Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of iHeart Podcasts and Kaleidoscope.
Speaker 1: I'm mas Valoshan and today Karra Price and I will
Speaker 1: bring you the headlines this week, including the race of
Speaker 1: the humanoid robots. Then on tech Support, we'll talk to
Speaker 1: Jeff Rosenthal about the role of private investment in building
Speaker 1: out energy infrastructure in the US to meet the AI boom.
Speaker 2: I would argue that this is one of the spaces
Speaker 2: that you just see the future manifest regularly, like the
Speaker 2: impossible become passible.
Speaker 1: All of that. On the weekend Tech It's Friday, April
Speaker 1: twenty fifth. Hello, Hello Cara.
Speaker 3: Hi as well.
Speaker 1: Since we last saw each other, A big important holiday happened,
Speaker 1: which was Easter. And did you see how it celebrated
Speaker 1: at the White.
Speaker 4: I did, And I can't say that I know many
Speaker 4: people who still roll eggs around with wooden spoons, but
Speaker 4: the White House likes its traditions.
Speaker 1: Yeah. There was also the human sized bunny who ended
Speaker 1: up next to President Trump on the podium, who.
Speaker 4: Looked a lot like Peter Rabbit, but suspiciously with a
Speaker 4: different colored jacket.
Speaker 1: This was, in fact Peter the Rabbit, who's been subtly
Speaker 1: renamed and restyled face exactly. He has not to infringe
Speaker 1: on Beatrix Potter's copyright. This wasn't the only slightly weird
Speaker 1: sight to behold at the celebration. There were also sponsorships
Speaker 1: and branding from the big tech companies. Meta had its
Speaker 1: own tent on the White House lawn, complete with an
Speaker 1: AI powered photo op. YouTube had a bunny hop stage,
Speaker 1: and a reading nook was provided by Amazon, complete with
Speaker 1: a couch and some colorful flowers with the Amazon logo
Speaker 1: in pride of place. This was all on the lawn
Speaker 1: of the White House at an event traditionally sponsored by
Speaker 1: American egg Board.
Speaker 4: I should have done this for my butt, mitzpah. Actually,
Speaker 4: just have different tech companies cover different tables.
Speaker 1: Well, future bamans for readers of the Arch of the
Speaker 1: Deal will no doubt be able to defray the costs
Speaker 1: in years to come.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, you know, nothing says easter to mean quite like
Speaker 4: a pink and blue sign with the words expand your
Speaker 4: World with Meta AI on it, which is just so
Speaker 4: funny to me because Meta execs past and present are
Speaker 4: literally testifying right down the street as this is going on.
Speaker 1: I know, I mean, it's surely incredible. What's what's going
Speaker 1: on Washington right now? On the one hand, you have
Speaker 1: Easter at the White House with all of these corporate
Speaker 1: sponsors from the tech industry, and on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you have the government's lawyers arguing to break up Google
Speaker 1: Meta on trial. It's this, you know, rather delicious seeming
Speaker 1: irony that you can't buy friendship, at least not from
Speaker 1: President Trump.
Speaker 4: But you can buy a couch at an Easter party exactly,
Speaker 4: You know what I mean? You know, it does make
Speaker 4: me wonder where this trend will go. I can sort
Speaker 4: of imagine a huge tent around Thanksgiving saying the annual
Speaker 4: pardoning of the Thanksgiving Turkey sponsored by TikTok.
Speaker 1: Speaking of strange and slightly jarring tech encroachment, I've got
Speaker 1: a headline to start us off. The Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: reports that a recent half marathon race in Beijing had
Speaker 1: some unusual participants humanoid robots. This thirteen mile race featured
Speaker 1: thousands of humans and twenty one robots running. There's a
Speaker 1: chance for China to show off its progress in humanoid robotics.
Speaker 1: You can check out the video online. It's pretty deep
Speaker 1: in the Young Canny Valley to see robots jogging alongside humans.
Speaker 4: This is my favorite kind of story, I think because
Speaker 4: of the uncanny valleyness of it, and also because there
Speaker 4: was It wasn't perfect, let's just put it that way.
Speaker 1: We'll get to some of the winners and losers.
Speaker 4: We'll talk about that. But you know, China is really
Speaker 4: leaning into humanoid robotics. They've said they want to be
Speaker 4: the leader by twenty twenty seven, which I don't know
Speaker 4: about you, but that's close to when I turned forty,
Speaker 4: not far away.
Speaker 1: As you mentioned, the race did show this still quite
Speaker 1: a lot room for improvement when it comes to these humanoids.
Speaker 1: They had to have a staggered start to the race,
Speaker 1: literally so they wouldn't run into each other. There were
Speaker 1: pauses between the robots starting. They were also in their
Speaker 1: own lane, the HOV lane of the half marathon in Beijing.
Speaker 4: There's so much about this that I love. But my
Speaker 4: favorite part is that some of these robots were wearing accessories.
Speaker 4: You know, some had like running shoes, tank tops, you know,
Speaker 4: they have those little like bicycle hat and to me,
Speaker 4: they all kind of look like guys in Fort Green
Speaker 4: who are trying to like bag women on hinge.
Speaker 1: Those weren't the only upgrades to the robots. They went
Speaker 1: beyond low ups In some cases, the developers had to
Speaker 1: modify the robots for the race so that plastic components
Speaker 1: wouldn't break off while they were running, and actually recast
Speaker 1: and replace those parts with metal. They also given longer legs,
Speaker 1: something I would love to.
