Newsletter #35: The Opera of AI - Insights From a “One Name” Legend in Artificial Intelligence. Igor.

You know how there are athletes that are such a big deal that you don’t even have to say their last name?

In the world of basketball, I say “Michael” or “Kobe” and you know exactly who I’m talking about.

In the world of tennis, I say “Serena” or “Rafa” or “Novak” or “Roger” and you know exactly who I’m talking about.

In the world of Artificial Intelligence, I say “Igor” and you know exactly who I’m talking about.

If you don’t yet know who Igor Jablokov is, all good.

Watch my AI with Alec podcast with him and I’m pretty sure you’ll never hear the name “Igor” again and not think of the absolute AI legend and pioneer.

We’re so fortunate to have AI OGs like Igor leading the way forward.

I hope each subscriber to this newsletter will watch the :30 minute interview.

I chopped it into two :15 minute parts on LinkedIn (Part 1 + Part 2) or you can check out the full interview posted on Twitter, YouTube or Spotify.

I tried to pick my 3 favorite excerpts from the interview but it was too hard.

So I went with my top 5. Still hard but easier than 3... ;)

1: Have you ever heard of IBM Watson? Siri? Alexa? Pryon? Now you know why “Igor” is a “one name” in AI.  Starting with the "baby version of Watson"...IYKYK.

“Because if I go backwards in time, I used to lead an early AI team at IBM and, we essentially discovered the baby version of Watson, way back when over 20 years ago, but they didn't want to green light it. And so in my frustration, I departed, stood up our last company.”

“A year into it, you know, I walk out on stage at the first ever TechCrunch Disrupt Conference and pull this Razr flip phone out of my pocket."

"I speak into it and it talks to everybody out there, Andreessen and Marissa Mayer, Guy Kawasaki, and nobody has any idea what I'm showing them.”

“What I wasn't allowed to tell anybody at the time is that it was the prototype for Siri before the iPhone even came out."

"We were secretly working with them. And then five years later, we were ahead of our times.”

“I mean, we ended up becoming Amazon's first AI related acquisition that birthed what many people know as Alexa.”

“So Alexa is my older sister's name and the code name for it, connecting the dots to today was Pryon.”

2: If “AI is sort of like Opera” isn’t the best way to describe AI and its multidisciplinary nature, I have no idea what is…the perfect way to capture why AI is so fascinating.

“Look, the reason why I love AI, it's, it's, of all the technology fields I could have possibly gone into, and look, my original major, you know, before I pivoted to computer engineering was nuclear engineering.”

“What's really fantastic about AI is you can be a renaissance person and it is multidisciplinary.”

“It's where everything collides."

"It's not just, you know, math and science, but there's, you know, anthropology and, you know, sight, sound, the multimodal nature of it as well.”

“It's sort of like opera."

"Opera, I think, is the pinnacle of the arts because everything contributes to it."

"You have costumes, you have scenes, you have architecture, you have the business, you have observing the people, you have ballet, the obvious music, the story, right, the hidden parable inside the story as well.”

“It's all there blended together.”

“And that's what AI represents is the best of humanity coming together.”

3: The one person that believed in him from the jump…JD Vance.

“Now, I happen to think that natural language belongs in those environments, but seven, eight years ago when I would tell people that, they were laughing at me and snickering at me like Beavis and Butt-Head.”

“Yeah. So I'm like, no, here's why that's a big deal."

"There's going to be a natural language layer at the top of the enterprise software stack. And it's going to be able to do multi-hop reasoning and sew together things like structured, semi-structured and unstructured knowledge all together through a natural language interface.”

“And then I would counter, you all knew how to talk to each other before you learned how to read and write."

"It's the ultimate boss level API."

"You're going to use it for human and machine and a machine and machine transactions."

"They kept snickering. And of course people laughed eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two years ago, Chat GPT comes out. Everybody is quiet."

“Now there was one person, one person though, early on you know, who called me and said, ‘Hey, I believe in what you guys are working on. Let me become, you know, one of your largest shareholders. Let me help you, you know, join the company on your board, help you run the company. Let's figure this thing out.'”

“And that was JD Vance.”

4: Humans + Machines. Not Humans vs Machines.

“I don't believe in trying to replace people at work."

"This connects the dot to other themes that you've heard me speak about before."

"I believe in augmented intelligence, right? And making people more performant in whatever life's journey that they choose for themselves as well.”

“And you wanna increase GDP by 10X. You're not gonna grow humans, you know 300 million to become three billion Americans."

"You know what you're gonna do, make sure every single one of them has has the firepower of ten citizens today."

"Guess what? That's augmented intelligence."

"It doesn't put anyone out of out of work and everybody then benefits."

"You get cures for cancer, you get faster than light travel. Maybe one day you get clean energy. You get that better cars. Maybe we'll finally get our floating cars and what have you.”

5: Have faith and know that “we always see a lot more kids building sandcastles on a beach than kicking them” aka we’ve got this.

“I know a lot of people are worried about what this AI stuff means."

"The one thing that can derive a lot of peace is we always see a lot more kids building sandcastles on a beach than kicking them. So just know there's a lot more people wanting to build positive things for our communities.”

Igor is a "one name" in AI. See what I mean?

Also, in case it’s helpful in finding the specific segment you want to jump to, below are the interview chapters and time stamps.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction to Igor Jablokov

00:53 - Igor's Journey: From IBM to Siri and Alexa

02:24 - Understanding Pryon and Enterprise AI

04:47 - Working with JD Vance and Rise of the Rest

07:18 - The Three Acts Post-ChatGPT

09:04 - Critical Take on AI Company Practices

11:04 - Lessons from Social Media

12:27 - Thoughts on DeepSeek

15:08 - AI and the Arts: The Opera Analogy

19:07 - Future of Work and AI (2030 Vision)

22:53 - Enterprise AI Adoption

25:35 - The Evolution of AI: From "Punk Rock Days" to Mainstream

27:48 - Closing Thoughts: AI's Role in Solving Global Challenges

Enjoy your Super Bowl Sunday!

Talk soon.

Alec