Exploring AI, Bitcoin, and Robotics in Investments with Darcy Ungaro

Special thanks to organisations who support innovation and tech leadership in New Zealand by partnering with NZ Tech Podcast: One NZ HP Spark NZ 2degrees Gorilla Technology

Episode Transcript (computer-generated)

Paul Spain:
Greetings, and welcome along to the New Zealand Tech podcast. I’m your host, Paul Spain. And today, we’re delving into the sort of crossover between the investment and the technology worlds, looking at at AI, bitcoin and a whole bunch of other topics. This episode, we have Darcy Ungaro joining us, as our guest. He’s a financial advisor and a podcast host. Welcome along, Darcy. How are you?

Darcy Ungaro:
Hey. Thanks, Paul. Thanks very much for having me on. I’m good.

Paul Spain:
Great great to have you on. Maybe a quick intro for our listeners to yourself.

Darcy Ungaro:
Sure. So, by day, I’m a financial adviser. I help people with their everyday products like mortgages, insurances, KiwiSaver, and also just offering fee based consulting service, financial advice. And then, yeah, at night or in the afternoons, occasionally, I am the host of the Everyday Investor podcast where we talk about mainstream investing and alternative strategies as well.

Paul Spain:
Fantastic. Well, looking forward to diving into this chat with you today. Before we start, big thank you to our show partners, 1NZ, 2 Degrees, Spark, HP, and Gorilla Technology. Now this episode, we’re doing as a joint episode, between the New Zealand Tech podcast and, and Everyday Investor. So I’m gonna hand over the the reins for for to you to steer the discussion, this time around Darcy.

Darcy Ungaro:
Yeah. It kinda feels like going to the dentist and and just grabbing grabbing a hold of the tools and just say, oh, I have a go this time. Hopefully, we can make it quick and painless. But, you’re you’re a bit you’re someone that’s been on my mind probably for the last few weeks as I’ve been trying to get my head around artificial intelligence and its general impact around, like, the performance of publicly listed companies. I wanna know if it’s just hype or if there is really something tangible, something substantial that’s actually happening because of the implementation of this technology. So just like at a at a general level, being, someone who’s very much involved in technology and serving the business community with basically with tech advice, you would probably understand a lot about how businesses implement and use technology at a micro level anyway. And I thought that would be a good that would be a good sort of point to look at to understand what it might look like at a much larger scale with a publicly listed company. So just general thoughts around how AI is amplifying the performance of these tech businesses.

Paul Spain:
Well, I think there’s there’s a lot of speculation around what the future holds. And and it’s right that we should be thinking ahead and and trying to join up the dots as to, you know, what does the future look like? What should we do now, so that we benefit out of where technology can take us, you know, whether that’s in the days or weeks ahead or months, years and decades ahead. And so if you look to some of the companies in in Nvidia, you know, is probably one of the most exciting in terms of, its growth. They’re a business that has built the the chips that are being used for a lot of the, the AI workloads, from, you know, varying companies, the likes of, you know, Open OpenAI, Microsoft, Tesla, and and so on. There are other companies making chips, but their ones seem to be the most in demand and the best product, right now. And often, you know, that’s something that will continue on for a long period of time. And now if we sort of, you know, step back a little bit, well, okay, well, all of these companies are buying lots of chips right now, but will they still need to be doing that in a year’s time or 5 or or or 10 years’ time? And this is where the speculation often comes into investment and why, you know, from my perspective, why we, you know, we talk about investing in the share market, not being investing but, you know, but being gambling, because there’s so much that we that we don’t know. And, you know, each of us, we have to make, you know, those calls around, you know, where we think things will go.

