This is Gavin Newsom - And, This Is Why Reid Hoffman Doesn’t Fear Artificial Intelligence

00:00:00.600 Corruption.

00:00:01.340 Yeah.

00:00:01.760 We're living in the greatest kleptocracy of your and my lifetimes.

00:00:05.300 Someone gets you a billion dollars in crypto, you're bought.

00:00:09.080 Period.

00:00:09.780 So the question is, where do they go as they get more power?

00:00:13.060 And the answer is, Elon became a narcissist.

00:00:16.280 This is Gavin Newsom.

00:00:19.000 And this is Reid Hoffman.

00:00:23.320 This is an iHeart Podcast.

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00:01:08.160 How's it going, boys?

00:01:08.900 Hey, Niall.

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00:02:38.480 Well, welcome.

00:02:39.860 My pleasure to be here.

00:02:41.160 Unbelievable.

00:02:41.340 First time in the governor's match.

00:02:42.560 Not bad, right?

00:02:43.580 Yes, not bad.

00:02:44.240 i mean it's you know it's you know now i don't know it's not but it's you know we're blessed

00:02:48.800 to be here yeah but i'm blessed to be here look sit was how many books you written six six best

00:02:53.580 selling books yeah two podcasts yeah one's not enough yes well you know everyone it was getting

00:03:00.160 to the point where everyone had a podcast so i had two two um the most uh you know i mean you've

00:03:07.080 been you've been around sort of og started a few companies you're part of this mafia this mob

00:03:12.760 called PayPal.

00:03:14.320 Yes.

00:03:14.780 Although I try, you know,

00:03:16.460 everyone likes the mafia kind of thing of it.

00:03:18.360 We didn't do anything criminal.

00:03:19.660 It's PayPal network.

00:03:20.640 Well, I'll get to, I want to get to, you know,

00:03:22.300 you guys obviously have embraced that a little bit.

00:03:24.500 Yes.

00:03:25.000 And, you know, we'll also talk about, you know,

00:03:26.920 it's kind of broken apart a little bit.

00:03:28.440 Yes.

00:03:29.040 The old, the pal version.

00:03:31.360 Yes.

00:03:32.020 Of the mafia.

00:03:33.460 Yeah, paid on pals.

00:03:34.260 I started this company, LinkedIn.

00:03:37.380 Yeah.

00:03:38.060 And you're currently, though not maybe for long,

00:03:41.360 And we'll talk about that on the Microsoft board.

00:03:43.100 And you've got a number of AI companies that you've started up.

00:03:46.760 And you also have invested, seems like everywhere, in the AI space.

00:03:50.740 And you're doing a lot of angel investing.

00:03:52.180 So all of that, and you haven't even turned 60 years old.

00:03:56.980 Nope.

00:03:57.380 Coming up, but not quite.

00:03:58.660 It's not quite.

00:03:59.880 But I really wanted to get you, Reid, to talk about AI in the broadest sense.

00:04:03.860 Because we've, look, we're just, everybody's wringing their hands.

00:04:07.260 the doomers, the gloomers, it's going to take our jobs. The anxiety is boiling. You're sitting

00:04:12.940 represented in polls and just anecdotal feelings. People are angry about data centers. People are

00:04:19.040 furious that their kid who went to Stanford and got this unbelievable degree is not getting as

00:04:25.560 many interviews as mom and dad expected their perfect child to get. But you have a different

00:04:33.300 take on all this you're a little bit more optimistic about this so i mean first you got

00:04:37.760 to acknowledge people are in pain having difficulties right i mean and yes there's

00:04:42.720 difficulties with entry-level jobs and if you listen to the press including by the way a bunch

00:04:48.080 of the ai people you who make you know foolish statements like white collar bloodbath and other 0.99

00:04:54.300 kinds of things they go well it's ai's fault and it's like actually if you actually look at it

00:04:58.180 thus far it's not ai's fault doesn't mean there won't be an impact from ai and all that stuff

00:05:02.840 and entry-level jobs.

00:05:04.060 But the pain that's being felt right now

00:05:06.140 is overhiring from COVID,

00:05:08.960 is tariffs screwing our economy and business planning.

00:05:12.840 And when all of that kind of stuff happens,

00:05:16.100 businesses go, I'm going to do no hiring

00:05:19.180 until I figure out what's going on.

00:05:20.660 Right.

00:05:21.140 So you're saying some of those big headlines

00:05:23.500 that we saw, Box and others,

00:05:25.760 that somehow suggested,

00:05:27.740 or at least added in the press release,

00:05:30.060 maybe a number of factors, including AI.

00:05:32.180 And then the mainstream press runs with AI, overhyped.

00:05:36.540 Yeah.

00:05:36.920 Well, overhyped, but it's a natural reason for a CEO to say that.

00:05:40.940 Because if I was like, oh, I overhired and I mismanaged, it's my fault.

00:05:46.980 No, no, I'm strong.

00:05:48.400 I'm taking advantage of AI.

00:05:50.280 AI is replacing jobs.

00:05:51.880 I am just being a really good CEO and manager of my shareholder capital.

00:06:00.760 CEOs are smart people.

00:06:02.180 Pick which you want.

00:06:03.360 Do you want door A or door B?

00:06:04.640 It's like, I'll take door B.

00:06:05.680 Thank you very much.

00:06:06.320 So what do you make then of the college graduate and the unemployment rates that legitimately, at least numerically, statistically, what's the causation of that?

00:06:14.360 What would you, what's the factor?

00:06:15.980 How would you factor AI in that respect?

00:06:18.240 What do you think more broadly is the reason that those numbers are higher?

00:06:21.380 Well, I think what is factually case is that a wide range of businesses are like, we don't know if we should be hiring new entry level people right now.

00:06:31.180 some of it's like well we're doing layoffs because we hired too many people during the pandemic and

00:06:36.880 and and then did this whole remote work thing which is not really working out and we're refactoring

00:06:42.180 it and and then there is oh and uh and now we've got trade war going on with global tariffs

00:06:51.700 which are increasing cost to consumers cost the businesses cost and so like like and we got

00:06:57.620 volatility central like hey it's july we're starting a new war right like you know so it's

00:07:04.900 like like in all those cases what businesses do the very first thing they do is let's not incur

00:07:11.180 any new expenses it's let's not hire any new people except the very clear people we need

00:07:16.380 entry levels are usually like oh these are people we need five years from now well we don't know we

00:07:21.300 need five years from now so let's not do that it's also let's not do a new lease let's not like it's

00:07:26.300 like let's let's just chill so that's the primary driving actual factor now that being said and by

00:07:34.260 the way there are a few places which are um ai related like for example the meta layoffs are

00:07:40.440 we need to free up costs for spending on compute and so we're going to do so it's not that there's

00:07:45.960 zero it's just that the broad brush you know kind of college grad is not actually in fact yet like

00:07:55.240 if it's a percentage from ai it's like five it's not you know it's not 30 or 50 so you talk about

00:08:02.240 i mean some that have used some pretty aggressive language about a white collar blood bath but i

00:08:08.100 mean you and i don't know if dario said that or not but i mean it did it was not surprising on

00:08:13.080 the basis of the question i'll ask which is i mean obviously he's because of his emphasis and

00:08:18.080 he put a numeric about 50 percent of white collar jobs be eliminated at least new white collar jobs

00:08:23.100 in the next, well, five years,

00:08:24.820 less than five years by 2030.

00:08:26.840 Again, hyperbole from your perspective.

00:08:28.940 And you're a guy, you know, you're a fan of Dario's.

00:08:30.620 Yes, I'm a huge fan of Dario's.

00:08:32.780 And look, Dario Franklin gets criticized

00:08:35.460 that he's doing it for, like,

00:08:37.980 kind of promoting his own technology

00:08:39.540 and this is how important my technology is.

00:08:41.300 No, Dario's very principled, right?

00:08:43.760 He's like, look, I think that there's a real worry here

00:08:46.080 and it's not on, like, society should be ready.

00:08:50.280 i'm trying to help society figure out getting ready so i appreciate dario's principle his

00:08:58.060 motivation etc now after he said that i called dario and i said look what you said is not heard

00:09:04.780 the way you think it's heard right because what people hear is well if that's going to create a

00:09:11.060 huge bloodbath and that's the outcome why are you building ai so fast why are you doing all this

00:09:15.160 stuff right is it just to make yourself rich right because what they hear is they hear the

00:09:19.860 hey everyone i have this really great technology that's going to like ruin half of your lives

00:09:26.100 and good for me and sucks to be you right that's what they hear that's not what you meant to say

00:09:32.540 but that's what they hear and so um and so i was like look i think the i said dario the better

00:09:38.900 thing to say is we're gonna have a lot of job transition and there's a lot of uncertainty

00:09:43.760 what's going on and it could have a really quick, massive impact. And we should be figuring out what

00:09:49.040 to do on it. Right. Right. And is that, so, I mean, you've talked about it in the terms of a

00:09:53.620 cognitive industrial revolution and you talked about not being Poland, uh, rather be England,

00:09:59.840 take advantage of this. And, and that's, and you've done that in the context of making the case that

00:10:04.380 we, you know, we should be accelerists though, probably with the notion of a steer. Yes. Uh,

00:10:09.660 so you're not naive. Sometimes you slow down on the curve and slow down on the curve. Uh,

00:10:13.740 But vehemently opposed to the sort of precautionary principle framework, this notion of this is, you know, we've just got to put a damn pause on all of this. 0.76

00:10:22.860 Yes.

00:10:23.240 So let's start with the pause because it's simple, which is say you issue a call for a pause and you have two groups of people, the group of people who pause and the group of people who don't pause.

00:10:33.300 The group of people who pause will go, oh, I hear you.

00:10:35.220 The humanist stuff really matters and I care.

00:10:37.360 So all pause. 0.99

00:10:38.460 And then the people go, I don't give a shit. 0.99

00:10:40.800 And they keep going. 0.98

00:10:42.040 So then what kind of AI is built?

00:10:43.740 right not good it's actually has a negative impact right that's the reason why i'm vehemently

00:10:49.760 opposed to like this kind of like pause and it's like well what if we can get everyone to pause 0.88

00:10:53.860 like well what's your plan to get everyone to pause including china and everyone like

00:10:57.740 is this at all realistic so my strategy tends to be how do we keep like you want the good guys to

00:11:06.040 win e.g the things that are pro like humanist human you know like you know the pope's awesome

00:11:12.600 encyclical like you know kind of like like keeping human beings at the center keeping a notion of

00:11:18.160 what is a positive to society by the way positive societies over years that doesn't mean that there

00:11:22.860 won't be massive transformation things that will be painful and difficult to get through but like

00:11:27.380 having a this is how society is better with this as where we're going so when people hear that i

00:11:33.380 mean the good guys i mean tech is getting slaughtered in the context of public opinion

00:11:37.820 people just don't trust anybody. The whole issue of truth and trust obviously has been accelerated

00:11:42.700 social media, but now obviously with AI. Deep fake this, deep fake that voice, and we can get to

00:11:49.080 even your own interesting avatar in that space. But this notion of trust and, you know, someone

00:11:55.140 may be listening and go, okay, yeah, Reid, this is easy for you to say. You know, I sit on the

00:11:59.640 Microsoft board and obviously invest in all these places. You've got two of your own AI companies.

00:12:05.360 uh you know come on man so um i am not of the view that uh like frequently what it is is like

00:12:16.140 just trust us right like like like you know it's like look we're in a very low trust environment

00:12:22.720 overall yeah right low trust of almost every institution even mixed trust of historically

00:12:30.020 great trust institution doctors and so forth so it's like so there's an overall thing so they

00:12:35.440 just trust us but then you have to say it's like okay well you have to prove my trust before you

00:12:41.460 do anything well that doesn't really work and it doesn't work in any of these places right so

00:12:46.020 the notion is to say well do the things that ultimately are building trust over time and

00:12:52.080 then when people really investigate like ah you're doing something that's fairly trustworthy so like

00:12:57.740 where you're talking about Dario, one of the things that Dario did is he said, okay, we're

00:13:02.260 going to build AI with a kind of a constitution. I actually don't think they should have used that

00:13:08.780 word, but like, you know, it could be a set of principles, like, you know, whatever, you know.

00:13:14.740 What offends you about constitution, sir?

00:13:16.980 Well, I, for one, am a huge believer in the American constitution, right? It is our thing.

00:13:23.200 I'm a little old school like you. I appreciate that. We'll get to that a little bit later.

00:13:26.700 Like, that is our religion, is the Constitution, right?

00:13:30.360 So, like, we stay with that.

00:13:32.520 And it's a little bit of saying, oh, implying that this is a Constitution is not really – like, a Constitution is a sacred document for me.

00:13:39.320 So, it's more –

00:13:41.020 Okay, it's as simple as that.

00:13:41.560 Yeah.

00:13:41.960 All right.

00:13:42.200 And so, the – but here's how we're going to build trust is here is the document that is central to all of our training of RAIs.

00:13:55.020 Right.

00:13:55.840 So you can read it, you can comment on it to us, you can suggest changes, you can understand

00:14:01.680 where we're going, what we're trying to do.

00:14:04.060 That's the kind of thing that I think, you know, needs to be there.

00:14:07.360 Transparency.

00:14:07.980 Yes, that's the beginning.

00:14:09.980 And that's along the lines, I mean, you and I have had these conversations over the years

00:14:13.440 and California's regulatory framework, SB 53, which we advanced, was around this issue

00:14:18.220 of transparency for frontier models, these large language models.

00:14:22.020 What about this, you know, I think from your perspective, it'd be interesting to hear your perspective about some of those contours.

00:14:28.340 I mean, we talk about Dario as the, you know, the good guy.

00:14:31.360 And for a lot of folks, that's through purely political lens because of some of the issues he had with P. Hexick and the Department of War issues around mythos, which I'm interested in your take on mythos and the fact that he pulled that back, what that means or what that suggests.

00:14:46.400 But it also has the origin story that played out very publicly with Sam Altman, with Elon Musk, all those origin stories of which you had a front seat, sir.

00:14:57.940 Front seat and participation in some of it.

00:15:00.380 An actual board seat as it relates to open AI.

00:15:02.900 Exactly.

