what is that freaks welcome back to tftc we have uh a very interesting guest the youngest guest
in tftc's eight-year history we've been doing this for eight years and stella you are our
youngest guest at 15 years old welcome to the show hi nice to be here how are you doing well
doing well uh like i was saying just before we hit record i'm excited to have you on because
we have an older audience.
I didn't tell you this,
but there's been a running
theme on the show and discussion
on this show and the other show I do with Matt Odell,
which is how do we reach the younger
generations in
Bitcoin? Because it's a bunch of millennials,
Gen Xers, and boomers typically
that listen to this
show. And so I'm
very excited to get the perspective of
somebody who's on the cusp of Gen Z and Gen
Alpha. You get to choose
which one you associate with, depending
on how cool one or the other generation is.
But this came to be because of an assignment you have at school,
at the Alpha School in Austin.
And the Alpha School is, I'm not sure if you're aware,
but outside of the Austin bubble, I think with tech forward
and investment circles, people are looking at what's happening
at the Alpha School around the country and saying,
hey, this seems like a pretty cool model, like I was mentioning.
I listened to the Invest Like the Best podcast with the founder, Joe Lamont, a few months ago.
And he was describing how he and the team, the administrative team at Alpha School built the school.
But I think getting the perspective of one of the students can be incredibly enlightening.
So why don't we start there?
It's a story about yourself.
How long have you been at Alpha School and what it's like?
I started Alpha in the middle of my ninth grade year.
Before that, I was homeschooled pretty much my whole life.
And I was doing dual enrollment at the local community college, Austin Community College, ACC.
And I kind of just found it boring, to be honest.
It wasn't really causing me to do much with my life.
I mean, sure, I'm at a college, but it didn't really feel all that inspiring or anything like that,
which is why I decided to come to Alpha because I wanted to do something more.
I have plenty of ideas.
I had plenty of ideas when I went in.
And so I kind of knew that it was going to be great for me
because I always preferred the idea of being like an entrepreneur
rather than working for somebody else.
And so Alpha seems like a perfect fit.
And it was when I joined.
I can't imagine myself going anywhere else now.
And so what is it like at Alpha School? What is a typical day like? What autonomy and agency do you have over what you decide to focus on?
We have quite a bit. We start our mornings with like three hours of academics, as I'm sure you
know. That's kind of what most people do know, where we do pretty much the core subjects. We do
have minimums that we have to do in each of them. But other than that, we get to completely choose
what we want to do in what order. I can do things whenever I want. I can do things in whichever way
I want, as long as I'm, you know, getting my work done. And we definitely have a lot of autonomy
inside of academics and even like outside of academics. We can go roam around the Austin city
downtown. And then, you know, Masterpiece obviously is a lot of autonomy. So there's that.
What's Masterpiece?
Oh, Masterpiece. Yes. That is our four-year-long passion project.
um so mine would be that website or i guess later game that i'm working on making there's people
making like ai teddy bears there's going to there's like a ai chat bot for helping teens with
like dating um there's a lot of really interesting products here that are you know coming up and
it's that's that's what we call this the masterpiece which is the four-year-long
passion project. Yeah. And that's, I think that's one thing that as a father with younger children,
we've got a almost six, a three year old and a three month old and thinking about, um,
how they're going to learn moving forward. And as somebody who's really dove headfirst into
incorporating AI into my business here at TFTC and what we do on the fun side, I often wonder
like okay when is the right time to introduce these ai tools into their life and what's the best way
in which they can leverage them and like how i get how was ai introduced to you to the students at
at alpha and how how often do you use it um i'm not sure about how it was introduced to other
students because i knew about it way before i joined alpha like one chat gbt released my parents
were like instantly hyped up about it. I witnessed like the first YouTube video about it come out and
they were like so excited about it and we all watched it as like a big family fun thing. So I'm
not quite sure how they introduce it to the younger kids since I joined in you know like
in ninth grade but we definitely do use it like quite a bit specifically when it comes to
masterpiece. In academics, it's a little more iffy because obviously we can't be doing any
academic dishonesty or anything, but we can use them for if we're trying to, you know,
better understand something or to help us with a topic we're really struggling with,
as long as we're not cheating with it, obviously. So most of the work with AI goes into the
masterpiece section. And so how long have you been using AI personally? Three or four years
now at this point yeah since like when did it come out 2022 something like that gbt3 i think so
and i guess let's lean into it like what's your what's your go-to ai stack these days for different
for different tasks um for just you know if i need help with any random thing i'll typically go to
chat gbt but for coding specifically i like to use cloud code i share the 200 subscription with my mom
and we just work on our own projects with it.
