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#796: Own Your Intelligence Stack with Tommy Eastman

TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast · 2026-09-28 · 71 min
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Tommy Eastman of Nous Research joins Marty to break down Hermes Agent and why owning your intelligence stack matters. They cover the leap from chatbots to autonomous agentic AI, self-improving memory, and model-agnostic harnesses that kill vendor lock-in. Tommy explains how open source models now handle most enterprise work at a fraction of frontier lab costs, why feeding company IP to OpenAI and Anthropic is a fiduciary risk, the GPU compute squeeze, trusted execution environments, and why Big AI lobbying against open source is disingenuous. Tommy on X: https://x.com/yeahfortommy Nous Research: https://x.com/NousResearch Hermes Agent: https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/ Code TFTC for $21 off for first 100 users! The Bitcoin Playbook for Commercial Real Estate Owners & Investors: https://www.tftc.io/CRE STACK SATS hat: https://tftcmerch.io/ Our newsletter: https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ TFTC Elite (Ad-free & Discord): https://www.tftc.io/#/portal/signup/ Discord: https://discord.gg/yHGkvYxdqT Opportunity Cost Extension: https://www.opportunitycost.app/ Shoutout to our sponsors: Block: Cash App: For a limited time, new customers can get $21 added to their balance. Just use code TFTC10 when you sign up, and send at least $5 to a friend in the first two weeks. Terms apply. Bitcoin services by Block, Inc. See the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app/legal/podcast. Square: Visit http://square.com/go/tftc for up to $200 off eligible Square hardware. Bitkey: Use code TFTC10 for 10% off the new Bitkey. Aven https://www.aven.com/bitcoin CrowdHealth https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/tftc Simple Mining https://www.simplemining.io/tftc Salt of the Earth: https://drinksote.com/tftc Join the TFTC Movement: Main YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TFTC21/videos Clips YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUQcW3jxfQfEUS8kqR5pJtQ Website https://tftc.io/ Newsletter tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ Twitter https://twitter.com/tftc21 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tftc.io/ Nostr https://primal.net/tftc Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Nostr https://primal.net/martybent Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://www.tftc.io/tag/podcasts/ Disclosure: Bitcoin services are provided by Block, Inc. Bitcoin services are not licensable activity in all U.S. states and territories, and not all services are available in all states. Bitkey is not available in New York. Block, Inc. operates in New York as Block of Delaware and is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Bitcoin is a non-deposit, non-bank product that is not FDIC insured and involves risk, including monetary loss. For additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures : https://help.cash.app/btcdisclosures Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at http://square.com/go/tftc ! #squarepartner. Offer expires December 31, 2026 at 11:59 pm PST. Offer for $40 off the cost of one Square Stand, $75 off the cost of one Square Terminal, $100 off the cost of one Square Handheld, or $200 off the cost of one Square Register, excluding applicable taxes. Limited to one discount per product type per seller account. Each code is limited to one redemption per account holder. Valid for new Square customers located in the US only. Offer not valid with guest checko
✨ Episode Outline — click any point to jump to it in the episode
Problem solved
Why businesses and individuals should own their AI stack (second brain, harness, model) with a model-agnostic agent like Hermes Agent instead of locking into a closed lab.
Benefits
  • Model-agnostic: switch models with /model to save tokens or keep data private
  • Self-evolving memory stores solution paths so tasks repeat reliably
  • Open models 60-90% cheaper than closed frontier labs for most work
  • Data sovereignty: keep company IP out of lab training data
  • Works where you are: Telegram, WhatsApp, email, Hermes desktop app
Use cases
  • TFTC migrated from OpenClaw to Hermes Agent within 24 hours via Telegram
  • Fountain MCP + Hermes clipped a podcast quote and posted to X within five minutes
  • Slide-deck skill + YouTube and Fountain APIs built ad sales decks with CPM pricing research, closing more ad deals
  • Nous Research runs its sales pipeline/CRM, content pipeline, and internal debugging agent on Hermes Agent
  • Wife emails Hermes agent 'Martin' at an agent.to address to shop for cars
KPIs / results
  • Nous Research ships Hermes Agent with ~30-35 people
  • 90% of users can do 90% of their work with open models
  • Top developers went from 0% to 100% AI-written code in ~9 months
  • Deck generated and hosted on Vercel in five minutes
Tools / build
0:00 / 0:00
[SPEAKER_03] You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts So it's all acting like safe haven I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor I mean that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin If you're not paying attention, you probably should be [SPEAKER_01] I've been very much looking forward to that I was very excited when we first talked a couple weeks ago Because I've been using your product for 4 months now And it has changed my life You saw me when you walked in here, you thought I was on the phone I was talking to my Hermes agent No, talking to your Hermes agent Better than talking to somebody I like the human element, okay? I do like talking to my wife, Greg, who's off camera here He's okay to talk to every once in a while [SPEAKER_01] But it's changed how I work pretty quickly I mean I'm 35 I've been doing TFTC for almost a decade now And within 6 months my full workflow has changed And Hermes is a critical part of that Yeah What? Let's take a step back And talk about you personally How you ended up at Noose Research Which built the Hermes agent [SPEAKER_01] You were in the Bitcoin industry, the crypto industry At Foundry before this And that's a whole other conversation I think it's really interesting How a lot of these up and coming AI companies Are seeded with people that have been in the Bitcoin and crypto industry before Yep But how did you end up at Noose? What drew you to it? And what have you been doing there? Since you got there? [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, so I was at Foundry Touched the Bitcoin stuff a fair bit But was really focused on distributed and decentralized AI there I just thought that AI obviously an incredibly powerful tool Very important that we get the ideological part of AI shaped correctly That was my first real exposure to that [SPEAKER_00] Thinking about the importance of AI for people, for the individual The sovereignty that AI enables I didn't really like a lot of the kind of first manifestations of that Like the first projects that kind of tried to champion that I wasn't that impressed with Found Noose eventually They were focused on post-training open models [SPEAKER_00] To make them more pliable, more human-like This was when the Meta models were state-of-the-art, right? The Lama models I quickly found that the team was just incredible One, very ideologically driven, right? Like at Noose, we truly believe that this The ability to own your intelligence stack is The most important technological innovation [SPEAKER_00] That we've ever faced as humans But also that the team was just incredibly sharp Like everybody at Noose is just a killer In love with AI, very driven It's just an incredible, incredible experience And yeah, for me, I focus on a handful of things We all kind of wear a bunch of different hats, right? We're still pretty small, pretty grassroots But so I touch a bunch of stuff on the product side [SPEAKER_00] Onboarding enterprises And manage all of our compute relationships as well So we have our managed product Which is News Portal Which powers, which can power Hermes Agent And powers Hermes Agent for a lot of users So managing all the inference and tools behind that [SPEAKER_01] So let's take a step back and just explain Hermes Let's focus on Hermes specifically And let's Because we've had this conversation Off air a couple times now But speaking to the person who thinks that The creme de la creme of their interaction with AI Is opening chat GPT and hitting chat And thinking that they're getting inexperienced What does Hermes bring to the table? And how should people view the Hermes Hermes Hermes [SPEAKER_01] And how to utilize it? [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, well that's the incredible piece, right? Is that we're so early We feel like AI is everywhere And everybody's talking about AI But there's only a small slice of people actually using AI And then the vast majority of that slice of people Are just using AI basically as advanced Google, right? Google on steroids Like my mom loves perplexity She uses perplexity all the time But she's basically just She likes