that chat GPT yesterday could give me two sources of the biography of a teacher I had in college who was a minor character in the world um but could find them one from his World War II records that were in a grave site you know celebrating World War II veterans the other from a classmate I know I had, you know, because that’s in the world and it can make connections between unstructured data. That’s fantastic. I want that. I want that for my own life. I mean, I I’ve got a a bookshelf over here, bunch of books. I I would like to aim my phone at that, look at the spines of all those books and tell me what I’ve got. Not only that, match it up with Amazon and other places I bought them and tell me where I got them, you know? I mean, those are that’s useful information to have. I mean, I’ve got a a stack over here of of health records. I I want to run them through a um a scanner, have them suck off everything they can and put it in a form I can use. We don’t have that. And until we get that, all of the marketing dreams are not going to come true. They can’t.

Chris Parker: That’s sort of the short answer.

Doc Searls: All of the marketing dreams will not come true. So, well, the marketing dreams on the business side like like you you were asking, well, what can business do? and my my case here and I’ve come at it I’m come here after many many years of you can I mean it’s like the Apple case you’ve you get oneoffs every one of the one-offs like right now this is one of Joyce’s points my wife’s points is that online we live in a world of nothing but accounts they’re all accounts every login and password is an account they’re all separate they’re not generalized I mean I have no scale across all of them none I mean my credit card scales. My email address kind of scales, but I don’t scale in a way where I can say to all of them, hey, I just changed my address. I just changed my my email address. I just changed my phone number. And inform all of them in one move that that’s what just happened. With AI, maybe AI on both sides, maybe we can. Um Ian Henderson, who’s very active in Project BM, and was on this case in the last millennium before I even met him. um made this really interesting point which is in B2B there are up to 3,000 variables involved in a relationship between two companies. If you have Boeing or Airbus and Rolls-Royce or Pratt and Whitney on engines, there are thousands of data points that have been worked out by AI 15, 20 years ago on how those companies get along around those variables. We should have those B TOC should be just as rich as B2B is. And that was Ian’s dream 30 years ago and we’re still not there because we can’t get there unless we have scale. One company having scale isn’t going to do it.

Chris Parker: Let me grab and and give you a stacked question which which I know I shouldn’t do in podcast and interview land.

Doc Searls: Go ahead.

Chris Parker: But um first thing is is imagine we achieve that. um how will that help the individual human, the person, you know, to to to live with AI? But and then the next question, if you want to weave it together somehow, is is how could we do it? And and is this related to Kawaii.AI that you’re the the chief intention officer for or like like why would this matter? Like like how would I be happier, more vital, more have more agency?

