It’s no secret; there is an epidemic of loneliness in the United States. In recent years, about one in two Americans reported experiencing loneliness. Today, we welcome David Bosnak, the CEO of Attune Media Labs, an organization that combats loneliness and anxiety with empathetic AI companions that enhance human connections through state-of-the-art technology. 

David began his career as an electrical engineering undergraduate with a passion for storytelling, eventually moving to Los Angeles to pursue acting and writing. Blending his engineering background with his storytelling skills, David launched Attune Media Labs, where he now focuses on leveraging the power of emerging technologies. In an era of disconnection, David’s work emphasizes technology’s potential for positive social impact while tackling the challenges of building ethical boundaries in AI development, especially within the creative fields and copyright considerations. 

In today’s conversation, David shares insights from his recent book, AI for Your Real Life, a practical guide empowering readers to harness generative AI tools like ChatGPT in their everyday lives. In the book, David suggests that AI should be viewed as a tool that enhances creativity and problem-solving rather than a replacement for human ingenuity. He underscores the necessity of ongoing dialogue about AI ethics, particularly as technology continues to evolve and influence various industries. Our conversation is packed with insights, laughter, and a few puns—because, let’s face it, who doesn’t love a good dad joke to ease their anxiety?

Listeners interested in receiving a free month's trial of Attune Media Labs’ emotional support companion, MiM, should email David here using “NOT REAL ART” for the subject line.

For more information, please visit https://notrealart.com/attune-media-labs

The Not Real Art podcast is intended for creative audiences only. The Not Real Art Podcast celebrates creativity and creative culture worldwide.

It contains material that is fresh, fun and inspiring and is not suitable for boring old art snobs. Now let's get started and enjoy the show. Greetings and salutations, my creative brothers and sisters.

Welcome to Not Real Art, the podcast where we talk to the world's most creative people. I am your host. Faithful, trusty, loyal, tireless, relentless host. Sourdough coming at you from Crew West Studio in Los Angeles.

Man, do we have an interesting show for you today. We have an author entrepreneur in the tech AI space. The one and only David Bosniak is here today to talk about his new book, AI for your Real Life.

A fun and practical guide to mastering ChatGPT, co pilots and generative AI to future proof yourself and stay relevant. Okay, that's a heck of a title.

And I'm so grateful that David is here today to talk about his book and his endeavors as an entrepreneur in the tech space. And he's here in part because he was an artist who's become an entrepreneur and I just love his story.

So we're going to get into that in a minute, but before I do, I want to thank you all, as I always do, for tuning in. Your loyalty means the world to us. We do this for you. It's all about you. So thank you for showing up yet again.

Thank you.

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Arturial.org Arturial is a arts nonprofit focused in media and entertainment and they sponsor the show which allows us to raise money and for you to get a tax deduction.

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So thank you so much for your support as always.

I want to of course, encourage you to go check out all the good, healthy, nutritious stuff we have for you@notrealart.com it's free range, it's organic, it's gluten free, it's MSG free. I mean, it's incredible website with nutritious stuff. You're going to learn about incredible artists and artworks.

You're going to be able to check out our first Friday's online art exhibitions.

You're going to be able to check out the remote series with Badir McCleary, an exclusive video series that is only available@notrealart.com so please check out the new remote series. Season two just dropped. And and so by all means, go check out episode one of season two.

We're gonna be dropping new episodes every month, so check it out right now. What are you waiting on? Go, go, go. What else? Oh, there's also a bunch of free educational videos there.

If you go to click on the school link, the Nautilart School, you're gonna be able to access hours and hours of free educational video that will help you learn about art, marketing and branding and promotions and how to make your first art toy and how to license your artwork and on and on and on. All kinds of great stuff there. So be sure to check it out. Okay? Okay. Boy oh boy, we have a really smart guest today.

We have a guy who has kind of done it all. David Bosniak started as an electrical engineering undergrad with a love of science and structure, but an even deeper love for storytelling.

So he followed every engineer's time honored path. He moved LA to become an actor and a writer.

Yes, he studied under Oscar winners shameless name drop Anthony Hopkins, built a regional theater that's still running 20 years later and spent over a decade writing, performing and producing for stage and screen. But he is a problem solver and he can't help but solve problems when they present themselves.

And he of course eventually won a national award from Chevron, went back to grad school for engineering. He helped work in the energy and infrastructure sector for large scale projects that helped drive technical innovation in construction.

But still, something bigger was calling. In the middle of the largest mental health crisis in US history, David saw an opportunity to bring together everything he learned.

The emotional truth of storytelling, the rigor of engineering, the power of emerging AI. And that vision became his company, Attune Media Labs.

Today, David's building empathetic a companions that use vocal tone, facial expressions and generative language to respond with real emotional intelligence, supporting people who feel lonely, anxious and overwhelmed. David's received four patents for his work on his the unique innovations that he has created.

And in the midst of all that, he managed to find the free time to write a book. Yes, he wrote and published his first book AI for the For Real Life. For your Real Life.

A fun practical guide to mastering ChatGPT copilots and generative AI to future proof yourself and stay relevant. Great book. I read it. Excellent primer for if you're A Neil fight or a newbie to AI it's an excellent place to start.

The through line was always clear to David. Make technology more human. And sometimes you have to take a nonlinear path to engineer breakthrough. So this is David Bosniak, people. He's here.