Paul Spain:
And, look, those longer term pictures are, you know, probably pretty hard to get a handle on exactly what’s going to happen. And sometimes there are very unexpected things that will happen with a business. Sometimes things are just, you know, predictable and, you know, you’ll get a particular, you know, curve that can be pretty sort of steep in the growth of a particular company. And it continues on that trajectory. And if you look back at, you know, at the really big successful sort of, tech stocks, you will see, you know, most of them have have some, you know, pretty impressive growth over time where at one point they were, you know, you’d you’d look at the, you know, I guess they’ve gone through multiple stock splits and so on. And and when you look at them over, you know, over a long period of time, they’ve just grown and grown and grown, and and they keep growing. But we do we do see, you know, we do see exceptions to that, and some companies are very, very much tied up, in 1 or 2 products. So, yeah, how how AI sort of fits in for different companies, You know, I think if you were to look at those, those top tech stocks and try and get your head around exactly where each one of them could be.

Paul Spain:
You know, it is very much a sort of, you know, a matter of sort of speculating as to as to how things might line up, and, you know, which companies are gonna do well. You know, in many ways, you wanna be probably looking out for for those that nobody else has recognized yet where there’s an opportunity for, you know, AI to really, really make the difference. Right? So I’m speaking at a at a at a, at a conference possibly before this is is published, for, for people in in your field, financial advisers, and I’m talking through, you know, some of the aspects of of, of AI. Now, you know, one one of my comments is that, you know, look, you know, everybody involved in this space has an opportunity to get in and to start using AI, you know, themselves as individuals, as as small, you know, small advisory firms. But they will be the big players that will come through as well. And, you know, most people have have, you know, heard of New Zealand and probably, you know, noticed, you know, the growth of, say, Shares East. You know, this is a company that’s been able to come about, because of certain bits and pieces of technology and, you know, they’ve built a momentum and done very well. I imagine we’re gonna see, you know, completely new different businesses that that will will come in and and do you know, potentially do something like what they’ve done, but it’s very much, you know, say, AI investment or or other, you know, other things that are just using AI, to be able to do so much better than, you know, some of the old, options and and offerings.

Paul Spain:
And in other cases, we’ll see, you know, it might be that applies AI, and positions themselves, you know, as as a leader by bringing together their existing tech and AI or or might be, you know, completely new, players. So there’s a lot of ways that these things can, can play out.

Darcy Ungaro:
Mhmm. You look at the legacy businesses, that I was just thinking when you were saying that before, there it’s one thing to look at these technology companies that are already in the business of tech and just seeing how AI can amplify what they’re already doing. But like you say, like, I wonder if the real opportunity is in looking at legacy business structures that still depend on old school administrative functions or even physical things that don’t necessarily require a high degree of accuracy, but they are just physical moving things around. Like, I’m I’m thinking of Optimus, Tesla’s Optimus. And I’ve I’ve been watching videos of this, Android robot that is just walking around doing stuff. And, like, I could imagine that if you had enough money and you just filled a warehouse full of these things, you you got you got them folding shirts in no time. Right? Pretty expensive shirts, mind you. But as as time goes on, the cost of those machines can effectively get to 0 eventually over time, and it’s really just power that we’re dealing with.

Darcy Ungaro:
And then ultimately, we get to a place way off in the future where energy effectively is the raw commodity for everything, and the actual labor is completely replaced by by robots, but that’s probably way too far down the line. But maybe the opportunity though coming back to this is is really just in legacy businesses that do require some manual input from somebody either doing an administrative function or simple simple laborious tasks. Right?

Paul Spain:
Yeah. Look. I think there’s there’s a there’s opportunities there. The challenge often for some organizations is that pivot, is that change. If they’ve been very slow moving organizations, how do you change from being a very, you know, a very slow to change organization into one that moves at a pace? And, you know, I think that there’s been, you know, a fair bit of, you know, discussion over what the rest of the auto industry, you know, can and will achieve when it comes to electric vehicles, autonomous, vehicles, you know, being being much more sort of, you know, software defined, I suppose. And, yeah, I’m I’m still hearing things, you know, today, and these conversations have been probably going on for, you know, between 5 10 years. I’m still hearing hearing, you know, commentary today from people within that sector who are saying, oh, Tesla’s still 5 years ahead of other players. And how could anybody make that when everything they’ve been doing has been out in the open for, you know, for so many years? Everyone’s seen their their share price, their market cap, you know, grow to where they’re they’re worth more than the next few, you know, automakers combined.

