What we talked about
Welcome back to The PreVetted Podcast, where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world.
Show notes
Radoslaw Blasiak joins the PreVetted Podcast for episode 16.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:01.298) Welcome to Prevetted Podcast, a blend of tech and leadership. Our guest today is Radoslaw Blasiak. I hope I pronounced it correctly. I apologize if I didn’t. He’s the founder of the League of Extraordinary Minds, and he’s going to share with us a little bit about his journey. Hello, Radoslaw. How are you doing today?
Radek Blasiak (00:12.174) All right.
Radek Blasiak (00:26.722) I’m good, I’m good, getting late here in Poland, but I’m very, very excited to talk to you.
Federico Ramallo (00:33.13) Great, great, yeah. I appreciate you staying late so we could talk. Yeah, I was showing you that we still have the sun, so it’s amazing that we can, yeah.
Radek Blasiak (00:44.258) Yeah, and I look almost like I would be in Mexico because I have this yellow filter on my video, as you can see.
Federico Ramallo (00:54.708) that’s right!
Federico Ramallo (01:00.202) So tell us a little bit about the League of Extraordinary Minds and what you are doing.
Radek Blasiak (01:09.228) Yeah, so what is the league of extraordinary minds? It’s basically a tool for teachers and schools and students to learn IT in practical way. about 10 years ago, programming started to be obligatory in Poland, in Polish schools. And all of a sudden, our governments realized that they don’t have
enough teachers to teach programming because in Poland there are I think about 20,000 schools and if one day you want to start teaching programming in all of the schools you need teachers to do this and of course we didn’t have so many teachers with such knowledge and about the time we created our company
And our kids were in schools and we just experienced how the IT lessons look like, like a computer science lessons classes look like in Poland. And we decided to use our experience, knowledge to create some kind of tool for teachers to make the teaching process easier and more effective. And that’s why we created the platform which we named
the League of Extraordinary Minds, but it’s a web platform with courses of programming languages like Python, like C++, like SQL, Java, et cetera. And teacher can use these courses and students can use these courses both in the school and outside of school. that’s why we, know, how we started in Poland. We started with some pilot program.
in one of the cities in Poland, and then we grew up and right now there are among 2000 schools using our platform here and a couple of schools also abroad. So yeah, that’s what we do.
Federico Ramallo (03:22.09) Very interesting. I noticed you started in 2015, right? So it’s almost a 10 year mark.
Radek Blasiak (03:30.222) Yeah, it’s our 10th anniversary this year, but the first year we were developing independent software. actually we started using our platform in schools in 2016. So the next year we will try to make some kind of celebration of 10 years of the platform.
Federico Ramallo (03:57.352) I see what you’re saying. So you rather count by the time you launch the platform rather than when you start working on
Radek Blasiak (03:57.678) Thank you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Federico Ramallo (04:07.102) Yes, well, it kind of makes sense because that’s when you create the impact to the world, right?
Radek Blasiak (04:13.922) Yeah, that’s the moment when people, you know, heard about us.
Federico Ramallo (04:20.126) Right.
So you were talking about that the teachers are your most, you know, your users, right? You have the teachers and you have the students, right? What is the most surprising bit of feedback that a teacher sent you?
Radek Blasiak (04:42.702) That’s an interesting question. Well, think the most, maybe not surprising, but what was kind of…
you know, make the most joy for us was the feedback from our teachers who were teaching programming in schools but also was a teacher of Polish language. Like, you know, in your school it would be a Spanish teacher, yeah? In our school it was Polish teacher and they send us feedback that…
He never experienced a platform so good written in Polish, like so correct, text so nicely, you know, with such nice texts in our courses. Not from the technical perspective, but from the literate perspective, I would say.
Federico Ramallo (05:49.194) from the content perspective, right?