Doc Searls: Uh well, all of that stuff to some degree is an inside job. Of course, you know, I mean, we we we um are we made happier because the internet’s here? Are we made happier because we because um uh journalism is essentially gone. Um because something we said in clue train was, you know, 26 years ago that all of us are going to publish now. um basically obsolets the model that we had which is there was a center that held you know I don’t know we’re better we’re off in some ways or worse off in others but we but there are too many ways that we’re different to to isolate any of them I think I think we lost something of human agency when industry won the industrial revolution 150 years ago um before then um what you did you If your name was Smith, you had an ancestor who was a Smith. You Cooper, they were, you know, they they they built barrels or, you know, my own surname surls is derived from a a Norman word for soldier. Um, you know, we had a role in the world, right? And and you were named after what you did. And nobody calls their kid, you know, Joe Middle manager, you know, or or Joe Sheet metal worker, right? We industrialized that stuff and we industrialized commerce and with the internet our dream for the internet with clue train was wait a minute no now we can have personal agency that’s what Chris locks you know we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers was about we’re going to get agency now because wait a minute we can all have a server and in fact when we started on the internet my email server was under my desk my web server surles.com was under my ask. I hacked it with minimal knowledge, you know, of what an IP address was and what a domain name was and and other things like that and and I mean I but I could do it right. Nobody would do that now. It’s too complicated. But um but how do we get how do we get that agency? And um I think that I mean I think the reason that personal AI can do it for us is that in order to have not just the full control over our lives which we kind of lost to some degree with the industrial age but we made far worse in the internet age. We on the one hand we can oh my god we got this phone I’m in touch with everybody. I can talk to everybody in the world. You’re are are you you’re in Europe somewhere, right? And yeah, I’m in Indiana and we’re zero distance apart. Um you mentioned earlier about a bubble. This is um Craig Burton who invented pretty much invented novel back in the 80s. Um it was a a good dear friend and is gone now described the internet as a giant hollow sphere like a bubble in which there’s zero distance between everything that the internet ended distance. Here we are the two of us right now there’s no distance between us and um even whatever lag time there is with latency it doesn’t matter. It’s close enough and within a hollow sphere we’re all zero justice away from each other. It’s like imagine a giant zero in our midst. This is very new to human experience. And part of my case right now is that we are at the beginning of a digital age. It’s going to it’s it’s a decade old at the most, maybe three decades at the very most. Um that’s going to last for millennia to come. And we’re just starting out. We’re just starting out with this. Yeah. And so, you know, how do how do we achieve real personal agency in this? And I’m thinking that having having control over our lives, which we’re going to need AI for personal AI, not personalized AI, which is always going to be look for agency on the corporate side. Just can’t help it. Open AI is in this game for for it, not for me. right now. If they have a personal version they can give to me, like I could get Microsoft Word and I could get um you know uh uh Intuitit. I remember I remember when Intuitit came along and I could do my my um my checkbook on on a Macintosh with with two discs I took in and out all the time. But oh my god, then Macintox came along. and Turboax. Oh. Oh my god. It was is amazing that sense of agency we got back then. We’re not getting right now is we’re getting agency that’s borrowed from Microsoft and Google and rest and we subscribe to it. It’s not ours. You know, I mean I don’t own PowerPoint or or or or uh uh Photoshop which I depend on because I do photography. I I rent it, right? But for that matter even rent sur all that stuff is rented but even if we have a service that we rent like we rent a car but at least we have a sense that is ours our agency is there when you we need we need personal AI for this that we feel is ours in the same way we feel our shoes are ours and our car is ours and our shirt is ours that it’s it’s personal and it takes this unstructured data and lets us cope with the world. The key to that and the reason I think this will stand or fall on this one thing is around privacy. We invented privacy in the natural world with the technology we call clothing and shelter. We cover our privates, we call them that with clothing. We understand our private spaces on our bodies that are exclusively ours that we will selectively disclose on an as needed basis to other parties. Um, and this is all tacitly understood. We can’t explain it all, but we understand it at the tacid level, right? The tacid is what we know, but can’t tell. Here’s what here’s the problem with that. In the digital world, everything needs to be explicit. You can’t program unless it’s explicit. So, how do we make privacy explicit? We can’t do it with consent. That’s what we have now. You go to a website, please consent to our terms, right? you’re screwed right there. You know, there’s no record of it. You know, there’s not an agreement. We need contract. And that’s why eight years ago, um, Project VRM, but actually customer comments, which is a nonprofit spin-off of Project VRM that I write about in the intention economy. In fact, I invented it in part for the intention economy for that book. Um, the idea with customer comments is that there would be a place where our terms would live. What are our terms when we go to a website? No, you guys, you agree to mine. Here’s what mine say. Do whatever you want. Just give me your service. Okay. I’m I’m here to buy shirts. You have a shirt site. It’s about nothing but shirts. Give me the shirts. That’s that’s that’s what the web was for in the first place. Here’s a document. Read the document. Well, you don’t go there in order to be followed out of there, you know, but in the absence of explicit understandings of what privacy is, the cell side did a paint job on w with with consent on their tacid understanding that anything goes. You know what? You guys are all naked. I can plant tracking beacons on you. You go to like say Smithsonian magazine, you’re walking out of that website with up to a thousand tracking beacons for parties unknown and it’s going on it’s being auctioned to the world and the wholesale side thinks this is normal and it’s fine and they’re full of [ __ ] on this. I’m from New Jersey. I can say that. And it’s it’s but we can make it explicit and our explicit understandings could be okay go ahead and you give me ads just make sure they’re not based on tracking me or give them to me if only you are doing the tracking. It’s just you know I’m I’m looking at um at tires. I just went to tire rack and I bought some Michelin tires. Okay. So, um, my understanding with them would be sell me tires and, um, and I’m I’m open to having a relationship with you where we can have an understanding about this, but you agreed on my terms. And so, customer commas is where those terms will live and we have a standard for this that is almost done. It’ll be published early next year called P712 from the ITLE E and that’s going to be called my terms. And to me, our future stands or falls on that. Are they going to agree to my terms or not? And if they don’t, we’re screwed and we’ll stay screwed. But if they do, we can open up an enormous amount of business that’s not there right now.