Paul Spain:
And, you know, the only things that you can kinda look to, you know, are the people, and and, you know, how they work inside that business and that they’re actually iterating and doing things faster or that it’s a complete lie and they they’re going nowhere and they’re gonna fail. And, you know, I I guess my my bets wouldn’t be on that, on on that second option. So, yeah, there there’s some really interesting things sort of, you know, tied up in terms of how businesses operate, how agile they are, you know, and and the ability to sort of change and and maneuver. And, look, for some of those things, you need a lot of money. So, you know, the ability to tap into, you know, venture capital or existing revenue streams, you know, can be helpful. But then you get other firms that that, you know, they get huge amounts of month, you know, money from, from Venture Capital, and they just burn through it all and and and don’t actually achieve the results. So, you know, there’s a lot of this that comes down to the people and the leadership and the and the methodologies that they they follow. And, you know, I imagine there’s a fair bit of, there’s a fair bit of luck in there, but the companies that do well over the long term seem to figure out how to make their luck and and how to keep, you know, keep making it.

Paul Spain:
I mean, look at Apple. If they hadn’t come up with the iPhone, where would Apple be, you know, right now? And and, you know, look. If they’d, they decided to go in another direction or hadn’t made the the tilts and the pivots that they’ve made, you know, you know, and it was, you know, back in the nineties when they they were out looking for handouts and, you know, Microsoft, you know, helped them get up off the floor because they were they were struggling. But, you know, look at them now. They were

Darcy Ungaro:
Yeah. And and it’s actually Apple’s a a great example, right, of how how to change, how to pivot, how to know when to, I guess, fold them. Right? Or or when when to go again because they’ve they’ve pulled out of that. I I I don’t know how many $1,000,000,000 it was, 8, 9, $10,000,000,000 this failed, not failed, but shut down EV project. Like, that’s an example that they were more than willing to change and ready to pivot yet again, get into the EV manufacturing business, so much so that they threw their capital behind it. They they pivoted. They they got into it, and then they pulled out. And, like, that just blows me away that they would actually invest that much and not get stuck into the mindset that a lot of people get stuck into when they’re renovating their homes, which is, oh my goodness.

Darcy Ungaro:
This cost, like, 20 times more than I thought. I’m just gonna pull out now. We don’t do that at an individual layer, but level, but they they they did at at a very large level.

Paul Spain:
Well, doctor Dyson did something, similar. So, you know, I was, you know, followed with interest, Dyson, because they’ve been an incredibly innovative company. You know, I struggle at times with with looking at, you know, how much you pay for some of their products versus the, you know, the other offerings, in the market, but they differentiate themselves, you know, so well. And I was really curious where they were going with their electric vehicles and and, you know, they pulled the plug on that too with, not the same level of investment, I don’t believe, as Apple put in. You know, but it was a very significant investment. Now the other area we probably haven’t, you know, haven’t haven’t touched on is is where does the money get made? You know, you talked about this, you know, thing where you, you know, ultimately, it’s it’s down to the the power. Everything’s sort of commoditized. And, you know, that that is one of the things if you can sort of, you know, predict when, hey.

Paul Spain:
There’s there’s, you know, 5 or 10 different chipmakers that are, you know, that are all able to do somewhat sort of similar things, and then they’re competing on, you know, on price while and the money doesn’t get made in that space. And and so, yeah, it’s kinda, you know, working out where those opportunities are, and they will vary according to to, you know, to different times. And, you know, as as you rightly highlight, you know, there there will be, you know, a whole bunch of, you know, existing established firms that will be able to maybe sprinkle some AI dust on on, on what they’re doing and will change their fortunes. There’ll be others that try to do that, and are just too slow and don’t achieve it. But often it is those startups that come through, you know, they’re agile. You know, they they just get on. They move they move fast. They bring in the right sort of people.

