What if AI is making us more productive while actually slowing down true innovation?

In this episode of the Mile High Success Podcast, Nick Elder sits down with inventor and technology entrepreneur Trevor Chandler for a fascinating conversation about artificial intelligence, invention, patents, and where technology may be headed next.

Trevor has more than 30 patents across areas including artificial intelligence, robotics, medical technology, language translation, and other emerging technologies. His path to becoming an inventor was anything but traditional. Before building technology companies, Trevor spent years traveling as a musician. He later worked at Microsoft and went on to build companies and intellectual property that led to multiple acquisitions.

Trevor explains why he believes many of today's AI systems are very powerful but are still limited by the information and structures humans give them. He shares his concern that AI can dramatically increase productivity while making people more dependent on existing knowledge instead of exploring completely new ideas.

Nick and Trevor also discuss the enormous infrastructure and energy demands behind today's AI systems. Trevor explains why he believes the industry needs to rethink how AI is built instead of simply building more computing infrastructure to support today's models.

The conversation goes deeper into Trevor's own inventions, including a patented self-improving AI system, a highly efficient language model, medical technology, language translation, and his current work exploring AI systems that can create and test new capabilities.

Trevor also shares how he approaches invention differently. Rather than simply following where technology is going today, he looks for problems that leading technology companies have not yet solved and builds new approaches around those gaps.

The episode closes with a look at one of Trevor's newest areas of research: the connection between biological evolution, emergent systems, artificial intelligence, and machines that may someday be able to develop new capabilities in the physical world.

If you are interested in AI, innovation, entrepreneurship, patents, emerging technology, or the future of computing, this conversation offers a very different perspective on where technology could be headed.