00:02:13.840So much to talk about. Obviously, all things AI.
00:02:16.680What's going on with your new party, forward party, your new cell phone company?
00:02:21.260What's going on in the world? We're living 24-7 with autopsies in the Democratic Party and, you know, all kinds of, you know, press conferences being canceled, including one today on AI from Donald Trump, a new EO that he's about to promote.
00:02:35.600I want to get to all of that. But first, I just want to check in on what is going on with, and you've got the lapel right now, with the Forward Party.
00:02:45.360So where to begin? A forward party is a positive, independent political movement that thinks the two-party system is going to lead us nowhere good.
00:02:53.940And unfortunately, we're doing great in the sense that people are increasingly despondent about the direction of the two-party system.
00:03:01.360So supporting positive candidates around the country of any party with a special spot in our hearts for independent candidates like Seth Bodnar, who's running for U.S. Senate in Montana, Mike Duggan, who's running for governor of Michigan and other candidates around the country.
00:03:20.320It being an independent is the fastest growing clinical affiliation in the U.S. for good reason.
00:03:24.800And so forward parties are growing all the time.
00:03:26.840Well, let's talk about your primary when you ran and your primary focus that continues to this day.
00:03:32.700And I appreciate your tenacity on it and have a little bit of history myself with UBI, this notion of universal basic income.
00:03:39.000And we can get to all things AI, but in so many ways, you know, you were way ahead of the curve in terms of calling these things out.
00:03:45.600This notion of min-come, as it's been referred to and organized in other countries.
00:03:50.600It's not necessarily a new idea, but it's an idea you really brought to the fore in
00:03:56.880But it's been a bipartisan idea over the course of quite literally decades and decades.
00:04:02.040Conservative economists, not just progressive thinkers, have been promoting this fundamental
00:04:07.000idea of monthly checks, minimum income that is universally distributed to address the
00:04:14.280anxieties, the burdens, and the stresses, particularly now in an AI-induced economy.
00:04:20.160yeah and you were open to this too man i remember you quoting voltaire at an event
00:04:25.000about how work uh stabs off like the three great sins uh you know it solves life's three great
00:04:31.920evils boredom vice and need yeah and look at this and i was like look at look at gavin quoting
00:04:38.400voltaire i have to steal that you know since i'm i was quoting other people but yeah uh this is
00:04:44.940something that is now front and center because ai has arrived and when i was running for president
00:04:49.980back in 2019 and 2020, it was still somewhat speculative or far out. But now it's here,
00:04:58.600spending $700 billion on data centers around the country. And the major tech firms are
00:05:04.280replacing coders, and soon it's going to be customer service. And then Waymo is going to
00:05:09.920replace the drivers and on and on. And so the average Californian and the average American
00:05:14.460is like, okay, what the heck is my kid going to do when they graduate from college? And in my
00:05:19.400view. And by the way, not just my view, but also, you know, Daria Amadei is saying tax us,
00:05:24.240put in a token tax. Sam Altman's like national wealth fund based on AI. Elon Musk says universal
00:05:29.880high income, which I, you know, quite enjoy, you know, the vision. And so we need to get a move on
00:05:39.160because more and more value is going to disappear into the cloud and more and more average families
00:05:45.540are going to be looking up being like, what the heck happened? So to me, universal basic income
00:05:49.820is the foundational step. But you have to keep on moving in that direction. And Gavin, thank you for
00:05:56.560pushing us down this road. One of the biggest misconceptions about universal basic income is
00:06:02.340that it somehow is anti-work. I have an Asian joke here, which is I'm Asian. I love to work.
00:06:08.180But the fact is, if you give people more money, they'll participate in the market economy. They'll
00:06:12.860start businesses at higher levels. They'll give to their congregation or religious community at
00:06:20.060higher levels. It's going to supercharge the things that people actually want, which will
00:06:24.360give us a lot more to do. The other major source of jobs, in my opinion, after the private sector
00:06:30.080retrenches, which it will, would be the government. And I'd much prefer communities figure out what
00:06:36.720they'd want to pursue for work than have the government come in and say, hey, I've got a
00:06:42.120bunch of jobs for you. Like, I don't think that's the vision that most Americans want.