Are you just as amazed as I am at the 4.5?
Oh, definitely.
It seems to be way better than the previous iterations.
It's so good.
Has it helped you with your masterpiece project at all?
Oh, definitely.
My entire website, I made it all with plot code.
I don't know any coding myself.
I guess I know some basics.
I tried doing the Khan Academy coding course when I was a little kid, but I never got further than making the snowman thing.
And so, you know, QuadCode has pretty much done all of the coding for me.
I haven't touched it at all.
I haven't even opened the files, I don't think.
And then when it comes to like actually hosting and launching the website, did you have to go through a domain?
Yes, I did do that.
that's not something cloud can really do i guess but um it was really easy and it's fairly cheap
too like the domain name i got is only 30 a year so it's practically a non-expense at that point
and you know i just had to upgrade my super base so that's you know getting a little bit more
expensive but yeah whatever well let's talk about it um okay what you're what you're building i mean
Yeah, your ultimate goal is the Sims-like game.
Yes.
However, you have to build fundamental building blocks to get to that end state,
and you've been working on somewhat of a storyboarding prototype.
Yes.
So since my game is kind of like AI Sims,
you kind of need people's characters to have substance for the AI to go off of
for them to be correctly characterized,
which is why I made my website, which is visual note-taking, essentially,
so that authors or other people, just with characters that they want to simulate,
write down every little detail about their character, their story.
They can storyboard it.
It's a visual way of planning out every little aspect and taking notes on it.
And that's what the website is really for.
And it will be incorporated into the game.
But for now, it's just the website itself, because I haven't quite made the game yet.
And what's the website?
It called bibliarch B It derived from two different greek things bibli from like biblio as in book and then arc as in kind of like monarch or ruler so it oh there it
is okay i'm in okay share this again so let me think of a story i can tell i create a new story
what do you recommend i'd recommend the template okay it gives a it gives a good
view of all the nodes let's tell the story of uh satoshi nakamoto let's make this uh oh wow
um free satoshi before bitcoin oh okay very responsive okay now what are you what would
you recommend i do here um fill it out to your heart's content you know you can go into the
characters and relationships to put in the characters um and just look at the different
types of nodes okay okay we don't have to do this all i think this is really cool to say
a finny
switching keyboards here yeah so this is cool so then you'd create like a relationship map
okay so yeah we can basically create these relationship and if you press connect characters
then you can create their how their relationships would look okay you click one character then the
other okay three professional okay this is really cool so how long did it take you to build this
um about the half half a semester it took to build that and then for the second half of the
semester i've been just refining it you know fixing all the bugs i like released it to the
public this like the second half of the semester um you know all that stuff okay using this now
in such so now i can see what you're doing so you you like to tell stories you like to write
yeah um fiction and so as a storyteller somebody's written fiction in the past what problem does this
solve for you well i there are other websites like this i've used them before but the problem
with those is that they're really expensive um that one that i used before this was millenote
but they give you very limited storage.
And then you have to pay to a monthly subscription
after you hit a certain threshold.
And it's very annoying.
And it's kind of just unrealistic
for the average person to be able to afford that,
which is what inspired me
to kind of make my note-taking look like this.
I had a different initial idea
for how the note-taking would look.
But when I thought about it,
I thought, hey, this could just be another grab for the game,
another feature of it rather than, you know,
kind of setting the note taking aside since it's kind of a major aspect of the
game.
