Your 24/7 AI Employee: One-Click to Real Work

00:00:07 Mark Smith
Welcome to AI Unfiltered, the show that cuts through the hype and brings you the authentic side of artificial intelligence. I'm your host, Mark Smith, and in each episode, I sit down one-on-one with AI innovators and industry leaders from around the world. Together, we explore real-world AI applications, share practical insights, and discuss how businesses are implementing responsible, ethical, and trustworthy AI. Let's dive into the conversation and see how AI can transform your business today. Welcome back to the AI Unfiltered Show. Today, I'm joined by Vlad. He's based in San Francisco. Vlad, welcome to the show.

00:00:51 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
Thank you so much for the invitation. It's a pleasure and honor. And as I've heard recently, we're going to have fun.

00:00:57 Mark Smith
We're going to have fun. And why don't we start with that? Food, family, and fun. What do they mean to you?

00:01:03 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
Oh, food, of course, it's Ukrainian, but also I traveled A lot. Ukrainian just reminds home. So like borscht is also some specific things like potatoes, which my grandma was doing. So I think like if we take AI as like something not that much human, so food is on the other side of that equation for me. So Family, his son, he's three and every day, it's a mind-blowing experience. So I don't even know how to transfer that knowledge to my friends. I don't like, and I mean, I do it for life. I transfer all this, but I don't know. It's unbelievable. And fun, fun. Gaming actually defined. who I am and saved me a few times and not just me. So I love games and I wish I had more like physical DMD.

00:02:15 Mark Smith
Yeah.

00:02:16 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
But I love video games. But the honest answer, which I realized not that long time ago, maybe a couple of weeks, was that work started to be actually, actually, it became also a game, so much fun game that I didn't play video games for some months already, which is so new for me.

00:02:40 Mark Smith
I can understand that. I can understand that. Particularly in the start of 2026, I feel in the AI space, there's been a big change and things are accelerating at a rate that the last three years, unbelievable. Now I have a three-year-old son as well, so I know what you're going through. Yes, and I love it. Absolutely amazing. He's a joy. He's up at daycare at the moment. Yeah. Tell me though, bring me up to speed. What are you doing in the AI sphere? What's your focus? And then we'll get into the year ahead.

00:03:24 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
We're doing a very personal AI assistant, like you're a multi-tool employee, 24-7, working for you, even when you sleep and doing everything you want and something even what you don't imagine. So it's a very personal, but take it as a staff member, but on top of everything what you would ever like.

00:03:49 Mark Smith
It sounds like OpenClaw.

00:03:50 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
It actually uses some of the technology of the OpenClaw. But what I didn't, I actually probably part of seeing patterns is that I'm a geek. So I read a lot of sci-fi. I drill down to some crazy geeky stuff. So when OpenClaw was there, I I failed to use it myself because it took too much time. So I'm not a technological person. I have like masters in history, so I like to spend hours, like too much. But I watched a lot of videos. I've read a lot of feedbacks and I was thinking, Blyen. Then my co-founder actually put it on my own laptop and I was like, oh no, so I need to make it right. And part of what we do is based on that technology is just My thing is, it started very long time ago, it's one-click solutions. So I believe that we as human beings, it's not about like hours of learning like either some how to use technologies or tools. My thing is to deliver those tools in the most efficient way for the human being and then What I've seen in the last couple of weeks with our thousands of customers, I will share with you whenever it's the time, but the last person knows about how AI works, they're more like gold and things are being worn. So yes, what we do, it does sound like open claw. It's an open claw for my mom.

00:05:31 Mark Smith
Yes, yeah, I like that. I like that. And the thing is, that, and I've said to my wife, and I've been heavily on open claw now for the past three, maybe 4 weeks, a lot of nights. And the thing is, I said, this is like, one thing she said to me, three years ago, I bought a robotic lawnmower. And I've got an acre and a half of land, and it looks like a park. It's beautiful because of this mower maintaining it. But she said, this mower is not for everybody, because she goes, because you're technical, You're always massive, you're always doing things to make it efficient, to make it work. It stops, it breaks down, but for you, because you're technical, you just know how to handle it. She goes, my mom would never be able to do that. And when I liken this to OpenClore and I've spent and I've rebuilt and built and rebuilt and created my own memory models and created my own soul and all this kind of stuff, I've realized that this is 99% of people not going to bother. That ain't for them.

