Scratching Nikias Molina’s Brain about AI and His Career.

By Editor in Chief Lisa Ahern and Web Designer Brayden Spencer

Nikias Molina, a Barcelona born Tech Content Creator, with over 300k subscribers on Youtube, sat down in conversation earlier this month with Brayden Spencer and I. We discussed his impressive and continuously rising career at only the age of 25 and how moving to America at age of 14 helped transform his life. We explored the controversies that arose surrounding his most viral video of him using Apple’s Vision Pro on the New York Subway. With his knowledge and love for technology, we touched on the highs and lows of Artificial Intelligence and how he thinks there is a positive future in regards to AI. The interview that follows is cut down and edited to fit within this issue. 

Lisa- You are incredibly young to have such a solid and well-established career, especially in this industry of tech, which is constantly growing. What do you think is your proudest moment in your career so far ?

Nikias- I think it's obviously like the recognition of Apple inviting me to Cupertino, to the Apple event. It's what every creator in the tech space just dreams to go to. Apple can announce the new iPhone, but you're the person in charge to show the hottest product of the year to the world. So there's a lot of eyeballs [on you]. In terms of a creator, you can get a lot of growth by being there because it's such a big moment and everybody's waiting for that content, for those articles. It's just a life-changing experience for me. And I guess that was the biggest moment of my career.

L- I'm going to go back a few years now to when you were 14 and you moved to America. And obviously America is very culturally different to Spain which would be a massive change, what differences did you face and how did it affect you mentally?

N -So I guess something that's great about the US is how much they motivate you to do and to pursue what you like. Obviously it's still school and you still [have] to follow the same life patterns as the rest of the world. But something that really changed is that they discovered this spark inside of me and helped me find my true passion. It was extremely different from lifestyle to education.[However] just being away from friends, family in your life and just meeting new people from zero, gives you a totally new perspective on life. It was just a fresh new start for me. 

L- You started making videos for your family to connect you over long distance. And then when you get to the point of saying, "hey, this is what I want to do as my career." What was the reaction of the people around you, like your family and friends to this career path? 

N- So they took it fine, I guess, because I was still studying, I wasn't [saying] "I'm dropping out". Once you finish college, you [have] to go to work. You got to find a job. And then once you find a job, it's extremely difficult to maintain a full time hobby and a full time job. So once I actually started. I just wanted to make this my full time job and actually make money so I don't have to find something else. My family supported me a lot. Obviously, when the first big salary reaches you, then your family's point of view is like, oh, OK. It was not that they didn't trust it in the beginning. I feel like that's every mom's worry, like, you know, “he's going to waste his time”. They were super supportive and I can't complain about that at all.

L- Did you ever hesitate for a moment and think, Am I taking the right path?

N-Yeah, I think so. Like once you start making videos that you want people to watch, it's tough because, you know [that] you're wasting so much time and you think it's not going to work. But I feel on YouTube and on social media in general and anything really in life, if you really want something to happen, it just doesn't happen the next day, and not even the following year. It's a big road plan ahead that you have to really work hard towards. So if you want social media to work instantly for you just because you want to make the money, you're just doing it wrong. I just [made] videos because it was a pure passion of mine.

Brayden - I remember that video of you in the subway with the Apple Vision Pro and  I saw a lot of different media interpreting it and I saw a lot of people using your video in a very positive light, [saying] this is the big thing of the future. And I was just wondering, how do you interpret the overall perception when it comes to creating or being a part of something that kind of blows up?

N- I think the reason a video goes viral is because there's controversy. Just all this stuff just gets a lot of traction because there's a lot of people debating one thing and there's people debating the other thing. It was one of the most well planned, thought out strategies that I've done. A shot of a white skinny guy in the New York City subway using it by himself, which is a very dangerous place to wear such an expensive piece of tech, is also evading reality. I wanted that image to just impact people. You're going to get both reactions.That's the conversation that I wanted to happen on social media. It worked. I was expecting like one to five million views on that video, but it crossed over 150 million views, making it actually one of the most viewed videos of the entire year.

L- We're doing this issue on the brain and a major contender to the brain is AI. As someone who works with the tech industry, do you believe AI could be used in a positive way, when so many people talk about it in a negative light?

N- I always say this analogy of a knife. I think a knife is a super useful tool that we use in our daily life to cut our food. Apart from cutting food, you can [use] knives to cut grass and plants. But there's obviously people using it in a very wrong way,to do certain things that are totally illegal .So there's obviously a bad thing to every single tool. We talk [about illegal use] when we talk about technology and AI. But now, ChatGpT has changed a lot. So the negativity of it is way much broader and the positivity of it is even more broad. I feel like AI is going to make us lose a lot of jobs in this generation, but bring us a lot more. I'm personally using it in my content and my workflow. I feel like the future of AI is extremely bright. We just saw a news report that there was this [type of cancer] that was  able to be picked up before a human could, thanks to AI. That stuff is what I'd love to hear more than all the negative stuff. 

L- It's kind of terrifying sometimes as well, because as someone who does English and as a journalist like myself, it's a frightening thing because it could replace us in the work space. 

N-It will replace certain parts of your job, obviously. But robots will pretty much never have feelings, even though they'll be able to express themselves more, they'll never have that human touch,  And yes, we will be living with robots and helping us in our workplace. So a lot of jobs will go away. But a lot of new ones [will arise]  even my job 10 years ago, it would have been crazy and impossible. A new era is coming up.