Radek Blasiak (05:52.718) So this was really something maybe a little bit surprising, not very much because we put a lot of effort to make this content both correct but also interesting. There is a lot of humor, a lot of connection to culture, et cetera, et cetera. It’s not strictly technical language.
Federico Ramallo (06:20.094) Yes, yes, I remember I took one of the courses about SQL and it was very engaging and it was, you know, like throwing you a problem and then you will solve it and then a little bit more difficult, right?
Radek Blasiak (06:25.71) Thank you.
Radek Blasiak (06:33.718) Yup, yup, that’s the way. This is the way.
Federico Ramallo (06:41.075) Can you tell us a little bit about the impact that you created to the students and the teachers? Because sometimes we talk about, so what is the purpose of a company, right? The revenue is part, but I believe that there’s more to it, right? It’s about the people, right? It’s about you, your team, and then, you know.
the people that you are serving, right? You’re serving them with a software, with a platform, right? That makes their life better, right?
Radek Blasiak (07:24.258) Yeah, so I mean, you you know when something is obligatory, it’s often like people start to don’t like it. Yeah. If you have to read the books because the teacher makes you to read the books, you usually don’t like these books anymore. So this was also the…
the problem with programming because every student has to learn programming in Poland. But not a lot of students really like to to put this effort to learning programming. It’s not easy as you know very well I think. So we have let’s say three groups of students. The not very large group of students which are very interested in programming.
and they are doing very well and they, know, even if they don’t have a good teacher, they can, you know, learn by themselves and be a good programmer or whatever. We have, of course, kids which are not completely interested in programming and don’t have this kind of skills or talents to learn programming. And you have kids between…
those two groups, which are, you know, average students, yeah? And so we are really interested the most in these average students because they are the students that you can lose or, you know, you can make something from them. And our biggest success, I think, is that programming became in the schools that cooperate with us.
Programming became a broad activity. Very many students started to learn programming because they find it fun it fun, it fun it fun with our platform, they find it engaging and all of a sudden they didn’t expect of themselves that they can program anything and now they can.
Radek Blasiak (09:50.03) We have many many examples of students from small cities, from even villages. They never thought about programming and now they are good programmers. We have students that started with our platform eight years ago and they are now teachers of programming in schools because they go through all the education, know, high school and university level and then started to be just teachers.
So there are a lot of successes connected to our platform somehow. don’t think that the impact is enormous and everything is because of us, but for sure we have some impact in Polish education in this area of information engineering.
Federico Ramallo (10:44.808) Right, Sorry, have to cough.
Yeah, mean, usually what I see with this government mandates, usually what happens is that if there is this mandatory programming in schools, that usually means low quality class, low quality content. Because it’s mandatory, who cares? That’s what I usually have seen.
Radek Blasiak (10:59.134) that’s in the doubt. know, if there is this method
Radek Blasiak (11:16.832) Yup. Yup.
Radek Blasiak (11:21.122) That’s true.
Federico Ramallo (11:22.482) I mean, you being able to raise the bar to build something that, because now when you’re competing, then now you can compete to build something better than everybody else, right? And being able to win that choice of on the teachers and the schools and all that, right? That makes, from my perspective, right? That makes a much bigger impact that,
Radek Blasiak (11:41.197) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (11:52.244) You other way to put it is, you know, you as a founder will be able to build something much better than what any government could do,
Radek Blasiak (12:03.404) Yeah, that’s of course true. So we have many programs, government programs in Poland also, which I would divide into two types. One type is the government is very successful in providing equipment to schools, computers, laboratories.
screens etc. It’s very good and it’s very important because without this equipment it’s tough to teach anything. But the other part is content. Content is much more problematic thing for government. So there are some government platforms in Poland but they are very simple, very boring I would say maybe and it’s something that’s know private
companies can do much better, I think. And this private company in Poland are us.
Federico Ramallo (13:09.258) Right, right, yeah. So yeah, what I’m trying to say is don’t sell it short. Don’t sell yourself short, right? From what I’ve been reading, I’m seeing that you’re generating a lot of impact, right? So yeah.
