CNBC Laughed At Me (Again)

I remember the summer of 2007.

Everyone was glued to their BlackBerries, and people were still wondering if Apple was full of crap.

I was on CNBC, calling Facebook a future $100 billion company, and people laughed.

Later, they stopped laughing. But the same thing happened again. I said Apple would 10X.

Some of the same people laughed.

What they missed was the bigger picture.

That moment wasn’t just about phones or social media; it was about a generational shift, the kind of tectonic change that rewrites everything.

Fast forward to 2024, and we're in the same position.

Yet again…

Apple is about to release something that WILL change the game. Many have caught on. Analysts are pounding the table this time.

But they aren’t talking about the right thing.

While all eyes are on Apple, there’s a tiny AI company—a critical supplier—flying under the radar.

The last time I made a call like this—about Facebook, about Bitcoin, about Apple—people were skeptical. But those who listened...

Well, they’re not listening to me anymore... they’re too busy Googling “how to buy a golf course.”

In the next few days, Apple will finally reveal what they’re up to. Some will laugh. Until they wish they didn’t.

Doug Hill and I recently sat down to talk about it. I’ll tell you all about it right here.

But that’s not the only thing going on in AI.

AI to the Rescue

On my podcast (full link below), I had this fascinating conversation with Hamed Shahbazi, who’s on the frontlines of revolutionizing healthcare with AI.

Hamed’s no stranger to shaking things up—he sold his first company to PayPal for $340 million. (No big deal, right?)

But these days, his sights are set on something even bigger: using AI to change healthcare.

Not in some far-off future. Now.

We started by talking about the Oura Ring, which, if you haven’t heard of it, is like the high-tech fitness tracker on steroids.

It tracks everything—heart rate, sleep quality, even how much you sweat.

Hamed wears one. He’s become a bit obsessed with it.

“I used to check my email every morning,” he told me, “but now I check my sleep score first.”

That hit home for me, because, I’ll be honest, I’ve avoided these things. I’m terrified I’ll get addicted to tracking every single detail of my life.

Hamed admitted it’s easy to get hooked. But he said that after a while, the obsession fades, and the data helps you understand your body better.

Here’s where things get interesting: companies like Oura are collecting so much data from users that they’re training AI to predict health outcomes.

“They might be one of the best predictors of COVID, just based on the data they’re gathering,” he told me.

Imagine that—an app that could predict if you’re going to get sick before you even feel anything. This isn’t just about tracking your steps or sleep; it’s about catching heart attacks, strokes, or even stress-induced health problems before they happen.

And that’s not even the wildest part.

The AI Co-Pilot

Hamed’s company, Well Health, is sitting on millions of patient records, and they’re using AI to sift through all of it.

It’s like giving a team of genius doctors access to the memories of 20 million patients and telling them to find patterns.

“What we’ve built is an AI co-pilot for doctors,” Hamed said. “It takes all the patient data—everything from doctor’s notes to lab results—and makes sense of it in ways that even the best doctors might miss.”

The AI doesn’t just look at one lab result in isolation, it sees connections between, say, slightly elevated liver counts and slightly high cholesterol that could point to a rare disease.

Most doctors just don’t have the time to dig that deep, but AI does.

At this point, I had to ask him, “So what’s the accuracy here? How often does the AI make the right call?”

Hamed didn’t hesitate: “Most of the time it’s right, like 95% of the time. And when it’s wrong, it’s usually because there wasn’t enough data for it to make a call.”

It’s not perfect, but 95% accuracy? That’s huge, especially when it comes to something as complicated as diagnosing rare diseases.

Another surprising revelation was how this AI is actually helping doctors reclaim their time.

Hamed explained how physicians spend 20-30% of their day just writing notes—notes that are legally required for insurance, medical records, etc.

“We’ve built an AI that listens in on the patient-doctor conversation and generates a medical note automatically. It’s returning hours back to doctors’ days.”

Doctors get to focus on being doctors, not data entry clerks.

And it’s not just about saving time. This technology is already making life-saving interventions.

Hamed shared a story about a patient with chronic kidney disease who wasn’t improving, despite following their treatment plan. The AI flagged that the dosage of their medication was too low, something that had slipped past the doctor.

After adjusting the dosage, the patient’s health improved dramatically. It’s the kind of thing that makes you realize how much potential there is for AI to not only catch problems early but also optimize treatments in ways that human doctors just can’t.

Then, we started talking about where this is all going.

The Craziest Predictions

Hamed laid out a vision that honestly blew my mind. He’s not talking about some distant sci-fi future where robots replace doctors.

No, it’s way more exciting than that.

(Listen to the whole thing here.)

All in all, I left the conversation feeling like we’re on the cusp of something massive. AI in healthcare isn’t just coming—it’s here, and it’s already changing the game in ways we can barely imagine.

And honestly, I’m kind of excited (and a little terrified) to see where it goes next.