11-11-26 Are Data Center Fears Irrational? - Bryan Christ Interview

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: And now for something completely different. Forget everything you've been told by others before. [00:00:06] Speaker 2: If, as a kid, you had told me where we were going to be today, I wouldn't believe it, because so much of what we're seeing sounds like and looks like an episode of, like, Star Trek at this point. [00:00:16] Speaker 1: Get ready for the real deal. Build data centers, but build on responsibly, right? [00:00:20] Brian Chris: The full story. What's interesting is that AI sentiment and data center sentiment, the negativity comes from not understanding how these things work. [00:00:30] Speaker 4: The whole enchilada. A lot of fear-mongering about data centers. It really is a campaign against AI. [00:00:38] Speaker 1: It's money news and information you can use to grow financially healthy, wealthy, and wise. [00:00:44] Speaker 4: I think there's a county in Georgia, and they project, I think, [00:00:48] Speaker 2: that they can effectively eliminate taxes in that county with what the data center is bringing in. [00:00:54] Speaker 1: Now, welcome in the real deal. [00:00:57] Speaker 2: I think that the pace of what's being called job displacement is happening much slower than the AI community anticipated. [00:01:06] Speaker 1: The Real Investment Show with Lance Roberts. Presented by RIA Advisors. I'm Lance Roberts. [00:01:12] Lance Roberts: Welcome to today's edition of our ongoing interview series on The Real Investment Show. Today's special guest is owner of BK Chris Ventures, Brian Chris. And we're going to be talking specifically about kind of the irrational psychosis around data center fear. Of course, you know, data centers are getting built. This is there's been a lot of debate within the media, particularly about data centers being built, water usage, electricity usage, electricity costs. States have put a moratorium on some of the build out temporarily until they can get their hands around it. In August of 2025, American attitudes towards data centers were roughly split. They were about 43% to just supported building one in their community. About 42% opposed it. But as this AI revolution has accelerated, the pendulum has certainly swung violently. According to the latest August 2026 polling from heat map and in bold research that has support has plummeted to just 21% while opposition has skyrocketed to 75%. So we're going to talk all about that today and what this AI data center build out means for not just the markets, but for the economy. And we're going to talk a little bit more about this with Brian, Chris. Brian, tell me a little bit about your background with BK Chris Ventures, LLC. You've been doing this for about nine years now. [00:02:32] Brian Chris: Well, so my technology background goes up much farther than that. [00:02:38] Lance Roberts: Well, I hope so. [00:02:39] Brian Chris: Yeah. So I actually cut my teeth on computers back in the early eighties when I was just a teenager. Right. So I got my first computer at the time and things like the Commodore and Apple were really popular. And I've been doing technology ever since. I worked at Compaq. It later became Hewlett Packard as a project manager there for a decade and a half. Served as a fractional CIO in the greater Houston area for a while. And then embarked on my own kind of independent consulting, which is what BK Chris Ventures is, is the financial vehicle for me to do that consulting work. So I'm a bit of a AI enthusiast, not by not necessarily by choice, but because my cybersecurity role sort of collided with it about four years ago. And so I probably spend more time keeping up with it. I would like to admit. [00:03:38] Lance Roberts: Well, just real quick. Let's have a little trip back in time because I was getting my first exposure to computers back in the early eighties, too. Commodore 64. Of course, Atari was back then. And then the Tandy 1000. So, you know, those certainly bring back some memories when you start talking about computers and learning, you know, basic computer language and then the dial up Internet. You know, all you could see was basically text language on the screen. So, you know, we certainly come a long way over those last kind of 40 years. [00:04:09] Brian Chris: Absolutely. You know, if as a kid you had told me where we were going to be today, I wouldn't have believed it because so much of what we're seeing sounds like and looks like an episode of like Star Trek at this point. [00:04:23] Lance Roberts: It does. It absolutely does. I mean, you know, it's just it is quite amazing how far technology has come. And, you know, there's a couple of stories around AI in particular is one. And, you know, we can kind of just touch on this briefly and talk about how this applies to data centers. But one is that A.I. is very similar to the Internet. A.I. is just a fad. It will never create any money. And, you know, this isn't, you know, it's all just debt and there's no truth to any of this stuff that's going on. And the other side of the story, of course, is that A.I. is going to be the game changer, the next industrial revolution that changes the way