Speaker 1: The fan base is fascinating, and I get stopped in
Speaker 1: the street on the way here four times like Kara Hey, Well,
Speaker 1: can't believe Sara.
Speaker 2: Is a unique individual. She wears all black, dark maid
Speaker 2: and she has her aviator dark glasses eyes.
Speaker 1: I look like Johnny Cash on a bad day.
Speaker 2: Journalist Kra Swisher is the go to person for reporting
Speaker 2: on technology. She's interviewed every heavy hitter in the industry
Speaker 2: and for a long time, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 2: Elon Musk. She's not afraid to ask them the hard questions.
Speaker 2: New York Magazine has called her Silicon Valley's most feared
Speaker 2: and well liked journalist. Caara began her professional career as
Speaker 2: an intern at the Washington Post and has gone on
Speaker 2: to report for many well respected media outlets. Caara also
Speaker 2: created this seminal All Things D conference, and I love
Speaker 2: that conference so much. Swisher and I've attended and even
Speaker 2: spoke at today. Karro Swisher has become a very successful
Speaker 2: podcast host and continues to be a force in the
Speaker 2: tech industry. I was leaving my office today and a
Speaker 2: bunch of my designers were sitting there saying, Oh, where
Speaker 2: are you going and I said out loud, oh, I'm
Speaker 2: going to interview kro Swisher, And they all wanted me
Speaker 2: to tell you how they listen their commuters. Yeah, since
Speaker 2: since the pandemic, they have become commuters from from even
Speaker 2: up in Hudson, New York. But they listen to your religiously. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's a really interesting fan base. You know, podcasting, as
Speaker 1: you know, since you're doing it more than anything I've
Speaker 1: ever done. Whether it's reporting or these events, you know,
Speaker 1: they get you well known enough or just you know,
Speaker 1: basic beat reporting. But podcasting creates an emotional connection.
Speaker 2: It does, and they get to know your voice.
Speaker 1: And your family, and you're right, they have to get
Speaker 1: to know who you are right exactly.
Speaker 2: And we are at I just want to make mention
Speaker 2: that we are at the newsstands studios in Rockefeller Center,
Speaker 2: right in the heart of Rockefellage Center. I love it
Speaker 2: here in an old fast studio. This is fantastic. Put
Speaker 2: the new ideas in here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is you have to be in here, but
Speaker 1: it feels like history.
Speaker 2: Well, you've been called Silicon Valley's most powerful tech journalists.
Speaker 2: How do you feel about that name?
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know how much powerful I have
Speaker 1: because the things I advocate for, like privacy and transparency
Speaker 1: and lack of you know, hugeness of these companies has
Speaker 1: not come to pass. They're all bigger than ever. They
Speaker 1: take more of our information and they keep going, and
Speaker 1: it caused a lot of damage to society. So I
Speaker 1: think I've tried to hold back the flood, but it's
Speaker 1: sort of flooded into our lives and changed us addiction
Speaker 1: and now with AI even more so.
Speaker 2: Oh the AI. We're going to get to that. That's
Speaker 2: a big topic for me, sure right now. So I
Speaker 2: have Hey Google in my kitchen.
Speaker 1: Yes, I have their device.
Speaker 2: I have the device and it's on my counter chop.
Speaker 2: And it's the first mistake you're supposed to have to
Speaker 2: say Hey Google before I answer you. Yeah, I didn't
Speaker 2: say hey Google at all. I didn't mention Google, and
Speaker 2: it just started to talk to me. Oh well, And
Speaker 2: I said, why are you talking to me? Uh huh
Speaker 2: oh I don't get exactly what you're asking, right right?
Speaker 2: And I said, well, you know you're not supposed to
Speaker 2: talk to me. Do I have to turn you off
Speaker 2: now in my kitchen? Oh? Please don't do that?
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Okay, so I was having a relationship with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and or something.
Speaker 1: It's trying to determine what you want. It wants to
Speaker 1: be your assistant, and it wants to be your assistant,
Speaker 1: a creepy assistant, like one of those movies.
Speaker 2: I just saw that one. Yeah, yeah, of the Little Girl. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that was so Megan, right, Megan, right exactly.
Speaker 1: So you know it wants the idea. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of different concepts right now, especially with AI, but it
Speaker 1: eventually wants to be your assistant, your friend.
Speaker 2: Your help for Hal, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: I want to go way back to Hal again.
Speaker 1: This is two thousand and one of Space, Say Martha's
Speaker 1: referring too. So yeah, so that's what it wants to do.
Speaker 1: So it's trying to anticipate what you want, what you
Speaker 1: asked for. And human beings have patterns, whether you realize
Speaker 1: it or not. You ask things at certain times the day,
Speaker 1: you go places, and for years they've been following you
Speaker 1: with the cell phone. They already know what you You know,
Speaker 1: you first were.
Speaker 2: The lab Shah, Well, first you had the laptop.
Speaker 1: You weren't move and you're just going from website to website,
Speaker 1: and that was fine because they couldn't really tell a
Speaker 1: lot except what you click on. Now you have the
Speaker 1: phone that tells you not you yes, exactly, not just
Speaker 1: what you want, but where you're going, what you do next,
Speaker 1: who you call, and so it has more and more
Speaker 1: information on you as you move forward, depending on the
Speaker 1: service US.
Speaker 2: So it doesn't matter that I click on do not allow?
Speaker 1: Well, yes and no. You know, I could show your
Speaker 1: iPhone where it's keeping your locations. It's not sending them anywhere,
Speaker 1: but it's keeping them, and so that's the issue.
Speaker 2: Reference those myself or only Google can reference.
Speaker 1: In this case Apple, it's in the Apple if it's
Speaker 1: usually turned on, but most people have to realize it's
Speaker 1: there and turned off. Now Apple doesn't send it up
Speaker 1: to the clouds, so they don't make use of it,
Speaker 1: not yet, but it's there. So a government entity, if
Speaker 1: they could get into your phone, would know exactly where
Speaker 1: Martha Stewart went all day long and how much time
Speaker 1: you spend.
