Dan Martell - April 16, 2026


99% of People Have No Idea What’s About to Happen With AI

Topics
level three AI organization
Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
Manus Bitcoin Whisperflow OpenClaw Gemini
Why I’m Going ALL IN on AI in 2026 (and you should too) How to Make Time For Everything (Seriously, everything)

Episode Stats


Length

14 minutes

Words per minute

200.55

Word count

2,828

Sentence count

128

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about the three levels of AI, and why you should be using them. AI is bigger than the internet, bigger than smartphones, and the gap between people who see it and the people who don t is growing every single day.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.240 99% of people have no idea what's about to happen with AI.
00:00:04.320 Most people think they're ahead because they switched to clod
00:00:06.880 or tried some new AI tool their cousin told them about.
00:00:09.520 That's like upgrading from a flip phone
00:00:11.200 to an iPhone 4 in 2026.
00:00:14.080 What's coming with AI is bigger than the internet,
00:00:17.120 bigger than smartphones, bigger than Bitcoin,
00:00:19.440 and the gap between people who see it
00:00:21.440 and the people who don't is growing every single day.
00:00:24.120 I build AI tools and AI companies all the time,
00:00:27.040 and what's shifted in the last few months
00:00:28.960 made me rethink everything about AI. How I work, how I build, and how I run my businesses.
00:00:34.060 So I'm going to show you where the three levels of AI exist right now. Where 99% of people are
00:00:39.480 getting stuck and they don't even know it. Where a small group of people are quietly getting ahead
00:00:44.020 of everyone else and it's growing. And the absolute cutting edge, the frontier, where the
00:00:49.860 next wave of billionaires is being made right now in real time, starting with level one.
00:00:54.880 The Assistants. Most people just figured out ChatGPT isn't the only AI tool. They're switching
00:01:01.180 from Claude, they're trying Gemini, maybe they heard of Perplexity. That's a good first step,
00:01:05.920 but it's just that, a first step. At this level, AI is a really smart assistant sitting next to you.
00:01:12.140 You can create images, research, emails, design, stuff that used to take hours or you had to pay
00:01:17.040 other people to do it. Done in minutes. Awesome sauce. But you still have to do the work. You
00:01:21.920 might be faster. You can do more, but you're still the one doing it. One of the most common questions
00:01:27.240 I get around AI is, what tools should I be using? Here's what I recommend right now. These are the
00:01:32.280 tools that I use. Screenshot this. Whisperflow helps me talk into it. AI assisted. It's a game
00:01:38.480 changer. Clawed Cowork, automate things on my computer. Manus, pretty much do end-to-end
00:01:43.700 complete workflows. Clawed Code, it's what I use to build custom solutions. And OpenClaw,
00:01:49.540 It's the wrapper around it all.
00:01:51.520 And I have my own variant called Apex.
00:01:53.560 We'll get to that in a second.
00:01:55.060 So now you just realize
00:01:56.120 you shouldn't just be using one AI tool.
00:01:58.320 You should be using many depending on the job.
00:02:00.620 Using those tools I just showed you, that's great.
00:02:03.240 They're incredible.
00:02:04.180 They will change your life.
00:02:05.720 But it's still just the beginning.
00:02:08.000 It's kind of like being in the kiddie pool.
00:02:10.320 And if you don't pay attention
00:02:11.560 to what I'm about to share next, you will fall behind.
00:02:14.160 I promise you this, there's no future where AI doesn't exist
00:02:18.480 and it does way more for you than what you think.
00:02:21.080 That's level one.
00:02:22.320 It's a start, but it's just the beginning
00:02:24.340 because level two, you stop doing the work entirely.
00:02:28.080 Level two is the agent operators.
00:02:30.600 ChatGPT has almost 6 billion visits a month.
00:02:34.040 A tool like Manus,
00:02:35.200 one of the most popular agentic AI tools in the world,
00:02:38.160 gets 18 million.
00:02:39.620 There's a big discrepancy.
00:02:41.160 That's only 0.3% of all those people
00:02:43.780 using ChatGPT on Manus.
00:02:45.700 Almost nobody is here yet.
00:02:47.500 Do you understand this?
00:02:48.480 Level two, you give AI a goal.
00:02:51.160 It plans the steps.
00:02:52.640 It executes the step.
00:02:54.340 It shares that with the people
00:02:55.920 you're about to share with it.