Chris Parker: Maybe I’m I’m I love the concept. I’ve I’ve been reading up on it a bit. Um, early in my career, I I I was in a in a a startup journey with some amazing individuals. Bill Benny and Kirk Wiggy are two NSA whistleblowers. They were coming.

Doc Searls: I remember Bill Benny. I met him.

Chris Parker: Yeah. Bill, interesting dude.

Doc Searls: Very interesting dude.

Chris Parker: I had, you know, we did a startup. The the premise was um let’s do let’s skate let’s largecale analytics while respecting the right of privacy. You know, this is probably this is like 10 years ago or so. We had Arian Kampuis who was arguably one of the world’s certainly Europe’s, you know, leading open- source privacy advocates who unfortunately disappeared. We still don’t know where he went and he’s presumed dead. Um um I I don’t believe that has anything to do with what we were doing with the NSA. a lot of people do, but um listening to Bill and Kirk and the sacrifices they made and the and the life energy that Arian Kamphuis put into privacy and trying to make that aware and then talk about Snowden, you know, what he revealed and you know, not much has changed. So how like how can we make this shift, you know, if if our future, you know, stands or falls on privacy and the governments aren’t going to legislate it as far as I can tell. Um how how could we make this happen?

Doc Searls: The the governments are going to legislate it and they already are. We have the GDPR and others. A problem with all tech law is that usually it protects yesterday from last Thursday and then we have it for another hundred years. I mean that’s the problem with the GDPR right now. The GDPR protected 2018 from 2015 and you know the cookie notice thing. It normalized you know spying essentially and it it did not do what it was supposed to do. And the truth is you don’t need a cookie notice if you’re not spying on people. But now every little website has to put up a cookie notice because somebody told them to. They don’t in the US, by the way. The US doesn’t have that law, but they do in Europe. And because people trade in Europe, they just put it up anyway. Um, and I’m glad you brought up Bill because he’s an interesting dude, but maybe talk about him more offline later, but um, but he but anyway, but he I I don’t want to get too far into a degression on him because it’s too it’s too interesting. But I’ll put it this way. We need the invention that mothers the necessity the invention that motherthered the necessity of the personal computing with spreadsheets. as soon as as soon as Bob Frankston uh and Dan Bicklin invented VisiCal and then Microsoft knocked it off with multiplan and Excel and and Lotus came along with 123. Um business had to have it and it got cheap enough so the rest of us could have it and we but also word processing was a big one too. Um but um you know it you know we need the invention that mothers the necessity. We don’t have that invention yet. What I’m hoping is that some small fraction of the trillions that are being spent now on on on corporate AI will be spent on here’s an AI for your world. Okay customer buy it have it in your house. put it in a box, you know, g get your, you know, a dedicated laptop or a Mac Mini or what one of the things Kawaii is doing, it’s called Kauet, assuming that you need a lot more compute than you’ve got on hand. Um, uh, there’s a a grid of other computers that are that are, you know, in an encrypted and sharded way, your data is still private, but is being crudged elsewhere.