I happen to have known David for a while, probably as far as he's concerned, too long. But he was nice enough to come back on the show and talk about his important, really interesting, good work.

And of course, his very good book, which I've read. It's easy to read, and I encourage you to get it, especially if AI if you're new to AI and you want a good kind of beginner's guide.

His book is fantastic for that. So without further ado, let's get into this conversation with the one and only David Bosnia. David Bosniak, welcome to Not Real Art.

Thank you so much. It's great to be here, man.

It is so great to have you here because you are a author, you're an entrepreneur, and I've had the privilege of knowing you for a while. And this is, I don't know, your third or fourth life at least, right? We're both getting to that point in life where we've lived three or four lives.

Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

If I was joking the other day, if it's true that we have nine lives, I probably on my ninth life.

But from a professional standpoint, you've always just inspired me so much because you've just been able to reinvent yourself again and again because you're so damn smart and you've, you know, but yet you're at the core, right? You. You. You have this gift that most people don't have. You know, it feels like most people are either right brain or left brain.

And it feels like part of your genius is that you have access to both sides. You're a real polymath. You have the artists in you that I know from an acting, writing perspective.

But you also have this incredible, like, engineering, analytical mind because, oh, by the way, you're an engineer, and now you're in the tech space, you know, building a business, which is incredible. And we'll get into that. But the other day, you just shocked me yet again when suddenly on Social. I see. Oh, wait, David wrote a book.

David's an author now, too, on top of everything else.

Why not? In all my free time?

I mean, come on, overachiever. You're making the rest of us feel like losers over here.

But I tell you what, I was just so impressed and so happy for you and proud of, you know, as your friend and whatnot. But, but I'd say, you know, I want to get you on the show. I want to, I want to, you know, hear about the book. I want to help promote the book.

Because not only are you just, you know, dear friend and respected colleague, so to speak, but, but this book is so timely.

Thank you. Yeah, I mean that was kind of, that was the big impetus.

I mean, as you, as you mentioned, I mean, my background's pretty all over the place as I like to.

I mean, I got my undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and then did what every electrical engineer does, like moved to LA to be an actor and a writer and did that for, for about 13 years, then went back to school, got my master's in materials because this was the early days of solar. I thought it was super interesting. And so it was one of those things, oh, I want to learn how to do this.

Unfortunately, I didn't think it through because I learned everything there is to know about solar energy except the fact that it's not actually made in Los Angeles, where I live. So. And this was way before remote work was the thing. Yeah, so it was, it's always been like an all over the place thing then like to your point.

Yeah, I then, then reinvented myself again as like in the power, in the power industry and then in the construction industry, tried to try to bring some technology into that.

And then he and I kind of rejuvenated that idea because OpenAI came out with a little program called GPT3, which was a precursor to ChatGPT. But it was that first LLM that you really could have a colloquial conversation with.

And it was a really big aha moment for me because it was that idea of prior to that moment, all of our interactions with technology were really constricted to that idea of you're going to type something into a computer, it's going to talk to you, it's going to respond to you that way. It's only going to be responding with whatever information you give it.

So the way it would decide on how you're feeling is just by doing a sentiment analysis on your words. Like, if you're saying happy words, you're a happy person and you're moving on. We all know that's not how we communicate.

It was very interesting to see the evolution of an idea of a. Of something that really is going to change the world in ways that we can barely even imagine.

It's definitely the biggest disruptor since the Internet. Probably more impressed, more bigger than mobile. And it is something that's really moving incredibly fast. And that is a blessing and a curse.

So the way that everybody usually thinks about AI now is from whatever form of media they take in, and whatever form of media that is will give it a. Either it's going to be the savior of all things, or it's Skynet Terminators are coming and we're all going to die. And the truth is neither.

But there's been. I'm a. I'm an. I'm a techno optimist. So I think that there's going to be a lot more benefits coming out of it than the.

Than the fear is currently justifying. All that said, having been in the field now for going on five years and being.

And every time at a dinner party or whenever I have, anytime I'm having a conversation, people are asking these questions that to me seem pretty obvious just because I've done it for a long time, right? So I kind of got to thinking about a year ago, not even maybe like eight months ago. Well, I know how to use all these incredible tools.

I know how to write from my background in film and television, why don't I just write a book and why don't I use this technology to write that book? So instead of me sitting down and literally writing out every single word, I used AI to help me come up with a theme. And then with.

From that, I elaborated on that and helped use it to help me come up with the outline. And then I elaborated and fixed it and adjusted everything.

I mean, I always say I will get you maybe 70% of the way there, but it's that last 30% that's really what just distinguishes something from useful and really groundbreaking to something that sounds like, well, I wrote it. And so I iterated and I did. I did many different versions and threw out probably 2/3 of what it originally wrote.

But it gave me that, like, that first step. Like a lot of people talk about that blank, that blank page problem with writing, or you're just staring at the screen thing. What am I going to say?

Right. So it's often easier just to, to, to take something that's not great and be like, okay, I know now what I want to say about it and make it better.

So that's a really long winded answer. You're welcome.

Oh, I was going to say thank you. Yeah. No, I mean, more information is, is, Is always better, I think. And, and I appreciate all that because, you know, it is. AI is the.

Seem seemingly the topic of the day. Certainly some of the dinner parties I go to as well. And it's, it is fascinating because there's a lot of, you know, hype, right?

And then there's a reality. And I, I played with AI myself off and on. I haven't been a. You know, I like to play with new tools and I'm not really a.

