AI, IoT, and the Human Element: Insights from Andre Brongniart

The Intersection of Humanity and Technology with Andre Brongniart

In this episode of The Human Code, host Don Finley sits down with Andre Brongniart, a principal engineer with a diverse background in psychology, social work, and technology, to discuss his unique journey into the tech world. Andre shares insights on the evolution and implications of IoT, AI, and quantum computing, emphasizing the balance between technological advancement and personal privacy. They explore the ethical and practical considerations of AI, quantum computing's potential to revolutionize data processing, and offer guidance on navigating the rapidly evolving tech landscape. The episode highlights the importance of incorporating human perspectives and ethical considerations in AI development.

00:00 Introduction to The Human Code

00:51 Guest Introduction: Andre Brongniart

01:10 Andre's Journey: From Social Work to Technology

01:18 The Impact of IoT and AI on Modern Life

07:37 Balancing Privacy and Innovation

14:37 Exploring AI Tools and Future Trends

16:53 Quantum Computing and Its Potential

21:53 Preparing for the Technological Revolution

26:02 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Sponsored by FINdustries 

Transcript

Don Finley: 0:00

Welcome to The Human Code, the podcast where technology meets humanity, and the future is shaped by the leaders and innovators of today. I'm your host, Don Finley, inviting you on a journey through the fascinating world of tech, leadership, and personal growth. Here, we delve into the stories of visionary minds, Who are not only driving technological advancement, but also embodying the personal journeys and insights that inspire us all. Each episode, we explore the intersections where human ingenuity meets the cutting edge of technology, unpacking the experiences, challenges, and triumphs that define our era. So, whether you are a tech enthusiast, an inspiring entrepreneur, or simply curious about the human narratives behind the digital revolution, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Human Code. In this episode. We're thrilled to welcome Andre Brongniart, a principal engineer with extensive experience in dev sec ops cloud infrastructure and cutting edge technologies like internet of things. AI and quantum computing. With a background that blends psychology and technology, Andre brings a deeply human perspective to the tech world. Today, Andre and I will share his journey from social work to technology and how it shaped his approach to engineering and leadership. The impact of IOT and AI on modern life, including the challenges and opportunities they present for privacy and user experience. As well as insights into the future of AI and quantum computing and how we can prepare for the ethical and practical implications of these advancements. Join us as we dive into these thought provoking topics with Andre Brongniart. This episode is packed with valuable insights that will inspire you to rethink how you approach technology and its integration into everyday life. You won't want to miss it. Welcome back to another episode. I'm here with Andre Brongniart and Andre, I got to say, it's been a pleasure talking to you. We've had a few pre calls and then getting into this, really love the perspectives that you've been bringing to the table. And I just got to ask you, what is it that got you interested in the intersection between humanity and technology?

Andre Brongniart: 2:12

sure. I've been working in technology for about 13 to 15 years. It's hard to, it's like a great transition. I used to work in other fields. technology I was working as a psychiatric social worker. And, Before that, I actually studied film production and was very in touch with the technologies that are used for film production at that time. and I had a kind of pivot in my career from film and I opted for something more intellectually focused, which was psychology. And that's very human based type of, engagement. So giving, counseling sessions and helping mentally ill people with their problems in different settings. and it's a really, how can I describe it? A very eye opening and a great experience to have learned those things and gone to college to learn more. about it. I started a master's degree in it and realized, you know what? This is probably not the best focus for me, for a number of reasons. I was already involved with technology and film and I wanted to come back to that. So I did not complete my master's. And I decided to pursue technology. what specifically I was looking into more of the IT aspects. the infrastructure and one of the things that really sparked my interest while I was working as a social worker was actually a conversation with. Amazon executive, at the time on NPR talking about multi core, technologies and hyper threading, for the cloud and how they were implementing that back when, and I found that fascinating, the ability that, to have, multiple thread processing. And I just started really diving into technology, I've always been interested in technology. I make electronic music. I like to record guitar on the computer. So in that sense that got me there. So the way that I interact with technology drew me naturally to it, to get involved more in it and launch a career in that.

Don Finley: 4:19

given that you've had a number of careers, Like you, you went on the psychology, the social work. helping mentally ill people, but then also with film, Like you're seeing that interface of how people are working with technology to, aid in telling stories, Like we're sharing information with each other. We're moving the ball forward there. what is it that you've seen in the last few years that have excited you around the technology of either storytelling or, from your past lives? What could be beneficial to the world.