Speaker 2: That that's the tax man does that. Yes, that's right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he does that by your phone records, but also now
Speaker 2: by location finds sure exact absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's just a of how much you know. What's
Speaker 1: happened is, and I think you and I have talked
Speaker 1: about this for many years, is you become cheap dates
Speaker 1: to the Internet people. You know, they make all the
Speaker 1: money off of your information. The US government paid for
Speaker 1: the Internet, but the people who are rich are not
Speaker 1: in the US government. It's these people who take advantage
Speaker 1: of it. And then they take advantage of you. You
Speaker 1: yourself and what you're doing, and you willingly give it
Speaker 1: up because you want a dating service or mapping or
Speaker 1: whatever you happen to use. You're giving valuable information of
Speaker 1: them so they can make money off of you.
Speaker 2: Well, in two thousand and three, that seems like yesterday,
Speaker 2: although or does it seem like a long time ago
Speaker 2: to you?
Speaker 1: Ah? You know, I just finished my memoir, so it
Speaker 1: seems like yesterday now. But I forgotten more about the
Speaker 1: Internet that I remember you being around.
Speaker 2: You and Walt Mosberg created the most important digital conference,
Speaker 2: and all the conferences I've ever gone to, and I've
Speaker 2: gone to a lot, that is the one I miss. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because you not only had the most amazing speeds, you
Speaker 2: also could hobnob with people, and that's also introduced a
Speaker 2: lot of new technology at that conference. It was in California,
Speaker 2: in southern California, south of Los Angeles, at one of
Speaker 2: those big conference hotels, and tech was just really shaping shape.
Speaker 1: It was it was at the beginning. What was interesting
Speaker 1: is you sitting in the front row. You always sat
Speaker 1: in the front row. Whoever the owner of the Washington
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal was, you sat in the front row
Speaker 1: of it and took notes, copious notes all the time.
Speaker 1: So it was a little bit disconcerting when I was
Speaker 1: doing interview, yes, because it was like Martha Steward's taking notes.
Speaker 2: But I was also because I was trying to take
Speaker 2: some chairs too. I'm trying to get the names right
Speaker 2: so that I could report on it on my on
Speaker 2: my blog. I did you know, I still do my
Speaker 2: blog every single day. But what were the most striking moments,
Speaker 2: good and bad, that you had during that conference?
Speaker 1: Well, let me give one of you was when you
Speaker 1: pulled out of your bag. You had this big, one
Speaker 1: of these big expensive leather bags, and you pulled out
Speaker 1: all these courts and you asked of Howard Stringer, if
Speaker 1: I remember it, sir, why you needed so much any
Speaker 1: courts and why you need chargers charging right exactly, and
Speaker 1: you were upset because they were all different things. There
Speaker 1: wasn't a standardized court and still there it's getting there,
Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, not yet. And so what was really
Speaker 1: interesting was that you did that at a time and
Speaker 1: asked it. It was a very pertinent question, which was,
Speaker 1: why doesn't take care about the consumer? Why do I
Speaker 1: have to carry all this stuff? Why is it a
Speaker 1: rat's nest? Why do I have to organize it?
Speaker 2: Now, I know you like that, And not only that,
Speaker 2: I was asking why do we have to buy buy that?
Speaker 1: So I think you asked the super pertinent question. I
Speaker 1: love that moment because they had no answer.
Speaker 2: Everybody laughed, and Sir Stringer he got mad at me,
Speaker 2: and he's you know, he said, because we want to
Speaker 2: make money. That's why we're never going to change.
Speaker 1: It, right exactly, And that was the actual truth. I
Speaker 1: think a couple of times. One was obviously the Bill
Speaker 1: Gates and Steve Jobs interview that we did, which I
Speaker 1: think is historical, historical, where they got together. They had
Speaker 1: never spent any time together on stage in a real interview.
Speaker 2: You're so arch competitors they were, they were.
Speaker 1: And it was a very touching because they were sort
Speaker 1: of like the Thomas Edison Henry Ford of the industry, right,
Speaker 1: and so if you have an opportunity to get them.
Speaker 1: And Steve was in good shape at that time. He
Speaker 1: had been sick, but he had gotten better before he
Speaker 1: got sick again. Yes, it his black T shirt and
Speaker 1: he he and Bates have such an important copaesetic relationship
Speaker 1: that you don't realize how important these personalities were depending
Speaker 1: on it what they did. And I thought that was
Speaker 1: an amazing interview. I thought one that was horrifying was
Speaker 1: Travis Kalanick, who's head of Uber, only because he told
Speaker 1: the truth. I asked him, you know, are you ever
Speaker 1: going to make money? Because if you looked at the
Speaker 1: numbers at Uber, it was like no money made by anyone,
Speaker 1: so it was underwritten by venture capitalists and everyone else.
Speaker 1: And so he said, you know what, when we get
Speaker 1: the person out of the front seat, then we'll make money.
Speaker 1: So he sort of said what Silicon Valley was pretending
Speaker 1: it wasn't saying, which was we'd like to get rid
Speaker 1: of human being. Want we want the driverless car and
Speaker 1: then we can make money and not caring about the implications.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was really instructive, and then obviously
Speaker 1: the Mark Zuckerberg interview where he sweat, where he broke
Speaker 1: down in a a cold sweat.
Speaker 2: He really did shirt soaking.
Speaker 1: We were in that front row again, and so was
Speaker 1: Ryl Sanmdberg. If you remember just losing her mind? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: his partner in crime. Yes, well that's a good way
Speaker 1: of putting it. So she was upset, but he really
Speaker 1: got nervous. And it wasn't because we were asking questions
Speaker 1: about privacy.
Speaker 2: He was having a panic attack, I think. But I
Speaker 2: sat at lunch tables during that conference. I sat with
Speaker 2: the founders of YouTube. Yes you did, Chad her Oh
Speaker 2: my god. I had so much fun with them and
Speaker 2: learning all about what they were doing, having no idea
Speaker 2: at the time how huge that was going to be.
Speaker 1: Yes, they were there early on. We had a lot
Speaker 1: of you had. We had the Twitter people early on,
Speaker 1: we had a lot of I got very.
Speaker 2: Involved with the Twitter people. I loved those people, and
Speaker 2: I actually liked Twitter from day one. I didn't like
Speaker 2: Facebook from day one.
Speaker 1: You did not.
Speaker 2: I don't know just and I still don't really use Facebook.
Speaker 2: My company does use into. Yeah, I used Instagram much
Speaker 2: much more, and now I'm getting involved with chiktok more
Speaker 2: for last year or so, and it's kind of fun.
