S1E6: Next Stop: AI-Explores Tech’s Travel Revolution
Listen to full episode :
Join our host Dan Christian as he welcomes Gilad Berenstein, the esteemed VC & Founder, for an engaging discussion on the exceptional opportunities that AI presents for everyone in the travel industry. Prepare to explore the core of the transformative potential of AI within the travel sector, understand the nuances of how various travel companies are leveraging this game-changing technology (with examples including ChatGPT, OpenAI, Expedia, and Airbnb), and gain valuable perspectives on the future of travel through the lens of AI innovation, drawing from Gilad's experience with his AI Researcher father and his own AI startup, UTrip.
Gilad shares fascinating insights into the vast possibilities that Artificial Intelligence is unlocking for all facets of the travel industry. He reflects on his early exposure to AI through his father's research in Israel and recounts his experience building his successful AI startup, UTrip. Furthermore, Gilad provides several compelling examples of how travel companies, including major players like Expedia and Airbnb, are currently utilizing AI to enhance their services and operations. The conversation also touches upon influential figures and technologies shaping the AI landscape, such as ChatGPT, OpenAI, Elon Musk, and Sam Altman, as well as the innovative approaches of companies like TTC.
Curious to explore the revolutionary impact of AI on the future of travel?
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Dan: 0:14
Hello and welcome to our latest episode of Travel Trends. My name is Dan Christian, and today we have a very special guest that I'm so looking forward to you all meeting. His name's Gilead Berenstein. He is a very successful entrepreneur as well as a. VC and board member. He had a successful startup called Utrip that after he sold, he went on to become a vc. And that's actually where we met was when he was working on Utrip. I had the opportunity to collaborate with him and for many years following that he's not only a very successful industry figure but he's also a wonderful family man. He's got a daughter and another one on the way, so he's not gonna be getting much sleep, and he is also come back from a really big trip. So we'll talk about that first. But Gilead, great to have you here. Thanks for joining us.
Gilad: 0:55
Yeah, absolutely. It's a pleasure to be here and I'm excited to chat.
Dan: 0:58
Excellent. We would often run into each other in industry conferences like Plug and Play in San Francisco, which, you know, I know you're still an active mentor and for me, obviously I'm keen to have this conversation with you cuz not only you are incredibly smart you're always a tuned into what's going on, but you're someone I proudly consider a, a friend and mentor. So I think as we have the conversation, people will quickly start to understand why Let's. Start with the last month of your life with how crazy your travel schedule has been. So tell us a little bit about where you've been and what you've been up to.
Gilad: 1:28
Yeah, the last month has been totally crazy. I was on a panel in one of the conferences I attended where I was speaking about the future of aviation, and I made a joke to a friend of mine that I was not nearly qualified enough to speak about the future of aviation. And then she reminded me how much time I've spent on airplanes this year, and maybe really I am qualified to speak about the future of aviation. No, but it's been a really wonderful month. I mean, as you know, things in our industry are really exciting right now, both because of artificial intelligence and everything happening around kind of, you know, what I think of as the commoditization of ai, which I'm happy to talk more about in our conversation. But there's just been a lot of excitement in the industry. So I was in Miami attending the Aviation Festival where I got to speak about both the financialization of travel in our industry. And the way that financial technology, financial products, and financial thinking is really coming into our space. As I shared, I was able to participate in a panel about the future of aviation and was really excited to hear about hybrid airplanes and hydrogen and some of the things that are coming down the pike. And then I was able to attend a virtuoso event where we spoke about AI from a number of different perspectives as well as a number of other conferences in Europe where artificial intelligence and the way that it's gonna impact our industry were the key topic.
Dan: 2:37
Very interesting. I mean, I was, had the privileged view of seeing your travels over the past four weeks and the number of planes you were on, and you always take great pictures of the food that you're privileged to enjoy and some of the places you have to stay. So it looked like an incredible trip and perfect timing before your second daughter is born. And that hectic new schedule starts right.
Gilad: 2:57
Yeah, I tell founders all the time that travelers don't travel to sit on planes or to sleep in beds. They travel to do, to see, to experience, and in my case, to eat. So that's very accurate.
Dan: 3:05
That's great. So. I want to go back to where your journey started, because here you are, you know, you are the founder of Brook Bay Capital. You have a really strong AI background and focus, which we are definitely gonna talk about as well, and we'll be one of the main themes of this discussion. But that was actually your background at Utrip. But now you work with brands like Virtuoso Faye Suede self book. There's a whole number of brands that you work with in the travel and hospitality space. That's your world now, but clearly it didn't start there. You started at a university on a startup, UTRIP, and I would love you to talk about how you got into the travel space for those people who are listening to this that wanna figure out how to break into this industry or working on a startup themselves. Because clearly you started with sacrifice long hours to become the success that you are today and continue to be. But where did your journey start?
Gilad: 3:56
Yeah, I mean even further back than, than what you mentioned. You know, I grew up in Israel where my dad was an artificial intelligence architect back in the nineties, so I was really fortunate to grow up in a home. Where the future of technology was a continuous topic of conversation and really fascinated me. And I was, I'm not an engineer, I've never written a line of code in my life. But I have spent most of my life thinking about the way technology can make individual lives better, and specifically focused on ordinary people like you and me. Whereas, you know, my dad is, you know, Has all his fancy PhD friends and worry about AI in their world. I was really fascinated with AI in the real world. And then fast forwarding a whole bunch is when I finished University of Washington in Seattle. I took a trip to Europe, like millions of people do every single year. And the trip was awesome. And I planned it using books and websites and asking friends and family for advice just like everyone else, but had a lot of thoughts about how artificial intelligence can make trip planning easy, enjoyable, and personal. And that's really what we focused on. So I spent a short period of time as a consultant and quit my job to start Utrip, which was really the very first AI startup in our industry focused on consumer experience and how do we help Travelers have, you know, a really unique travel experience. So,
Dan: 5:09
Now you're in a unique position looking back, having had the success that you've had, and one of the things I think that would just be worth highlighting. Is some of what you consider to be the keys to your success, and I think quite likely there's, there's common themes that I've seen in our relationship that I, you know, that stand out to me. You know, you're a great public speaker. You're extremely well connected. You're obviously very smart and capable. But what are when you look back and you look at your journey, if you were to share two or three keys to your success with a wider audience, what, what stands out to you?