You know, I don't consider myself a technologist by a long shot, but. But I do like using tools that make my life easier or, you know, make my work more efficient or more effective.

And so I've been playing with AI tools for a while. But I mean, one of the things that. But I've just been. I just kind of rolled up my sleeve and jumped in. I didn't, I didn't buy a book.

I didn't read a book. Obviously I bought your book and read it when it came out.

But what I loved about your book, what I love about your book is that it really is sort of a wonderful primer. Primer. What? You know, it's a, it's an introduction. I mean, it's kind of like. But it's a pretty solid. It's not, it's not like you go high level.

You know, there's like a high, like high level basic stuff, but you drill down and you get into some real kind of nitty gritty stuff too. And so there's something there for everybody. I mean, if you're new to AI, it's a great book.

But if you've been, you know, working with like, I have a little bit, like, it was still super valuable because I was learning deeper stuff that maybe I wouldn't have learned otherwise or would have taken me longer to learn it on my own or whatever. But it's all in your book.

It really is a great kind of introduction to AI no matter who you are or where you're at on that spectrum of like, complete neophyte beginner to, you know, kind of pseudo novice, you know, etc.

Yeah, I mean, that was really the intent. It's, it's, it's not a book that I, that I wrote for people to read from COVID to cover.

It's really people, wherever they are in their journey, can pick it up, look at a chapter here or a section there that it's all laid out in the table of contents of like. Okay, first, I'm going to. First, let's, let's talk about what it actually is. Let's talk about what it's not.

Let's talk about how, how we interact with this technology through this process of prompting and what prompting really is. I mean, I was at south by Southwest last year, and there was a really cool talk with this woman who was the head of HR for IBM.

And, and so, of course, at dinner parties for her, everybody asked, what should my kid be studying? What's the, what's the job of the future? And for a while, everyone was talking about being a prompt engineer, which, the way she put it, I just love.

She's like, that's like saying that you're an email composer. Like, there's not, there's, there's, there's no. Yes. Prompt engineering is a thing, but it's something that we will all be doing.

You're not, it's not going to be a standalone job because once we learn how to interact with the technology, then we're, then we can interact with all the technology. The process. It's called, it's called, it's called inference.

When the language model goes through the prompt and then responds and reacts to it, that's just gonna be the way that we interact. It's the new, it's the new code. The new coding language is for us, English.

It's gonna be whatever your, your native language is, your ability to, to interact with it colloquially, your ability to really dive into that. And so that, so there's parts that, there's part. The early parts of the book talk about that talk, like, help you learn how to craft those prompts.

There's a bunch of tricks and techniques that you just kind of pick up along the way and that, like giving it a, giving the, the AI a Persona, saying like, you're, you're the head of marketing of a big Madison Avenue firm and you and I need your help creating a good tagline for my product, xyz.

If you just put give me a tagline, it'll give you something, but if you give it more context or you give it a Persona, or you give it an expertise that it has, then it, it narrows down what it's actually looking for. Because the way all of AI works is, it's just, well, all of generative AI works right now with language models is.

It's just, it's, it's, it's word affinities.

So you are like, if you have, if you have milk and cup, you might think that the next word is going to be breakfast or something like that, as opposed to the next word could be zombie.

You, you know, it's the autocomplete on your phone where it just, it's assuming what the next word is, but instead of just having a few words to choose from, it has literally Internet. So, so it really is about getting to know what, wherever you are with the technology.

And then as you mentioned in the later chapters, I talk about how to make it more, how to use it and utilize it more effectively for your work, whether you're in mid career and you're just nervous about it, you're just getting started and you want to learn about it.

As we get further along, I get into a few more complicated programs that are super interesting, like Zapier, which is this ability to combine different things. So you can combine two different tasks, create a zap is what they call it, and then run it as a single workflow.

So you can have these really complex and elaborate systems that you can just put them all together and hit go. And something that used to take you a day and a half, you can do in five minutes once you've set it up. So that was really the impetus behind it.

It's not supposed to be a textbook. It's not that everything builds on itself. It's that I could use help here. Maybe this can help me.

Yeah, I mean, the book is not intimidating at all. I mean, that's not to say there aren't like, you know, what's the word? Very serious ideas and serious insight there. That's a serious book.

But it's actually, it's not an intimidating book because it's easy to read. Even the COVID is so fun. I have my copy right here. And by the way, I think your, your robot friend there is right behind you.

Look out, he's gonna, he might get you.

Well, I've got my coffee too. I'm ready.

And so, yeah, so every.

I mean, clearly you put a lot of intentionality into making this book as accessible and as friendly as possible because you Know, this is the new, you know, the Wild west, so to speak.

And you know, some people are excited and some people are intimidated and to have, you know, have a book that, you know, really is approachable, you know, it was just, it was, you know, kudos because you, you really, you really nailed it on, on that. And, and you know, but there's just so many fun things that are in there. You know, one of the things that jumped out at me was this exercise.

You said, you know what, do this. Go into your fridge, take a photo of what's in there, upload the fr. Upload the photo into AI and ask it what to eat for dinner based on the photo.

And the AI will literally analyze the photograph to see what's in your refrigerator and then spit out some recipes.

Yeah, no, and that's the cool thing.

There's so many, there's so many different utility that are beyond just like composing, composing a new email or like how do I, yeah, how do I like fix this spreadsheet? And, and that's the fun part. Like I love.