Speaker 1: People are getting good at it. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: about the writer's strike right now, and I'm like, there's
Speaker 1: a million creators on TikTok showing how creative you can
Speaker 1: be for no money. That's a worrisome for them.
Speaker 2: They could have had those wallet, But those writers could
Speaker 2: be doing issue. Maybe they are while they're trying to
Speaker 2: on the strike. They might be doing TikTok. Who knows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really changed. You have adopted really well to I.
Speaker 2: Like it, and even for an old lady, Yeah, I've
Speaker 2: been around for a long time. I really want to
Speaker 2: know what the kids are doing, right. I really want
Speaker 2: to know how I can reach the vast audience.
Speaker 1: You know, it was interesting because your original company, and
Speaker 1: I remember the time some people made fun of it
Speaker 1: and I thought, no, this is exactly right when you
Speaker 1: called it omnimedia.
Speaker 2: Right, I got booed on the stage at TED I
Speaker 2: got booed, and I was taken aback because they didn't
Speaker 2: quite understand what I was talking about.
Speaker 1: You were talking about media everywhere, no matter where people were.
Speaker 2: You know, whether where your media has to be where
Speaker 2: the person is. Yes, yeah, and the podcast I mean,
Speaker 2: look at look at the success of these hundreds of
Speaker 2: thousands of podcasts.
Speaker 1: It's amazing, and you really reach audiences.
Speaker 2: The newspapers closed as magazine shutters as the printed word
Speaker 2: goes away. Podcasts are so engaging, they are you know.
Speaker 2: I listened to a couple of news stations and then podcasts.
Speaker 2: Right news stations. I don't listen to books on tape.
Speaker 2: I must rather read a book. Do you listen to
Speaker 2: books on tape?
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 1: I have four children, so now I don't do that.
Speaker 2: I don't do anything but work big podcasts and get
Speaker 2: them food and get them food.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's what I do. We met at actually do
Speaker 1: you remember you don't remember day. I'm trying to remember
Speaker 1: the esh. You were at a party Bill Gates through.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. All of us were like, what is Martha
Speaker 2: Stewart doing here? That was we're all homemaker. What the
Speaker 2: heck is a homemade Well.
Speaker 1: It was interesting because it was again, like I said,
Speaker 1: very few people were interested in it at the time.
Speaker 1: You were, as I said, one of them, Bob Igert,
Speaker 1: was very curious. He called me very early when he
Speaker 1: was at ABC, and Barry Diller called me and said this,
Speaker 1: I need to understand this in the early night maybe
Speaker 1: late nineties, Yeah, when I was covering it.
Speaker 2: But that's what I was. And I became friends with
Speaker 2: Bill Gates. You did, and I went to his fiftieth
Speaker 2: birthday party, which was such a blast. It was astonishing
Speaker 2: to watch what happened, right, But I was always super
Speaker 2: interested in people, especially from old media, that understood what
Speaker 2: was happening and were willing to embrace it rather than
Speaker 2: sticking to the bitter end to what they had.
Speaker 1: Because you had a very successful magazine and publishing.
Speaker 2: When we closed our magazine, I didn't close it, and
Speaker 2: Meredith closed it, but we were at two point three
Speaker 2: million subscribers twelve million devoted readers, and that is not
Speaker 2: good enough to remain on the newsstand. That's correct, because
Speaker 2: everyone's getting their information. Every one of my recipes is online,
Speaker 2: every single article is online. You don't have to have that,
Speaker 2: you don't have to have a clutter in your table.
Speaker 2: And yet there are those diehards that really miss it.
Speaker 2: I miss it. I miss it because I love to
Speaker 2: write and I love to take have beautiful photographs and
Speaker 2: beautiful designed pages, and so you have to find a
Speaker 2: new way to do everything.
Speaker 1: Well, what you did has a through line in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, and I think a lot of the
Speaker 1: successful media people in the Internet are genuine to themselves.
Speaker 1: We were just a second ag was talking about Kim
Speaker 1: Kardashi and or you is you did communicate yourself very
Speaker 1: early in Print is Martha's Life. It's things you thought.
Speaker 1: You were very genuine to yourself, and I think whether
Speaker 1: people liked you or not didn't matter. They knew who
Speaker 1: you were and that's the most important.
Speaker 2: So why did you step away from your conference with Walt?
Speaker 2: Yeah after twenty years?
Speaker 1: Because twenty years seems like a good number, don't you think?
Speaker 1: You know, I kept making it. It was kind of
Speaker 1: like putting on I mean, you've moved through a lot
Speaker 1: of different phases. I did it for twenty years. It
Speaker 1: was excellent for twenty years, and I didn't see that
Speaker 1: I could keep it up. It's like doing a Broadway
Speaker 1: show every year. And I was super.
Speaker 2: Because there was not that much innovation going on in Jack.
Speaker 1: Because the last interview was Lorraine Powell, jobs Tim Cook
Speaker 1: and Johnny ive No, you know, and they had everybody there,
Speaker 1: and the year before we had everybody there. I just
Speaker 1: felt like the genre was changing and I had done.
Speaker 1: I kept hitting home runs, and I thought, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to hit I'm not at some point I'm not
Speaker 1: going to hit a home run. If I can't, I won't.
Speaker 1: I also thought I wanted to think of new ways
Speaker 1: for gatherings that weren't in ballrooms, weren't more formal, and
Speaker 1: everyone copied us. That's honestly, honest, true, that really copied
Speaker 1: us like crazy and made fun of us when we
Speaker 1: started uh, and then of course copied everything we did.
Speaker 1: And so I just felt like I had interviewed every
Speaker 1: single person, and I thought there's other ways to reach them.
Speaker 1: And podcasting was one of the big reasons.
Speaker 2: Is that, Well, your podcasts are extraordinary, not only your
Speaker 2: your regular podcast on With, but then your succession podcast.
Speaker 2: Yes do you like that? Oh my god, But those
Speaker 2: characters I know are so horrible. I forced myself to watch.
Speaker 1: The show you did you forged. I know I had
Speaker 1: to know all those people.
Speaker 2: I know every single one I know in real life.
Speaker 2: In real life, I know who they are. Not we're
Speaker 2: not talking about the actors listeners. We're talking about the
Speaker 2: fan characters on which that that is base and they
Speaker 2: do exist. It's all very well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really enjoyed that. That was interesting, and that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I'm much more independent I used to be.