Gilad: 5:41
Yeah, I mean, that's a hard question, but I'd say the first one is curiosity, and I don't think it's unique to me. I think this is something that entrepreneurs in general have in common is I've always been really curious and my curiosities are broad. So I find it easy. To naturally wanna dive deeper. And of course when you do a startup, you really have to become the world expert in whatever it is your startup is doing. So I thought, I think curiosity is definitely one of them. The second is lack of fear of taking a chance or taking a risk or taking a move. And I think that's one of those things that people can, can actually underestimate, you know? We talk about being risk averse or risk tolerance when it comes to finance or investing or things like that. But I think there's another place where being risk tolerant is around making mistakes. And I'm not scared and I was lucky that I was born this way, not scared to try something out, knowing that I might not work out. And I think that, that that internal understanding that you're willing to try, even if it's gonna fail is probably the single biggest key to success that I've personally had.
Dan: 6:44
Well, it's interesting you point that out because there was a story I did wanna share with our listeners that it's a personal one for me, but it more exemplifies the type of person you are. And so lemme quickly tell that story cuz hopefully it'll shed more light on the dynamic and the the dynamic that we have, but also your character. So when. We've worked together for many years. We obviously have a lot of friends in common in the industry. Brett Tolman being one who I worked with for nine years at the Travel Corporation. Gugen, of course the cto, an excellent CTO that continues to run the technology team at the Travel Corporation and a number of people in the industry. But those are kinda two standouts. When I was, I moved back from LA so my personal story, of course, is that I I made the difficult decision to move back from LA because my mother-in-law had brain cancer was terminal and her time was limited. So we came back to Canada to make sure we were here for her. A month later, my dad was diagnosed with liver cancer and he was given maybe six months to live. He ended up having slightly less than that, and I made the difficult but necessary decision at that time to step back from my role. And to step away from the travel corporation to be able to focus on having that time with my dad and my mother-in-law. And I know now it was definitely the right decision, but it was a difficult one at the time. Cause I loved my role. I loved digital, I love travel. Those are my two great passions. But what stands out for me, which is why I wanted to mention it to you, is that. In the first month after I finally stepped away from the day-to-day activity, I was going to the airport with my dad and my son. And you remember this because you were on a couple of calls while we were at the airport. So my son is gonna be a, a pilot and my dad was worked in a shipyard growing up. So he loved ships. My son loved planes. And so we went plane spotting at the airport and my dad had a month after I left my job before. He went into the hospital not to come out and in that month I was taking him and my son to the airport as frequently as possible and doing plane spotting and having that time. There was a couple of times when I went just with my son and we had calls together and so I'd be at the airport and what really stands out to me is that the dynamic that we've had, it doesn't matter. When you're in a role with certain seniority or if you are, it's you always made time. For me, we always had such a great dynamic. I. And for me, when I look back now, that was so the right decision because it also gave me the chance to take a risk that you were just referring to, to be able to step out on my own, which is something I'd wanted to do for years. And finally I had this window of opportunity where I was like, I'm gonna focus on my family and I'm gonna step out on my own. And that's exactly what I've done. And you, which is one of the reasons I wanted to speak to you on this podcast. You were not only a big supporter, a big advocate, but also a good friend during that time. So first off, Thank you. And, and secondly, what, what are you doing now? So, I mean that example I just shared, you obviously have lots on the go, so I'd love to know what is, you know, besides the last month of travel, what's, what's filling your, your schedule as it is today with everything you're working on?
Gilad: 9:48
Yeah. And thank you for sharing that. That's that's very meaningful. Well, today I do a few things. I run Brook Bay Capital. Which is an early stage venture capital fund based here in Seattle, even though we invest across North America and even a little bit into Europe as well focusing on a number of industries, but travel and hospitality technologies, our single biggest industry and artificial intelligence is really what ties together all of our investments within the fund. In addition to investing, I spent about a third of my time as a professional director. So I'm on several large corporate boards and on a large handful of startup boards. And I really love working with executives and founders and CEOs on trying to figure out how do you marry business strategy and product strategy together? And that's really one of the things that I get most excited about.
Dan: 10:32
Cool. I think you're the only person that's gonna be on this podcast that speaks faster than me. And that's another thing that I find great about you cuz that's how fast your mind works and how quickly you're able to deliver information. So we're gonna switch into the topic that I know you love talking about and I'm really keen to have this conversation with you. For this podcast, because this is an example of a conversation we might have in our catch-ups, we're talking about different startups that are happening in the industry, and I really want people with this episode to get a sense of the types of conversations that we have. So I actually prepared a couple of questions that I was anticipating having with you directly, and I thought it'd be interesting. So I've actually prepared these very intentionally in like in a beginner, intermediate, and advanced AI questions before we started talking. On the podcast, GI Lab was talking about Lex Friedman, another podcaster that clearly we both listen to and have a great deal of respect for. But when you have certain people, the high intellect, talking to other people with high intellect about a specific topic that they're very knowledgeable about, you can really lose the audience very quickly. And so I know you're more than capable to have those conversations. And so I wanna step. 1, 2, 3 in that direction. The first one I wanted to ask you is that when we look at what's happened in the last few months for those of us in travel that have all of a sudden been unleashed with the potential of chat, G p T, your dad was an AI researcher. You clearly know how far this discipline goes back and how much a quantum leap it's taken in the last year. But for many people, I. They've really only just become familiar with it in the last year or the last six months and chat. G p t was the, the, the major development that people started to play around with, get to know and start to realize that it has potential. So what, what I'd love to ask you just starting off, is that when you look at chat g p t now and you think of people in travel industry roles, what do you think are the immediate implications of that technology and its usefulness?