Paul Spain:
They have the right mindset, from the get go, and and they nail things. And they, you know, they become the the next, you know, NVIDIA, the next Tesla, the next, you know, Apple Mhmm. Because of that. And then you’ll see the I guess, what, you know, what we often see with these big firms is is the acquisitions. Right? And, you know, one one of Apple’s acquisitions over the last, you know, decade or or so was buying a a chip maker so they can make their own their own silicon, make their own chips, and and weren’t so reliant on the the Intels and NVIDIA and so on, of of this world. That was a, you know, a reasonably low cost acquisition, for them. But, you know, in the long run, you know, it would be very interesting to know what the, you know, the multiple return was on the, you know, 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars that they, they threw into that one. And it would be it would be a a phenomenal absolutely phenomenal, return, but also a great win for, you know, for for that, company too who was Yeah.

Paul Spain:
You know, probably reasonably, obscure at at at the time.

Darcy Ungaro:
Yeah. And so thinking now, like, zooming out and just looking at the investment universe, we’re we’re talking here at the beginning of March. It’s a it’s a fascinating time just generally if if you zoom out and you think about the last 3 to 4 years and you and you think about kind of what happened since March 2020, lot of quantitative easing, a lot of new currency creation through central banks and governments with responding the way they did. And then that sends shock waves and creates some pockets of growth and then some pockets of zombies, I guess you could say. But in the like, just taking a snapshot, if we were to look at a dashboard of what the investable universe looks like right now, currently, we have the s and p 500, which is an index of 500 companies in that index that you can invest in all in one go. That just hit 5,150 for the first time in history. So we’re at an all time high with the S and P 500. About I don’t know.

Darcy Ungaro:
I think it’s, like, 20 to 30% of that, though, is what we call the magnificent 7. And these are the the 7 companies of which Apple, Amazon, NVIDIA, Tesla. Did I say Microsoft already? Microsoft. Meta, Alphabet. You know, these are the company these companies are actually the ones that are providing the outperformance or these are the ones that are providing the positive return for the the S and P 500. The rest of the index is is still there, but it’s just kind of meh. You know? That’s interesting, though. So we’re seeing a very, very small pocket, funnily enough, all technology companies, all being enhanced by AI.

Darcy Ungaro:
And so this new wealth in the new world that we’re seeing seems to always revolve around technology. And and NFT, just in other news, just sold for $16,000,000, the 2nd highest price ever. Now it wasn’t that long ago, I think, Paul, where you and I were probably talking about NFTs maybe 2 2 to 3 years ago or so, and it was it was all the thing. Most of us probably would have just written it off and thought, no, that’ll never come back again, but we we just had a $16,000,000 sale. And then gold, not that that’s technology. In fact, that’s probably anti technology. That’s that’s only 1% away from trading at all time highs. And then finally, what I really wanted to pick your brains on is Bitcoin, about 3% away from all time highs.

Darcy Ungaro:
I think it’s, like, 60 and and, like, right now, yeah, it’s it’s just under $69,000. I think it has to get close to 78,000 to get to a new real all time high in US dollars to account for inflation. But this kind of goes right back to what you were saying around how willing these businesses are to change, to adapt AI into their business models. We’ve seen a massive pivot with Bitcoin. Huge. Not not in price. Forget about the price for a second. But we’ve seen a massive pivot in terms of people’s perspective at a very, very high level.

Darcy Ungaro:
Larry Fink. I’m not sure. Are you familiar with with Larry Fink? Are you and Larry friends by any chance?

Paul Spain:
No. No. I haven’t spent any time hanging out with with Larry Fink. But, yeah. I mean, I guess we’ve got, you know, big big names, out there. What’s he chief executive of, BlackRock, which is the big fund and maybe you can for the uninitiated, you know, walk them through why firms like BlackRock exist. And of course we often hear the BlackRock sort of name come up these days, that, you and I might not necessarily, be be on the same page with. But, you know, the these names sort of get bandied around and people are maybe quite concerned about the role that they play, in the world today.

Paul Spain:
But I think you probably break that down for us because it’s it’s reasonably simple. And in some ways, although there’s there is a lot of power that these sort of companies have too.