00:06:36 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
Yes, and it is for them. I really want them to have it. I really, really, well, that's what we do. In the last like week after we connected what we've been building and backing thinking the last three years, with the open coat technology and some other stuff. So in a... I've seen not just my mom, my, it's like it's literally my mom and my co-founder's mom using it heavily and like other like thousands of people, but among them like we didn't do any marketing. And like, and even my mom was asking, can I share like the link with my friends? I said, yeah, mom, you can. Like, why would you ask? So, but, and Every evening, the way we build it is that it learns like from every person's spot what tools were built. And it takes those tools and then repopulates it to everyone. So in the morning, whenever some other person, even me, would ask to do something, it will be done like this. Because some stuff, people just don't know it doesn't work this way. And one person, for example, I wanted to record a music video, no audio, the track, and I asked to create a track and then to publish it on SoundCloud and Spotify, and he didn't know that it shouldn't work this way, and in 12 hours it worked. I was like... And I've seen people like, there's the woman where she lost the job and she was thinking what to do. And she wrote a book because she's an HR pro for life. So she practiced all the experience, just talking to the board, not learning. She was just talking. It was voice messages and just talking. And then she put together the book, published it on Amazon, and actually got some sales online. Our VC friend, I wouldn't even think about that as well. He asked, I call mine Alice. So that's a sound. Wow. Actually, the way people call the bots, never talk like connecting, but I don't know why, but like 25, I think for now, people called it Kai. They don't know each other, but they did. And then that VC going up, if he would ask me before about it, I would say, not yet, but he didn't. So he was, she analyzed 308 episodes of like VC podcast, put it together in like a data table for him to analyze specific investment he wanted to do. I was like, okay, so I believe I am a geek for like 99% of the people, but sorry, but I didn't, I have enough patience to install OpenClub before my co-founder, that is for me. But then when I seen the magic and I understood that what we've been building about the understanding, like, here course, like on the side of whatever AI engine we have right now. Oh, by the way, the book of yours. So it takes the system from the organization and connects it from that way to people. So to leverage the AI from the organization, like I take it as a team. So whatever you do, I believe it's always a team. So either like two people or more, it's a team. So you've been leveraging that and propagating it. I believe that the part where it connects is the understanding person-to-person communication. Because this is maybe only my problem, but I live that through. To have an ability to actually allow like 90% of the time to be able to at least be sure that wherever I'm trying to say, the person is going to understand the way I say it. speeds up everything. So.

00:10:41 Mark Smith
I just jumped on your site. It's portal.ai, right? And. It's only an invitation only.

00:10:51 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
It's not yet an invitation only. So it's the same link in Telegram. So it's just the website put the link there because we've reached the limit of OpenClaw like 3 days ago because the founder of OpenClaw, he didn't think that technology will be used the way we use it with thousands of customers. And we have like I think 60,000 agents for now working, for them. it was like 3 days it was 30. So there was some technical limitations, but he emailed my co-founder and then they've been tackling that. in the last couple of weeks, we hit a few problems. Well, somewhere we've been banned on Google, on Anthropic, on OpenAI. So because we started to use so many tokens, they probably thought that this is something wrong. It's happening. But that was fixed. I think it's got like the value, all the connections and investors. But that was fun, one in one day. Then some of the technical limitations of the current AI technologies. And then The stories of people, as I said, I've only shared it with friends and friends of friends. And every morning they text me and say something good without it. Like, it's just, bro, like, what you did is amazing. Thank you so much. And it's the first time in my life, like, before, it was always lonely. Because building something which you may see the parking, but people don't. And Uh, I, uh, I remember, for example, with team market, the first time in, you know, I have a video clip in my head. I was pitching in New York and, uh, in the first, uh, uh, role, there was a guy, he was literally laughing on every slide I created. It was, and that was my first public speech. Wow. Yeah. But I understand him. So even for me, like half of that presentation was clear for me that we're going to do it. The other half was like my pattern thinking and belief. But it actually became true in like three years. All of it. Somebody sent me the deck. I said, bro, every slide is me.But it was before I was in sketch was games. And when when they ban you in the bank and say that You have to have a proof that you are shipping video games. So send us a photo of the physical warehouse of the boxes. And I'm saying like, but there is no physical. So it's official contract with Codemasters. So this is the contract. This is the word official to their American account. But they're like, it doesn't work. That's why. So I had to just print the papers and make a photos of some random warehouse.