Chris Parker: Can can you explain Kwaii? So like like if this is something that is this something that people can embark on now that if they’re inspired by this and like I want to have personal AI

Doc Searls: Kai it’s K W it’s it’s it’s a term for South Africa um uh Reza Rasul is the uh the founder of it um uh uh it’s reza is his first name and r i s o l is his last name um and it’s kw W AI and it said at KW Aai.ai I think. Um uh and it his idea was open source AI, open source personal AI, not just you know but the key part is is is the open source side of it. And um it is almost entirely unfunded. It’s a volunteer thing. um they’re getting more uh deliberate about who’s a member and what you contribute to it. You know, you belong to a committee, you’re you know, you’re involved in in some way. So, it expanded to like a thousand volunteers, but they’re kind of winnowing it down now. It’s just more in a set of purposeful stuff. Uh but I just suggest going there. Just go look up Kwaii. And uh they have open meetings every Friday and then a little afterparty on Friday on Zoom. Uh and where there’s generally a speaker who comes in and talks about something. I’ve spoken there like a bunch of times at this point. Um uh but it’s a conversation right now. It’s a conversation. And what and I mean their main focus I would say right now is toward is toward Quinet and making this this sort of a backbone a kind of cooperative backbone for personal AI development. Um we’ll see how it goes. I think conceptually we need the sense that this is ours. It’s not like just out on a network like I don’t have I don’t want to have to need a network to have this. And I’m not so sure that the personal data that we need to crunch is that big. I think we can take a um you know, we’ve got these models that have been built uh already that are out there and even a relatively weak one like uh Llama. Um uh and I say that only because they’re not giving us the latest and greatest and the best. Uh yeah. Um but thank you. It’s sort of open source. It’s very compromised kind of open source, but it’s there. Um, but where but the two things there are I want that AI where I can I can throw in my financial data and my and my contacts and my calendars even if those come in as like tab or comment separated values whatever it was and have it be smart enough to know what to do with it and to um and not necessarily just do the Q&A thing but you know you know annotate the calendar for with where I was take my travels and put that on there or put my calendar on my travels, you know, have a table of my travels. That’s just a table. I’m looking at the table. Uh uh, you know, give me outputs that are not just I asked the question, you gave me an answer. But here’s a big part of it. There is so much data that ought to be ours and is not. So, for example, Google Maps and Apple Maps have your travels. You have a GPS in your phone. Where were you? You know, right now there are apps you could do that with. They’re hard to use. I’ve got two of them. I’m trying to use them, you know. But but they have those, you know, where was I? You know, where how did I get there? Uh we we took that shortcut. What was it? You know, I we there there’s But we don’t have that data, right? There’s lots of data being collected about us. Your TV has a Linux computer in it. Okay. That Linux computer is busy looking at all the shows you watch. Do you have access to that? You should know. Did I watch all the way to the How far did I go with Game of Thrones? How did far did I go with the surprise? Did I watch the I think I did. What episodes did I watch? You know, what are they on like football right now? Is it on is it on Fox or NBC or CBS or ABC or Peacock or whatever it’s called this week? You know, on on HBO, who knows? They want you to not know that. And this is a big one. Subscriptions. subscriptions are totally out of control. Every, you know, thank you Substack for, you know, giving me, you know, half a blog post and have to pay for the rest. Okay. I hate that [ __ ] I mean, but I would like to pay them, but not maybe on a per use basis, but I want to have the subscription method, not them. Anyway, so so if we if we try So anyway, just clawing that data back out of those places is is a job. Well, early um I I know it’s probably two three years ago um I did do some tests with I think I think it was called free GPT was you can install it on your machine indeed you can import llama and some other open source type models and run it it’s super processor intensive it’s nowhere to the quality that you could get just with you know GPT5 or cloud right now um but I you know there is some glimmer there that these things are possible and if Quietet is going to give an infrastructure for that that’s truly yours and then indeed there’s the data you know wrangling of getting your your data in and you mentioned CSV files and stuff which nobody wants to do. So do you believe it will do you believe it will um evolve that way because I I would I would love that to have a

Doc Searls: Well, it it’s a market hole. I mean to me that’s I mean it’s like who’s going to fill this hole?

