Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Joining
Speaker 2: us now is venture capitalist Mark Andresen. He's out with
Speaker 2: a stunning new essay, Why AI will Save the world?
Speaker 2: Counterintuitive or is it so? Mark? It's great to see you.
Speaker 3: Hey, good morning Mark.
Speaker 2: You go through a couple of the myths, and I
Speaker 2: actually just thought, as a fun interview, you know, we
Speaker 2: have a general, like a general audience. Some of these
Speaker 2: people may not be all familiar with your work. You're
Speaker 2: just on the Joe Rogan experience. But the most common ones,
Speaker 2: I thought, you do a fantastic job of breaking these down.
Speaker 2: The first and foremost is will AI kill us all?
Speaker 2: Why won't it?
Speaker 4: I will not, in fact kill us all. It's like
Speaker 4: it's it's it's it's a very exciting new technology. It's
Speaker 4: a technology. We build it, we control it. You know,
Speaker 4: it runs, it runs on computers that we own.
Speaker 3: We don't like what it does, we turn the computers off.
Speaker 4: It's a you know that that part is just I
Speaker 4: think straightforward engineering.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons why I think it's important for
Speaker 2: people to understand what you're talking about about the level
Speaker 2: of control is that there's been a lot of I
Speaker 2: don't want to say fear mongering, but maybe there is
Speaker 2: about singularity about the ability to you know, pass the
Speaker 2: Turing test and all of this. As someone who's a
Speaker 2: technologist there from the very beginning, from so many of
Speaker 2: so much of the Internet and all that, why do
Speaker 2: you think that that is something that we shouldn't be
Speaker 2: concerned about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you may know, we Californians are famous for
Speaker 4: our cults. We love our cults. We have produced many
Speaker 4: thousands of them over the over the decades and continue
Speaker 4: to do so. And so there's this concept in in
Speaker 4: religious studies of a millenarian cult, sort of an end
Speaker 4: of the world cult. And the way that he start
Speaker 4: is with sort of the idea of creating heaven on Earth,
Speaker 4: which is actually a term you may be familiar with.
Speaker 4: It's an old Bill Buckley term called immin immanitizing the Eschaton,
Speaker 4: which is sort of bring about, bring about heaven on Earth.
Speaker 4: And this is the idea of the singularity, right. So
Speaker 4: techis who get into this stuff kind of you know,
Speaker 4: come with this idea of heaven on Earth through the.
Speaker 3: Application of technology.
Speaker 4: But of course the flip side of heaven on Earth
Speaker 4: is creating hell on Earth, right, And so the sort
Speaker 4: of utopian cult tend to transform over time into being
Speaker 4: these sort of apocalyptic cults. And you know, they sort
Speaker 4: of hear this term, you know, kind of summon summoning
Speaker 4: the demon, and then you know, and then things.
Speaker 3: Go horribly wrong.
Speaker 4: So these are just like ideas that are kind of
Speaker 4: very deeply rooted in kind of Western theology, Western philosophy,
Speaker 4: and whatever new is happening in the world.
Speaker 3: We tend to kind of build up these cults. I
Speaker 3: maybe I'm I don't know, I'm a simpler guy.
Speaker 4: I'm an engineer. You know, I got where I am
Speaker 4: by writing software. Writing software is hard. You know, lots
Speaker 4: of like practical aspects involved in getting any of this
Speaker 4: stuff to work.
Speaker 3: I Mean, the.
Speaker 4: Funniest idea right now is you can't even today, you
Speaker 4: can't even buy chips to to do AI. Like there's
Speaker 4: this massive, like global chip shortage for AI chips, and
Speaker 4: so I have these kind of fantasies that there's a baby,
Speaker 4: you know, malevolent artificial intelligence running in a lab somewhere
Speaker 4: that has like a huge order out to Nvidia and
Speaker 4: it's just like incredibly frustrated that it can't take over
Speaker 4: the world because it can't get the chips.
Speaker 2: That's that's well said. Yeah, it turns out that the
Speaker 2: limiting principle here is actual factories, not in terms of
Speaker 2: the idea, which is kind of amazing. Let's also talk
Speaker 2: about AI ruining our society, as you said, hate speech, misinformation.
Speaker 2: This is why we need regulation. We need it now,
Speaker 2: we need to shut down. The government's got to get involved.
Speaker 2: What do you make of that that argument there?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so after we get through the apocalypse apocalyptic cult,
Speaker 4: then we get to sort of the mode basically, you know,
Speaker 4: of any sort of significant new technology basically where it
Speaker 4: threatens existing power structures. Right, so it sort of it
Speaker 4: sort of threatens the hierarchy of who's in charge and
Speaker 4: who gets to decide, you know, kind of what people think.
Speaker 4: And of course they you know, the Internet is you know,
Speaker 4: you know, you guys are an example of this, Like
Speaker 4: the Internet has had a shattering effect on the traditional
Speaker 4: you know authority of people who used to be in
Speaker 4: a position to be able to gate keep access to
Speaker 4: information and used to be able to, you know, determine
Speaker 4: what people say. You know, there's once upon a time,
Speaker 4: if it if it was set on the major three
Speaker 4: TV networks, that's what everybody believed. And then you know,
Speaker 4: guys like you come along and and kind of you know,
Speaker 4: blow that up.