00:06:47.300When you were promoting UBI, you were promoting about $1,000. It was $1,000, if I recall,
00:06:52.420specifically. Yeah. Oh, by the way, just for fun, too. I even wrote a book recently called
00:06:58.660Hey, Yang, Where's My Thousand Bucks? And the alternate title, which you'll enjoy was
00:07:04.700Hey, Am I Racist? Or Are You Andrew Yang? Both of which I have gotten. But yeah, it's a thousand
00:07:11.600bucks a month was a freedom dividend so and i love that you framed it as as you suggest a freedom
00:07:18.420dividend and you were going to pay for it i mean it's not inexpensive i think at the time they
00:07:22.940scored it what 2.83 trillion dollars or something like that is that accurate uh order magnitude it's
00:07:27.980a little bit lower than that if you include current uh programs which in in my plan um would
00:07:34.120be kind of like a trade-off it's like you get one or the other and you can elect um but let's call
00:07:39.120at $2 trillion or $2.5 trillion just for, you know, the setup. And the idea, again, was just
00:07:46.360to deal with the anxiety, create at least a baseline of money that allows people not, you
00:07:53.680know, makes the end of the month a little bit less stressful and then provides the opportunity
00:07:58.260to stretch the mind of imagination across the spectrum of issues, including something you've
00:08:04.420been attached to for decades, and that is a very aggressive entrepreneurial construct. This notion
00:08:09.420of startups, which you've invested a lot of time, energy, and resources in promoting. But what about
00:08:16.480this, as you suggest, notion that UBI is charity versus this notion of ownership that, you know,
00:08:23.740interestingly, even Sam Altman came out, as you pointed to recently, suggesting maybe
00:08:29.400university basic capital is a better approach. This notion of an ownership society, not necessarily
00:08:34.980a charitable society that can make everybody feel a sense of not just connection, but connection
00:08:41.600to a larger cause called democracy to one another in a broader sense. Yeah, I'm on board. And the
00:08:48.320fact is these models were built on our data and our data is getting sold and resold for hundreds
00:08:52.820of billions of dollars a year and no one's seeing a dime. And a dividend is what a stockholder,
00:08:58.000a shareholder gets. It's one of the things I framed as like a stakeholder society where you
00:09:03.840get a dividend as a result of being a member of the richest, most advanced country in the history
00:09:10.620of the world. So there are different names you could use, but that is exactly what I was going
00:09:16.840for, which is like, look, we all have an ownership stake in the future. And then we can look at our
00:09:21.900kids and say, you have an ownership stake too. You're going to be all right. And when the AI
00:09:25.760wizards, develop more innovations, you're somehow getting like a tiny, tiny slice of that.
00:09:33.820It's interesting. I appreciate the frame in the context of that. You know, to me, it's not even
00:09:39.680a debate. For us out here in California, at least, it's both and. And let me give you a
00:09:44.460proof point. A few years back, inspired by a lot of the work you were doing and a lot of the
00:09:48.680commentary and the critique, I just, I love stress testing, this idea of increasing the number of
00:09:54.080tries, be open to argument, interested in evidence. And it led to us at a state level
00:09:58.740putting out $35 million of general fund to seven large-scale UBI projects. And by the way,
00:10:06.100those projects are fully functioning with the cohorts, class, the support on their multi-year
00:10:12.760pilots. And the results of all of these pilots, they targeted pregnant women, foster families,
00:10:18.520people 65 and over. In fact, we just trued it up an additional $5 million. So it's $40 million.
00:10:24.080We're going to get the results of all that in an independent analysis of what it produced and stress test literally in a matter of months.
00:10:34.820And so California will, at a scale, a geographic scale and demographic scale, have the ability to, you know, to kick the tires further.
00:10:43.800But we're also going to be piloting this notion of universal basic capital at the same time.
00:10:49.100We're now rolling out, working with what we created, baby bonds years ago before the Trump accounts, 5.5 million California accounts, up to $1,500 for all of our kindergartners.
00:11:02.660We put $1.9 billion of general fund money to support this program and to use these accounts for ownership, for capital accumulation, focusing on financial literacy, the notion of compounded investments.
00:11:18.200And so I'm very appreciative of what you're doing.
00:11:21.980I'm also appreciative now we're broadening the conversation to capital, to equity, to
00:11:27.740public equity, to dividends in something broader than just income.
00:11:32.560I'm pumped that you've been rolling these things out in California, Gavin.
00:11:36.120I have a joke, which is it only counts if money changes hands.
00:17:47.020learn the hard way open your free iHeartRadio app search learn the hard way and listen now
00:17:52.600i've been you know i've been listening to you on a bunch of podcasts and i appreciate
00:17:57.580you know you've been out on this you know you've been calling us out not just been out on the road
00:18:02.180uh talking about ai and uh what's going on not just with gen ai but now with what's going with
00:18:09.560agentic ai as it moves and morphs into this next iteration um and talking about compute not just
00:18:15.420talking about data centers, but talking about tokens, talking about digital privacy and this
00:18:22.140notion of a digital dividend that can look many different forms and shapes. But this notion of AI
00:18:29.940anxiety, this notion that they're coming after my jobs. We talk about white collar workers now0.99
00:18:36.200having so much more in common with blue collar workers. You could be talking about a 25 year old
00:18:40.640that's not getting, you know, any interviews that just graduated a few years ago and is having a
00:18:47.020hard time and sounding a lot like, you know, the old factory work in Ohio, that, you know,
00:18:51.820blue collar worker, white collar rhetoric is starting to come together. And I think a new
00:18:56.140coalition in many respects around anxiety. And so I'm curious where you are on the spectrum,
00:19:02.760the doomer versus the utopia spectrum. Is it coming sooner than we think the displacement
00:19:08.620is coming faster? Is it coming in different shades, meaning the people you don't hire0.79
00:19:13.020is a form of that displacement? Because those are the easiest people, as you suggest,
00:19:16.780to fire, the people you don't hire. Is it coming first to entry-level jobs, clerical jobs? Is it
00:19:23.020happening in the physical AI space? You talk about Waymo, then we could talk robots. I mean,
00:19:28.540give me a sense of where you are on the spectrum of AI and the spectrum of what we should be
00:19:35.440thinking about? Well, first, let me share a story to help set this convo up, Gavin. So I was a CNN
00:19:41.680commentator for a while. And at one point, the team approached me and said, hey, we're thinking
00:19:47.960of doing a TV show called The Future of with Andrew Yang. It'll be like the future of healthcare,
00:19:52.780the future of transportation. I said, all right, that sounds good. They come back 10 days later,
00:19:57.500they said, hey, Andrew, we ran a focus group. Bad news, Americans don't like the future.