Radek Blasiak (13:18.932) Sure.
Federico Ramallo (13:29.578) For a while I worked at a public school in Argentina upgrading their computers from cardboard boxes to real computers. So they didn’t have the budget to buy computers. So they put shoe boxes and draw the keyboards, right? Which I don’t know, mean, for me it’s not the hardware.
Radek Blasiak (13:50.584) Okay.
Federico Ramallo (13:58.854) is the software, right? The interesting thing, right?
Federico Ramallo (14:06.186) When I saw that, I was thinking, they missed the point of the computer, It’s not the… the box. And there so many things you can do. You can learn programming without a computer, right? Yeah.
Radek Blasiak (14:13.218) Yeah.
Radek Blasiak (14:19.99) Yeah, that’s true. That’s true, especially younger kids. There are a lot of also good products for this. So yeah, yeah, but absolutely you can teach a lot of algorithms without computers for younger kids. But there is a moment that you have to switch to computers because nothing makes sense without a computer at the end of the day.
Federico Ramallo (14:34.292) Right.
Federico Ramallo (14:45.942) Yes, yes, but you know, but I saw that as a missed opportunity. the teachers didn’t understand how to teach about programming, right? So, yeah. So I was going to ask you a little bit about Poland, the Poland startup scene. you tell us a little bit more?
How is a startup seen in Poland or in… I hope I pronounced in this correct, Rocklow. Is that… Bras… Bras what?
Radek Blasiak (15:23.672) Wrocław Wrocław Wrocław Wroc- Wrocław
Federico Ramallo (15:32.404) Vrot… what? okay, okay. Yes.
Radek Blasiak (15:32.894) like vroclawia yeah it’s difficult it’s difficult yeah so i’m not an expert in in in this field you know but i can i can you know first of all we are we are in european union and it matters very much because the
I would say…
Radek Blasiak (16:00.556) The law, company law, etc. is very similar in European countries. You have to bend to some rules which are presented by European Union. I think the startup scene is very much similar in most European countries. There are not so much fun…
funding opportunities as for example in US there are a lot of more rules I which you have to follow so it’s not very easy however on the other hand you have some European funds that you can apply for there are every every couple of
every couple of weeks some kind of competitions for these fundings. So you can apply for this and if you are a good idea or a good team or a good, I don’t know, proof of concept or whatever, you can get some money like we get a couple of years ago for advancing our company to Middle East. There was some program from European Union which…
supported companies to expand to the Middle East. We can use this money to go to some kind of exhibitions fairs in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, in Bahrain and some business trips. So we have some money from this. I wouldn’t say that it’s very different than in other countries. There are a lot of young people
The education is very good in Poland. One of the, I think, maybe ten best education systems in the world. I’m looking at the research, education research. It’s called, I think, PISA or P-I-S-E. P-I-S-A, I guess.
Radek Blasiak (18:20.878) So there is like every three years you can check how the education system in every OECD countries works. So we are always at the top. So there are a lot of people which you know trying to start companies and I think it’s okay. But it’s not something that you would, I don’t know, think about every day how good we are in startups.
I think we are average in this.
Federico Ramallo (18:49.033) Right.
Federico Ramallo (18:54.11) Right, right. you have the benefit of the European Union because you can basically, all your market is the EU, right?
Radek Blasiak (19:09.878) Yeah, it’s a single market. It’s easy to sell your products or services in European Union if you are inside. But there are two sides. This is good, but on the other hand, the strict rules are not so good. So maybe, you know, it’s kind of black and white picture and gray.
Federico Ramallo (19:10.164) or you have country by country.
Federico Ramallo (19:20.137) Right.
Federico Ramallo (19:39.198) Yeah, I mean, it’s always the issue, the dilemma, know, regulations kill innovation, right?