00:13:47 Mark Smith
Amazing. Amazing. So Can people, do they have to know somebody to get access at this point?

00:13:56 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
At this point, not at all. They only answer why the website is invitation only, because our, probably at the, hopefully, that the Apple Store application will be approved from day-to-day, maybe today, maybe tomorrow. And what I've learned from when we're did grew from zero to a couple of thousand users and technically it was more zero to 500 than technical thing and then 500 to 1000 technical thing. And now we don't see any limitations, but we work with something nobody ever wired up like this way before. So we're going to use it as a technical. But if everything works, I hope, I believe the more people join, the better. The fun thing is that one of the very, very, very, very smart people, he was here a couple of days ago, also over in Easter, and was like, we need more architects and people who know like what they do, learn it like all the way to bring their knowledge. And I said, like, the less people know, they don't know it doesn't work this way. So they just ask you, do this and this and this for me. And it does. And then that populates to everyone. It's small blocks like in Minecraft. And then like, I have my own metric. It's the like innovation propagation rate. So, and we have 30, maybe already 40 cases when we didn't build those tools. So people build the tools, they've been propagated, and then 35 times on top of that, other users build something new. So.

00:15:36 Mark Smith
Wow. And is the main interface Telegram.

00:15:40 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
Well, yes. I hopefully Apple very soon. And then I'd be happy to give it to everyone. Just Telegram was the easiest and the fastest way as a Bellgram.

00:15:52 Mark Smith
Oh, man, I'm sold on Telegram. Yeah.

00:15:55 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
But just to manage your expectations, of course, but I am surprised that I did myself using it.

00:16:04 Mark Smith
Yeah, it's awesome.

00:16:07 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
Lots of interesting cases and I can tell more, but you let me know what would you like to hear.

00:16:15 Mark Smith
So tell me, what are you seeing in the step from, we've had three years of a chat-based experience with AI. How do you see that changing in 2026?

00:16:29 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
So I have my own experience. I talk. So I, but I'm different. So Gen. Zs, for example, they like to talk and to hear. I read, so very fast, much like I watch YouTube usually on Twx. So that's why my portal one, I record voice messages and then the replies I read. So I think that very fast, it will be just very, like, depending on the personal, what person wants, because I know people who change to the voice to whatever they want the voice of the person they talk to. I personally already like would try to like three months ago, to have a video conversation. We can do it. We just can't scale it to millions, but for us, with it, works. So if you ask me, I'd rather talk to real human beings and leverage AI just to me have more time to do what I'm passionate about, rather than have more and more time and sophisticated conversations. But that's one side. The other one is that I'm a very curious person. And every day it brings so much interesting stuff that I have to physically stop myself from working.

00:17:45 Mark Smith
This is so intriguing. How does the functionality to build out a new tool work? Is it purely that I'm saying I need something? It doesn't happen, so it proactively goes away and engineers it.

00:17:59 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
Again, I can share with you the experience we have now. So, but it may be different with different people, which I also know.So, first of all, sometimes it just says, I can't do it. Like, to publish on SoundCloud and in SpiceBy, it took like 10 hours and like 10 times he was saying, I don't take no as an answer. But when he showed me what he built, I mean, It took me years to build a business. It was like 20 years ago, and it still works. It brings money. She built it in a day, downloaded tools, downloaded like scripts, like what? It was like a team of people of which I know, it would take them once she did that. So, but for example, the most like revenue-based, like if to take a successful customer I know now, she is an influencer, put a She has a lot of subscribers, like we're talking millions, but it was maybe 5, seven years ago when she was on a peak. And she tried a lot, not many things happened, but when she asked Ella in hers, it was... She's shared, but I didn't know where it comes from, but anyways, when she asked 401, can you check out what's happening? So it went there, analyzed all the videos she has, all the comments, all the customers, and said, like, This is what you're missing, this is what you should do, this is what your audience really wants to hear about, and this is your tools. So if you want, I can help you out and put together stories for you. And she said, okay, do it. It put together the stories. And then he said, actually, if you don't mind me, I will iterate the stories because now reading the comments and the data, I can do better stories. And overnight she made a few thousand dollars. What? And she said, I just talked. And then it put together the website for her. Wow. Yeah. And the beauty is that she didn't know it. Like, it's too hard. She just said, do this hell when it did.

