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I feel like I have gotten dumber each day of September.

And honestly, I have no one to blame but the person looking back in the mirror.

I have mostly spent the month on the West Coast ingesting the latest advances in artificial intelligence. First at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference, then Salesforce's (CRM) annual Dreamforce extravaganza, and currently with AI chats on Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid podcast (now stationed at the Nasdaq). I'll toss in a Netflix event I went to Thursday night where Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates talked for an hour, mostly on AI and the future of the world.

Technically, I guess all of these AI discussions are making me a more informed journalist, leader, and human being.

But sometimes listening to what people deep in the weeds are doing in AI sound like a completely different language. Think Martians speaking on Pluto. And the lingo and development of AI tools and products are moving at a speed multiples faster compared to my last West Coast venture in September 2023.

Hard to keep up and not think you have an IQ of 75!

It already feels like I am way behind the curve on understanding the next wave of AI — and that's alarming because 1) there's potential for at least five more waves to hit civilization; 2) the average person on the street unlikely realizes how their very way of life is about to be affected by an AI-powered agent or some other piece of technology.

Bill Gates dives into the future of the world at a Netflix event on Thursday alongside journalist Kara Swisher. (Brian Sozzi)

We saw that firsthand with the new AI functionality Meta (META) and OpenAI showed off this week for their various products. This was a series of wow moments.

Bill Gates proceeded to tell a packed theater that AI will soon become "superior" at "very profound" tasks. Reassuring!

I also experienced it up close and personal with a real nice German fella named Richard Socher on Opening Bid (video above).

Never heard of the 41-year-old Socher? You should be following his work at search engine You.com, a company he founded. He was the first chief scientist at Salesforce (CEO Marc Benioff was an early backer of You.gov), and he eats, sleeps, and breathes AI.

The company is now valued at close to $1 billion after an investment led by Nvidia (NVDA).

Here are a couple of quotes from Socher that left an impression:

"I think over the next few years and maybe decades, almost every company will be hit with some kind of innovator's dilemma in that the way they used to make revenue is going to change because a lot of their processes are going to get automated with AI. And that just changes the nature of the work that you're doing. You need to stop thinking about almost any repetitive process. Every time you feel like, oh, I've done this before, I'm just going through these steps, you should be giving those as a prompt to an agent and then get an accurate AI agent."

"I think actually in the next few years, we're probably going to see more and more AI agents surfing the web for you than we have people surfing the web, which will change the web as we know it too, and how it often monetizes. But it basically means that a lot of people will get access to their own personal assistant in the way only really wealthy people have right now."

You may be wondering what this all means to you, the investor.

Here are a few notes from me on that front before you go:

• 2025 is going to be one hell of a year for Nvidia and AMD (AMD). The demand for AI chips only seems to be strengthening. What that means for struggling Intel (INTC), well…

• This coming earnings season, listen for executives at companies you invest in outline cost-cutting moves by using AI. If you hear crickets, it could be a signal the company doesn't have a great AI strategy in place and risks getting left behind.

• Today is the day to buy three books on AI to understand the lingo and possibilities — and then think critically on how the technology could be applied to investments you are eying.

Three times each week, I field insight-filled conversations with the biggest names in business and markets on Opening Bid. Find more episodes on our video hub. Watch on your preferred streaming service. Or listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

In the below Opening Bid episode, early You.com backer and Salesforce (CRM) CEO Marc Benioff shares his views on how AI will shape the business world.