And so with the game,
is that the intention and the goal is to allow individual users,
players to build their own universes and characters?
Yeah.
It's pretty much aiming to be, you know, as I said,
the Sims is my major inspiration,
But more so it's meant for plot simulation than life simulation.
So you'll be able to simulate scenes, build like a world map, all of that stuff that usually games don't allow you to do because they have, you know, smaller ideas of what of playing, you know.
And would it be like Ready Player One where individual universes created by individual players can interact with each other or?
I never quite thought of other people's characters interacting with each other, but that could actually be great.
It's more so for creating the universes themselves and simulating the characters together that exist in the same world.
But I guess you could create different worlds if you have different stories as well, or maybe share them with your friends.
Yeah, this is fascinating.
Somebody has been away from the gaming scene for quite a while.
since I picked up the sticks or
downloaded a game on
my desktop but
I think that's one thing that's really
sort of illuminating to me with this AI wave
is just how there's a lot of people
worried I'm sure
you may be aware of it in the mainstream
people are worried that AI is going to take
people's jobs and that
there's not going to be any use for
humans anymore but having used it
and leaned into it myself I find it
Hard to believe there certainly will be some job disruption, but I think for individuals with creative desires and more importantly, agency and the will to actually use this stuff, it's incredibly powerful.
What's your perspective?
That's exactly what I think.
I don't think that AI is exactly a harm to the job market.
Just rather, you know, putting it in.
Oh, I got a pop up on my screen.
I don't think that AI is exactly a harm to the job market, but rather that it will change the kind of jobs available.
So rather than going to work for some big gaming megacorporation, people will be able to make their own dream games.
You know, before AI, you would see everybody saying, oh, I wish I could quit my job so I could just make my dream game.
Or, you know, growing up, all my friends wanted to make video games.
But for the average person, you know, it's not really available to them with the time and money since it's expensive.
and AI, I feel like, just allows more people to be able to do what they want rather than work for
somebody else. So I don't necessarily see it as a harm to the job market, but rather allowing more
people to be their own boss and make their own products. No, it seems like that's a very big
focus of alpha. And that naturally leads me. And I'm sure you interact with plenty of kids your age
outside of alpha do you think there's going to be um i'm trying to think of the way the friend
like are you worried about people your age that aren't interacting with these tools to be honest
a little bit yeah i feel like it mostly boils down to motivation issues i see like some friends of
mine they kind of just don't really have drives and so i'll tell them hey why don't you try out
doing AI coding for this idea you have.
And they kind of shoot it down because they aren't really willing to put in effort.
And I feel like that's kind of the biggest issue here of people are just instantly shooting
down things when it could be good for them.
And that's, you know, probably the biggest problem is that they won't accept, you know,
the responsibility and, you know, working towards things that they want.
I just hope that AI will help them realize that it's going to be much easier than they think.
And that's, I mean, the generation above you,
or you're straddling the older generation that you straddled Gen Z,
that's one of the big problems that at least we discussed on this show a lot this year,
is this idea that a lot of, particularly the older members of Gen Z,
don't think that there is enough to be inspired about and enough motivation to go out there and
actually put effort in because they think the system is working against them but again to your
point and what i truly believe it's this if you have these ai tools and you lean into them and you
show some agency and some drive you can actually do something productive and that's what i hope and
one of the things that i've been saying on this show is i hope gen alpha is sort of able to
really lean into this opportunity considering how much time they have
in front of them and take advantage of it.
Definitely.
I think that Gen Alpha has a better chance at this
because they're being introduced to it much younger.