Gilad: 12:26
Yeah, absolutely. So I think, I think Ja, I mean, I just wanna point out. Chat. G p T was launched in December. This is just six months ago, and it's actually kind of hard to remember because the world has changed so much and our conversation has focused so much on this, even though this is really just a six month old technology. So to start, you know, to start to answer your question, the basics is very simple and not unique to travel, and it's really about efficiency. Every business can take G P T and other similar technologies and right away begin to find efficiencies within their organization. This might be around communication. This might be around summarization of information. This might be around all sorts of different things where G P T is really strong and there's a lot of kind of low hanging fruit that are available to any professional or any business that's trying to find efficiencies. Now when we move from kind of the really, really low hanging fruit to just slightly higher level, I think there's a lot of places on travel where this can be used. One area that I'm talking to my companies about is post-booking, pre-trip. So after we book all the things we wanna book on a given trip, there's often lots of questions that come up. There's small questions and they don't require a lot of creativity, but they're incredibly important for travelers. So this might be things like, where do I meet my driver? Or what's the dress code when you go into that cathedral? Or how do people tip in this country? These types of questions that, again, are very important to the traveler, but require not a lot of creativity or judgment for someone to be able to answer. So I think that's one really awesome kind of easy place for us to begin to use G P T within the travel space. The other side of that same coin is the very, very top of the funnel where the questions are still generic and are still broad, where G P T can insulin effectively without needing a lot of specifications within there. So this might be, I'm traveling with a couple kids. What's a great place to go to in December that's close to Seattle? Or we really love red wine, but are on a medium budget. What are some great wine destinations for people like us? Things like that that work really well. Now, I don't know if this is cheating going into your next question, but I think the next opportunity for us as an industry is to further train these LLMs or large language models, which are sort of the AI models that, that underpin these capabilities and build one specifically for our industry. So imagine taking this information from destinations, you know, from ministries and from DNOs and such, from suppliers, air hotel cruise tour, from travel agencies, and all sorts of different places in the industry. And bringing them together in a way that allows us to further train the artificial intelligence model. So now we can answer questions that are industry specific with our own knowledge base, as opposed to just the generic answers available through the open web training that it did.
Dan: 15:01
Yeah, it's very interesting and we definitely want to get there. But just in terms of the first question with regards to chat, G P t, I just wanted to highlight the contribution you made just recently at the first Shiso conference because I had heard, I. Feedback from your presentation from industry colleagues that were terrified of chat G P T until they saw your presentation and were actually going home realizing that it can be their ally rather than their foe. It's not gonna make their job obsolete. And I just, as soon as I heard that, it just made me think of so many conversations I've had with people in the travel industry over the years with digital, whether it be social media, user generated content even just online booking compared to booking over the phone. There's always been concerns about. Role redundancy and change, but clearly you were able to take a complex subject like AI and wrap it into a conversation about chat G P T and have people leaving the room feeling empowered, which I think is incredibly important. And I think that's why I wanted to ask you that question first, because people are listening to this wondering where chat G P T is going to impact their role or their future. So that's, I think that's what you said there was really helpful. Please, please add to it.
Gilad: 16:10
Yeah, I, I would just love to add that the, the most important thing I said there was really just to trial and to test and to play. You know, often people think that when it comes to this new technology, you have to begin by having some sort of, You know, multi-year strategy that encompasses your whole business or your whole career, and, and I have the exact opposite perspective. My advice to all people is just play, begin to play with it. Because by playing with it, you're gonna learn what it's good at, what it's not good at. You're gonna begin to build that knowledge of how to use it better in larger and larger things. So I both mean this for you as an individual, but also for companies. I say begin by doing something really small. It's hugely around efficiency. And then move to something slightly bigger, you know, solve a problem that you have in the business and go to a bigger and bigger problem. And eventually you can try to solve, you know, these huge opportunities you've always been dreaming of, et cetera. But I would not recommend to start there. I would just say play. And that's the best way I think anyone can engage with this.
Dan: 17:02
Very interesting. And the other aspect too, that I'm sure you. Heavily emphasized is the fact that with ex, the experimentation and playing is that you can find ways to enhance what you're doing. I mean, a good example obviously is using chat G P T to draft press releases or social media content or even paid media. So we've been using a IT course with a number of clients and encouraging our clients to utilize it. And then recently I was part of the Travel Tech Summit, which I know you. Been a part of before and have presented that. And one of the the CEO of Cloud Beds was talking about Jasper and how he's actually bought his entire executive team Jasper Access. And I've subsequently registered for Jasper and making sure that all of our team members use it as well because it's phenomenal how much it can improve your efficiency and the ability to write and produce content. And so definitely I think the first takeaway for sure is also empowering. But let's get to your second and kind of deeper. Of understanding and, and, and potential utilization of ai. And the, the second question I wanted to ask you is that, yes, there's clearly a lot of interest in this topic. There is a lot of there's a lot of fanfare, there's some concern. We'll talk about ethics in a moment and, and Safeguarding human beings. But and I think that gets people's, they hear about chat, G p T, and then they hear the world is ending. It's kind of, kind of quickly went from one extreme to the other is like, guess. So wait a second. I thought you told me it was my friend and it's gonna help me, and now you're telling me it's gonna end civilization. But Before we come to that, I would love for you to highlight who you think today in the travel space, and I'll just mention a couple, but please, by all means, obviously you've seen what Kayak and what Expedia have done with integrating into the APIs. The one I clearly find compelling is Brian Chesky talking about how. Airbnb is gonna utilize AI not only for personalization, but really shifting the model of travel, which having worked on a startup and one that you're familiar with around the concept of travel deals and, and curating offers, is the concept of travel being broken, that people don't necessarily wanna search where and when. It's more about who you are and what you might be interested in. And so I think in many ways Airbnb has been a terrific example in our space that's always innovating, always kinda the leading edge and always pushing to do interesting things. But I would love to know from your vantage point, who do you think in the travel space today is doing genuinely interesting things with ai?