Radek Blasiak (19:45.336) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (19:47.21) the cars in the 90s were much lighter, right? But they weren’t safe. you know, in that sense, was good because now cars are safer, right? You know, probably less reliable, right? But, you know, but they’re safer-ish, you know. So, you know, there is some benefit for regulation, but it also means that, you know, for instance, if you want to…
launch a new car in the US, it’s a nightmare. So companies basically don’t do it. The US don’t have a lot of the cars that they have in other markets. So Suzuki, for instance, moved out of the US because of that. They just stopped selling cars there.
So anyway, I’m digressing, yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Regulation kills innovation, right? Yeah, but it also brings some positive things, right? So there are privacy laws in the EU, right?
Radek Blasiak (21:05.996) Yeah, it’s complicated here. It’s not easy to judge what is better. What a lot of people like to do, simplify everything, but it’s not so simple.
Federico Ramallo (21:14.175) Right.
Federico Ramallo (21:22.058) Yes, yes, yes, I get it. So can you tell me a little bit more about Poland? I mean, it’s it’s our nation, but I heard it. You know, I told you this story, right? My my grandma left Poland when she was four or five years old. Right. So I I, you know, became a citizen, you know, Polish citizen. My mom got it.
You know, I got it. And I don’t know if you know this, the, you know, the, so my mom got it because she was a daughter of a Polish citizen, but my dad could not because he’s married. So he can get a spouse visa, right? But he cannot, he cannot work, right? And then I can get the citizenship because my mom has a citizenship, but then my wife,
Radek Blasiak (22:12.663) Okay.
Federico Ramallo (22:21.738) cannot get the citizenship, she can get the spouse visa, right? Or I probably don’t say the name correctly, but it’s something like that, right? So we did the process, right? Because at one point we were considering moving there, right? But it’s, I mean, I know it’s connected with my identity.
Radek Blasiak (22:30.286) Okay, yeah.
Federico Ramallo (22:51.55) but it feels so foreign because I know so little about it. And when the ambassador was giving me my birth certificate and my passport passport, she asked me, do you speak Polish? And I said, no. And she was like, but you should. You should learn Polish because… and.
Radek Blasiak (22:56.632) Yep.
Radek Blasiak (23:13.72) Yes.
Federico Ramallo (23:20.296) I mean, she was right, right? So I felt so embarrassed about that. yeah. And I said, you’re right? Yeah. I have no argument, yeah.
Radek Blasiak (23:31.341) I’m strongly against it! I’m not advising you to learn Polish, it’s very difficult. Yes, I mean, I don’t know there is other language as difficult as Polish. You can’t probably learn it when you are older than two years old.
Federico Ramallo (23:38.772) really?
Radek Blasiak (23:58.144) It’s not a good idea. No, I’m joking, of course you can start to learn Polish and I can’t help you with this, but it’s difficult, it’s difficult. And what about Poland? Wow.
Federico Ramallo (24:01.514) Federico Ramallo (24:08.991) Right.
Radek Blasiak (24:14.734) I don’t think I can tell you about Poland very shortly, anything interesting. It’s in a connection between East and West, from one side we have, right now we have Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, from the East.
But 25 years ago it was USSR, so it was Russia basically, all of these countries. Then, you know, after communists broke, they divided into many countries. So we have a lot of different neighbors right now, but it was the Soviet bloc basically. And on the other side, we have Germany. So we have, from one side we have…
We have Russia and from the other side we have West Europe. And in the south we have Czechs and Slovaks. So there are a lot of countries around us. We are in the middle of this. The history is difficult because through hundreds of years we were in conflict with these neighbors. Both with Russia and Germany and also with Austria and Hungary. So it’s very complicated.