Speaker 4: Have, which you know, to me, this is a sign
Speaker 4: that humans are still superior. These robots trained for months
Speaker 4: so they could navigate both the flat and hilly parts
Speaker 4: of the course and also take six left turns and
Speaker 4: eight right turns, something fortunately I still don't have to
Speaker 4: practice for.
Speaker 1: And I think the majority of these robots were actually
Speaker 1: remote controlled. But a big issue was stamina. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they need to take water, break or catch their
Speaker 1: breath like we do, but these robots are breat on
Speaker 1: batteries which need to be recharged every two hours, and
Speaker 1: the race was what over three hours long, so at
Speaker 1: different points in the race, the robots were stopped because
Speaker 1: they ran out of power and had to swap batteries
Speaker 1: in order to keep going, which.
Speaker 4: Is just like a pit stop at a NASCAR race.
Speaker 4: Let me just clarify when you say a group of
Speaker 4: humanoid robots. Listeners might think this is a robot army,
Speaker 4: you know, it's like very Star Wars, where they all
Speaker 4: look the same and run at an identical pace. But
Speaker 4: that was not what happened here. It was a melee.
Speaker 1: Have you seen Have you seen when dog walkers are
Speaker 1: in Central Park and you have every type of dog
Speaker 1: from big to small, from crazy to calm.
Speaker 3: That's how we lose people.
Speaker 1: That this was that of robots. It was a melee
Speaker 1: of different shape, different size, different herky jerky robots. I
Speaker 1: think in some sense, you know, there was a competition
Speaker 1: amongst the robot manufacturers. Some fared better than others on
Speaker 1: one and you have the front runner, Chian Kung Ultra,
Speaker 1: who stood at five foot nine and only fell over
Speaker 1: once when it's battery failed. It did change his battery
Speaker 1: three times, but Tien ran at about six miles an
Speaker 1: hour across different terrains including hills, stairs, grass and sand.
Speaker 1: Others weren't so lucky. One humanoid with propellers went off course,
Speaker 1: slammed into a fence and broke into pieces. It sounds comedic,
Speaker 1: it was actually kind of scary. Things. Two hundred pound
Speaker 1: metallic humanoid charge its way into a crowd of people,
Speaker 1: how to tell you, some were barely able to walk,
Speaker 1: much less run. One humanoid robot named Juan Juan actually
Speaker 1: went in the wrong direction for a little bit before
Speaker 1: sitting down and refusing to go further, which was like
Speaker 1: me at sports day as a child. Yes, in you two.
Speaker 3: I think I was going to say we are all.
Speaker 1: One on this podcast where we are one.
Speaker 3: Sure, it's very relatable.
Speaker 4: And while Tian Kung Ultra was the first humanoid to
Speaker 4: cross the finish line after about two hours and forty minutes,
Speaker 4: a human runner finished the race over an hour and
Speaker 4: a half before that, So only two humanoids cross the
Speaker 4: finish line within the race's original cutoff time, which cut
Speaker 4: extended to four hours and ten minutes because most of
Speaker 4: them just simply weren't going to make it. If I
Speaker 4: was running a marathon, this would also happen.
Speaker 1: By the way, it's funny to laugh at the missteps
Speaker 1: of these robots. But remember how when we were first
Speaker 1: playing around with Gennety of Ai. You know, it was
Speaker 1: impressive that it could write anything at all, but the
Speaker 1: writing was completely unserviceable. So, you know, I think that
Speaker 1: we're seeing what we may be seeing here as a
Speaker 1: kind of leading edge of in fact and explosion in
Speaker 1: humanoid robots because these robots are intertwined deeply with the
Speaker 1: development of AI. Robots have different parts, but you could
Speaker 1: say that the brain is the AI which allows the
Speaker 1: robots to learn from patterns and mimic human behavior in
Speaker 1: real time. And according to analysts at Goldman Sachs, Deep
Speaker 1: seeks are one model may have changed the game for
Speaker 1: Chinese robotic companies because now top level AI performance is
Speaker 1: possible with fewer advanced ships and less computing power, which
Speaker 1: makes it easier to distribute across a society.
Speaker 4: So is it safe to say that this race was
Speaker 4: less between humans and robots, which it clearly was not,
Speaker 4: and more between the US and China.
Speaker 1: Well, Cara, that's why they pay the big bugs. I agree.
Speaker 1: I agree. There is a strong national pride element to
Speaker 1: the Chinese robotics sector and seemingly a desire to integrate
Speaker 1: robots into more and more human activities such as this marathon.
Speaker 1: There's also some interesting robot human dance self videos that
Speaker 1: you can find online.
Speaker 3: I've seen them.
Speaker 1: They're well worth checking out. Moving on to another story
Speaker 1: that could be straight out of a sci fi novel,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately is not in partnership with Wired magazine. Four
Speaker 1: or four Media reported on a tool that some police
Speaker 1: departments near the Southern border are paying quite a bit
Speaker 1: of money to use. The product is called Overwatch, as
Speaker 1: in the shoot them Up video game, naturally, and it
Speaker 1: comes from a company called Massive Blue.
Speaker 3: Only boys can name this.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I'm not saying women can't, but it sounds
Speaker 4: like something that only boys can name.