that we live and operate and work in society. And we and you and I have both certainly been through these transitions. You know, I remember a day where, you know, the fax machine. I mean, I remember days we used to type stuff with carbon paper to get a copy. And then you had the fax machine and this was, you know, this was a game changer. And then then there was this thing called FedEx. It was like who needs packages overnight and then the Internet and then, you know, cell phones. And, you know, it's been this evolutionary change that we have that you and I have lived through this technological innovation. And it seems like every time we have one of these starts to a new technological revolution, there's this big campaign of doubters up front. Who needs packages overnight? Who needs to have a cell phone? We have cell we have phones in our house. Why do you need to carry one around with you? Who needs a smartphone? You know, and each time these have become embedded in not just society, but in the way that we work, the way that we communicate, the way that we operate. And, you know, A.I. is going to be the next evolution of that. But anyway, I ramble. Let me let me turn the table to you. What do you think? Yeah. [00:06:11] Brian Chris: So it's interesting. So there's a real struggle within the A.I. community to actually characterize, you know, in terms of like an analogy. Like, what is this similar to? Is it similar to the invention of electricity? Is it similar to, you know, the invention of the railway? What I'll say is you sort of you put out there like two kind of views of of where and how does A.I. matter? I think both of those are true. I think right now we call the frontier labs. And for your audience, I'll explain what that is. I see the sort of the big five. That's Elon Musk with Gronk. That's Sam Altman with open A.I. Meta, which is basically Facebook just launched a really earth shattering model. Google has Gemini and Anthropic has Claude. And we call these the frontier labs. These are the guys with billions of dollars thrown into their infrastructure to their R&D. And my understanding is that they're all sort of financially underwater writing the bubble. And I don't think that actually is true for for space else. I think that Elon has a lot of other things going on that make him, you know, this situation a little different. But, yeah, they're all sort of rolling the collective financial dice on this. And I don't know where that lands. I don't know whether that pays off or we have something like, you know, we saw the Internet bubble back in the day where, you know, everybody had a website and all these vendors online and went home time to pay the piper. Some of the money wasn't there. Some of the money wasn't there. And, you know, it all blew up. Right. I don't know whether that's going to be true for them. The question about whether this is going to be a game changer for for jobs, the economy is I don't think that's I think that's undeniable. Let me just, you know, and I'm sure there'll be some people that are listening and say, oh, that's wonderful. And other people want to throw stones at me for this. But I, you know, just this year basically tackled four things that I would normally probably hire a contractor for. Right. Right. Because AI empowered me to do it. So in one sense, as a business owner, it allowed me to be more efficient with my consulting practice. But on the other hand, it meant that there were four people that I would have hired as a contractor that I didn't hire. Right. So if anybody says, you know, they know exactly where this thing is going, I don't think that's true. You know, there were some early and I bought into it early on that the sky is falling. It's all gloom and doom. There's some things to certainly be cautious of. But I also am a little bit more optimistic than I used to be. [00:09:21] Lance Roberts: Yeah. And, you know, and it's a good point that, you know, there's certainly going to be some job disruption around that. And but I think, you know, we tend to focus on just that is that AI is going to cost all these jobs and nobody's going to have any work anymore because AI will do everything. But, you know, I look back over, you know, kind of these evolutions that you and I have lived through. You know, when the Internet came along, everybody said the same thing. Oh, the Internet's going to destroy all the jobs who needs, you know, who needs people to, you know, when the Internet can do sales and marketing everything else. Why do you need salespeople? Right. And what we found out was, is that the Internet created a whole lot of new jobs because you needed website developers. You needed people to maintain it, search engine optimization, all this other stuff that went along with running and maintaining an operating website. And then it also created a lot of businesses because for the first time, a guy working out of his garage could have a website that could compete with one of the S&P 500 companies in terms of selling product. Because on the Web, everybody's equal. If you've got a marketing and a brand out there and a good marketing solution, it worked. So, social media comes along and then we create a whole brand of new jobs called