Chris Parker: Yeah. I somebody is and it’s going to make a zillion dollars when they do it. I mean, I would gladly pay pay for something there. I I gladly paid for Excel and and for um you know, I still do for for a collection of Adobe products only half of which I use. I mean I mean obviously people are willing to pay you know for a service or for a product that it probably will be a service of some kind. Um, but but people somebody with somebody who’s young, okay? Like I’m an old guy now. I’m not going to do this. If I was, I’d do it. And if I was, I’d go out and I, you know, if I was 25 or 35 or even like 50, I would I would gladly and eagerly go out and and, you know, and and sell it. And I’m sure I could sell it, but I but I’m old and I’m done and I can’t. So I’m I’m here to tell other people to do it, but somebody’s going to do it.

Doc Searls: I have a feeling that you’re not done. You are you are

Chris Parker: Oh, no. I’m just starting. I mean, I know. I mean, I I I mean, it’s like I mean, I I can’t tell you how fast 78 years goes. I mean, it’s like Oh my god. It’s really crazy. But, um, you know, I’m just getting started. I’m still just getting started. But what but I but I’m setting fires. I’m not standing around.

Doc Searls: No, I get it. And I think there’s some other players. um Duck Duck Go, you know, the the private they could definitely they’re they launched DuckAI recently. I I I just saw it, you know, slide past and I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” I need to get in touch with him again. Ive I’ve I’ve talked with their CEO’s name. I’m forgetting, but I got his book. Anyway, but I’ll um maybe we’ll bring him as well. Um, so Doc, if you were to close this with some advice for the individual humans, the people listening to this that that that have been listening and and probably got excited like I have, maybe a bit worried because you’ve you’ve, you know, pointed out some some of the dark sides of of this technology, this digital world we’re in. Um, you’ve painted some some pictures of of where we can go and and the importance of privacy and people can look up my terms. Um, and you said that was a standard on on the customer commons coming out, you know, within a year or so, but if there what could you leave people with right now as we’re on this cusp, you know, we’re just on that still on that that spearhead of the beginning of this whole thing is what I believe. What could they carry with them to keep their wits about them, keep their humanity about them, keep their agency about them? What can you what can you give us?

Doc Searls: Um well, on a practical level, and this is just pure advice, um I would not get personal with an AI with any of the corporate AIs. Avoid that. Um ju just because it’s so much more useful for everything else. Um, now there are some like pie. I think they were meant to be personal in first, but I I and I have friends friends there. Um, but I I would I mean I’d especially appeal to anybody with a business mind. Do a startup around personal AI. Get it get a get a personal AI startup going out there where it’s working for us and it’s about our lives and not selling us [ __ ] If it’s about selling our stuff, go away. I it’s not about that. It’s about getting on top of your life. If you’re on top of that, you’re going to be a much better customer. That’s the first thing. And I don’t think VRM happens without that at this point. I don’t think um I think my my terms is a critical part of it. By the way, it’s an ITLE E standard. Just a hat tip to them because they sought us out and they’re the ones behind it. I’m the head of the chair of that working group. Um and if you look at my terms of my name, you’ll find a bunch of stuff. So there there’s that. But that is again I mean if people just have my terms in their head that every every time you see a cookie notice think of it as going the other way. What would you say to them? That would be friendly and constructive you know I mean yeah great functional cookies would be great you know analytics cookies fine as long as the analytics doesn’t carry information about me away with it. That’s a problem with with Google system like you know it still carries an identifier of you away with it. Um but you know I I but just think about what is it every time they say our terms have changed. I can tell you what they’re changing about right now. They want arbitration. They don’t want class action. So they’re and you know what fine arbitration is fine. You know we’re going to get along. We don’t need litigation on this. Mhm. Uh if you’re a lawyer, just start thinking about, hey, you’re a lawyer for the customer, not for the seller. What would you have? What would you put in here? What would this be about? Um I I don’t think there’s a single thing that a person can do right now other than learn everything you can about AI and what’s good about it and and try to support that. Um, but think about how your personal agency in the digital world is going to be based on explicit and not tacid understandings. And those explicit understandings need to be programmable and they need to start with my terms. I think it’s as simple as that. Without contract, we don’t have and they’re contracts, by the way. We don’t have privacy. Not going to happen. And if we don’t have privacy, we don’t have agency. we’re going to be dependent variables and not independent variables.