00:20:02.520and you know and that was uh you know kind of um tough to hear and this was a few years ago so when
00:20:09.280you talk about the hostility towards ai and grads booing the commencement speakers americans don't
00:20:15.820feel great about the future because they don't think it's going to include them they don't think
00:20:20.020they're going to be among the beneficiaries uh and they are stone cold correct uh you know like i have
00:20:26.360AI you don't or maybe you can you can like use it you can pay for it but you're talking about
00:20:33.620the formation of multiple trillion dollar companies you're gonna have our first trillionaires
00:20:37.340and then the average family looking up in central California or central Missouri is like okay like
00:20:45.540I don't think I'm gonna win as a result of this and so if you give me a chance to boo or to protest
00:20:52.360the data center. I'll take that. And so the question is, how do you make that person feel
00:20:58.840like they're winning? And I'm going to go back to what I said before, it's like it only counts
00:21:02.100if money changes hands. So if the big winners from this, and I do think some of the AI high
00:21:08.140chieftains are getting wise to this because they know that people are turning on them so
00:21:12.300completely, they've got to share the winnings as quickly and broadly as possible.
00:21:18.400Now, to your question of like, where am I in terms of how bad it's going to get for workers and what sequence and the rest of it?
00:21:25.100No, I look at the same data that you do.
00:21:27.540Maybe you have better data than I do because you're a governor and you get like some internal secret stuff.
00:21:35.740But the big companies are replacing first coders, then customer service, then various white collar functions, then slowing down entry level hires.
00:21:45.400College kids now have an underemployment rate of, let's call it, 48% or something along those lines.
00:21:56.940I'm 51 years old, and I tell people if I don't get dumber in a given month, it was a good month.
00:22:02.780AI probably got twice as smart in the same time frame.
00:22:05.260So then saying what we're going to do is train people and have them upskill.
00:22:09.420I mean, by the time I complete the program, AI got eight times faster.
00:22:12.860So, you know, like what that's not a real plan. So I like it probably sounds pretty pessimistic, my analysis, but I sit down with CEOs the same way you do. And the CEOs tell me, look, I'm going to fire 15 percent of my staff this year, another 20 percent two years from now and another 20 percent two years later than after that.
00:22:34.700who knows. Now, are they going to go on CNBC and say that? Probably not. But have I heard that from
00:22:40.280now a dozen different CEOs of both public and private companies? Yes, I have. And so if you
00:22:47.300hear that over and over again, and by the way, even for me running Noble Mobile, our CTO came
00:22:53.740and said, hey, guess what? We're going to take down the job posting for junior engineers because
00:22:58.420I think I can now get it done with AI. And so that's the, you know, the easiest people to fire
00:23:05.160are the people you haven't hired yet. So, you know, we're having the same conversations. And
00:23:10.120by the way, the people, these folks running these frontier labs are saying it out loud. I mean,
00:23:15.880as you noted, Dario's saying it out loud, an anthropic open letter, basically an essay that
00:23:21.580was written by sam altman and open ai uh around the anxiety and so they they see the you know
00:23:27.640they may not see quote unquote the pitchforks coming but they certainly see into the future
00:23:32.360and the trend lines here that are becoming headlines i mean sam had attacks on his house
00:23:36.740i mean like that that was a modern day pitchfork so you know i i think they're feeling it and by
00:23:43.420the way i i think the lapse here it's like the level of federal dysfunction is actually
00:23:48.760like a major impediment because if you had a government that had its act together they would
00:23:54.320already be distributing uh an ai dividend in my opinion and i think a lot of the ai companies
00:23:59.780would be forking over cash to keep the pitchforks at bay just out of enlightened self-interest uh
00:24:06.480you know like there's a sense that people are greedy beyond uh you know like uh like any other
00:24:12.780measure and i just i think that enlightened self-interest from a lot of these tech ceos
00:24:18.740is like, look, they know they're going to have plenty of money. And what I joke about is like,
00:24:25.400life is better outside the bunker than in the bunker. Like, no matter how much money you have,
00:24:29.120like that bunker is not that nice, you know, like, you know, miss the sunlight. So I think
00:24:34.700that there is a grand bargain to be had. But our government is asleep at the switch, or just
00:24:39.820cheerleading for the AI firms. And even if the AI firms are raising their hands and saying, hey,
00:24:44.880like you know please do consider taxing me um then at the same time they have 150 million dollars
00:24:50.220in lobbying cash that um they'll use to bomb anyone who does something they don't like and
00:24:55.620so there are a lot of legislators who are like okay are you sincere about this or are you just
00:25:00.800trying to make yourself look good and then if i suggest it all of a sudden i'm going to have eight
00:25:04.600figures spent against me and i mean that's played out obviously and and i think what is it out in
00:25:10.000your neck of the woods is the 12th congressional district alex boris yeah like who i find to be
00:25:14.560totally reasonable. Passed a sensible AI safety bill as a New York state legislator.
00:25:23.660Which, by the way, full disclosure, Andrew, was modeled after the bill that we passed here in
00:25:29.240California, SB 53. That's right. So I couldn't agree with you more, the sensibility of the bill.