Gilad: 19:32
Yeah, so, so first off, in terms of Airbnb, I mean, I completely agree with, with exactly what you said. I mean, Airbnb, I mean, I think, I think their magic, or, or, or their genius, I should say, is their ability to focus on the desires of the traveling public on, on, on the consumer's desires in a way that most other companies forget. I give this advice to founders all the time, booking things, transactions are required for someone to go on a trip. There's no question about that, right? People don't travel to sleep in a bed or to sit in an airplane seat. They travel to experience to do. And ultimately Airbnbs, you know, capitalization of this in travel, like a local, even if only for Tonight, or belong anywhere, which is the newer version of that. I think it's just absolutely brilliant. In terms of AI specifically, I actually think that the big guys are doing a nice job with early use cases. So in Expedia's mobile application, I've spent a bit of time playing with their G P T integration. And as you probably know, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is actually on Expedia's board, so they've had some early access and some incredible mentorship about how to use this technology within their ecosystem. I thought it was a pretty good. Kind of top of funnel utilization and, and integration of the G P T capabilities. The thing in my mind though, is the opportunity is actually much larger than taking existing, existing products and offerings and making them better with ai, which we can and will and should do. No question about that. But ultimately, the opportunity here is to actually leapfrog or to think about the paradigm of how we plan travel in a whole new way. You know, if we think about OTAs including Hopper, which I think is one of the most exciting and innovative OTAs in the world right now. From a consumer experience perspective, it's really the same thing with slightly better technology, slightly better user experience, slightly prettier and more, more easy to use pages. But the paradigm of how we look for inventory and how we find it in ports, it hasn't changed. And this is where the big opportunity is now. It's to say is can we use this new technology to completely disrupt the way people think about planning trips and the way people think about booking the elements of their trips using this technology. Can it be more conversational? Can it be not only more personalized but really more engaged in, in the objective that you as a traveler have? That's the opportunity. So there's a bunch of startups doing it, but the oldest ones are five months old cuz this technology's only been around for six months available to the public through an api. So ultimately, I think there's a lot of excitement, but I do think we're still very much in the early days.
Dan: 21:57
For sure, and there's no shortage of AI startups that you're likely seeing it come across your desk at the moment. And, and as this next. Funding activity, but also overall enthusiasm for this technology and its potential, which we both know from experience. Web one, web two, web three, that was sort of half started until AI came along, cuz everyone was chasing blockchain and NFTs and even the metaverse seemed like it was gonna be a thing there for a while. And still maybe, don't get me wrong, don't, don't ever count meta out. But the, the interesting thing is where. This will go in 12 to 18 months. You've highlighted a couple of times now that this is just six months old, and so there's a lot of hype and enthusiasm and there's some real practical utilizations of this technology. But I would love for you to extrapolate because you're a big thinker where. This will lead us to in 12 to 18 months. And I'm not necessarily talking about the ethical concerns, which feel free to comment on as well, more to address people's concerns around that and, and what may happen with regulation and so forth. But the I think the, the part that's fascinating to me to watch is we all know what it was like to get our first Netscape browser. We know what it was like to get the first Google engine search engine, and this is that next new thing where you start to see so many different ways that this could change our behavior. And search is just one of many of those. So Gilead, one of the things I wanted to ask you about is the implications of AI 12 to 18 months from now, and where is this headed?
Gilad: 23:26
Yeah, absolutely. So the most important thing I like to say about AI when we think about the future of our world with AI in it is that AI is just a tool. I was fortunate to spend some time at the Allen Institute, which is the world's largest nonprofit AI research institute, and one of the things I learned there is that AI is a tool. Used by people to accomplish their goals. And it's really that simple. So any excitement and optimism or fear and anxiety we have about AI should all be couched in the premise that it's a tool that enables people to do what they wanna do. Now, one of the analogies I heard at the institute that really resonated with me is to think about AI as a new type of wrench. A new type of tool and use that wrench to build a better car. And the analogy here is the car is a website, an app, some sort of a digital experience. And then because you build a better car using a better tool, it can now better compete on the worldwide web. So ultimately using this technology, we're gonna see both the incumbents become better, become more efficient, become more personal and I think we're gonna see that across the industry. And that's really exciting, I think. I think for all of us. But I'm personally more excited about the new. Generation of upstarts are gonna come that are really gonna revolutionize the way we think about travel. The way that we take data from other parts of our lives might be the content we consume, the food we eat at home, other things like that to learn about our deeper preferences, to be able to make better recommendations in real time. It might be about alerts and the idea that you know that I love Lady Gaga and the Seahawks, and if they're both playing in Dallas next weekend, you can alert me with an itinerary, with recommendation things to do. So I imagine an industry. That is just much more personalized, not just at the moment of making a purchase when you say, I care about A more than B, but imagine an industry that's personalized and proactive that's really working on our behalf as travelers to give us opportunities that are really exciting. And like I said, I think it's coming from both the large guys and of course a large crop of startups.
Dan: 25:17
Interesting. I think that's an excellent way to look at it and a good way you've defined it. Because I even have people that try and wrap their head around artificial intelligence and machine learning. Is that the same thing? And it's like, well, actually artificial intelligence is the study. And machine learning is one aspect within that.
Gilad: 25:32
That's exactly right. And if I could just add, machine learning is one aspect within artificial intelligence, and then quantum, not quantum computing, of course, we're talking about neural networks. Quantum computing is a different area and it has to do with ai, but we're not talking about that today. Neural networks is a subset of machine learning and generative technology with. Generative is of course the g and g P T is just one subset of neural networks, right? So I think the point you're making is really important for people to understand that AI is a really wide area of study and what we're talking about right now, generative models are one tiny element within that.