00:15:05.100 So, look, most of the people creating AI, you know, are like kind of unique human beings.

00:15:16.400 yes so you know and and part of it's because by the way geniuses frequently are yes right and so

00:15:23.980 um and usually you know with folks who like it's pretty easy to attack anybody i mean you've had

00:15:32.060 the experience i've had the experience of it's like an attack by a negative person who is willing 0.65

00:15:37.300 to invent shit or build on what is a small thing to make it into a huge thing is one of the things 0.97

00:15:44.460 that kind of flows through. 1.00

00:15:47.220 Now, I have the fortune of knowing all of the head,

00:15:53.800 like every head of all these labs.

00:15:55.540 And so I have a pretty good sense

00:15:57.060 of what their actual moral characters are

00:15:58.760 and what the things are.

00:15:59.480 And many of them are good human beings.

00:16:02.160 That doesn't mean they're perfect.

00:16:03.600 Right.

00:16:04.440 But they're good human beings.

00:16:05.040 But I mean, I want to pause on that

00:16:06.860 because I mean, objectively from your perspective,

00:16:09.300 many are good human beings.

00:16:11.040 Yes.

00:16:11.420 Because they've been, I mean,

00:16:12.220 these guys really have been vilified across the spectrum yes uh and you know and uh perhaps more

00:16:18.060 so even today with the first trillion air being minted etc and all that issue which i want on

00:16:23.300 that i didn't say oh we're good specifically to that human being but this notion that most are

00:16:30.560 good human beings but they're also trapped by incentives right i mean we're all creatures of

00:16:34.460 incentives yeah in this notion of the incentive as you suggest to accelerate at peril if it's not

00:16:40.380 us, it will be someone else. Wouldn't you rather the American stack in the context of what Jensen

00:16:44.940 talks about in NVIDIA, this notion of the American stack with the American values to the extent

00:16:49.520 possible. But what, I mean, those incentives aren't necessarily even good people for good

00:16:56.080 behavior. Yeah. So in any incentive system, you will get some good effects on it and some bad

00:17:03.400 effects. No incentive system is only good effects. Right. Right. So, so, you know, for example, you

00:17:09.640 have an incentive system to try to make more money. Well, you try, like, it creates jobs and

00:17:14.900 productivity, but you also do a whole bunch of other things. Like, so it's a blend, right? And

00:17:18.980 you get people, you know, selling cigarettes and other kinds of things. So, and so I think the

00:17:27.020 incentive system, what you have to do is say, how do we tune the incentive system so that the major

00:17:32.440 incentives mostly align with good outcomes? Now, part of the reason why is you already noted the

00:17:38.300 England versus Poland in the Industrial Revolution, if we are the society that kind of has,

00:17:45.740 call it the primary pole position, and how AI does this next Industrial Revolution,

00:17:52.260 which I think is going to be bigger than the previous Industrial Revolution,

00:17:56.160 then we can sort out how the economics and society works.

00:17:59.640 If you say, well, we have the massive economic benefit occurs to our society,

00:18:03.580 I'm like, well, it's only these seven companies.

00:18:05.900 Well, we're in a society.

00:18:07.060 We can broaden that out some.

00:18:08.860 We say, well, any company that has profitability of above X per employee now has an extra tax that's used to pay for all the rest of society.

00:18:20.500 And if you own that industry, you can do that.

00:18:23.660 If you don't own that industry, it's a little bit like when people say, hey, I hate these social networks.

00:18:29.460 And by the way, there's some real social network issues, although I always, to my own defense, point to LinkedIn.

00:18:34.700 One of the few, if not the only social network that actually had no – I mean, right?

00:18:39.880 Yeah.

00:18:40.200 I mean, kids are doing fine on LinkedIn if they're on that.

00:18:43.600 Yes, exactly.

00:18:44.560 Like LinkedIn works just fine.

00:18:46.000 So it's doable.

00:18:47.320 But if you said, hey, we banned social networks, even ignoring the LinkedIn question, it's like, well, would you want it to be only Chinese social networks?

00:18:53.720 No, no.

00:18:54.220 You'd rather have the social networks here and have our ability to shape them.

00:18:58.220 Now, of course, we need to.

00:18:59.800 There's the political melee around it and all the rest.

00:19:02.060 Right.

00:19:02.460 But you want it to be a U.S. property that you're shaping.

00:19:07.200 And the same thing with AI.

00:19:08.440 And that's part of the reason I'm an accelerationist.

00:19:10.840 It's like one of the things I was saying a couple years ago is we want AI to be American intelligence.

00:19:15.520 So it's like it matters.

00:19:18.040 And that doesn't mean at any cost.

00:19:21.080 Nothing is at any cost.

00:19:22.640 Like if you said, well, it would destroy an entire generation of children.

00:19:30.160 That's horrific.

00:19:31.720 Like, can we avoid that and still be acceleration?

00:19:34.460 It's the answer I think, yes.

00:19:35.800 But it's like, okay, what are the things we do in order to do that?

00:19:38.420 Now, I do want to wrap back to one of the things before because I think this is very important given, you know, we've seen, you know, American college students going, I hate AI, right?

00:19:49.040 Booing.

00:19:49.580 Yes.

00:19:49.680 I mean, have you given a – did you do a commencement?

00:19:51.660 No.

00:19:51.960 You were probably smart enough not to do one this year.

00:19:54.220 Yes, exactly.

00:19:55.180 Who needs that?

00:19:56.200 Yes.

00:19:56.780 Well, because you're showing up to try to offer something to help them.

00:20:00.140 Yeah.

00:20:00.600 Right?

00:20:00.820 Like the usual protest and commandment of the speech is sleeping.

00:20:05.100 You just sleep.

00:20:07.440 But what do you mean?

00:20:08.720 But it reinforces the anxiety.

00:20:10.640 Yes.

00:20:11.040 No, no.

00:20:11.300 And I get it.

00:20:12.020 Highly educated people that are played by the rules.

00:20:15.140 And I feel, look, I understand.

00:20:18.900 I feel the pain, right?

00:20:20.580 So, but the question is, and this is why I think it's so important, is, look, it is completely legitimate for college graduates.

00:20:30.820 to be going, you know, hey, the older generations,

00:20:34.140 the boomers, et cetera, you've really fucked it over for us. 1.00

00:20:36.980 We got all this shit going on and this is on your watch. 1.00

00:20:39.900 Yeah. 1.00

00:20:40.180 And you suck. 1.00

00:20:41.560 Yeah. 1.00

00:20:42.020 I get it.

00:20:42.640 And I think it's a legitimate gripe.

00:20:46.140 Right.

00:20:46.300 Like, but in crisis, this is the thing I really want the kids to hear,

00:20:51.900 you know, the college kids, crisis is opportunity.

00:20:54.560 And by the way, you can be the AI generation.

00:20:57.840 You should be using it.

00:20:59.120 You should be going, hey, company X, you need people to help you like AI-ify your company.

00:21:05.640 I can be the person doing it.

00:21:07.160 You shouldn't be trying to opt out.

00:21:08.980 It's a disaster for you, right?

00:21:11.360 And I'm saying it for them.

00:21:13.020 Like, I don't have any stake in them.

00:21:15.680 Like, the entire current graduating class could all say, we refuse to use AI.

00:21:20.680 It makes no difference to me, but it will be terrible for their lives, right?

00:21:26.220 And so it's like, look, embrace and figure out how to make it useful to you and then

00:21:31.700 have that help amplify your career and life path.

00:21:34.740 And you continue to make that point.

00:21:36.540 It's about amplification.

00:21:37.940 It's about having a co-pilot, but this notion back to turbulence, this idea that the transition.

00:21:44.680 So talk about the transition, the context.

00:21:46.520 Look, if Dario's overstating the short term, are we understating the long term or is it

00:21:54.640 just uh you know modest fits and starts a scale scope speed so you know where are you in all that

00:22:02.620 how do you calibrate all that if you're a policymaker sitting in this seat how do you begin

00:22:07.820 to anticipate where that stress where that friction where the real turbulence is going to come

00:22:13.100 well some of what i thought you guys did that was really smart with sp53 was get data start

00:22:19.280 monitoring start asking questions like because it's like okay what's really happening here not

00:22:24.000 oh i watched her like like some journalist wrote a story about one case you know blah blah blah 0.94

00:22:30.660 yeah that's not the way to do it that's that's like like the dumb like oh my god we should 0.92

00:22:36.200 restrict airplane travel because it's unsafe it's like no no no it's the drive to the airport that's 0.94

00:22:41.700 unsafe the the the plane is actually so much safer right per mile per minute everything else

00:22:49.980 It's like, no, the plane is much better.

00:22:51.840 So it's like making policy decisions based on data,

00:22:55.640 and we should be getting the actual data,

00:22:57.460 not the hysteric kind of responses.

00:22:59.660 And start there is actually, in fact, really important.

00:23:02.180 Now, that being said, as a rough template,

00:23:08.760 we want to be thinking about, okay,

00:23:09.960 AI is this transformative tsunami that's coming.

00:23:14.180 And within a small number of years,

00:23:16.940 jobs there will be a large number of jobs that will be completely transformed

00:23:22.980 some of those jobs will be they're just all done by ai some of them will now be clerical jobs what

00:23:30.200 kind of jobs people have their theories of this and of course anthropic puts out literally the

00:23:34.440 pie chart yes of what kind of jobs are most likely to be impacted what's your theory of that case

00:23:39.360 so those pie charts are usually limited in that they say if the tasks of doing the jobs are only

00:23:46.860 the ones today and that there aren't new tasks this is what it looks like there you go there

00:23:51.620 will be new tasks amen now that being said for example i think that there's a relatively small

00:23:58.200 n number of years before a customer service person a customer calling customer service

00:24:03.300 says please put the a on it's a lot more helpful right because you have a human being trying to

00:24:09.320 follow a robotic script by looking at the screen or the guy's going to do that so much better

00:24:14.020 there's just like there's there's rules for human beings but they're like looking at what's going on

00:24:18.820 with the pattern of ais and trying to reimagine that's not the bulk customer service job so like

00:24:24.680 that's one i think there's a lot of like um there's a whole classes of sales jobs that i think

00:24:31.980 will be much more ai and you begin to get to this weird sci-fi story where the ai sales person the

00:24:38.280 Yeah, a sales agent calls the company AI agent

00:24:42.380 to listen to the AI sales agent.

00:24:45.400 And there's a whole thing that kind of navigates through it.

00:24:47.940 It's a whole weird, weird universe.

00:24:50.000 That will happen.

00:24:50.920 That will happen.

00:24:51.660 Yeah, and years.

00:24:52.760 And not three, maybe 10, like not 20.

00:24:58.720 Right.

00:24:59.020 Right.

00:24:59.620 And so those will be like kind of swaths of jobs.

00:25:04.520 But here's the thing, and it's that new task thing

00:25:06.940 that I was mentioning earlier,

00:25:07.760 which is basically there will no longer be – there will be very few human jobs that are just humans by themselves.

00:25:15.540 We will all have teams of agents that are working with us and doing.

00:25:19.620 But actually, in fact, what you can see from the pattern of already looking at it is you actually get to some pretty incredible increases in performance

00:25:28.960 where the human brings in the things that the AIs don't have.

00:25:33.100 And look, one of the questions is will the AIs not have those for a long time?

00:25:36.860 Will they get them quickly?

00:25:38.060 We don't know.

00:25:39.020 It's all coming, right?

00:25:40.860 My bet would be we're very adaptive.

00:25:44.520 Like this whole like human beings will be replaced and we'll have our cognitive faculties goes all the way back to the printing press and writing.

00:25:52.120 Like I actually think there's areas where we make good judgment.

00:25:56.360 Like people say, oh, my God, look at cloud code.

00:25:59.260 Like there's no need for engineers anymore.

00:26:00.900 Well, I actually talked to a whole bunch of people who use Cloud Code, and I've used it myself intensively, and I've used Codex and OpenAI, and I've used Microsoft Copilot.

00:26:11.700 And by the way, some of it is just amazing, like amazing.

00:26:17.000 Like if you had told me, like if you had asked me even like say five to eight years ago, would I be seeing this?

00:26:22.900 I would say, no, no, no, no, that's not yet.

00:26:25.020 They're like, yes, here it is.

00:26:25.900 That's amazing. 1.00

00:26:26.920 On the other hand, it breaks on weird shit. 0.97

00:26:29.900 right and so part of the human thing is like orchestration it's like okay like for example 0.98

00:26:36.840 how how does coding work at open ai well they have a big screen and they have multiple agents

00:26:41.860 working and they're like oh oh that one's stuck we got to get that one on stuck right okay this

00:26:47.680 and and it makes them hugely more productive now if you thought well it makes them hugely more

00:26:53.120 productive they're just doing all the work we don't need anyone else doing all the work it's

00:26:56.240 like look there's infinite work it's like now maybe there will be say for example tech companies

00:27:02.220 may more naturally be at you know call it 50 of the current engineering crew that doesn't mean

00:27:09.000 that those engineers it's like other engineering firms start more competitors etc etc it's just

00:27:14.120 the productivity of how you operate it's like the the humans aren't replaced uh in all cases by ai

00:27:22.060 They're replaced by humans using AI.

00:27:24.920 And so you want to be the humans using AI.

00:27:26.400 And then this gets back to, I think, this is a central point.

00:27:28.300 It's like, well, what's the thing you should be thinking about is one is monitoring.

00:27:32.760 And then the other one is, how do we help AI be part of the solution?

00:27:37.620 Because the thing that's driving it at scale and speed is AI.

00:27:42.180 We need solutions that work on the same capability set.

00:27:46.440 So, for example, OK, how do I help AI? How do I have AI helping people make job transitions? I want to be seeing that. Right. So like like one of the things you could do right here at the mansion is you could say, hey, great.

00:28:02.400 You know, California is the center of the AI revolution in the world.

00:28:08.060 It's part of the reason why 53 mattered.

00:28:10.400 Hey, I want you guys to all come by and tell me about how AI could be useful in helping people, all ranges.

00:28:17.960 I want to hear about blue collar, white collar, multiple industries.

00:28:22.240 How does that help those people, you know, find the right work, do the right work, you know, have pride in their work?