00:25:35.840It was a large language model, LLM frontier safety and transparency bill, and just the second in the
00:25:41.940country. And one, by the way, broadly embraced by tech, but he hasn't necessarily been.
00:25:50.640Yeah. And by the way, the irony of the attacks on Alex Boris, Gavin, you have these ads of him
00:25:57.680looking very mean and scary and then say, he worked for Palantir, you can't trust him. And
00:26:02.520meanwhile, the folks who are funding that ad are the AI companies themselves that are just trying,
00:26:06.940You know, and Alex, of course, is like, I did work for them and then I became a state legislator and I'm trying to do good things.
00:26:14.840And so this goes back to the conversation around incentives is that legislators know it's like, look, if I take on the industry in a way that they don't like, it's going to reduce my job security.
00:26:25.960And so if I, you know, kind of hand wave or like walk around the block a little bit, like, you know, I mean, and I do think Republicans are more guilty of this right now because, again, they have just been reduced to cheerleaders for the industry, even as their voters are turning on AI.
00:26:46.000You know, there's like a fascinating disconnect. AI has a 26% approval rating right now. And I think that's lower than ICE. So it gives you a sense how bad it is.
00:26:55.960And I think it's trending negatively, not positively, even though it's already quite low.
00:27:00.620What do you make of, I mean, you know, obviously with David Sachs, he's no longer, quote unquote,
00:27:04.960formally there as the crypto and AIs are.
00:27:07.720I mean, Trump came in very enthusiastically, sort of ripped off the Band-Aid, rolled back
00:27:12.220some of the executive order, at least directionally rolled back some of the policies of the prior
00:27:18.360administration, the Biden administration.
00:27:19.800There was efforts to undermine our safety and frontier model legislation led by not just members of the Trump administration and SACS, but people like Ted Cruz that didn't want to see any regulation.
00:27:35.620There was an effort to preempt states from taking that role and responsibility.
00:27:40.620And we're highlighting Alex and how he's the burden and beneficiary because there are tech people that are behind him as well.
00:27:48.400There's nuance and who's going after him and then, interestingly, who's supporting him.
00:27:52.960A lot of folks out here in Silicon Valley are actually supporting Alex.
00:27:56.300I think he's getting more of his money from California than he even is from Manhattan in an interesting twist in the saga of his election.
00:28:05.300But what do you what do you make of where Trump is now, particularly today, where he allegedly was going to come out with a new executive order and was going to have a press conference?
00:28:17.640He pulled back the executive order of press conference the last minute.
00:28:41.880We got to pay a little more attention to the safety sides of things.
00:28:44.940Yeah, there was apparently a freak out that mythos could be used to hack through a lot of systems and infrastructure. And so they did have like a wake up call. I don't know what's going on with this delay.
00:29:00.880But what's interesting is that I think Trump and some of his team have realized that a lot of their people, their voters are very, very dubious of AI and that if left unchecked, AI could rip through federal systems in a way that would be disastrous.
00:29:19.620And so they're trying to be responsive. And I think they will end up announcing some measures around having to look at model frontier models before they're released.
00:29:31.920One of the jokes I have been telling is that there are more regulations to open a hot dog stand than launch a new model that's going to impact millions of people.0.56
00:29:42.160It's like I could just use people as guinea pigs, whereas I couldn't use them as guinea pigs on my hot dogs without someone making sure that, you know, they're kosher, so to speak.0.58
00:29:52.460Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, nothing funny about that joke.0.95
00:30:06.940And I do think people in both parties are going to move to fill it, which I applaud because to me, it's crazy that we don't have more sensible guidelines.
00:30:18.140We missed the boat on social media. Our kids paid the price. We're missing the boat on AI.
00:30:23.500And young people and workers, in my opinion, are about to pay the price.
00:30:28.620And so there's going to be a political backlash as a result.
00:30:31.880So as we focus on safety and we focus on the intended and unintended consequences of AI in that prism, we talk about jobs and job loss and the anxiety and how it's beginning to manifest.
00:30:45.500Certainly, a lot of headlines suggest it's already taking place in shape.
00:30:49.680It's geographically dispersed, so it's a more challenging thing.
00:30:53.820It's not reflected necessarily on the factory floor.
00:30:56.340Or it has been automation generally, certainly, but not reflected necessarily with clerical workers that, you know, it's harder to see what's happening in terms of those job losses.
00:31:06.980But Warn Act, the Warn Act itself, it seems to me it's worn out its usefulness.
00:31:13.860It was designed like our labor laws, 1930s, these things were designed for a world that no longer exists.
00:31:20.020Unemployment insurance seems to me to have worn out its benefit.
00:31:25.760What about employment insurance? What about the opportunity to really scale portable benefits?
00:31:32.360What about modernizing the Warn Act and having early warning systems?
00:31:36.760What about I mean, what are what are the conversations we need to be having now at scale to reform our systems,
00:31:43.420to prepare in real time for what's happening in real time on our watch?0.96
00:31:49.120Yeah, tying health insurance to jobs is super dumb. I think most people realize that.0.92
00:31:53.520And by the way, it's an impediment to entrepreneurship. There are a lot of people that would start businesses if they didn't need health insurance for their families. And health insurance now is very expensive. And so, you know, like if I start a company, I'm like kind of running a massive risk.