Dan: 26:05
Well, and that's where we're seeing these examples of these use cases that are very specific as you. Define what, how AI can be utilized as a tool. We're seeing examples where they take over chat, it can index a website, it can take all your content, and all of a sudden you don't need. The contacts, the same contact center resources that are answering live chat questions with customers. When an AI bot, we've had chat bots for a long time, of course, right? But now it's this next level of learning because of the self-learning, the system gets better. Was utilizing a system recently testing it for one of our clients who had implemented a tool called Zip Chat, an Australian based platform. And one of the questions I asked, it was to register me for the newsletter. And he wasn't even aware that it did that, and then he looked in the database and my email had been added to it. So really clever implementations of this technology. So we know chat is one aspect, search is another. You mentioning a great deal about personalization and what you then can leverage to be able to make the right matches with people. Are there any other broader. Implications that you think of that you see as a sector that is just starting to staying with travel, of course, because AI has so many broad applications in many different industries. But when we think about travel, are there any other categories or themes that you're seeing emerging?
Gilad: 27:25
Yeah, absolutely. So one other area that is really important in our industry is information, presentation, information and communication. Because when you plan a trip, there's a lot of decisions that you have to make along the way, and there's a lot of information that's. Presented by the different players you work with, different companies you engage with along the way. So one example that comes outside of travel, but I think is directly applicable is Tableau, which is a data visualization platform not owned by Salesforce. So they've integrated G P T technology into their Tableau system so that it can help people receive information and receive data in the way that's most meaningful and best for them. So some people want to receive. Large Excel spreadsheets with lots of announcing lots of numbers. Some people want a narrative, some people want bullet points. And the thing is, G P T and AI can take the same piece of core information, of core knowledge and present it differently to each person, or communicate it differently to each person based on their personal preferences and how they best receive information. And this exact same thing is gonna happen in travel. Some of us are really map oriented. Some of us are very picture oriented. Some of us are really into narratives, and none of these are right or wrong. We can all get information in the way that is best suited for us, and this is one era that artificial intelligence can really help.
Dan: 28:38
Very interesting. One other aspect I just wanna address since we've mentioned it twice, is I. Privacy, fears and concerns that people have about ai. For example, some people are suggesting don't put your Google Analytics data in there and attribute it to your business because essentially you're providing that information to the system. Even those people who are using it for any personal information. It's another aspect that you should reconsider. Whether you're actually personally identifiable information pie as we refer to it in our space, that is something that no company can use when, when the first round of ai, which is more along the lines of Tristan Harris, who you're obviously very familiar with. For anyone who's listening to this that hasn't seen the social dilemma, definitely watched it on Netflix, but also watched the AI dilemma, his recent talk that he gave, which is really inspiring. Feel free to pause this, go watch that and come back to this. But Tristan Harris. Also a big thinker and highlighted the concerns about essentially us losing the first battle with ai. That the algorithm, the, the, the, the damage that the algorithm has had on society was a lot of unintended consequences. Fake news and people living in fiefdoms. And, and so what I wanna ask you though is that address some of those concerns for people who are. Looking at this and are genuinely concerned, what do you think needs to be, people need to be aware of just to keep themselves safe and also practical? Like what do you think is going to be coming in the near term in terms of regulation or how, how do you think this, this sector is going to continue to adapt?
Gilad: 30:16
Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things I do is I'm involved with a think tank called AI and Faith, and what we do is we bring together faith leaders from. Every faith you've heard of and some that you haven't and philosophers from all around the world to help AI practitioners, both technologists and CEOs and entrepreneurs building with it, to think about AI collectively. One of the things that happens is when you are in a startup, it can be very lonely. And you're expected to come up with a lot of things on your own to innovate and you, and that's absolutely a core part of your job, but sometimes it feels like you have to innovate in areas like ethics or human behavior as opposed to being able to learn from all this wisdom that's come from the form. So I think that there's a lot for us all to learn and all of us to think about, about the future with AI that we can learn from the past. Now, a few examples around regulation. One thing I think is really important is that AI should be de masked. Anytime you're talking to an AI bot or engine, it should present itself as an AI engine. It should be on the AI's responsibility to let us know, to DEM mask itself and to let us know that you're talking with artificial intelligence. And I think similarly, if the artificial intelligence has a motive that is non-obvious, that should also be de masked. So for example, if you're talking to a, a AI engine that's supposed to be a tourism to the US AI engine, but it has an objective of selling you hotels in California somewhere. And it's okay maybe if it's in the fine print, just like we have with websites and apps, but somewhere its objectives, its biases should also be made available to the people using it. Another example you talked about is privacy. Privacy is incredibly important, and in some ways there's nothing new about it except for the fact that AI will supercharge everything. So the same privacy concerns that corporations had before still apply. It's why most corporations use their own servers for emails as opposed to using a generic Microsoft or generic Google server for your email. And that's so that ultimately, while. The software, the, the, the email client, as we call it is operated and owned by one of large companies. The actual email data underlying it is on your server owned and controlled by you. So, for example, open Air already allows you to do this for a fee, and it could be a hefty fee, but for a corporation that's gonna adopt. This. They have to create private instances or essentially private servers where they train or further train their own models, and they control that, own that. Not just from a privacy perspective. That's really important of course, but also from a competitiveness perspective. The idea is if you look at a company like Virtuoso and we make our own G P T based on our own branding, our own knowledge, our own itineraries, that is a differentiating asset for us, just like it could be for Hilton or for any other business. Within the industry. So not only are there the privacy concerns, but there's also competitiveness concerns that go into that. So maintaining privacy is really important, and the best way to do that is by having a private instance or your own version running on your own server. But just one last thought about ethics. I think this conversation is really important and you know, I'm, and I'm a, I'm a student of Warren Buffett's and Warren Buffets likes to say that incentives really, really, really matter. And even for those of us who know that incentives matter, we often underestimate the impact that incentives have on human behavior and human thought. And the problem is that while I know. All the challenges with regulating technology and especially a new technology that's still emerging and still developing and wanting to do nothing of any kind that could slow down the development. The problem is for those developing it today, the only strong incentive is a profit motive. And we need more incentives in society, ones that really look out for all of our wellbeing. So I'm a believer in regulation. I think we should take a slow, a slow road towards it. And I think that the European Union is actually thinking about this in a really smart way, rather than thinking about how do you regulate the technology itself, they're trying to think about how do you regulate the use cases Instead of regulating the tool, they wanna regulate the behavior of people, which to me seems like a much smarter way to go about this.