it because it's Google But a little nicer So where you start [SPEAKER_00] Where you make that jump from AI chat bot to agentic AI Is when you start to enable actual autonomy So these agents start to actually be able to make Some decisions for you And carry out tasks without you having to sit there and monitor them 24-7 You can go and have an agent, you know, book reservations for you You can have an agent look at data that you have And build dashboards You can start to really automate real tasks [SPEAKER_00] At Noose we use it for a bunch of different things Ranging from, you know, managing our CRM of enterprise Of enterprise customers to taking ideas that we have for content generation And working through a whole creative pipeline to create our end product Why Hermes agent itself is, I think, very special Two major reasons One being that I'll say three major reasons [SPEAKER_00] One, the first being that it's very simple to use It really just works I think a lot of open source projects end up with this issue where The repo gets bloated They want to be inclusive of everything But we've taken a stance where yes, we want Hermes agent to be able to Bend to your will and be completely pliable But that it's really important that we maintain the sanctity of that repo [SPEAKER_00] And are somewhat opinionated in what kind of exists in that core repo to protect the user experience So it working out of the box is a huge reason why it's been successful Two is the memory piece, the self-evolution piece So as Hermes agent As you use Hermes agent, you'll notice, you know, market improvements in the quality of output over time [SPEAKER_00] And this is a really important piece because I think where people end up frustrated and what prevents people from using ChatGPT in autonomous ways is You can't do tasks Reproducibly with the same results, right? So you ask Chat to go do a task It tries to do the task It might figure it out the first day and then the next day you have it do the same task and it can't figure it out, right? And it's a super frustrating experience [SPEAKER_00] Hermes agent stores the primitives of that path where it found the right solution And then recalls them every single time So if you figure something out once with Hermes agent, you're going to be able to do it again and again and again and again And that's where you can truly say, okay, agent go do this And you don't have to sit there and monitor and worry And you can have other tasks be dependent on that task, right? The third piece of why Hermes agent I think is so beautiful And this is like the the ideological holy grail, right? [SPEAKER_00] Is it's able to be fully model agnostic and that is important for a lot of reasons And we thought it's been important for a really long time at Noose You've seen more and more attention come to this issue now though of data sovereignty and provider lock-in Nobody wants to be locked in to a single big lab Nobody wants these labs training on their data People want to own that stuff because that's the secret sauce, right? [SPEAKER_00] That's the sauce of my company is is this data And if I'm sending all of that to a lab that's going to use that to train in the next model I'm giving away I'm giving away like the secret codes So Hermes agent enables you to to own your full stack You can choose to have stuff managed if you want your cloud instances managed or whatever You can basically Craft whatever solution meets your sovereignty and privacy needs [SPEAKER_00] And you can go implement that And if things change you can pivot it as well, right? So there's no provider lock and you can use any model in the world You can use much cheaper models like there's so many open source models that are incredibly performant for the vast Majority of tasks now and at a fraction of the price point So yeah, it's I think it enables it enables you to just have a much more sovereign AI experience And really own the full the full stack from the floor up. Mm-hmm and it's [SPEAKER_01] I mean we the thought my my Hermes story My name is Marty Bent Yeah, so I open claw over Christmas break people like I'm like one it snowed like 30 inches in Philly one Sunday and the kids are watching a movie. I was here and I'll try this out So like first I've ever set up a Vm Set up a cloud server Set up the Hetzner server like went through this YouTube store set up open club and [SPEAKER_01] Connected it to Anthropic at the time when you could know off them before they before they Prevented that from happening and And was immediately blown away like holy crap This thing is insane. So for about four months I was building out that open claw Instance and integrating more of our workflows Into into the agent set up in the harness [SPEAKER_01] In the cloud and like seeding the file system in the cloud with everything that I wanted this this computer to be able to access and Along the way like April May I was talking about open claw and I heard people You know, it was probably actually March April people beginning to be like hey you're using open claw you should like try out Hermes and then like another similar situation or I was just a Sunday afternoon [SPEAKER_01] And and I was sitting there I was like okay like I've had 10 people like reply to some of my tweets like you should try her So and I was like, okay, we love our community literally went to my open claw agent and telegram. I was like hey Spin up a Hermes agent in your server and let me know when that's finished and then I hooked up telegram And then within like 24 hours was like, okay Hermes agent shut down the open claw agent and We're gonna we're gonna begin working and [SPEAKER_01] It's been insane what we've been able to do what I've been able to do on the team at tftc over the last four or five months just really seeding The Hermes agent but to your point. I think That's what I really want to get through to people when we discussed this on our call a couple weeks ago is I'm interested to get your thoughts on how you view this like I think there's three legs to the stool of An agentic system particularly if you're doing it for a business you have [SPEAKER_01] The file system or the second brain and there's there's ways in which you can Make that second brain stronger with things like semantic search for QMD or obsidian bolts for a knowledge graph with Associations, but I would bucket those into one thing Second brain essentially a file system The harness the agentic system in our case Hermes and then the models The two most important things are [SPEAKER_01] The second brain and the harness and the models like you said you can be model agnostic and that's what I love about Hermes is it makes it Extremely easy to switch models and I'm hitting slash model changing for different Tasks when I don't want to burn tokens or burn expensive tokens or if I want to use a more private open-source model I don't think most people understand like I think we're at this It's not that I don't think I know most people don't understand that this [SPEAKER_01] This sort of three-pronged approach and what is the value? What does the relative value of the different prongs within that three-prong approach? And I think that's where the opportunity lies and why I love Hermes is I think you mentioned like the self-referential learning As part of the memory system and I think there's a ton of people Out there saying all right AI is here. I've been convinced it's not going away. I need to Implement it in my business. So just focusing on businesses [SPEAKER_01] Specifically like how would you like is that is my inclination? Of that three-prong approach right in your mind and If so, how do you articulate that particularly like enterprise clients walking through this? [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, yeah, I think you're completely right There's so much value that The returns are compounding the quality of intelligence is compounding the more and more as the agent gets more and more intelligence, right? So that that file system is incredibly valuable The more the agents are only as good as the data that they are able to access, right? It's not some magic [SPEAKER_00] And so the ability to give your agent access to as much context as possible and basically just let it go to work is is the secret sauce That's the real that's the real value in these systems And I think it's it's it's almost hard to articulate sometimes to enterprises like why would I use Hermes agent? It's like well, you can use it for everything and [SPEAKER_00] That can that's it's like it's almost too abstract, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like okay. What does that mean? And it's like the reality is though you really can and you've seen it. I'm sure you really can use it for anything any monotonous task you may have Anything you want done just throw it at your Hermes agent and see what happens, right? I think the the low-hanging fruit where a lot of people immediately say wow, this is incredible is working with big data [SPEAKER_00] If you have whether it's your stripe data your customer data The ability to create to organize that to create visualizations to do modeling is stuff that These these agentic systems excel