Speaker 1: I'm with you on this, not unfortunately. Overwatch is marketed
Speaker 1: as a product that quote deploys lifelike virtual agents which
Speaker 1: infiltrate and engage criminal networks across various channels. Basically, Massive
Speaker 1: Blue is offering cops virtual personas that can be unleashed
Speaker 1: on the Internet and used to interact with quote college protesters, quote,
Speaker 1: radicalized political activists, and suspected drug and human traffickers over
Speaker 1: text messages and social media.
Speaker 4: And one such example of an Overwatch AI persona is Heidi,
Speaker 4: and Massive Blue described her in a presentation to the
Speaker 4: Texas Department of Public Safety as quote a radicalized AI persona.
Speaker 4: Here's her backstory? You ready, yeah, ready, Oh my god,
Speaker 4: it's me. She's a thirty six year old, Oh my god, childless,
Speaker 4: divorced woman who lives in Texas. But this is when
Speaker 4: she got radicalized. She was raised in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Her hobbies are activism and baking, and her personality is
Speaker 4: quote outspoken, lonely, and body positive. This is the greatest
Speaker 4: thing I've ever heard in my entire life.
Speaker 1: This is summoned from the nightmares of JD events.
Speaker 4: Literally, like the these are the threats to American society.
Speaker 4: A body positive child woman.
Speaker 1: Body positive, lonely, outspits.
Speaker 4: By the way, she's going to get five thousand if
Speaker 4: Heidi keeps up with this body positive, childless behavior. The
Speaker 4: Trump administration might give her five thousand dollars to have
Speaker 4: a child.
Speaker 1: So maybe the unintended consequence of a legion of Heidi's
Speaker 1: roaming the internet will be bankrupting the American American government
Speaker 1: taking advantage of the credits to have children exactly. This
Speaker 1: is obviously a truly weird story, but the purpose of
Speaker 1: personas like Heidi is to interact with and of course,
Speaker 1: perhaps we might say in trap real suspects on social media.
Speaker 1: The idea is by looking to these potential suspects, Heidi
Speaker 1: and other AI personas can gather evidence on them to
Speaker 1: be used by police departments. Sorry, I shouldn't be lovey.
Speaker 1: I mean it's bizarre.
Speaker 4: It's the most bizarre thing. Also that like these are
Speaker 4: the threats to American civilization. Like to your point, like
Speaker 4: an AI cat, we don't even know if she has
Speaker 4: a cat, because her cat could be a bigger threat.
Speaker 4: But that she's outspoken and body positive is what's so
Speaker 4: crazy to me. I do need to point out that
Speaker 4: it is legal to protest in the United States, so
Speaker 4: it's a bit odd that one of the types of
Speaker 4: AI personas is a college protester. But the idea of
Speaker 4: law enforcement using fake personas to catch suspects isn't new.
Speaker 4: Officers have made profiles claiming to be teenagers to gather
Speaker 4: information on child predators.
Speaker 1: Now, this is like if you turned to catch your
Speaker 1: predator into an AI and then turned that AI into
Speaker 1: a product and then sold it to police departments.
Speaker 3: That's exactly that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: Using this software instead of having to log on and
Speaker 1: make a fake profile message of suspect back and forth
Speaker 1: and hope they don't catch on to what you're doing,
Speaker 1: Overwatch does a lot of that work for you so.
Speaker 1: Another of watched profile the police departments can use is
Speaker 1: child trafficking AI persona, also known as Jason. Jason is
Speaker 1: fourteen years old, likes video games, and has a hard
Speaker 1: time interacting with girls.
Speaker 3: He's an insult or just a normal.
Speaker 1: Fourteen year old boy. To be fair to him, I
Speaker 1: wasn't such a big video gamer, but I certainly had
Speaker 1: those other two characteristics. In the presentation obtained by four
Speaker 1: or for Media, there is a screenshot of a sample
Speaker 1: text exchange between Jason and someone who is presumably a
Speaker 1: predatory adult, asking these alone, Jason replies to the message, quote,
Speaker 1: just chillin by myself. Man. My mom's at at Symbol
Speaker 1: work and my dad's out of town, so it's just
Speaker 1: me and my VID games video game controller emoji.
Speaker 4: I would have already been under a dictionary. I wouldn't
Speaker 4: even be able to talk to this. You know, we're
Speaker 4: not clear if this is a real exchange. We do
Speaker 4: know that Massive Blues signed a three hundred and six
Speaker 4: d thousand dollars contract with Panal County in Arizona, and
Speaker 4: the county use an anti human trafficking grant to pay
Speaker 4: for this exchange. The Panal County Sheriff's office did tell
Speaker 4: four A four media that Overwatch has so far not
Speaker 4: been used for any arrests.
Speaker 3: It is used for a lot of laughs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm curious if the fact it hasn't been used
Speaker 1: for any arrests it's considered to be a good thing
Speaker 1: or a bad thing.
Speaker 3: That's what I was going to say. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So, Karen, while we're on the topic of what kind
Speaker 1: of information can we gathered about people online, You've got
Speaker 1: a headline for us about removing yourself from the Internet.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So the Wall Street Journal ran an article with the headline,
Speaker 4: go delete yourself from the Internet, and it talks about
Speaker 4: how Google recently updated its results about You feature and
Speaker 4: you can plug in details like your name, various email addresses,
Speaker 4: phone numbers, or street addresses, and Google will literally show
Speaker 4: you what kind of things about you or out there
Speaker 4: on the internet.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I looked at this and I was like, him
Speaker 1: is basically asking me for all of my personal data
Speaker 1: to run a search on what personal data exists on
Speaker 1: the Internet. So, of course I I did it anyway,
Speaker 1: And indeed, I think this is this is less about
Speaker 1: a kind of cursory Google search and more of them
Speaker 1: doing like a deep web search to reveal what exists
Speaker 1: about you online? Is that true?
