Speaker 1: Honestly. One thing. Sometimes people are saying peptides because they
Speaker 1: just want to take a zempic, but they want to
Speaker 1: make it sound more biohackery. Like I think this is
Speaker 1: a super common phenomenon in the tech world, like peoplere
Speaker 1: experimenting with other ones, but fundamentally a lot of them
Speaker 1: are guys who want to diet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it doesn't even mean anything. It's just like you,
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: It's like fifty or less amino acids in a chain
Speaker 1: or something like that, Like insulin is a peptide, like
Speaker 1: our diabetes patient saying like, oh yeah, I'm indructing my peptides.
Speaker 2: Right, I got invited to the peptide party at the
Speaker 2: AGI house. That was what I thought to me, that
Speaker 2: was like the peak.
Speaker 3: But it is interesting, like I mean, I feel like
Speaker 3: so much of it, but also like with the AI
Speaker 3: belief of like this superhuman you know, like we have
Speaker 3: to compete with the machines, Like it's all sort of
Speaker 3: tied up in that.
Speaker 1: Whole other episode peptides, but very tense.
Speaker 4: Fir, Welcome to tech stuff. I'm os Va Loosen and
Speaker 4: this is the week in tech where I'm joined by
Speaker 4: three of the world's most plugged in reporters to break
Speaker 4: down what's really happening in tech right now. Today, we're
Speaker 4: joined by Taylor lorenz if use a mag read, Albigotti,
Speaker 4: tech edit of Semipore, and Jasmine Son, whose excellent substack
Speaker 4: is a tech stuff favorite.
Speaker 5: Welcome all, Thanks for having us. Great to be here,
Speaker 5: Thanks for having us read.
Speaker 4: Last time you and I saw each other was in
Speaker 4: can at the Marketing Lions Festival where you interviewed Demis
Speaker 4: Hassabis on the Google stage. That was only just over
Speaker 4: a month ago, and now he's stepped down as CEO
Speaker 4: of Deep Mind. Did you have any inking about what
Speaker 4: was coming? I? You know, I have to say I
Speaker 4: had it. There was a there.
Speaker 2: I had this gut feeling that he had there was
Speaker 2: a real change in him. I've interviewed him a few
Speaker 2: times over the last few years, and when I first
Speaker 2: interviewed him, like sort of soon after the chat GPT moment,
Speaker 2: he was so excited, like Google was going to battle,
Speaker 2: you know, against everyone again in this AI race and
Speaker 2: they're building these new models and they were behind and
Speaker 2: he was really the person in charge of that, and
Speaker 2: that you could tell he was like, you know, he
Speaker 2: was in he was into it when we talked about
Speaker 2: that sort of thing, like the actual productization of Google models,
Speaker 2: et cetera. He just wasn't that passionate about that. Ken
Speaker 2: and I and I came away from that week. That
Speaker 2: week and Ken thinking like man like demis is not
Speaker 2: like he's this part of the AI race is just
Speaker 2: not what he's passionate. He's passionate about the science. So
Speaker 2: I should have had the scoop is the boort on
Speaker 2: that he was stepping down. But obviously I'm a terrible
Speaker 2: reporter for not getting that. But no, I mean I wasn't.
Speaker 2: It was a shocking announcement, but at the same time
Speaker 2: was not surprised like very few Nobel Prize winning scientists
Speaker 2: you know, are are passionate or great like you know,
Speaker 2: business leaders right at major corporation, Like it just isn't
Speaker 2: those two skill sets. I always thought of him as
Speaker 2: kind of unicorn for having those two things, but I
Speaker 2: think he was like a temporary unicorn, Like he just temporary.
Speaker 5: During that time.
Speaker 2: It was probably really interesting for him because he is
Speaker 2: very competitive, but it's not anymore.
Speaker 4: Now it's just a horse again. Jasmine Special, first time,
Speaker 4: welcome to you. Thank you so much for joining us
Speaker 4: hot off the heels of a huge EZRA client interview
Speaker 4: earlier this week. Very excited to have you on the
Speaker 4: show and to hear about your reporting about what's really
Speaker 4: going on with the data center backlash. You went on
Speaker 4: a kind of cross country road trip to report this.
Speaker 4: But what made you go out into the field and
Speaker 4: what you in search of?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, so I spent about ten days in Wisconsin
Speaker 1: and Michigan visiting a bunch of different data center sites,
Speaker 1: four different ones, and talking to folks, whether it's local officials, activists, residents, workers,
Speaker 1: about data centers and the backlash around them. And the
Speaker 1: reason I went was, you know, I'd been tracking the
Speaker 1: AI backlash like a lot of folks have for several months,
Speaker 1: most of the past six months or whatever. You see
Speaker 1: these the booing at college graduations, you see assassination attempts
Speaker 1: at both tech CEOs and government officials. You look at
Speaker 1: the polls and it's like people are not excited about AI,
Speaker 1: They're worried it's going to take their job. They do
Speaker 1: not want a data center in their community. And this
Speaker 1: is incredibly bipartisan as a backlashing ways that are very
Speaker 1: unusual but at the same time, you know, I'm based
Speaker 1: in San Francisco and I do most of my reporting
Speaker 1: on the AI industry, and people here, myself included, just
Speaker 1: did not understand what it was that was making the
Speaker 1: public so incensed about data centers. Like we did not
Speaker 1: know if it was a water story or I hate
Speaker 1: AI story or a you know, electricity prices story. And
Speaker 1: I was reading the news, but I just never got
Speaker 1: a clear sense of what exactly was driving things. And
Speaker 1: I felt like the only way to do it was
Speaker 1: to get on the road and just talk to people myself.
Speaker 4: There's a parenthetical in your story. By the end of
Speaker 4: this trip, my friends and I felt slightly embarrassed at
Speaker 4: the caricatures we originally believed in. In general, one should
Speaker 4: be cautious about assuming your opponents are just reading fake news.
Speaker 4: What was the moment where in your reporting you kind
Speaker 4: of the pieces start to click, And what do you
Speaker 4: think other people in Silicon Valley are missing and what
Speaker 4: do you hope to communicate to them with the story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's kind of an assumption in Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley that a lot of folks in the AI industry
Speaker 1: have that the main reason people hate data centers is
Speaker 1: because they watch too many tiktoks about like water and
Speaker 1: draining the ocean. And there's definitely a set of people
Speaker 1: who have in back watched too many tiktoks about chattpt
Speaker 1: draining the ocean, right, Like, you're not saying that's not real.
Speaker 1: But you know, as soon as I started talking to
Speaker 1: these activists and having long conversations with them, a few
Speaker 1: things became clear. One was just like a lot of
Speaker 1: these folks are a lot more informed than the caricatures
Speaker 1: would assume. People knew the difference between an AI data
Speaker 1: center and these old data centers for storing like hospital data.