at right? They are just so much better than we can possibly be at And so I think that's where you see a lot of the time people immediately go okay this is this is a game changer [SPEAKER_00] Is when they have some big data problem and they make visualizations out of it it works right away in one shot But yes to your original point this the structure is Your company it's it's in its entirety. It should be it should serve as your company brain, right? Like those those three pieces of the stool like you said are the company brain I think I agree with you that You know, it's it's context or or file system harness and then model [SPEAKER_00] I don't want to discount the model too much his model quality does matter a lot right and but they're very additive [SPEAKER_01] They're becoming commoditized if went to that's where like I'm oh in the long tail for sure. I think in the long tail You can be like over time the ability to be model agnostic is only going to increase [SPEAKER_00] Yes. Yeah, I mean it's a reaching parity not nine months ago You couldn't use an open model for anything like they were basically worthless, right? Um, and now you I like to say I think about you know 90% of users can do 90% of their work with open models Right like there is definitely stuff that you want the the biggest guns for but tons of work can go to open models And yes, that gap is continuing to close and it's only going to become more and more commoditized [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, and at what point do you like the like what is the uh? The minimum Aiiq level that you need to do all the tasks like do you really like yeah a year from now? [SPEAKER_00] Are you gonna need a frontier model to do your completely do your modeling or your crm? Yeah, the vast majority of people are never gonna do tasks that require these these top tier models It's just not part of part of what they do now and [SPEAKER_01] the So let's take a step back and talk about Aii broadly like where do you think we are? Um, what trends are you most interested right now? Is it the data center compute side? Is it this model race? Is it the harness? Uh, whoa What are you most interested right now in the world of aii outside of hermes and news? [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I mean I think it's really interesting to follow How the open source models have changed the market? Right like I said nine months ago you really couldn't use open source aii Um Now If we if we if we transport back to january february you saw a bunch of prominent ceos talking about Oh my our employees need to token max token max token max like unlimited spend very quickly They were like Whoa [SPEAKER_00] Way too much money like and and want to find cheaper solutions right and that It's timed well with open models reaching the point where they can be these cheaper solutions I think there's a lot of stigma around them for some people still about being you know mostly chinese models right like china is completely championing the open source model the model race Um, but you're seeing You know numbers on in hermes agent on open models go up and up on open router [SPEAKER_00] Open source models going up and up companies are recognizing that ai spend is out of control That being locked into open eye and anthropic is prohibitively expensive to power your business Um And open models are really the only solution and There's such an incredible Like free market of of these open models, right? Like there's so many different gpu providers in different locations [SPEAKER_00] Different you know compliance requirements so you can tailor whatever you need if you need sock to if you need gdpr If you need them in the us, there's all these different things that you can tailor to fit your needs Um, but it's a much just more freer market, right? So you're seeing that price discovery you're seeing model prices decrease and you're seeing people be able to access intelligence much much cheaper Which is obviously just incredible for for the economy for business for small businesses, especially No, and I think [SPEAKER_01] I just discussed this with jordie visser who was on before you rolled in but I think the the latham and walk-in story from a couple of years ago A couple weeks ago the law firm basically said We're not using anthropic or open ai we're gonna buy our own gpus and self-host your model that I mean That's a massive signal. Not only the models are good enough to do that, but also I think a trend that many people are Not um Not appreciating enough and I think alex carp's been beating the drum about this but like particularly if you're [SPEAKER_01] uh, uh enterprise the size of latham and walk-ins or any fortune 500 company like the The feeding of your Company IP to anthropic and certain ai's I think it's gonna get to a point where shareholders or Board boards of directors gonna say this is like a breach of fiduciary responsibility I think you're just handing over the secret sauce to yeah these model providers who are Proving or [SPEAKER_01] Or literally launching products that they're training off of companies that are doing this like that They're going to try to compete with you and oblige your business while it's providing you value in the interim And so your point about open models like I think there will be Um a massive Inflow of usage for increased usage of these open models from like a fiduciary perspective just to preserve your IP [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I mean people are just throwing their trade secret It's actually a really interesting psychological phenomenon right like Yeah businesses are doing it but also that the average user the chat gpt user the anthropic user people are People share so so much with these models and almost Like completely unaware of of privacy or how that obviously could could backfire in the different ends that that could go to It's happening at the at the individual level it is happening at the business level as well [SPEAKER_00] But I think at least now the more and more businesses are very aware of that that's something that really resonates With businesses that we talked to about about Hermes agent is they want to ever since that Alex Alex Karp Spiel he went on businesses want to own this they're very very aware Um, they're very very concerned about where their data is going I think the general public is lagging behind but I think there'll be a rude awakening for them as well Agreed agreed [SPEAKER_01] Sup freaks this trip was brought to you by our good friends the bitcoin team at block bitcoin at block bitcoin was originally introduced as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system We all know that the idea wasn't just a buy and hold to use bitcoin and many different facets holding is one facet Spending receiving is another facet I've been working towards this for 17 years and block has put together a whole ecosystem of companies to really bring about the reality of bitcoin is everyday money So with cash app you can buy spend send receive earn get paid in bitcoin [SPEAKER_01] When you're trading over $2,000 not gonna pay any fees on that So then there's square which is helping bring bitcoin into real-world commerce Eligible businesses can accept bitcoin payments over lightning with settlement in seconds and 0% processing fees Customers can pay with bitcoin or even dollars over lightning through cash app And help local businesses keep more of every sale It's making bitcoin payments feel as easy as tapping a card And when you're ready to hold bitcoin There's bitkey It's a bitcoin wallet built for real life No seed phrases It's a two or three multi-sig So no single points of failure It has recovery and inheritance [SPEAKER_01] Processes and capabilities built in And the new bitkey device includes a screen So you can verify important actions directly on the device before approving them So you know exactly what you're authorizing So together cash app square and bitkey are helping make bitcoin easier to earn save spend and secure It's a simple idea bitcoin works when people can actually use it in the way that they want That's bitcoin app block Sup freaks. 