So I'll go babysit my younger cousin, not Will's kid, the other cousins,
and my little cousin Elton will be talking with ChatTBT
about a game idea he has and like creating ideas for his Pokemon fan game
dream and so I feel like the younger generation of Gen Alpha definitely has a
much better chance of learning how to you know adapt to AI and use it to feel
all their dreams but I feel like Gen Z specifically is stuck in kind of a negativistic state that harming them yeah that like it and that why i really um inspired by your entrepreneurial spirit and
leaning into this and i guess building on that like bibliarch and the games that may flow from
it like do you see this as something that you can monetize um i mean yeah i guess like
anything that you can make you can monetize i suppose um people use ai for you know making
personal projects and you know projects they can monetize it it's really all just
the same as long as it's you know driven by motivation you know
yeah and i'm seeing here you know it looks like there is a paid tier on bibliarch and you can pay
in Bitcoin. Are you only accepting Bitcoin? That is a donation page. And I do accept
non-Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is obviously an option. I would prefer Bitcoin, frankly.
I'm right now working on a paid tier, though, which will allow users to do multiplayer.
Multiplayer has kind of been the biggest step up in this website. And I've been working on it for
a while because it it requires real time and all this stuff that's just kind of a pain to make but
it's almost done and when it is it will be under a paid tier since it you know takes up a lot of
real-time functions which i have limited of before having to pay extra so yeah it's going to be paid
under a subscription something like that um and yeah why do you prefer bitcoin well because
inflation, really. I've mostly just heard about inflation from other people. But in a way,
I'm pretty sure that I did dodge it. From what I've heard, like half of the US dollars have been
printed since 2020. And I've been investing in Bitcoin since like way before 2020, when I was
like five in 2015, that kind of stuff. And so I had pretty much all of my savings in Bitcoin.
And so because of that, I pretty much avoided all that massive inflation that would have been
caused during that time. And it's kind of crazy to think about that because on top of it, I was
making money through Bitcoin going up. And so, you know, it's incredible to hear. I mean,
that's the other thing to start young in Bitcoin. It's about time in the market,
not timing the market and so yeah back that you're 15 and have been able to recognize the
upside potential of holding bitcoin for long term is again i think another benefit that gen alpha
has yeah moving forward what what is your peer group think of bitcoin are you unique um no i
have other friends that are like you know kind of in the bitcoin space but i feel like i'm probably
the biggest into it i'll try to get my friends who you know my friend lily is saving up for a
computer and i'm telling her lily put your money in bitcoin while you save up for it
or you know other stuff like that so i'm probably i'm the biggest into it but they don't have like
negative feelings towards it or anything just sort of indifferent if you're not really into it
it's like oh yeah it's something it exists because that's always been a long long-standing assumption
in the Bitcoin space is that, hey, Gen Alpha is really going to get this because
you're 15, you were born, gosh, it's hard to, after Bitcoin launched.
After Bitcoin launched.
So you've never lived in a world where Bitcoin didn't exist, which is hard for somebody like
me to fathom because I spent more than half my life with Bitcoin not existing, which is,
yeah, it's interesting to go through.
But like building Biblioark, what were some of the biggest challenges and sort of the roadblocks that you ran into?
I'd say the biggest challenge was just Claude Code not listening to me.
Sometimes it likes to go off and do its own thing or messes everything up in one go.
And it's really annoying.
Thank God for backups because I have almost lost everything at times.
It's actually the biggest struggle.
Just the AI being kind of incompetent at times.
I think with 4.5, I've noticed, I don't know if you've noticed this,
the Cloud code has been way better.
Oh, yeah.
It hasn't, like, made giant mess-ups in forever for me.
That was pretty early in development that it was doing that.
And so what's that flow look like when you're – do you just use Cloud?
Do you connect at the cursor?
Just Cloud.
I go in the terminal, you know, CD, blah, blah, blah, blah,
get into the correct directory and then Claude and boom, I got it.
Are you using their MPC framework at all?
MPC framework?
It's sort of their agentic framework that lets you contract agents
within Claude's app to do particular micro tasks.
Well, I've never heard of it, so I guess not.
Yeah.
No, MCP, excuse me.