Speaker 4: Yes, it's things like where you live, if you've ever
Speaker 4: gotten a speeding ticket, magazine subscriptions, which is very risky
Speaker 4: for me. And these little bits of data can add
Speaker 4: up to a pretty substantial amount of information about you
Speaker 4: that's just floating around. You know, it can expose you
Speaker 4: to annoyances like getting more junk mail or scarier situations
Speaker 4: like identity theft or doxing or receiving unwonted flowers.
Speaker 1: Has that ever happened to you? I can't talk about
Speaker 1: it and not to mention. Data brokers scrape this stuff,
Speaker 1: package it and then sell it on as a dossier.
Speaker 1: We're talking about very personal stuff here, like license plate
Speaker 1: numbers of your vehicles, list of your family members, and
Speaker 1: the dossiers are getting more and more detailed as time
Speaker 1: goes on and more data becomes available. Yes.
Speaker 4: So just to be clear, like Google's results about you
Speaker 4: only provides information, there's a separate request process for removing
Speaker 4: things from search results, and there are are also other
Speaker 4: services you can pay for to proactively remove personal data
Speaker 4: from the Internet.
Speaker 1: One thing I can't stop thinking about is that deleting
Speaker 1: yourself from the Internet is not something you can do
Speaker 1: once and then it's done forever. I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: a never ending task.
Speaker 4: It is a never ending story, and it's ongoing for
Speaker 4: a couple of reasons. First, you know, if you don't
Speaker 4: live in a state with data privacy laws like California
Speaker 4: that require, for example, people search sites to take down
Speaker 4: your data upon request, that information might just stay up there.
Speaker 4: And second, data that's been taken down can reappear. And
Speaker 4: I think this is an unfortunate part of being in
Speaker 4: the modern world, is that like your data can just
Speaker 4: be out there.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel bad for people who live in
Speaker 1: states where mugshot databases automatically uploaded to the Internet. I mean,
Speaker 1: I find that so deeply unfair that you're kind of
Speaker 1: haunted by your mugshot forever. Even if you know Sheriff's
Speaker 1: department takes it down subsequently, it will never never leave
Speaker 1: the Internet. Also, it's one of those things where we know,
Speaker 1: you know, I know we have to be much more
Speaker 1: careful with day to privacy, but it's just so hard
Speaker 1: to actually do it. I mean, it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where it seems I until something bad happens to you,
Speaker 1: it's almost impossible to motivate yourself to take more care.
Speaker 4: And also, you and I always talk about this, like
Speaker 4: what is to be gained by giving away my data
Speaker 4: quite a bit? What is lost by giving away my
Speaker 4: data quite a bit? But I don't care as much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there are things you can do at
Speaker 1: the margins, like make a fake email address or a
Speaker 1: burner email address for every time you sign up for
Speaker 1: a site online, have a different password every time you know.
Speaker 1: Those are steps you can take that will be substantially protective.
Speaker 1: It's time for a quick break now. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we'll run through the short headlines and speak with Jeff Rosenthal,
Speaker 1: co founder of the VC firm SIEV about investing in
Speaker 1: energy infrastructure. Carrow it back, and it's time to get
Speaker 1: into the shorties.
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 1: I'll start with one of my favorite publications, The Aviationist.
Speaker 3: Do you really read that?
Speaker 1: You read it online? I read it online. They have
Speaker 1: a story with the headline British Army radio wave weapon
Speaker 1: cooks multiple drones swarms simultaneously. If you can write headlines
Speaker 1: like that, you deserve to be anybody's favorite publication.
Speaker 3: Peabody, Babe Peabody.
Speaker 1: So the British Army is testing a new air defense
Speaker 1: weapon that can simultaneously destroy more than one hundred drones
Speaker 1: in one deployment. The so called rapid Destroyer we Brits
Speaker 1: to God with names, damages or disrupts critical electronic components
Speaker 1: inside drones using just radio waves at high frequencies. This
Speaker 1: causes the drones to crash or malfunction during flight, and
Speaker 1: it could actually be a transformative defensive weapon for conflicts
Speaker 1: like the War in Ukraine. To the UK's Defense Intelligence,
Speaker 1: Ukraine had to defend against attacks from more than eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand drones in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: So bad news for members of jen Alpha trying to
Speaker 4: pose his adults on Instagram. The Verge reports that Meta
Speaker 4: is taking its AI driven age detection to the next level.
Speaker 4: If a user claims to be an adult, meaning they
Speaker 4: lie about their birth year, but then an AI tool
Speaker 4: finds evidence that they are in fact a teenager, evidence
Speaker 4: like messages from friends saying happy sixteenth birthday, smoking that's
Speaker 4: a big smoking gun, Meta will automatically switch that user
Speaker 4: to a teen account, So watch out who your friends are.
Speaker 3: These accounts are more restrictive.
Speaker 4: For example, they're private by default and Instagram limits the
Speaker 4: kind of content teen c.