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It's the same playbook real estate investors have run for decades pointed at bitcoin Your cpa will want to see this before the end of the year and with attractive financing available You can deploy without selling assets to do it. This is not a garage operation Simple Mining runs over 40,000 machines [SPEAKER_01] It was just ranked the fastest growing company in Iowa on the inc 5000 chart They put together a valuable resource called the 2026 bitcoin mining blueprint It covers the five mistakes investors make when allocating to mining and how to avoid them before deploying capital You can access it for free at simplemining.io slash tftc That's simplemining.io slash tftc It's funny I was taking the meta muse agent for spin this morning I was like wow this thing's powerful [SPEAKER_01] But then how much of this information do I want to give to meta and suck? I think that's a question that a lot of people are not to grapple with Yeah But I mean history shows particularly in the digital age most people don't care That's why I think like focus on enterprise like where you have to care Because money and shareholder value for lack of a better term is on the line But then for the individual like running individual agents like I think [SPEAKER_01] Hopefully team at Noose Research and others can get the UX To parody with something like a muse agent or just works out of the box Which I think to your point like that was one of the most impressive things So like I literally told my open claw agent set up a her muse agent and had it working within like 10 minutes Yeah [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I think that It's really important to make the product easier and easier for people to use right Because if it's you know hours of setup versus instant setup and the privacy is the only differentiator That's that's proven time and time again that that's not enough I do think on the individual privacy aspect [SPEAKER_00] I think it probably needs some sort of you know massive event to catalyze people growing aware of this Of this of this concern but I do think we're at a stage where yes it was bad when you shared all of your information in this in this digital age previously But now the ability to for agents to access it to compile it access it spread it It seconds right? [SPEAKER_00] So I think there are way worse potential outcomes on the table now that agentic AI is as powerful as it is If people continue to be so so free with their with their data I mean I'm imagine what percentage of chat GPT users would be horrified if their chats all got all got Lee [SPEAKER_01] Well, we see wasn't there the ability to like Google's like if you were sharing the the output And you create like a share link that was getting cached in Google search. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah something similar happened to meta as well Yeah, where they thought they were like having a private conversation they are they're posting it publicly Yeah, it's horrifying horrifying horrifying Yeah, and it's So how would you just like that's what I'm I've been trying to discern because things are changing so quickly [SPEAKER_01] Last year at this time like Opus 4 6 wasn't even out yet Correct. So you didn't have like there was that frontier model For breaks or memories like oh wow now this stuff can like really cook and then a month later is like They were working on open claw you guys were working on Hermes but like people don't become aware of like this harness thing until That happens. We're only like nine months into this. What? Where does it like how do you think this looks? Even three months from now a year from now and [SPEAKER_01] What trends should people be paying attention to particularly around? User experience and in workflows that they can incorporate using this stuff. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I well What you said is exactly right right like at this time last year Opus 4 6 wasn't out I think the best way to describe that that change that clear like step function increase in AI capability was At this time last year Like my top the top 10 developers I knew 0% of their code was written with AI and It wasn't better than them too many issues too many hallucinations no ability to do long running tasks [SPEAKER_00] Now a hundred percent of their code is written with AI right like almost nobody There's almost no reason to be writing code except with AI now And people are doing incredibly long running tasks with agents And that was less than a year ago like you said like nine months ago that that change happened And so to think about where we are from the next nine months It's it's really really hard to be predictive. I think that [SPEAKER_00] I think what's very clear is we're early on the adoption of AI And we're going to start to see like just those basic levels like engineers all using AI We're going to start to see that all be integrated into every enterprise this like this year from this time now This time next year. I think every enterprise all code is written by AI right? Like there's really no there will be really no excuse at that point [SPEAKER_00] I think it will be abundantly clear that you have to do this to keep up to ship Because the companies that choose to do it are gonna it won't happen overnight, but it will happen fairly quickly Will drastically outperform and be able to cut expenses and be able to ship faster than companies who do not choose to use AI I think as far as like novel novel behavior that emerges I think we're just gonna start to I think we're getting close to starting to see [SPEAKER_00] More and more autonomy be dropped into the hands of AI right? Like there's always the examples of my oh my eyes shopping for me that stuff It really isn't happening yet for the most part right like you can kind of manufacture some text But it's by no means a smooth user experience Um And so that plumbing has to continue to improve Um For it to actually for you to actually make that transformation where it is as simple as texture Hermes agent like oh [SPEAKER_00] I need I need this purchased and the Hermes agent goes and purchases it The next iteration of that which is even cooler and this is where we're heading is Hermes agent is always on and actually being predictive Right, so if I For example and this and this kind of can happen now, but I think it's going to become more and more prevalent is I you know, I have to go to I have to go to sf next week. It's on my calendar. I forgot to book I forgot to book flights. I forgot to book hotel [SPEAKER_00] Hermes agent just goes and does all of that For me and it's handled and I don't even have to worry about it And then I get in a routine where yep. Oh marty texted me and said he wants to hang out in philly Hermes agents gonna go it's gonna book my flights. It's gonna book my hotels It's gonna do it all correctly It's gonna send marty the information that he needs to know It's gonna send marty's hermes agent the information it needs to know Right, so I think um All of these minor tasks that you have to do in your life Can be [SPEAKER_00] Pushed off to agents right it can be foisted on to agents and clear you up So I like I hate booking hotels. I'm terrible at it. I book wrong hotels all the time I book wrong flights all the time Hermes agent should do all that for me And I think we're getting really close to it being able to and I think like that three six month window Um of where it's in an always on state. It's being predictive and it's being autonomous I think that's that's very very reasonable I'm a massive uh flight hotel train procrastinator [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, yeah same it's horrible I've got to get a I'm gonna go somewhere in a couple weeks so that I should have booked the flight months ago. Yeah, I booked it yesterday I was like oh, I'm paying the premium for this because it's been and it's been on my calendar And it's uh What are you seeing? Internally, so this is one thing selfishly. I want to get out like Obviously you interact with Some individuals and enterprises leveraging Hermes agent what are some of the most creative or [SPEAKER_01] Mind-blowing ways or workflows that people have incorporated Using Hermes? Yeah, it's a good question Or another way to frame it is like Who's utilizing it the best and why is the way they're utilizing it the best way? [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, well, I think news research utilizes it the best But in all seriousness we I think we it's really really important for us right if we're gonna deliver this product to enterprise that we are the number one power user of it Um And so we use it we use it for everything Um I couldn't even try to quantify the Productivity increase that Hermes agent has Applied to [SPEAKER_00] To news but it's funny when people ask us how many you know how big is the team and I said we say you know 30 30 people 35 people They're often blown away just because if you've watched the rate that we've shipped on the Hermes agent repo and the cloud products and the enterprise offering It's something that would you know take an order of magnitude more people in the past Um, so we use Hermes agent for You know managing our full our full sales pipeline [SPEAKER_00] Um, you know no need for these you know the standard kind of You know crm crm sass hermes agent can manage that for our content creation pipeline Um We haven't I don't know if you've seen our i'm sure you have our our design work and the the videos we put out are aesthetically pleasing We want things to look pretty Um The the stuff we put out all of that is generated in Hermes agent pipeline [SPEAKER_00] It's it's very reproducible. It allows our designers to have a ton of um A ton of control over the end product and it takes a ton of you know manual you know graphic design work and labor off of their plate Um One of the most interesting tools we have is uh an agent internally that all our employees can use And it basically has a bunch of key data sources of ours [SPEAKER_00] Um, so if a you know if a user complaint or if a um a customer complains about a billing issue or oh some something isn't working correctly a news