influencers and people, you know, using social media to create jobs. And there's a very interesting study out just this past month talking about solopreneurship. Is that one thing we are seeing already from AI is a lot of people becoming solo independent entrepreneurs because they don't need anybody else. They can do sales and marketing and everything else with AI and they can run their own business using AI to enhance that. So, you know, my point is, is that while there is this idea of job destruction and that will certainly occur, it happens every time we have new technology. We also need to give some thought to where the new jobs are going to be created. You know, I don't know what comes out of AI. Maybe there's a whole new, you know, AI set of influencers that come out of this or whatever it is. But there is going to be a new subset of jobs that come out because of AI. [00:11:27] Brian Chris: Yeah, absolutely. So, one of the things that you're actually seeing right now, which is this really weird contention, and it's part of why I wrote that article that I did on LinkedIn. I wrote it on a day when anti-AI sentiment, and it was really anti-data center sentiment, but it was really like a disguise for AI, anti-AI sentiment. I had never seen anything like it. I hopped on X that morning to sort of just kind of catch up on the world. And it was, you know, just every other post was about, you know, how it was going to hurt the electric, you know, like the consumers' electric rates were going to go up and it wasn't being responsible with water. And it was just, it was the amount of noise around this was just so insane. And, you know, and I knew these things weren't true. So, I just rolled up my sleeve and I said, you know what, I'm going to just, you know, tackle this. It feels like the right thing to do. And so, what actually you end up finding out is that really this anti-data center movement when you started engaging with these folks was really wasn't an anti-data center movement. Because we've had data centers forever, really it's an anti-AI movement. Yes. And then what you have to sort of do is like, in the interval between us talking now and me writing that piece, two days later, you know, there was a, I don't know if you know who Gary Cain is, but he's the CEO of Y Combinator, venture capitalist firm out in California. And he said, Hey, this is a Chinese site. And he got ridiculed for it. But then what happened is three days later, Elon Musk discovered that there were effectively 200,000 Chinese bot accounts running around and spreading this anti-data center, anti-AI propaganda. And she put it down and the noise just precipitously just dropped off. Yep. So I don't think he was wrong there. I think that he got tackled when he shouldn't have. And I think there's an element of this whole thing, this anti-AI sentiment that's really driven by propaganda. Trump recently said, if you pay attention, said that it's really important that America win this race. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. China knows this. Now, you asked me a question about jobs and where I'm going with this is, I think it's important that we, we do win the race, that we stay ahead of our adversaries. Um, I think there's, there's, there's so much more at stake than just the local, local politics and by local, I mean, not just a county and state, but I think what I mean is, is national as well. Um, and, um, there is what's going to happen. I think is there's, you're seeing this, the union, uh, union heads are coming out and talking about this, but the data centers require, um, electricians, plumbers to build these things out. There's currently a shortage. I think the estimate is around 350,000, uh, shortages of those trades. And so you have, um, you have the, the heads of these unions running around and explaining that, Hey, we got this wonderful opportunity for this blue collar work. And it's paying. I read some crazy number. I want to say that it was in Pennsylvania, uh, where they're building a data center. Um, these guys that are doing this work are making like six figures, like solid up two hundreds. Yes. All the stuff. Yeah, absolutely. We have this massive shortage and I think even Lowe's recently came out and said, Hey, we're going to establish a coalition to help train because we're going to have a shortage of these skilled, skilled jobs. And so they're committed to helping train some folks. Yes. [00:15:27] Lance Roberts: Yeah. Two, two things real quick. First of all, we're going to post a link to your article right here below. Um, so there's a link to Brian Chris article on, uh, it's posted on LinkedIn, but we put a link, we'll put a link here for you as well. But you know, it is very interesting that, you know, first of all, never go on to X to get anything that is, that is devolved into a cesspool of negativity. I mean, it's just amazing. You know, it used to be, I could go there and, and, and, you know, get some good information about the financial markets, et cetera. And there were some really smart people and those people have pretty much all left because all that's left now is just the wrath, the kind of the rabble that are just, it's the end of the world coming. And, you know, AI