And I think the most beautiful thing that happened to Poland is European Union. Because, you know, there is eight years of peace in Europe now and it never happened. So long period of peace among these nations. are, know, 40 nations and they always fought with each other. So, it’s really nice to be in this place. and…
When I hear from different sides like President of the United States complaining about European Union I always think you are not a very wise person because either you don’t know what you are talking about or you wish people bad luck because the worst what could happen is to…
Radek Blasiak (26:39.854) this country to split again and start to fight with each other. So right now everything is great in Poland. We are progressing for 30 years, I guess. Our economy is better every year. The country is, I think, in good condition. The education is good. The economy is good.
The demography is not very good because not many kids are coming to the world. But who knows. surroundings are also difficult as you know well enough. There is a war between Russia and Ukraine so it’s on our border almost.
And who knows what will happen. So we spent a lot of money now for military, buying everything we can, tanks, planes, ships, ammunition and whatever, and trying to live a happy life.
Federico Ramallo (27:58.142) Right.
Radek Blasiak (27:58.742) Right.
Federico Ramallo (28:04.135) I was, yeah, I agree with you, the EU is underappreciated worldwide, right? Yes.
Radek Blasiak (28:13.488) Yeah, hugely, hugely underappreciated.
Federico Ramallo (28:17.672) I sometimes I think that worldwide is, know, who speak out loudest rather than who does better things, right? So yeah, it’s a very, you know, like, and that’s why the question, right? Because for me, it overshadows a lot of the good things that are happening, you know, quietly, you know, yeah.
Radek Blasiak (28:45.144) Yeah, it’s just normal life. You have to appreciate just normal life, you know, without international adventures, I would say.
Federico Ramallo (28:47.496) Ahem.
Federico Ramallo (28:56.978) Right. And it’s one of the places that I want to go to visit in the next year or so. Take my son. I have a 10-year-old, so take my family.
and
Radek Blasiak (29:14.776) You are welcome. If you come, we can show you our country. Your country, your country almost.
Federico Ramallo (29:20.414) Very lovely, yes.
Federico Ramallo (29:25.128) Yes, because it’s mean, here in Mexico, there are great things happening, the, I was thinking about this today. They have this pre-colonial, I don’t know if to call it like that, but pre-colonial culture, right? That is very rich, know? That is, you before the Spanish came into Mexico, right?
Spanish, British, and many people. But they have a lot of culture there. Then when you see the 20th century, the culture is going down in terms of discipline, in terms of values, right? And we have a lot of organized crime, right? And the people live a life like romantics.
Romantics comes from the World War II where 40,000 people die per day. You wouldn’t know, it’s like we live now because we don’t know if we’re to live tomorrow. So we’d rather enjoy now when we have the opportunity. It’s kind of like that. There’s a lot more of a hedonistic lifestyle and culture around that.
So that makes it difficult to…
to grow as a community towards becoming better people. That’s not the general rule, but then when you get into the professional world, then it’s more formal, but still there’s a lot of alcohol involved.
Federico Ramallo (31:31.422) My wife was recently, she’s my co-founder and CFO of the company, but she’s running another startup with her brother. And they are doing industrial kitchens for the other multiple plantations. So they’re providing that service to those plantations. We’re 500 people a day and whatnot. Anyway, and they did this.
Conference and then you she was telling me that you know everybody was getting drunk It was you know, it was a very you know became a diff, you know, it became a cantina in the evening, right? So it wasn’t good right for for business. It wasn’t good, right? Plus we’re used to Work with American clients. So, you know for her getting into that environment. It was shocking, you know so Anyway, that that’s what we’re dealing in Mexico, right? That type of culture, right?
So anyway, I’m interested to learn more about your culture and your country culture, right? Because when you told me that programming was mandatory in Poland, I was surprised by that, right? And I think that’s a great step forward to build a more skillful people, right?