Speaker 1: I'd been affiliated with the journal at the Times for
Speaker 1: a short time. I work started at the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: But I kind of wanted to make what I wanted
Speaker 1: to make, and you sort of get this, like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to ask anyone permission to what I want
Speaker 1: to make. And the Succession one was an enormous hit
Speaker 1: because people, because we did a journalistic job about most
Speaker 1: people show those people. No, that's right, and most.
Speaker 2: People don't know that the families on which that that
Speaker 2: succession is based, they really exist. And kra of course
Speaker 2: is has covered all of them, covered all of them.
Speaker 2: And oh the Scandinavian Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's Elon Elon slash Daniel X.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was perfect. I talked to him quite a
Speaker 1: bit about that.
Speaker 2: Here was a wonderful actor.
Speaker 1: He did a good job. He very much distilled their
Speaker 1: ridiculous arrogance at a dance.
Speaker 2: You know that I was. I dated Charles Simoni.
Speaker 1: Yes, I remember he used to come to the conference.
Speaker 2: Right. He loved going to that conference.
Speaker 1: He wanted to go to space, and you thought, well,
Speaker 1: what are you doing?
Speaker 2: What's right? That's right? And I went up. I went
Speaker 2: to bike and in Kazakhstan with him. He said, this
Speaker 2: is a nerd, Hungarian nerd who then was forced out
Speaker 2: of Hungary and when he was a child, like sixteen
Speaker 2: years old, went to Denmark, learned Danish, accumulated Danish girlfriends.
Speaker 2: Then he came to work for Xerox. Then he met
Speaker 2: Bill Gates. Xerox I think steered him right to Richard
Speaker 2: Bill Gates and he wrote Excel and were and somehow
Speaker 2: I got together with him for for a long time.
Speaker 2: But through him I met all these people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: And it was very interesting. I mean I would I
Speaker 2: would dissect word and get him so angry because I
Speaker 2: found every glitch and word. Why doesn't this? Why does it? Why? Then?
Speaker 2: And he had all and and on his big boat.
Speaker 2: He had all the software engineers working for him creating
Speaker 2: more software, and I kept asking him, why can't you
Speaker 2: do this? Instead of that, I would have been a
Speaker 2: great tech executive. I would have I would have product products, yeah, probably,
Speaker 2: but probably boring because those guys are so boring in
Speaker 2: real life.
Speaker 1: They are indeed the quods clotures type type type, you know, but.
Speaker 2: Brilliant and they get it done. It's so it's so crazy.
Speaker 2: But I then fell in love with Elon Musk not really,
Speaker 2: I mean virtually and he I mean I love the
Speaker 2: idea of Tesla. I mean I drive a Tesla. I
Speaker 2: I've owned it since the beginning. I don't like paying
Speaker 2: the twenty five hundred dollars upgrades. Elon, if you're listening,
Speaker 2: these are the geniuses of today. Sure, yeah, you're one
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 1: Oh I don't think I'm as No, but you're a
Speaker 1: genius and you're in my own way. But you know,
Speaker 1: and Elon's taking a turn that's a little strange.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not happy about it because I did sell
Speaker 2: my Twitter at fifty four dollars and seventy five cents.
Speaker 2: That was I waited, I did. I I've thought it,
Speaker 2: I've fought it out. You know, should I sell it?
Speaker 2: Should I not?
Speaker 1: Something?
Speaker 2: But it went down. It went down to like thirty
Speaker 2: or twenty something. He doesn't belong with Twitter.
Speaker 1: No, well, he needs it for his it's sort of
Speaker 1: his id right, And so you know, Tesla Elon is brilliant,
Speaker 1: SpaceX Elon is even more real Twitter Elon is a jackass,
Speaker 1: and that's really the problem.
Speaker 2: I agree, who's your favorite job, guys?
Speaker 1: I think jobs? I wrote it too, because he you know,
Speaker 1: everyone has his take on him that he was mean
Speaker 1: or he was difficult. You know, he wasn't. He had
Speaker 1: too much passion. I guess that's it caroused him to be.
Speaker 1: Everything was hard with him, and I think people he's heartless.
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, no, he has too much heart.
Speaker 2: First place, he did.
Speaker 1: He also had a civic sense of things. Now he
Speaker 1: made lots of mistakes. Look, he parked in handicapped spots.
Speaker 1: That's the worst like at this point compared to everybody else.
Speaker 1: You know, he didn't tweet anti Semitic things, he didn't
Speaker 1: tweet anti homophobic stuff. He really did create and bring
Speaker 1: vision to things, and that's been sorely lacking. Like the idea,
Speaker 1: who is the next Steve Jobs? It sort of was Elon,
Speaker 1: but now not so much. Well, maybe he'll come back.
Speaker 2: He has to. He has to because he's way too
Speaker 2: smart and all his ideas really could work.
Speaker 1: A lot of them. I mean one of the problems
Speaker 1: is when you become this rich and maybe you've experienced this.
Speaker 1: When you become rich or famous, people surround you that
Speaker 1: are enablers and they make you. And this happens to
Speaker 1: tech people all the time, and they get pulled in
Speaker 1: like Gates with Epstein, like all these people, and so
Speaker 1: your judgment gets and actually succession if you think about it.
Speaker 1: One of the things they did great and that really
Speaker 1: well in that show was that their environments got smaller
Speaker 1: and smaller and smaller. They went from car, expensive car,
Speaker 1: to expensive playing to expensive apartment, but never talk to
Speaker 1: regular people, and everyone around them work for them, and
Speaker 1: so they're never going to be honest. And I think
Speaker 1: that's a lot what's happened to tech people in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. And so you know, when everyone's agreeing
Speaker 1: with you, you unless you have a fall like Steve did,
Speaker 1: like you did, you don't understand real life, right, You
Speaker 1: don't understand that, and so you live in a bubble
Speaker 1: that creates a real problem for you.
Speaker 2: But you extolled Elon's talents early on. I did for
Speaker 2: a long time. But now you're not on speech. But
Speaker 2: now I'm speaking to what happened.
Speaker 1: Well I don't really appreciate someone. When Paul Pelosi gets
Speaker 1: attacked to tweet something homophobic, I think this poor man
Speaker 1: got beaten up by a crazy person who'd been in
Speaker 1: many ways whom I know very well, to raise anti
Speaker 1: gay tropes at that time, the anti Semitic stuff is disturbing.