00:02:57.180 It gets feedback on what you shared
00:02:59.200 and then updates itself.
00:03:00.900 It's tools like Manus, CloudCode, CloudCowork,
00:03:04.400 entire projects are handled by the AI.
00:03:07.520 Essentially in that mode, you are the agent operator, okay?
00:03:11.340 You configure, you're like the project manager
00:03:13.460 of all these virtual AI agents.
00:03:15.380 You gotta pick the tool, you gotta sign at the job,
00:03:17.920 you gotta check the outputs,
00:03:19.200 you gotta figure out the data connectors.
00:03:20.900 And I even did a whole video on Manus
00:03:23.020 where you can use it to like run and manage your business.
00:03:25.600 I'll link it at the end.
00:03:26.540 So today I wanna break down what actually changes
00:03:28.980 between level one and level two.
00:03:30.660 First, let's compare the touch points,
00:03:32.180 like how many times you have to touch the AI
00:03:34.680 to get it to do the thing.
00:03:36.000 On level one, you have many
00:03:37.480 because you're still the person doing it all,
00:03:39.340 you just have different tools for every task.
00:03:41.300 On level two, you only have a few
00:03:43.340 because you have one specialty tool or AI per job type.
00:03:46.900 Now let's compare what the AI does.
00:03:48.820 See, in level one, it helps you do the work, right?
00:03:51.420 Write copy, do research, competitive analysis.
00:03:54.400 In level two, it does the whole work for you.
00:03:57.080 Not only the pieces,
00:03:58.520 but it puts the whole thing together
00:03:59.940 as a complete work product.
00:04:01.580 Now let's compare what you do in these levels.
00:04:04.380 Level one is everything.
00:04:06.240 If you don't do anything, it won't do anything, okay?
00:04:08.900 It might make you faster, but it's still you.
00:04:10.680 In level two, you can give it a prompt,
00:04:13.040 walk away, you manage the tool,
00:04:14.880 but when you come back, trust me,
00:04:16.080 it'll complete something for you it'll build you an app it'll create a presentation it'll do the
00:04:21.200 competitor analysis it does the whole thing you essentially just assign a task you check what it
00:04:25.680 did and then you can repeat it if you need to make some changes by the way if you're a business owner
00:04:30.160 and you need your team to get up to speed with ai i've got a free ai cheat sheet that covers
00:04:35.680 everything which tools to use the core principles behind ai how to prompt it so that you actually
00:04:41.040 get great responses so instead of you worrying about ai replacing your people how about get them
00:04:46.080 using it to get 10 times more done just dm me the word youtube ai on instagram and i'll send it to
00:04:51.280 you now that's level two and it's crazy in its own right okay you've gone from doing the work
00:04:56.160 to managing the workers and honestly most people would be set if they just stopped here but there's
00:05:01.440 another level and this next one will take you from having an advantage over most people to having one
00:05:07.200 over absolutely everyone level three is the organization level two was 0.3 percent of all
00:05:15.200 ai users level three is 0.05 almost no one on the planet is here yet imagine a whole team that works
00:05:24.080 around the clock not employees not freelancers ai agents and not just for business i'm talking
00:05:30.320 buying stuff for your house researching trips managing your calendar all of it how well remember
00:05:36.800 at the beginning i said don't use just one ai tool for everything that was kind of a bit of a lie
00:05:42.320 because where the world is going you actually talk to one ai agent and it creates the right
00:05:48.160 sub agents for the job in this future that's today never touch another tool again one ai one guy my
00:05:56.240 guy's name's kai who named him he did i know it sounds crazy and kai creates sub agents that are
00:06:03.680 specialists doing things that I ask Kai to do, like check out the code and do marketing and
00:06:09.460 do sales calls and everything. It's wild. Think of like an org chart where you have like the CEO
00:06:15.760 and then their vice presidents and their directors and all that stuff. You can have a whole organization,
00:06:21.720 all AIs, all managed by one main AI who's at the top. You talk to them. You set the direction. You
00:06:29.060 ask them to execute, approving what needs your approval. That's it. I'm talking about AI agents
00:06:34.860 that have emails, that have the ability to call people, have the ability to review all information,