Speaker 1: People could tell you the difference between a closed loop
Speaker 1: and an open loop cooling system. The other thing was
Speaker 1: that while environmental impacts were certainly one thing that people
Speaker 1: were worried about, actually like the focus on government process
Speaker 1: and the total lack of transparency with these NDAs, the
Speaker 1: way that these data center deals were done in back rooms,
Speaker 1: with this feeling of oh, these big tech companies are
Speaker 1: paying off your small town officials to like introduce this
Speaker 1: gigantic project without your consent. That was actually what I
Speaker 1: saw to be driving the backlash A lot more and again,
Speaker 1: these activists I was talking to, they were actually incredibly
Speaker 1: informed about the details of municipal finance and the city
Speaker 1: tax system, and it was just very clear quite quickly
Speaker 1: that you know, I think that there's a way where
Speaker 1: you can assume, in a lot of different contexts that
Speaker 1: your political opponents are just reading fake news or maybe
Speaker 1: there's a foreign influence operation, Like I think OpenAI published
Speaker 1: this report that was like, actually, it's a CCP, like
Speaker 1: the reason people hate data centers, it's like CCP propaganda,
Speaker 1: and like this idea is just like frankly ridiculous to me,
Speaker 1: Like it kind of reminds me of twenty sixteen and
Speaker 1: sort of russiagaate and the idea that anyone who might
Speaker 1: vote for Donald Trump was just like reading Russian syops.
Speaker 1: And like, I'm not saying that foreign influence is not
Speaker 1: any factor whatsoever, but I think it's a way to
Speaker 1: get out of reckoning like the very real reasons that
Speaker 1: people are upset about something like a data center coming
Speaker 1: into their community.
Speaker 4: Taylor Reed, I know you both read the story and
Speaker 4: and and what Jasmin on as your clients, so I'm
Speaker 4: curious for your feel questions for Jasmine as we have
Speaker 4: a special guest today.
Speaker 2: Great reporting. I love I love it. I mean it's
Speaker 2: it's so interesting. I think what I wonder is like,
Speaker 2: is the data center kind of one issue and then
Speaker 2: this overall kind of like hatred for AI and really
Speaker 2: maybe technology really large, is that another issue? Like because
Speaker 2: I've always thought I mean, I see they're sort of
Speaker 2: bleeding into one another, but I've always thought that data
Speaker 2: centers is like these are kind of local issues that
Speaker 2: these these tech companies are going to.
Speaker 4: Have physical manifestations, right, which makes them easy to.
Speaker 2: Totally But at the same time, like I think, as
Speaker 2: Jasmine's I think getting at like these people have real,
Speaker 2: like legitimate, real practical concerns about like the municipal finance
Speaker 2: and like the noise pollution, the energy prices. They I
Speaker 2: think there are like these real worries and those are
Speaker 2: local issues that I think tech companies have to have
Speaker 2: to sort of in each individual case solve, right, this
Speaker 2: is like there's no solution that scales here but at this.
Speaker 2: But then there is this like broader problem that the
Speaker 2: tech industry has that it's very bad at pr.
Speaker 5: Like it's image around the world is horrible.
Speaker 2: I mean, like I was walking through France, like, you know,
Speaker 2: when we were in France, I was like, you know,
Speaker 2: I saw spray painted you know, sort of murals about
Speaker 2: AI and how horrible I mean, which.
Speaker 4: How to be good at pr when you live in
Speaker 4: the echo chain. But that's the thing, like you personally,
Speaker 4: I mean, just maic, curious toy you reflect on this actually.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, read and I both live in
Speaker 1: San Francisco and spend a lot of time with folks
Speaker 1: in the industry, and I feel like what happens so
Speaker 1: often is I'll be having a normal, like social conversation
Speaker 1: with people in tech or AI who are perfectly pleasant, curious, lovely,
Speaker 1: very smart people, and they'll just start saying things and
Speaker 1: in my mind, I'm just hearing the screaming. Do you
Speaker 1: hear yourself? Like, I think there's a thing where a
Speaker 1: lot of these people in the industry, they never leave
Speaker 1: San Francisco, all of their friends work in the AI industry.
Speaker 1: They don't realize what sort of values gap has emerged
Speaker 1: between the things that they believe are true and the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. Another thing that I heard a
Speaker 1: lot of and was even again myself, like I live
Speaker 1: in this bubble too. Was a bit surprised by is
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, very few people think that AI is
Speaker 1: a bubble. They're all receiving this like immense like productivity
Speaker 1: uplift from using cod coding agents or design agents or whatever,
Speaker 1: and so if anything, they're like, I can't get enough compute.
Speaker 1: There's two there's too little AI available for how much
Speaker 1: my company wants to use. Whereas you know, you go
Speaker 1: to the rest of the country, a lot of people
Speaker 1: are very worried that this is a high risk industry,
Speaker 1: that it's a bubble, and the way that crypto is
Speaker 1: a bubble, and I think that really informed a lot
Speaker 1: of the data center backlash too, is that this is
Speaker 1: seen as a high risk industry and like if it
Speaker 1: does pop, let's say, there's a twenty percent chances is
Speaker 1: a bubble. People aren't really sure. Am I going to
Speaker 1: be left with this gigantic stranded asset in my community like.
Speaker 4: A new rust belt essentially of abandoned data centers.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: And I think that it was really salient that a
Speaker 1: lot of the places that I visited, the data centers
Speaker 1: were being built in cities and in towns and sometimes
Speaker 1: on the literal sites of abandoned like GM factories or whatever.
Speaker 1: And so the sort of raw lived experience of seeing
Speaker 1: what happens when a company comes in, goes bankrupt and
Speaker 1: sort of leaves you with a contaminated brown field like
Speaker 1: that is very salient to people and sort of informs
Speaker 1: the way that they think about do I want this
Speaker 1: new high risk industry coming in and building in my community?
Speaker 4: But justin how did you pick those communities that you've visited?
Speaker 4: I mean, there are so many places where data centers
Speaker 4: are emerging and where opposition is brewing, Like what made
Speaker 4: you go to the Midwest?
Speaker 1: A couple of things. So one was I really was
Speaker 1: interested in this sort of de industrialization history. Some folks
Speaker 1: I talked to imagine that maybe, you know, data centers
Speaker 1: are a rein industrialization of America. They are bringing back
Speaker 1: the skilled trades. A lot of the union folks and
Speaker 1: technicians I talked to were really excited. Some people are saying, like,
Speaker 1: you know, America can't build, but we can build data centers.
Speaker 1: And so I was pretty interested in that side of
Speaker 1: the story. And then the other thing was that politics
Speaker 1: are really interesting. So both Wisconsin and Michigan are obviously
Speaker 1: very influential swing states, right, you have very competitive races
Speaker 1: all the time. You also had two very interesting primaries
Speaker 1: going on where AI was playing a big role. And so,
Speaker 1: for example, in Michigan, as folks probably know by now,
Speaker 1: Abdul sayad this sort of progressive insurgeant just be Hailey Stevens,
Speaker 1: the moderate in the center race. And you know, in
Speaker 1: that race, maybe Israel was probably the biggest issue a
Speaker 1: pack spending, but that was something that Abdul linked very
Speaker 1: directly to the idea of say big tech spending or
Speaker 1: DT spending in these races, the sense of how do
Speaker 1: we get money out of politics?
Speaker 4: And he and Bernie and AOC came together to really
Speaker 4: kind of bash big tech as part of his campaign
Speaker 4: right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And in Wisconsin, Francesca Hong, who is I think
Speaker 1: that elections on the eleventh, But she's a DSA candidate,
Speaker 1: frontrunner in the front runner Democratic frontrunner for governor in Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: and she is running on a data center moratorium and
Speaker 1: her case for how are you going to win over
Speaker 1: like rural farmers in you know, deep purple Wisconsin, in
Speaker 1: the deep red parts of the state, are I'm going
Speaker 1: to be the only one who's going to advocate for
Speaker 1: a data center moratorium. And so I found that fascinating
Speaker 1: and I got to talk with both Francesca and Abduel
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 3: This is something that Rob Flaherty, who's the former head
Speaker 3: of Digital and a big strategist for Kamala Harris. You know,
Speaker 3: he's just been a big advocate of these, like Democrat
Speaker 3: candidates leaning really hard into the anti data center rhetoric,
Speaker 3: the data center moratorium, all of that, because it plays
Speaker 3: so well with voters, and I think voters, like working
Speaker 3: class voters that they are. The Democratic Party large has
Speaker 3: sort of lost over the past few years.