Speaker 3: And so you know, look, we're we're on that.
Speaker 4: We're on the tail end now of you know, fifteen
Speaker 4: years of like very dramatic change.
Speaker 3: But by the way, on.
Speaker 4: Both sides of the political aisle, uh, you know, in
Speaker 4: terms of like who gets to basically decide what truth is?
Speaker 4: And of course the people who used to decide what
Speaker 4: truth is are extremely upset about that. And of course
Speaker 4: a lot of like ordinary people who now have a
Speaker 4: chance to learn alternate pint points of view and get
Speaker 4: information they would not have had otherwise. We're obviously very
Speaker 4: excited about that.
Speaker 3: I think this.
Speaker 4: Concern is like another turn on that right because because
Speaker 4: you know, people are going in the future, people are
Speaker 4: going to be talking to AI, learning from AI, you know,
Speaker 4: getting information from AI, you know, at least as much
Speaker 4: as they do that with other people. And so what
Speaker 4: the AI says is going to have a big impact
Speaker 4: on society. I think that's going to be an overwhelmingly
Speaker 4: positive impact because I think people are going to have
Speaker 4: access to a lot more information. It's going to be
Speaker 4: like the Internet ont steroids. But if you're a traditional gatekeeper,
Speaker 4: like you don't like this at all, and so that's
Speaker 4: when you bring out, you know, the sort of scare
Speaker 4: factors like like hat spetion and misinformation.
Speaker 2: Yes, smart. And one of the questions though here is
Speaker 2: about development, and this is one of the only ones
Speaker 2: of which I'm still have some questions around, is given
Speaker 2: that we have the existing players Google, Facebook, the bigger
Speaker 2: corporations involved, should we worry then about monopolies, you know,
Speaker 2: being the most transformative in this space and carrying over
Speaker 2: existing policy or will the technology itself be able to
Speaker 2: trump those concerns.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's a very open, live question right now,
Speaker 4: and I can kind of argue all sides of that question.
Speaker 4: I don't know the answer, you know, this is a
Speaker 4: very unusual situation. You know, usually new technologies get running,
Speaker 4: you know, kind of starret of a decade or so
Speaker 4: before they become sort of super political, before people start
Speaker 4: to lobby for regulatory capture. This, this technology is unusual
Speaker 4: in that the major players are are They're already in Washington,
Speaker 4: and they're already lobbying aggressively for regulatory capture. And I,
Speaker 4: you know, I said them in the piece, and I've
Speaker 4: said out places like the big companies here are trying
Speaker 4: to form a cartel. You know, they're trying to basically
Speaker 4: get the status that the big banks have in financial services.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: They're trying to basically get protected, you know, as institutions
Speaker 4: that are too big to fail, and they're trying to
Speaker 4: basically get a regulatory wall established so that startups can't.
Speaker 3: Compete with them.
Speaker 4: And look, they haven't early head started on that. They've
Speaker 4: made excellent progress. They've used these scare messages like end
Speaker 4: of the world and Hatespe and all the rest, you know,
Speaker 4: kind of as levers to try to get this kind
Speaker 4: of regulatory capture. You know, I and others have been
Speaker 4: pointing out that this is like a transparent grab for
Speaker 4: regulatory capture. You know, it's it's ironic that I feel
Speaker 4: like I have to encourage Washington to like, not like
Speaker 4: and trust big tech, but in fact they should not.
Speaker 4: In fact, you know, in this case, trust big tech
Speaker 4: and then they should let let you know, they should let
Speaker 4: technogy run. Why should they let the technology run competition?
Speaker 4: You know, they basically the big companies should be subject
Speaker 4: to competition from start ups and from open source start ups.
Speaker 4: An open source should be subject to competition for big companies.
Speaker 4: And of course that that that that is the time
Speaker 4: honored way to you know, to to discipline companies is
Speaker 4: to make sure that they're subject to actual competition.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that's an important point. We also do
Speaker 2: you touch on AI taking all of our jobs in
Speaker 2: the essay? One of there's been some talk here about well,
Speaker 2: it turns out that blue white collar jobs are a
Speaker 2: little bit more at risk even after decades of self
Speaker 2: driving car discourse. But even that mark you kind of
Speaker 2: try to make the case here that make taking all
Speaker 2: of our jobs and all that is the doom. You
Speaker 2: know that people have been crying about with new technology
Speaker 2: for a long time. You know, you've all know Harari
Speaker 2: many others have been like no, no, no, no, this time
Speaker 2: is different. So why why is it not different?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So if you look historically, basically this is the cry.