Darcy Ungaro:
Yeah. And it’s it was similar to what we were talking about before, another episode that we did with, regards to Peter Thiel building that that, amazing underground mansion. And, yeah, if you could, why wouldn’t you? Right? So here we have Larry Fink who is in charge of this massive behemoth called BlackRock. I can’t even remember how many $1,000,000,000,000 worth of funds it manages, but a fund manager is a corporation, I guess you could say, that takes money from investors and invests it on their behalf. So as an investor in a BlackRock fund, you own units in a fund and that fund goes out there and it acquires the actual investments on your behalf. It just so happens that Larry Fink is quite entrenched with the World Economic Forum as well. And recently, there was a lot of positive murmurings around Bitcoin from the World Economic Forum specifically around energy usage. And if you go back in time, maybe about 1 or 2 years really, back when back when Bitcoin was getting some pretty bad press around its power consumption.

Darcy Ungaro:
And there’s a lot of negative news out there, and it seemed to kind of hit the media all at the same time. FUD, fear, uncertainty, and and doubt is what we call it. And it was interesting because right at the very top, at the World Economic Forum, they were railing against the energy consumption of Bitcoin. Funnily enough, Larry Fink wasn’t a fan of Bitcoin at the time either. And now there seems to be a massive pivot where BlackRock now is one one of the providers where where effectively without BlackRock, a lot of investors wouldn’t be able to get into Bitcoin right now. So back BlackRock is one of the providers of one of the Bitcoin ETFs or exchange traded funds.

Paul Spain:
And And and this is the way that that it makes it very, very easy for people to invest in Bitcoin without actually having to know, you know, anything about it and and, you know, the the complexities that have maybe, existed in the past. It’s it’s just, you know, treated like buying stocks or or or anything else. Right?

Darcy Ungaro:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. And so you you now have this mainstream wrapper around this alternative asset. That’s what an ETF is. It’s just a wrapper that makes it more tolerable for people on their shares, use their hatch app to just jump in there and go, cool. I’m gonna buy that fund today. Thanks.

Darcy Ungaro:
And there’s a few of them out there. So since the beginning of January, there was, I think one of, well, 9 or so that launched at that stage, and it’s been going from strength to strength where the the net inflows coming into these Bitcoin ETFs. In other words, the amount of people that are putting money into these ETFs and then these these funds like back BlackRock have to go out and buy the Bitcoin now. That’s putting so much buying pressure into the exchanges that, well, there’s effectively somewhere between 10 to 20 times more buying going on than the amount of Bitcoin that’s being mined and or created. And that’s going to then half as well. The amount that’s being mined is gonna half in less than a 100 days. And there’s amounting speculation that what we’ve seen with this nearing $70,000 Bitcoin price is just the tip of the iceberg. And so it’s just fascinating though that you take 1 person involved with traditional finance like Larry Fink, little bit of a pivot, and that can send massive shock waves through the entire ecosystem.

Darcy Ungaro:
And it’s just sent Bitcoin off to the moon, basically. So yeah. Like, it’s it’s fascinating. I I don’t know where you sit with, Bitcoin. I know we’ve been talking about it, Paul, probably since I started doing the podcast. I think one of the one of the first podcasts I did was was around, Bitcoin, and that kinda really opened my eyes. And I remember talking to you shortly after that show thinking that, was that the right thing to do? And I think you mentioned that I probably lost at least one of my 2 viewers at the time who thought that they didn’t really agree with my open mindedness on Bitcoin way back then. But I I don’t I wanna know how how open minded you are, Paul.

Darcy Ungaro:
Are you are you are you a Bitcoiner yet? Have you been orange peeled permanently yet?