Speaker 1: Jasmine.
Speaker 4: You also heard from some people though, in these communities
Speaker 4: who are like obvious beneficiaries, right, and so how did
Speaker 4: some of the conflict play out in terms of like
Speaker 4: pro and con on the data centers? And I guess,
Speaker 4: you know, my connective question is around with this phrase
Speaker 4: as week benefits. And I remember, you know, during the
Speaker 4: Brixit campaign in England. In Britain, you know, the only
Speaker 4: kind of pro remain argument was like you'll be poor
Speaker 4: if you leave, and that wasn't very galvanizing. In fact,
Speaker 4: it made people angry, and so I'm sort of curious
Speaker 4: as to obviously, on a local level, people who are
Speaker 4: contractors and doing construction stuff of feeling the benefits. But
Speaker 4: is that is there a sense in these communities as
Speaker 4: a true debate over the pros and cons of the
Speaker 4: economic stimulus?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think the main case that these
Speaker 1: AI data center developers are making to communities is tax revenue,
Speaker 1: right like, we will pay a lot of property taxes.
Speaker 1: And I think the problem here is that American culture
Speaker 1: right now, and I know Taylor's done a bunch of
Speaker 1: reporting on this kind of thing. It's like suffuse with
Speaker 1: this sense of people are really worried about distribution and
Speaker 1: all concerns, right Like people have a felt sense based
Speaker 1: on the past few decades of the economy that just
Speaker 1: because you know, unemployment numbers look low and GDP goes
Speaker 1: up and like the stock market's doing really well, that
Speaker 1: does not mean that most Americans. That doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: working class Americans are going to feel the benefits of that.
Speaker 1: And so when people see things like Okay, maybe in
Speaker 1: ten years after like this tax incentive district shuts down,
Speaker 1: if the data center is still around by then, it
Speaker 1: will start pouring property taxes into my city coffers, But
Speaker 1: do I also trust my city officials to spend out
Speaker 1: on the issues that matter to me? What are they
Speaker 1: going to do with that money. I think this sort
Speaker 1: of growth in the abstract like revenue and the abstract,
Speaker 1: is something that people have become a lot more skeptical of,
Speaker 1: and especially when that tax revenue is being positioned against
Speaker 1: like all of these much more tangible and sort of
Speaker 1: concrete sounding harms, whether it is like construction is really annoying,
Speaker 1: or whether it's you know, what happens if this becomes
Speaker 1: a stranded asset. But I think I felt a lot
Speaker 1: of frustration from local officials in these communities because they're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how do I run the city
Speaker 1: and pay for public services like firefighters and like you know,
Speaker 1: like traffic services and whatever without continuing to raise taxes, right,
Speaker 1: And so everything's becoming more expensive to run. Education is expensive,
Speaker 1: like infrastructure is expensive. But people don't want to pay
Speaker 1: higher taxes, and so they're thinking, let's bring in this
Speaker 1: data center. This is going to solve for cities tax problems.
Speaker 1: But again, that promise has not been as compelling to
Speaker 1: residents as many of the city officials would hope. And
Speaker 1: I think that's been kind of a yeah, it's been
Speaker 1: a frustrating experience because actually when I asked folk's like, hey,
Speaker 1: are you excited about the tax benefits, A lot of
Speaker 1: anti data center people say, well, like I don't believe
Speaker 1: they're going to hit, or like maybe that only starts
Speaker 1: again in ten years when the tax subsidy district closes,
Speaker 1: and maybe the data center is not even going to
Speaker 1: be around by then. Just like the phrase I don't
Speaker 1: believe them. I think this is just speculative with something
Speaker 1: I heard over and over and over.
Speaker 2: One idea that's been thrown out there is that maybe
Speaker 2: people could be paid individually like they do in Alaska,
Speaker 2: right or New Mexico or where there's a sovereign wealth fund.
Speaker 2: And I think opening eyes even flow to this idea.
Speaker 2: I mean that, and that there's a reason they go
Speaker 2: to these stranded power you know, rest belt areas, because
Speaker 2: they have all this power infrastructure already there to build
Speaker 2: these data centers. So you know, the one idea is
Speaker 2: like we'll take the you know, somehow take that revenue
Speaker 2: and distribute it to the people.
Speaker 5: Did that come up? But all like, are people asking
Speaker 5: for that.
Speaker 1: I don't think I heard anyone ask for it is
Speaker 1: something I've had talked to folks in the AI industry
Speaker 1: about as a potential solution as well. I think it
Speaker 1: would be more effective than I think the current strategy.
Speaker 1: But fundamentally there's also a lot of folks just feel
Speaker 1: like they're being bribed.
Speaker 4: I think, like one going to say of a UBI,
Speaker 4: like I think, like.
Speaker 1: In Silicon Valid, there's assumption that if you just like
Speaker 1: make the checks bigger, then people will be happy about it.
Speaker 1: But actually the thing that's going on now, which has
Speaker 1: been a bit of a cultural vibe shift, is you
Speaker 1: make the checks bigger and people get more suspicious. Right,
Speaker 1: Like Abdul's like number one hit against Haley Stevens is
Speaker 1: look up all of this money she's getting from APAC.
Speaker 1: It has actually become advantageous in some races, like the
Speaker 1: Alex Bores race in New York, even though he ended
Speaker 1: up losing, Like the fact that Leading the Future was
Speaker 1: spending money on against him actually like helped his campaign, right,
Speaker 1: And so I think people have become just a little
Speaker 1: bit more suspicious of getting corporate paychecks. And to me,
Speaker 1: it's not that I think that there's no way to
Speaker 1: build a data center, right. I think that there definitely
Speaker 1: is a way to make these like good deals for communities,
Speaker 1: but you have to deal with the public trust stuff,
Speaker 1: and like the process transparency I think really.
Speaker 4: Matters well, and how do you how do you do that?
Speaker 4: I mean, how do you deal Is there any way
Speaker 4: to deal with the public trust stuff that comes from
Speaker 4: the private sector or.
Speaker 1: I mean, like I was talking to somebody in you know,
Speaker 1: the AI industry, who is like, why don't you look
Speaker 1: at this open a ideal in Effington County, Georgia. Right,
Speaker 1: they had one of the biggest community benefits packages that
Speaker 1: I've seen, frankly for a data center. And so in
Speaker 1: a way you might say, well, these community benefits are
Speaker 1: so tangible, they're so concrete, this is so much money.
Speaker 1: But they also sort of announced the deal after it
Speaker 1: was already done, and then how one public hearing after
Speaker 1: all the negotiations were over and no one had heard
Speaker 1: about it, right, And so people were furious. Thousands of
Speaker 1: people like showed up to protests. And to me, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that the community benefits don't help, but it
Speaker 1: feels much worse when it's like we've already made this
Speaker 1: decision for you, and here's like a little here's a
Speaker 1: cookie to sort of shut you up. And I think
Speaker 1: that's the sort of sense of you didn't even care
Speaker 1: to ask, is really what's bothering people?
Speaker 3: Well, it feels like people also blame big tech with
Speaker 3: like a loss of agency. You hear this a lot. Obviously.