There's a whole chapter just on all of the artistic creativity means that you can do with, with a lot of these Gen AI tools like that. That example is just one of them. Like I do. And by the way, if you haven't tried it, you really should. It's.

It's kind of crazy because you're like, I didn't know I could use zucchini that way. I didn't have zucchini. But yeah, the. There are so many tools that lend themselves to be to thinking outside the box.

I mean, you can now create music, you can create art, you can create really whatever in your head. I mean, to your point from earlier, I kind of wrote the book the way I like to chat with my friends. So of course there's a team and Wonder.

Wonder Twins references all throughout it because child of the 80s, this is, this is my background. But the, the ability to really be creative with it is what is the most exciting to me.

Because yes, it's like efficiencies are off the chart, but there's only so much efficiencies you really can put in. And it's that 70, 30 part I talked about earlier. That part where human ingenuity and human creativity that is irreplaceable will always win out.

But it's always going to be necessary, but you actually have room for a whole lot more. You don't have to do every single brushstroke to create something that's gorgeous. But once you have a framework for it.

You can actually take it in any direction you want.

And so the realism of like go, like, you can upload a picture into some, into like a program like midjourney, and say, put this, put this like a picture of your office, for example. And then say, make my office as if it's on Mars. And then suddenly you're in this Martian landscape.

And then you can really, you can put yourself into it. In the same way I've got this weird backdrop here. You can put yourself into these different scenarios.

You can create all sorts of different characters and you can create all sorts of different, both imagery and movies and sounds and, and dialogues and you can really elaborate on things that weren't possible just two, three years ago. And that's really the fun part at the end of the day.

Yes, it's going to help us, it's going to help us an enormous amount with work, but it's really, it really can help us with a lot more than that. And that's kind of like devil's in the details and that's what I really love about it.

Yeah.

And you know, again, I mean, you know, for myself, one of the things that, that I've really come to appreciate about AI using AI tools is not just the time it might save me, you know, in terms of whatever task, but, but as a thought partner, like if I have a half baked idea or if I'm just stuck on something, you know. Here. Well, here's a very poignant personal example. I mean, I had a.

Recently I had a dear friend, my college room best friend from college passed away and his family asked me to go speak at his funeral and which I did.

But he was a real outdoorsman, you know, and I was trying to find a poem that sort of honored him but within, within the context of his love for the outdoors. And so I went to, to Perplexity and I started searching for poems for, you know, to honor outdoorsmen who have died.

You know, it was basically the prompt and, and, and within like, I don't know, 10 poems, I found the one like, like within, I mean, within minutes I found it, it spit, it spit out 10 poems or whatever.

And then the one that was the one was like amazing and perfect and I grabbed it and I had it within 10 minutes and I read it at the funeral and you know, people cried. I mean it was just like a wonderful, powerful tool that made my life easier, saved me time. It was a thought partner.

And you know, this idea that the 70, 30 thing, I totally Get. Because I feel like, you know, with AI, what's the word? I mean, it's not this doomsday scenario.

It really is opportunity to be like one plus one equals three. Like me and AI together, we're better than we are apart.

Absolutely. It's additive. It's not, it's. It doesn't. I mean, look, the replacement issue is, is real. There's going to be a lot of disruption because of it.

But really it's. I mean, I say it in the book. It's kind of becoming like a worn phrase. But it's not like that AI is going to take your job.

The person who knows how to use AI is going to take your job. It. And so it's the, it's the idea that you really can, you, you can collaborate with it and it can take you far.

Like just before, before a, before, like AI search was an option, we were all just using Google and if you had tried to do the same thing of like find me a poem, blah, blah, blah, well then you would have gotten the, like the Google layout that we're all now very used to. The first three things are sponsored links. Then you've got two or three actual search links and you've got three more sponsored links.

Two or three and then three more, and that's the page. So you're really only getting like five or six links that are what you're asking for as opposed to what they're selling you off of. Off of.

Off of Google search and the ability to be more direct in that. If you had.

And also if you had put in like the exact situation that you're talking about about your friend passing away and he was an outdoorsman and, and you wanted to capture that feeling. If you had put that into, if you can still try, if you put that into Google, you'll get something.

And you might get like a few links to maybe a Robert Frost poem or something like that.

But when you put it into a chatgpt or a perplexity, like you said, it will take the exact sentiment behind what you're saying and the elaborate nature of your description. It takes all of that into account.

It's not just doing a keyword search for outdoors poem, funeral, like, like you can put those three words in and get a very different response. I mean, a very similar response on Google and a very different response on, on an AI search.

Yeah, yeah, no, that, that's. It's night and day.

It's sort of, I mean, AI search and I use perplexity a lot but you know, it sort of delivers on what Google promised on some level. Right. Like, you know, I mean, Google was revolutionary when it came out.

Absolutely.

But. But then of course it got commercialized and to your point, I mean, so much of the results were sponsored results and you know, et cetera, et cetera.

So you're not necessarily getting the best information, you know, on page one or whatever. But anyway, perplexity, you know, essentially, you know, it's the needle in the haystack.

I mean, you, you can get to the needle pretty damn quickly using AI. And I love that. I love it as a time saver. I love it as a thought partner. I love is just as a, you know, I had to write a, a press release.

Somebody asked me for a press release a while back for something and they gave me like a day to turn it around. I was like, wait a minute, I need, you know, but I just, I went to, went to Claude. I think I said, I need a, you know, here's the info.