is going to kill all of us and the markets are going to crash. And, you know, it's just, you know, I've just kind of ignore most of it now, but like you, I do get a lot of fodder to write off of because there's so much bad information and bad propaganda on X in particular. And it is sad because there's a lot of people that, that believe what they read on X and they think that it's true, but there's so much bad information. You've really got to be careful about what you pull off of X these days. But, but just real quick, you know, this, you know, back to this kind of story about data centers in particular, you know, Texas has now put a pause on them temporarily. They're trying to get their hands around, you know, the electricity usage, the water usage, et cetera. And speaking of Elon Musk, he's building a big data center outside of Texas A&M and Bryan College Station. Now he just cut the deal with the, with the city on that. There was a big backlash over that, over tax credits that were given, which actually people just read the headline. They didn't read underneath to where the city will get $20 million a year every year for like the next 30 years. So it's actually a very, very good deal for the county and the city. But regardless of that, you know, is, is most of this stuff about AI dinners, the data centers really just kind of stuff that, that people are pulling off of the internet and not really understanding what's happening underneath. [00:17:28] Brian Chris: Yeah. I, so I think, like I said, that there really is a true kind of propaganda campaign going on. Um, and I think we're, I'm actually seeing a little bit of a spike of one right now. Um, but if you, if you really go and do your research, what you'll find is, well, first let me back up and say that I think the governor Abbott's position is pretty, um, is pretty balanced. Um, he's been very clear that, that, you know, that he believes that the AI and the data centers, they're actually going to be an economic, um, benefit to Texas. Um, but he also understands this idea that you need, and this is where I am build data centers, but build on responsibly. Right. So in, in, in really what's interesting is that AI sentiment where the data center, AI and data center sentiment, the negativity comes from not understanding how these things work. There was a recent study done, I want to say about a week ago, um, where if the respondent was to explain, hey, um, new data centers are built with closed loop systems that use roughly the equivalent of like a swimming pool or two every year. Um, or, um, you know, from places like Loudoun County in Virginia, where the studies have shown that their electric rates and their tax rates have actually like been positively affected by this stuff in use. So if you give that information to the surveyed respondent, then their position shifts. Yeah. And so I think people are taking, um, exactly what you said, they're reading the headline and they're, they're just immediately buying into the fear and it is causing the backlash. So I think where governor Abbott is coming is from is a very balanced position because, um, he's recognizing the benefit of it, the value of it. Uh, I think Trump does too. Uh, but at the same time, he understands that people want to know that these things are being done in a responsible manner. And I'm all for that. Like we wouldn't, we need to hold them accountable to making sure that they're good stewards in the community. They're not, you know, there are regions of the country where water is, is an issue. So even to take a swimming pool, a set worth of water, you know, without, you know, considering the ramifications can be a big deal. Yeah. [00:19:53] Lance Roberts: And I think that's, and Brian, yeah, Brian, I think that's one of the parts that people miss too. So one of my, my wife works for an LNG company and they sell LNG to data centers. And what I think a lot of people miss is, is that they assume that just because a data center is being built, that all their electricity prices are going to go up because that data center is going to pull all that electricity off the grid. But in reality, a lot of these, I'm not gonna say all of them because I don't have that fact, but I do know that a lot of these larger data centers are building their own power structures. They're, you know, building power generation either through LNG or natural gas, and they'll eventually shift towards many nuclear reactors at some point in the future when we have those available. But in a lot of cases, they are, they are, to your point, very self-contained units. They use their own water. They recycle their own water. They're, they're, they're generating their own power. So they're not really affecting the community grid as much as a lot of the headlines suggest. Would you agree or disagree? [00:20:50] Brian Chris: Oh, I absolutely agree. There was a really interesting case, again, relatively new, I want to say within the last couple of weeks. Now, the voters of the township rejected it. It was, I think it was in Pennsylvania. And they, you know, I think one of the big, big data center companies was going to come in, and they were effectively going to build 500 megawatts of power and