Speaker 4: This is sort of the paranoid cry on the economic
Speaker 4: front that's going to come up basically every new wave
Speaker 4: of technology for three hundred years, and the cry is
Speaker 4: always the same cry, and it's it's based on this
Speaker 4: fallacy and economics called the lump of labor fallacy, which is,
Speaker 4: by the way, is the heart of Marxism. One of
Speaker 4: the reasons why marx system doesn't work is because like
Speaker 4: this fallacy is false. And the fallacy basically is that
Speaker 4: there's a fixed amount of labor and either machines are
Speaker 4: either humans are going to do the labor and have jobs,
Speaker 4: or machines are going to do the labor.
Speaker 3: And then humans won't have jobs.
Speaker 4: And so that you know, the proposal then always is
Speaker 4: that new technology will lead to a miseration of human beings. So,
Speaker 4: of course what happens in practice is the opposite of that.
Speaker 4: New technology drives economic growth, New technology drives job creation,
Speaker 4: new technology drives wage growth. The sectors of the economy
Speaker 4: with higher levels of technological development show higher job growth
Speaker 4: and higher wage growth, and The reason for that is
Speaker 4: very simple, which is technology is a lever on human effort.
Speaker 4: If you take a human being and you add technology
Speaker 4: to what they do, they become more productive, right, They
Speaker 4: generate more output with the same amount of human effort.
Speaker 4: That leads to higher wages, that leads to you know,
Speaker 4: basically growth in the economy. If if AI in fact
Speaker 4: is allowed to run through the economy, I have no
Speaker 4: doubt that the result is going to be massive economic growth,
Speaker 4: massive job growth, and massive wage growth. I think actually
Speaker 4: the bigger threat is AI won't be allowed to run.
Speaker 4: It'll be outlawed in some form. And just give you
Speaker 4: a couple examples of that, which is, you know, will
Speaker 4: the medical boards allow there to be AI doctors? You know,
Speaker 4: will the bar associations allow there to be AI lawyers?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: I think it's actually equally likely we'll see the opposite problem,
Speaker 4: which is AI will not be allowed to actually run
Speaker 4: through the economy, and as a consequence, it will actually
Speaker 4: have less economic impact even than I would hope. I
Speaker 4: hope that's not the case, but I do worry about.
Speaker 2: That, right well, I mean, you got classic job preservation
Speaker 2: there going on, which actually those does lead to the
Speaker 2: next kind of myth that you talk about here about
Speaker 2: AI leading to crippling inequality. So the obvious answer is, like,
Speaker 2: you're right, market, it will unleash all this economic growth,
Speaker 2: but all of the gains will aggregate to the top.
Speaker 2: You don't need that many employees actually involved in these companies,
Speaker 2: and they will capture the trillions of dollars in value
Speaker 2: and a new underclass will form. That's why we need UBI.
Speaker 2: So see how quickly I got there in terms of
Speaker 2: this one. What's your view?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this is sort of again, this is sort
Speaker 4: of right. This is a fallacy right of the heart
Speaker 4: of Marxism, right. And the way I always kind of
Speaker 4: teach my friends on this is it's like, if the
Speaker 4: answer is UBI, then the question when it was communism, right, Like,
Speaker 4: it's it's amazing how quickly sometimes sometimes people get to like, oh,
Speaker 4: we just need to give everybody money. It's like, okay,
Speaker 4: that sounds familiar. So the reason that doesn't happen. The
Speaker 4: reason doesn't happen is because when people miss and this
Speaker 4: is this is again, this is a fallacy that's repeated
Speaker 4: over and over again. Technology democratize this, and with AI
Speaker 4: it's actually striking that. It's it's so obvious that that's
Speaker 4: already happening. You and I and anybody else in the
Speaker 4: world today can get access to and use in our
Speaker 4: daily lives the very best available AI, like anybody watching
Speaker 4: this can use this same. You know, I cannot pay
Speaker 4: a million dollars and get a better AI than anybody
Speaker 4: watching this can. And the way and the way that
Speaker 4: you do that if you want that is, you know,
Speaker 4: you can go to you can get to go on
Speaker 4: chat GPT for twenty bucks a month you get the
Speaker 4: good stuff. Or you can go to Microsoft Being which
Speaker 4: is a version of GPT four, or you can go
Speaker 4: to the Google Bard, which is also getting quite good.
Speaker 4: Those are actually free, right, So Microsoft and Google are
Speaker 4: already bringing this stuff to market for free.
Speaker 3: Why why are they doing that?
Speaker 4: It's because they're trying to use it, right to boost
Speaker 4: their existing search businesses whatever, that's not your problem is
Speaker 4: they're giving it for free. And so the best AI
Speaker 4: is already available to anybody who wants it. Over one
Speaker 4: hundred million people are already using it in their in
Speaker 4: their daily lives. That number is going to rant very
Speaker 4: fast from here, and so you'll have it.
Speaker 3: I'll have it.
Speaker 4: Everybody else will have it. Everybody will happen in their lives,
Speaker 4: everybody will have it in the workplace. Everybody will be
Speaker 4: able to build businesses based on it. Everybody will be
Speaker 4: able to upgrade any aspect of how they operate based
Speaker 4: on it, and so and so democratized. And the and
Speaker 4: the reason it democratizes is actually it's it's sort of
Speaker 4: an an Adams, you know, Ada Smith refutation of Marxism.