portal or my Hermes agent there's some bug We can just ask we can just ask our internal Hermes agent hermes agent debugs It can push fixes. Um And and basically is able to access all of our data backends at once right whatever it may need and it becomes over time [SPEAKER_00] Really really capable and competent at accessing this data and turning it into an actionable item for the user Right so rather than somebody having to manually sift through you know infinite logs basically and find issues hermes agent can find it in seconds And that's actually a good way of Describing what hermes agent is good at it can do any task that a human could do but would require infinite patience, right? [SPEAKER_00] Like nobody's actually able to sift through millions of pages of logs like you could but you would go insane But hermes agent does it instantaneously and homers agent doesn't complain either. So it's a pretty it's a pretty fun solution. Yeah [SPEAKER_01] That's what I'm wondering like I would love again selfishly so like Like give your team access to my Hermes agency like where am I fucking up? Like because that's what I'm like continuously like Trying to figure out is all right, how can I better utilize this? Okay. I always feel like I'm not utilizing Just in AI generally. It's like I'm not utilizing everything the best of its ability and it's trying to like explore Yeah, where the boundaries and the edges are and I feel like every week I'm an aha I'm like holy crap [SPEAKER_01] Like I just like one example. This will be the second time you're hearing the story and to Two consecutive episodes if you listen to the Geordie Visser episode, but I'll tell it again. I was at the bar We published this Podcast via fountain And so like our RSS or video or audio file video file description Everything is up there trans trans transcript as well [SPEAKER_01] They uh, they have a it's not publicly available yet. I hope they don't get mad at me for disclosing that they have a built And and cp that I have a mpc mcp mcp mcp that I have a beta access to And so bound has video the transcripts and I've connected the mcp to my hermes agent And I can literally just voice the text like hey uh, tommy and I the the podcast is published now we were we were um [SPEAKER_01] Let's get meta here. Let's see if my hermes agent will pick this up by reading the transcript Uh, I want you to use the fountain mcp to clip out the the section of the conversation with tommy Where we're talking about uh, how to connect balance mcp what I what I use it for Uh, take a Take like the the most engaging quote from that and then a one sentence brief description tag tommy in it and then post it on x and I did something similar to that last night within five minutes [SPEAKER_01] the hermes agent and use fountain to Find exactly what I described in the podcast. I published yesterday clip it out Send it to me to review and then like send tweet and it's incredible within five minutes. It's incredible like I'm at the bar having a beer Yep, and getting work done. Yeah, yeah for a media company. It's like hey, that is work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah [SPEAKER_00] I mean that's a non-negligible amount of labor that you would have you would have had to do It's kind of a pain and a tedious task It's like it's like death by a million paper cuts when you have to do all those things all the time and the amount of time that it frees up By you being able to just dump all of that on it is I mean how much I guess I'd ask you Can you quantify? The impact on business that you know hermes agent has had for you for you all over the last four months? Uh [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, I mean I think From It's increased our profit margins increased our revenue One thing I've hated historically I've told this to people many times like like we're a small shop. It's me. I ran Pftc by myself for six seven years and it's only within like last three or four years that We've brought on any employees and there's five of us and some contractors Uh I did all [SPEAKER_01] For many years I did like the recording the editing the publishing Uh But the bane of my existence and as I said funny is what I did at Barstool Sports when I worked there was ad sales Uh and like putting together decks is something I'm I'm I appreciate good aesthetics but I don't know I don't know how to manifest them in the digital world Uh, very well So like all my decks were like Google slide like slapdicks Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, trust me. It's a good show Um, but uh [SPEAKER_01] Went and found like a beautiful slide deck skill connected it to the YouTube API connected it to a fountain API connected it to Um Uh a bunch of other things that are pertinent to putting together a media deck and basically say hey For example, like if I was gonna Try to sell you on an ad deal like hey Uh, I would like news research to to be an ad partner with us [SPEAKER_01] Uh think about ways in which we like we would be a good brand fit for them based off of our Yep, our demo data like our our stats on YouTube and whatever and like come up with a deck five minutes later Uh, it's got a html page on versell beautiful deck that can actually sell like on top of that. It's like Let's make sure we're pricing this right like run market research about podcasts of our size like what is the cpm? [SPEAKER_01] Is there any premium on our audience specifically that could do that research and come up with like accurate pricing and that has led to More closed ad deals for us. So yes, it has long way away saying yes, it has [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, but I like what you said too about Um, you know, you have a hard time personally manifesting aesthetically pleasing stuff in the digital age But hermes agent enables you to do that. Yeah, right Yeah, right and that's what's so cool about it is if you're if you're a high agency if you're a high agency person right now There's no better time in the history of the world to exist right? [SPEAKER_00] Um, like I can't I can't write code anymore, but I can I manage our compute clusters and I can get all of the visualizations all the telemetry that I could possibly want from it just by interfacing in natural language right and build dashboards that help inform our business decisions and allow us to see how we're acquiring new users and How our compute clusters health is and That you know, that would take data scientists front-end engineers. It would it would take a you know [SPEAKER_00] A series of people to do that in the past and now i'm just prompting hermes agent and it's building out what a full team would have to build historically So it empowers you to do Pretty much anything in any dimension that you want right in any domain that you want. I mean, it's it's yeah [SPEAKER_01] It's unbelievable freaks look at me. I'm glowing. I've got like an angel's halo going around me You know why that is is I feel good. I feel taken care of I feel blessed healthy happy and that is because i'm a crowd health member My family and I have been crowd health members for five years now literally this month five years ago We joined crowd health we've had two babies. We've had multiple health events and we're never going back to health insurance Crowd health is crowd funded health care. So you you sign up for crowd health you pay a monthly fee you help out with other people's bills [SPEAKER_01] And it's significantly cheaper than health insurance We were on cobra as a family of three when I when I left my last job before I went full-time to tftc Went on the crowd health now as a family of five we pay Uh, I believe seven hundred dollars a month. It's significantly cheaper. They're going to negotiate prices lower for you They've consistently negotiated health care prices as much as 50 60 80 percent in many cases They help out with babies. If you have a pregnancy you pay the first three thousand dollars and the crowd covers the rest [SPEAKER_01] Um, if you have a regular health event, you pay five hundred dollars and the crowd pays the rest Go to join crowd health.com sign up today use the code tftc opt out of health insurance I'm uninsured baby and I love it use the code tftc at join crowd health.com You'll get ninety nine dollars a month for the first three months that you're on the crowd health platform in the community bitcoiners You found sovereign money now find sovereign health and sovereign health care All right freaks, you know, I don't take sponsor money from products. 