00:32:07.420so portable benefits would be to me like a massive step in the right direction but like I'm still
00:32:14.940for universal basic income or the equivalent because I think it's going to become increasingly
00:32:21.940necessary and one of the topics I think you and I both are passionate about is what's happening to
00:32:28.700men and young men where labor force participation just continues to decline they have lower rates
00:32:34.800of both high school and college graduation,
00:32:37.500lower rates of family formation and dating.
00:32:57.020to try and help people who are in jobs.
00:33:00.080But I just think we need to be doing much more
00:33:02.100to stimulate uh activity and paths so that folks feel like i bring something to the table even if
00:33:08.820what i bring to the table is just my magical ai dividend so i can come out and like you know um
00:33:13.740buy a beer i mean people aren't drinking either so i mean i should use a different example
00:33:17.520you know um like uh buy a burger um you know with my friends uh you know like some of the the
00:33:25.160fundamental issues are are um to me uh only addressable with very very big dramatic actions
00:33:31.740And one of the things I like about you, Gavin, is like you hear this stuff and you're like, yeah, Voltaire, like, let's do it.
00:33:37.260I mean, not like you actually say that, but but, you know, but you've got part of it might be because you're the governor of California, which I dare say is the most abundant state in the country in terms of a growth mindset.
00:33:51.800And I, again, you just got to, I mean, an entrepreneur member, I started right out of college, opened my first business, grew it to about 21 small restaurants and hotels and wineries, not to impress you to say that, but to press upon you that entrepreneurial mindset, a willingness to try to take risks, not be reckless, recognition that you have agency, you can shape the future.
00:34:11.480We're not victims. It's decisions, not conditions that determine our fate and future. Recognizing that businesses can't thrive in a world that's failing.
00:34:19.840So I want a customer base that is successful and thriving and recognizing, Andrew, in the spirit I think that defines you and I, that you can't be pro-job and anti-business as well, that we should be supporting business formation and entrepreneurialism.
00:34:34.580Dude, one of the most consistent things that happened to me when I was running for president in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, is I'd run into a business owner and they'd say, hey, you're running as a what?
00:34:43.740I'd say a Democrat. And they really thought Democrats did not like them as small business owners.
00:34:49.720And it made me so sad because it was like I came up as a small business owner and like you guys are the backbone and life's blood of this town, of our workforce.
00:34:59.540So that was something that really stuck with me. I mean, I'm sure, you know, you get versions of it.
00:35:04.580Anyway, I mean, but just like you, I came up as a small business owner, and it's still what makes me tick.
00:35:11.820Why are we, Andrew, then, as supporters and champions of small business, why do we have a tax system, particularly when productivity and wealth are now being rewarded, robots, technology, automation?
00:35:46.680John Arnold, Vinod Khosla, me, sounds like maybe you too.
00:35:51.200Heck, even Jeff Bezos the other day, if I heard him right, where you tend to tax things you want less of.
00:35:56.940So taxing jobs via payroll taxes and other costs discourages hiring.
00:36:05.340Meanwhile, if I do automate hundreds of thousands of jobs away via AI, I get to keep virtually all that money because it's going to be going through some megacorp and I'm not paying a lot of taxes on that.
00:36:19.720So we're emphasizing the vortex that is AI and capital and data as it sucks up more and more energy and jobs.
00:36:31.740And then the small business owners just trying to employ people in their community has to pay out the nose for their social security taxes and payroll taxes and health care in many cases.
00:36:44.820I mean, we should be going line by line to what that small business owner is paying and be like, let's see if we can get rid of that.
00:36:50.920Unpack it. Where are you? And we talked briefly about physical AI.
00:36:56.640You know, we're seeing it. You brought up Waymo.
00:37:00.000Anyone who's been to San Francisco, you could be seven deep at a stop sign with seven driverless cars in front of you.
00:37:05.700You must have been in them already, right, Gavin?
00:37:07.640I mean, I remember, Andrew, I'm old enough, gray hairs to prove it, when I was sitting there with Larry and Sergey in the parking lot at Google in basically a golf cart that was driving itself and just never forget that experience, the first iteration of that, decade or so ago.
00:37:26.560I mean, now it's going to be Joby Aviation and Archer and others competing for the version of the flying taxis.