Speaker 4: The reason it democratizes is because these companies want, the
Speaker 4: companies like Microsoft and Google, that and open Aid want
Speaker 4: to become big important companies.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: The way to be the biggest possible vendor of technology
Speaker 4: is to provide that technology the largest possible market, and
Speaker 4: the largest possible market is everybody on the planet. And
Speaker 4: so basic commercial self interest actually leads to the opposite result,
Speaker 4: which is everybody gets the technology. That happened obviously with
Speaker 4: the smartphone, it happened obviously with the Internet.
Speaker 3: It happened to the microship, but happened with the car.
Speaker 4: You know, it's happened with every other new form of technology.
Speaker 4: And that that's what's happening here.
Speaker 2: Mark. One of the points say you often make, which
Speaker 2: I think is very important is that tech. Right now,
Speaker 2: the industries that are actually driving the most inequality are housing, education,
Speaker 2: and healthcare, both of which are the most resistant actually
Speaker 2: to technology. As you alluded to earlier, lawyers being able
Speaker 2: to keep and effectively a moat around their fees, doctors
Speaker 2: in the same way, even if technology exists which could
Speaker 2: quite easily give the consumer a much better product. Could
Speaker 2: you touch on that though, about how tech has actually
Speaker 2: not been allowed and not even just tech, but really
Speaker 2: like recompetition has not been allowed to penetrate the regulatory
Speaker 2: moat around these through sectors which are increasingly driving the
Speaker 2: vast majority of the inequality in US society.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we live in a bifurcated economy bisector. And
Speaker 4: why I described this is there's called fast sectors, which
Speaker 4: are the sectors.
Speaker 3: That are allowed to incorporate in your technology.
Speaker 4: And these are sectors like in someerer electronics, television sets, right, media, software, right,
Speaker 4: you know a lot actually by the way, food and drink. Interestingly,
Speaker 4: where you're allowed to have basically very rapid technological evolution.
Speaker 4: You're allowed to have free mark capitalism, You're allowed to
Speaker 4: have tons of competition, tons of new entrant tons of startups.
Speaker 4: Then you've got what I call the slow sectors, and
Speaker 4: the slow sectors of the sectors of the government is
Speaker 4: very involved in them, and the government establishes all these
Speaker 4: regulatory barriers and constraints in what companies can do, and
Speaker 4: the result of that is rapidly escalating prices.
Speaker 3: With very little technological change.
Speaker 4: And you mentioned it, but the three big slow sectors
Speaker 4: are housing, education, and healthcare. And by the way, you
Speaker 4: could put a couple other sectors in there, and I would,
Speaker 4: I would, And you could say also.
Speaker 3: By the way, government is in there.
Speaker 4: Generally government agencies are also very resistant to do technology.
Speaker 4: And then I would just say, also, like the entire
Speaker 4: field of law essentially, like so the entire field of
Speaker 4: like administration of the economy, which of course has been
Speaker 4: you know, growing tremendously, also is very resistant to new technology.
Speaker 4: And so you have this like bizarre situation if you're
Speaker 4: trying to like raise a family in the US right now,
Speaker 4: you have this bizarre situation, which is you can buy,
Speaker 4: you know, a television set that covers your entire wall
Speaker 4: right and spectacular, you know, four K, eight K visual
Speaker 4: splendor to watch Netflix. You can buy that for like
Speaker 4: three hundred bucks, but if you want to send your
Speaker 4: kid to college for four years, it's three hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: Right and and and those prices buy fur Kate further
Speaker 4: every single day, right and and and Actually, my analysis
Speaker 4: is this, This is why it feels like our politics
Speaker 4: have gone so wild on both the left and the right.
Speaker 4: I think this is the underlying reason why there's so
Speaker 4: much populism on both sides.
Speaker 3: Of the aisle.
Speaker 4: Is because the experience of just the typical American voter
Speaker 4: citizen is that the American dream, as defined by the
Speaker 4: very basics of buying and living in a house, you know,
Speaker 4: having sending your kids to college, and having excellent health care,
Speaker 4: the prices in those things are running completely out of control. Yes,
Speaker 4: this is one hundred percent function of government involvement. The
Speaker 4: government in all three of those sectors subsidizes demand while
Speaker 4: restricting supply. And so those are sectors that have a
Speaker 4: cartel like structure. Right, It's virtually impossible to start a
Speaker 4: new university, It's virtually possible to build houses lots of places.
Speaker 4: It's first virtually impossible to start a new hospital or
Speaker 4: get a new doctor license. And so the government basically
Speaker 4: has a set of policies in place that restricted option
Speaker 4: technology and drive prices in those sectors.
Speaker 3: I think they should stop doing that. You know.
Speaker 4: One of the things we're trying to do in our
Speaker 4: business is in jectmore technology into those sectors. But it
Speaker 4: is very hard because the barriers there too new technology
Speaker 4: are very high.