some, there was some other incentives in there. I was shocked that the, the, the township rejected it, but, uh, a lot of these, these companies are now saying, hey, we can do a lot of good for the communities we move into. And that includes, uh, building, you know, um, sources of power, whether that's solar or, uh, traditional, you know, coal fire or whatever it is. Um, they are, they're, they're in tune with that. And I think they are, they're absolutely willing to bring it to the table. You're starting to see sense of that already. [00:21:50] Lance Roberts: Well, and, and, and, and I guess from, you know, let's, let's shift the focus here just a bit. So, you know, first of all, people are, are, are opposed to data centers for a lot of reasons, just because of headlines that they read. And, and I was reading that same study, um, that you were talking about, uh, and it's actually the one in Loudoun County, Virginia. And, you know, when you start looking at, you know, while the locals complain a lot, and this was, let me just read this line from your article, because I thought it was really good. While locals may complain about the infrastructure, the financial impact is undeniable. According to the county budget data tax revenue from data center computer equipment has skyrocketed from 466 million in fiscal year 2022 to a staggering 795 million in fiscal year 2026. That's 800 million a year in tax revenue. And that's the money that funds schools and roads and emergency services. And, and that's the stuff that we're overlooking in a lot of, with a lot of these headlines. [00:22:43] Brian Chris: Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a county in Georgia story on it as well. That's really good. And they project, I think that they can effectively eliminate taxes in that county, um, with, uh, what the data center is bringing in. Uh, it's not going to happen overnight. I think it's predicted to somewhere 2029, 2035, something like that. But they're on a path to say, Hey, if this continues, you might not need to collect local sales tax or local taxes at all. [00:23:14] Lance Roberts: So, so, you know, and again, moving past that, right? So once you start talking about those facts, everybody's like, okay, well, if they're using their own power, they're using their own, their own water for the most part, and they're generating revenue, then what's the bad thing about it? But it really just comes down back to kind of the original statement, which was, I really just don't know what this means for me. Right. Is this going to displace my job? What's it going to do? What's this mean to me economically? What's, you know, you know, everybody tells me that I'm gonna lose my job and my future is going to be crap because AI is just going to do everything. But that seems to be a very simplistic excuse. When you start looking at the potential benefits, everything from, you know, we've already seen breakthroughs in cancer research because of AI, we've seen breakthroughs in medicine and a variety of other areas because of AI operations, etc. There was just recently a brain surgery done with the with the assistance of AI, right, first ever. And so these these benefits are going to be very broad to the human race and probably far outweigh what some of the near term concerns are. So how do we address that? [00:24:22] Brian Chris: Yeah, I think it's so I want to kind of springboard off of something that you said earlier, which is if you go on social media, like it's, it's not necessarily the best experience. Um, one of the things that clued me into this wasn't really a railing against data centers as much as it was AI, somebody had posted a little meme out there and it was called the, you know, the anti data center pledge. And it basically said, I pledged to stop using Netflix. I pledged to stop posting on Facebook and the laundry list of these services. And the reality is, is that data centers have been around forever. Um, and in the world that I live in, there's something called digital transformation, which means you're a big company, you're getting rid of, you know, you used to run software in your own data centers, what we call on prem or on premises. And now you're going to go, you know, use services in the cloud, SAS applications, you're going to use ENTRA instead of active directory in and so data centers exist and they've been around for a while and they do all of these things. But it was tongue in cheek because no one would really sign the anti data center pledge. And it was really, it had this like calling effect. What it was really proving is that you're not against data centers, you're against a specific use case of a data center, which is these data centers that are massive GPU farms to train and run AI. And so that's when I really realized that this was a lot of fear mongering, um, about data centers when, when, when really it's a, it's, it's campaign against AI. [00:25:59] Lance Roberts: Well, and, and, and look, you can certainly understand the, the, the, the fear, right? I mean, we were raised with the Terminator, um, a variety of other movies about the future, how AI was going to control everything would all wind up in world war three that destroyed everything. It's all going