00:28:32.400 So we're going to have a day here in the mansion.

00:28:36.500 You're going to come talk to us about it because I want to hear you thinking about it, right?

00:28:42.540 Because by the way, ultimately, if you're not delivering on this, then I have to apply more pressure because my responsibility is to the citizens of the state.

00:28:53.940 And look, I'm very happy that we have the AI revolution and the economics flowing in from that and all the rest.

00:29:01.760 but i care about all my citizens yeah so tell me what you can do for them yeah interesting i mean

00:29:08.840 this notion of using ai the thing that has displaced that worker to help find and place

00:29:15.580 that worker exactly in a new opportunity a new career that's not quote-unquote just training

00:29:20.060 per se in the old yeah sort of black and white movie uh community college construct yes but i

00:29:25.520 want to if i could i want to i want to get back there's so many areas on computing issues

00:29:29.260 limiting issues in that space and what's going on with data centers, et cetera, and where we are

00:29:34.640 in terms of the competitive landscape. But you, I, I was, I, I didn't know this. You, you were at

00:29:41.320 Stanford back in the, talk about black and white movie, wasn't that, it wasn't just a couple of

00:29:46.240 years ago, but way back when, and you were studying what was simplistic solution. What the hell is

00:29:51.760 this? Simplistic solutions, symbolic systems. Yeah. What the hell is this? Well, it's artificial

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00:32:18.760 So I was part of, as an undergraduate, I had an AI degree.

00:32:22.960 You had an AI degree.

00:32:23.840 Yes.

00:32:24.320 When no one had ever heard of this nonsense.

00:32:26.920 Well, not no one.

00:32:27.780 I mean, most of us had never heard of it.

00:32:29.700 Yes.

00:32:30.120 Even though we started to realize that we all had it and we've all been using it for decades.

00:32:34.340 Yes.

00:32:34.840 But this notion of gen AI became the thing that we kind of conflated.

00:32:38.640 Yeah, that was what's new.

00:32:39.520 Yes.

00:32:39.640 And so was it just a natural inkling?

00:32:42.280 And I mean, did you see the future then?

00:32:44.100 I mean, was it just a major that started to present itself?

00:32:46.680 No one else was in the class and you figured, hey, I couldn't get in the other class?

00:32:49.920 I get an A on this one.

00:32:52.200 No, it was, so what people assume, people in my kind of role, and many people in my

00:32:59.260 kind of role are fascinated by technology.

00:33:00.860 I'm not.

00:33:01.500 I'm fascinated by human beings.

00:33:02.920 Okay.

00:33:03.340 Right?

00:33:03.780 And so what I was interested in was human thought and human language.

00:33:07.540 And so how do we understand ourselves?

00:33:09.500 How do we understand each other?

00:33:10.420 How do we communicate?

00:33:11.180 how do we get to a better understanding talking to each other etc etc and that was what was most

00:33:16.300 interesting and so like i looked at you know do i do anthropology or psychology like i was looking

00:33:21.740 at the whole range but i was like what's the thing that um in doing this i could actually make the

00:33:30.000 most interesting things i've always had a belief that we evolve ourselves through technology like

00:33:34.880 this is a you know these glasses these are a piece of technology this podcast like and that's

00:33:39.660 actually how we evolve our state as human beings and who we are and so forth and so i was like okay

00:33:44.940 this ai thing that's interesting right so i'll go do that and i did it symbolic system is a

00:33:51.200 multidisciplinary major so it included psychology included linguistics included philosophy so you

00:33:56.600 did all of that as part of it and you went to oxford and got a philosophy as well yes because

00:34:00.660 well what i concluded at stanford was none of us understood what thinking and speaking was

00:34:06.020 So here we are trying to build AI, and we have no sense of what that is.

00:34:09.140 Maybe philosophers did.

00:34:10.680 Went to Oxford and included philosophers didn't either.

00:34:13.360 And so give me, I mean, this is what year?

00:34:15.160 When are you studying this stuff, roughly?

00:34:17.680 1985 to 1993.

00:34:20.200 To 1993.

00:34:21.560 In both Oxford and Stanford.

00:34:22.780 And so AI as we know it today in the context of the vernacular of this sort of notion of

00:34:26.800 gen AI, et cetera.

00:34:27.800 I mean, the origin story, they tend to lazily go back.

00:34:31.280 It's sort of like the beginning of biotech may have been 79 with Genentech or something.

00:34:34.820 And there's a lazy punditry to that.

00:34:36.840 But is that punditry accurate to suggest somehow in the minds, deep minds of Google, that sort

00:34:42.620 of the origin stories started to take shape early 2013, 14 range?

00:34:49.040 How would you describe what we are addressing or dealing with today in the context of that

00:34:55.340 origin story?

00:34:56.280 Where did it really begin at a scale that we're now more accustomed to?

00:35:00.000 Well, so by the way, like many technological revolutions, including modern ones, there have been multiple, like, oh, in five years we'll be having AI invent new science.

00:35:12.880 And that goes all the way back to the 80s.

00:35:15.120 Goes back to the 80s.

00:35:16.060 80s, yeah.

00:35:16.940 So then, here we are, we're there.

00:35:19.080 Because what happens is some achievement happens, and then people go, aha.

00:35:24.480 So, like, we beat human grandmaster at chess.

00:35:27.380 Yeah.

00:35:27.560 That was the hard problem.

00:35:28.820 and now it'll be inventing physics and you're like not so much yeah yeah uh and so it's like

00:35:35.560 cycling through it and that was actually part of my conclusion at stanford was like no none of these

00:35:39.700 technology none of these current technical approaches will work so what's the thing that

00:35:45.360 got me back in ai was um a three-hour meeting with demis isabas uh the ceo and co-founder of

00:35:52.720 deep mind yeah and what i realized that he had that he had like he is the i think the the he and

00:36:00.540 his co-founder is the original kickoff of deep mind and it's not i mean again it's not microsoft

00:36:05.340 it's not anthropic open ai it's not spacex as well i mean it's that's the i mean if you really

00:36:10.380 want to start to understand and unlock an understanding and what demis realized was

00:36:15.800 we have scale compute and with scale compute we can create scale intelligence now his original

00:36:21.900 idea has been less of the important thing which is self-play so we had pong and go and it plays

00:36:28.040 but the answer was we can apply a lot of compute to evolve a competent machine a with cognitive

00:36:37.440 capabilities and i was like you're right we now have scale compute and what's more we have scale

00:36:43.320 data and we have scale engagement you know through internet and mobile the revolution a revolution a

00:36:50.740 massive revolution is here now did i know when i walked out of that meeting you know and at um

00:36:58.180 you know king's cross that i was like oh actually it won't be the self-play it'll actually be these

00:37:04.720 these things called transformers these large language models that read the trillion and a

00:37:11.520 half words on the internet and use that as a learning basis to create something no i didn't

00:37:16.940 know that well i did know is this is now a revolution and and so it's like okay how do i

00:37:24.780 help and you know for me uh i'm i'm not adverse to doing stuff commercially obviously i've done a

00:37:31.480 whole bunch of stuff commercially but for me i look across the whole spectrum i go okay what's

00:37:36.260 the stuff that i should do as a founder as investor what's the stuff that i should do

00:37:39.760 as a content provider and author what's the stuff that i should do talking to you know people who

00:37:44.700 care about society like you and others and what to do like how do i go from you know humanity

00:37:50.040 society industry and that's the order which i care about them right humanity first society second

00:37:55.260 industry third industry can be very useful for society and humanity but you like part of the

00:38:01.520 like when you were talking about that earlier steering and shaping well we want to steer and

00:38:05.760 shape industry to go it should be on average massively positive for society over time right

00:38:12.120 And if that's not the direction you're in, it needs to be fixed, right?

00:38:16.020 Now, over time, not this year necessarily, right?

00:38:19.800 There's always costs of transformation and all the rest.

00:38:23.580 Now, and so I went, that's the revolution we're in.

00:38:27.340 And so for me, I think that's 2013 or 2014, right?

00:38:33.640 And it's and that's why when like Sam called me and said, hey, I'm thinking of pulling this thing together with, you know, for AI, for humanity, will you help?

00:38:43.560 The answer was yes.

00:38:45.140 It was one of the things where I just got my partners at Greylock really focused on crypto.

00:38:50.660 And I was like, oh, I'm going to stop doing this crypto thing because this AI thing is coming.

00:38:54.360 And what AI thing?

00:38:55.300 I'm like, oh, it's coming.

00:38:56.080 and and actually you know i think you know i think my partners at graylock were the first

00:39:02.240 uh venture partnership that saw gbt4 because i got sam's permission i was on the board of open

00:39:07.500 ai to say hey come in and demo this and and and show this because there was there was a six-month

00:39:13.760 period where gbt4 was not public because we're like oh is it safe enough and all the rest and

00:39:20.520 you know they were doing it i was like okay look i think it's safe enough is it okay to show the

00:39:24.200 partnership and sam's like yeah this this since you're serving on a 51c3 board of open ai trying

00:39:29.780 to do this this is the least we could do yes you could go show them you know what's coming

00:39:34.000 google there's or there's some interesting i i and i don't you know i don't want to get into

00:39:41.460 gossip but i think it's interesting because it's instructive to a lot of people and it's also

00:39:45.280 i think connects a lot of your own personal relationships and dots um so you you know you

00:39:51.200 were notoriously, as we were alluding to earlier, part of the payfowl mafia. And those are the

00:39:56.240 brand names today. Elon Musk, obviously Peter Thiel, David Sachs, less of a brand name,

00:40:01.320 but increasingly trying to be one in terms of his association with the Trump administration.

00:40:08.060 Musk allegedly, and Larry Page, co-founder of Google, had a conversation that, as at least

00:40:18.840 musk's telling goes uh musk was concerned that larry wasn't taking this gen ai seriously enough

00:40:25.180 in terms of its downside risks uh and decided to go off on his own uh made the same contacts you

00:40:31.960 made with sam altman and others uh and went down this path of a 501c3 yep and tried to birth open

00:40:40.520 ai yep is that reasonably accurate that is reasonably accurate i think it was a conversation

00:40:45.620 I think it was, you know, Larry was kind of saying, was, you know, you know, it's probably too simplistic, but, you know, kind of articulating a transhumanist perspective to Elon that, you know, naturally freaks someone out because the rational response to that is, that's a little strange, right?

00:41:05.480 Right. And so and so it got very concerned about it.

00:41:10.600 Now, you know, in Elon's case in particular, it's the, you know, Elon has the definition of a messiah complex.

00:41:16.940 So it's like, no, no, I have to be the one building AI, not anyone else.

00:41:20.840 So there's the there's a little bit of the I'm worried about it generally, but it's also the I'm worried it's you, not me.

00:41:26.580 I think that's sort of proven itself a little bit.

00:41:29.440 This notion of going back, even when you said the glasses, which is interesting, technology can see better.

00:41:35.480 We've been aiding and embedded, and as a human, that technology, it's not just, you know, ones and zeros.

00:41:41.400 Yes.

00:41:42.200 Though, you know, now they're becoming ones and zeros, as Meta and others.

00:41:47.420 I think now Apple's coming out with their own version.

00:41:49.440 But what this notion of technology trans, I mean, you remind what allegedly Larry said to Elon that freaked Elon out,

00:42:02.400 is what guys like Peter Thiel couldn't even answer.

00:42:06.080 You know, I think it was a 17 second pause

00:42:07.860 in an interview about, you know,

00:42:10.480 human beings and technology.

00:42:12.640 But when you, yeah,

00:42:13.780 you sort of invited that in with the glasses.

00:42:15.760 I mean, what is all that?

00:42:17.380 I mean, for folks that may not be familiar

00:42:19.420 with some of this,

00:42:20.100 but maybe familiar with the anxiety

00:42:21.740 that some of these conversations

00:42:23.320 have induced more broadly,

00:42:25.140 what is the suggestion?

00:42:26.280 Is this, are we just all in a simulation or something?

00:42:28.780 Is that the point?

00:42:29.920 There's that kind of,

00:42:30.720 there's a cast of characters there.

00:42:32.000 You've been in a few of those conversations too, I'm sure.

00:42:34.240 I have been in a number of them, yes.

00:42:35.440 It's like, actually, I was sitting with two of my friends at the time.

00:42:45.340 Elon was one of them.

00:42:46.380 And they're like, oh, yeah, everyone smart I know is living in a simulation.

00:42:54.360 And I was like, am I smart?

00:42:56.600 And they're like, yes.

00:42:57.480 I'm like, well, then not everyone.

00:43:00.780 And it wasn't.

00:43:01.360 i remember the origin that we had second life we had some of these virtual realities maybe they

00:43:05.300 were alluding to a version of playing around with that but they mean quite literally we're in a

00:43:09.820 simulation yes and so um i think simulation is the kind of classic theory that gets people to like

00:43:18.840 um the kind of christian theory of intelligent design about how we get created or yeah the

00:43:25.140 fermi's paradox like we have questions we don't know the answers to therefore right simulation

00:43:30.640 And you're like, no, no, we have questions we don't have answers to.

00:43:34.860 Stop.

00:43:37.740 Like, we will try to figure out the answers to those questions.

00:43:40.800 Like, the simulation theory stuff is like, sure, there's unknowns.

00:43:44.700 Like, for example, the classic one that you usually use to argue with this is we don't have signals that there's other intelligent universe in the universe.

00:43:52.740 And so, you know, like with radio waves and statistics and all the rest, we should have that.