Speaker 2: Yes, they're outrageous. And finally, actually one point that you
Speaker 2: touch on is about national competition visa via China. There's
Speaker 2: been some arguments here about the Pentagon and whether we
Speaker 2: should have completely state subsidized AI and the way that
Speaker 2: the Chinese companies do it. You've argued here in the
Speaker 2: essay that a robust private sector is actually enough in
Speaker 2: order to quote unquote beat them. Given though that they're
Speaker 2: massive investments inside of China on quantum computing and more,
Speaker 2: why is it still enough for our private sector to
Speaker 2: be able to come out on top eventually.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, first of all, this is sort of an incongruity
Speaker 4: and how Washington's dealing with AI. And this is something
Speaker 4: I experienced a lot, which is I talk to people
Speaker 4: in Washington on Tuesday, right, and they're they're very worried
Speaker 4: about all the arguments that we've already discussed, you know,
Speaker 4: sort of internal to the US. I talked to the
Speaker 4: same people on Thursday, and they're very worried about China,
Speaker 4: and all of a sudden, they're like, Wow, we in
Speaker 4: the private sector need to like teme up and advance
Speaker 4: AI as fast as we can because we have to
Speaker 4: compete with China, and we might be in a future
Speaker 4: of war with China, and that war might be want
Speaker 4: or lost on the basis of the application of AI.
Speaker 4: And so there is this weird thing of course, where
Speaker 4: you know, societies kind of turn on themselves when there's
Speaker 4: no external threat, you know, the Chinese external threat. You know,
Speaker 4: maybe maybe it's showing up at a good time kind
Speaker 4: of you know, sort of weirdly, not in the way
Speaker 4: that we would prefer, but like, you know, maybe it's
Speaker 4: going to get us little bit more focused on things
Speaker 4: that matter. Look, so both the Chinese state and the
Speaker 4: American state have decided that AI and autonomy or the
Speaker 4: future of warfare. China has been very public on this.
Speaker 4: They you know, they the great thing about China is
Speaker 4: they just like publish their plans. They just like tell
Speaker 4: you what they're doing. It's the thing very straightforward, you know,
Speaker 4: kind of how they communicate. And then and then look
Speaker 4: in the US, the Pentagon, you know, several years ago
Speaker 4: now basically announced decided that what they called the third offset,
Speaker 4: just sort of the third big national strategy for you know,
Speaker 4: for technology, advanced and military fairs, was going to be
Speaker 4: a AI in autonomy. And so they've they've actually already
Speaker 4: been kind of marching down this path. And so it
Speaker 4: is pretty clear that both the major powers in the
Speaker 4: world kind of believe the future of warfares is gonna
Speaker 4: be it's gonna be based around AI. In China, they
Speaker 4: have you know, they have a system, and their system
Speaker 4: has their public sector and their private sector completely intertwined.
Speaker 4: Right the the the private sector in China is owned
Speaker 4: by the public sector. It's owned by the Communist Party,
Speaker 4: and so they have the they have the advantage that
Speaker 4: they can directly control the entire productive capability of their
Speaker 4: system against you know, their their military needs, which is
Speaker 4: which is what they're doing. You know, we don't have that,
Speaker 4: you know, we have we have at least in theory
Speaker 4: of free market system. The advantage of the free market
Speaker 4: system historically is a much faster rate of innovation, right
Speaker 4: if if you get all these companies actually competing with
Speaker 4: each other, you get all these new entrepreneurs that we
Speaker 4: back competing with each other, competing with the big companies. Uh,
Speaker 4: you know, you get a much faster rate of innovation. Historically,
Speaker 4: the US system has led to a much much faster
Speaker 4: rate of innovation than the centralized Soviet system did or
Speaker 4: the centralized Chinese system has. And so my argument is
Speaker 4: just very straightforward, which is we should unleash the animals
Speaker 4: spirits of our private sector in our defense sector in
Speaker 4: the same way we did during the Cold War. We
Speaker 4: should have an absolute determination to know just completely swamp
Speaker 4: the Chinese centralized system in terms of the quality of
Speaker 4: our AI and then an any future military conflict like
Speaker 4: we should be set up to just beat them decisively
Speaker 4: right out of the gate with superior technology.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: And then my last question, Mark, you're one of the
Speaker 2: best read people I know. What are some great books
Speaker 2: that people can read to prepare for this transition on
Speaker 2: a social level, a technological level, and a political level.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I mean there's tons.
Speaker 4: I mean, my number one recommendation on the shifts of technology,
Speaker 4: there's a great short book written by an Mit professor
Speaker 4: fifty years ago called men, Machines and Modern Times, And
Speaker 4: it goes through this sort of cycle of adoption, like
Speaker 4: what happens when a new technology arrives that sort of
Speaker 4: threatens to, you know, kind of up end the established order.