Speaker 2: The drunk or something doing that.
Speaker 1: I would say so, but it's been about one hundred
Speaker 1: and three of them now, and so you're sort of like,
Speaker 1: you are so much better than this. What are you doing?
Speaker 1: And so I actually tweeted something where I agreed with him.
Speaker 1: For some reason, he decided it was a disagreement. And
Speaker 1: because he's so thin skinned, because so many people around
Speaker 1: him are being paid by him to tell him people
Speaker 1: are bad, he can't tolerate dissent. And that's the problem.
Speaker 1: Nobody tells him what are you doing? And I think
Speaker 1: when he was at his best, he listens to people saying,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Elon should see
Speaker 1: me as a friend of his who's a real friend, right,
Speaker 1: rather than someone.
Speaker 2: Sit down with you and have lunch and talk about it.
Speaker 1: He can't now, he's he's there's a lot, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a what about his new hire for Twitter ads.
Speaker 1: I like her very much. You talked to her, I
Speaker 1: have talked to her. I know her very well from NBC.
Speaker 1: I think she's very talented. I think she's gonna have
Speaker 1: a hard time because she has to sell ads.
Speaker 2: And decline and as even after she joined.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's correct, and you know they just removed all
Speaker 1: the safety people from it. You can't sell ads when
Speaker 1: you have child pornography on a site, right, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: It doesn't go together. So she has good will of
Speaker 1: the industry, and I'm hoping that she will have some
Speaker 1: else effect on him, But I don't think so. He
Speaker 1: doesn't want to. He wants to know if it makes money,
Speaker 1: not that it's the right thing to do, and so
Speaker 1: I think that's going to and he's losing so much
Speaker 1: money there it's crazy.
Speaker 2: So and Jeff, Jeff Bezos bought the Washington.
Speaker 1: Post, your old newspaper a long time ago.
Speaker 2: What do you think about that.
Speaker 1: I think he's been a good owner. I think he's
Speaker 1: you know, I think he's been a very good owner.
Speaker 1: He just there was just a change today with Patty
Speaker 1: stone Side for taking over for Fred Ryan. I think
Speaker 1: that was much needed there's a lot of discomfort with
Speaker 1: Fred at this point, and it's a great institution. It
Speaker 1: just needs more investment and more innovation. I think it
Speaker 1: had stopped being innovative.
Speaker 2: I wanted to get back to your two podcasts on
Speaker 2: with Parrot Swisher and pivot. Yes, you know there are
Speaker 2: two words in the vocabulary that I absolutely abhor and
Speaker 2: do not let people say pivot. Pivot and and rigor rigor.
Speaker 2: Why don't you like rigor? I hate I don't like
Speaker 2: the word moist.
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't like the wordist either, but I don't
Speaker 1: like the word ointment either. Wet nurse is also bad.
Speaker 1: I have a whole list of them, have a whole sense.
Speaker 1: Should I have a sentence? Excuse me, wet nurse, please
Speaker 1: apply the ointment to the moist penis. That's my least favorite.
Speaker 2: And don't pivot when you see what it looks like.
Speaker 1: It's a joke that we're making a joke based on
Speaker 1: the idea. Yes, because everybody everyone in tech, when they
Speaker 1: have a failure, which is hysterically pivot. We're pivoting. We
Speaker 1: didn't mean to lose all this money, but now we're
Speaker 1: going to pivot to blink.
Speaker 2: I hate that excuse. It works.
Speaker 1: Twitter pivoted from a podcasting company to Twitter. Now it's
Speaker 1: still a shitty business, but that's slack was a game
Speaker 1: company and a pivoted. That's great, that's a really good thing.
Speaker 1: But most of the time it's an excuse for failure.
Speaker 2: It's crazy.
Speaker 1: So that's the joke. It's like, we're not really it's
Speaker 1: a joke meant to pivot. But it's worked out rather
Speaker 1: well because I'm on with the most defensive white guy
Speaker 1: in America, which is Scott Galloway, which.
Speaker 2: You've worked across all media platforms. How important is that
Speaker 2: you have complete ownership of your content completely on Fisher
Speaker 2: So do you own it? Yes?
Speaker 1: I own ONWI then and how.
Speaker 2: Do you access it? The listener?
Speaker 1: Well, I have a partnership with Vox Media. There's very
Speaker 1: few media companies that let you own your things, and
Speaker 1: Vox is the almost the only one. It was at
Speaker 1: the times. But they just pay you a salary and
Speaker 1: then they own everything you do. And what got me
Speaker 1: going is all my my code interviews and my all
Speaker 1: Things Digital interviews are owned by Rupert Murdoch. They lost
Speaker 1: them all on they did a changeover thing. All my
Speaker 1: content is gone. I don't know where it is. It
Speaker 1: has to be somewhere, so it's somewhere, but I can't
Speaker 1: find it. It's not accessible because they did a changeover
Speaker 1: of their systems.
Speaker 2: And those interviews would be so valuable, that's correct. Some
Speaker 2: of them dream correct of coming up with a new idea,
Speaker 2: so they.
Speaker 1: Didn't care for my creations, right, they didn't. It's like
Speaker 1: being a painter and you paint something beautiful and then
Speaker 1: some dumb rich owner owns it right and puts puts
Speaker 1: his foot through.
Speaker 2: We have the digital of all our content. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's been very It's been kind of difficult because the
Speaker 2: platforms change and you have to keep upgrading. But we
Speaker 2: have access to pretty I think.
Speaker 1: That you are everything that living owns it owns it, right,
Speaker 1: and so one of the things that's important to me,
Speaker 1: which is the last thing I did, was to own
Speaker 1: it completely. Because Rubert Murdock owns half my interviews, New
Speaker 1: York Times owns a whole bunch, and Box owned a
Speaker 1: lot because I did my first podcast for them, and
Speaker 1: I thought that's enough. I'm sick of making It's like
Speaker 1: being a chef for a rich person, right, and now
Speaker 1: you own your own I own every good okay, and
Speaker 1: and they rented from you, essentially sort of licensed for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, oh good, it's a reverse license. That's right.
Speaker 1: It's important you were one of the first to own
Speaker 1: your stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh yes. And content. I think my strength was that
Speaker 2: I really believed in the future of good, evergreen content.
