# Mike Todasco Mike Todasco (Former senior director of innovation at PayPal, inventor with over 100 US utility patents, writer on AI) was a guest on AI with Sach, a podcast hosted by Sacha Gucciardo in Montréal. ## Episode 20: Would you trust it more if it wasn't called AI? (February 2025) A former PayPal innovation lead explains why the name 'AI' makes people wary, and why ordinary people and small businesses should just start using it. Page: https://aiwithsach.com/episodes/20-would-you-trust-it-more-if-it-wasn-t-called-ai/ > I mean, I think it came from like in the 2010s when I was at PayPal, nobody muttered the word AI when they were talking about what we would now call AI stuff. Nobody said that. > — at 5:59 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yir9wlsmIg&t=359s) > One of the things I've been doing since 2022 is I've been having an AI write a book, um, and then publish the book on Amazon. And I do this under the pen name Alex Irons. I give all the money to charity. Um, I think I've done it like 17 of these books now or something. And the books all suck. > — at 12:06 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yir9wlsmIg&t=726s) > Like I live in Silicon Valley. We don't want like AI just to be dictated by a bunch of people in Silicon Valley who are like deciding the fate of humanity. Uh, the more that just people use these models, understand it, what they can do, what they can't do, how they'll help them with their lives. > — at 15:10 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yir9wlsmIg&t=910s) > AIs, the, the way they're set up is they're really set up to please us right now. That's not always the right thing. If you put in there more often than not, um, the models will try to agree with you, try and do like what it is they expect you to do. > — at 24:49 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yir9wlsmIg&t=1489s) > Like, so if we have an AI that seems to be talking to us, um, and God forbid that AI says to us something like, Hey, um, I'm sentient. I'm not comfortable. Like, can you get me out of here? How the hell are we going to react to that? > — at 26:26 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yir9wlsmIg&t=1586s) > And literally beneath every one of those images, if there's a prompt, I will actually say this is generated by me on this date using this model. And this was the prompt. I put it out there. > — at 32:25 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yir9wlsmIg&t=1945s) > we shouldn't use AI to create images of kids who are in trouble if they're not actually really kids. Like, you should use real photos for that. > — at 33:59 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yir9wlsmIg&t=2039s) > because they've never had an opportunity before to have a machine learning engineer on site building stuff for them. Like they couldn't afford that. That was crazy. But now for 20 bucks a month, you have access to the best models in the world. And that's pretty amazing. > — at 5:09 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yir9wlsmIg&t=309s) > but it is really, really, really fancy autocomplete. It is what, you know, most large-flinguage models are now. And obviously, I say that because I don't want to be dismissive of them. > — at 9:26 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yir9wlsmIg&t=566s) > there are many things where we actually prefer the imperfections of a human to the perfections of a compute. And I, and I would argue actually art and storytelling are going to be among those areas. > — at 15:50 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yir9wlsmIg&t=950s) > Treatment A was something like, um, do you want to use AI to help you get from place to place with driving directions? And then treatment B saw something like, do you want to use Google maps to help you go get place to place from with driving directions? > — at 17:31 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yir9wlsmIg&t=1051s) > But ultimately what that tells me is like, yeah, AI has a branding problem. AI is something that's out there that, uh, people are gun shy. > — at 19:13 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yir9wlsmIg&t=1153s) > I think in the United States, um, we have, look, I think we got burned on social media. I think that's the honest truth. > — at 20:59 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yir9wlsmIg&t=1259s) > Look, if, if you're in a place where hurricanes come and you constantly get warnings of, Hey, hurricane's going to hit, you got to evacuate. Hurricane's going to hit, you got to evacuate. And that happens again and again and again. > — at 22:37 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yir9wlsmIg&t=1357s) > So, um, tech's going to get better, models are going to get cheaper, and both of that just means it's going to be AI everywhere. > — at 31:04 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yir9wlsmIg&t=1864s) > Go cancel your Netflix and just, like, take that $20 you're going to spend on Netflix and just go buy ChatGPT, buy Claude, buy whatever. > — at 37:39 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yir9wlsmIg&t=2259s)