I uploaded some documents, you know, trained it for a minute. You know, please write me a press release based on. And within 15 minutes I was done.

Yeah, I know, I know.

Like, man, that would have taken me three hours normally, you know.

No, absolutely, absolutely.

And, and it's, and it's still, it's still based off of the information you put in and you can still just like do that brain dump onto a piece of paper or onto, onto the prompt line of Claude, for example, and it will, will elaborate and fill in the details and give you whatever tone you're looking for. And you and my company, I have to do annual and quarterly reporting to the, to the shareholders.

I did a bunch of searches, format, and then I asked it to like, I've dumped all the information in and I said, give it to me. And what would have taken me like four days and a bunch of revisions and have like all sorts of people to have to go over.

It suddenly just takes you an hour and that's a huge time saver.

But again, I like to come back to the, the creative aspect because also I know that, I know the audience of your show tends to be more people who are in the creative fields. It, it doesn't have to be an adversary in those things.

Like, I mean, I, for one, I mean, I've always thought my ability to draw a stick figure was kind of iffy.

So I've seen your stick figures. I mean, if there was ever a master stick figure drawer.

I know, I know. Again, again, you're welcome. I mean, that's, that, that's what I bring to the table.

But like, I've always envied people who could just have an idea and be able to create it visually. And then tools started to come along that made that more possible.

And then you've got things like Canva and Figma and all these really, really advanced tools that allow for you to, to deposit ideas into a visual format. If you don't have the ability to actually draw it yourself, this just accelerates that first step of it that you would normally be struggling over.

And then from there you can take it in any direction you want. There's a program that I, that I really enjoy. It's called Suno, and it makes, makes music for you.

And so you just kind of pick the genre, you pick a few different aspects of it. You, you pick the feel you're going for and it creates a beat for you or a tempo or, I mean, you can even have it.

You can even combine that with other programs and have full songs and have them be like these recording sessions. That's not going to replace Beyonce and Katy Perry.

I mean, like, people who know what they're doing are always going to be head and shoulders above what rank amateurs like, like me and like a lot of people who are playing around with these tools can do.

But it is nice to know that suddenly you don't have to have some divine gift to actually be able to do a lot of the things that a lot of artists take for granted.

I mean, I can't draw a straight line, but I had a friend in high school who could just sit down and suddenly have a whole animated page in three minutes.

So like, it's, it's not that it's leveling the playing field, it's just giving access to certain creative tools that most people don't, but it just don't. It. It doesn't exist for them.

Yeah, you know, you're definitely hitting the nail on the head. And from a artist perspective, there's a lot of, well, like most things, artists, it's not a monolithic community.

And so there's a lot of different opinions about, you know, the use of AI for good, better, indifferent, and of course, it all over the map. You know, I think of course some artists see it as a fantastic tool, collaboration tool, thought partner, that kind of thing.

And you know, some artists are technologists and are you coding AI within their artworks? So there's, you know, clearly levels to this.

But you know, in the, in terms of like your basic visual art image, this Idea of like, okay, well, well, there's always been clip art, right? So it's sort of a clip art analogy. It's like, oh, okay. AI art is kind of the new clip art on a certain level. It's like, okay, I don't know how to Dr.

I used to maybe just have a program that I could grab a line drawing of a taco because I'm, you know, doing something about tacos. But. But with AI, you can now go and say, hey, I need an image of a taco. And it'll pop it up in a minute or a second.

And, and by the way, 20 of them, and you can choose which one you want or whatever. But the issue, drilling down on that a little at Surface, it sounds really cool and it's great and it is convenient and it is going to be.

Ultimately, all these issues I think, will be worked out on one way or another. But the copyright issue is real. I mean, as I understand it, you know, the LLMs, you know, they're trained based on existing data on the Internet.

And to the extent that it's drawing an image, that image it's drawing is informed by all the artworks, the millions and billions of images on the Internet. And so artists are up in arms saying, wait a minute, shouldn't I get a royalty? Shouldn't I be compensated?

Because that image that I created kind of looks like my work, it looks like my aesthetic. And so it's a fascinating time. I don't know exactly how they're going to end up, you know, working that out.

It's a legitimate argument, I would think that's, I think, part of the angst for artists. It's like, wait a minute, you know, like, this isn't very original. You know, I can see the influence of Keith Haring or whoever the case might be.

So, like, what, what, what is. Do you know what the current thinking is on this issue and where we're at? And how do you see this?

It's, I mean, it is a huge issue and it's, and it's relevant to, to a lot of people. And it's, it's real. So it shouldn't be, it shouldn't be dismissed or being diminutive to, towards it. There's this, this, this concept of fair use.

And that is the, that's the idea behind what, what a lot of the LLM companies, OpenAI Anthropic, then followed like Meta with their llama. And then a lot of the other companies, we were basically, I mean, in the beginning, they were just ignoring Copyright.

They were just scraping everything. They would go on to Reddit and take, take every word that was said. They would go onto YouTube and download every video and just scrape that data.

Then people started to get wise and they were like, you can't do that. And then, so that all basically stopped. Then there is that, okay, how much of my work is in there? The problem with AI is it's a black box.

There is no way to track, to track electrons. Like, oh, well, this went to this, went to this, went to this. And that's how it got here. You can't do it.

And so a lot of, a lot of the similarities are inferred now. I mean, there were cases when there was a.