Speaker 2: That's right, right, And so an interview with Steve Jobs
Speaker 2: is an evergreen piece of content that you have to find.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: Well, we put that made that when he died. We
Speaker 1: went to Rupert Murdoch and said, can we make this
Speaker 1: free to the entire world all his We did six interviews,
Speaker 1: including the one with Gates, and we put it on
Speaker 1: Apple for free to the entire world so that they
Speaker 1: don't have the copyright anymore. And he agreed at the
Speaker 1: time because he was a big fan of Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: and was very sad at his death. And so what
Speaker 1: we did is we asked him to do it, and
Speaker 1: at the time his greed escaped him for a second
Speaker 1: and he allowed us to do it.
Speaker 2: So, oh my gosh, that.
Speaker 1: Piece of content is free.
Speaker 2: So is podcasting? Is this the new frontier for for knowledge?
Speaker 1: Some of it, some of it? Yeah, I think you know,
Speaker 1: there's all these new media companies opening every day. I'm
Speaker 1: very hard. I started a new media company way back
Speaker 1: in the two thousands, I remember, and that was unusual.
Speaker 1: And now there's substacks, there's all kinds of ways for
Speaker 1: journalists to make money. Not all of them are going
Speaker 1: to succeed. There's too many of them, and it depends
Speaker 1: on if you're good and if you have a product
Speaker 1: that just like anything else. Do you have a product
Speaker 1: and you've had this experience in Target or wherever you
Speaker 1: were selling your stuff, if the product is that's right,
Speaker 1: oh right, right, Kmar. If you have a product that
Speaker 1: people want to buy, people will buy it, and that's
Speaker 1: what you have to do. Now there's too many podcasts,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean a bunch of them aren't going
Speaker 1: to make money. It means some of them aren't, just
Speaker 1: like in media, and that's fine, that's totally fair. I think.
Speaker 1: So I we've been done. We've done great financially and
Speaker 1: as a business, but not everyone's going to You know,
Speaker 1: the fan base is fascinating and I get stopped in
Speaker 1: the street on the way here four times, like Kara, Hey, well,
Speaker 1: I can't believe.
Speaker 2: Sarah is a unique individual. She wears all black darkness
Speaker 2: and she has her aviator dark glasses.
Speaker 1: Yes, I look like Johnny Cash on it.
Speaker 2: But you and Anna Winter are the only two women
Speaker 2: and I know that are identified by your eyewear.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yes, And it used to be Sophie Lren.
Speaker 1: Oh well no, and we're not. Neither of us is
Speaker 1: quite up to her. But nonetheless it's really interesting because
Speaker 1: you have an intimate relationship. Podcasting is different. For years,
Speaker 1: I was a very well known tech reporter, and you know,
Speaker 1: tech people would stop me, Oh, Cara, Hi, how you doing.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you about this what happens. When I
Speaker 1: started the podcast, the first one, which is called Recode Decode,
Speaker 1: I was in the subway in San Francisco and four
Speaker 1: African American women, young women came up to me and said, Caro,
Speaker 1: we love you. Can we take a selfie? And I
Speaker 1: was like, this is not my demo, Like it's usually
Speaker 1: a white guy and the older white guy, right, And
Speaker 1: they're like, can we tell you? And we love this?
Speaker 1: And we didn't like this and we liked this. We
Speaker 1: hated that guy. They were entrepreneurs. They were doing a
Speaker 1: makeup line for women of color, and they were entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1: They weren't tech entrepreneurs, but they were using tech like
Speaker 1: anybody else. And I was like, do you read recode
Speaker 1: the website? They're like, what's that? They only listened to
Speaker 1: the podcast and I thought, oh, I see they know
Speaker 1: me because they hear my voice. I'm in their heads.
Speaker 1: And it was a great way of developing relationships.
Speaker 2: They look at your picture and they put you together.
Speaker 1: I get stopped by at one time in here in
Speaker 1: New York. I was I was walking down the street.
Speaker 1: Someone made a three sixty turn. He jumps out of
Speaker 1: his giant car. He's an ober driver. He's also a
Speaker 1: fireman from Queens, which is another demo that was not
Speaker 1: my demo, right, and he goes.
Speaker 2: Caro swish, I love you.
Speaker 1: I love when you kick Scott Galloway in the nuts.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: It's fantastic. I didn't know about AI whatever, and I
Speaker 1: was like nervous, and he goes, can I have a selfie?
Speaker 1: And I said sure. He goes, did I scare you?
Speaker 2: I said yes.
Speaker 1: I thought I was in taken from leam Neeson. I
Speaker 1: thought that was the end of me. The either the
Speaker 1: Saudi's or Elon was decided it was time for Kara
Speaker 1: to leave them more planet and it was great though.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of thing you get stopped all the time.
Speaker 2: So who remains on your on your jew list? Yeah,
Speaker 2: your do list for the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'd liked interview Donald Trump. I'd like a shot at him.
Speaker 1: I certainly would like to talk to Jeff Bezos again.
Speaker 1: I think he'd be I have a dozen times.
Speaker 2: Where is you know? He hasn't been VISI hasn't. So
Speaker 2: you're married again? You got y, you were married, then
Speaker 2: you got divorced, and then I got married. Yeah, younger, older.
Speaker 1: Slightly younger, not to not too much. I didn't go
Speaker 1: way down.
Speaker 2: So yeah, you're just what how old are you? I'm
Speaker 2: sixty sixty? Oh gosh, that's I knew, Cara. How many
Speaker 2: years ago? Of thirty thirty years ago? I knew you
Speaker 2: were thirty, that's you did. Yeah, you had two college
Speaker 2: students and two young kids and two little kids. Yeah,
Speaker 2: how old are the babies?
Speaker 1: And the babies are three and a half and one
Speaker 1: and a half. Oh, and are they showing you new
Speaker 1: things completely? It's my first girl too, and you have
Speaker 1: a daughter, and that's just amazing. I have three sons
Speaker 1: and a daughter. And so my older kids are great too.
Speaker 1: They're just and they're wonderful. Brothers are no. No, one's
Speaker 1: a chef, one's a cook, and the other will be
Speaker 1: a teche Yes, he will be.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: He's interested in neuroscience and physics.
Speaker 2: So that's very chechy, right, yeah too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And my daughter said she's going to be a doctor
Speaker 1: and a mom, so a great. Yeah, she's already picked.