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Maybe we'll start there [SPEAKER_00] Oh all sorts of headaches managing managing clusters and computes compute for sure What I think is really interesting about um The way compute has shifted it's shifted with use which is I guess obvious right but I think it's worth noting again We said this time last year opus 4.6 wasn't out developers weren't using it to write code good developers weren't using it to write code I was using it to write code, but good developers were not using it to write code [SPEAKER_00] At at this time last year You could if you needed you know, uh, if you needed a cluster of you know, whatever 128 gpus You know, I could send a text out and have 10 different providers bidding for bidding to win that now It's the inverse I basically would have to go in and text 10 20 different people and say I need a cluster I need a cluster. I need a cluster. I need a cluster. Nope We don't have any we don't have any we don't have any it's [SPEAKER_00] Unbelievable how squeezed the the the hpc industry is right now. Um, I think we're We're up against a lot of you know land land and power um Limitations, I think you're seeing the the regulatory environment has just really squashed the ability to continue to grow that um, but also just the the usage was such a parabolic increase in inference needs um [SPEAKER_00] That we weren't we weren't prepared for it, right? Yeah [SPEAKER_01] Is that to that point who who is getting access obviously outside the the uh frontier model because you have to training obviously you have the inference and um Obviously anthropic open ai meta google spacex they all have incredible access to this stuff, but I think um We've discussed like open router. I think stripes acquisition open router is a very strong signal and I think this neocloud um [SPEAKER_01] Sector is going to I I think basically having open market for different models is very smart idea, especially if we believe that Being modeling agnostic is going to be a trend that that strengthens In the future, but like to that point like how How do you get priority like how do you Both on okay, let's back up infrastructure side What makes you a good cluster? What do you need to do right for your end customer to make sure people come [SPEAKER_01] back to you and buy compute for you because there's a bunch of stuff with like networking and latency and all of that then to how um For the for the off taker like how do you how are these people the neoclouds that Own the gpus and will inevitably host them. How do they Decide whether or not you're a good you're a good off taker that deserves access to that Yeah, does it even matter? It's like you're paying you. Yeah, um [SPEAKER_00] So on the first piece. Yes, it's Managing managing these nodes is difficult. Um There's a lot of entropy in the management of these nodes that I don't really fully understand But there's a lot of downtime With if you're talking about manage inference specifically, there's you know throughput and latency uh throughput latency uptime um And so you I mean these these providers do want to work to [SPEAKER_00] To have a good experience for the end user because it can it can be a huge headache and people are paying a lot of money for these nodes And if their throughput isn't met if their latency requirements isn't met it really ruins the end user experience really really quickly and people are going to stop People are going to stop paying for paying for machines from a specific provider right now The market I think is so squeezed that there's way more Wiggle room and tolerance for that stuff just because it's like where else are you going to go? um [SPEAKER_00] To your second question I know that that plays a role in like who is the end user who is the buyer who is the off taker plays a role in the decision-making process of these companies I've heard people talk about how Like this the sales cycle for these aes is basically flipped before it's like I need to go find people to sell this compute to Now it's like I have all these people to go sell this compute to I have to build a case of why my people [SPEAKER_00] To internal teams why my people are worthy of of getting the right to this compute contract So the thing is completely inverted. It's it's it's it's fascinating, right? And I think It's always company It's internal politics and kind of company dependent on that stuff, right? There's different partnerships between between companies and and favors had of course um I think You know a lot of these companies do try to [SPEAKER_00] You know care about open source and and try to support different parts of the ecosystem, right? I think um I think people recognize that if all of this compute ends up Very very consolidated. That's a dangerous that's a dangerous situation for a multitude of reasons Um So I think yeah, they there's you know economics play a big part, but there's also a bunch of um [SPEAKER_00] Kind of strategic initiatives that drive where where this compute ends up and i'm happy we're discussing this now because i meant to bring this up earlier [SPEAKER_01] I think it's important to clarify for people. We were talking about open source models many of which are predominantly trained uh in china and then released people hear that They're like, oh i'm sending all my data to china now. That's not always the case Like if you're connecting directly to a deep seek servers, like yes, you are but I think The understanding around like no like it's open source so you can have American companies go buy gpus and download the model there and you're you're not serving it to [SPEAKER_01] Chinese servers. It's a chinese model run on american servers [SPEAKER_00] Correct massively different right and that's been a huge education piece that we're trying to drive home is You can have all of these cost savings. You can get really good performance at you know A fraction of the cost you know 60 70 80 90 percent cheaper than us closed frontier labs um And you can do it with yes It's a chinese model, but it's running on infrastructure owned by a us company in a us data center on us soil Right, and those are where your data flowing is two totally different things. Yeah [SPEAKER_00] Well, you can say that people like it's running home to china though, right? It's like yeah, no, no, not exactly [SPEAKER_01] It's definitely not and then uh Like the prior again going back like tying in privacy to this too This is what uh, I know we were talking about maple ai uh venice is obviously exploded in popularity uh ppq is another one uh uh [SPEAKER_01] I am very bullish on running these open source models and trusted execution environments just like to increase the privacy layer because that uh shout out to mark goodwin uh He's been on on the tip on on twitter saying like even if you're using open source It doesn't mean to centralize there's still somebody hosting those servers at the end of the day but with like trusted execution environments being able to run The the inference in a secure enclave and have everything end-to-end encrypted from your device that's baking the prompts to the [SPEAKER_01] input uh in transit is encrypted then you do everything on the secure enclave you recrypt it set it back like I think that's a massive opportunity to [SPEAKER_00] um, i'm just rambling now. Yeah, and I think I think that and I think I think local models local models as well and local models are continuing to get better hardware consumer hardware is continuing to get better and better, right? And so the ability for you to run a model on your local machine and do again It's not going to be a hundred percent of your work, but a good chunk of your work Especially if you have sensitive workloads like you can run those on local models and and get get real work done [SPEAKER_01] Well, this is actually something I'm happy you brought this up. This is something I've been like thinking like I am not Smart, uh, I'm maybe I'm not You're smart. I won't denigrate myself. I'm smart, but I do not have the skills to Post train an open source model my own data As like something of like her If news you figure out a way to take what I built with my hermes agent and be like, okay, I want to use this model um, this local this slm like locally uh [SPEAKER_01] Hermes ag have all the context of what we've been working out over the last six months Like can you help me post train this model on our specific data like that? I think at least for my purposes, that's that's one thing i've been uh Somewhat obsessed with for the last week or two is like, okay, i've gotten to this point Like what else can I do? Yeah, how can you squeeze more performance out? Post train a model and all of our stuff like yeah, how do I do that? Yeah, um [SPEAKER_00] That's what i'm looking for anybody wants to help me. Let me know that we can do that We can get you that so that actually was part of the reason that Hermes agent was created it was it wasn't created to be this outward facing product It was created really out of like a completely utilitarian birth our our Co-founder technium created this hermes agent to help as a small ai research lab, right? You're always trying to find like these these moonshot ideas to [SPEAKER_00] To push you to the frontier and technium created this self self-evolving hermes agent to help us You know become frontier model trainers. Um, so the the original birth of hermes agent was really to do It was in part to to do that. Um, and that's something we should do a job of highlighting Um, how you can use hermes agent in that stuff as well. Yeah [SPEAKER_01] so What uh What's the plan with news? Like you have the agent you have news portal we got this enterprise What uh, what are you guys striving for? um In terms of what this company looks like? um I know you said this on the phone like who knows what any