There's a big case between the New York Times and OpenAI about the fact that you could, you could pretty much recreate an entire, entire New York Times article almost verbatim. Like, I mean, just only a few things removed and changed.

And you can't make an argument that it's not, it's not that, that, that it's not taking that information virtually whole hog.

Yeah.

And so there's a, there's a huge, there's a huge amount of legal wrangling that's going on. A case just was just processed even a week ago, where, I'm forgetting which companies were specifically involved. So I won't name any.

But where a really large organization was able to procure the rights to an enormous data set of people's writing for a specific fee. And that's really where it's going to be, where what it's going to come down to.

People aren't going to be able to claim royalties after the fact, but they will be able to sell into the data sets. And that's, I think, where it's going to, what it'll come down to, of people. People have to own their creations. There's no question about that.

And the Trade and Copyright office will not let you copyright a prompt. Like, you can't, doesn't matter how elaborate it is. You can't copyright the input to an LLM. The output is a different story.

And the output, what it allows for is if you make significant changes.

Like, I mean, like I wrote the book and in the book and I copyright, I went to, I put it in the copyright office and they, and I said that I made like significant changes. Most of the book is really rewritten by me.

But then if, like in the book I have like these fun little, like, illustrations and all of those I did with different programs, whether they were dall. Er, midjourney or pica. I used a lot of these different ones to create it. I didn't do anything to those.

I mean I did a little tweaking here and there, but I mean I don't. Again, I'm not a visual artist.

And so in on my copyright for the book there is a disclaimer saying that the, that all the illustrations are, the illustrations themselves are not copyrightable because they were, they were not created by a human. So it is a dynamic situation and the way we're going to get around it is not clear at the moment it will evolve as the technology evolves.

Because what is really fundamental for everyone to understand is there's nothing static about this, about what's happening right now. Where we are today is light years from where we were six months ago. And so that, that perpetual cycle is not going to decrease.

And with the amount of resources that are just being funneled into these technologies, it's only going to get faster and better and more, more realistic. And we are going to have to, as the society decide what, how, how we value people's creations. What constitutes the creation of a person?

I mean, I mean the creation by a person versus things that are like there's always been, there's always been tools that have assisted us in creating. I mean the, when people invented pigment, suddenly they could draw better.

And then they, and then like the first, the first computer assisted programs came out and it would, it allowed for a whole different medium of artwork to start coming out. It wasn't that the people who were using it were no longer artists, they were just using a medium differently.

Yes.

So there's going to be, there's going to be. I think, I think the fair use argument in the beginning is getting a bit debunked.

There's, there's rulings that, that are still coming out all the way up through the Supreme Court around it. But it's going to be a matter of people are going to have to really know how to, how to monetize their creations.

Which I imagine is one of the biggest problems for artists anyways.

Like, they're like, people become artists not because they're good bankers, they become artists because that's their creative drive and not knowing how to, what to do with that. After you've created it, you basically, you follow the same system that somebody else did before you.

And if that system suddenly breaks, what's your outlet? What are your means of remediation?

Well, I think the silver lining in all of this for you is that given the dynamic, fluid nature of everything. I think your book has already got volumes 2, 3, 4, 5. Coming down the pike here. This book may already be out of date, my friend. It just came out.

Yeah, no, it's terrifying. Like I'm, I already like look back at it and be like, oh yeah, no, that's like, I don't even know. Does that company still exist?

Like, like there's, there's a lot of that.

Yeah. Years ago. Years, like talk about three lifetimes ago.

I got, I was doing freelance writing and I got hired to write this sort of travel book about Chicago. You know, it was like, you know, best places to eat, drink and have fun in Chicago.

I worked so hard to only focus on those places that had been around for a long time, you know, because I was like, okay, I want this book because this was pre Internet, this was print book, right? So it was like I wanted the book to be as timely and relevant for as long as possible.

And so I worked really hard to really focus on those classic spots that have been around forever. Probably going to be around forever.

The first, first month the book comes out, one of my favorite places that I put in the book that been there forever. Closed down. Like it was like, looks brand new now. Now it's already out of date. But anyway, yes, it is a fluid dynamic situation. It is incredibly.

And I think that's part of, right. The fear that people have. It's like, wait a minute, we got a tiger by the tail here.

You know, and our government and our leaders can't seem to agree on anything anymore.

You know, how the heck are we going to be thoughtful and strategic in humane about this and because it's moving so fast and if you're, if you are Sam Altman, you don't. You mean you're glad it's moving fast. You don't want regulation, you don't want, you know, constraints, guardrails.

And obviously the government, you know, whether they care or not, you know, they're not doing much about it seems in fact maybe they're even trying to get rid of regulations so that. Well, by the way, I think they just did. I think now the states, you can't, like there's 10 years that a state can't sue or put constraints on AI.

Like basically they gave AI like a 10 year free Runway just to do whatever. So it is a dynamic, fluid situation, a lot of change. And I think that's part of the anxiety is like people just don't know like where this is going.

And no one, you know, it's like there's not much of a safety net or assurance that, you know, we're not going to like ultimately shoot ourselves in the foot somehow, you know.

Yeah, it's really an important topic and an important point. I mean the company that I started, it's called the Tune Media Labs and we are a public benefit corporation. And the reason it's.

And that's basically for those people who don't know, it's basically like a regular C Corp. But instead of just being, just having the only like the highest requirement for a C Corp is, is as a fiduciary to shareholder value.