Paul Spain:
Look. I mean, you know, for for for me, you know, I guess most most of my kind of investment has been into into my own, you know, own business and sort of, you know, having a house and things like that. Right? But but, you know, that kind of has certainly, you know, caught caught my, caught my attention. And, you know, I think there’s there’s, this general mindset that the world is likely to be, you know, continue going down the digital path. And and that’s really where, you know, technologies or or or, you know, from an investor point, assets like, you know, Bitcoin, you know, you need to look at it through that lens of a world that is increasingly, you know, more digital. The idea of of using sort of, you know, paper money and and and coins as, checks, banknotes. You know, that’s, you know, those are becoming things of the past depending on where you are in the world and and and so on. And, look, you know, some people are pretty uncomfortable about those sort of changes, but, look, I think we’re we’re going in a we’re going in a digital direction.

Paul Spain:
And, you know, what does that mean? Well, you know, there will there will be some good sides to it. There’ll be some bad sides. But for digital currencies, which is where where Bitcoin sits, it seems reasonably unlikely that in the long term, that’s not gonna keep, you know, keep rising. And particularly because there are these technological aspects, to it that that you mentioned in terms of there’s a, you know, there’s there’s a fixed supply. We have this, the, the halving that’s, that’s coming up that, that plays into that. So, you know, it’s like everything else. It’s sort of speculative. You you know, we don’t know everything that might happen.

Paul Spain:
We’ve certainly seen bad things happen, you know, when it comes to, crypto cryptocurrencies because of big players sort of falling over and and not being, you know, established on good foundations. If you wanted to pick how well a company like Blackrock, would be handling their their bitcoin cryptocurrency, type of investments, you would like to think that they’ve done it in a super secure way. That there, you know, there isn’t some easy way for somebody to sort of hack in and steal their funds. But, you know, you you can’t know for sure, how these things are gonna, you know, are gonna play out. And there is some some complexity to it, but it’s it’s it’s certainly no no big surprise to me. I’m just looking now, you know, 112,000 New Zealand dollars is the prices of a bitcoin today. So, you know, if we compare that to where we were a year ago, what are we? Up 210%. This is very, very significant.

Paul Spain:
And of course, on the flip side, because we have seen these things fall fall back, you know, down in the past, there there are, you know, there are some interesting sort of potential consequences. In fact, I think if we look at if we look at the current price today, because of where where New Zealand’s, you know, dollar is trading That’s

Darcy Ungaro:
right.

Paul Spain:
This is the highest that Bitcoin ever been in in history if you’re a New Zealand investor looking at if you’re a New Zealand dollar lens.

Darcy Ungaro:
If if you’re looking at it from almost every currency, we’re at all time highs. Not necessarily adjusted for inflation. That that’s the only other thing that we gotta that’s the next milestone. But that says something about the strength of the US dollar, which is also interesting because that’s connected to a lot of stuff that’s probably beyond the scope of this episode. But going back to what you were saying, though, right at the very start of this episode when we were talking about NVIDIA, creating chips. Right? A lot of uncertainty investing in any growth company because there’s so many things that haven’t yet come to fruition. And so you are taking a risk when you’re investing for growth like this. Right? Like, for example, maybe there is, an Optimus robot is starting to make chips now, and it’s infinitely cheaper and faster than it ever has been before.

Darcy Ungaro:
And it just I don’t know. I’m just making this stuff up, and I don’t know what you mean.

Paul Spain:
You are. But but but but I you know, I take the point. There’s always a, you know, a lot of unknown aspects. Yeah. And, look, nobody can tell you what Bitcoin or virtually any other investment will do tomorrow with complete accuracy all the time. Like, some people are gonna get it right, you know, some of the time. Sometimes things do seem, you know, more obvious in terms of where they’re hitting. And I recall at one point making a change to my mortgage based on all the wisdom was that the, the rates were gonna go in a particular direction, and it was going down.

Paul Spain:
And, you know, there was so much evidence sort of pointing in that direction that I made a particular change, and and and it made a, you know, a big difference to be thinking ahead and and taking action. So, you know, I think a lot of life is about thinking ahead and planning, putting on our futurist hats and and planning for the future. Yeah. No. Nobody can tell you exactly what that is. But, you know, you should make the best calls that you can. And, you know, in New Zealand, a lot of our investment has been into, into real estate. I don’t know how long that sort of stays.