00:37:32.000yeah um the first time i rode in a waymo just commercially was in california last summer
00:37:37.220whatnot i took a little social media video um and really enjoyed it and then after i got out0.65
00:37:42.840and thanked the driver that wasn't there i just like i just thought like yeah we're fucked which
00:37:47.140i set out and then it kind of um but it was a great experience in the sense of i felt perfectly
00:37:53.940safe after the first 30 seconds uh you you don't have a driver in your case i'll speak to myself
00:37:59.700like i'm kind of a public figure too so sometimes not having a driver is kind of preferable to having
00:38:03.640a driver you know you can like play the music you want if you feel like it you can have a private
00:38:08.200embarrassing conversation you want you know so like i i got out and was like yo this thing is
00:38:13.740coming fast and furious uh and i'm someone who by the way is more dubious of like robots performing
00:38:22.520certain types of tasks but i have very smart friends who are like look at the factories in
00:38:27.640China don't even have light switches anymore because it's all just robots doing stuff in the
00:38:31.280dark and they can run 24-7, seven days a week. So the robots are real and coming. And America,
00:38:38.520unfortunately, has seeded a lot of the robotics industry and manufacturing. And so we don't see
00:38:43.040it in the same way. We don't feel it. And I will say, I think that there'll be human plumbers,
00:38:48.260human HVAC repair for the foreseeable. But apparently the robots are coming. So it's like
00:38:56.300AI and the cognitive work and the white collar work of which there are about 70 million jobs
00:38:59.940and then the robots are up next good times Andrew Yang like you know I mean it's I you know I mean
00:39:07.980I people sometimes joke Gavin about like you know am I like a doomer am I optimistic I mean I'm like
00:39:14.040you I'm an entrepreneur so I'm optimistic by nature but I fear I wrote an article I said0.97
00:39:21.060i call this process the fuckinging um it's like the fuckinging of white collar workers um and uh
00:39:27.560and then the robots will be the next wave and the and a proof point of that not to be modeling or0.86
00:39:33.300or you know too negative in this this subject but the proof point of that certainly manifesting now
00:39:39.620at scale here in california fremont the old factory for tesla where he was doing about half
00:39:45.480of the global production i mean remember tesla happened here first future happens here first and
00:39:50.400And I appreciate the future is a four-letter word in the context of the anxiety out there.
00:39:54.560And I appreciate you reminding me of that because the future always has its, you know,
00:45:24.860And that's, you know, that manosphere, that boyosphere, it's really a boyosphere, is, you know, created this, you know, a real toxic environment, particularly for young men.0.72
00:45:34.020And I think it goes back to that question.0.87
00:45:35.680But it connects to two things you said earlier that I want to just highlight and point out.
00:45:40.400You mentioned that we made the mistake on social media and let's not make it on AI.
00:45:45.400You mentioned the issue of men and boys and work that Scott Galloway has been doing in that space as well.
00:45:50.380And so you, as a response to this, and the overwhelming evidence of what we've done to our kids with these devices, have come up with a really novel and interesting idea.
00:46:13.700I'm well known for trying to make people less broke, which I'm grateful for.
00:46:19.240but but also to your point I've been concerned about our kids and us spending too much time on
00:46:26.660what Hasan Minhaj calls our rectangle of sadness which if you think about the last time you got
00:46:32.560really upset it was probably off of this guy or your kids being on this guy and so I thought how
00:46:38.940can we help and I was inspired by what Mark Cuban did with cost plus drugs where he bought generic
00:46:45.800drugs in bulk. And by the way, this is the sort of thing that I just know you're going to love
00:46:49.320because it's trying to solve a large scale consumer problem, but doing it in the marketplace.
00:46:54.760So then I went and looked at our costs and figured what else can you maybe cost plus in
00:46:59.240American life? And so the average Californian's cost structure goes housing, healthcare, education,
00:47:06.120food, fuel, transportation, media, and then wireless. The average American is spending $83
00:47:12.200a month on their wireless plan. The average European is spending $35 a month on their
00:47:17.960wireless plan. That delta, Gavin, comes to $100 billion a year in extra spending on wireless.
00:47:26.720And of that $100 billion, $11 billion is going to Verizon shareholders as a dividend every year.
00:47:31.540$7 billion is going to AT&T shareholders as a dividend every year. So you can see all this
00:47:35.740extra spend. And so the first trick I had to pull was, can I get a better deal from any of
00:47:41.620these carriers for Americans. So I went to the carriers and T-Mobile said, we're into it,
00:47:48.520in part because it was me, Scott Galloway, and some of our friends being like, we're going to
00:47:52.900try and do this for the American people. So number one, we cut your wireless bill typically in half
00:47:59.060down to $42. But the kicker and what you described is that if you use less data, we give you the
00:48:05.020money back at the end of the month. So it's an incentive to stop doom scrolling. When you're
00:48:10.060doom scrolling, you know you're costing yourself money and we're kind of simple. We don't like to
00:48:13.420cost ourselves money. So the average Noble Mobile user uses 17 to 20% less screen time in month two
00:48:20.900because we realize we're being chumps when we're getting sucked down a rabbit hole because that
00:48:26.620extra 30 minutes actually might cost us some money. So that is Noble Mobile and we're trying
00:48:32.820to solve those two problems, both the money people are spending and also how much excess time
00:48:39.980we're spending on our screens. I love it. Well done. And look, anyway, again, anyone with kids,
00:48:44.720but you said it's not just our kids. I mean, we model the behavior, right? It's not what we say,
00:48:50.180it's what we do. And they're watching us on our phone complaining about them being on theirs
00:48:53.960and wondering, you know, not even recognizing this. It's like you're in my house at my dinner
00:48:59.480table, Gavin, because it's hard for me to lecture my boys when then I'm going to like grab this
00:49:04.280thing, you know, 10 seconds later. And so imagine a phone plan that could actually boost your kids
00:49:10.340allowance if they spend a little bit less time on their phones. And then you can have
00:49:14.320like a conversation about it every month to see like where the trends are and like what they're
00:49:19.260doing more of. And for yourself too, like you can turn it into a friendly competition, which by the
00:49:26.320way, this competition I lose every month because I'm a heavy phone user and I'm very open about it.