00:43:57.720 well okay that's an interesting puzzle that's an interesting question why do we not have that

00:44:03.900 and but like and therefore we're in a simulation is like that's a lot of cognitive theoretical

00:44:12.160 infrastructure to explain this a similar like like the hey we have an unknown about the complexity

00:44:19.800 about how human brains evolved and what the intermediate steps looked like well therefore

00:44:26.120 there must be a creator but well there's a lot of it's an unknown and by the way therefore there

00:44:32.680 must be creator and therefore by the way the creator must be my religion not any of the other

00:44:36.100 20s like it's like what like it's like no no pause on the mystery right and then go okay we have an

00:44:43.600 unknown to answer so there's a whole bunch of craziness but i think coming back to your the

00:44:47.520 first part of your question i think is very important because i think this like i've been

00:44:50.940 giving some speeches in italy like i gave one at bologna and perusia because i wanted silicon

00:44:56.160 valley to remember some of the important humanist nature of the renaissance which is what is it to

00:45:02.640 really be a humanist when you're thinking about this technology and it's not just self-declaration

00:45:08.980 i am humanist you're like no that that that's nice it's better than i'm not right um but it's

00:45:17.820 like well what is it to be humanist to say look uh i have a theory about why the work i'm doing

00:45:25.520 will cause a much better result for call it at least 80 percent of humanity

00:45:32.700 then the next thing is and i'm transparent about it i'm talking about it i'm giving you a chance

00:45:40.640 to critique me dialogue with me etc etc and then this is a super important thing is

00:45:47.660 I'm not like a narcissist about it.

00:45:50.540 I don't come to my theory of humanity

00:45:52.720 because I go, well, this is good for me, right?

00:45:55.360 Or I'm the most genius person in the world.

00:45:58.920 Everyone else's theory of humanity is bad.

00:46:00.520 Mine is the good one.

00:46:01.680 But no, no, no, engage in dialogue, get critique,

00:46:05.820 understand kind of what's going on for this.

00:46:09.320 That's what being a humanist for technology is, right?

00:46:13.440 And we have some, right?

00:46:15.600 great it doesn't mean that they don't make mistakes dario sam etc but they're they're

00:46:23.160 actually in fact they're committed and you can tell they're committed because they do things

00:46:27.680 that are not in their own economic self-interest and they invest in it in order to try to make it

00:46:34.140 work doesn't mean they're perfect doesn't mean it's not worth speaking up and say hey do x do

00:46:39.920 also more of x or less of y perfectly good thing to do it's part of the reason why we have the

00:46:46.180 dialogue about it to say hey the way that we try to make decisions about because the short answer

00:46:52.160 is these technologies will build by small groups of people right and we'll have humanity level

00:46:58.260 impact and you're like okay you can't then say hey we're gonna have a un global voting day

00:47:06.700 That's not the way it's going to work.

00:47:08.660 So the dialogue and bringing up the concerns about what it is, that iteration is the way that we get to being more broadly humanist.

00:47:18.660 One of the great anxieties, and you triggered it, this notion that it's a handful of people.

00:47:24.360 And we talked about the American version and at least having a chance at regulating something within our quote-unquote jurisdiction.

00:47:33.860 But regulatory capture is real.

00:47:35.600 You have just massive, obscene, off-the-charts wealth comes with massive, obscene influence to write the rules and regulations and the incumbency protection racket, to lock everything out and lock everybody out, to buy politicians.

00:47:53.580 I mean, so how does that play in?

00:47:56.700 I mean, that certainly plays, that is playing into people's anxiety in a profound and outsized way.

00:48:02.220 How do we address both and?

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00:50:27.960 When you have a kind of a tsunami like this, and this is to some degree talking to you,

00:50:33.980 talking to the Dems on this who tend to be the, oh, fight all the wealthy power.

00:50:38.080 And you're like, you need capital on your side too, right?

00:50:41.300 Politically, right?

00:50:42.880 So have that as a good theory of the game.

00:50:45.320 So the issue is say, and like, for example, and I'll come back to AI, but this is like

00:50:50.080 the mistake the Dems made with crypto, which is like, there's a huge amount of crypto wealth. 0.99

00:50:54.300 If we just go attack it and go, hey, we're just going to try to kill all of you. They go, 0.99

00:50:59.260 you're trying to kill us. Okay, we're going to vote the other way with not just our votes,

00:51:03.060 but our dollars and all the rest. And it's like, okay, that's really painful and causes

00:51:06.500 a whole bunch of bad outcomes for society. So again, you go, well, how do we shape it? It's

00:51:11.780 like, look, we're not trying to like extinguish all of you. We're trying to make sure that crypto

00:51:15.680 has the right positive function in society and they said well i can't envision anything it's

00:51:21.180 like well i come call me i can envision things right there's payments there's much cheaper

00:51:27.180 banking systems there's all kinds of things let's just shape it that direction yeah i get it you

00:51:32.220 don't like because who does like terrorist ransom coin right like like you know like there's a bunch 0.93

00:51:38.200 of bad shit we should do bad shit about that or the the question of oh well it's this random 0.97

00:51:42.980 some speculation it's like well look we do allow betting in various ways let's try to contain it 0.99

00:51:48.100 and make sure it's not too bad you know same reason why we go you know alcohol has a bunch

00:51:53.740 of bad outcomes but it's better for society if we go sure it's okay if when you get to age you drink

00:52:01.040 don't drive but it's like that kind of stuff you have to shape it right because there's certain 0.98

00:52:06.680 ways now you get to ai and you say all right an ai wealth generation it's like shit this is creating 0.93

00:52:12.840 a massive amount of economics that will have massive impact politically. 0.86

00:52:19.360 And by the way, what's shared across all this economics is a interest in not having the

00:52:26.740 economics of the AI industry like trimmed, right?

00:52:31.980 And by the way, some of that trimming is a terrible idea, which is let's just reduce

00:52:36.520 our own American wealth.

00:52:37.440 Some of it, like taxation for helping the rest of society, can be a good idea.

00:52:42.840 Right. So so it's it's and, you know, getting it right is hard, but I think it's doable.

00:52:51.080 And it's like, well, then you go to, well, who are the people who would be with me on, hey, we should tax AI in some good ways, robot tax, whatever else, or make it happen.

00:53:01.600 What are the ways we do that? So we take off some of the AI wealth that fights on our side for helping society.

00:53:08.160 and we fight against the other AI wealth that's like, no, no, no, I should take my trillion

00:53:12.960 dollars and be able to do whatever the hell I want. So easier said than done. I mean, this gets

00:53:18.100 to, and we talk about that turbulence and we talk about the transition and using your vernacular

00:53:22.940 and you've, there's a lot of conversations about, all right, if, if this does have a more pronounced

00:53:28.360 impact sooner than we anticipated, and we don't have the answer to what to do about that. And we

00:53:34.380 of the AI solution to address the AI problem in terms of that transition. This notion of

00:53:39.880 universal basic income versus universal basic capital, this notion of equity, this notion of

00:53:45.960 ownership broadly shared so that we can address some of that anxiety. We all have a stake in the

00:53:52.060 game. You tend to be on the UBC side of this equation. But the question I have for you is not

00:53:59.200 where you are on that simple question, the binary, at least in that context, which is hardly the

00:54:04.140 binary but the question i posed um is how the hell you do it who's gonna do it you think sam's

00:54:10.260 gonna he says two and a half percent you know what they're about to go public uh we've we've

00:54:14.860 called for it in california why doesn't he do it here in california let's will happily take two and 0.96

00:54:18.860 a half percent a year in this his home state that helped birth this damn industry i think he's gonna

00:54:23.340 pick up the phone after hearing this uh he might i'm like sam cares about this stuff to his credit 0.80

00:54:29.220 he put out exactly and to his credit yes he put that out yes he put that out he's been running

00:54:36.280 uh universal basic income experiments funding it himself in oakland like like like like he's here's

00:54:42.800 the moment yeah so this is a moment yeah all these ipos coming uh dario here's the moment yes no so

00:54:49.480 like i think that's a great called ass right now i actually believe of all of the open ai folks and

00:54:57.400 all of the anthropic folks they're very philanthropically minded so i think like 0.93

00:55:03.880 well the foundation i mean objectively you can you can dismiss these i get the populace

00:55:09.140 these guys yeah but they did put a foundation with the largest in the world yes exactly that

00:55:15.080 they set up yes exists yes and has tens of over a hundred billion dollars of capital today yes

00:55:21.380 exactly and so and and what i think is unlike for example take the open ai foundation i don't

00:55:27.240 think they're going to be sitting on their hands. And I actually think one of the things that you

00:55:31.300 should do, and I think California should do, it should be as, hey, you guys were only possible

00:55:40.120 because of California. We provided the platform by which you guys could do this. Could you guys

00:55:48.560 disproportionately focus on helping our state and doing stuff? We'd love to talk to you.

00:55:53.560 You're supposed to take your capital gains to Texas.

00:55:55.440 Yes.

00:55:56.400 Texas, Florida, et cetera.

00:55:58.000 It's like, you couldn't have made this without us.

00:56:01.580 Correct.

00:56:02.300 Fact.

00:56:03.020 So please contribute back.

00:56:04.880 Yeah, or contribute back without the please.

00:56:07.340 Yes.

00:56:07.740 We're grateful for the job creation, the innovation.

00:56:10.100 We're grateful for all the energy and daring.

00:56:12.060 We're very, very proud of your success.

00:56:13.780 Yes.

00:56:14.200 And please.

00:56:15.500 Yes.

00:56:15.860 And time to.

00:56:16.520 Yes.

00:56:16.840 Yes.

00:56:17.260 Right.

00:56:17.500 Because like, for example, SpaceX.

00:56:19.300 Pay it forward.

00:56:19.960 Impossible without this state.

00:56:21.680 Yeah.

00:56:21.840 tesla wouldn't exist without the regulations impossible without this state thank you right

00:56:26.020 so it's like you're welcome elon yes and thank you for your innovation and daring as well yes

00:56:30.680 by the way extremely important yes like absolutely i'm pretty sure you're gonna ask me a question

00:56:36.480 where i'm about to dump on elon but no you for good reason but this is amazing for me to have

00:56:42.260 to ask yes but why isn't i mean so let's you open that door uh why doesn't he feel this way

00:56:48.080 i mean honestly well because what what what is it you know i remember there was a different guy

00:56:54.020 though i was with someone the other day i said no he was always this guy and i said well he didn't

00:56:57.940 appear that way in the 15 interactions i had uh you know him better than anybody so look people

00:57:04.840 are dynamic so the question is where do they go as they get more power more sycophants around them

00:57:11.940 and so forth and the answer is elon became a narcissist who who he wasn't a narcissist i think

00:57:17.760 he was a small narcissist and now he's a big narcissist.

00:57:20.680 Yeah. 0.96

00:57:21.340 Right.

00:57:22.020 And like he lies through his teeth constantly.

00:57:25.320 I don't know if he,

00:57:26.380 if he tells himself stories about it,

00:57:28.780 like in a basically like the,

00:57:31.520 like,

00:57:32.000 like the whole pitiful open AI lawsuit.

00:57:35.680 Was it, 0.99

00:57:36.200 it was pathetic. 1.00

00:57:36.980 It was pathetic. 0.99

00:57:38.040 And the courts agreed. 0.98

00:57:39.420 Yes.

00:57:39.840 Well, 0.98

00:57:40.040 and it's pathetic written out large for everyone to see. 0.99

00:57:44.340 Yeah. 0.98

00:57:44.560 That's that too.

00:57:45.500 Right.

00:57:46.040 It's like, 0.99

00:57:46.420 it's a court of law with with truth in like documents depositions etc it's just pathetic 0.97

00:57:56.100 it's like the no no no like i'm trying to do anything possible to argue that you guys are 0.88

00:58:01.200 wrong and i was right and i was like no they were they were right you were wrong yeah but it's just

00:58:06.280 i mean it so it just i mean i guess it i mean it's just a classic clinical definition of narcissism

00:58:13.840 Yeah. And like, for example, he goes, I like, for example, he helps found open AI as like, we need to have AI for the benefit of humanity, not just Google. Yeah. Okay. Then he goes, oh, shit, I should have my own. So he gets AXAI started. And in a desperate bid for market share, he's like, oh, yeah, that's fine.

00:58:37.000 if we create a whole bunch of like pornographic images,

00:58:41.160 some of which are children,

00:58:43.080 you know, journalists have been reporting on this, et cetera.

00:58:45.460 And that's because it's more important

00:58:47.560 that I have this AI thing

00:58:51.200 than this damage that we're doing to children

00:58:53.840 and all the rest of this stuff.

00:58:54.820 It's like, it's crazy.

00:58:56.500 So how do I mean, by the way,

00:58:58.580 just, I mean, accelerating and fast forward,

00:59:00.760 I mean, SpaceX is a pretty remarkable company

00:59:04.580 on the basis of the facts and evidence, Starlink in particular,

00:59:08.180 from a sort of cash flow perspective, an ROI perspective.

00:59:11.700 And a goodness for society perspective.

00:59:13.560 Yeah, and by the way, I've seen that firsthand in the middle of the Amazon,

00:59:16.700 which actually really inspired and surprised me to be that, in fact,

00:59:22.160 universally awkwardly connected in the middle of the rainforest,

00:59:25.580 even more so than, frankly, out here in Silicon Valley.

00:59:28.500 But I'm curious, just, you know, with regard to SpaceX and the IPO,

00:59:33.400 I mean, there's other component parts of that that are a little more dubious and questionable. 0.98

00:59:36.820 There are folks out there deeply more cynical than I am that just call it a damn Ponzi scheme, period, full stop. 0.98

00:59:42.240 Where you are in that respect. 0.99

00:59:42.980 Krugman, for example.

00:59:43.960 Yes.

00:59:46.060 Look, so I'm a small investor, but I think it's nuts, right?

00:59:52.640 I think it's nuts.

00:59:53.400 I mean, it's like, for example, you just look at the prospectus, and the biggest part of it is payments from Anthropic for these data centers that are horrific for the environment, are badly set up in their networking equipment, that nominally he's trying to restart XAI for the third time by cursor to go somewhere.

01:00:17.020 Yeah, by cursor, $60 billion, San Francisco-based company that five years ago didn't exist.

01:00:22.960 Yes. And it's like, okay. And I'm glad he's buying Cursor. You know, great. Yeah, hopefully something will come of it.

01:00:28.980 What are they, Vibe? What is Vibe Coding? Sorry to go down this rabbit hole.

01:00:32.960 Oh, no worries.

01:00:33.540 But it's a Vibe Coding company.

01:00:35.020 Well, it's one of the early revolutionaries of how do you have AI accelerate your coding.

01:00:43.060 And Vibe Coding is a part of that. It's not the whole thing.

01:00:46.120 It's like, you know, like basically anyone who is coding who's not using AI right now, or not everyone, call it 90 plus percent.