Still haven't heard of it.
yeah no i was just thinking about uh if you lean into that and create little agents to do little
subtasks for you this yes my mom has um my mom's been doing this i haven't yet i've been meaning to
but she says that it's like really helpful and she gets them to write all different documents
on different things and then she tells the main clod um go over these documents and review and
tell me which way is the best way to do this in all subjects yeah no it's and to be honest i've
been leaning into it as heavily as i probably should be but um it feels like for bibliarch
specifically it could help you really accelerate this and i think that's the other crazy thing so
over the course of your masterpiece building this um how i mean we're talking about claude 4.5
but like how how more powerful have the ai tools gotten since you started on this project oh yeah
definitely a lot more when i started this i was actually not using clod i was using replit and
i ran out of the amount of stuff that i could use to code with replit which is why i moved to clod
and instantly it was just so much better and you can really tell the difference especially like
you know replit versus cloud code or chat gbt versus cloud code claude is so above all of the
other models and considering it'll only get better it it really makes me think that you know this is
like the complete future of coding why even learn to code after this yeah do you feel fortunate to
be at alpha to be able to have the autonomy and the ability to focus on stuff like this.
Yeah. I, you know, you know, talk to friends and they talk about how they don't have time to
partake in hobbies and stuff like that. And it makes me realize, you know, I'm really lucky to
have all the time to be doing this because not only can I work on it at home, I can work on it
at school and it's so beneficial to me. And I feel like so many people could benefit from,
you know a similar model in public schools or other things do you think it will get picked up
by other other schools or private schools because that's i mean just outside looking in
and um speaking with people like your parents who have sent their children there it seems pretty
clear to me that the structure the curriculum and sort of the model by which you um sort of
have kids like yourself follow their passions and while doing so in doing so learning some pretty
complex things and actually getting a good education seems like the right way to do it to
me i mean i went to a montessori um school when i was younger and i think i feel like it's very
similar just find when children are passionate and sort of foster and nurture that passion and
the best to your ability as a, as an educator. And it seems like Alpha is really taking that to,
to another level. Yeah, definitely. I wish that, you know, public schools would incorporate this,
but I don't know. I don't think that they'd actually do it because public schools seem
more like they're trained to, they're trying to train you for, you know, being in the workplace,
like working these long shifts To be honest I don know if it really all that about education at this point It the exact same as like hundreds of years ago Yeah the Prussian model of public schooling
systems. Learn how to get in line, listen to the bills, walk to your next class and
learn the subjects that we put before you. Yeah. What is your great hope for your generation?
My what? Oh, my great hope for my generation. I guess really just to kind of stop being so negative. Everything I see online with Gen Z is just really negative, really pessimistic.
And I feel like a lot of people are holding themselves back because they try to see the worst in everything to be, you know, correct or like, oh, you see this AI thing is so harmful. I'm so I'm so caring because I say this.
it's kind of like almost fake. And, you know, since the fakeness is coming in a way of,
of negativism, it's kind of promoting more negativism. And I just wish that, you know,
my generation could be more positive and more like, oh, this is a good tool we can use. We can,
you know, make our lives better with this rather than only focusing on the downsides,
because pretty much everything has a downside and an upside.
It's just you got to choose which one to look at.
Yeah, it's a double-edged sword, if you will, with silver linings in between.
Yeah, the moral social signaling is Gen Z is not the only ones doing it with people.
I think that is something that is systemic throughout society across all generations.
Yeah.
Especially in the age of social media, it's really easy.
to be a moral social signal uh signaller online because it's very easy to get
social brownie points in the forms of likes and retweets and stuff like that
um so that is it is weird i mean being a millennial it was really uh i'm at the perfect
age to remember life right before the internet pretty vividly in life when the internet became
popular and as it's progressed and um i think that's another thing a lot of people don't realize
is that you, me, my parents, your parents were born at this really interesting inflection
point in human history where we're transitioning from the industrial age to the digital age
and how do we sort of evolve with these new technologies.