Dan: 34:13
Absolutely. Many people listening to this will have seen the headlines and some people listening to this will be very well versed in the subject matter that we're talking about, but clearly not everyone has the same amount of time to apply the thinking to AI and really understand the. The technology, its consequences. So I just wanna highlight a couple of points that you've talked about. One is ethical AI and the need to make sure that there are other incentives. Cause I saw you were at Warren Buffett's at the Berkshire Hathaway, so you got that direct from the source. But making sure that the right incentives are in place and I think there's a lot of discussion around that now. That is certainly happening. And indications are pointing in that direction. It's happened in other industries. We've seen that with like genetic cloning and other industries have had safeguards put on them to make sure that it is useful. The other part that you mentioned too, which is very much the Turing test of trying to understand if this technology can outsmart. A human, or essentially, if you would never know, it's not a human, which we're at that point and and quickly excelling to the point where even chat gpt three or chat GPT four is gonna be a thousand times more capable than the human brain and faster. And so you have people like Jeffrey Hinton that stepped out of his role, like one of the godfathers of ai. People see the headline that the godfather of AI has left Google so he can speak out and he's questioning his life's work. And that is genuinely frightening to people. And so it's, it's hard to rationalize all of these elements. One other aspect that you mentioned too was this idea of not just having a profit motive. And Elon Musk, who's a certainly controversial figure, everyone knows who he is, but not everyone knows that he was involved in open AI at the beginning. And there's sort of a, a bit of a rift between Sam Altman and Elon Musk. And part of that is exactly what you're describing is that. He claims to have named OpenAI and the reason he named it OpenAI was the idea was gonna be open source. And what he takes an issue with is that they've now moved to a profit motive by virtue of Microsoft's investment. And they've really changed and altered their trajectory to have financial profit incentives and shares for staff members, which was something that in many ways in Silicon Valley, you're better than anyone to ask this question of, because developers wanna work on that technology, want to be incentivized. And so they're not necessarily gonna just do nonprofit work. So I'm keen to know how you strike that balance of making sure that you are doing good. The original Google mantra do no evil. And so how do you reconcile the, you know, your example with AI and faith to make sure that we have the right protocols in place to make sure that by and large this is moving in the right direction and benefiting humanity.
Gilad: 36:49
This is the most important question. It's obviously the most difficult question as well, but I'll say that first. My reaction was similar to Elon Musk's when OpenAI went from a not-for-profit open source to a for-profit corporation. But I actually believe that that was the only way for them to continue to develop the technology at the pace and scale they developed that ad. Cause ultimately it does take billions of dollars to train these models at scale, and they needed to find a way to bring in that money. And of course I wish the US government was investing in our research and development in the way that we did a hundred years ago, but today, that's just not the reality in this country and really not the reality in most countries. So, so private dollars really did have to be used to continue to develop AI further. And needless to say, even if we stopped developing AI in the United States, people in other parts of the world who maybe have different incentives and ways they wanna use the tools are not stopping their own development. So I think the most important answer is this has to be a conversation that we are all engaged with as a society. And the what makes us more difficult than when the worldwide web came into existence is the worldwide web moved pretty slowly. So we had time as society to get engaged and yes, we also, our congress and our other politicians making fools of themselves asking dumb questions, but people forget. That was almost 10 years ago, and I actually think that most of'em ask many, much better questions now. So the, the short answer here is we all have to be engaged. We all have to be engaged through business, through nonprofit, through academia, and through government, to be able to regulate this in a way that really does have all of us at the center. Now, I wanna stress to say that, I don't see anything wrong with profit motives, and if I was one of the engineers at Open ai, I too would want some equity upside in what happens there. But I strongly believe that business can do great in the world and most businesses do do good in the world, but at the end of the day, we need incentives and safeguards from all around. And think you referenced cars, there's a bunch of videos that have been going around. I'm sure some of the, some of your. Audience have, have seen these of when the United States mandated seat belts in the United States and people were going crazy about their freedoms were taken away. There's also this hilarious one about this, I guess one state outlawed drinking beer in the car at the same time that they made it required to wear a seatbelt. And someone said there's a great video going around. He was talking to the local news saying that the US was becoming a communist nation because there's no more freedom is. Every new type of technology has had to find a balance between being developed by for-profits, by academia, and regulated by government. And I think ultimately AI is no different. The challenge is that it moves so much faster. The challenge is we cannot wait 10 or 15 years to do this. It's gonna be too late then, and we all have to engage now, which is what makes it so difficult.
Dan: 39:32
That's really helpful guidance. And the one last question I wanted to ask you on ai, and we'll bring it back to travel with this question and then I'm gonna hit you up with our. Five travel trivia questions that I'm sure you'll excel on. But the question I wanted to finish off on the discussion with AI is that in my research and understanding of where we're headed next, that given some of the potential pitfalls of ai, even with the best intentions the whole do no harm to humans or, you know, not allowing AI to manipulate humans, which clearly it's. Going to be able to do, if not is already capable of doing that. But the some of the leading thinkers that I've been listening to have been talking about the idea of everyone having their own personal AI that will essentially help you navigate in a world where there are all these AI that you are forced to interact with. So essentially you've got a, a white knight for a lack of better expression that is going to help you navigate. Our world and society. And so the reason I wanted to bring it back to that question is that if at some point we're all going to have our own personal AI, that's gonna help empower us and people can think about a personal assistant. I mean, we've, the longest time we've been seeing the the, the The little paperclip icon, you know, pop up on, on Microsoft. I mean, that was, that was a little assistant. But all these little assistants that we have around us, whether it be Alexa or Siri we have different, many examples of that today. But the idea of having something comprehensive that really understands who you are. That can protect you and that can help you navigate the world. I find that fascinating because when we look at travel, so much of it was about travel advisors and having a personal travel assistant, someone that would, and even the idea of the ota, the online travel agency, really was this model of someone that was going to help be there for you to help you with your booking activity. And so do you think that. When we think about the idea of a personal assistant or a personal ai, do you think that that would specifically apply to travel? Can you think of examples of where travel companies that just want to essentially be that personal travel assistant for you and will now have the opportunity by virtue of this technology?