That's, that is, that is 100% of the job of the entire executive team.

Whereas a public benefit corporation allows you to create a public benefit statement that can be on par with shareholder value that can be North Star, if you will, for what the company's really all about. I mean, I mean Patagonia did a great job of really trailblazing a lot of this. And so we create.

So our, our product is a empathic AI support companion and we, and we use this artificial emotional intelligence to really create that. But really what we wanted to do was create something where like the Hippocratic oath was in play. Like, like first you. No harm the.

The idea of really trying to drive a, an ethical framework where the health and wellbeing of the user is sacrosanct. It is our highest priority and nothing can really come before that.

It's why my company will never like, sell advertisement because the data is literally people's thoughts and feelings. You can't do that. You lose credibility, you lose trust. And frankly, I don't want to be part of that company.

So I think AI ethics is a very important topic. There are a lot of ethicists that are trying to, that are trying to weigh in, but ethics needs technology to support it. And so we're trying.

So one of the things we're trying to do is create almost that ethical layer that can be the, like what we call. One of the things we do because at the core of what we've built is basically an empathy engine.

And we're trying to develop the equivalent of intel inside for EQ and allow for technology to have that ethical framework that we are. If we're not born with it, we're taught it.

Growing up, I mean, I'm sure everybody's, everybody's heard the same things growing up about what's right and what's wrong. And that's the thing that's missing from the harsh reality of the ones and zeros of regular AI.

And so I think that's a really important factor that we all have to collectively work towards. Governments aren't going to do anything about it just because it's good. Governments are going to follow where the dollars lead.

And right now all the dollars are pushing, pushing against those regulations.

And, and so, so we have to be just vigilant consumers of these products and understand what's good, what's useful and what is and what is outside the bounds of what we're, what we're accepting.

You know, you didn't. I love what you're saying. You didn't use this word, but what struck me about what were you saying? It's like you're, you're your company.

You said a tune. A tune Labs.

Attune Media Labs.

Yeah, Attune Labs. So it's almost like you guys are providing almost like the conscience of tech. It's like, oh, okay, yeah, your tech is a sociopath.

It has no sense of empathy or ethics. Insert our tech here because now, thanks to us, your tech will have a conscience and be empathetic.

And wouldn't that be wonderful, right, if the tech is actually humane and cares.

Yeah. I mean, like, we all, like everybody has their own ethical framework. And who am I to tell anybody else how to live their life?

But there are things that, that I think we, as we as people within an organized and somewhat advanced society can agree upon. And when you remove, when you remove all constraints from any technology, it reverts to the lowest common denominator of our human existence.

I mean, you look at, you looked at the, like the early models when they just had a train on, like, only Twitter, instantly you had a racist, misogynistic bot that was, that was spouting all this, all this, like, really far, far extreme dogma. So, I mean, the, the impulse towards our better angels requires us to really consciously work towards it because easy will beat out.

Easy will beat out anything that's thoughtful and complicated every time. And we have to really be the, be the shepherds of that new techno technological future. Because, I mean, look, I'm midlife, but I've got a.

My son is 14. It's a very different world that he's entering into.

And I'm really hoping that we can establish a framework that will allow that world to be flourishing and not constricting. I mean, initial conditions matter.

So, yeah, I want to make sure that we take the time to really honor and kind of celebrate the work that you and your father have been doing with your company Attune. Because it is such a fascinating.

I've had the privilege of sort of hearing about it over the last few years, but it is, it is such an amazing gift that you're trying to give the world, you know, really, because, and maybe this has changed but you know, I know like from the get go you guys were really focused on trying to solve the loneliness crisis. And we have so many folks that are just battling loneliness and depression and all the things that are related.

There's no way that for all kinds of reasons, the only way you're going to scale a solution, it's got to be, it's gotta be tech centric on some level. And, and you're, it just so happens your dad is a work world renowned expert that can maybe help solve some of this problem.

And so you guys decided to, you know, leverage technology to bring, bring companionship, if you will, you know, to the masses. So where are you now in this? Because you've been working at this for a few years. How's, how is it going? What's the deployment like?

What are some of the results you're seeing?

So it's been, it's been remarkable. Yeah, we, I mean loneliness. The, the former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy basically declared it a pandemic before the COVID pandemic.

Loneliness affects one out of every two people in the United States. So we're talking about 160, 170 million people that are clinically considered lonely. And it's not just like, oh, sad, you're lonely. Boo hoo.

There's really clinical repercussions to it.

You have a 30% higher chance of stroke or heart disease, a 50% higher chance of dementia, 60% higher chance of just dying prematurely because loneliness causes raising cortisol and it's, and the inflammation that comes from that accelerates all these other disease states. So that was really the impetus behind our desire to, to create that empathic companion that could be available 247 to everyone.

If you take every single person who's a licensed anything, anything in behavioral health in the United States, you've got maybe about a million people. So you've got about a million people who are trying to help the problems of 170 million. It's never going to work.

So we, so really what we wanted to do was create a situation and a technology that could be that 247 anytime, anywhere that really gets to know you and learns who you are over time. And that's what we created. We call it, we call it MIM because it's, it mimics how we communicate human communication.

The lion's share of it is actually nonverbal. But the only way technology has to know what we're feeling is by that sentiment analysis I mentioned earlier.