And I think that's what we're witnessing, what you're describing now is sort of this
confrontation with this incredible change in a very short period of time.
my parents often like they've mentioned to me before that back when the internet was released
um like the internet started existing people had the same reaction towards it that they have towards
ai and same with like the industrial revolution it seems like whenever any new sort of technology
comes out people tend to down on it rather than embracing it even though it's the future and
And I find that very counterproductive, and I don't even quite understand why people would be against it, because it makes no sense to be anti-innovation, especially since all of these tools that are created, people always think that they're going to take jobs, but they seem to make jobs.
The industrial revolution causes more people to be able to do different things or technology coming into play allows all these technological jobs with the coding and digital art, all these things.
And AI, I think it's going to be the same.
It's just going to give people more jobs, just not the same ones that they're used to.
Yeah.
When I think about it, I think there's great potential for an explosion in small and medium-sized businesses.
We can have a world of hundreds of thousands, millions of even small businesses of people using AI to build obscure niche products that exist on the Internet and interact with the physical world sometimes and give people agency to control their own lives.
And most importantly, not most importantly, but importantly, their financial well-being.
Yeah, definitely.
yeah what uh what are some other projects i mean you alluded to some earlier in discussion but what
are some of your peers building um for their masterpieces there's you know the kind of poster
children of the school like the ai teddy bear the ai dating coach um that kind of stuff there's a
kid making a running app kind of based off of pokemon there's a girl making a kind of um true
crime thing for like teenagers to solve true crime cases there's non-profits for like helping voters
come into things there's you know multiple streamers streaming is actually quite a big
thing at my school surprisingly um you know various topics over different things oh modular
clothing that one's one of my favorites yeah fill me in on streaming streaming culture is a culture
that it's the first time where i feel old this emergence of streaming culture and i look at the
streamers and kids your age will sit there and watch somebody on twitch or kick or whatever
live streaming platform and just watch that person sit at their computer and talk about
things what in your mind what is what is the draw the allure of streamers and what are the pros and
cons of that format to be honest i'm not too sure about the draw i've never been big on streaming
myself i've heard other kids at my school say that it's kind of like nice to put on for like
background noise if they're like studying or like playing the game alongside them i guess
i'm not quite sure altogether though because i don't really have my own experience on it
you're a similar spot to me where it's like okay what the heck is going on
let's get another some uh like-minded individuals and uh on the cusp of gen z and gen alpha
well stella this is um this has been awesome thank you for being the youngest best ever
thanks for having me what um what have we not discussed that you think the audience you would
like the audience to walk away with whether that's particularly what you're working on bibliarch
how alpha works or just um a message from uh a 15 year old gen alpha slash gen z
to a much older audience um i guess just you know yeah it's the future better embrace the future i
mentioned that already but you know that's a good message for an older audience because i tend to see
you know, older people kind of rebelling against new technology, I guess.
But I don't think that your audience would be like that.
I feel like they're pretty innovative.
Yeah, very innovative.
The best, the biggest, the brightest audience in the world here at TFTC.
So just an affirmation for all the audience members
who are already leaning into AI.
You're doing the right thing.
Yes, definitely.
Yes.
Awesome.
Well, Stella, thank you for your time.
Good luck finishing Bibliarch.
Thanks for having me.
Good luck for the rest of your tenure.
We found Alpha School.
I think it's really cool what you're building and what you're participating in at Alpha School.
Like you said, I think this model should be replicated as widely as possible across the country, across the world.
Because I think it's the future of education.
I'm a big believer in autonomy as somebody who went to public and private school.
and sat in class, waited for the bell to ring, walked in the line for the next class.
Yeah, and I hated it.
At high school, we had a bit more autonomy, not as much autonomy as you had,
but grade school, public school was like a prison to me.
I don't think it's changed much since I was going to the public schooling system.
And so hopefully this is a great model.
I know it is a great model.
Hopefully more people become aware of it because I think the discussion that we had,
a 15-year-old being able to come on a podcast and talk with this much confidence
and talk about something very interesting,
which is building something using cutting-edge AI tools like Claude
is an example of like, hey, this is what we should want our youth doing.
This is what we should want them leaning into.
So thank you for your time.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
yeah i wish you luck thank you all right peace and love freaks