Radek Blasiak (32:59.054) Yeah, but you know, Poland has changed enormously through the last 25-30 years. 30 years ago it was very similar to what you are saying about Mexico. Alcohol was everywhere, people were… I mean, probably people were much poorer than in Mexico even, because we came out of communism and we lost industries, etc.
a huge you know
Oh, it’s getting late here and I forget some words, unemployment. It was a huge unemployment in Poland there, like 25 or 30 percent even. So really, Poland is a different country than 25 years ago, a different country completely. It’s, you know, I have my sons and I have now 20 something years old.
Federico Ramallo (33:38.825) Right.
Radek Blasiak (34:01.706) and they didn’t know what was here before they came to the world. But it was not very nice place there.
Federico Ramallo (34:14.216) Right, isn’t that amazing? I mean, think about like all the things that we learned if we were able to transmit that to our sons, right?
That makes the homo sapiens, the humans, unsustainable. Because as you mentioned, your son doesn’t know the previous culture. So the way we can do that is because every kid that is born doesn’t have any knowledge at all. So he has to learn everything. That is a different… That gives us hope.
Radek Blasiak (34:30.136) Thank you.
Federico Ramallo (34:59.582) We have the hope to change, to change our culture, change what we can do.
Federico Ramallo (35:07.93) and reinvent ourselves as a community, as a group.
Radek Blasiak (35:17.055) So, could I agree more with you?
Federico Ramallo (35:22.022) Radek Blasiak (35:22.25) So that’s how it looks like. Recently I saw this graph which presents the GDP grow in Poland.
And it was like, you 25 years ago we have GDP per capita like half of Japan. And this year we are equal to Japan GDP per capita. So in 25 years we grow to the level of something that we thought is completely unavailable for us.
Japan was something from the clouds. So advanced society, so rich a country and now we are on the same level. So it’s crazy. It’s really crazy from the perspective of me 30 years ago it was completely unbelievable that it would happen and it happens.
Federico Ramallo (36:17.556) Wow.
Radek Blasiak (36:32.814) So yeah, I think it’s a good time for Poland. I wonder how long it will last.
Federico Ramallo (36:47.102) Yes, hopefully, yes, hopefully it’s going to last a long time. Yeah. I didn’t know that the GDP per capita in Poland is similar to Japan. That’s amazing.
Radek Blasiak (36:59.842) Yeah, it’s amazing. I didn’t believe it either. It’s probably maybe it was adjusted to… I’m not sure how it’s called, purchasing power or something like this. But either way, it’s, you know, it’s a normal distance to reach in such a short time, really.
Federico Ramallo (37:04.339) Ahem.
Federico Ramallo (37:25.642) Yes, mean 25 years is nothing for a country, Yeah, but it’s a new generation, right? So you’re mentioning that the I think it’s called renovation, renovation, right? Right? Or something. No, I don’t remember the name, but it’s how many kids per capita or per family are being born. So if a country is below, I think one or average one, it means that
is declining, right?
Radek Blasiak (37:57.102) Yeah, it’s below 2.1. Yeah, yeah. So we are now about, I think, 1.2 or something, 1.4. So it’s not good. But it’s, I think, all the West has the same problem. So that’s how it is. The richer the country is, the worse is the demography.
Federico Ramallo (37:59.422) below 2.1 yes
Federico Ramallo (38:17.8) Yes, yes, I mean…
Federico Ramallo (38:23.55) Yes.
Radek Blasiak (38:23.596) The best demography is in Africa right now. It shows you where is, you know, the poorer countries are better.
Federico Ramallo (38:29.054) you
The poor country have more kids, yes. So tell me, we have a few minutes more, but tell me a little bit more about what are your plans, what you want to achieve in the next 12 months.
Radek Blasiak (38:52.295) Uhhh, you know we have…
I’m not sure about the business plans, from our perspective of development of our platform, biggest step now is beginning of AI course. We are creating with Wroclaw University of Technology. No, sorry, just Wroclaw University because we have two universities in Wroclaw. Wroclaw University is a very good university, probably.