Speaker 3: This is how they feel about social media, this is
Speaker 3: how they feel about AI. They worry about being sort
Speaker 3: of controlled by these algorithms. They feel like these big
Speaker 3: tech companies are sort of above us and controlling everything.
Speaker 3: And I think, I mean, I was just also reading
Speaker 3: about the Time story about the Louisiana deal that met
Speaker 3: I made too, and it's like, if you ask people
Speaker 3: about that, the backlash is basically like, we didn't have
Speaker 3: a say, we didn't have our we don't have any
Speaker 3: agency in this process because, as Jasmine was saying, it's
Speaker 3: sort of a predetermined outcome.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you had this line in your piece, Jasmine. My
Speaker 4: conversations made me wonder if the technical content of data
Speaker 4: center deals is mostly beside the point, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: So before I left for this trip, I asked some
Speaker 1: folks I knew who were more in the Silicon Valley side.
Speaker 1: What questions should I ask people? And they would tell
Speaker 1: me to say things like, if we promised that electricity
Speaker 1: rates wouldn't go up, would you be okay with the
Speaker 1: data center deal? If you've got to check in the
Speaker 1: mail personally, would you be okay with the data center deal?
Speaker 1: If you were sure that this wouldn't use any water
Speaker 1: from the Great Lakes? Would you be okay with the
Speaker 1: data center? And so I asked these questions to people,
Speaker 1: but it was very clear, very quickly that I was
Speaker 1: operating on the totally wrong level of abstraction, because one
Speaker 1: was people were familiar with the whole host of issues
Speaker 1: with data centers, and they'd say, well, like, you know,
Speaker 1: even if that one's not a big deal, what about this?
Speaker 1: What about this? And then the other thing was again
Speaker 1: that sort of reflexive I don't believe them. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, a company can make these promises about how
Speaker 1: much tax revenue they're going to deliver, but if there's
Speaker 1: no trust that it's going to happen, then it kind
Speaker 1: of doesn't matter what the terms of the deal are,
Speaker 1: because people feel this power. A symmetry where a giant
Speaker 1: corporation can write a carve out into a contract. Your
Speaker 1: part time city aldermen are not going to be able
Speaker 1: to be on a fair negotiating ground with this gigantic,
Speaker 1: mega corporation that's worth a trillion dollars, right, And so
Speaker 1: I think that sense is making people very suspicious. I mean,
Speaker 1: think about the fox Con fiasco and Wisconsin. That really
Speaker 1: informs the way that a lot of people think about
Speaker 1: these things. Fox Conn and Trump sort of and Scott
Speaker 1: Walker announced this, these thirteen thousand jobs that were going
Speaker 1: to come to Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, and they pulled out
Speaker 1: and left the city in like over one hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars of debt they had taken out for infrastructure improvements.
Speaker 1: They said those jobs were coming, and they just weren't.
Speaker 1: And so I do sort of understand. I empathize with
Speaker 1: the fact that these people don't want to believe those
Speaker 1: promises again because they've been burned before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's also a scene in your piece that I
Speaker 4: loved where you're in I can't remember if it was
Speaker 4: Wisconsin or Michigan, but there's a kind of concreted over
Speaker 4: former industrial.
Speaker 1: The GM plant in Janesville.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the soil is toxic and it's the cleanup
Speaker 4: operation is something that nobody can afford. And you sort
Speaker 4: of pose this question, would the local residents prefer to
Speaker 4: keep just concrete over toxic soil where this is or
Speaker 4: have a data center and they might prefer the former,
Speaker 4: which just shows you how incredibly stark this is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that one surprised me because to me,
Speaker 1: I actually thought in that case, like this data center
Speaker 1: is promising to do the thirty million dollar cleanup project
Speaker 1: that nobody else has that is environmentally destructive to have
Speaker 1: all this contamination in the soil. The city was saying,
Speaker 1: this will help us remove our wheel taxes. We are
Speaker 1: going to see immediate benefits. And there are definitely some
Speaker 1: folks like this real estate broker who were on that
Speaker 1: side of the case. But ultimately, like the letter of
Speaker 1: intent from the data center developer in Janesville expired because
Speaker 1: there was so much opposition from local residents because what
Speaker 1: the GM story taught them was not, Okay, let's like
Speaker 1: bring a new corporation to build our economy around, but
Speaker 1: we should never have our city be that dependent on
Speaker 1: like a big company who can just up and leave
Speaker 1: ever again. And so that level of distrust which I
Speaker 1: think is baked into much broader questions than AI, much
Speaker 1: broader questions in technology is sort of informing the way
Speaker 1: that people think about data centers.
Speaker 4: Well, if to me, there's only one thing missing from
Speaker 4: your piece, and that was a quote from Aaron Brockovic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I should have gone one.
Speaker 4: When we come back, controversy over open AI's first brand
Speaker 4: trip stay with us. Welcome back, Taylor. You also covered
Speaker 4: the ai backlash this week, and in particular the reaction
Speaker 4: to open AI's first ever brand trip.
Speaker 5: What went down?
Speaker 3: So open ai took a couple dozen content creators to
Speaker 3: this really beautiful getaway in upstate New York where they
Speaker 3: all had these sort of luxury cabins. It was very pastoral.
Speaker 3: I heard people comparing it to Midsomar, where it was
Speaker 3: just kind of very curated.
Speaker 4: Also horror film, though it is a horror.
Speaker 3: Film, which I think is the joke. But yeah, they
Speaker 3: had this event where basically these content creators were brought
Speaker 3: They were not paid to be there, but it was
Speaker 3: effectively kind of like a media trip, right where they
Speaker 3: bring a bunch of people up, they put them up
Speaker 3: in these really nice digs, they feed them, you know,
Speaker 3: these really nice dinners, and they have open AI people
Speaker 3: come and talk about new technology, teach them how to
Speaker 3: use these products. They also did things like beatkeeping and
Speaker 3: hiking and you know, kind of other fun activities. It
Speaker 3: felt very similar to a lot of the stuff that
Speaker 3: Apple's been doing in terms of like cultivating these lifestyle influencers.
Speaker 3: You know, this is not a new thing for brands,
Speaker 3: but the backlash was so intense. A lot of these
Speaker 3: creators have taken down their videos not posted about it,
Speaker 3: yet you know, been receiving just like an enormous amount
Speaker 3: of heat.
Speaker 4: Let's play some tape from the backlash.
Speaker 6: People in what appear to be five star hotels lexing
Speaker 6: about being on a chat GPT brand trip is so
Speaker 6: deeply disgusting and embarrassing and why we are truly in
Speaker 6: the end times. This chick Grace is like, this.
Speaker 7: Trip is so amazing, it's so the seating is thoughtful,
Speaker 7: the activities are thoughtful. Yeah, you know, it's not thoughtful
Speaker 7: the way that, because of what is needed for data centers,
Speaker 7: places like this have to go in and infiltrate communities
Speaker 7: that you probably don't even think about, Grace while you're
Speaker 7: filling your baptob up with I think I need a
Speaker 7: little more crystal Sea salt in here.
Speaker 3: Well, Gracie has been the most like, she's really been
Speaker 3: their strongest soldier. She's this content creator who who does
Speaker 3: a lot of work with tech companies. If you look
Speaker 3: in her bio, she's talking about her consulting work with
Speaker 3: Amazon Uber. So this is clearly somebody that is in
Speaker 3: the techa. Gracie basically provides sort of like leadership skills
Speaker 3: for women especially and kind of what she calls soft skills,
Speaker 3: basically executive coaching. But yeah, she she received a lot
Speaker 3: of a lot of hate and she doubled down.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I think while a lot of other influencers kind of
Speaker 3: paved and got nervous, Gracie was one of the few
Speaker 3: that kind of doubled down and said, listen, I didn't
Speaker 3: violate my moral code. I violated maybe your moral code,
Speaker 3: but I feel completely fine about going on this trip.