to be run by robots. So there's, there's a certain embedded, you know, from science fiction movies, et cetera, there's a certain embedded fear of the unknown from AI. But, you know, that's something that we're going to have to start to, you know, kind of focus on, you know, and something, you know, you're in this industry, you understand it. The one thing that gets me a little bit is that people assume that companies like Google and Microsoft and Amazon and, and, and others, Nvidia, who are making, making these large investments into AI are doing this. Really just kind of out of left field. And in other words, they don't really have a plan. There's no real, there's no real vision towards revenue, et cetera. And my argument has been is that throughout history, that's what these companies have done. Google built YouTube before anybody. I mean, people are going, who wants to be on YouTube? That's stupid. Who's going to watch movies on the internet, right? And, you know, before Netflix, there was, you know, Blockbuster who needs to rent a movie online. I'll just go down to Blockbuster and rent a VHS. And yet these were in, these were CapEx investments into a vision that these companies built. And when you start talking about companies like Microsoft and Google and Amazon, these are the best capital allocators that have probably ever existed in human history about being able to invest capital and create something that people use and want. And I find it a stretch for people to be discounting their ability to do the same thing with what they're doing with AI. [00:27:47] Speaker ?: Yeah. [00:27:48] Brian Chris: So what's, what's really interesting there is, is I think that the examples you gave, they're all very large companies and they're, they're playing the wrong game. Um, I don't know how I got on it, you know, probably just by the perk of my head up too much, but. They'll pull the trigger on it, but open a part of open AI's, uh, chat GPT, um, ad campaign, um, subsidized, uh, prototype, if you will. So, right. Like, you know, most people either use the free version of chat GPT or they have, you know, probably, you know, one of the, the lighter plans like the plus or whatever things account or whatever. Uh, but they're looking at an advertising based model. Right. So, you know, they're thinking about the dollars they're thinking about, you know, how do we, how do we, you know, turn this thing into a money make, but, but they're not right now. I mean, I think one of the, a great example of this is, uh, is Anthropic, uh, with Claude. Um, they've got, they're a real fork in the road because they, they early on made the wrong bet on the hardware side. And the irony is they actually lease equipment from Elon to run their models, right? So he has these data centers called Colossus one and Colossus two. Um, Elon is leasing them and compute on Colossus one so that they can run. Uh, you know, this is, again, this is so uncharted territory. It's just doesn't do justice. Um, for this. Uh, Nvidia is a different beast because they are not a, they're, they don't, they haven't. They haven't, and I'll use the word LLM because that's really those large language models, but the AIs really is large language models. Have an LLM. Um, but it's not one that the ordinary Joe has heard of. Um, what Nvidia is interested in is, um, they want to have the hardware essentially so that you can run AI locally on, you know, your own system. That is a legitimate concern. I will tell you that, um, early on, I think there's some controls in place now that you can leverage with ChatGPT and Claude that didn't exist early on. Mm hmm. But when you enter your prompt into those tools, they were actually using that for, for training data. Yeah. Uh, you can, you can, there's obviously concerns there, right? Because if you're working on a document where you sign a mutual NDA, for example, you, like, you can't have that data going into those, uh, training runs. That's, that's a violation of the, the NDA. [00:30:35] Lance Roberts: That's right. [00:30:36] Brian Chris: Uh, and so, uh, there is this, there is a legitimate fear of, Hey, I'm, I'm entering my data. Into these systems. What are they doing with it? Uh, one of the ways you can solve that if you have to know how I, this is, you know, I tinker with this stuff. But sitting off to the side of me is a little computer that's running what's called a local model. The data stays on that. It's as smart as, you know, ChatGPT was like a year ago, and I can use it for just about anything that I don't need the, you know, big frontier models to do. I even have to do some lightweight coding for me. Um, and, and so that's where Nvidia is coming, right? Like I, I spent, you know, more than I wanted to on that little piece of hardware, but Nvidia wants that to be commoditized. Right. So then I'm going to view a brand or whoever can run this stuff on their own PC laptop. Right. And, and still, and still like get the advantage of, of, you know, having the kind of superhuman ability to do things better and faster without having to pay someone to do it. So I'm really kind of interested to see how this clash of the Titans plays out in that space. That's what I'm looking at. So do, maybe the