Chris Parker: Um to summarize, Doc, thank you so much. There is educate yourself. Um so learn up on this. Don’t use it blindly. If I can paraphrase, there’s another couple episodes of this uh series with different futurists and philosophers and academics. And episode six of this miniseries, I’m going to actually talk to AI about this as well. And I’m still trying to figure out how I’m gonna play with that, but it’s going to be fun and interesting, I’m sure. So, keep going as a way of of educating from various different views and cultures. Um, I’ve got South Africans, Swiss, um, Cambodian academic, fascinating uh, individual. Um, don’t get personal with AI. I love that. Um, you keep reading about people who are in relationships or relying on AI for therapy and things like that that um, yeah, I don’t want to be too doctrinal about that. I I mean, but I of course, you know, I’ve been through every crisis I need in my life so far, right? You know, so I I’ve learned a lot. I kind of don’t need the shrinking. Um but um and I’m sure that they can help with shrinking. They certainly can help with health. They’ve helped me a lot with health. I mean just simple things. What you know what can you tell me about congenital disthropoic anemia type two you know um that I don’t know so far. Right. And yeah know it’s brilliant and and and and it’ll give me some stuff I didn’t know. And that’s really helpful because you’re I mean you’ve got a weird you know it’s like there’s this library of all the all I would call it all the world’s knowledge all this data about the world. It’s like this giant library but you can’t go into the stacks. You have to ask the the the librarian at the front and the librarian will give you good answers based on what’s back in the library. That’s what it’s giving you right now. Um but it’s a machine. It doesn’t know anything. It just conveys it to stuff to you in a way you can understand that emulates human expression but really isn’t human. And just remember that it’s not human and it can’t be human. And I think an outcome of this will be it’ll put in relief what can only be human and that’s our souls. And I think we all know we have a soul even if we deny it. That’s something that’s irreducible and and is tacit. It’s never going to be explicit and it doesn’t have that and you do. So, there’s that. And I’m going to be really cheeky here. And um your your your third recommendation was if you’re business-minded to step into the personal AI space and make it’s empty. It’s it’s it’s empty. It’s blue water. It’s not it’s it’s not a red ocean. It’s a blue ocean.

Doc Searls: It’s a blue ocean.

Chris Parker: And I I I’ll also raise my hand. And I’m just coming out of my mission from the last five years of you know private equity uh buy and build business integrations and carveouts and and fascinating journeys. But I I left that a couple months ago and took the summer and now I’m seeking that next adventure and and this sounds really appetizing. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to find that the CEO of Duck.Go who I’ve also met.

Doc Searls: Oh, really? Great. Yeah.

Chris Parker: Um I’m sure I’ve got the email. So, one action I will take. The book is over there somewhere and I’m just looking at it’s there somewhere. Yeah. So, one one action I will take from this is I’m gonna I’m gonna reach out to that that person and um I’ve already registered with Quai as a um as as some sort of member. I’m not quite sure what it is. There’s a different type of membership. So, we’re going to talk with them and follow up on this. But, uh and if people want to learn more about Doc Surls, there’s the book, The Intention Economy. Um you know, Clue Train Manifesto. You can find him at doc.surls.com and he also has his own podcast reality2.0 and of course Kwaai.ai. So docsearls.com. So Dr. Thank you so much for joining.

Doc Searls: Thanks Chris. This is great. I appreciate it.