Speaker 1: And the baby can't talk yet, baby does. Baby's going
Speaker 1: to break things. That's he's going to destroy things. Construction
Speaker 1: and destruction.
Speaker 2: What's plaguing tech? Now? What are the besides Washington?
Speaker 1: Washington isn't plaguing them. Washington has not done any regulation
Speaker 1: Washington talks about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but there's I mean, all this stuff with chik chok.
Speaker 2: What do you think of that?
Speaker 1: I think it's bright, shiny. I just interviewed Jenn Easterly,
Speaker 1: who runs SISSO, which is the agency dealing with cybersecurity
Speaker 1: attacks on everything from elections to the electrical grid. And
Speaker 1: I think TikTok's a shiny object. I think the real
Speaker 1: issues are China really upgrading itself, around AI, around autonomous cars,
Speaker 1: around the government funding a lot of things going around
Speaker 1: the world and collecting precious minerals you need for all
Speaker 1: for batteries and for phones.
Speaker 2: And I think owning owning minds every everywhere uranium I
Speaker 2: just went to I just went to Madagascar. There are
Speaker 2: minds there being you by the Chinese. Yes, Greenland has
Speaker 2: so many minerals being being mined by Elon Musk and
Speaker 2: Jeff Bezos all for their space exploration. That's corella is
Speaker 2: their batteries.
Speaker 1: Well, they need that, but the batteries are essentially owned
Speaker 1: by China right now. Essentially, I mean a seventy percent
Speaker 1: some numbers. That's really high. So I think we spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time. I think it's listen. I wrote
Speaker 1: a column four years ago in The New York Times
Speaker 1: saying I love TikTok, best new product I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: It's going to be a huge hit. It's run by
Speaker 1: the Chinese Communist Party. Like, that's my worry, so I
Speaker 1: use it on a burner phone. People lost their minds
Speaker 1: when I wrote that. They're like, how dare you anti Chinese?
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm anti Chinese Communist Party. Yes, I will
Speaker 1: cop to that. I'm not anti Chinese and so I
Speaker 1: think people, you know, the idea of propaganda surveillance is
Speaker 1: really problematic. So I think it's a worthy thing to
Speaker 1: think about, especially since we're not allowed to be in China,
Speaker 1: None of our tech companies are allowed to be there,
Speaker 1: but they're allowed to have one hundred and fifty million
Speaker 1: users in the US. Oh yeah, all kinds of problems.
Speaker 1: And I've interviewed all the senators about this. It's very
Speaker 1: clear that they're using for propaganda and surveillance. But we
Speaker 1: have bigger issues of fish to fry, technical fish to fry,
Speaker 1: like China AI around AI autonomy, batteries, all kinds of
Speaker 1: innovation issues, and they are they want to become the
Speaker 1: dominant technological power, and we are US continues to be,
Speaker 1: especially in AI chips. Obviously we're going to start making
Speaker 1: a lot more here.
Speaker 2: Do we have to we just send it all to China?
Speaker 1: We do because if we're lazy and don't figure it
Speaker 1: out correctly. And so one of the things that's important
Speaker 1: is to think about where the next generation of technology
Speaker 1: is going. And what we have to do is including
Speaker 1: our government, which has sort of opted itself out and
Speaker 1: let you know, space is now run by Elon Musk
Speaker 1: and Jeff Bezos essentially Elon Musk. Yeah, you know AI
Speaker 1: is now run by the top tech companies. That shouldn't
Speaker 1: be the case. The government should be deeply involved in
Speaker 1: this stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, AI is probably you consider that the most important
Speaker 2: next step in tech.
Speaker 1: Well, it's been around forever. Let's yes, machine learning, neural networks,
Speaker 1: this is forty years old. What's happened is there's been
Speaker 1: a quantum leap in its abilities, which they didn't think
Speaker 1: was coming for another decade, right, some people did, some
Speaker 1: people didn't.
Speaker 2: Then who spearheaded that leap chat.
Speaker 1: GPT, which was funded by Elon and also Sam Altman,
Speaker 1: who's the more principal person there, and a bunch of
Speaker 1: people read Hoffman, a whole bunch of people, you know.
Speaker 1: And so it's you know, right now it's being decided.
Speaker 1: All are critical things again are being decided by private
Speaker 1: companies and not elected officials. Even if you ate your
Speaker 1: elected officials, they're elected. And do you know any electric
Speaker 1: officials who could possibly be well listen, elected officials do
Speaker 1: the SEC elected officials do regulators do? The FCC, they do,
Speaker 1: the FDA, they do not perfectly well.
Speaker 2: Many of the many of the elected officials in the
Speaker 2: news today are really concerned with their on tiktoky with
Speaker 2: issues that shouldn't even.
Speaker 1: Know trans people. Oh god, really, this is our biggest
Speaker 1: issue of our day. No, it's not. And so I
Speaker 1: think one of there are like Senator just Interview, Senator Warner,
Speaker 1: Senator Bennett, Senator Klobasar ken Buck, Who's I agree on
Speaker 1: nothing with, but I think he's excellent legislator. He's from Colorado.
Speaker 1: He's very conservative, but very smart. He understands what's at stake.
Speaker 1: There's bunches of them that do. There's bunches in the
Speaker 1: dew and Lena Khan who runs the FTC. It's just
Speaker 1: a question of our government getting to Europe is the
Speaker 1: one legislating everything now, not US, and we've never legislated this,
Speaker 1: so they need to enter the picture in it.
Speaker 2: They're getting some big settlements from our chech guys.
Speaker 1: Some of them they're not that big. Well, I think
Speaker 1: it's pocket change to them. We need a global initiative
Speaker 1: around as global.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's probaly a change to Microsoft into Apple into.
Speaker 1: But we need a globe like we should all agree
Speaker 1: and the people. One thing that's different from the AI
Speaker 1: people to the social media people. Is they're warning. They're saying,
Speaker 1: this is dangerous. We need your guidance. They're asking for guidance. Now,
Speaker 1: that could be a virtue signaling. That could be something
Speaker 1: they're doing just to like trick everybody. But they're saying
Speaker 1: it's problematic and so so an existential they call existential threat.
Speaker 1: If the people making it are calling it an exisential
Speaker 1: threat on par of pandemics and new clear war, maybe we.
Speaker 2: Should act, paying attention.
Speaker 1: Pay attention, and there should be global initiatives like on
Speaker 1: like no killer robots. Nobody gets to make killer robots.