question is better framed. Do the frontier labs get to like a recurring profitable state before the Nvidia's of the world commoditize it and, and make it, you know, harder to get to that. [00:32:05] Lance Roberts: And look, and look, and I think that's a very valid point, which is that, you know, let's be clear. There are going to be winners and losers in the AI space. There will be companies just like we saw in the dot-com bubble. You know, there are going to be companies that are in this space now that will no longer exist in two years, three years, four years, whatever it is. There's going to be other companies that are going to, that maybe we haven't even heard of yet, that will become dominant players. You know, when we look at the top 10 stocks in the S&P 500, right, it's Apple, Amazon, Meta and Google and Nvidia. Maybe in 10 years, it's a totally different set of companies that we don't even know exist yet. But that's part of this revolution, this evolution process that will occur. And I'm certainly not. And just for people that are listening to this interview that are investing in markets, I'm certainly not saying that you should go out and buy every AI stock because they're all going to be winners. That's absolutely not the case. But I do think there are certain companies that have a much better position to win in this space long term because they have cash, because they have revenue from other sources to support their AI, that they have a built in trajectory to be a winner longer term than companies that may be very AI specific that are just starting out. [00:33:18] Speaker ?: Yeah, absolutely true. [00:33:19] Brian Chris: Yeah, absolutely true. And I think what you're going to see on top of that is you're going to see a lot of consolidation. You actually just saw it recently, Nvidia bought Hugging Face. Right. So Hugging Face is this, for folks that don't know, is this great place where you can go and you can try all of these different models that you've never heard of. And it's where some of the local models get sort of distributed so that you can pull them down and run them. And Nvidia saw an opportunity there and said, hey, let's go buy this. And they did. And I think it was a smart play. I think it's really going to serve them well in the long run. [00:34:02] Lance Roberts: Yeah, well, you know, if a company can vertically integrate, you know, that alleviates a lot of barriers as well. And again, you know, it's interesting, you know, Anthropix getting ready to IPO sometime soon. OpenAI will eventually IPO or not. You've got XAI, which is inside of SpaceX. So, you know, we'll see. I mean, maybe the, you know, the AI models themselves, maybe that's not the space where the winning becomes. Right. Maybe it is the data centers. Maybe it is whoever controls the data that's ultimately that winner. And, you know, and maybe OpenAI is acquired by somebody later on. And maybe Microsoft, I'm not saying this is true, but maybe Microsoft buys OpenAI or Google buys, you know, Anthropic at some point. And integrates that into a larger overall model. You know, I have no idea what the future holds. But, you know, I think we're very early in the cycle. And I think the one mistake that some investors are making right now is discounting this phase of the cycle as the end of the Internet boom. You know, we're more at the beginning phase of the Internet cycle, really, than we are at the end of the Internet cycle. [00:35:15] Brian Chris: Absolutely. You know, not a day goes by that I'm not shocked with what I'm seeing. But just for those, you know, that I don't know when this will air, but on the 10th, so two days from now, Brock's newest model is going to come out. Elon has said that it's going to be trained on all of the engineering SpaceX data that they have. So, you know, how much intellect is in that is we'll find out. But I mean, just based on that, it's going to probably be pretty amazing. These guys, you know, they keep saying, oh, you know, AI is going to hit a wall, AI is going to plateau. The problem with that narrative is it just hasn't happened. The recent release of Astra, which is the kind of code name for the ChetGP 6 series, absolutely amazing. They've employed a technique that has some folks alarmed. And I think there's reason to be alarmed with that. But it's not a new technique. It was one that was published a few years ago. But, you know, they they finally said, you know, we're going to do it. And they did. And it's paying off, you know, massively in terms of the power of the model. And I think you're going to see others go there. So I don't know where this thing plateaus. What I will tell people, and it's somewhat insulting. But, you know, if you look at, you know, these these models have been put to to Mensa level tests, and they are they're clocking in at 130, 140, you know, ish on the IQ. You know, the Mensa is tuned to where the average person is at 100, right? So these these models are smarter than just about every single person, you know, including yourself. Yeah. [00:37:07] Lance Roberts: I'm getting ready to wrap up here. Just, you know, final thoughts on what you would like our listeners to kind of take away from our conversation today. [00:37:16] Speaker ?: Yeah. [00:37:17] Brian Chris: Final thoughts. And I'm not going to make any apologies for it. I'm a Christian. I believe that God's in control. And I say don't don't sweat it. I say also take the opportunity to understand these things. They're they're more than just a chat, you know, a tool to chat with. I run a frozen yogurt shop, and I use it to do my shopping because it can find prices on the goods that I need that in much less time than it would I would normally do it, you know, by hand. But they really like I don't think the average person has even like comprehended the level of power that they have in their hands that they can do what they do best, but do it better. So I think for a large swath of people, they can they can really up their game if they'll embrace it and run with it. I would argue maybe there's some professions that, you know, I get asked all the time, you know, my kids go to college, which should they not get into. I think there's a list that Sam Altman created of things that would probably not be good bets long term in terms of what you should study. I would take that under advisement. I see a huge I'm encouraging people all the time at that age. Consider the trades. They are going to be the last thing that's impacted by AI. And I think the other and I'll leave I'll try to wrap up with this last piece of good news. I think I think that the base of what's being called job displacement is happening much slower than the AI community anticipated. And I think it's because of what I just said, most people look at these tools and they still just think they're like these really fancy chat tools. There's so much more than that. And until that sort of propagates down to the, you know, ordinary, you know, average Joe, I don't think that there's like, I don't think that tomorrow you're going to walk in and you're going to find, you know, whole departments are cut because of AI. I just don't know that was one that was the worry and concern. I think we're seeing that we've got more time to get people acclimated, to think about changing their profession, to do something different. And I tell folks to take advantage of the time. [00:39:52] Lance Roberts: Well, you know, you could say the same thing about the cell phone when it first came around, you know, the cell phone, you've got the entire world of information at your hands and people have gotten dumber. And all they do with cell phones is just tweet mean things to people that they don't even know rather than learning. Right. And, you know, it's the same thing with AI. It's this very powerful tool that you can use. You know, I've used it to analyze my business, how to how to make my workouts better, how to improve myself. You know what, you know, what things am I missing? And I find it interesting at the bottom of your of your article, you have an author's note says the initial draft this blog was created using local hosted AI. I think that's very interesting statement because this is a tool. And, you know, in the future, you know, it's interesting right now, if you know, Steve Stanley Drunkenmiller just wrote an article and he wrote a very good article about bond prices and interest rates. And immediately the media attacked him over, he used AI to write it. Well, yeah, I drove a car to work this morning. I used a cell phone to call my wife. I used a computer to find out what the prices were today for the markets. I used my computer to trade. And yeah, I used AI to do some research. This is a tool and it's going to be a tool that we use every day in our life in the future. It's going to be just as commonplace as picking up a cell phone or getting information off the Internet or driving your car or anything else. And I just find it interesting that people are just attacking AI at every corner being, oh, I can't be real. AI wrote it. That's not really the case. And in the future, this is going to be much more prevalent than it is today, just as it becomes a more ordinary commonplace tool in our everyday lives. Hey, Brian, I appreciate your time today. [00:41:37] Brian Chris: Yeah, thank you. I'm glad to have been on and I'm glad to get to chat with you. [00:41:42] Lance Roberts: Absolutely. Brian Crist, he is the owner of BK Crist Ventures, LLC, and the link to his article that he wrote on LinkedIn. It's a really, really good piece about the irrational psychosis of data center fears. I'll put the link here right below it. It's well worth your time to read. And again, if you have any questions or comments, be sure and get by our website, realinvestmentadvice.com. Send those to me. I'm always happy to help. We've got lots of articles on our website about AI and a lot of the fears that are out there. We've put a lot of research into those, trying to dispel some of those kind of irrational things that are being talked about right now. So you can be a better investor and focus on what matters to your portfolio over time. That's what we do every day here on The Real Investment Show. And we're glad you're here. Be sure and like and subscribe to the channel. It certainly helps us a whole lot. And we'll see you next time on the next edition of The Real Investment Show. We'll see you next time on The Real Investment Show.