Speaker 3: But yeah, a lot of the criticism directed at her
Speaker 3: it was basically the data center stuff. It was I
Speaker 3: think the juxtaposition of this idea that data centers are
Speaker 3: destroying our environment, ruining the climate data DA and then
Speaker 3: that against this very sort of pastoral, beautiful upstate New
Speaker 3: York background where it was that so much of the
Speaker 3: trip was about experiencing nature, it felt I think, you know,
Speaker 3: it just triggered a lot of people in that to
Speaker 3: sort of leave those comments. And then also there was
Speaker 3: a lot of discussion about you know, open Eyes were
Speaker 3: with the Department of War and this idea of you know,
Speaker 3: there was this other person that made this parody version
Speaker 3: of it like come with me on a Palenteer brand trip,
Speaker 3: which is ironic because Palenteer is also doing influencer marketing
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 4: Jasmine you and audience smiling, How did you? What was
Speaker 4: your take on this story?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean so I had in tracked this, but
Speaker 1: then I was watching the video that Taylor made and
Speaker 1: I do feel like it was you know, we're studying
Speaker 1: the AI backlash from different angles. I do think that
Speaker 1: one of the things that struck me most was when
Speaker 1: open AI is sort of constructing this idyllic, utopian like
Speaker 1: aspirational experience. There is, as Taylor mentioned, so little tech
Speaker 1: and AI in that experience, right, Like, it's really interesting
Speaker 1: that when they sort of design like what do we
Speaker 1: want the world to look like? What do we want
Speaker 1: a brand to be about it's like nature and like
Speaker 1: very physical, tactile activities and socialization in person with like
Speaker 1: other human beings. And I think people probably felt that
Speaker 1: dissonance pretty strongly. But anyway, I just thought that was
Speaker 1: like a really interesting bit of reporting because I hadn't
Speaker 1: heard about the brand.
Speaker 5: Trip read what about You?
Speaker 2: You know, I think I think this, as I said earlier,
Speaker 2: the pr strategy of tech just has not worked. And
Speaker 2: and like it's kind of too late because now, you know,
Speaker 2: is Taylor's point, Like it's it's influencers, it's so fragmented,
Speaker 2: and it's and you cannot control the message. There is
Speaker 2: nothing tech is going to do to control the message.
Speaker 3: But I would actually point to Anthropic as a case study.
Speaker 3: Anthropic has they hired this woman who has been really
Speaker 3: building out their influencers. She's an influencer marketer, and she
Speaker 3: has built out their influencers strategy over the past year.
Speaker 3: I have never seen this level of backlash even remotely
Speaker 3: towards any of Anthropics activations, and they do a lot,
Speaker 3: actually they do these dinners. They actually also work, you know.
Speaker 3: I saw a lot of people saying, oh, well, it
Speaker 3: was just the influencers they invited. There's these vapid life
Speaker 3: silent influencers. Anthropic has done tons of work with. I mean,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't call these women vapid, but life soil influencers
Speaker 3: that are sort of the you know, the West Village
Speaker 3: early archetype, right, Like Claude is this like elevated product.
Speaker 3: I think it a lot has to do with the
Speaker 3: brand positioning as well. And this idea of like using
Speaker 3: Claude is smart, it's elevated. You're wearing your little Claude
Speaker 3: thinking cap, you know, like it actually has done well
Speaker 3: for them, And a lot of these other companies have
Speaker 3: done influencer marketing as well. I mean I point to
Speaker 3: like Google, Amazon, et cetera. These are companies that have
Speaker 3: just I think Microsoft like Legacy. I mean Microsoft worked
Speaker 3: with Alex Earl. Microsoft also has a very deep partnership
Speaker 3: with the Department of War. Literally that is how you know.
Speaker 3: I think through the partnership with Microsoft is how the
Speaker 3: Pentagon is able to continue to access a bunch of
Speaker 3: these AI services. So I'm not saying that it's hypocritical,
Speaker 3: but I think it's interesting kind of how brand perception
Speaker 3: around these corporations is shifting and just the the real
Speaker 3: negativity around open it.
Speaker 5: There's something about opening particulous? Is is it?
Speaker 4: Because they got their first.
Speaker 2: They're the winner in consumer chatbots, right, Like Claude doesn't
Speaker 2: even register it's not on the map, and like and yeah,
Speaker 2: Anthropics up. They you know, they had some good press
Speaker 2: around the Pentagon thing like just give it time to.
Speaker 3: I know, but I just I don't I agree with you.
Speaker 3: But you know, there's a lot of people that will
Speaker 3: be very anti AI, but they are okay with Claude,
Speaker 3: and I seem.
Speaker 1: Weird to me, Like do you think that Anthropic did
Speaker 1: something right or was it just that open AI screwed
Speaker 1: up that bad.
Speaker 3: I think there's a couple of things. Number One, I
Speaker 3: think it's also important to look at like, okay, who's
Speaker 3: on the team at open AI. We have Charles Porch,
Speaker 3: who is the one who built Instagram into the cultural
Speaker 3: force that is today. But and you know, Charles is
Speaker 3: very senior leader at open ay now, but his job
Speaker 3: is to kind of change this positioning. I think he's
Speaker 3: mostly known for celebrity partnerships.
Speaker 4: The Kylie, the Kylie Metup. What did he strike that
Speaker 4: before he left the Metro Ray Bounds partnership.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Yes, So he's very into this like aspirational positioning,
Speaker 3: and I don't know that that's going to translate with
Speaker 3: a company like open Ai, because they're their public image
Speaker 3: is so belue Girn sam Altman is so reviled, almost
Speaker 3: in a way that Mark Zuckerberg was too. Though, But
Speaker 3: I think a couple of things that Anthropic has done
Speaker 3: right is Number one, Dario is coded as like liberal
Speaker 3: kind of and I think that like insulates him from
Speaker 3: backlash from large parts of the left, or at least
Speaker 3: the center left. They sort of view it as a
Speaker 3: responsible tech company, and I think just generally it is
Speaker 3: seen as I think the B to B positioning. People
Speaker 3: experience these products a little bit more, I think it's
Speaker 3: seen as just this like more elevated company. You'll note
Speaker 3: that even though Anthropic again has a chatbot that consumers use,
Speaker 3: as read said, it's not as popular, but if you
Speaker 3: look at the headlines around these lawsuits of chatbots or
Speaker 3: killing children, it's always open Ai. And so I think
Speaker 3: open Ai is just seen as this sort of unique villain.
Speaker 2: Anthropics had plenty of public relations black eyes too, though. Right,
Speaker 2: there's the whole open source thing.
Speaker 1: Right, there was these like policy folds fighting with the
Speaker 1: White House. They're fighting with Jensen.
Speaker 5: What about burning the books?
Speaker 3: That's the only thing, that's the only thing, interestingly, and
Speaker 3: you know what, I just made a video about that,
Speaker 3: and people continue to say that it is open.
Speaker 5: AI doing that way.
Speaker 4: Explain what happened, Taylor.