Speaker 4: The book is interesting actually because it has a specific
Speaker 4: focus in the book on historical precedence and military technology,
Speaker 4: and so it has this incredible story of the first
Speaker 4: naval gun that was able to automatically compensate for the
Speaker 4: role of ships. Yes, like one hundred and hundred years ago,
Speaker 4: the change naval warfare forever. And it was the level
Speaker 4: of institutional resistance from both the US and the UK
Speaker 4: navies to not adopt this technology was like, you know,
Speaker 4: completely wild. And so anyway, it's it's a it's a
Speaker 4: it's a very good book on Uh, it's a very
Speaker 4: good book on on a societal impact of new technologies.
Speaker 4: I also, I can't help but recommend on the fiction side.
Speaker 4: I'm reading with my kid right now. I Hitchiker's Kind
Speaker 4: to the Galaxy, and I bring that up. I bring
Speaker 4: that up because Douglas Douglas Adams, the author of that,
Speaker 4: had maybe the sort of funniest uh, you know, explanation
Speaker 4: of how new technologies are received by society. Uh, he said,
Speaker 4: if you were below the age of fifteen, and new
Speaker 4: technology is just obviously the way the world works, why
Speaker 4: wouldn't why wouldn't it be, which, by the way, is
Speaker 4: how my eight year old kind of us AI is like, Yeah,
Speaker 4: of course the computer answers questions like why wouldn't the
Speaker 4: computer answer questions? And then he says, Adam says, if
Speaker 4: you're between the ages of fifteen and thirty five, the
Speaker 4: new technology is extremely exciting and you might be able
Speaker 4: to make a career in it. And if you're above
Speaker 4: the age of thirty five, the new technology is unholy
Speaker 4: and scary and it's going to destroy society. Right, So
Speaker 4: I think that I think it's framework actually also is
Speaker 4: exactly what's applying to AI right now.
Speaker 2: All right, well, we'll have links down those in the description. Mark.
Speaker 2: We really appreciate your time. I think the audience will
Speaker 2: get a lot out of this.
Speaker 3: Awesome. Thank you man, Thanks man.
Speaker 2: We're always looking for a good take out there. This
Speaker 2: one is genuinely stunning. Scott Galloway of Take Pivot Pivot Fame,
Speaker 2: a co host of the podcast with Karroswisher, usually confined
Speaker 2: to the tech world into like cringe liberal politics, has
Speaker 2: decided to wait into the Republican primary. Here's this prediction.
Speaker 5: I think President Trump is not going to run for president. Yeah,
Speaker 5: under the auspices of a plea deal.
Speaker 2: Where is that coming from? No one says that stuff.
Speaker 5: Actually Governor Christie said said it and or at least
Speaker 5: a components.
Speaker 3: You're going be on the stage if Trump shows up,
Speaker 3: he qualified thanks for my donation to him. I can't
Speaker 3: believe I gave him money.
Speaker 5: I actually think Governor Christie is going to surpass just
Speaker 5: antism the number too. But I don't think it'll matter.
Speaker 2: I think Trump.
Speaker 5: I don't understand it. Can't empathize with President Trump, but
Speaker 5: I know how old Richmond think. He has a very
Speaker 5: nice life, and his life can be going back to
Speaker 5: golf and sycophants and having sex with porn stars, which
Speaker 5: I think is a good thing. I being cynical, I
Speaker 5: would like to do more of that at some point
Speaker 5: in my life.
Speaker 2: Or I'm going to hit you when this is over,
Speaker 2: just saying, or.
Speaker 5: He can live under the threat of prison.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's certainly a take. Here's why I think Scott's wrong.
Speaker 2: If that was true, then he would have not run
Speaker 2: again in twenty twenty four. Everything that he said, I've
Speaker 2: heard that, by the way, from a lot of people
Speaker 2: who knew Trump. They're like Trump legs to golf. He
Speaker 2: doesn't like to do work. All that's true. Guess what
Speaker 2: he can do all that as president and still get
Speaker 2: all of the attention and craving that he's always wanted.
Speaker 2: So I think that the analysis is spurious. I also
Speaker 2: think that given the threat of legal indictment, being president
Speaker 2: is the best possible scenario because it shields you legally
Speaker 2: from a lot of it gives you legal immunity in
Speaker 2: many of these cases, and gives you the best political
Speaker 2: case to wage in order to keep you out of
Speaker 2: a prison cell.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I agree with you, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: make the other case just to make it interesting.
Speaker 2: So if he.
Speaker 1: Didn't run for president, then he wouldn't like the crimes
Speaker 1: were already committed. This writing was on the wall that
Speaker 1: he was likely to face indictment in a variety of
Speaker 1: cases with regard to January sixth and the documents and
Speaker 1: the thing in New York as well. So since that
Speaker 1: writing was already on the wall. If he doesn't run
Speaker 1: for president, then he doesn't have any leverage to try
Speaker 1: to secure the plea deal that Scott Galloway is floating here,
Speaker 1: in which others have floated as well, which is like, listen,
Speaker 1: you agree to not run for president, you go back
Speaker 1: to your private life, and this.
Speaker 2: All goes away.