01:00:55.280 If you're coding and not using AI, you're making a mistake, right?

01:00:59.860 So, and it's only getting better, right?

01:01:03.240 And both Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, I think Microsoft Copilot, I think will have a good entry here, are all – I think the fundamental way has changed the entire world in terms of how we operate. 0.92

01:01:23.580 so anthropics willing to buy the revenue but like that is your primary revenue thing in the thing

01:01:30.720 that you're going public on like this is in the government yes well and then you're like oh the

01:01:37.960 doj is saying they've got to drop the lawsuit because this is part of our national security

01:01:42.780 defense like well that's none of that's in their prospectus and by the way the entire xai thing

01:01:49.520 elon himself said it's a complete train wreck we're rebuilding it and i was like well you know

01:01:54.100 if you had like honor integrity you'd say well we'll hand back those government contracts because

01:01:58.040 we just said our product was a complete train wreck right it's like you know so it just it's

01:02:03.880 all corruption i mean corruption yeah i mean you just call it yeah call what it is call it what it

01:02:10.920 is we're living in the in the in the in the greatest kleptocracy of your and my lifetimes

01:02:16.000 and it's i want to circle back on that stay tuned for those that are tuning in on that because that

01:02:23.820 deserves some attention but as we we sort of bounce back and forth the anthropic data center

01:02:28.840 point you made in this notion of compute and you made the point the biggest limiting factor in

01:02:32.840 terms of the acceleration is less the chips as important as profound as they are it's really

01:02:37.820 about the compute and so it gets to the question of data centers and all the anxiety in data centers

01:02:42.800 which has actually been sort of a leading indicator of one of the reasons people have

01:02:45.880 such animus towards AI, because they connect the dots. And there's been a few studies, DC,

01:02:50.340 Maryland, that 60% of the growth of those retail or rather residential utility bills have been

01:02:56.820 attached to the issue of data center growth. So where are you in all that? I know you've said

01:03:01.020 we blamed AI for everything, but the issue of utility costs, which have been growing

01:03:06.320 separate from AI, certainly haven't been benefited from AI and data centers.

01:03:12.000 Look, I think that the clear thing for you and the other folks to do is say, look, we want to enable data centers that are net very positive contributors to communities.

01:03:23.600 So, for example, a very easy one is to say, hey, if you're building a massive data center, you have to provision power at like 130 percent.

01:03:33.900 Right.

01:03:34.920 And that 30 percent is that's amongst the things that you're contributing back.

01:03:40.160 Right.

01:03:40.640 And by the way, who should benefit from that?

01:03:45.520 Well, the local residents who should have a choice of whether or not they want that or not.

01:03:51.120 Their power bills go down as part of that.

01:03:54.900 I mean, the irony is the data centers are getting subsidies on their bills, and we're socializing an increase on everybody else's.

01:04:04.400 No, and so what it should be is you should contribute.

01:04:07.140 Look, we will help you.

01:04:08.900 Because by the way, knowing from the inside, Microsoft board and other things.

01:04:12.500 Here you are walking conflict.

01:04:14.980 Yeah.

01:04:15.920 I don't know if that's a conflict.

01:04:17.980 But information, informed.

01:04:21.120 Look, what do these hyperscalers care about?

01:04:22.960 They care about reliability, ability to construct the thing, ability to deploy it, ability to manage it the right way, et cetera.

01:04:29.180 look if you said you have to have like your cost structural increase because you have to have a

01:04:35.060 130 contribution for the power stuff they would sign that deal in a heartbeat if you if you gave

01:04:41.520 like if you you said hey and and and by the way they'd do more it's like well what are you gonna

01:04:46.600 do for local community in terms of jobs right we want we want to see something serious here

01:04:51.140 look it should it's a simple kind of like like simple set of asks and in the absence of that 0.95

01:04:57.600 they'll take what you're giving because people are chasing for these damn things virginia i think

01:05:02.220 it's 25 percent of all their base load now yes data centers yeah which is off the charts insane 0.88

01:05:07.260 yeah and so you should it should be an ask for we will help you do this stuff right these are the

01:05:13.240 things you need to do and by the way if someone else give you a better deal fine go with someone

01:05:16.840 else this notion of jobs though i mean the construction jobs are legit and we should

01:05:20.720 celebrate that and these are good high-paying jobs and uh and and careers and people bounce

01:05:26.620 around even if they're temporary um and get the benefit of that but they're not a lot of jobs on

01:05:31.380 the permanent side of this no although for example when you're going to hyperscalers let's take

01:05:35.300 microsoft the thing i would ask if i was a local area is i'd say i want you to open up a microsoft 0.96

01:05:40.160 office here now you're talking yeah just open up a microsoft so we need to be better damn

01:05:44.700 negotiators yes whereas i mean we just yeah okay i mean i'm that's i'm having a hard time arguing

01:05:51.780 with these these deeper points what about this notion of these things being what is it's the

01:05:57.940 gpus don't last very long right yeah they're just a few years but well because the next ones are so

01:06:03.000 much better right yeah so is this i mean back to froth even kkr yes big promoter in the future i

01:06:11.020 mean saying a little froth here sam said bubble mark you know i mean all these guys i mean you

01:06:16.880 You know, the Zuckerbergs of the world.

01:06:18.840 So you're like, ah, yeah.

01:06:20.480 I mean, so this knows where are you in the bubble matrix?

01:06:24.300 On the sort of frothy bubble side of this and the CapEx in this space.

01:06:28.820 And that the ROI is, you know, or is it, it's electricity to you?

01:06:33.960 So I think it's ultimately electricity where we're getting intelligence at the cost and scale of electricity.

01:06:43.160 And that's just great.

01:06:44.740 And so, for example, it's one of the reasons why a lot of the challenges are just wrong.

01:06:48.800 Like they say, well, you know, climate impact.

01:06:52.220 And you're like, well, actually, let's just make sure that AI is applying some to grid analysis and power running and so forth.

01:06:58.240 And you say, hey, if all of a sudden all of the HVACs and laundry machines and all the rest were intelligent devices that ran when it was cheap on the grid and all the rest and was doing power management, net very positive benefit.

01:07:12.800 And we've already seen Google do that with their own data centers and all the rest.

01:07:15.700 Like, it's a whole bunch of stuff there.

01:07:17.760 And I think the same thing in terms of ultimately, that doesn't mean that there won't be some things that are Ponzi schemes and some things that are major economic losses.

01:07:28.720 But a bubble is, oh, this isn't sustainable.

01:07:34.380 It all just kind of falls down and it has domino effects to other things.

01:07:37.920 Right. The short answer is like Anthropics revenue is limited by its compute. It has more demand that it can provide right now. And and so that like this isn't like, oh, no one wants this. It's no, no. This intelligence at the scale and cost of electricity is massively useful, massively wanted.

01:08:00.560 So it doesn't mean you say, well, maybe we built that data center for $50 billion and it actually ends up being worth $40 billion.

01:08:10.420 And we've got some operating losses.

01:08:12.700 But, by the way, in operating it, it operates profitably and all the rest, and we just have to take a charge down.

01:08:18.720 That's not a bubble.

01:08:20.100 That's volatility in a market.

01:08:22.380 Yeah.

01:08:22.700 What do you make of a market which is so fierce in the competition?

01:08:27.180 This notion of superintelligence, this race to this holy grail, and then in a nanosecond, I shut every competitor down.

01:08:34.420 I quite literally talk about the Messiah complex.

01:08:36.960 I own the world in my palm of my hand, maybe literally.

01:08:42.560 That a company like Google and Gemini are uniquely positioned against an anthropic, against open AI and others,

01:08:52.560 Just on the token question, that they can sort of do what companies, Amazon, infamously, many other companies do, and that's just gut their competition and price them out by lowering the cost below their actual cost and have tokens as loss leaders until they bleed out their competition.

01:09:10.280 Well, they definitely are the cheapest price tokens of the major stuff today, and it's not having that much of an impact.

01:09:18.020 Interesting.

01:09:19.140 Right.

01:09:19.400 That's what relates to this.

01:09:20.760 Yeah.

01:09:21.200 Right.

01:09:21.420 So it isn't to say it's not an issue to pay attention to, but like, for example, when people kind of check token costs across, call it, you know, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, Google is by far and away the cheapest, but the heat and usage is still in OpenAI and Anthropic.

01:09:43.440 And by the way, within the enterprise context, Microsoft, right?

01:09:47.640 And so, yes, that's a worry, but it's not really playing out that way.

01:09:52.100 Now, some of it is, you know, for example, you know, Google missed the curve on the coding agent thing, right?

01:10:00.140 Some of it's, you know, kind of other things.

01:10:02.300 Google – and look, I'll just – so it just doesn't look like I'm Microsoft, you know, dumping on Google.

01:10:09.260 Like Google missed a bunch of different productization things.

01:10:12.480 So did Microsoft, right?

01:10:13.960 So it's like, you know, there's a bunch of stuff there.

01:10:17.060 And so did OpenAI.

01:10:18.220 I mean, is there investing in Sora?

01:10:19.880 Yes.

01:10:20.420 And what is it?

01:10:21.420 What was it?

01:10:21.940 Banana something?

01:10:22.840 I like it.

01:10:23.560 Nano banana.

01:10:24.160 Nano banana.

01:10:25.160 Google. 0.86

01:10:26.520 Meanwhile, Anthropic sort of plugging along.

01:10:28.820 Yeah.

01:10:29.080 No, no.

01:10:29.780 Like last year and this year, year of Anthropic.

01:10:32.380 Right.

01:10:32.920 Right.

01:10:33.240 What happened with Mythos?

01:10:34.180 What did it mean to you?

01:10:35.180 Was it overhyped?

01:10:36.240 Was it Adario?

01:10:37.760 Once again, Doomscall.

01:10:39.300 Yeah, here.

01:10:39.860 I mean, is it, you know, was it just the friction of just anyone's sort of pushing back against

01:10:45.980 pete hexa and trump and so they need to be banished is it elon making the calls in this 0.98

01:10:51.360 competition in sax saying we want these son of bitch shut down what is what does mythos represent 0.97

01:10:55.660 to you so mythos is i think both real and overhyped right it's it's it's a weird i don't think i've 0.97

01:11:01.940 ever said that sentence before and it's real because they tuned they had a coding sharp lead

01:11:08.800 they tuned it to cyber um that was a genius and genius for both and they did the responsible

01:11:16.920 thing of saying hey let's try to allow a bunch of different places which are critical infrastructure

01:11:21.980 which are both within the kind of public sphere and also private sphere banking etc let's make

01:11:27.900 sure that all that is hardened early before this stuff is and we're doing a very responsible roll

01:11:33.040 out for all that and that's the the real and then the overhyped is you know like you know it would

01:11:39.380 be the end of the you know it would just be catastrophe if it came out and you're like yeah

01:11:44.760 i don't think it's quite that i just think it's like more train wrecks right like there would be

01:11:50.080 some real costs but i don't think it would be the you know end of civilization or anything else

01:11:54.100 now um what i think that happened is because you know anthropics trying to be responsible

01:12:01.840 possible. As far as I understand, from the outside, looking at the administration,

01:12:07.860 there's a lot of different people jockeying for control in the AI sphere. There's people who are

01:12:13.860 like, oh, we hate all tech. We hate big tech. Let's just close all this AI stuff down. That's

01:12:19.260 like Bannon, et cetera. There's people who are like, oh, this is a commercial thing. I should

01:12:24.140 own it. It's like Bessent, et cetera. There's, you know, Sachs going, there should be no controls

01:12:29.360 here the only way that ai becomes american intelligence is there's zero control you know

01:12:34.160 and so like there's a melee within the uh within the white house to which tends to really only the

01:12:41.880 the factions that tend to ultimately win is you know is there a big payoff for someone in a

01:12:45.920 kleptocracy right so i think and they don't like anthropic because they also like to be the we are

01:12:52.840 the big, you know, swinging, you know, things, right, in this.

01:12:58.460 And we don't like that they're not rolling over and going, you know,

01:13:01.860 yes, sir, you're my master.

01:13:03.460 And they're like, they're principled.

01:13:05.320 And by the way, we live in a country by which, you know,

01:13:09.780 kind of individuals, citizens, organizations, companies

01:13:14.380 must follow the law, but the law is not, 0.99

01:13:18.280 I do whatever the fuck you tell me to do, right? 0.94

01:13:20.860 It's we follow the law. 0.99

01:13:22.560 Yes.

01:13:22.840 right both and yes yes and so of law well we'll get to the rule of don later but yes exactly

01:13:29.120 and so so their principle about that and that's what they were trying to hold up to and what they

01:13:34.780 were doing and it was like no no you must do what we tell you to do it's like no not necessarily

01:13:39.280 right you know and so so it's like ah we have an option to show them who's boss right right you 0.67

01:13:46.640 know like ah i don't think that's that by the way frankly i think that's un-american we should be

01:13:51.840 celebrating achievements of americans of things that we do and so forth and it's like to say no

01:13:57.280 no you must be following hair leaders commands whoever hair leader is whether it's a you know

01:14:04.040 uh you know uh left wing version right wing version whatever yes it's like no no it's like

01:14:10.340 we follow a rule of law together there you go um so sam took advantage of this from a competitive

01:14:18.400 perspective at open ai and said we're good yeah what'd you make of that uh i wish he called me

01:14:24.280 beforehand yes that was a mistake yeah it didn't didn't go over well yeah well so um maybe

01:14:31.780 drunk folks it did i haven't talked to sam about this yet partially because it all happened very

01:14:36.200 quickly and then i was like and then it happened at that point showing up and saying i wouldn't

01:14:40.080 have done this it's like not very constructive and helpful um you know i undoubtedly part of

01:14:45.860 what sam's trying to do say look if the if the good principled people like you know anthropic

01:14:51.540 and open ai bow out then it's only left to the unprincipled people like xai i get it it's a

01:14:57.720 challenging issue it's not straightforward okay but this would be a would have been a very good

01:15:02.960 chance to say no no all of us principled companies should stand together and we should sort this all

01:15:09.240 all together right and so we're like we're not going to jump in we also think these principles

01:15:16.160 and and what happened is he quickly deluded himself that was like oh this is solvable

01:15:20.200 technically it's like no the anthropic people are good technically too they're from open ai

01:15:24.860 and he was oh shit that doesn't work yeah yeah that's the reason why anthropic was going we're

01:15:29.820 not going to do it this way right and so it's like and you know the part of what happens is 0.98

01:15:36.460 The competition gets so ferocious that it's like the, oh, I'm just competing.