00:49:30.280i love it well it's it's it's part of that same trend that you know even it may not be at the
00:49:36.280scale the direction you want to take it but with flip phones now where people are just trying to
00:49:40.960go back to you know what's old is new again man um i'm also throwing parties around the country
00:49:47.380called offline parties where you check your phone at the door and then it feels like a 90s college
00:49:52.860party we even had someone uh give a guy their phone number on a napkin just like used to happen
00:49:59.700back in the day because like no one has their phone and they start talking and then they're
00:50:04.000like yeah give me a call but we don't have your phone but it's a forcing function because what
00:50:09.140do we all do at a party at a moment where awkward or alone or bored we bust our phone out and then
00:50:15.180that kind of like shuts a door so at these offline parties people have to make eye contact have to
00:50:22.580look at each other they kind of have to you know I wouldn't say have to drink I mean obviously
00:50:26.440We don't force anyone to drink, though. We give out some drink tickets. It is funny how people I mean, it's not funny.
00:50:34.200It's terrible how people don't party as much as they used to. Like you see it in the nightlife districts in I'm sure L.A.
00:50:42.660and San Francisco. I've actually been to the downtown districts in L.A. and San Francisco hosting these events.
00:50:48.100And let's just say, like, I felt like I was doing a service because people would come and say, like, wow, like I haven't had a night like this in a while.
00:50:55.440Andrew you're talking to trust me the right guy here remember my I'm in the wine business in the
00:51:00.660restaurant and bar business so I'm living this so you are that's actually where you and I first met
00:51:05.520it was like you know I think you were already governor but it was in San Francisco and it was
00:51:08.940like in a like in a bar restaurant and you talked about how that's how you came up and I'm sure it
00:51:15.280pains you the same way it pains me because we spent all these evenings out in our young adult
00:51:20.500years well it needs socializing it's connecting it's a sense of community it's not just the drink
00:51:25.680and i get that you know i mean i love what scott your partner's been saying on this he he actually
00:51:29.900is going further he wants to lower the drinking age but uh because he he's he's that sincere about
00:51:34.960this the desperate need to people to get off you know you know get back and um and uh and connect
00:51:41.540again i mean people young boys aren't even asking girls out on dates now they're scared to death
00:51:46.640my 13 year old gavin said to me and my wife uh quite recently i think i'm gonna have an ai
00:51:53.000girlfriend and then we were both shocked and appalled uh and we asked him why and he said0.89
00:51:58.740i think it's gonna be a lot easier than getting a human girlfriend uh and he's not wrong on that
00:52:03.420side because getting a human girlfriend is not easy um and so i i then said hey christopher um
00:52:09.600this is what making out with your ai girlfriend is gonna be like and i pretended it was like not
00:52:13.520pleasant and all and i was like this is what making up your human girlfriend's like and i
00:52:16.620took his mom and started kissing i was like which is better which is better you gotta go for uh the
00:52:21.780human even if it's harder um but this is what our kids are are experiencing where um they're living
00:52:27.740in a friction-free digital world and we all know that real relationships actually come with a level
00:52:33.340of friction but that's the stuff of life it's the stuff of humanity what do you make of it you know
00:52:38.220There was a headline this weekend, this last weekend, that China quite literally, the headline was around China making sure people don't have online girlfriends and how they're restricting access to social media, how their version of TikTok is radically different than ours and what content you can actually access and the hours you can actually access it.
00:52:58.540you saw in China, and I'm curious your thoughts on this, where they actually find, a court
00:53:04.620fined a company that fired a worker under the basis, under the auspices that that worker
00:53:27.580I read that same book you did probably about how China is run by engineers and we're run by lawyers.
00:53:34.160And so their approach to problems is very, very different than ours.
00:53:37.800And there are advantages and disadvantages to both, you would say.
00:53:42.720I can't imagine in America trying to identify who got fired due to AI and who didn't because it's going to happen in such a broad way.
00:53:53.620I mean, our challenge, in my view, is trying to get people excited about the innovation and progress that's going on and like to feel included.
00:54:03.120And right now, you know, like I think that's a really tough bar in terms of China's moderating its own social media and banning AI girlfriends.
00:54:14.080I mean, the fact is, we all know what's going to happen in America.
00:54:18.480Our kids are going to date less, fall in love less, get married less, have fewer kids.
00:54:23.060schools are going to close around the country colleges are going to close you know you're
00:54:28.160going to have increasing demographic challenges because you have an aging population I mean this
00:54:33.540is all written clear as day and so China saw something similar going on it's like you know
00:54:38.380what AI girlfriends at the margin are going to actually reduce the oomph inside of our kids to
00:54:45.660go out and meet each other so let's get rid of them you know you can see the rationale very very0.59
00:54:50.920clearly um and and i do think we can borrow some pages from their book in terms of actually
00:54:56.000figuring out uh what's happening with our young people in particular um and trying to get in front
00:55:01.240of it um trying to help in real ways well in in let's i want to close on a beat of optimism there's
00:55:08.440a lot of punditry obviously more broadly on in compare contrast in the in terms of the approach
00:55:15.000that china's taking in the competition that marks i think a lot of uh the conversation we're having
00:55:20.380as well with China as it relates to superintelligence and cybersecurity and national security more
00:55:25.680broadly defined and how we have an advantage, the issues around chips and American stack,
00:55:31.360all those debates that we didn't even get into. But there's also a school of thought that you
00:55:38.260and I may be a little too pessimistic about where AI is taking us. That, you know, I was reading
00:55:43.760an Andreessen associated blog the other day. It was pretty damn convincing that, you know,
00:55:49.880Sure, there'll be some, you know, there'll be a moment in time.