Gilad: 41:52
Yeah, absolutely. So that, that's great. And I'll, I'll answer this in kind of three phases. So phase one, there's essentially going to be an AI assistant available to professionals. So I say this a lot, you know, and, and those of you who are at the Forbes Travel Guide heard me, heard me give this on stage, you know, it's very soon gonna be irresponsible of you to see a lawyer who doesn't have a great AI assistant to find the right cases. It's gonna be foolish of you to send your kid to a doctor. Who doesn't have a great, is a great AI assistant to find the exact research that pertains to your kid and their conditions, whatever. And for those of, for those of us who prioritize travel, it's also gonna be foolish to use a travel advisor who doesn't have a great AI assistant helping them do better at their job. So first and foremost, I think professionals across every professional and travels no exception, whether you're an advisor or concierge. A manager, but also the maid cleaning the rooms will soon have an AI assistant helping her, him, or her, figure it out exactly how to fold the the sheets right, and do all the things that the hotel brand likes to do for their customer. So it's gonna be stage one, stage two is gonna be exactly what you talked about, which each of us gonna have our own AI assistant. Just imagine a Siri. That was just way, way better than what Siri is today. And it's gonna do a lot of legwork for us. So imagine walking into the airport, you no longer have to verify your identity with your passport. You no longer have to go to the front desk to change your seat because I know it's exactly your seat preferences. You know, all these configuration security is gonna be much, much more quickly because you're not gonna need to have you know, Show your ID and do all the different steps that go through security. Same with customs. You're gonna get to your hotel, you're gonna walk in, your ai are gonna talk to the hotel AI at the front desk. It's gonna know the pillows you like and the drink you like, and what time you want your wake up call and all these things. And, and I can go on with the analogy forever, but the point is, these personal AI assistants are gonna know us in a way. Honestly might be better in the ways we know ourselves because you know, they're gonna pay closer attention to us than we probably do. And they're gonna be able to communicate in real time with all these other AI you see through the world to make the world more efficient and effective for us. The third stage, and this is a question mark, still is kind of AI versus AGI and a lot of the people who are, which stands for artificial general intelligence versus artificial intelligence. And when we watch movies or ex mechan, i, in my world, it's considered to be kind of the best movie. Thinking about these topics, we're really talking about agi or when Elon Musk talks about summoning the demon, when he talks about what we're doing with ai, he's not talking about a tool that's finding you a better hotel. He's talking about the AGI that has its own intelligence and potentially its own desires and their own incentives. I say that in two perspectives. One, I think there's a big question mark still on whether or not we reach agi, whether it's truly possible. For us to do that, or if there's some asymptote we have not reached yet in intelligence and computing. And the second question, of course, or the second point I would make is that even if, even if there's no asymptote, even if it's possible, people forget how narrow the AI we have today is. You know, the Alpha Go, which until six months ago was considered to be the most advanced AI in the world. It's the AI built that beat the world best players in the Game of Go, which is an ancient Chinese strategy game. Sort of think about it like chess on crack. And for many years people thought that it would be impossible for an AI to beat. The world champion and go, and of course it was possible. And now no human has beat Alpha go in the ancient strategy game of go. But the thing about Alpha Go is it can't play checkers. It can't play chess, it can't pay your taxes, it can't open the door, and it can't even tell you what go is. All it can do is probability. And it's really, really, really good at doing probability. So the point I wanna make here is when we think about the far off future and we think about agi, there's still questions of if it's possible at all. And even if it is possible, even if we knew that for sure, remembering that the applications of AI we have today, regardless of how impressive and many of them are, incredibly impressive, are very, very narrow.
Dan: 45:50
That's absolutely fascinating and I could carry on this conversation for hours, I'm sure. Some of our listeners would like it to continue, but I'm mindful of your time and theirs and hopefully we have a chance to do this again, Gilad, because this is, this has been thrilling. I've really enjoyed this conversation and I wanna, I want to hit you now with the trivia questions and because I can look at you, I can see that you're not using any. Enhance techniques to get these answers. But I've customized these, of course, given your travel background. So I'm based in Toronto. You of course are based in Seattle, and I wanted to start with a question that connects the two of us, which is this. So trivia question number one, first of five, here we go. The CN Tower is how many times taller than the Space Needle in Seattle? Is it twice the size, three times the size, or five times the size?
Gilad: 46:40
Oh my goodness. Well, I'm glad you gave me that. It's taller cause I would've sure said the space needle was taller. I'm gonna go with three times.
Dan: 46:49
Well done. Correct. Three times the height. So for those people who are not familiar with either the Space Needle is An incredible, it was built with a world's fair and a focus on space. And so it, it, but the the views from that tower, which is about 605 feet, are unbelievable. You can see mountain ranges in every direction. It's stunning. But the CN Tower in Toronto is 1,815 feet. So it's three times the, the, the height of the Space Needle. But the reality is for those of you who've been up the CN Tower At best, you might be able to see some mist from Niagara Falls way in the distance on a perfect day. So I say the view is far more spectacular from the Space Needle, but the CN Tower is three times the height. So, but you got it. That's number one. All right, number question number two. On the flip side, what is the lowest point on earth? And I'm gonna give you multiple choice on this one as well.