01:15:41.620 It's like, no, no.

01:15:42.380 There are some places you put the competition aside.

01:15:45.580 And when it's humanity and society, you put the competition aside.

01:15:49.620 Amen.

01:15:50.900 What they're not putting aside at OpenAI is this notion of AI into the physical space.

01:15:56.820 They're actually trying to lean into that, partnerships with Johnny and others.

01:16:02.360 and that gets even to what elon's doing and dexterity robots the robots are coming physical

01:16:09.360 ai we're seeing it manifest in you know driverless cars driverless planes or flightless planes or

01:16:15.580 pilotless planes certainly or at least flying cars in the vernacular of the jetsons which is

01:16:21.960 interesting they're doing a reboot of the jetsons seems to make some sense in this world that we're

01:16:25.760 I suspect it'll be a little bit more mixed than the Jepsen, just in the current cultural context.

01:16:34.060 I suggest you're right, or believe you're right.

01:16:36.580 So where is the physical AI?

01:16:38.720 I mean, we could talk about robots as a separate thing, but what do you think?

01:16:41.360 I mean, I don't know.

01:16:42.920 What do you think where Sam's going with OpenAI and the partners for Johnny Ivey and others in terms of designing some really revolutionary,

01:16:52.780 there's sort of an apple-esque uh you know steve jobs johnny sort of this is you know imagining

01:16:59.580 the future without the constraints of what you already know eraser mania forget what you already

01:17:03.580 know design a project a product for the for the ai agents not constrained by the thinking of the

01:17:08.780 past so just like within a small number of years none of us will be doing anything that's like

01:17:15.660 knowledge or information work without having multiple ai agents that we are managing a

01:17:21.160 workflow and so doing and that's small n five maybe right like you know there's no longer such

01:17:27.360 a thing as a human individual contributor there's a human manager of agents maybe working on a team

01:17:32.400 with other humans managing agents and all the rest and all the you know and there's what's

01:17:37.060 happening that's an amazing transformation um there will be within a small number of years

01:17:45.860 some amazing AI bringing into the work, into a workplace?

01:17:52.880 Will it be the kind of Johnny, you know,

01:17:55.900 reimagination of the phone, et cetera, kind of thing?

01:17:59.220 Will it be the rebirth of manufacturing in America

01:18:05.040 through robotics and all the rest?

01:18:08.100 Will it be autonomous vehicles, which, you know,

01:18:10.820 will bring enormous health savings, deaths, other kinds of things, enormous.

01:18:21.700 And by the way, there's obviously job transitions.

01:18:23.980 Although, by the way, we're short a lot of truck drivers.

01:18:27.940 Yeah, which is remarkable.

01:18:29.520 Because it hasn't come yet at scale.

01:18:32.040 But it's coming, right?

01:18:33.120 Yes, yeah.

01:18:33.760 But by the way, even if all truck manufacturers started manufacturing

01:18:37.680 only autonomous trucks today it's at least 10 years before there's over half of the trucks

01:18:42.800 in the road are autonomous right so it's like so there's even there's a there's adjustment right

01:18:47.860 and so um so all the stuff and we want it right i get it's that people say well i don't want

01:18:53.880 disruption i want disruption of what i want robots yeah i want my humanoid robot i do yes you actually

01:18:59.380 you do right it doesn't mean you want every different version of them right right but like

01:19:04.420 for example like take autonomous vehicles like like we have over 40 000 deaths per year that

01:19:11.460 doesn't count injuries maiming etc etc right like that's a cost in human lives what's more you go

01:19:18.940 well you care about environment well if you can actually in fact have the grid manage all the

01:19:24.200 more efficiently massive environmental impact right so you want all that and it's like yes

01:19:29.120 and by the way you said well what happens the truck driver jobs like well one not a lot of 0.87

01:19:33.100 people doing them they hate the fucking jobs and then two yes the central thing we should be doing 0.87

01:19:38.960 in this this age of ai revolution is how do we help figure out large swath of people like get 0.97

01:19:46.560 new kinds of jobs whether it's entrepreneurial new starts whether it's things that we're doing

01:19:51.440 with society whether it's like all of that stuff we need to lean in heavily to because the jobs

01:19:56.940 will be changing and most people say legitimately i like my job i don't want it to change and you're

01:20:02.960 like, yeah, it happens. Right. And we'll help. Right. But that's, that's, I think how it.

01:20:11.040 Hey, I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb. Together, we're going to have

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01:20:42.180 The Jonas Brothers here.

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01:22:51.280 Listen to I Am Rap Report on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:22:57.480 So much of the focus and you, as you're speaking, got me thinking about even your two AI companies that you've that you've founded, co-founded.

01:23:11.380 Yeah. Not all those others that I think everyone we've named you've you've invested in.

01:23:15.840 Yes. It's just we can get to that in a minute.

01:23:19.640 But this so much of our time and energy.

01:23:23.220 I was talking to Ezra Klein about this and back east a week or two ago.

01:23:26.860 And he said, it'd be good to mix in, I'm paraphrasing him, and I don't want to talk out of school, some of the good stuff along the lines of what you now are sprinkling in.

01:23:36.940 And you're investing very directly just in the area that we, you know, you talked about 20, 30 years ago, people were focused on the issue of breakthroughs in medicine.

01:23:45.580 Yes.

01:23:46.160 Breakthroughs.

01:23:46.620 I mean, I can live longer, healthier life.

01:23:49.740 So, I mean, where are we?

01:23:51.700 Let's talk.

01:23:52.200 Let's now paint a more positive picture of what AI can do for good for society, not just for Elon.

01:23:59.500 So he's worth $6 trillion by the time my daughter graduates college.

01:24:04.280 Yes, exactly.

01:24:05.520 So Manus AI, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Ujwal Singh, and I have co-founded.

01:24:10.920 And the idea is to create a drug discovery factory with AI.

01:24:13.760 and it's the best shot i think we have seen ever in human history for doing a lot of cancer curing

01:24:20.900 and a bunch of other things too because ai it's like a search problem biology is more complicated

01:24:27.740 than all of this other shit right it's like like it's like well you know there's there's more moves

01:24:33.620 in go than there's atoms in the universe and yeah goes as a child simplicity tool relative biology 0.92

01:24:40.760 but now that we got scale compute it's like okay what's the thing that is going wrong with leukemia

01:24:47.980 can we find something that like allows us to monitor stuff early allows us to figure out

01:24:54.820 what might be going wrong and something that might be an easy therapeutic that might be as

01:25:00.680 simple as an injection or a pill because you create a small molecule an antibody a protein

01:25:06.820 et cetera, that can bind with the, you know, kind of the thing that's going wrong and disable

01:25:15.200 the bad thing and not have serious toxic side effects. That's a difficult search problem.

01:25:23.080 And right now what we have is we have, and by the way, I think we'll continue to have

01:25:26.640 genius clinician, PhDs, researchers doing stuff. I don't think it takes away their job,

01:25:33.660 but we have them like it's like they're doing all the computation by hand and they're trying

01:25:39.380 to be brilliant and figure out something so like figuring this out takes them a decade to have a

01:25:44.660 maybe i've got i spent a decade and i got one maybe right well ai can now go all right here are

01:25:51.940 like i did today's compute i generated a hundred maybes let's sort through which of these things

01:25:58.740 might be worth looking at more,

01:26:00.720 which are, I should earn it more, et cetera.

01:26:03.140 And how do we run that through the entire process

01:26:06.840 by which we do?

01:26:07.900 Of course, we want to do safety checking and so forth.

01:26:10.340 And is our theory that it is non-toxic?

01:26:14.580 Okay, we've included that in our search

01:26:17.160 and how the AI works, but let's test it, right?

01:26:20.820 And let's run through it.

01:26:21.860 Like we should have that

01:26:23.060 because that's part of what makes our metasysism.

01:26:24.980 Like we have the envy of the world

01:26:28.240 in the pre-RFK Jr. FDA,

01:26:32.820 kind of like gold-plated medicine.

01:26:38.740 It's one reason, like if it's accepted here,

01:26:41.160 it's accepted everywhere.

01:26:43.380 And let's keep our rigorous standards.

01:26:48.800 Maybe we could figure out

01:26:49.820 how to make it more efficient in various ways.

01:26:51.580 I think that's a good thing to do.

01:26:54.240 And then deliver more medicines.

01:26:57.000 And by the way,

01:26:57.380 this is part of like the AI for humanity is if you said like, and you know,

01:27:01.760 I don't know, like what I will categorically assert is AI has the best shot in

01:27:08.120 human history of curing all cancer. Right.

01:27:12.400 Like if we, if we could deliver even on a percentage of that, right.

01:27:17.100 That's huge. Have we though? I mean, we've been saying this for a few years.

01:27:21.760 And there's exponent. I mean, I feel like AI is exponent. Are you, I mean,

01:27:26.080 I know we're always just right around the corner.

01:27:29.000 Here we are, just fusions, just a few weeks.

01:27:31.580 It's like the Iranians are just, you know, they're right there with fusion. 0.92

01:27:36.200 Fusion is three years out. 1.00

01:27:37.140 Just in a couple weeks away, yeah, whatever.

01:27:39.000 So where are we?

01:27:40.320 So at Manus AI, we have some of the world's brightest computational chemists.

01:27:48.420 And some of the chemistry that the AI has been saying, how about this?

01:27:52.500 They're like, that's really interesting.

01:27:54.780 That might work.

01:27:56.080 I've never seen that before.

01:27:57.560 And that gets exciting.

01:27:58.480 Yeah, and we're calling this the Move 37 off AlphaGo

01:28:02.300 of we're getting maybe Move 37 chemistry, right?

01:28:06.440 So it's a very interesting,

01:28:08.500 like it's like, that's interesting.

01:28:11.180 And how do we socialize?

01:28:12.500 I mean, that was the point Ezra was making to me.

01:28:14.760 It's one thing again, just in the hands of you, sir.

01:28:18.720 God bless you.

01:28:19.760 I'd rather you than these others.

01:28:21.440 But the point being, how does, you know,

01:28:23.680 It's a compute for the UC system and the CSUs and for 40 million Americans in California, for 350 million Americans, for society writ large.

01:28:36.420 It's not about monetization.

01:28:38.420 It's not just about the commercialization in the context of an ROI that is numeric.

01:28:44.300 And I know there's the sort of free enterprise case that that is, you know, we don't even get into the larger philosophical point.

01:28:51.620 Well, one of the things I think is important for everyone to think about is we don't have the AI revolution except through the commercial sector.

01:29:00.360 The capabilities of doing it in any other sector than the commercial sector do not exist.

01:29:05.140 Because what you need is you need to be able to apply scale teams with scale resources.

01:29:12.720 And like scale teams, I mean thousands of people, tens of thousands of people.

01:29:16.000 Scale resources, billions to hundreds of billions in risk environment.

01:29:21.620 where a lot of this will fail as you're going no other sector other than the commercial sector can

01:29:27.700 do it and and that's because people go well sure i'll build a billion dollars here that i might lose

01:29:33.020 right because i'm not going to then be castigated for it or else because it's like look it's my

01:29:38.200 billion dollars i'm trying to do it etc and that's part of what gets to the scale compute scale data

01:29:42.400 centers and all the rest now so what we when we think about this is we say how well how do we

01:29:47.720 shape it now back to some of your earlier questions about like well what should you know

01:29:53.000 folks in your chair be doing like what we want and in your conversation with ezra what we want

01:29:59.620 in short order is at minimum three assistants uh given to every citizen state country etc

01:30:08.000 one medical one legal one educational and we want them to be very competent and we want them to be

01:30:15.100 essentially equivalently free.

01:30:18.200 It doesn't matter if it's like a low cost.

01:30:21.480 It doesn't matter if it's like ad subsidized.

01:30:23.300 It doesn't matter like whatever.

01:30:24.900 And it can be done without the state paying anything.

01:30:29.760 Because if you go to, say, Google, Microsoft,

01:30:33.800 OpenAI, Anthropic, and you say,

01:30:36.640 look, if you're willing to build this

01:30:40.180 on what you're doing,

01:30:41.920 what would you want from us

01:30:44.080 that would make it worth your while to do it.

01:30:48.660 Because, by the way, the money you'd get from us,

01:30:50.880 you don't care about relative to all the money you're getting.

01:30:53.140 Like, just being paid,

01:30:54.740 we don't have to spend public money on this.

01:30:56.780 What do you want from us?

01:30:57.640 They might say, well, you know,

01:31:00.560 we've got some permitting problems

01:31:03.120 in these three data centers.

01:31:04.320 Well, as long as you clear with the local community,

01:31:06.680 jobs, electricity, so forth,

01:31:08.280 we'll help you with your permitting problems

01:31:09.700 if you do this, right?

01:31:12.100 Or, oh, well, look, we would love to be in the healthcare business, but the medical liability stuff is so intense.

01:31:18.680 Could you give us a channel of safe harbor that could be by an independent review committee that you set up from the amazing hospital system in California and say, hey, give us parameters of safe harbor to operate.

01:31:34.560 And if you give that, then we'll be learning and we'll be building an industry off this.

01:31:37.640 great and then we will provide a medical assistant that's 24 7 available to every citizen of

01:31:44.820 california maybe every i prefer the u.s but we're here sitting here in california fine anything of

01:31:51.140 that because then by the way i have access to this kind of medical thing of 24 7 i can call a doctor

01:31:58.460 and get an answer for something i need very few people have that right right i would love it if

01:32:05.520 Every single person had it for their kids, for their partners, for their grandparents, for their family members, for their friends, et cetera.

01:32:12.620 And by the way, these things can give really good medical advice.

01:32:17.600 No medical advice is perfect, but they can give really good medical advice.

01:32:20.880 So there's medical advice.

01:32:22.020 And so it's like take the kind of medical thing that only the ultra-wealthy have access to and make it democratically available, like every citizen, legal assistant, right?