Speaker 1: So it would make sense in that context of like,
Speaker 1: I get to hold the threat of me being president
Speaker 1: again over their head, so I can secure some sort
Speaker 1: of a deal to make sure that my ass does
Speaker 1: not end up in prison, and then you know, the
Speaker 1: fallback play and is to actually win the presidency again
Speaker 1: and then he can make his own problems go away.
Speaker 1: The reason that I don't think that this is correct is,
Speaker 1: you know, if they strike this kind of a plea
Speaker 1: deal with Trump, it really validates the case that this
Speaker 1: all was political to start with, that the only thing
Speaker 1: they cared about was keeping him out of the White
Speaker 1: House to begin with. And the lawyers that I've talked to,
Speaker 1: because you know some of the mechanics of this, like
Speaker 1: I don't have full insight into the lawyers I've talked to,
Speaker 1: you really think that this is a very unlikely outcome.
Speaker 1: Because you're offering a political solution to what is ultimately
Speaker 1: a legal problem, and those two things don't normally mix.
Speaker 1: So that's why I, you know, that's why I don't
Speaker 1: see it happening frankly, but hey, it's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Look what do you think of the Chris Christy take?
Speaker 2: Oh totally wrong? I mean no, look, no offense, Scott,
Speaker 2: But like this is just not your wheelhouse really at all.
Speaker 2: I mean we've covered really I think here's the problem
Speaker 2: for him. Scott genuinely is like a resistance liberal and
Speaker 2: I hates Trump and he wants to see somebody like assent.
Speaker 2: But you and I are familiar with how actual GOP
Speaker 2: primary voters think an act, and they love Trump, and
Speaker 2: the thing that they hate the most about Chris Christy
Speaker 2: is that he's anti Trump. Chris Christy, if he was
Speaker 2: running on literally anything else, probably would be doing fine.
Speaker 2: If you're somebody who is genuinely anti Trump, the best
Speaker 2: lesson you can learn is to be like a Nancy
Speaker 2: Mace or a what was the guy who got elect
Speaker 2: a governor of Georgia. I'm playing Brian Camp, Brian Camp.
Speaker 2: If you want to be like Brian Camp in those
Speaker 2: two instances, what do you do. You run against the
Speaker 2: left and you just kind of hope that nobody really
Speaker 2: notices that you do have differences with Trump. That's not
Speaker 2: the Christie tactic. There's no way you can be number
Speaker 2: two like that, not whenever. That's like running against Ronald
Speaker 2: Reagan in nineteen eighty. It's just not going to happen.
Speaker 1: I do you think I agree with like, he's not
Speaker 1: going to be the nominee. I don't know if he
Speaker 1: could pull into a second although actually I did see
Speaker 1: I mentioned this was New Hampshire poll that has him
Speaker 1: actually tied with DeSantis in New Hampshire for second for
Speaker 1: a second place in New Hampshire.
Speaker 4: I do think that.
Speaker 1: There is something just on a like basic human level
Speaker 1: that is compelling about the fact that he feels like
Speaker 1: just like Trump does. He feels like he's saying the
Speaker 1: things that he really thinks. Whereas desantist, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley,
Speaker 1: all this other cast of characters, it's so naked that
Speaker 1: they're posturing, they're trying to get the right answer, they're
Speaker 1: using whatever their little consultants and focus groups told them
Speaker 1: to say. And like obviously Chris Christy has his own
Speaker 1: advisors and is doing his own version of that game,
Speaker 1: but he has much more of that feel of like, listen,
Speaker 1: I know this is uncomfortable and unpopular. I know the
Speaker 1: audience that I'm speaking to.
Speaker 2: I don't care.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to say it anyway. There is something
Speaker 1: compelling about that? Is it win the GUOP nomination?
Speaker 2: Compelling?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Is it do a little bit better than I think
Speaker 1: people are giving him credit for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see that. I could see that. All right,
Speaker 2: Well maybe we'll find out. Maybe I'll look like an idiot.
Speaker 2: You could roll my clip and say I'm the actual
Speaker 2: cringe person who doesn't know what I'm talking about. That's
Speaker 2: always fun. So we'll see you guys later.
Speaker 1: So some fascinating charts were posted to Twitter showing increasing
Speaker 1: political polarization around some key issues of just like basic
Speaker 1: self esteem, basic self worth, and these things seem to
Speaker 1: be splitting, Like there seems to be more of an
Speaker 1: ideological divide in these feelings over time. Let's go and
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen so you can get
Speaker 1: a sense of what we're talking about here. So you've
Speaker 1: got some questions, like on the whole, I'm satisfied with myself,
Speaker 1: so you have a spike in Democrats who disagree with
Speaker 1: that sentiment over Republicans. How satisfied are you with your
Speaker 1: life as a whole?
Speaker 2: These days?
Speaker 1: You again have Democrats really dissatisfied with their lives and
Speaker 1: an increasing divide there. Same thing with life often seems meaningless.