Andre Brongniart: 4:52

if you think about it from connection between the human and the technology that are present now, it's evolved greatly since around the same time that, that, that was discussing that I changed my career was when the iPhone was planned to come out, the first iPhone. So I had wind about it, that there was going to be a device that had a touch screen. It was coming out from Apple and they didn't want to share what it was. And it was the iPhone. everything is like IoT connected these days, Almost. anything can be IoT connected. what meaning does that have from my perspective is that everything is translatable to data. So everything you do with an IoT connected device, whether it's your smartphone, your computer, a toaster, it could be anything, all that data, if, as long as it's connected to the web, it's going somewhere to, the cloud that is value for primarily really for the manufacturer of that product to use, but also you as an end user get, get value from. The fact that they're analyzing what is happening with those devices so that you are, they're able to create a better product. They're able to improve on what they have. I'm not sure that most people think about that very much, or my oven is connected to the internet kind of thing, but it brings all the things together and that's where IoT is really breaking through. So when you start to implement machine learning and AI into the mix and start really analyzing all this data and then the powers of what it can do, it just explodes, Like you have an evolution of what the potential possibilities are. yeah,

Don Finley: 6:44

So if I'm hearing you correctly, we've got an explosion of devices that are online now, Like the IOT devices, we have number of items in our own space that, I'm sitting here just counting the devices that are probably pinging the internet right now and sending telemetry data back as far as, their usage. And like you're saying, there's two sides to this. The manufacturer gets a benefit of understanding how their product is being used. The consumer, reaps the reward of whether or not they can actually, use that data to make the product better. but then additionally, like I get You know, I have Amazon Alexa and, she dings every once in a while if there's a package at the front door or if there's something else. And so I get some advantage of knowing this. I know when the Amazon truck is, 10 stops away, because of the temp telemetry and IOT data that gets shared. I think one thing that you've hit on I'd love to dive deeper into is that balance between, our privacy as individuals, and then also like the shared collective benefit actually exposing that data. And I think a lot of us we sign YULU agreements by clicking a button. That's like a 40 page document for how, Apple or Microsoft or anybody else is going to be using our data. do you have any tips for people as far as like an understanding of what they could be sharing and should be sharing

Andre Brongniart: 8:08

I think from my perspective, once you click a EULA. a license agreement, and it's a fine print agreement that you're not really reading. Assume that your privacy and data will be used, in any way, shape, or form. Whether it's policies and regulations controlling that or not really varies greatly on where you are, where you're resident of, and what country you live in. so your privacy in terms of using that device will be limited to or controlled by what input you put into that device. how you use it and the actual like license agreement holder, which is between you and the company that is giving you that, that ULA. So I guess you could say, assume, I don't like to say the worst, but assume that anything and everything can go from that device. that's the best suggestion I have in terms of your privacy. Unless you know that you have control over it another way, technically, assume that.

Don Finley: 9:28

I think you're bringing up a good point. We like, we touched on the iPhone earlier, And the iPhone was basically three features, When it first came out, what is it? Phone calls, music. and Internet were the three things that Jobs announced, that day. And it's blown up to be so much more and a device that, many of us pick up a hundred times a day in order to look at. And now that we have generative AI coming into the picture and deeper integrations, Along those lines, I think the conversation around privacy and security is coming front and center because it was one thing to basically assume that your data was going to go sit in a data warehouse and then somebody was going to have to parse it, figure out what was going on. Or, it was just the endless trough of data that could essentially hide, the inconsequential stuff that you're doing. But we've seen what happens with online advertising and social media in which there's a an added benefit to have a better, understanding of what you're in the market to buy. What, emotions will actually keep you on applications longer. and with generative AI being so deeply ingrained into the tools and into our faces, if there is alignment with the, advertisers, I think it creates a different product than one that is aligned to the user's goals and benefits. you have any input on that topic as well?

Andre Brongniart: 10:54

Yeah, from the perspective of, the data and how it's used, it could Use, abuse, misuse, it's like Anything, it can be used correctly and ethically it can be used unethically. and when it comes to, a person that's in, we're using technology, how do you benefit from it and not take, not be taking advantage of it? It's a very complicated, dynamic, right? We're paying for devices that we must agree to the EULA to use. If you don't agree, it won't let you proceed. Now, how does, how do you get an advantage of it? your advantage is that you're using a device that enables you to interact with technology in a way that improves your life to one degree or another. It includes the ability to communicate with people all around the world, to extend your career. to learn things on a, in a split second. I've been using lately Brave browser. it's a privacy based browser. It's very good. it's, also has, good tracking, blocking abilities. So we'll track and we'll block things by default. You don't need like a, a browser plugin to, to block fingerprinting or whatever, it does it for you. And it will tell you what it's doing. One of the greatest features of it recently that I really found was the AI integration. There's Brave AI, which is, to be honest, it's Really good. I'm not sure, I haven't looked into what LLM is backing it, but, or if it's GPT or what, but it's very well, tuned for searches. It's a search AI. So when you put in the search, you just click on the A button and it will search all the most relevant. Results and give you a summary of all that in its own words, which is it doesn't very well. So while

Don Finley: 12:53

I gotta say that one of those features that I'm really enjoying about the ARC browser as well, that search, it's a search for me capability that it goes out and it looks at six, I think six or so different websites to find your answer and then it compiles a small report for you.