Speaker 3: So Anthropic basically was there was this viral video of
Speaker 3: this like what looks like a book guillotine. It's really
Speaker 3: just the way that they slice off the spine of
Speaker 3: a book in order to feed the pages into an
Speaker 3: AI scanner. Anthropic is doing this to millions of books. Now,
Speaker 3: these are books that have that are that they buy
Speaker 3: buy the palette for like cents on the dollar, and
Speaker 3: they are books that are going into the trash. I
Speaker 3: personally think that it's better to have books scanned before
Speaker 3: going into the landfill.
Speaker 5: Some of them were rare books, right like that.
Speaker 3: You know, no, no, no, none of them were written. No,
Speaker 3: let's be clear. You cannot buy rare Yes, you cannot
Speaker 3: buy rare books, buy the palette, right, and so this
Speaker 3: is just a ridiculous sort of conspiracy. Also, rare books
Speaker 3: are not protected by copyright because most of them are old, right,
Speaker 3: so it wouldn't. So this is basically books from the
Speaker 3: twentieth century that are not rare, that are out of
Speaker 3: print some of them because they're just like an old
Speaker 3: training manual for Microsoft ninety five or something. Right, it's
Speaker 3: not something people miss. Somebody made the adjudication to throw
Speaker 3: that book away, is my point. So I just put
Speaker 3: a video about this this week and I've gotten multiple
Speaker 3: messages about it, and it's driving me crazy because I'm like,
Speaker 3: it's anthropic. It says aanthropic in the video.
Speaker 2: It's a meme though, right, And it's interesting that they're
Speaker 2: confusing them with Opening Eye, but I think that gets
Speaker 2: this point, like, yeah, anthropic could do a better job
Speaker 2: of pr than Opening Like they're not. It's not having
Speaker 2: an effect on the overall perception of AI and tech, right,
Speaker 2: and that's that's an issue.
Speaker 4: Well, what's the influence a piece of all this though,
Speaker 4: because Taylor, you alluded to the Nantucket no Influencers sign
Speaker 4: in your video as well, and I feel like there's
Speaker 4: kind of like error when it was like quite acceptable
Speaker 4: and aspirational to get loads of free stuff and unbox
Speaker 4: it from the like fashion influencer industry world, which somehow
Speaker 4: when it's like juxtaposed or superimposed onto the tech industry
Speaker 4: like makes it kind of particularly inflammatory perhaps, Or do
Speaker 4: you think just the social modes are changing, like what
Speaker 4: is the influence a piece of this and how does
Speaker 4: it relate to the tech piece.
Speaker 3: I think the influencer piece to me, because it's not
Speaker 3: just they're not just getting backlashed for the tech partnerships,
Speaker 3: although that is sort of unique, but I think overall,
Speaker 3: it's this feeling of inequality and I think a lot
Speaker 3: of people are struggling. Jazz Jasmine was mentioned earlier. You
Speaker 3: can tell people, Look, the GDP is going up, Look
Speaker 3: these you know this is happening, but they feel this
Speaker 3: visceral frustration with our economy and the way that things
Speaker 3: are sort of unevenly distributed. And so when you see
Speaker 3: these lifestyle influencers living this very aspirational life online, of
Speaker 3: course they're going to be a target of people's ire
Speaker 3: because it's like, well why does this person get like
Speaker 3: all they're doing is flying around and getting free brand trips,
Speaker 3: free opportunities, and I'm here struggling. And so I think
Speaker 3: we've seen a shift whereas like previously so much of
Speaker 3: the influencer industry was built around aspirational lifestyle. Now it's
Speaker 3: built a lot more. You see the rise of commentary influencers.
Speaker 3: It's people that you have to have a little bit more.
Speaker 4: I think, Jasmine, this is your kind of second big,
Speaker 4: big media moment of the year. The first one was
Speaker 4: your Permanent Underclass piece for The New York Times a
Speaker 4: couple of months ago. Does how do you see all
Speaker 4: of this tying in to what you wrote about the
Speaker 4: concepts of permanent underclass and how it's understood and perpetuated
Speaker 4: by Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean one thing that is weird about the
Speaker 1: AI industry, and in particular, probably anthropic more so than
Speaker 1: the other companies, is that they talk constantly about the
Speaker 1: mass job displacement that their products, their coding agents, their
Speaker 1: enterprise agents are going to cause. And they do this
Speaker 1: handbringing thing that's like, oh, we're so worried about it,
Speaker 1: Like Dario will write these twenty thousand word essays about
Speaker 1: how AI might lead to I mean, sal molment does
Speaker 1: the same thing. Might shift power from capital to or
Speaker 1: from labor to capital, might increase in equality, might concentrate
Speaker 1: power in the hands of a few companies might create
Speaker 1: an underclass of people of quote unquote lower intellectual ability,
Speaker 1: and there's this very strange dynamic where people see that
Speaker 1: and they're like, Okay, you're doing all this hand ringing,
Speaker 1: but why are you building the technology to put us
Speaker 1: all out of work? Right? And so there's this sense
Speaker 1: of like, oh, these companies they don't even care about
Speaker 1: their impacts, right, They don't care about the kind of
Speaker 1: destruction they're causing. And of course people already have a
Speaker 1: sense that the economy is quote unquote rigged against them
Speaker 1: or something like that, and so the fact that the
Speaker 1: AI industry both seems aware of this and is the
Speaker 1: kind of indifferent to it or not slowing down in
Speaker 1: any way really freaks people out. I mean, I also
Speaker 1: have this sense, for example, that with there the creative stuff,
Speaker 1: like with fiction authors and writers who tend to be
Speaker 1: very anti AI, for example, people will talk about like, oh,
Speaker 1: AI like can't really write, like it doesn't have like
Speaker 1: the true essence of art or something like that. But
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the creative criticism is really
Speaker 1: economic anxiety, and a lot of the general backlash to
Speaker 1: AI is actually rooted in economic anxiety. You might say
Speaker 1: like AI is actually not very good at writing, but
Speaker 1: really there's like an underlying fear, which is like I'm
Speaker 1: a freelance illustrator and I'm getting fewer gigs now, Like
Speaker 1: this thing poses a threat to my livelihood, to my work.
Speaker 1: I think if the technology was not one that was
Speaker 1: taking away people's jobs, it would be a very different story.
Speaker 1: I mean, even when I talked to Kathy Hochel about
Speaker 1: her data center moratorium, one thing that was really surprising
Speaker 1: about how she thought about it was she thought about
Speaker 1: it as almost like jobs for megawaw or something, which
Speaker 1: is like these data centers, sure they create like five
Speaker 1: hundred or one thousand temporary jobs, but the number of
Speaker 1: jobs for megawah is not good enough, and so it's
Speaker 1: not a good trade off for people when this thing
Speaker 1: is going to put them out of work or threatening
Speaker 1: to put them out of work, and you're bringing it
Speaker 1: into your community to use your resources.
Speaker 4: When we come back at night, my scenario losing billions
Speaker 4: while you greet your wedding guests. Stay with us, Welcome back.
Speaker 4: Read for our final story this week. I feel a
Speaker 4: little bit like I'd put my TMZ hat on because
Speaker 4: there was a major drama last weekend at a wedding
Speaker 4: in Carmel.
Speaker 5: What happened?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Leopold Ashton Brenner, who was a former open
Speaker 2: Ai employee who kind of blew the whistle on security
Speaker 2: concerns there, got fired and then he writes this essay
Speaker 2: called Situational Awareness, which is all about how, you know,
Speaker 2: AI is essentially going to take over the world faster
Speaker 2: than anybody thinks it goes. You know, everyone is reading
Speaker 2: this thing. He's hailed as sort of this genius, right.