The computer science department is among the best computer science departments in world in this university. They help us to create this AI programming course. It focuses more on the technical part of AI, so how to create models. If you know some Python, you can build some structures which…
can be used as a foundation of AI, of machine learning, of neural network, etc. So we are at the beginning of publishing this course and next year we’ll probably finish this course. So it’s going to be published by some modules every couple of months. So it’s going to be…
I think revolutionary somehow for us. First of all, because AI is everywhere now, everybody’s talking about AI, but mostly about how to use AI. And our course is from the other side, from the technical side, how to create this. So it’s going to be, I think, very impactful for us. And it also was very demanding from technical part of our team, because it has to…
Radek Blasiak (40:54.688) implementing this course was difficult for us. It’s not like Python. It’s not like, you know, C++ where you can create little snippets, little lessons and check something and all of a sudden you have much bigger problems because students will train their models. So you have to have, you know, more power in your servers, et cetera, et cetera. So it was, it was difficult and we are, you know, at the last stage of
dealing with these problems right now, so probably next month we’ll publish first lessons. And second part, we are working also on some gamification models on our platform, which will make it even more fun for our students. So these are two, I think, two major differences which will happen in a couple of months. And from business perspective,
Federico Ramallo (41:31.135) right.
Radek Blasiak (41:56.43) I think Poland will stay our main market because there are a lot of European Union funding for schools for such kind of modern education. So we’ll try to reach for this funding and keep our schools with our platform. And we’ll try to expand also abroad. I don’t know how successful we’ll be in this.
Middle East is on the plan and also Europe. I told you we are going next week to Berlin to some huge technology exhibition. JITEX Europe in Berlin. So yeah, we are trying to reach a couple of places in the world and do something. And we will have the 10th anniversary
Federico Ramallo (42:43.732) Great.
Radek Blasiak (42:57.024) of our platform next year, so we will try to make it international competition. We’ll invite some schools from all around the world to participate in this competition. who knows what happen. I’m moderately optimistic about next year.
Federico Ramallo (43:12.734) Interesting.
Federico Ramallo (43:20.456) Right, right. I was going to ask you about AI, but you kind of answered. Yeah, that’s very interesting.
Wishing you the best of the success,
Radek Blasiak (43:32.184) Yes, can’t wait to see this. I mean, of course, I already test some of these lessons, but when we published it, it became real. So I will share with you the first lesson also for you to check what you think about them.
Federico Ramallo (43:47.294) Yes.
Federico Ramallo (43:51.87) Yes, please do, because my mom is teaching my son coding. I don’t remember. I can send you the platform that they are using. But basically, they’re teaching, you know, they’re working with blocks. So he’s drawing blocks instead of code, right?
Radek Blasiak (44:09.922) Yeah. Scratch maybe? The reason scratch.
Federico Ramallo (44:16.166) Scratch, I think code.org and he has another one I can send you a link so you can look it up basically he he trains the LLM with photos of his teddy bears right so you have the rabbits you have the you know the there is a
Radek Blasiak (44:22.958) Yeah, sure.
Federico Ramallo (44:39.73) It’s called Dr. Simi. It’s a little doctor that it’s this low cost pharmacist. So it has its own teddy bear, right? So, you know, different teddy bears. then, you know, depending on which one you show, it says, it’s probably this, it’s probably that, you know. So they were playing with that. And my son was super excited about it. Right. So I’m thinking, well, then the next step is, you know,
working towards, or she’s working towards, getting into code. yeah, I think that’s going to be very interesting. And AI, it’s a great thing now. I was at GitHub in San Francisco, and they had the Google AI, head of Google AI, Y Combinator. Who else was there?
Radek Blasiak (45:15.0) very nice. That’s very nice.