Gilad: 47:46
I know the answer to this
Dan: 47:48
You don't even want the three options. What is the.
Gilad: 47:50
Dead Sea in Israel,
Dan: 47:51
Correct. That's correct, yes.
Gilad: 47:52
You know, when you drive to the Dead Sea, this is a giveaway. There are signs everywhere that say you've reached the lowest point on Earth. So that was an easy one.
Dan: 48:00
Now the interesting thing about that though is how far, this is a bonus question. You already got it right, but how far below sea level is the Dead Sea?
Gilad: 48:08
No idea.
Dan: 48:08
It's, it's 1400 feet, so nearly the same height as the sea and tower. So if you think about that, just to put it in perspective of how far, it's almost three space needles below water is the point that you're at when you're in the Dead Sea. All right, so let's, let's go to your homeland Now, Israel, and this is also a multiple choice, I'm gonna give you all three, but you may just like the last one, knock it off right off the top. But what is the most popular Taurus attraction in Israel? Is it the Western Wall? Is it the city of David? Is it old Jaffa, or is it the birthplace of Jesus?
Gilad: 48:41
That's so hard. My gut wants to go with the birthplace of Jesus, but I'm gonna go with old Jaffa.
Dan: 48:47
Oh man, it's the Western wall. 70%.
Gilad: 48:50
Oh, interesting.
Dan: 48:51
Yeah. Interesting. Right? 70% of travelers, but it's only slightly ahead. So it's almost a trick question because all of those are top tourist attractions in Israel. But yes, the Western wall is technically number one.
Gilad: 49:03
That's awesome, and I'll give Israel a plug. There are few places in the world where you could see so much history and so much modernity in such a small place like you see in Israel.
Dan: 49:11
And I've traveled to 50 plus countries and I still have not gotten to Israel yet. So I definitely need your travel suggestions and maybe at some point we could actually even go there together.
Gilad: 49:19
That would be a dream.
Dan: 49:20
Cool. Now let's bring it back to where you are now in Seattle. So I've got two final questions for you. Number four, what is the name of the farmer's market that was established in 1907 in Seattle?
Gilad: 49:31
Pi
Dan: 49:31
On its namesake street. And it was actually shares the name of a couple of famous explorers, but what is the famous market in Seattle? One of my favorite markets in the world.
Gilad: 49:42
Pike Place Market.
Dan: 49:44
Yeah, well done. There you go. So yeah, three of.
Gilad: 49:46
It is amazing. It, it is an incredible place and the thing that's really special about it is I find that many tourist markets where tourists goes in the world are kind of just for tourists. Whereas Pike Place Market, it's truly for locals, for restaurants and for tourists, which makes it really cool.
Dan: 50:00
Well, I still have a passion project that I'd like to bring to life the next couple years, which is World's Greatest Markets, world's best markets, and essentially doing a similar to a lonely planet coffee table book that profiles the great markets of the world. Because you and I being avid travelers and. Passionate about history and culture. A market to me is a combination of cuisine, culture, commerce, those three things coming together. And many of these markets can be, you know, over a thousand years old. And there's incredible history to the people that lived there, what they were able to farm, what the, the incredible skills of certain artisans and the fact they bring it to a market. So I a big fan of Pike Place Market and I think that some point I'm gonna have to find the time to try and make that a reality.
Gilad: 50:43
I love that. I totally agree too. I mean, it's such a great place. It's why, it's why cuisine is such an amazing way to study a culture. It brings together history and culture and geography and all these things.
Dan: 50:53
Awesome. Now the last question is still gonna keep us in Seattle. There is a new hockey team. So I had to ask you this question because being Canadian, even though I was born in England, I raised here, I played baseball growing up, but. Hockey is clearly the most people see it as the Canadian sport. You have a new hockey team called the Seattle Kraken, a name I still can't get my head around. And I, what's a Kraken? I was just like, I released the Kraken. Do you remember from
Gilad: 51:21
Exactly.
Dan: 51:22
yeah. And so it's a mythical creature in the water that would otherwise destroy ships. And so it was voted on by people of Seattle, and that's what you guys decided on was the Seattle Kraken. But what I wanna ask you, Is what the name of the arena is because it actually really reflects Seattle's little destination being progressive, responsible, and sustainable. What is the name of the arena that the Seattle Kraken play?
Gilad: 51:45
It is the climate pledge arena named by Amazon who bought the naming rights and instead of using their own name, called it the Climate Pledge Arena.
Dan: 51:53
So refreshing compared to, compared to loans and the number of poorly named sports parks around the world. That has gotta be the best by far.
Gilad: 52:08
Yeah, and it's claim to fame as I believe it's the most sustainable arena in the world in terms of water and energy usage.
Dan: 52:14
Amazing. Yeah, thanks for that additional, but I, I still have to give you four outta five. Even though,
Gilad: 52:19
I'll take it.
Dan: 52:20
yeah, you did incredibly well. But this has been such a joy. I really appreciate our friendship, our continued connection. And again, going back to that personal story I shared, my dad kept telling me, don't quit your job, son. There'll be more summers. There weren't more summers. He passed away a few months later. I am so glad I got that time with him, and I'm so glad that I'm on the trajectory I am now, and I'm so glad that we have the relationship that we do. So, Real pleasure. I'm so excited for you to have your second daughter and to see you continue to thrive. You're still a very young guy. You're capable of doing so many more things, and I look forward to staying connected and, and seeing your continued success. So thank you for doing this, and I'll leave it to you to Any final thoughts, please, Gilead.
Gilad: 53:03
Yeah, it was a blast and I appreciate it, and I'll just leave with the most important thing I said ai, just a tool used by people to accomplish their goals. Have fun with it.
Dan: 53:10
Awesome. Thank you, Gilad. Thanks everyone for listening. We'll see you on the next episode.
