Jan Roessner, Co-Founder and CEO of One Earth Rising, joins The Augmented Life to share his journey from German military officer to tech entrepreneur and investor. With a background spanning helicopter and reconnaissance drone piloting in Afghanistan, digital marketing, building licensed video games for partners like PETA, and now Web3, Jan offers a genuinely diverse perspective on navigating the complex challenges and opportunities at the intersection of technology and society.
In this episode, Jan dives deep into the transformative potential of emerging technologies like Web3 and AI to address critical issues such as data ownership, information integrity, and the spread of misinformation. He shares his passion for longevity and biohacking, discusses the importance of engaging with AI on a daily basis to stay ahead of the curve, and provides practical tips for integrating AI tools into your personal workflow to boost productivity and creativity.
Join us for an insightful conversation on harnessing the power of cutting-edge technologies to create a more transparent, trustworthy, and empowered digital future.
Tune in to the full episode here:
I dove a little deeper into some of my favorite snippets from this week’s episode below:
Jan stresses the importance of validating information sources to prevent the spread of misinformation, particularly on social media platforms. He shares a concerning observation:
"One of the most horrendous or horrific conversations that I recently had in a pizza joint was two young ladies. They were telling me, 'Yeah, that's actually very true. I just, I never really check it out. I just forwarded, I just reposted.'"
This anecdote underscores the critical need for individuals to verify the credibility of information before sharing it. By leveraging emerging technologies to establish the integrity of content, we can create a digital environment that amplifies trustworthy information and mitigates the spread of false or misleading narratives.
While Web3 technologies have faced challenges such as misuse and scams, Jan emphasizes their transformative potential in solving critical issues related to data ownership and information validation. He states:
"Web3 was misused in many ways, rug pulls and scams and so forth, but it can do incredibly great things. And one of these things is to provide ownership. Another one is validating the ownership or validating the source. Where does this information come from?"
By empowering individuals with greater control over their personal data and establishing clear provenance for digital assets, Web3 technologies can create a more secure, transparent, and equitable digital ecosystem. This shift towards user-centric data ownership and robust validation mechanisms is crucial in combating misinformation and protecting user privacy.
Jan envisions a future where AI can be harnessed to empower individuals with access to validated, reliable information. He suggests:
"If you have a system that can validate original information, then you can use AI to just highlight that information for you. If you're pulling information for preparing for an article, preparing for a talk, preparing for anything that you need information for, you can train the AI to only give you the information from validated sources."
While this vision may seem advanced for many people today, Jan emphasizes the importance of everyone engaging with AI to understand its potential applications. He states:
"The number one important message to anyone in this world today is engage with AI wherever you can. Best on a daily basis, even if it's just for simple tasks, just understanding how it works, how it is applied and how these prompts work."
By training AI systems to prioritize and surface content from authenticated sources, we can create powerful tools that enable individuals to access high-quality, trustworthy information efficiently. As more people become familiar with AI technologies through daily engagement, we can work towards a future where validated information is easily accessible to all, revolutionizing the way we consume and share knowledge and fostering a more informed and discerning society.
Jan highlights the potential of integrating Web3 and AI technologies to establish the provenance of information and ensure its integrity. He explains:
"If we can get to a point where The New York Times has a validated wallet address, and an article that comes out of The New York Times gets watermarked on the asset itself, you can have an AI run and say, 'Just pull for me all the articles that are originally from The New York Times.'"
By leveraging the immutability and transparency of blockchain technology, combined with the data processing capabilities of AI, we can create a powerful system for verifying the origin and authenticity of information. This approach can help combat the spread of misinformation by enabling users to easily identify and access content from trusted sources.
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