Speaker 1: Here's one for all the people still ignoring cryptocurrency. The
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal has a story under the headline Crypto
Speaker 1: knocks on the door of a banking world, shut it out,
Speaker 1: and it reports that some crypto firms plan to apply
Speaker 1: for bank charters or licenses, allowing them to operate more
Speaker 1: like traditional lenders that can take deposits and make loans.
Speaker 1: This comes just a few years after the FTX collapse,
Speaker 1: when many major banks cut ties with crypto firms. But
Speaker 1: where a bank license comes striccher regulation. At least for now,
Speaker 1: all eyes are on the crypto friendly Trump administration to
Speaker 1: see where the crypto companies will have to play by
Speaker 1: the same rules in order to get these licenses.
Speaker 4: And lastly, I wanted to highlight a new startup with
Speaker 4: an unfathomable mission to achieve quote the full automation of
Speaker 4: all work, so to basically achieve humans having to do
Speaker 4: no work. This story is from tech Crunch, and the
Speaker 4: company called Mechanize intends to research the limitations of AI
Speaker 4: because they believe quote the explosive economic growth likely to
Speaker 4: result from completely automating labor could generate vast abundance, much
Speaker 4: higher standards of living, and new goods and services that
Speaker 4: we can't even imagine today. Unsurprisingly, the announcement has received
Speaker 4: considerable disdain and backlash on social media, but the company,
Speaker 4: in its affiliate nonprofit AI research organization, actually has significant
Speaker 4: backing from industry insiders, and they want you to know
Speaker 4: that they are hiring humans.
Speaker 1: Not fully mechanized yet not yet. It is interesting, though,
Speaker 1: how quickly things which seem like pipe dreams of the
Speaker 1: tech industry become the bread and butter of our daily lives.
Speaker 1: I mean, think no further than generative AI chat GPT.
Speaker 3: It's all I can hear about.
Speaker 4: It's all people focus on, and even people who don't
Speaker 4: know I host a tech podcast are talking to me
Speaker 4: about it. I'm hearing stories at book club, at my passoversator,
Speaker 4: in all of my group chats. Everyone wants to tell
Speaker 4: me ways in which they are using generative AI.
Speaker 1: Have there been any particularly striking usages that kind of
Speaker 1: stuck with you?
Speaker 4: I actually was able to do a palm reading on
Speaker 4: my mother. I'm sorry, mom for giving chat GPT your palm.
Speaker 4: We're gonna have to look into that on Google.
Speaker 1: Chatchept will say yes to a request to do a
Speaker 1: palm reading.
Speaker 4: Oh absolutely, and then it gives you all of your
Speaker 4: different life lines and your bumps on your hand and
Speaker 4: all of that. And then there's the lowest hanging fruit,
Speaker 4: which is what do I text back to the guy
Speaker 4: from Hinge, which seems to be the most popular use.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love the idea of AI palmistry. I mean,
Speaker 1: all of these industries that would have thought when the
Speaker 1: writers were striking in Hollywood two years ago, this will
Speaker 1: never happen to me.
Speaker 3: Of all of it, I.
Speaker 1: Should have laughed. But literally, really, a palm with AI
Speaker 1: is insane.
Speaker 4: We're going to see all those storefronts in the West
Speaker 4: Village and Greenwich Village just shutting down because chatgvt has
Speaker 4: taken their jobs.
Speaker 1: Just computer screens and palm readers. Yeah. Something I think
Speaker 1: back too often is my conversation with azeemas are Back
Speaker 1: in March, he writes the Exponential View newsletter, and he
Speaker 1: talks about the adoption of AI. Back in March, he'd
Speaker 1: just given a presentation at south By Southwest about the
Speaker 1: intersection between AI and energy demand, specifically how much energy
Speaker 1: is needed to power all this new usage, and he
Speaker 1: says something that really stuck with me, which is that
Speaker 1: USAI dominance could be challenged by how quickly this country
Speaker 1: can bring new power onto the grid.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the tech companies are addressing this head on.
Speaker 4: Microsoft made a deal with the owners of the Three
Speaker 4: Mile Island nuclear plant, which suffered a meltdown in the
Speaker 4: nineteen seventies, to reopen it, and in return, Microsoft committed
Speaker 4: to paying almost double market energy rates over a twenty
Speaker 4: year contract.
Speaker 1: So obviously energy is absolutely critical to the future of
Speaker 1: the tech industry, and as we know US private money
Speaker 1: increasingly plays a huge role in tech buildout. And just
Speaker 1: look at Stargate, which are both fascinated by.
Speaker 4: I don't know if i'd say fave, but I'm definitely
Speaker 4: interested in Stargate.
Speaker 1: This week, per Bloomberg quote, a new venture capital firm
Speaker 1: called SIV has raised an inaugural fund of two hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars to invest in startups tackling projects like nuclear
Speaker 1: energy and manufacturing, joining a broader movement in Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: to back physical world companies with national implications. Hits tell
Speaker 1: us more is Jeff Rosenthal, the co founder and managing
Speaker 1: partner of SIV. Jeff, thanks so much for being here today.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me Oz. It's great to
Speaker 2: be here.
Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about SIV.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: SIV is a firm built with a very singular purpose
Speaker 2: in mind. It's to back and build businesses that are
Speaker 2: focusing on critical infrastructure and industry domestically. Here in the US.