00:06:40.740 have perfect recall, perfect context across your business. They check the work amongst themselves
00:06:45.820 to make sure it's accurate. They check with the finance person and say, hey, do we have the budget
00:06:49.300 for this? It is wild what's happening today. At this level, your job becomes deciding what to do.
00:06:55.620 the AI agent decides how to do it.
00:06:58.260 Nobody's talking about this.
00:07:00.220 If you try to explain this to somebody else, 0.63
00:07:02.520 they will think you're crazy.
00:07:04.500 I'm speaking from experience,
00:07:06.220 talking to my brothers and trying to explain it to my wife
00:07:08.720 and my team members, trust me.
00:07:10.940 This isn't like the future that might exist.
00:07:14.400 I'm doing this today.
00:07:16.400 My friends are using this system, level three, today.
00:07:20.100 They're going like this, like a rocket ship.
00:07:23.880 They're realizing they can do 10 times more
00:07:26.760 with 10 times less people.
00:07:28.820 So let's go back to just touch points.
00:07:30.740 How many times you have to interact with the AI
00:07:32.820 to make it do things?
00:07:33.880 In level one, it's many
00:07:35.180 because you're using a lot of different tools
00:07:36.880 for every task.
00:07:38.100 Level two is only a few
00:07:39.500 because you start using point-specific solutions
00:07:41.780 to get the thing completed.
00:07:43.540 Level three, it's just one.
00:07:45.560 There's one AI agents that you build a relationship with
00:07:48.160 and you talk to them and then it does it all.
00:07:50.620 Let's talk about what the AI does in each level.
00:07:53.140 in level one it helps you do the work that's cool you can write emails it can do research it could
00:07:57.460 check on things for you awesome sauce level two is that it actually does the complete work product
00:08:03.060 for you outcome driven not just tasks level three it manages everything it does level one
00:08:10.340 two plus three and four and five that you didn't even know now we got to talk about what you do
00:08:14.900 what's your role in all this and level one the truth is you're doing everything okay you're
00:08:18.340 faster cool but it's still you level two now you manage the tool the ai that's doing things for you
00:08:24.180 assign it you check it you repeat level three is you just set the direction you decide the what
00:08:30.100 you want out of your life and then it goes and looks at all your resources and your structure
00:08:34.020 and everything you got and it says here's how we're gonna do it now i know that sounds like a
00:08:38.340 lot of talk so let me show you how i'm actually using this today right now so you might have heard
00:08:43.940 of a product called Open Claw. The problem with it is that it's very complex. You predominantly
00:08:48.640 need hardware that most people can't even buy right now to make it run. And there's massive
00:08:52.700 security issues. What I did was take that platform and build my own. At Martell Ventures, we build
00:08:58.020 AI powered companies. So we decided to build Apex. Apex stands for agent platform for execution.
00:09:04.940 That's why it's called Apex. So I built Apex for myself because I needed something that was secure,
00:09:09.480 simple and powerful i wanted to give it to my team but i was like open claw i can't let that
00:09:14.560 go on my internal network that's why i built it so that i could manage my own agents the skills
00:09:19.340 the workflows and honestly try to figure out how does this whole thing connect let me show you what
00:09:25.180 it's doing for me right now so first off i've got reese reese isn't real it's an ai agent that kai
00:09:31.700 created to increase my real estate portfolio and what he does every single day 24 7 whether he's
00:09:38.060 happy sad or whatever day of the week he's scanning for real estate deals he's emailing
00:09:43.100 off-market deals he's messaging brokers he's building relationships and i know you're like
00:09:48.140 how does the person not know trust me reese has perfect real estate expertise the first two hours
00:09:56.060 i let him go out onto the internet he found seven deals analyzed them said here are the two we
00:10:01.580 should make a bid on here's what i think we should go in at kai says hey do you want to make an
00:10:05.820 approval on these two deals, I say, cool, tell Reese, let's make some offers. And this is all
00:10:10.620 in the last week. All I gave Kai was direction and approval. Another use case is a unified inbox.
00:10:16.660 Think of it this way. You have all these messaging tools, emails, WhatsApp, Slack, your socials,