Paul Spain:
We’re, you know, such a the average cost of a home now in terms of multiplier versus incomes is is so much higher than than what it was, when I entered the workforce. You know, you do have to wonder, you know, at what point does does that stop? And so, yeah, it’s there’s there’s always been this wisdom when it comes to investment of diversifying. So, you know, the idea of of things that tie into technology being good places to invest, that that goes well with me.

Darcy Ungaro:
Yeah. Of course, it does. Well, and and on the topic of being a futurist, I just wanna get your your take on this perhaps before we bring it in for landing. You mentioned property, another great example of a finite asset sort of more or less. I guess you could always go up. Right? But more or less, property is a finite asset. And when we buy property, we’re trading something which is infinite for something which is finite, much like you would with Bitcoin. Right? You’re trading something which is infinite, our our New Zealand dollars to something that’s finite Bitcoin digital scarcity.

Darcy Ungaro:
So the reason though why it’s infinite is something that’s seldom discussed with investing, I think, And we often focus on the flavors like different types of sweetness without considering where that sweetness comes from. It’s actually sugar. And it’s currency debasement ultimately, 1st and foremost, in my view, that’s what that’s what creates the so called wealth or the price appreciation in what we invest in. Because when you’re buying property, sometimes you’re borrowing as well. So you’re shorting the New Zealand dollar. You’re getting rid of the thing that’s going down in value to acquire the thing that’s going up in value, but it’s often not something that we we think about. So think of putting your your future your futurist hat on without asking you to be an economics expert at all. But if you were to think, right, 5 years, maybe even go all the way up to, say, 2030, What does it look like, Paul, in 2030 as it relates to what we can own in the future? So thinking property or our investments.

Darcy Ungaro:
Do you see a future which is pretty much like what we have today, just linearly a little bit different, or do you see something that’s exponentially different?

Paul Spain:
Look, it it’s lots of different knobs that can, you know, probably be turned by different people to impact, you know, how the future, you know, actually plays out. And there’s different different forms of government, different types of government and different decisions that can be made. Although, you know, if you look more broadly, the world does tend to, you know, travel in a particular direction together. Yeah. And in terms of how these things, you know, play over the over that longer term, I guess there’s some aspects of that that that sort of scare me a little bit. You know, if property prices kinda keep going where they have done over the longer term, what does that mean? Do you know, can we afford to own anything? But then, you know, if you’re investing in that, are you investing for the return on the value going up or is the rent worth anything? You know, I think if we look at startups, often, you know, those that have invested in startups and and, you know, made some of the biggest, money, it hasn’t necessarily been off those start ups, you know, profitability. It’s that other people wanna jump in and to and to buy that stock. So, you know, the valuations, you know, keep going up.

Paul Spain:
Then we kind of have to also throw in, well, what does the sort of access to, you know, low cost technology sort of mean for us in the in the future? You know, how how does that play out with with technology? If you could be based anywhere, but you could get to, you know, a city location in a very short period of time because you’ve got, say, autonomous electric, you know, air taxis, you know, for example, that can get you from from a to b very quickly. We had, you know, one of one of my team today, understand took him 2 hours to, to get to to get to work, through through the the Auckland, you know, traffic. If we if we look at, you know, robotics and and automation, you know, can the can the cost of of houses be brought down when we kinda, you know, look at the at the raw elements? We look at the, you know, the costs of steel, wood, and and other things. Will will that change, as the technology, improves? You know, can we make things, you know, safer for less? So, in terms of easy answers, I’m I’m not sure I can give you an easy answer on on that one, you know, Darcy. We are one of the other player in facts, of course, as, you know, what happens with population and and and and different, different countries. I think it was, you know, Bernard Hickey was sort of suggesting if if we keep a somewhat similar trajectory to what, you know, we’ve had over maybe the last, you know, 20 years, we keep that going, you know, we’d end up with a New Zealand population. I think it was in the direction of sort of 16, 17, 1000000, you know, by the end of the, the century. You know, is that catastrophic or not? Well, you look at the UK, which I think is probably, you know, a bit smaller than New Zealand, you know, and then north of 50,000,000 people.