01:32:33.360 Like, okay, currently, like, law is expensive, right?

01:32:40.200 And so currently, like, when a person is kind of going into, like, signing a rental contract or an employment contract or anything else, most people can't afford lawyers, right?

01:32:52.740 And they're like, I trust that it probably works out.

01:32:54.900 It's okay, et cetera, right?

01:32:58.100 Well, legal assistant.

01:32:59.800 Like, it will help you with your rights, with what goes on, with how to interface this.

01:33:06.480 Like, that's why we have these laws, to help protect you.

01:33:10.320 Now we have an agent that can help navigate that and say, we want to make sure that's provided to every citizen.

01:33:18.500 Nice.

01:33:19.240 Right?

01:33:19.580 And then education, same thing.

01:33:21.200 And the same thing with education.

01:33:22.480 So we talk about democratization.

01:33:25.120 And, you know, I've had a strong theory that it's the same fight, that if order to save democracy, which I've been particularly passionate about, Prop 50 redistricting and pushing back against what's happening in Washington, D.C., that we have to democratize the economy.

01:33:40.480 That this notion, again, of just concentrated wealth, I'm joking about the six billion trillion dollars.

01:33:45.240 I mean, I think it's realistic.

01:33:47.220 You know, maybe not my oldest daughter, graduation, but certainly my youngest son, that will see that.

01:33:55.680 You already have 10% of people that own two-thirds of the wealth.

01:33:57.960 You have a 30-year-old that's not doing better than his or her parents for the first time in American history.

01:34:02.720 There's just growing anxiety between the imbalance between the rich and the poor.

01:34:06.440 You've got 20 states that's still $7.25 minimum wage, people working full-time that are ending up on welfare.

01:34:13.160 I talk about corporate subsidies, so those corporations are getting benefit of that.

01:34:17.500 You talked in terms, you used the word kleptocracy that a lot of people are using right now.

01:34:23.680 and i talked about regulatory capture and i talked about that concentration of wealth

01:34:28.080 ultimately becomes concentration of political power etc what do you make of the world we're

01:34:32.680 living in today what do you make of the state of our union in relationship to all of this

01:34:38.740 well you know i always when a new administration kind of comes in the power even when i disagree

01:34:50.760 intensely campaign against i'm quiet initially because i want them to be successful we want

01:34:56.560 i agree right it's like we want for society for citizens 100 and it's just like like the level of

01:35:07.540 like call it chernobyl squared catastrophe is just huge it's like no one has a theory that

01:35:17.620 tariffs lead to better economics for your average citizen bannon does well yeah maybe he doesn't

01:35:25.080 buy eggs and gasoline you know and so uh you know no one who understands how economics and economies

01:35:33.300 work yes right and so um and it just it just goes down the list and then you get to the

01:35:38.440 like like the absurdity of like maybe the like the iconic one is uh you know when trump's being

01:35:46.520 And given the plane, even Laura Loomer leaves the plane, leaves the boat?

01:35:52.500 No, no, don't accept that.

01:35:53.880 By the way, we are a huge investor in that plane.

01:35:58.360 Not just the $400 million the Qatari government gave to Trump, but the $900, almost $1 billion in the Pentagon budget to retrofit it was also appropriated.

01:36:10.620 And that is a plane he will take with him.

01:36:12.880 Yes.

01:36:13.120 Yes, to the foundation.

01:36:14.220 He will take with him.

01:36:15.680 Yes.

01:36:15.920 yes exactly so like it just like it's it's just it's it's it's it's not just i think frankly

01:36:23.180 illegal but it's gross and un-american right i mean it's not it's like what we stand for

01:36:30.040 is not the rip off everything that you can out of the public coffers to benefit yourselves but

01:36:37.660 that's happening and these are your old friends yeah some of these were my old friends yeah i

01:36:42.180 I mean, I knew some of these guys when they seem to be completely indulgent in this.

01:36:47.160 It's not just showing up.

01:36:49.540 They're the beneficiaries of this.

01:36:52.100 Like it's the thing I mentioned earlier is like, you know, Elon acknowledges that the XAI stuff is a complete train wreck catastrophe.

01:36:58.480 And you're like, OK, well, hand back your government contracts.

01:37:01.660 That would be the honorable thing to do.

01:37:03.760 And by the way, I'm, you know, that's against my own, you know, very small shareholder interest.

01:37:09.360 Well, small with large is not small to the rest of us, but I appreciate your point.

01:37:13.860 Yes.

01:37:14.360 But why the hell are they doing it?

01:37:15.380 I mean, seriously, it's not just Elon.

01:37:16.920 It's all these. 0.97

01:37:18.000 I mean, I've got knee pads right there for sale on my Patriot site for a damn reason. 0.97

01:37:22.800 I had to go. 0.97

01:37:23.420 I dropped your note.

01:37:24.240 I love this.

01:37:25.060 God bless you, man.

01:37:25.720 I mean, not everyone does.

01:37:27.080 But it wasn't just for the CEOs and these brand names, but it's for law firms talking about law.

01:37:32.560 It's about the universities that we're selling out.

01:37:34.720 It's about, you know, all these folks that you used to count on selling their soul to get the deal.

01:37:41.120 Yeah.

01:37:41.300 I don't know how these people look at themselves in the mirror.

01:37:43.940 I mean, it's like, look, it's what's the price of your honor, your integrity, your ethics.

01:37:49.760 This is crazy, right?

01:37:51.300 Like, and look, if you're a citizen that has any, you know, power, which basically is all of these people, including myself, no, no, state of your principles.

01:38:01.260 Some of the most powerful people in the world.

01:38:04.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:38:04.720 and they're falling prey to this bullshit yeah and it's they're bending down and they're 0.99

01:38:08.820 rationalizing it oh the the dems would be worse and you're like in what planet right like like 0.99

01:38:15.680 like is the sky purple where you live i mean what like what's what what's going on it's probably

01:38:21.440 red the the you know and so uh you know it's kind of the the question of like how do you defend this

01:38:30.860 stuff i mean it's it's it's it's like for example the iranian war will have massive

01:38:39.520 implicate uh impact on your average american citizen you know even as humrose opens the the

01:38:46.480 ships haven't been haven't been going for you know months we're we're not like i i appreciate

01:38:52.680 the fact that the market's like oh we're really hopeful it's back and we're gonna lower lower

01:38:56.620 the price of oil futures this will work through yeah i mean well there's some estimates over you

01:39:01.720 if you look at the total cost is over a trillion dollars not the 50 billion yes that's the direct

01:39:06.220 cost the cost that have been born yes globally yes to all the rest of us and that's to every

01:39:11.820 american citizen yeah right and then the notion of oh well uh because like the classic one is

01:39:18.940 a all apologies accepted because i i know this is not true of you um you know and and actually many

01:39:26.160 politicians but they go all politicians are corrupt trump's just more more straightforward

01:39:30.000 yeah right and you're like no he's gonna he does it openly yes at least he's a man that's he's the

01:39:37.600 most transparent yes president everyone was getting planes he's just the first one who's acknowledging

01:39:43.620 it's like no that's not the case not the case right not the case and so and by the way you

01:39:49.060 know someone who says hey um uh you like whatever politician acts oh you misreported that you

01:39:57.760 probably should have said hey this weekend was a gift okay small dollars what do you think that

01:40:04.960 corruption like like like like people think about it would you have been bought off by that no it

01:40:11.120 was a mistake okay these things can happen someone gets you a billion dollars in crypto

01:40:17.220 you know yeah yes you're bought period yeah yeah well we get to the uae and then the fact they got

01:40:24.640 high value chips in return yes that were denied in the previous administration exactly only after

01:40:29.680 world liberty financial deal yes and all that and how well i can go down a litany of lists including

01:40:35.400 just the ufc fight and how it was paid bonuses were paid in the trump backed crypto so exactly

01:40:40.160 can't make this stuff up also you can't make up the fact that you you know you must have tell me

01:40:46.420 the truth did you feel an inclination at first you're like all right i'm going to turn the page

01:40:51.600 a lot of my friends are going to the inaugural um you know even if i'm not invited you know

01:40:58.460 you know we wish this guy success maybe he's different this time maybe he learned his lesson

01:41:04.940 after all you know being on the receiving end of you know so much stress uh during the biden years

01:41:11.480 yes um you must have gotten calls from friends of yours that did go it was like reed brother i'm

01:41:18.000 just doing this because it's the right thing to do for my company i'm a fiduciary what i mean what

01:41:23.680 how did you you chose not to do any of that you're paying a price for that i want to talk about that

01:41:28.440 briefly but you chose not to most folks chose to yeah so look i think the important thing is

01:41:36.520 to say look and and people may not realize it's like people can see that you're you're

01:41:45.600 what's the price that you're putting on your own honesty and frankly the only kind of price i do

01:41:55.240 except for my honesty is is is saving millions of children if there was something where i were

01:42:00.720 where you say okay this would save millions of children you're not going to be dishonest okay

01:42:03.900 i would take that trade contrast that to doge and usa id cuts yeah 500 000 children yeah

01:42:11.280 probably dead dead because of that yeah right great job ilan your ipo yeah i'm the defender

01:42:18.520 of children well i see lots of corpses right and so um the i i think that the the look the

01:42:29.900 exhortation is look at yourself in the mirror and see it and by the way if the person goes i look at

01:42:34.080 myself in the mirror i'm just fine because i don't care then then we have to speak about it and that's

01:42:38.860 part of the reason i wouldn't go that's part of the reason i don't like you know i got these funny

01:42:44.640 phone calls from people saying hey you know for uh 20 million dollars the right thing i can make

01:42:50.900 your your your trump problems go away and you literally got a call yeah yeah like don't donate

01:42:55.920 to this or that equivalent of a ballroom at the time yes exactly and it's like i can make your

01:43:01.360 things this is sick yeah this is happening it happens yes it's it's it it is it's like like

01:43:07.400 that is un-american right i stand for what the country like aspires to be and should be 0.99

01:43:14.040 this is corrupt this is fucked no possibility and you and i share something sadly in common which 0.98

01:43:21.440 It's just the elephant in the room. 0.99

01:43:23.100 So it would be either of us.

01:43:25.280 We can act like it didn't exist.

01:43:26.560 We can edit it and say, but the Department of Justice.

01:43:30.340 Yes, which is being instrumented as a personal and corrupted to a personal attack vehicle for President Trump.

01:43:41.020 In your case, it's political opponents, right?

01:43:43.700 Which is, no, our whole point from George Washington's, you know, seeding of power and what this country stands for is we do not allow the instrument of state to try to corrupt the political process for people running for office.

01:44:00.540 Oh, no, no, I'm going to stand up because, like, what's the basis of your Department of Justice investigation?

01:44:07.720 Like, do you have any evidence?

01:44:10.220 Do you have anything? 0.67

01:44:11.140 No, no, we'll just harass them.

01:44:12.880 We'll just, we're going to look for something.

01:44:14.880 And we're not going to look for something in red states.

01:44:18.060 We're not going to look for something.

01:44:19.020 We're going to look for something in, oh, who are the people who might be running for office?

01:44:23.000 Let's look for them, right, that are running against us.

01:44:26.040 Right.

01:44:26.260 Or those that donate.

01:44:28.060 Yes.

01:44:28.780 To the other team.

01:44:29.620 Yeah.

01:44:30.080 Well, this one is crazy.

01:44:31.680 So, look, I have the honor of being called out three times by, you know, Trump for, and Trump administration.

01:44:39.920 Actually, twice by Trump and once most recently, kind of indirectly, for like investigation.

01:44:47.700 The first one was Antifa, which is like an organization that they can't name a member of, an activity of, a leader of, an attributable action, et cetera.

01:44:59.400 But whatever that is, maybe I've been financing it.

01:45:01.720 You're like, what are you talking about?

01:45:04.040 So you've been doing – how many years you've been financing Antifa?

01:45:06.860 Yeah.

01:45:07.060 Well, like – and can you point it out to me?

01:45:09.440 I would love to see it.

01:45:10.780 As far as I know, I have never financed anything even remotely in the same universe, but whatever.

01:45:19.080 So now most recently, some lawyers for E. Jean Carroll came to me and said,

01:45:24.280 we have a woman who is the victim of sexual assault, who is being slandered and attacked and wants to go to court.

01:45:34.880 and would you like make a 501c donation by the way totally legal to finance legal cases by the

01:45:42.520 way it would even been financed a little legal cases to say hey i get a percentage of the

01:45:46.240 proceeds that's actually it's like no no i think what's important here is that a that that a a vic

01:45:53.240 a survivor of sexual assault can have her day in court with an american jury who makes the decision

01:46:01.500 Yes, that is an important thing as being Americans.

01:46:06.340 I will finance that, right?

01:46:09.020 Versus financing a ballroom.

01:46:10.720 Yes, versus financing a ballroom.

01:46:11.900 And I have no economics.

01:46:13.060 I was literally like, if economics come back from it, she is the survivor.

01:46:18.560 She should get that, right?

01:46:20.400 Like, I am just helping her have her, you know, kind of ability to speak her truth in court.

01:46:27.280 12 jurors, probably at least three of them were Trump voters, right?

01:46:31.500 you know, twice demonstrated as, nope, quick, universal,

01:46:36.460 you know, like the entire journey went, yep, this is bad.

01:46:42.040 And now, because it's like, wow, you know,

01:46:45.060 so now the DOJ should be investigating this.

01:46:49.020 First, they started with, we'll investigate E. Jean Carroll, right?

01:46:52.880 And you're like, so wait, you're investigating the survivor

01:46:57.460 and the victim of sexual assault,

01:47:00.880 which an American jury has found in favor of.

01:47:06.740 So you as the DOJ are investigating her.

01:47:09.640 And they're like, oh, no, no, no,

01:47:10.260 we're investigating the funder, right?

01:47:12.920 Well, for what, right?

01:47:15.740 Like, you know, I was like,

01:47:19.480 and by the way, would I do it again?

01:47:21.260 Yes.

01:47:22.180 Like a woman who has been assaulted

01:47:26.360 by a very powerful, rich man, she should have her ability to speak her truth through a jury.