Andre Brongniart: 13:11

yeah really quick it's a nice way to see a summary of the top results according to whatever search engine you're using So that's utility and when Brave is not, they have a plan where you can make credits, crypto credits, on their browser accepting Brave advertisements specifically geared towards you and your browser and what your profile is, still maintaining a certain degree of safety or privacy and security that you're browsing with minimal tracking. You're staying within a more of a brave ecosystem unless it's a less of a maybe perhaps an an Alexa ecosystem or a Google ecosystem of search and data. So you still have options, which is a really good thing is that you have choices you can make. The most obvious choice is google. com. Is that always the best? you must ask because it's the most, it's the best known. It's the, it started and it was an amazing engine, there's options now and they're well, very well integrated into browsers these days. I

Don Finley: 14:37

was using an open AI assistant this morning, we were building, team is working on a, an AI that's helping to answer like my social media messages, So LinkedIn, Instagram, kind of thing, all from the business accounts to kind of see, but then we also have Braze, Brave has their AI. Like I was saying, I use Arc browsers AI. And then additionally, we have another tool that has its own AI built into it as well. And I'm just getting an inundation of AI tools. And I'm just curious about how you see, the possible futures of what these AIs, are we going to be having, 15, 20 AIs that we're interacting with? Are we going to have, a handful? Do you see there being consolidation in the future do we see AI as a feature or AI as a product or both?

Andre Brongniart: 15:24

think it's both, but in a very high level, it's both. I think if our technology private sector and market is healthy, we'll have options. If we have mergers that are, becoming more of a singular like monopoly, then obviously it's going to be more limited. And that happens, obviously, that's happened to a lot of technology. But I think that AI is always going to have niche cases, and it's always going to have products and features that, One will have, but another won't. So I'll be lit over here. And there's so many potential use cases for ML that machine learning that, have no direct connection to the, perhaps the common user. Will be more maybe at the military level, at the government level, or under the scientific, industries. so from a perspective of a regular user, we'll have to see. is everyone going to say, Hey, I just use Microsoft Edge or I use Google Chrome? Is it going to be like that? Like I use Chatspeak GPT or I use, Llama or I use whatever? is the next thing, or the most powerful, well known, marketed thing? Who knows? But there will always be niches. There will always be more to do. One of the things that I've been dabbling with and thinking about a lot is, and I've done some research on this, is the ability to use quantum to do transformers with quantum. So quantum computers, using LLM transformers and, getting results that way. at the current time of this quantum era, I don't think we're quite there yet, but there are hybrid models that could be used. but, in the future, that's probably going to be the way to go. the way that the industry is going to shift towards. Quantum computers and processors are very complicated to build, very expensive, and also very hard to maintain. But they have a smaller footprint in the future, on the amount of energy they will use. So there's a lot of advantages other than just the ability to compute faster and more data. More, cycles with qubits, but there'll always be a room for classical computing because it drives the way we think it's a lot more, linear,

Don Finley: 18:03

curious as to, I think what you're saying is if we look at the energy usage of AI, it's getting to be on, Godly ridiculous how much energy is being consumed by data centers for the specific purpose of AI. And if you look at what, really, let's say, so we get to AGI, artificial general intelligence, and we hit a mark of, basically it being smarter than 50 percent of humans, we probably still hold an energy usage footprint that would be Thousands of times greater than what it takes for the human brain to create the same solutions. Granted, we get tired, we get, hungry, we get emotional, there's all these other aspects of humanity that make, the tool still somewhat better. But when you look at an efficiency standpoint from just energy usage, the human brain is remarkable.

Andre Brongniart: 18:59

Oh,

Don Finley: 19:00

if quantum can help us to get to that space, that's amazing. The other thing that I'd like to throw out there is, one of the challenges with quantum computers is the temperature. We've got to keep it at near zero degrees in order to maintain quantum effects and zero degrees Kelvin. Like we're talking about basically. Almost absolute zero, is the ideal space to be running it. There was a research paper released about a month ago, and if you do re searches on consciousness and quantum effects specifically with Penrose, and Penrose wasn't the one who actually wrote it, but that's the way to find this. so Roger Penrose has this, idea that consciousness could be a quantum effect,

Andre Brongniart: 19:46

Yes.