company looks like Like what are your what are your north stars and who are you building for it? [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, yeah, I think um, who are we building for is is everybody and I think I I answer that really intentionally that way um Because I think we've we've built this we've built this product in a way that It it meets you wherever you are The open source repo if you want to run You know a local model on your local network and never touch You know never touch any news research managed product. That's great [SPEAKER_00] Like the hermes agent repo will always be able to empower you to do that and will continue to improve it and maintain it um If you want certain things managed like great, we'll do all that as well We will be the best we are the best place to have your hermes agent You know hosted and managed if you want, you know different pieces managed, but you want to own certain pieces or do some work locally Great. We'll we'll meet you wherever we are. So we really are building this um Building this for everybody. I think the two the two sort of [SPEAKER_00] Key outcomes over the next handful of months for us Which lead to where we we want to be in the end is one making Decreasing the amount of time that you go from googling hermes agent or having your friends send you a hermes agent to To realizing wow, this is a magical magical experience, right? How can we get that time? So how can we make it a frictionless onboarding? How can we meet people on whatever device they are? [SPEAKER_00] um, how can we enable people to send others there send others a hermes agent? Oh marty hasn't used hermes agent. Let me send it to you can click a link open it up and Ask it one question and be like wow and not have to do You know set up not have to configure anything So that's really really important right is how can we make sure it is frictionless as possible and make it so you As quickly as possible realize that you have a tool that you've never experienced before in your hands um And then the second piece is, you know [SPEAKER_00] Delivering delivering hermes agent to enterprise in a way that they are able to control Their ai stack right it is their sovereign ai stack with all the bells and whistles that enable Enable employees to be much higher agency much more output And do it in a way that isn't prohibitively expensive that Leverages the plethora of models and tools out there that um [SPEAKER_00] Can can power hermes agent in a in a meaningful way? Delivering that product to enterprise at scale. So yeah, those those two things can we trim down that timing? Can we deliver to enterprise at scale? [SPEAKER_01] the uh meet people on their device that that's been one of the The interesting observations i've had over the course of the years uh Who attracts to what specific form factor like I was telling you like I haven't used cloud code or codex desktop in seven months people like are you doing that like are you Are you trying to get left behind? I'm like no. I literally it's connected to all these different models [SPEAKER_01] And my go-to form factors is like voice to text in telegram. I have a group chat with the agent Just the agent and me but the group chats allow you to create topics. Yep So we have topics that represent different sessions that are ad ops bitcoin brief uh, or the commoner newsletter builder um uh, if we have a business meeting, okay, like biz ops, what do we need to get done blah blah blah [SPEAKER_01] Uh, and then there's something about that form factors just vibes with me like just being able to like on the go on a walk around the neighborhood and you saw me literally when you walked in I had my newsletter session open like talking about how I want to frame today's newsletter And just that that form factor being able to walk On the go and doing my phone clicks with me. Yeah, there are others. It's like And I think a lot of people are going to talk about vendor lock and people are locked into uh [SPEAKER_01] The cloud code and codex specifically those desktop apps and they think like this is the only way that you can leverage this I'm like no, you you gotta You got to get yourself off self off that tip as quickly as possible because you're gonna get vendor locked in and that's not what you want um But it is like everyone but something like ed on our team He loves the uh, he loves the hermes desktop app. That's how he interacts with it And i'm i'd never frankly I never use it. Yeah, just use it through telegram. Um and I think [SPEAKER_01] There is It's becoming clear to me that there's going to be different preferences and different form factors for how you interact with this and thinking about a company like news research trying to design for All those different ways which people are going to prefer to interact with it is [SPEAKER_00] It's a crazy problem think about yeah, it's a it's a it's a massive problem, right and um, and you're exactly right There's not there isn't some you know golden solution Where oh everybody is going to use this as the way to interface right at least certainly not yet and I think the stance that we generally take is Don't be like we we're definitely opinionated on the some of the best ways to use these things But we don't want to ever lock in unless it's Blatantly obvious that that is the place that we need to lock in right so can we? [SPEAKER_00] So we allow whatsapp we allow telegram we allow email like wherever you want this thing to live and and meet you is Is important because people use it? People use it in different ways There's a lot of people that would never want to talk want to talk as much as you right like they would never want to do that Everybody is so different and everybody finds different ways to get the performance out of these agents that they want that You you need to build for a huge range of different um platforms yeah [SPEAKER_01] yeah, it's funny when we like As you're mentioning that like email the hermes agent has uh an agent.to mail uh email address um And so like for my wife whenever she's like ah like we're in we're in the market for a new car And she's like, oh, she's like doing it the old way. I'm like, hey, just email martin I gave him permission to email you back like tell him what you want and he'll go do like a search for you So like my wife is email martin the more sophisticated marty is uh [SPEAKER_01] Is doing all this work, but it's like it's been fun watching my wife just Just she'll be like oh email martin today and he like did some good work for me Like that's pretty incredible. Does she like martin more than you? No, no of course. I hope not Not yet at least Maybe at some point Maybe when robotics get here shoot I'm kidding i'm kidding the uh but um No, it's just like the yeah, like that's one form factor. It's like hey honey [SPEAKER_01] Instead of like you take my phone and getting telegram just email martin. Yeah, yeah He'll get you a list of cars in the area that are within the the range of What you're looking for? Yeah, she's been going back and forth with them in an email thread. That's yeah [SPEAKER_00] It's probably a magical experience for right. Yeah, yeah Yeah, and awful and awful it's all of those monotonous tasks like going and searching and getting quotes from six different from six different vendors and finding the car you want and the reviews all of that is it goes from these incredibly laborious processes to You know a few minutes texting your her his agent. No, no, we have a ad on our team. He has his agent [SPEAKER_01] uh And our agents are emailing each other. Yeah, like so we got stuff for the business like Ed in his telegram or his hermes desktop app with his agent like all right email martin um And tell him that we did This thing in this part of the business and make sure he updates his second brain to yeah to recognize that it's uh And I feel I still feel like i'm not utilizing it like i'm like We do that and some like a workflow like that will [SPEAKER_01] Uh emerge i'm like is this the right way to do something like this like is there there more efficient ways that point being is there's so much to uh to explore in terms of all these different workflows in these cases particularly teams like thinking about how teams interact with Agents and I think dorsey's interview with sequoia earlier this year really Really cemented my thing about like how to view A company in the world of agentic ai or something the company is like [SPEAKER_01] essentially like a knowledge layer in your job is to Give it the best most robust knowledge that every employee can access and so um I haven't let Look everybody into the group chat on telegram. However, we do have like discord and the agents run wild and discord and they can talk there and interact with them so that That use case of creating a second second brain for a company specifically and then getting access the right access [SPEAKER_01] To individuals on the team is a massive problem Uh, not a problem massive opportunity Uh, because when you think about like permissions Especially if you're like selling enterprises like okay, I want becky from finance to have access to this data, but not this data Um, and like just building