Speaker 4: I feel like that was the first like hot take,
Speaker 4: viral essay that permeated my about AI. I mean, there
Speaker 4: was a deluge to them after us, but I feel
Speaker 4: like that was like the kind of a moment of
Speaker 4: these like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: There was like AI twenty twenty seven and things like that,
Speaker 2: but this one was really, you know, was the big one.
Speaker 2: And he's going you know, he went on like the
Speaker 2: Duarkesh podcast, which is super influential in the tech industry
Speaker 2: and sort of became this like stage about you know,
Speaker 2: the development of AI and like a true believer, right,
Speaker 2: but he's also an effective altruist, an effective aultra. You know,
Speaker 2: he worked for FTX like they love sort of making
Speaker 2: market bets and huge risky market bets based on these
Speaker 2: like these beliefs about what's gonna happen, and you know,
Speaker 2: sort of throwing caution to the wind. And that's exactly
Speaker 2: what he did. And he starts a fund which is
Speaker 2: you know, called Situational Awareness based on this idea that
Speaker 2: the AI boom is is, you know, we're getting to
Speaker 2: agi faster than anybody thinks. And if you just invest
Speaker 2: in all the companies in the stack, from you know,
Speaker 2: chips to memory to data center provider, you know, to
Speaker 2: to neo clouds, you're gonna make a ton of money.
Speaker 2: And a lot of people invested in this thing. He
Speaker 2: was making a huge amount of money. Like his story,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's the Wall Street Journal and
Speaker 2: a huge profile on him. It was, you know, this
Speaker 2: this amazing investor. At some point like an insane it
Speaker 2: was like, you know, of course, if you if you
Speaker 2: bet on this hot area, you put all all this
Speaker 2: money into it, you're going to do really well in
Speaker 2: the short term. He was also betting on margin, right,
Speaker 2: which is like you know we all remember from history
Speaker 2: class in school, right, the nineteen twenty nine crash was
Speaker 2: all about this, right, So if you borrow a bunch
Speaker 2: of money and you and you bet it and you
Speaker 2: bet it all and then the market goes down and
Speaker 2: you have to the you cover those loans, things turn
Speaker 2: out badly. So the market has been down and so
Speaker 2: his fund basically nearly imploded while he was at his wedding.
Speaker 2: This was a great detail. And I think another Wall
Speaker 2: Street Journal article that you know, his wedding where they
Speaker 2: were by the way they were, like the most important,
Speaker 2: I think interesting detail in that story was that they
Speaker 2: were having breakout sessions for discussions at his wedding and
Speaker 2: he's like, but he's dealing with like, you know, essentially
Speaker 2: his fund about to you know, implode, you know, while
Speaker 2: this is all going on, and he eventually sells all
Speaker 2: these positions to Citadel. But actually, remarkably, he's not it's
Speaker 2: not his fund didn't implode. Like he's actually still up
Speaker 2: apparently eighty percent on the year, which is which is incredible.
Speaker 2: Like he's he's still He's going to actually be fine.
Speaker 3: It seems like, yeah, but he had to sell all
Speaker 3: that all those assets off to Citadel.
Speaker 4: But he got to keep his androp his big position
Speaker 4: in anthropic, I think, which was the key metel ground.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he got to keep his anthropic position. But I'm
Speaker 3: just saying, like the fund is like significantly weakened.
Speaker 2: I was smaller, but it's still it's still positive though,
Speaker 2: like he didn't like it didn't implode, Like his investors
Speaker 2: are are on paper making money right now in his
Speaker 2: fun which is like in which is crazy. But you know,
Speaker 2: I think, to me, what was so interesting, Like and
Speaker 2: your your TMZ joke oz is like perfectly illustrates this
Speaker 2: is like since when does the TMZ crowd care about,
Speaker 2: you know, some fund manager going bust. It's it's the
Speaker 2: cultural significant. It's like what he represents that made this
Speaker 2: story really interesting. Both I think from the outside world perspectively,
Speaker 2: he's this tech industry person and there's a lot of
Speaker 2: shot and freud, but also within the tech industry there
Speaker 2: was a lot of like anti EA, like anti effective
Speaker 2: altruist sentiment that I saw on Twitter, and I'd be curious,
Speaker 2: you know, you get Taylor and Jasmine's opinion on this
Speaker 2: as well, but like it just kind of showed that
Speaker 2: like this is he represents this sort of culture that
Speaker 2: I think, you know wants it. It gets back to
Speaker 2: like the broader discussion we've been having on this whole show,
Speaker 2: which is like people just want to see people like
Speaker 2: this fail.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's it's it's like he represents billionaire Hubris.
Speaker 1: He's also super young. I think, like that's worth mentioning.
Speaker 1: He's like in his mid twenties. His Beyonce wife, I
Speaker 1: suppose now, is the chief of staff Ta Dario at Anthropics,
Speaker 1: So she's also a very very influential AI person, right,
Speaker 1: and he was taking these crazy bats, got fired and
Speaker 1: somehow build this gigantic fund. People want to see the
Speaker 1: avatar of sort of tech bro billionaire wonder can fail, right,
Speaker 1: And so I think people had a lot of fun
Speaker 1: with that. One fund detail is I heard that at
Speaker 1: his wedding during during the ceremony, they first think guests
Speaker 1: and then they thanked Ken Griffin.
Speaker 5: It sounds like a Semiphore event. They were also great, Yeah,
Speaker 5: we did have Ken Griffin in an event.
Speaker 2: You know, there are all these like great conspiracy theories
Speaker 2: too that like that somehow Sitadet like tanked the market
Speaker 2: on purpose.
Speaker 3: I mean to me, Ken Griffin is the big winner
Speaker 3: in the situation, and you're right read it's talking that
Speaker 3: his fund is even on life support. But I would
Speaker 3: say that's because, like I think this kid should have
Speaker 3: just gone into like VC, because then it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 3: You don't have to worry so much. And also people
Speaker 3: are comfortable with these like long term bets and they'll
Speaker 3: give lots of money to like twenty five year olds,
Speaker 3: I think in the hedge fund world. I mean the
Speaker 3: fact that he got all these like margin calls. I
Speaker 3: think that it's just like a shark your kind of environment.
Speaker 3: It's tough for someone to navigate like that, and I
Speaker 3: think he actually is quite underqualified for that.
Speaker 1: But they love that right like they love being like again,
Speaker 1: he worked for sam bankmuin free. The whole thing is
Speaker 1: not making these crazy high risk, crazy high expected value
Speaker 1: bets that could totally go bus. But man, it must
Speaker 1: feel so good to succeed, you know.
Speaker 2: It's part of like the EA ethos to like to
Speaker 2: just bet it all. Like it's like better to take
Speaker 2: like high risk on some great outcome than sort of
Speaker 2: head your bets.
Speaker 4: There is a crazy thing here that he literally worked
Speaker 4: for SBF. We all know FDx ended and then people,
Speaker 4: I don't know how much of the forty five billion
Speaker 4: was actually cash people put in. How much of that
Speaker 4: was appreciation on the cash they put in. But even so,
Speaker 4: like it's kind of it's kind of remarkable that like people,
Speaker 4: as much as some people want to like tear this down,
Speaker 4: tear this down and oppose it in every way and
Speaker 4: like find you know, data centers and Leopold Ashan Brenner's
Speaker 4: and opening our influencer trips to like object to there's
Speaker 4: another group of people who just want to absolutely whatever
Speaker 4: the risk be associated with this.