Don Finley: 19:47

but we don't know what the method of holding quantum effects in the human brain are. And in the human brain is a warm, wet environment. So it is very different from a, dry, cold environment that we currently do quantum computing. what they were able to find out in this paper is that in formaldehyde microtubules, which are the building blocks of your cells. So they give the cell structure. They're able to maintain quantum effects. inside of those in a warm, wet environment. And so I could see from this, if we're able to hold qubits in these, tubules, microtubules, then there's a possible path forward to a quantum computer that could be done at room temperature, which you're just, greatly increase both the availability and ease at which we could go down that quantum path.

Andre Brongniart: 20:44

that's impressive. I hadn't heard of that article yet. that being said, like even having, even if that doesn't come along because maybe not practical or it doesn't work right, or it's error prone beyond, the abilities that we have in the next 50 to a hundred years to solve. having data centers like AWS, Microsoft, Azure. And, whatnot, GCP, Google, GCP that have quantum computers in the long run that are centralized, and taken care of can still be in, you can still work with them with classical computers. So in order to use them, you still need classical computers. But I guess the real power is. once you get to the threshold where we're not just doing chemical simulations and physics simulations. We can do a lot more because error correction and qubits are there. Anything that a GPU farm that's running for OpenAI can do, maybe one or two quantum computers together can do,

Don Finley: 21:51

it's going to be really impressive. So Andre, one last question for you, like everybody out here is trying to, find their footing in this space where we're going through a good amount of change in technology. That impact may not be felt in the rest of the community today, but it's coming. community, I'm using that as the general kind of let's say world, United States, whatever. what would you recommend people do to get themselves prepared? Or how are you keeping yourself prepared for this, incoming revolution of technology?

Andre Brongniart: 22:22

Okay, just to give a foundation to that answer, AI, ML, same thing, AI, Is, it's blown up and it's a storm and it's coming and it will start to settle, but it will always continue to improve. There are questions on whether they should restrain it. generally I, and, basically getting to the point of singularity, say you were saying It's smarter than 50 percent of humans. But we're talking about exponentially growing intelligence, beyond any IQ you can possibly imagine, as time goes along. And as we know, technology increases in power and ability. Generally speaking, exponentially. so that's a reality. I'm not sure how much constraint we can put on it or we should, or we shouldn't, but one of the things that do know being a human is that if it has human quality intelligence, regardless of how intelligent it is still something that's learning from us. So if we teach it to be destructive. it may be more destructive. If we teach it to be compassionate and caring, and we gate those things, we have a way to, to psychologically rear AI and gate it, which we do that. we have, training, the way we train the models are that way. But we should have specialists that not only think of it from a neural perspective, from a technological perspective, but from a behavioral perspective. And I don't think there's anyone really expert in, say, psychology, like rearing psychology, that's really deeply involved in this. process of AI. I do believe and have thought of this before is that we need that. We need specialists that understand psychology and human psychology,

Don Finley: 24:30

those are really good points that you have. And it reminds me of a story of two wolves. Are you familiar?

Andre Brongniart: 24:37

I think so, but I don't recall it. The one you feed.

Don Finley: 24:43

the, I can't actually remember how the story starts out, but it's an Eastern, philosophy story. And, the grandson goes to the grandfather and asks him a question. Something about his own cognition of whether, the bad thoughts, the sour feelings, the anger, whatever. And the grandfather goes, look, there's this, there's a battle of two wolves going on inside of your mind. on one side you have the dark thoughts, you have, things that are nasty, the anger, the despair, the sadness, the loneliness, the lack of connection, like we, we can just name whatever fits into that darker, wolf. And then on the other side, there's happiness, there's joy, there's, connection, there's family, there's community. and there's creativity and, the grandfather tells the grandson that these are the two wolves that are battling inside of you. And the grandson asks, who wins? And the grandfather just responds, the one you feed. and I think that's what you're highlighting here is that we've got to make a conscious choice as to how are we participating in this, revolution of technology. if we look at like how we're actually, raising AI can be right. It's Raising AI and it's, raising consciousness or, raising intelligence. what is it that we want to see from this and how do we want to interact is incredibly important. Yeah. So Andre, I got to say, thank you so much for being with us today. I really appreciate you sharing yourself, sharing your insights with the community. And, it's been a blast just getting to know you as well over the past few days.

Andre Brongniart: 26:13

Thanks a lot, Don. I appreciate it. It's been a blast, too. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Don Finley: 26:19

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