00:20:10 Mark Smith
Tell me about an unrecognizable world. As in, in the coming months, one of the things that we discussed on our prequel was how things are going to change so much in the coming months. The way we live, the way we interact and work, is potentially going to change at a much faster rate than what we've seen to date. What are your thoughts?

00:20:40 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
I can share what I feel probably because I feel better now than a couple of weeks before because I don't remember like in my days when I was like fired from the TV company when like were different things and I've seen at what rate and how fast Now people are losing their jobs. I was sure that we will put AI to work. I was sure it will be efficient. I just didn't know how.And I knew how it's going to work for enterprises, and I've seen it. But maybe that's my thing. But well, maybe that's about late. I don't know. But I believe that people have talents and people have ideas. And a lot of people are probably fairly losing their job. But every technological revolution, it brings new jobs. And yes, the speed of revolution now is unbelievable. But in my head, I was liking the answer, like how we're going to get empowered by AI. And now I feel better because the only thing left is It's weird to say, but the only thing left is for people to believe in themselves. Everything else AI will do.

00:22:03 Mark Smith
Yeah, that's interesting. That's very interesting. What skills do people need to live in the intelligence age?

00:22:12 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
Like starts from believing in themselves and then whenever they don't, and this is what I've seen in our customers. I would say that that's maybe my thing or my circle thing, but this is what I've seen in our customers. And the stories are creating, on one side, emotional, on the other side, life-changing for them. So as one of the girls said that ChatGPT always is pleasing me. For all is arguing, but it makes me believe in myself and do **** and end worse.

00:22:43 Mark Smith
Oh, that's awesome. Yeah.

00:22:46 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
When I say that, I guess, because that's what we do believe. And then when you believe in yourself, we will bring everything we can. And then it's already probably there because the rest, this cross-population thing and the communication thing already also there. So what skills? Believe in themselves, curiosity and just, oh, well, one more important stuff that it's never going to be perfect. So It is like today, like in the morning, I just realized it is the same way as we are human beings. We are not perfect and never will be. The same as AI. Today it hallucinates this way, tomorrow the other way. It's not going to be perfect. It's not, it is what it is. And that's why it's never, it's probably won't be always a win. Just keep trying. And the technologies now and how we wrap it, they make it so easy just to try again. just you've given yourself try it and you fellas published his music like with all the IP rights and everything else. But sometimes I don't even know how it happened because the other, also I think it was a girl, she wanted also to do the website of, oh, I don't remember what was that. Portal said that we need to buy on the name cheap the domain and we need like five bucks. She said I can have it. It's like She said, I can't help you. She said, but please, let me find something. And then in the way he did, like he did it. Okay. So, and we're just in the beginning of it.

00:24:23 Mark Smith
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:24:25 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
Probably on top of that as I feel more safe about the future and I'd like to share that with the other ones. I don't know how to probably communicate it, but this is what it is.

00:24:40 Mark Smith
Yeah, I agree. I agree. Vlad, it's been so interesting talking to you. If people want to learn more about what you're doing, is the best place to go portal.ai.

00:24:51 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
Yeah, because I believe that it will take some time to publish the episode. At that time, we may have not just the application, not just the Telegram, but I want it all. So, and we will have it all on the website. So, yes.

00:25:10 Mark Smith
I love it. Thank you, sir.

00:25:12 Volodymyr (Vlad) Panchenko
Thank you. It was a pleasure talking and thank you for the questions.

00:25:16 Mark Smith
You've been listening to AI Unfiltered with me, Mark Smith. If you enjoyed this episode and want to share a little kindness, please leave a review. To learn more or connect with today's guest, check out the show notes. Thank you for tuning in. I'll see you next time where we'll continue to uncover AI's true potential one conversation at a time.