01:47:34.580 So I love the clarity. I would even do it again. I mean, you've been defiant. You said,

01:47:39.220 quote unquote, I will not bend the knee. Your lawyers may have said, hey, Reed, why don't we

01:47:44.680 just, you know, why don't we, why don't we simmer it down a little bit here and see if we can work

01:47:49.560 something out? Why do you feel you need to be so clear and defiant in respect?

01:47:53.280 Look, my lawyers, who are extremely good, said, you have the following risks.

01:47:58.400 But one of the things I love about my lawyers is they said, and we admire the fact that you're doing the right thing.

01:48:05.020 That period.

01:48:05.640 And that's part of the reason that they like to work with me. 0.95

01:48:07.320 Goddamn right. 0.96

01:48:07.760 Goddamn right. 0.98

01:48:08.520 Yeah. 0.87

01:48:09.240 And this thing's playing out in real time.

01:48:11.440 This is just a few weeks ago.

01:48:12.540 They went after you.

01:48:13.180 Exactly.

01:48:14.560 Yeah.

01:48:14.780 And so, as you know, maybe it's still going.

01:48:18.280 Maybe it's not.

01:48:18.940 Who knows?

01:48:19.860 Who knows?

01:48:23.280 really a hell of a journey this conversation's been around the globe. And I'd be remiss if I

01:48:30.140 didn't just circle back on one final thing, and that is you're over under assessment. You've been

01:48:37.080 a lifelong Democrat. You've been trying to sort of work with the party from within, trying to

01:48:42.360 sort of strengthen our muscles, strengthen our, you know, our approach and tactically and

01:48:47.460 substantively and policy and also just in terms of, you know, how we're successful and just

01:48:52.640 building coalitions, etc. What's your make of the overview of this whole autopsy and where we are

01:48:59.940 and the lessons we learned or didn't learn from the last election and where we stand as a party,

01:49:04.840 the Democratic Party today? Well, one major mistake we made in the last election

01:49:09.720 that the next election we simply won't, which is most American people think D.C. is broken

01:49:17.640 and want to change.

01:49:19.260 And the problem is, like, you know,

01:49:21.240 Kamala's chance was to say,

01:49:23.660 I'm different than Biden, right?

01:49:26.040 And like, yes, he was a necessary stabilization

01:49:28.980 for the catastrophe that was Trump one,

01:49:32.060 and there'll be a necessary stabilization

01:49:33.500 for the infinite catastrophe that is Trump two.

01:49:37.720 But like, I'm hearing that people feel pain

01:49:42.660 and feel that there needs to be a change

01:49:44.200 and DC is broken.

01:49:45.700 That's going to be important.

01:49:46.980 Yep.

01:49:47.640 Um, and it's, you know, including like, Hey, uh, until we figured out what's going on for us, could we like really limit and slow down what's going on with migration?

01:49:58.380 Cause like, like, uh, I don't know how migration is better for me.

01:50:03.100 Right.

01:50:03.640 So, you know, that kind of stuff.

01:50:05.240 But I think probably the most central thing is there's a lot of Democrats who don't understand why business is so important.

01:50:14.240 They don't understand it pays for everything.

01:50:16.980 it pays for the the medicare it pays for social security it pays for jobs it's like really

01:50:24.020 important you got to be the i'm pro business right it just got to be you can't be pro job

01:50:29.700 and anti-business yes exactly so it's like stop being like stop doing anti-business rhetoric

01:50:36.420 because people go wait that's totally broken right then that's what part of what this like

01:50:41.300 socialist means right it's like so so like be pro-business now you may say well i want business

01:50:47.700 to contribute more okay be more specific about what that is and and then go on that as part of

01:50:53.160 what you're doing it's like look i love i'm very pro-business and i think business can contribute

01:50:57.280 more in the following ways i want business to succeed and i think we should get business like

01:51:02.360 it's the i want business to succeed of course you do it's what gives us jobs and everything else and

01:51:08.300 And so being pro-business in that regard, and I think that's part of the thing where there is, like, I just don't think it works to say the real problem is in earlier elections, we weren't anti-power enough where anti-power means anti-business.

01:51:29.080 And so it's like, no, look, we do, look, all societies have pillars of power.

01:51:35.500 They have pillars of power in politics.

01:51:37.960 They have pillars of power in business.

01:51:39.840 They have pillars of power in celebrity.

01:51:42.360 They have pillars of power.

01:51:43.580 And what you really want is a distribution of power. 0.98

01:51:46.480 Now, when you get to a trillionaire, you go, hey, he should be limited about how he can buy elections and do other kinds of shit, right? 0.89

01:51:54.200 Like, that's important because that's a corruption on that kind of power.

01:51:58.440 but by the way part of the reason why like i have not been worried about the the the scaling tech

01:52:06.100 companies is because if we were this is one thing i said like eight plus years ago if we were five

01:52:11.880 to seven scale tech companies heading to three i'd have a concern if we're five to seven heading to

01:52:17.060 15 they compete with each other and they're balancing out their power and all the rest

01:52:22.180 And by the way, I'm right, right?

01:52:24.560 NVIDIA, OpenAI, Anthropic,

01:52:27.160 it's more and more and more competing with each other.

01:52:29.560 And that competition is part of how we govern the system

01:52:33.700 in terms of how we're doing it.

01:52:35.100 So being more business intelligent

01:52:37.600 and pro-business generally,

01:52:40.000 and the thought shouldn't be, how do we limit business?

01:52:42.660 The thought should be, how do we shape business

01:52:44.520 to help society?

01:52:46.580 And so in this, I mean, so it's interesting

01:52:49.020 just at the core, and I think it goes to,

01:52:50.640 You had some issues with Lena Kahn at the FTC and the contacts, and then the brand of Biden sort of took a shape in a completely different direction, including, by the way, in the crypto space, as you were implying earlier, that there was an opportunity there.

01:53:06.200 And they just turn their back because of the excesses, but without looking at the sort of baseline benefits of blockchain or democratizing access to banking and not having the friction and the capture of the banking system and the fee structures and the rest.

01:53:23.380 Yeah, exactly. So what we want is we want Democrats to say, well, we're business intelligent and we're proposing things that shape it to the better benefit of the working class. Great. All for it.

01:53:39.480 And you are where on the billionaire's tax, sir? Reid, where are you on the billionaire's tax? You know my position as a state level, but what about that debate broadly and how does that play in to your broader point?

01:53:52.680 So I'm not at all opposed to increasing progressive taxation.

01:53:58.060 Right.

01:53:58.440 You and I have talked about the income taxes here before.

01:54:00.320 California is a perfect example.

01:54:01.980 Right.

01:54:02.360 Yeah.

01:54:03.620 Now, but the way that it's proposed and implemented is a disaster, right? 1.00

01:54:12.840 I mean, it's the, you know, it's kind of like the, hey, fuck you. 1.00

01:54:18.440 We hate you guys. 1.00

01:54:19.160 We're going to take money from you. 0.97

01:54:20.140 well a lot of them respond to that very rationally and say great we're going to another state

01:54:24.780 yeah right and by the way not only do they take the they reduce the prospective

01:54:29.380 billionaire's tax the annual income tax that we were otherwise enjoying is no longer with us yes

01:54:35.680 it's a disaster as this state has discovered it's not anecdotal i mean yes people say oh it's 0.95

01:54:41.580 bullshit no it's not bullshit and we have actual names real people and then we have dozens of 0.96

01:54:46.560 people they don't know about because they don't want to make a big deal about it exactly i personally 0.98

01:54:50.980 know 15 people have moved yeah i don't say that yeah because i'm i'm at 12 so let's compare the

01:54:56.300 list yes so so it's a disaster now um part of uh by the way and someone watching this may be like

01:55:04.140 rolling their eyes of course read mr billionaire saying this newsom's captured by these guys as

01:55:10.040 well you know that's why they're this is a chummy conversation but but the notion of the california

01:55:15.720 billionaires tax. At a state level, this is a real thing. By the way, it's why the teachers

01:55:22.780 opposed it. That's why the firefighters opposed it. That's why a vast majority of organized labor 0.70

01:55:28.000 opposes the California billionaires tax, which I think is an incredibly important point to make.

01:55:33.960 It's not just you saying it to me, who's well known in my opposition. That said, it's at a

01:55:39.480 federal level, this notion of, again, you say progressive tax system, but this notion of

01:55:45.560 a tax system that does what? Inheritance needs to be reformed, does it? Stepped up basis need

01:55:53.940 to be reformed? Look, I think it's good to do all of these things, right? Look, it's good to say,

01:55:59.880 look, we are not in a place where, roughly speaking, progressive taxation, e.g., as you

01:56:06.180 make more money, you pay a higher percentage of tax. Not just a higher number, but a higher

01:56:10.100 percentage. Not to infinite. I actually think roughly when you get to 50, you start getting

01:56:15.900 weird, perverse incentives. Like you go to, I'm now charging with 70% tax. The answer is, oh,

01:56:21.120 I'm now going to work more on how do I not pay the 70% tax than earn the next dollar. Roughly at

01:56:26.160 50-50, many, not all, but many people go, I'll just earn the next dollar. I'll find. Now,

01:56:32.760 But the problem is the net effective rate for wealthy people is well below 50.

01:56:36.520 Because it's not on their income.

01:56:38.820 It's on the corpus.

01:56:40.460 It's on the capital.

01:56:41.800 It's the benefits that accrue then to having a lower tax rate for capital gains.

01:56:48.060 So this we should be fixing.

01:56:50.700 And by the way, we already have versions of wealth tax, like property tax is a good way.

01:56:55.340 I actually like the whole Pieter Terre tax.

01:56:57.620 I think it's a small thing, but I think it's a good thing to do.

01:57:00.020 And Mandami obviously popularized it, but it's happened in many other cities,

01:57:04.160 including San Francisco had a version.

01:57:05.780 It's in litigation and other parts of the globe have been doing it for years.

01:57:08.480 Yeah, but I think it's a small one, but an example of this is a good one, right?

01:57:13.220 And so what are the ones that we can do that are healthy in the system

01:57:18.760 and also don't have weird kind of massive double tax kind of things

01:57:27.520 and are coherent across it and so forth?

01:57:30.020 But progressive tax is good.

01:57:32.420 And, of course, the incentive is to try to avoid tax, right?

01:57:36.400 I mean, that's a natural incentive.

01:57:38.220 Everyone has that incentive, right?

01:57:40.140 But let's try to make it so that it's, that you're like, okay, because this is the thing I, like, when people call me to ask me about the California wealth tax, I say, look, here is how I would try to introduce new taxes in California, whether it's raising the income or a house.

01:57:57.180 I would say, hey, Kate, we're going to tax very much disproportionately from the wealthy.

01:58:02.800 The wealthy have had a huge benefit of being in California because that's how they've made all their wealth and all the rest.

01:58:09.320 So, yes, we wish that they would just go along with it.

01:58:13.000 But, of course, everyone wants to avoid tax.

01:58:15.880 But, like, pitch it to them in terms where you're like, I'm fixing the problem.

01:58:19.400 right like hey we're creating a sovereign wealth fund for being able to fund ongoing you know kind

01:58:26.400 of prosperity of california is like okay then like okay i like i'm i still would rather not

01:58:33.480 pay more tax right but it makes sense to me that opens the door and by the way so many of the

01:58:37.320 conversations we've had with many of the people including number of people that have left are in

01:58:40.980 those lines where they would they they have publicly stated not just privately stated they

01:58:45.680 would support something

01:58:46.860 along those lines.

01:58:48.000 Because it makes

01:58:49.220 economic rationality.

01:58:50.540 Because in addition

01:58:51.500 to first saying,

01:58:53.260 you know,

01:58:54.480 F you, you wealthy people, 0.69

01:58:56.360 we're going to just 0.74

01:58:57.060 charge you for this.

01:58:58.820 And it's like,

01:58:59.560 well, were you charging me

01:59:00.300 for what?

01:59:00.760 Oh, the huge shortfall

01:59:02.980 from Trump's,

01:59:04.420 you know,

01:59:05.200 a big,

01:59:06.240 beautiful betrayal,

01:59:07.440 betrayal bill,

01:59:08.380 HR1,

01:59:09.280 big cuts to Medicaid.

01:59:10.540 Which we have these huge costs

01:59:12.040 because cutting Medicaid.

01:59:13.220 Yeah.

01:59:14.080 So we're going to charge you

01:59:14.800 for that.

01:59:15.080 It's like,

01:59:15.680 Well, that's not a one-off issue.

01:59:17.840 Yeah.

01:59:18.120 That's going to continue.

01:59:19.240 And you're telling me this is one-off?

01:59:21.100 I don't believe you.

01:59:22.220 You don't buy that.

01:59:24.560 Amen.

01:59:25.420 Well, I appreciate that sentiment and obviously believe very strongly we're going to have to address the tax code federally in a profound way.

01:59:34.100 And California, in many ways, has some clues.

01:59:36.420 It has some models.

01:59:37.080 I mean, compare California, most progressive tax rate, states like New York as well, but to the most regressive states like Texas and Florida that tax their low-wage earners more than we tax our high-wage earners.

01:59:49.700 So the question objectively is, who is the high-tax state?

01:59:52.800 We have the highest tax rate for the 1%.

01:59:55.180 99% don't live in the 1%.

01:59:58.500 But this notion that there's a tonality here, there's a sentiment around begrudging success.

02:00:05.360 there's aspects of this that I think

02:00:07.680 there's nuance of what you're saying that I think is

02:00:09.840 important as a Democrat. I certainly

02:00:11.840 share. Thanks for sharing

02:00:14.000 all this time. It's been a lot

02:00:15.940 of fun and thanks for coming to

02:00:17.300 Governor Reagan's

02:00:20.100 mansion who I think had 70%

02:00:22.180 tax rates when he was president.

02:00:24.700 I think that's one of the reasons I was

02:00:25.960 unwinded. It just creates a huge incentive

02:00:28.020 to try to do something about it. But it's a pleasure

02:00:29.700 and I look forward to our next.

02:00:35.360 This is an iHeart Podcast.

02:00:38.920 Guaranteed human.

This is Gavin Newsom - June 19, 2026

And, This Is Why Reid Hoffman Doesn’t Fear Artificial Intelligence

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