Federico Ramallo (45:37.448) big players, and basically they were saying that Google Ads is the business model is going to disappear because now people, instead of using the search, they’re going to use the prompt. So then the ads won’t make sense. They have to reinvent how they’re doing ads. So that’s going to happen very, very soon.
the bottom line was this is like the 2000s where there are so many new open opportunities for things to do that now AI AI first applications can radically change you know and basically throw you know replace a lot of current tools that we’re using right so they’re saying that there’s an
an open field of opportunities to do there. So yeah, it makes sense that you’re doing AI courses because I think there’s a lot of power there. mean, AI is not going to replace programmers, but it’s going to replace programmers or developers that are using AI. So yeah.
Radek Blasiak (46:40.984) Yeah, sure.
Radek Blasiak (47:00.088) Yeah, it’s hard to really predict what will happen. It’s a very dynamic situation, I think.
Federico Ramallo (47:06.558) Right. Right. Yeah. And I can understand, you know, having LLMs running around and, you know, just doing the training and all that. It literally changed your whole architecture of your backend, right? Just for that course, right?
Radek Blasiak (47:21.838) Yeah, it’s an issue. I think you have to be very careful, especially in schools.
introducing AI because what would be the worst thing is to make kids stop thinking and just you know using AI to solve their problems because that’s what people do yes they would choose the easiest path they can
So the kids in the schools also will try to use it and already are doing this. So I think you have to find some balance between allowing kids to use AI for… for helping helping solve problems, but on the other hand you have to make kids be creative, be critical thinkers.
and not rely on AI in everything. So I think it’s very difficult. And it’s not very obvious that AI in education is a good thing. I think it’s more complicated than that.
Federico Ramallo (48:54.206) Yeah, I I remember my teacher saying, don’t use a calculator, just do the writing by hand. I grew up, my dad was at IBM, so I grew up around computers when I was a kid, right? So in my mind, I was thinking, why would I spend time writing when I can just type, right? Which it’s the easiest path, right?
So I was thinking, you know, I can type everything in the future. I don’t need to write, right? So now my handwritten letter, it’s not very good, right? Took me a lot of effort to make it better, you know, because I grew up with that, you know, idea, right? So the, I mean, I think that there is some of that, you know, people used to say, the kids are, you know, they get so immersed on newspapers or books, right?
Radek Blasiak (49:24.588) Yeah.
Radek Blasiak (49:33.774) You
Radek Blasiak (49:39.947) I really do this.
Federico Ramallo (49:52.904) now the phones, right? we keep saying those type of things. So I think that there is some value of using these type of tools, but also on the other hand, the AI tools, they can process everything for you. So then there is no critical thinking, right? And that kind of makes the books…
and the process of reading books much more valuable than before because, you know, learning the deep knowledge of, you know, of how things work because you can get the answer from an AI, right? Yeah, the shallow answer, right? But the why and the why and the why, right? There is a level where the AI cannot help you, right? So understanding the, you know, how everything works at
until the zeros and ones. That would make the type of engineers, software engineers, would be much more interesting to hire because they would understand how everything worked.
Radek Blasiak (50:59.534) the distance of a chain of seven tiers.
Radek Blasiak (51:08.43) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (51:14.322) Awesome. So I appreciate very much you’re taking the time and staying late so we could talk. We’ve been scheduling this call and then we both had to cancel at one point. So it was great that we were able to meet. I actually delayed the flight so we could have the call today in my studio, I guess.
Radek Blasiak (51:23.682) My pleasure.
Radek Blasiak (51:42.57) Thank you.
Federico Ramallo (51:44.91) So yeah, yeah, I I’d rather not reschedule so we could talk here. So I appreciate you being here, and I’ll let you know as soon as this episode is published.
Radek Blasiak (51:59.822) Great, thank you very much for your time and it was my pleasure to talk to you. I hope to talk to you soon again.
Federico Ramallo (52:09.352) Yes, yes, we’ll stay in touch.
Radek Blasiak (52:11.853) Sure, please do.
Federico Ramallo (52:13.866) Great, Awesome. Thank you.
Radek Blasiak (52:17.561) Thank you very much. Bye.