Paul Spain:
But there’s all sorts of other, you know, changes for for these things to to work. So

Darcy Ungaro:
Yeah.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. I I would I would love to sort of give you a really confident answer on yep. Things are gonna, you know, change exponentially in this direction, or that direction. Look, I, you know, I think you’re a futurist in your own right with your thinking and you probably give a, a better, maybe a more shocking answer, than I might do. I I do tend to sort of lean in on the positive that, you know, we if we we’re astute as we go through these things that, you know, hopefully as as society, you know, from individuals right through to, you know, government, levels and and I guess in the, you know, at a global sort of, levels, you know, that we would make, you know, good good decisions. And so, you know, that’s that’s that’s kinda what I’m looking for and and what I’m looking for. And and partly why I think it’s important to have these discussions, so that we can see maybe where we are going off track and where we could be creating, you know, catastrophes for society that we we figure some of those things out, and we make we make the better calls, and we call out the things that are, you know, that are really big big issues.

Darcy Ungaro:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, humans are problem solvers. Right? That that’s what gives me hope is that we’re problem solvers. It’s just that occasionally we get stuck solving the wrong problems. So as long as we’re solving the right problems, I’m I’m pretty optimistic generally. And so, like, you just just to finish up on you, you’re generally optimistic about the future, Paul?

Paul Spain:
Absolutely. Yeah.

Darcy Ungaro:
It’s good. The future’s so bright, you’re gonna get the, progressive lenses installed here.

Paul Spain:
Hey. When I was a youngster, I used to wear, I used to I used to wear yellow lenses. So what Nice.

Darcy Ungaro:
Oh, I can see I can see you with, mixing and scratching. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. We’re good. Alright. Well, that that that’s a good chat. Thank you.

Darcy Ungaro:
I’ve definitely come away with some some things that I probably wasn’t thinking about before, like just the opportunity with legacy businesses implementing AI, for example, and just like the future being more digital. Like, there there’s there’s layers of stuff here that I think could probably provide a good platform for further discussion as well, but, yeah, I really appreciate your time. Thanks, Paul. It’s good.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. My my pleasure. Look, you know, I think that the the encouragement for, you know, for everybody should be as we should all be looking at AI now, we should look at, you know, what is its role in in our own lives. You know, we, you know, we should be talking to to our family members around, you know, the role of technology and AI and and what they do. I just just heard a stat actually, and and I, you know, I didn’t have the all the details of the source and so on. But it was talking about, those who who bring, you know, tech knowledge and expertise into into their role, that the average uplift that that, that brings to their earning potential apparently, is a 30% uplift, compared to colleagues, who haven’t doubled down and and learned and understood, you know, how they can utilize technology and AI and what they do. And look, I think that number could, you know, could grow, you know, considerably in an AI world for those that understand how to leverage AI even just their own businesses.

Darcy Ungaro:
Like even just employees. Right? Are you talking about business owners or just even just employees?

Paul Spain:
Employees. Yeah. Absolutely.

Darcy Ungaro:
Yeah. So this this is like a really this is a good future, so we should probably go out there and just get amongst it rather than wait and see what happens and kinda be skeptical. Right? This isn’t something that you wanna sit back and just wait on the sidelines for. Right?

Paul Spain:
Agreed. Yeah.

Darcy Ungaro:
Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Alright. Well, great chat. Thanks, Paul, and we’ll, we’ll catch you in the next one.

Paul Spain:
Great. Well, thanks, Darcy. It’s been great to do this sort of, flipped New Zealand tape podcast episode and to have you, leading leading the way.

Darcy Ungaro:
Confusing though. Like, am I the host or am I the hostee?

Paul Spain:
I don’t know.

Darcy Ungaro:
Hopefully, people aren’t

Paul Spain:
So, yeah. Keen to hear from listeners. If you enjoyed this episode and would like more of these sorts of things, love love to hear from you. You know, definitely get in touch. And, big thank you to our show partners, Gorilla Technology, HP, 2 Degrees, Spark, and 1NZ.