Speaker 2: There are these three multi decade megatrends that are really
Speaker 2: meeting us quickly in this moment, and those are AI
Speaker 2: and compute and the power needs behind them in the
Speaker 2: digital infrastructure required. As you mentioned, the rev limitter to
Speaker 2: AI really isn't GPUs, it is electrons. It's the reshoring
Speaker 2: and reindustrialization of global industry after decades of offshoring and
Speaker 2: globalization really following COVID and Ukraine and now accelerated with
Speaker 2: the new administration. And then the third is the electrification
Speaker 2: of everything and really just the need for energy abundance domestically,
Speaker 2: not only because of economic prosperity, but also as a
Speaker 2: pertinent national security requirement. So we see that as a
Speaker 2: potential seventy trillion dollar market opportunity over the next fifteen years.
Speaker 2: To put that in perspective, that would be like building
Speaker 2: the rail system and the highway system every six weeks
Speaker 2: for fifteen years here in the United States.
Speaker 1: And what's the name SIEV means SIV is short for civilization,
Speaker 1: So big, big goals.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, shoot for the stars, land on
Speaker 2: the moon.
Speaker 1: I'm especially interested in energy, and we've spoken about Microsoft's
Speaker 1: investments in nuclear power. Do you at SIV have a
Speaker 1: kind of ten year view on how America's energy needs
Speaker 1: are going to be addressed?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Yeah. So we're saying we want to triple energy consumption,
Speaker 2: you know, in a decade. Right. It's it's just the
Speaker 2: United States. It's like a lot of these things that
Speaker 2: people say. It's like, hey, if we're going to meet
Speaker 2: the needs of the time, if we're going to meet
Speaker 2: the demand curve of AI and reshoring and electrification, we
Speaker 2: need to triple energy. It just doesn't really work that
Speaker 2: way because we're talking about infrastructure. This is steel, it's rebar,
Speaker 2: it's concrete, it's tens of thousands of people on work
Speaker 2: sites every single day. And so it's not AI, it's
Speaker 2: not software. You can't just say, like, we have a
Speaker 2: million more users, let's just scale it. You know, when
Speaker 2: we looked at this and we saw inflect demand with
Speaker 2: relatively fixed supply. We thought that there was really nothing
Speaker 2: that could completely cross that chasm except maybe the thing
Speaker 2: that we invented seventy years ago, which is a scaled vision.
Speaker 2: So you see plenty of money and venture going into
Speaker 2: new reactors. And so when we look at the United States,
Speaker 2: we have ninety four operational reactors today, we're the leading
Speaker 2: nuclear superpower in the world. However, there's about fifty different
Speaker 2: designs active, which means that they're all special snowflakes. And
Speaker 2: when you build anything in of one as a singular project,
Speaker 2: that's the most expensive way you could ever do things.
Speaker 2: And so what we innovated on at the Nuclear Company,
Speaker 2: which we co founded on our platform actually before raising
Speaker 2: outside capital, is really a fleet scale approach to developing
Speaker 2: and deploying approved nuclear.
Speaker 1: Reactors, a fleet of reactors.
Speaker 2: Yes, so instead of building one approved reactor gigawatt scale reactor,
Speaker 2: we're actually building in of six. And the idea is
Speaker 2: that you have huge cost declines and huge time declines
Speaker 2: from reactor one to two to three to five. You
Speaker 2: can build a real supply chain, you can build real
Speaker 2: trades that roll from reactor to reactor, and this is
Speaker 2: all through observed data.
Speaker 1: Power generation is one challenge, power storage is another. Onboarding
Speaker 1: to the grid is another, Dealing with regulations is another.
Speaker 1: What's the kind of total picture of the ways in
Speaker 1: which you are addressing the opportunity of energy demand in
Speaker 1: the US.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a very broad set of needs.
Speaker 2: To your point, it's energy generation, it's storage, it's dealing
Speaker 2: with more and more volatility on the grid which increases cost.
Speaker 2: It's dealing with, as you mentioned in the opening, the
Speaker 2: veritable arms race that the hyperscalers are going through for power.
Speaker 2: This is a existential crisis for them to secure their
Speaker 2: future growth. There is industrial efficiency technology. There's everything in
Speaker 2: the vertical of digital infrastructure, cooling, high capacity lines, you know,
Speaker 2: next generation racks and servers, innovation and acceleration in GPU,
Speaker 2: and this is all Chapter one. That's the most exciting
Speaker 2: part is like this is the worst that this technology
Speaker 2: will ever be. And this is the very beginning of
Speaker 2: the innovation cycle for all of these things. When you
Speaker 2: use chat GPT's the worst it will ever be. The
Speaker 2: way we really model what we personally back or build
Speaker 2: as we say, hey, is this scale tech versus deep tech.
Speaker 2: We think ninety five percent of the solutions are here today.
Speaker 2: The chasm to cross is more one of execution than
Speaker 2: one of pure intervention.
Speaker 1: Just just to clarify, scale tech means something that already
Speaker 1: exists that you can accelerate by investing in, whereas deep
Speaker 1: tech means essentially replicating the role of university or funding
Speaker 1: for research that may only bear commercial fruits a decade
Speaker 1: from now.
Speaker 2: That's right. I think it's too long duration to capital
Speaker 2: intensive for a vehicle like ours, and we're also not PhDs,
Speaker 2: so we really don't have much to offer you if
Speaker 2: you're still in a lab, so we won't really take
Speaker 2: binary science or technology risk. We then look for proven
Speaker 2: customer demand, hence our LP base of true operators in
Speaker 2: the spaces in which we invest. We want to understand
Speaker 2: the appetite for adoption, the imminence of that adoption, when
Speaker 2: would you adopt it, and then we want to back
Speaker 2: into competitive unit economics. Businesses with those features really scale exponentially.