Speaker 3: Well, those are the rich silicon value people, right, those
Speaker 3: are the investors, Like, those are the people that is like,
Speaker 3: it is the existence of that class of people that
Speaker 3: I think makes the rest of the public so angry.
Speaker 1: And all these young people in Silicon Valley they're thinking
Speaker 1: AGI is going to come in three years. It's going
Speaker 1: to eliminate all of the jobs and freeze everyone in
Speaker 1: their current economic positions. That's the permanent underclass belief that
Speaker 1: folks like Leopold believe. And so I better accumulate as
Speaker 1: much capital as fast as possible in the next two
Speaker 1: to three years, like starting this crazy high risk catch fund.
Speaker 1: I mean I talk to folks, to other twenty somethings
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley all the time who have this mindset,
Speaker 1: who look to people like Leopold of Yeah, if we
Speaker 1: think that the world is going to get frozen into
Speaker 1: a permanent overclass of people with capital from AI and
Speaker 1: a permanent underclass, my only goal is to make sure
Speaker 1: I'm going to be on top. And if the whole
Speaker 1: economy goes crazy in two years anyway, it's okay for
Speaker 1: me to take these high riskpects.
Speaker 2: It's the classic it's the classic mistake that everybody makes.
Speaker 2: It's almost a cliche that people, you know, overestimate the
Speaker 2: short term, underestimate the long term, and it's like it
Speaker 2: never ever isn't true. And like the market right now,
Speaker 2: look at the rewarding people, the rewarding the companies like
Speaker 2: Microsoft that are taking like the long term bet that
Speaker 2: this technology is gonna it's going to take a while
Speaker 2: for adoption to occur, you know, to build the data centers,
Speaker 2: et cetera. So you know, it's it's funny that they
Speaker 2: just that just people keep making the same mistakes.
Speaker 4: Jasmin, do you know Leopold? And I guess I'm curious.
Speaker 4: We had Theo Baker on the show a few weeks ago,
Speaker 4: and it was interesting to hear him sort of reflect
Speaker 4: him being a kind of participant observer in this in
Speaker 4: this world, which I guess in some ways, I'm not
Speaker 4: sure if you would feel like that describes you as well,
Speaker 4: but like, what's it like to move through this world
Speaker 4: while also documenting it? And yeah, do you know Leopold
Speaker 4: And what's the kind of what should we know about him?
Speaker 5: Were you at the wedding?
Speaker 1: Was not at the wedding. I had friends at the wedding.
Speaker 1: I heard reports from the wedding they put all their
Speaker 1: phones in a bag, so there are no photos. Also
Speaker 1: big gen Z trend. I think it's a good one,
Speaker 1: to be clear, So not a lot of photos from
Speaker 1: the wedding. I don't I don't know Leo. We've met before,
Speaker 1: but I would not say that I know him or
Speaker 1: am friends with him. But yeah, I mean it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I like THEO. I went to Stanford. I had a
Speaker 1: lot of friends in the tech industry who are now
Speaker 1: AI millionaires, multimilliaires, DECA millionaires. It's interesting right now to
Speaker 1: be in the city because you have this again wealth
Speaker 1: bifurcation where two people like me and my old classmate
Speaker 1: from undergrad whatever. We were roughly as smart as hard working,
Speaker 1: took the same path. And then one person goes and
Speaker 1: works at open AI in twenty eighteen or something, and
Speaker 1: the other doesn't like learned. I started learning about and
Speaker 1: following the AI industry in twenty eighteen. That was when
Speaker 1: GBT two came out and the LM started seeming really interesting.
Speaker 1: Was already very clear this was going to be a
Speaker 1: big deal, and I was like, no, I'm going to
Speaker 1: become a journalist question mark. And so all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you have this thing where in your friend group half
Speaker 1: of the people are like one hundred times as wealthy
Speaker 1: as the other half of the friend group, and it
Speaker 1: really causes a bunch of like strange psychologies. It's a
Speaker 1: very odd experience, I think for people. You know, Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley has always been a place where some people end
Speaker 1: up found me wealthy for a mix of like skill,
Speaker 1: luck and privilege, and AI has magnified those gaps. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's a very strange time to be uh
Speaker 1: in this city. As sort of like a young person
Speaker 1: in the Chechamlio.
Speaker 5: I have advice.
Speaker 3: I want to hear Read's advice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got I need some advice.
Speaker 2: I have some advice as someone who also made the
Speaker 2: mistake of becoming a journalist, is just don't marry another journalist.
Speaker 2: I married a lawyer so I can survive in the
Speaker 2: Bay Area.
Speaker 1: Oh god, that is good advice.
Speaker 3: It's just interesting, how like I mean, it's Jasm said,
Speaker 3: I feel like there's this it like San Francisco is
Speaker 3: so small, and there's all these quite small like social
Speaker 3: scenes as well, and I feel like there's that Stanford
Speaker 3: social scene, but also the EA world. Like it's just
Speaker 3: so funny to look at like the degrees of connection
Speaker 3: between Leopold and all these other major figures in AI
Speaker 3: and it's it's like one degree.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean everyone knows each other like again,
Speaker 1: like it's like, oh, Leopold went to the door Cash podcast.
Speaker 1: They're very good friends. They do a happy hour every Friday.
Speaker 1: I've been to the happy hour, like like Dorkush lives
Speaker 1: with Dylan Patel and Sholto Douglas and like this third
Speaker 1: or fourth other guy. You know, Like everyone knows each other.
Speaker 1: It's an extremely small city. Everyone knows everybody's business. And
Speaker 1: I think, like to the point about like Sanford and
Speaker 1: Tec journalists or whatever. I think a lot of it
Speaker 1: is like, at least for me, you show up at
Speaker 1: this crazy world of Silicon Valley. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the frat boy down the hall is raising like millions
Speaker 1: of dollars from Marissa Mayor for a startup that he
Speaker 1: knows is fake, and everyone knows his fake. He's waving
Speaker 1: around his Brex card, buying everyone tequila shots. You're like,
Speaker 1: what the hell? Like that guy's just like another like
Speaker 1: freaking like nineteen year old brack eye, Like what are
Speaker 1: we doing here? And you developed this anthropological fascination with
Speaker 1: like what is going on here? I have to write
Speaker 1: about it?
Speaker 2: But at the same time, it's like nothing compared to
Speaker 2: what it was when when like I got out here
Speaker 2: in twenty third the end of twenty thirteen. Yeah, more
Speaker 2: like that, Like I just and probably even more in
Speaker 2: the nineties, right, like people were just going nuts and
Speaker 2: for with all these startups, and I feel like that
Speaker 2: aspect of it like hasn't even happened yet with AI,
Speaker 2: Like I think we're gonna see more of that. It's
Speaker 2: gonna be insane, and.
Speaker 1: They don't drink anymore. They're less fun.
Speaker 5: Maybe that's the issue.
Speaker 3: The frat guy is injecting peptides.
Speaker 5: Nobody eats, nobody drinks.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah, I mean literally.
Speaker 4: For tech stuff, I'm as Voloshin. This episode was produced
Speaker 4: by Eliza Dennis. It was executive produced by me and
Speaker 4: Julian Nutta for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 4: Jack Insley makes this episode and Kyle Murdoch rotel theme song.
Speaker 4: A special thank you to Jasmine's son Taylor Lorenz and
Speaker 4: read Albergotti. Please check out all the work they put
Speaker 4: into the world. We're very lucky to call them friends
Speaker 4: at the pod