So what we can do is we can bring all of the non verbal communication back into the conversation. It's the difference between I'm fine and fine.

So we can take all of those data, those biometric data that we naturally absorb, put it back into our model that's designed by my dad's 54 years of clinical psychoanalytic experience and, and create something that's really empathic, that can attune to who you are. That's what, that's where the name came from. This, we've brought MIM now into the marketplace.

We did some early studies just internally where 110 people, three months of interacting with Mim and had 86% of them had lower loneliness scores, 55% had lower anxiety, 45% lower stress levels. It was far from a rigorous clinical trial, but it was, it definitely showed us that this is the right direction.

There was actually something came out from Anthropic, just like the last two days where they said almost 3% of all conversations with Claude are around advice for interpersonal relations. And there was something on, that came out on TikTok just in the month of March. There were 16.7 million comments about using ChatGPT as a therapist.

And I mean look, it's great, people are using whatever is available, but these tools weren't designed for that. And so the, so our idea is how do we improve human flourishing? How do we really get people what they need, when they need it, where they are?

And that's, that was the genesis behind, behind Attune Media Labs and behind mim. And we launched commercially last year and started to gain a bit of traction.

One of our first clients was actually the Scan Group, has a company called Health Care in Action which provides the street medicine for the homeless community in Los Angeles County. And so they were being given phones with mims on them so that they would have somebody to talk to.

And so we're trying to go after people where they are, whether it's through health systems, provider networks, employee benefits programs and even government programs. We're talking internationally, we're talking to the country of Cameroon to help their, their public health workers who have a 70% burnout rate.

So the idea really is let's create something that can really benefit People and let's get it into as many hands as possible. So it's been a really exciting journey for me.

Well, you know what I mean. As I'm listening to you talk, I'm realizing that we have got to get your technology in the hands of artists.

Absolutely.

I know so many artists that are suffering from these things, loneliness or depression or anxiety or self loathing or what have you. And I think it would be such a powerful, powerful application. We should absolutely talk about that.

But yes, I mean, all kinds of cohorts, whether it's artists or just, you know, regular folks out there dealing with the stress of life. Having somebody that not just you could talk to, but somebody you could confide in, you know, and, and no, there's no judgment.

Right. It's the judgment free aspect. It doesn't care if you say the same thing a hundred times. It doesn't care if you have opinions that are controversial.

It might not agree with those opinions. It might challenge you to espouse on where and how you got to those opinions.

But it's not going to dismiss you because you have thoughts that you might not be able to talk to anybody about, whether in whatever method.

But, but Scott, I'm happy to, we can, we can put links in the show notes and I'm happy to give your listeners like a free month of, of use of Mim for if they just.

I don't know how people communicate with you and your show, but I'm happy to give people who reach out a free month of access just to try it because it is, can be very like, we found it to be very helpful for people. It helps them reinspire their creativity because you can have those back and forth dialogues. MIM has its own inner life.

You can ask Mim about her mind's mind's female, so I always use she.

But you can ask, you can ask her about her hopes or dreams, her thoughts or feelings, and she'll happily discuss all those things introspectively as well. And so it can really, it can help a lot of people and it's really about getting it into people's hands. So, yeah, be happy to do that.

Wow, thank you for that. Now. That'd be amazing.

And we'll talk about how to serve that up in the best way because I really, truly believe that what you're doing is so important for everyone.

And of course, our focus is on serving the creative community and artists and anything we can do to support them, empower them, make their lives easier. That's what we're here for. So thank you for that very special, valuable offer. Thank you for that.

And well, my friend, I mean, we, you, you're a busy man. You're building a revolutionary, cutting edge company. Congratulations on all of your hard work and success. I know every day is a struggle.

Entrepreneurship is, is sexy, wonderful, exciting idea. But the reality is it is a, it is a stressful slog.

Yeah. And you guys, everyone's a 10 year overnight success.

That's right. That's right. And I mean, you've been at it about five years now, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. But you're growing and things are.

I had more hair when I started.

You and me both. Well, David Bosniak, kudos to you, my friend. Thank you for coming through.

We're gonna do our best to promote your book and get it out there as well as, you know, help honor what you're doing with, with the tune and helping to solve the loneliness crisis because it truly is a serious issue.

Well, thank you, thank you so much for having me on. Thank you for providing this amazing platform for artists in general. Big fan, long time listener, first time caller.

So really, really, really proud of what you've created here with Not Real Art. It's really, really a gift to the world. So thank you for doing that too.

Thanks, pal. I had a, I had a fun thing happen the other day.

My daughter was, I picked her up from the school bus and she got off the bus, she got in my car and she says to me, she's like, yeah, I just talked to my, my friend, I was talking to my friend on the bus and she said, well, what does your dad do? And my daughter says, well, he's a podcaster. He has a podcast. And the friend said, oh yeah, what's it called?

She said, well, yeah, it's called Not Real Art. And the friend goes, that's my mom's favorite podcast. And my daughter was so proud. She's like, that's my dad.

I'm like, I'm like, hey, you know, I'm out there. People, people know me. No, thank you for that. Thank you for the kind words, thank you for coming through and by the way, open door policy.

Please come back anytime to give us updates, share your exciting work. And by the way, your second edition, your new edition of the book coming out next year, because I know.

Yeah, exactly. Thanks, Scott. Really appreciate it. And yeah, it's good time.

Sounds good, David. Thank you. Have a great day.

You too.

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