Speaker 2: They can really redefine markets.
Speaker 4: After the break, OZ has more from Jeff Rosenthal, a
Speaker 4: VC firmative that's on tech Stuff's tech support.
Speaker 3: Stay with us.
Speaker 1: On the nuclear side. This is kind of one of
Speaker 1: the great debates I think going on in the tech
Speaker 1: world will be how much of text amount of energy
Speaker 1: is met by nuclear. Of course, one of the facts
Speaker 1: in this is that people are scared of nuclear power.
Speaker 1: I mean they're scared of how you suppose that the
Speaker 1: wast they're scared of meltdowns. Did you have any concerns
Speaker 1: about the first project in this space? You know, you're
Speaker 1: putting your name to being nuclear.
Speaker 2: I think it gives us solid that zero people have
Speaker 2: died from nuclear in the United States. You know, like
Speaker 2: hundreds of fallen off of windmills. If you think about
Speaker 2: coal plants or all the other ways in which we
Speaker 2: consume power, there's trade offs to everything. I personally feel
Speaker 2: that splitting atoms to create chain reactions to power giant
Speaker 2: turbines that give us the energy and prosperity for our
Speaker 2: cities in our society is almost the most amazing thing
Speaker 2: we've ever done as a species. And we're not handling
Speaker 2: nuclear waste ourselves. It's not like I'm taking it out
Speaker 2: in a bag in the back of my house. We
Speaker 2: work with nuclear operating utilities, and so this is constellation
Speaker 2: or floor to power in light. They handle the nuclear
Speaker 2: waste today without issue. We do believe that this is
Speaker 2: an essential part of the power mix of the future.
Speaker 2: It won't be all of it, you know, Like today,
Speaker 2: the most efficient way to really run a data center
Speaker 2: on power is two gas turbines because that achieves a
Speaker 2: capacity factor, meaning they can stay on close to one
Speaker 2: hundred percent of the time. The problem with intermittent energy
Speaker 2: powering data centers is you really can't do training or.
Speaker 1: Inference intimatum being basically solar.
Speaker 2: Wind, et cetera. Yeah, so the value of twenty four
Speaker 2: x seven clean base power is exponential for the entire system.
Speaker 2: It's really really important. So it's not all just apples
Speaker 2: to apples.
Speaker 1: There is I mean, there are cool storage solutions around,
Speaker 1: you know, capturing wind and solar energy to make it
Speaker 1: on nine twenty four seven or investments in.
Speaker 2: That space explicitly true. There are emergent technologies for large
Speaker 2: long duration battery storage for wind and solar. There's things
Speaker 2: like form energy and in Tora energy, there's interesting startups
Speaker 2: that are looking to store thing and it's store power
Speaker 2: and heat. So these things are amazing, they're so inspiring,
Speaker 2: but they are not really here today.
Speaker 1: We talked a lot on this show about how some
Speaker 1: of these things that seemed like pipe dreams or seemed
Speaker 1: like science fiction, uh, you know, becoming science fact in
Speaker 1: our lifetimes.
Speaker 2: These stories have been all around us for a long time.
Speaker 2: It's more an awareness issue than it is like an
Speaker 2: invention issue. So people are like, where's my iPhone? You know,
Speaker 2: I got my first iPhone? Change my life, life Gmail
Speaker 2: and change my life. Where are these things? And so
Speaker 2: I would argue that this is one of the spaces
Speaker 2: that you just see the future manifest regularly, like the
Speaker 2: impossible become possible. It's such a fun innovation cycle.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: There's things like Cigar Lake. Cigar Lake is in eastern Saskatchewan, Canada.
Speaker 2: It's owned by Camico. They discovered it in the early eighties.
Speaker 2: It's underneath a snow melt lake fourteen hundred feet deep.
Speaker 2: It's a billion three year old deposit of uranium. Most uranium,
Speaker 2: say in Africa point one two point two percent uranium
Speaker 2: per ounce of war, right, and so these massive sulphuric
Speaker 2: acid leaching fields. This is like twenty four percent uranium
Speaker 2: war It's the second most concentrated uranium deposit in the world.
Speaker 2: So they spent decades figuring out how to freeze the lake.
Speaker 2: They free on this entire lake. Okay, then they rebarred it,
Speaker 2: and then they drilled it fourteen hundred feet down and
Speaker 2: they've been mining it with robots for three decades. And
Speaker 2: it's where something like a quarter of our uranium comes
Speaker 2: from in the United States. And so all I'm saying
Speaker 2: the reason I offer you this, this is like a
Speaker 2: wonder of the world. There are one hundred of these.
Speaker 2: We just don't really know about them because we haven't
Speaker 2: been excited about this space for a long time.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg used the phrase physical world companies with national implications.
Speaker 1: I thought was a good phrase because the world you're
Speaker 1: investing in and building, of course, intersects very heavily with politics.
Speaker 1: But on clean energy, it's kind of interesting because President
Speaker 1: Trump has talked about beautiful coal, beautiful, clean coal, beautiful beautiful,
Speaker 1: and has certainly stepped away from the Biden administration's commitment
Speaker 1: to like keleen energy and green energy. At the same time,
Speaker 1: I think Q one of twenty twenty five was the
Speaker 1: biggest bonanza quarter for investment in climate tech the US
Speaker 1: has ever seen. Five million dollars invested in one quarter
Speaker 1: up nearly sixty five percent year on year. What's going
Speaker 1: on there is private capitals seeing an opportunity in public
Speaker 1: drawback or how do you know?