the guardrails for that. Yep. Totally massive opportunity. Yeah, it's a massive opportunity [SPEAKER_00] I think there's a bunch there too as far as um Um How can you use her me's agent to get more out of every employee? Right, and I think what you see is Certain employs it's a skill to be able to prompt these agents right like it like different people get different performance out of agents It's like very much a feel thing and I think you have You have people that are incredibly incredibly proficient like your top performers um [SPEAKER_00] Hermes agent lets you bring other people up to their level right and that's what we're rolling out for enterprises is is is You know this concept of of a collective wisdom a collective brain where you can take performant employees top skills And deliver those to relevant employees and they immediately get boosts in their performance their agents are immediately better They're shaped in the way that you want them shaped if you know you however You want your top employees perform if you want other people like that like it will shape other people's agents in that way, too [SPEAKER_00] and When you have new hires instead of having like this cold start on-ramp experience You can equip them with a skill set of tools that are formulated, you know In the way that tftc wants things written right in you know all of that stuff and and you can have um You you can have your agents molded kind of to your voice and and the way that you want things done your guidelines And you can give that to new employees existing employees, etc [SPEAKER_00] To kind of help shape people in your direction and also give them that productivity boost. Yeah [SPEAKER_01] What do you think this does for the job mark? Are you uh The permanent underclasses is quickly quickly approaching or a world of a billion flowers are going to bloom [SPEAKER_00] um I think we could have a whole nother podcast on that. I think I think I think I I think I land somewhere somewhere in between right? I think that what this does is you know our It enables you to not do all of these monotonous tasks, right? If you've I think [SPEAKER_01] My big oh my god, i'm gonna lose my laptop job. Yeah, my my bigger concern is oh you [SPEAKER_00] Like you're worried about not just like, you know making excel sheets for the rest of your life or whatever Like that's you're really worried about the paycheck Yeah, like I think what this what this should do is free people up to do you know more thoughtful and higher agency tasks than sitting there and like button pushing um So, yeah, I mean is it going to be this straight shot to a million flowers? No, like there's of course going to be bumps in the job market is you know, these disruptive technologies [SPEAKER_00] You know move through the their natural growth and integration and flow um But I think if you the optimistic view right is that this will enable humans to do things that are more way more fulfilling than what a lot of people have Convinced themselves is is is foundational to their lives. Yeah, the uh [SPEAKER_01] That's sort of philosophical music i've had over the last year because you mentioned earlier like if you're high agency and get a lot out of this and That's the the question I have is they're just like a natural distribution of individuals who are inherently high agency and a very large percentage of which are not or Is there an ability to engender high agency in people? Um, and do ai tools inspire them to become a high agency? [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I don't know. I think that's what we're going to find out in the next decade. We'll find that out I'm sure it's some mixture of both. Yeah um What's your most contrarian take and what's going on right now? My most contrarian take of what's going on right now. Um I don't know if it's contrari it's contrarian. It's i'm sure it's uh uh, there's a lot of people I think that probably should have this viewpoint. I never know how uh, how um pigeonholed i am [SPEAKER_00] I am or sorry how echo chambered I am but I think that um If you want to talk about like existential risk and the way that existential risk of ai like ai You know misaligned ai killing all humans or whatever. Um Um, I actually like sometimes believe in there's some I believe there's some degree of credibility to that argument as a as a possibility but what I think is [SPEAKER_00] I think where we get to crazy town really fast and it's and it's really really disingenuous is um You see large companies and and lobbyists pushing for Uh a stop of open source, right like open source has become and become this sort of Has become this this evil in this and this scapegoat Um, whereas if you ever actually believed in in in existential risk is a real threat Open source would be the last thing you would be concerned about [SPEAKER_00] You'd be concerned about this massive consolidation of compute. You'd be concerned about you know Um, the frontier constantly being pushed by the closed labs, right like just distillation to create open source models Like definitionally can't exceed agi unless the top labs already have done it themselves. Um so I think the Yeah, the the way that that argument has been has been pushed and is certainly kind of the the controlling argument in [SPEAKER_00] The vast majority of the population may likely not those that are very in tune with ai But the way that that argument has been framed to the vast majority of the population. I think is just incredibly incredibly disingenuous incredibly And it's [SPEAKER_01] Almost disgusting is the point is like if I don't think Most of the public is aware because they don't pay close enough attention It's like very clear to me. It's like okay, you're looking for the you've raised a ton of capital You're deploying a ton of capital into this Infrastructure built out really for the frontier labs, uh, and You have a need to get a return on invested capital And you're seeing these open source models begin to nibble at your feet not only that like many people are turning to them for 90 of the work [SPEAKER_01] But they're individual use cases And you're trying to shut shut pull up the ladder and shut the door behind you Just so you can save the those profits and I think When you consider how profound of a Shift this technology is for humanity the fact that there's literally two or three companies trying to pull up the ladder and control yeah, it's just incredibly uh [SPEAKER_00] I would say evil at the end of the day. Well, where did all the data come in the first place? [SPEAKER_01] Right like it's all of our data that I mean the fact that they were buying like centuries old books and like cutting off the bindings and [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, and then burning them. It's like what the hell? Yeah, it was all our data that it came from in the first place [SPEAKER_01] Right and then they yeah, it's it's open eyes disingenuous dealing with it with the new york times or not. Yeah, I think that that uh I guess copywriter a copyright case is moving forward. I mean, it's been a pleasure. Um I'm sure there's more I am gonna pick your brain off uh off air about what I should be doing with my agent I love it any any final thoughts final final words of wisdom before we wrap up here [SPEAKER_00] I don't know about words of wisdom. I think um I think at some point it will be very obvious that You should care about um privacy in in the age of ai and agentic ai I think that The more proactive you can be about it and and the steps that you can take to empower a [SPEAKER_00] A world where you have more ownership as a business and as an individual of of your ai and where the data that you Give to your ai flows Uh, the better the better served you'll be and you can avoid a lot of a lot of headache down the road And so I think looking for Obviously hermes agent but looking for tools that enable you in the ai realm to um Have good controls over your data But do it in a simple way that isn't it super burdensome and and a huge headache for you [SPEAKER_00] I think will be a really really valuable investment going forward [SPEAKER_01] I completely agree with that um Thank you for joining me. Thank you, uh, in the team at news for for building hermes has been incredibly powerful for us here at tftc and uh excited to see what you guys build next love it. Thanks marty. Thank you. Peace and love freaks Thank you for listening to this episode of tftc If you've made it this far, I imagine you got some value out of the episode If so, please share it far and wide with your friends and family. We're looking to get the word out there [SPEAKER_01] Also, wherever you're listening whether that's youtube apple spotify Make sure you like and subscribe to the show and if you can leave a rating on the podcasting platforms that goes a long way Last but not least if you want to get these episodes A day early and ad free make sure you download the fountain podcasting app and go to fountain.fm to find that $5 a month get you every episode a day early ad free [SPEAKER_01] Helps the show gives you incredible value So, please consider subscribing via fountain as well. Thank you for your time and until next time