Speaker 1: I enjoy life as much as anyone. This one has
Speaker 1: potentially the biggest spike here, which I actually thought was
Speaker 1: kind of revealing. The future often seems hopeless. You've got
Speaker 1: nearly forty percent of Democrats who agree with that. Again,
Speaker 1: that has really spiked very recently in recent years, whereas
Speaker 1: the Republican number has shown a recent spike, but not
Speaker 1: nearly as much as the Democratic number. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the biggest divides. So kind of fascinating that there
Speaker 1: seems to be a real split in assessments of the future,
Speaker 1: in assessments in personal satisfaction, how I feel about myself,
Speaker 1: how I feel about my life, how I feel about
Speaker 1: the future, etc. Between liberals and conservatives.
Speaker 2: I do wonder how much of this is generational though,
Speaker 2: just because so many young people are liberal, they are
Speaker 2: going to self select for more doumerism, And I mean,
Speaker 2: you can't blame them on one hand, So yeah, but
Speaker 2: I do think there is something to this. You can
Speaker 2: see it in the attitudes around COVID, you can see
Speaker 2: it around safetyism, you can see it around optimism, around
Speaker 2: the feeling of the country in some cases. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm on various different sides of those, so I do
Speaker 2: tend to understand. But I think the one that is
Speaker 2: very sad is life. Life often feels meaningless, and a
Speaker 2: huge spike in the agreed number for self identified liberals,
Speaker 2: and I enjoy life as much as anyone with a
Speaker 2: disagree also spiking as well. So in general, I think
Speaker 2: this is probably skewed most by generational gaps and by wealth,
Speaker 2: but there is definitely something like I'm not going to
Speaker 2: say spiritual, I don't know what is it. I don't
Speaker 2: know what the word is, epistemological to something about what's
Speaker 2: going on here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the generational point is well taken. I
Speaker 1: do think it's worth noting on almost all of these metrics,
Speaker 1: even though the liberal numbers go up at a faster clip,
Speaker 1: the conservative numbers are rising as well, So you do
Speaker 1: have increasing levels of like personal dissatisfaction and pessimism rising
Speaker 1: among the population, and in some ways, I think that's justified.
Speaker 1: In a lot of ways, I think that's justified. You know,
Speaker 1: the one about the future often seems hopeless. That one
Speaker 1: really struck me because listen, if you you know, if
Speaker 1: you're a young person that's looking at you know, the
Speaker 1: fact that the error is like unbreathable from wildfires and
Speaker 1: there's increasing you know, extreme temperatures and climate catastrophes, and
Speaker 1: it just seems like there's no end in sight and
Speaker 1: this is going to continue to spiral out of control. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty justified to have some negative feelings around that.
Speaker 1: And then in terms of personal material conditions, if you
Speaker 1: are a person who benefited from, you know, growing up
Speaker 1: and starting your career at a certain age in America
Speaker 1: where now you've got a home and you feel pretty solid,
Speaker 1: you pretty feel pretty stable, and you've got a nice
Speaker 1: little nest egg, and you're of that generation, Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: probably going to feel pretty pretty good about things, at
Speaker 1: least better about things than young people who are like
Speaker 1: I'm never going to be able to buy a house,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be able to have a family,
Speaker 1: I'm never gonna be able to have kids, never going
Speaker 1: to be able to have some basic measure of stability,
Speaker 1: and rather than feeling like, yeah, but things will get
Speaker 1: better over time, it just seems like we're facing down
Speaker 1: a landscape of decline. You know. To bring it back
Speaker 1: to politics, because that's what we do here, just the
Speaker 1: specter of we're really going to have Donald Trump and
Speaker 1: Joe Biden as like the best we can do in pology.
Speaker 1: I just think that's so symbolic of this sense of
Speaker 1: national decline which pervades people's overall feelings of optimism and also,
Speaker 1: you know, can can lead into their own personal feelings
Speaker 1: of how their life is likely to go over the
Speaker 1: coming years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's true. I think a lot of
Speaker 2: it focuses on future conditions, and that's where I would
Speaker 2: you know, the most immediate ones that you can try
Speaker 2: is cost of living and you know, not even educational attainment,
Speaker 2: but attainment towards the or at least a feeling that
Speaker 2: you can ascend to a higher social class if you
Speaker 2: work hard enough. That's really you know, that's all the
Speaker 2: basic American contract that was there. It's exactly why also
Speaker 2: that those numbers were much more equalized in the past.
Speaker 2: So I do think this is a very generational chart,
Speaker 2: and I think that's actually even more unfortunate than whenever
Speaker 2: you divide it by partisan, although I do there is
Speaker 2: something even amongst people who are of the same age
Speaker 2: in terms of some sorting on these issues, which is
Speaker 2: not good, by the way, for people to have totally
Speaker 2: different world.
Speaker 1: I think there's I think there's always been a divide
Speaker 1: between liberals and conservaive conservatives tend to be like, rank
Speaker 1: higher on levels of happiness, and so there's always been
Speaker 1: a bit of a split here. But the fact that
Speaker 1: you have these generational divides coming to the.
Speaker 2: Four I think is very noteworthy. Agreed, all right, we'll
Speaker 2: see you guys later.