Speaker 2: I mean, this is the Golden Age. So first and foremost,
Speaker 2: there's this thing called Geben's paradox, and with Jebens paradox,
Speaker 2: exis ammons is that for you know, one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty years, humans have essentially gotten one percent more efficient
Speaker 2: every single year. We invent LEDs where we figure out
Speaker 2: a more efficient electric motor, and then we use that
Speaker 2: gain an efficiency which drops pricing to increase consumption by
Speaker 2: one point three percent. So every time we increase efficiency gains,
Speaker 2: we actually use more of what we have.
Speaker 1: And this was why when deep Sea came out, the
Speaker 1: Nvidia stock price went down, a lot of small people said, well,
Speaker 1: actually this might be a good thing ultimately because although
Speaker 1: they've done it without the very very advanced chips, this
Speaker 1: will ultimately drive more demand for chips one.
Speaker 2: Percent and more demand for AI. I believe we're pretty
Speaker 2: energy blind in our society to a degree. In the
Speaker 2: case of these clean energy companies and these efficiency technologies.
Speaker 2: For the twenty years leading up to this we were
Speaker 2: in an abundance market. You just did not need these things.
Speaker 2: There was no market driver, there was no demand driver
Speaker 2: for innovation in these spaces, and so that you can
Speaker 2: see the returns being pretty abysmal.
Speaker 1: Historical energy demand was flat until Jerry, we.
Speaker 2: Were solving problem that didn't exist yet. And so it's
Speaker 2: not just AI that's a major contributor. It's AI. It's
Speaker 2: the reshoring and reindustrialization of global industry. If you want
Speaker 2: to smelt steel in America, it takes a lot of
Speaker 2: power building flush rocks in America if you want to
Speaker 2: I mean, let alone, refinement of critical minerals and then
Speaker 2: the mining of critical minerals like these are all things
Speaker 2: that are nonpartisan in my opinion. Like this is a
Speaker 2: movement that's been happening for quite some time. And we see,
Speaker 2: you know, the tariffs more as a canary in the
Speaker 2: coal mine.
Speaker 1: So the energy sector has been particularly punished by the
Speaker 1: swings and roundabouts on the tariffs. I think abound sixteen
Speaker 1: percent this year. That's not something that concerns you as
Speaker 1: somebody investing in this space, I.
Speaker 2: Think it certainly concerns me. I think that you know,
Speaker 2: you talk to anybody in retail markets are softening, consumers
Speaker 2: are spending less money. But I think that these trends
Speaker 2: that we're talking about are multi decade mega trends that
Speaker 2: you know, you're going to need these things if you
Speaker 2: want to have a prosperous society in the future.
Speaker 1: When people think about the sa they tend to think
Speaker 1: about consumer like you know, will by Parker or Goop. Well,
Speaker 1: I think about SaaS, I think about you know, Slack
Speaker 1: or Shopify or whatever else. But you're not the only
Speaker 1: person to be looking addressing this kind of infrastructure opportunity
Speaker 1: through VC. Andrewson, I think, announced a six and roe
Speaker 1: million dollar fun last year to address American dynamism.
Speaker 2: What's striving this necessity is the mother of innovation first
Speaker 2: and foremost. You know, you have these mega trens we've identified,
Speaker 2: I think many other people have. I think that there's
Speaker 2: also a more durable moat in physical products in a
Speaker 2: sense now, so while you know, hardware the first four letters,
Speaker 2: and hardware is hard and so Benuura is always like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I'll stick to enterprise SaaS. That is way
Speaker 2: less defensible than it used to be. You know, now
Speaker 2: with windsurf and your own time, no staff, you can
Speaker 2: code and develop, you know, your own apps or platforms
Speaker 2: or technologies. Suites that used to take millions of dollars
Speaker 2: in years and dozens of people on front end back
Speaker 2: in nearing development. None of that is necessary anymore.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: The defensibility of what was really like the center of
Speaker 2: the Venn diagram for venture deals a decade ago has
Speaker 2: kind of disappeared to a degree. I think people are
Speaker 2: conscious of that, and so we'd rather work with companies
Speaker 2: that are utilizing the tools of the day to really
Speaker 2: reimagine and reinvent critical industries versus just being like yet
Speaker 2: another digital service provider.
Speaker 1: Jeff, thank you for joining us on tech Stuff.
Speaker 2: Of course, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: That's it for this week for tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Karra Price and I'm as Valoshin. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced by Eliza Dennis, Victoria Dominguez and Adriana Tapia. Is
Speaker 1: Executive produced by me Cara Price and Kate Osborne for
Speaker 1: Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcasts. The engineers are
Speaker 1: Bahiit Fraser and Graham Gibson. Kyle Murdock makes this episode
Speaker 1: and he also rid of theme.
Speaker 4: Song Join us next Wednesday for tex Stuff the Story,
Speaker 4: when we will share an in depth conversation with journalist
Speaker 4: and podcast host Evan Ratliffe about a radical group of
Speaker 4: young tech people concerned by the existential threat of AI,
Speaker 4: who are on trial for murder.
Speaker 1: Please rate, review, and reach out to us at tech
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. We really want to
Speaker 1: hear from you.