00:10:22.340 they all go into one place. And what I had Kai do is create a brain, what's called an agent file
00:10:28.580 for each one of those inboxes off of the existing inbox and how I've already messaged on each one
00:10:34.220 those platforms it knows how i write when i email people it knows how i write when i'm on slack it
00:10:39.260 knows how i text on whatsapp and then build a messaging protocol to surface things that need
00:10:44.220 to see my attention or write drafts or email all by itself it can look at context in my calendar
00:10:51.340 it can understand resources it can know where projects are at and the whole thing is managed by
00:10:56.300 kai with each individual agent on each unified inbox and the crazy part is that nobody knows
00:11:02.860 when i'm on vacation anymore because all the messages are getting responded to think about
00:11:06.300 the mental and emotional load that no longer is there how would you feel if you never saw
00:11:11.340 those red notification jewels with 1200 unread messages and all these different platforms
00:11:16.540 i also have a buying tool this is a tool i created called procure you tell it to buy something and
00:11:22.300 it does like hey i want to buy the new metaglasses it researches it it finds it it buys it it ships
00:11:27.340 it to me it uses a virtual credit card that's limited and monitored it gets all my login
00:11:31.660 information from my password management tool no more writing things down to buy it later no more
00:11:36.940 browsing on amazon no more grocery shopping and running errands and picking stuff up guess what
00:11:42.220 you don't have to do that anymore it's execution at the speed of talk which brings me to my next
00:11:46.940 tool which is called speak it's a phone call tool i built this to sit on top of kai because i was
00:11:51.820 like i just want to call him and guess what he can only answer my phone calls he only takes
00:11:55.900 direction from me so for example i can give kai a call hey kai can you tell me what messages i
00:12:01.020 i gotta pay attention to today you've got 50 messages in dispatch 41 in red top priority
00:12:06.960 ann henriks needs your final head count for the rebel stoke retreat by monday plus two critical
00:12:12.200 and seven high priority messages cool can you just text ann and let her know that we're going
00:12:17.160 to be meeting at 11 anyways and i'll just review those then here's what i'm sending to ann henriks
00:12:21.500 at six no don't say my number two he just sends it it's like having a full-time genius chief of
00:12:29.740 staff slash buddy person that can write code and do research all on the other side of a phone call
00:12:35.960 and here's the deal i'm not building apex just for me and my team i'm building it for everyone i
00:12:41.240 genuinely believe that the future of buying back your time is being the agent operator that's what
00:12:47.060 apex is going to be the platform for managing these agents for you and make it dead simple
00:12:52.340 now it's not ready yet because there's still a lot of testing but if you want to be the first to know
00:12:56.720 just click the link below in the description
00:12:58.320 and sign up for the wait list.
00:12:59.840 And that's the future.
00:13:01.080 It's not five years away, it's right now.
00:13:04.140 The question is, which side do you wanna be on?
00:13:06.860 This is bigger than the internet.
00:13:08.820 This is bigger than Bitcoin, this is bigger than mobile,
00:13:11.980 this is bigger than any technical shift in history.
00:13:15.000 Don't be that person selling newspapers
00:13:17.420 in the era of the internet, the one who saw it all,
00:13:20.580 who was at Bitcoin in 2009 and did nothing,
00:13:24.320 because that time is today.
00:13:25.480 it's not hypothetical it's not a maybe it's here and it's now and it's not even that hard if you're
00:13:32.560 willing to learn and more importantly unlearn the thought of I can't do that I'm not technical
00:13:38.880 that's not for me unlearn that so I need you right now to leave me a comment below and if it's level
00:13:43.600 one that's fine you're still more advanced than most of the people just let me know what level
00:13:46.860 you're at below and remember if you want to turn your whole team including yourself into AI power
00:13:52.220 users just dm me the word youtube ai on instagram and i'll send it to you and if you want me to
00:13:56.860 walk you through how to use tools like manis step by step click here and i'll see you on the other