00:55:53.160There'll certainly be categories of jobs and transitions, but we always mind those transitions0.88
00:55:57.600and that the doomers, or at least those that are expressing so much alarm, that are feeding
00:56:02.740the anxiety, that they're just boneheaded once again.
00:56:09.160And that we're going to come out with augmentation jobs that we couldn't even conceive of.
00:56:13.640We're already experiencing those jobs today in some respects, maybe not at the scale and
00:56:17.640consciousness, most people imagine. And a lot of the judgery, what gets repeated gets replaced.
00:56:22.380That's a good thing that we move away from that. And we can find some of the things that you're
00:56:26.120looking for with your UBI. I mean, what do you say to that train of thought? And I imagine
00:56:34.020you may identify a little bit with it. What's a more positive picture you can paint here?
00:56:40.740The positive opportunity is flipping from a scarcity economy to an abundance economy.
00:56:47.640Where right now, GDP might be $84,000 a head in America, which is significant. I mean, it's more even than it was when I was running for president in 2020. And AI is going to push that past $100,000 per head.
00:57:03.540so we're getting to a point where you could meaningfully situate people where people are
00:57:08.720actually living better and like more fulfilled happier healthier it's just how do you take this
00:57:14.420value that's being created and translate it to the average american family or household and i think
00:57:18.720that's what the andres and blog misses it's like do i think they're going to be fantastic innovations
00:57:22.720yeah 100 percent like do i think that that uh that kid down the street uh who right now is
00:57:28.780kind of listless and directionless is going to be, you know, dragged into all these fantastic
00:57:33.820new opportunities? I do not. You know who else doesn't think so? The kid himself or their
00:57:38.300parents. So like that's the burden I think the Andreessen School has to try and figure out how
00:57:45.340to bridge that gap. But if we're ending on an optimistic note, the top line growth will be
00:57:51.320there. The opportunities will be there for us to really address poverty and a lot of other
00:57:56.240large-scale problems in a way that have not been possible before. A mindset of scarcity made sense
00:58:01.380in this country when our, I mean, not mine, because like, you know, I mean, actually, Gavin,
00:58:06.220I don't know if you know this. My parents met as immigrant students at UC Berkeley in the 60s.
00:58:11.920My brother was named after the Lawrence Hall of Science and was born in San Francisco. So there's
00:58:16.340a lot of California in my DNA. But when Americans first showed up to these shores, if they didn't
00:58:23.140grow or hunt their food, they died. So there was like this mindset of scarcity that kind of made
00:58:28.300sense. It's like, if you don't work, you die. Now, fast forward, AI is about to switch us
00:58:34.900to a zone where we're going to have trillion dollar firms and trillionaires. And there's
00:58:41.060going to be more than enough to go around, especially when the robots come, where if we
00:58:45.940can get our acts together, we can actually solve societal problems in a way that was not possible
01:00:11.140All of this is going to take shape and anthropic.
01:00:14.100And and that abundance is going to create more anxiety and that concentration of wealth is going to create more, I think, insecurity for even those that are the wealth creators themselves.
01:00:26.200And so this notion of sharing that abundance and having a society where everybody sees themselves as participating and fully, you know, fully, as you suggest, consider they see themselves in the future is foundational.
01:00:43.060Yeah, I'm pro innovation and pro success. I don't begrudge anyone their wealth, like as long as their neighbors aren't falling into the abyss, you know, at scale. And I mean, that's, and the thing I say to some of my very wealthy friends, and they not agree, is that everyone is less happy in a vastly unequal society.
01:01:05.100you know like no one wants to have bulletproof cars and private security for their kids and all
01:01:09.860this stuff like it's miserable um and so the enlightened self-interest thing to do is like
01:01:14.420look i can be successful um and let's solve some problems uh these so that that's my school of
01:01:23.180thought i i you know since you probably know some of these people you probably naturally fall
01:01:27.960someplace similar uh and that to me is something that even many of them will get behind like the
01:01:33.700the caricature of some of these people is like, they need every last dollar.
01:01:36.980It's like, look, you know, like, sure.
01:01:39.680They probably like their money. Um, and they, they don't necessarily,
01:01:42.600you know, like want to port it over to the government in various ways because,
01:01:46.140you know, they might not have like the highest confidence.
01:01:50.120But I think many of them can be drawn into a meaningful conversation, uh,
01:01:57.680And that's where I think we're missing that national leadership right now.
01:02:00.800And that opportunity presents itself, particularly in light of these IPOs, the situational moment demands of that.
01:02:07.280And look, if we quoted Voltaire, let's quote Aristotle, and he said it as well or better than we ever could, you can't live a good life.
01:02:14.660You can't live a good life in an unjust society.
01:02:17.900And that kind of wealth disparity, that kind of imbalance between the rich and the poor is the oldest, as Plutarch said, and most fatal ailment of all republics.
01:02:27.160So this society is just simply going to fray.
01:02:29.860And so I think this light and self-interest, there's a real opportunity and shot to bridge that.
01:02:36.660And thank you for giving me a shot to, you know, of adrenaline, reconnecting with you, talking in more entrepreneurial terms about the future and how we can accelerate it, but steer it with the kind of guardrails and values that all of us deserve.