In this episode, Brett Gibson talks with Lucas Young, cofounder and CEO of Deepnight about how they’re building AI-powered night vision that helps the military, law enforcement, and first responders see in near-total darkness. Deepnight combines AI with commodity digital sensors — the same kind used in smartphones — to replace expensive analog night-vision hardware that costs over $30,000 per unit and hasn’t kept pace with modern imaging technology.

Lucas explains how night vision has worked since World War II, why analog image intensifiers hit a ceiling, how smartphone photography paved the way for this breakthrough, and what it takes to bring military-grade low-light imaging into the field.

Chapters

(00:00) Why Night Vision Is Still Mostly Analog

(00:39) Deepnight’s Breakthrough: AI That Sees in the Dark

(01:44) How Their AI Reconstructs *Real* Scenes

(03:58) Lucas’s Path: Google Pixel → YC Founder

(05:26) Why Modern Cameras Rely on Software

(09:12) The Rise of AI-Enhanced Photography

(11:45) The Insight: AI Could Beat $30K Night-Vision Goggles

(13:03) How Traditional Night-Vision Tubes Work

(14:10) Starting Deepnight Without Knowing If It Would Work

(15:11) Early Prototypes: Offline → Real-Time Night Vision

(16:15) The Physics Challenge: Seeing in Moonless Starlight

(19:12) Running This on Smartphone-Class Chips

(22:27) Building a Custom Neural Network for Night Vision

(28:43) Can Cheap $50 Sensors Match Military Gear?

(48:06) What’s Next: Real Soldiers Using AI Night Vision

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