Speaker 1: That's all decided, just like with nuclear issues, everyone doesn't
Speaker 1: get to do it. Maybe we should decide the algorithms
Speaker 1: should be transparent so everyone can see them and the
Speaker 1: impact they have on people. Maybe everybody should see what
Speaker 1: you can't build, Like you don't let anybody have stuff
Speaker 1: about building another pandemic, don't let any flag people that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. We can all agree on certain things.
Speaker 1: So does there have to be a worldwide conference on this? Yes,
Speaker 1: the world?
Speaker 2: Is there one planned?
Speaker 1: No. I've talked to a secretary blinking about it. I've
Speaker 1: tried to push I think so I should.
Speaker 2: I should talk about that.
Speaker 1: You know, it would be interesting because some people think
Speaker 1: there should be an agency that that regulates the world.
Speaker 2: Agency like a world or a national like the United Nations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or national.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe an agency within the United Nations. Well, but
Speaker 2: that's a problem that's so effective.
Speaker 1: I know, nations. You know, no one can agree on
Speaker 1: lunch anything, right, No, but you could have an organization
Speaker 1: just like look the internet, big goold.
Speaker 2: I could I like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have a couple ideas, Mark, I have another one
Speaker 1: where I want to get This is my greatest idea.
Speaker 1: I want to get Lorraine Powell Jobs, who has all
Speaker 1: the money in the world, Melinda Gates, Mackenzie Scott's the
Speaker 1: ex wife.
Speaker 2: All these are all the ex wives or form wives
Speaker 2: widows of of of Steve Jobs, of Jeff Bezos Gates,
Speaker 2: of Bill Gates.
Speaker 1: And maybe Cheryl Sandberg, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Just get them all, oh and the wood Skis, the
Speaker 3: Susan Wijeks, stuff like that, and get them together in
Speaker 3: a in a group of investors and philanthropists together, these
Speaker 3: women who have so much cloud, they're all doing interesting things.
Speaker 1: Lorraine owns the parts of the Atlantic McKenzie's been killing
Speaker 1: it in philanthropy, doing amazing things. Wis are doing philanthropy obviously,
Speaker 1: Melinda Gates has Pivotal, which is an investor and also
Speaker 1: does philanthropy and through the Gates Foundation. Like when I
Speaker 1: get them together on three topics, like all these power women,
Speaker 1: you could join it, Martha.
Speaker 2: I would love to join it. But this is about
Speaker 2: this is about AI.
Speaker 1: Do that panel, yes exactly, and not to day, but everything,
Speaker 1: like what if they got together and really used their
Speaker 1: money and power to influence I don't know, immigration, gun control, AI,
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 2: The world is flat, we have to admit it, and
Speaker 2: we have to do That's that book. Yeah, all of that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so so hard to think about this every single day.
Speaker 2: Do you wake up fearful in the morning about what
Speaker 2: the news might what might have happened the night.
Speaker 1: Now? You know, it's interesting because I got into a
Speaker 1: beef with JD. Vans, who used to be intelligent. He
Speaker 1: used to be a tech He was on the board
Speaker 1: I was on. I know he was a tech person.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, something happened someone someone grabbed his brain and
Speaker 1: did something to it. And he was tweeting at me
Speaker 1: something obnoxious and then he wrote to me, he goes,
Speaker 1: liberals don't believe in the future, and I tied it back.
Speaker 1: And I shouldn't have done this, but I did, And
Speaker 1: I said, you know what, I have double the children
Speaker 1: you do, So I believe in the future twice as
Speaker 1: much as you do. Obviously, you better get to it
Speaker 1: because I kind of winning the children game. So if
Speaker 1: you have children, you have to believe in the future.
Speaker 2: Oh, you have to. And you have to embrace the
Speaker 2: future and help and try to make it better.
Speaker 1: That's correct.
Speaker 2: I totally agree. Now I wake up worried that something
Speaker 2: bad happened last night, I mean Ukraine. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 2: somebody will call me if something bad happened, somebody from
Speaker 2: Europe will call me in tell.
Speaker 1: That's because the Internet gives this constant, instant information all
Speaker 1: the time. This was happening before, we just didn't know
Speaker 1: it right, and so it's created. The society's on a
Speaker 1: full twitch. And then they had no guardrails, so they
Speaker 1: get to spew endless amounts of toxic waste in our face,
Speaker 1: some of which we don't know is true.
Speaker 2: And AI, it'll get a lot worse. I'll tell you that.
Speaker 2: How often do you use chat Cheep each.
Speaker 1: I use them all. I'm right now using PAI. It's
Speaker 1: by the guy who started Deep Mind and read Hoffmann.
Speaker 1: It's going to be a personal assistant. It's going to
Speaker 1: know you, and it's going to talk to other AIS.
Speaker 1: There's going to be dozens of AIS and they'll negotiate
Speaker 1: with each other on your behalf your AI.
Speaker 2: So what are you using it for?
Speaker 1: I'm just trying it out to see what works. It's
Speaker 1: in the earlier. In this case, personal AI is different.
Speaker 1: It's going to be your assistant. Think of it more
Speaker 1: as your assistance.
Speaker 2: Tell you something for it.
Speaker 1: I don't you know, Scott uses a lot more than
Speaker 1: I do. I test it out. It's often wrong. It's
Speaker 1: often like right now, Google has an experiment where it'll
Speaker 1: write your email for you. You write a couple of sentences,
Speaker 1: then it'll improve it, and it never.
Speaker 2: Improves it, No, but it will ultimately when it gets
Speaker 2: to you, it will gets your v OPAC.
Speaker 1: You remember the early Internet how it looks, Remember Yahoo?
Speaker 1: Remember that page that doesn't look so good?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And it'll get better. And so I think we have
Speaker 1: to figure out what the good parts of AI are.
Speaker 1: And there's tons of them. With healthcare, with information, with ideas.
Speaker 1: My brother's an anesthesiologist and he uses it to decide
Speaker 1: on cases, and you know he decides in the end,
Speaker 1: but it gives them ten good ideas.
Speaker 2: One of my nephews uses it to write job descriptions.
Speaker 1: Right, why not those are and they tend to work.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, he says they're very good.
Speaker 1: Gives you idea. Generation is one of the greatest things
Speaker 1: from me. So what can we do that will help humanity? Healthcare?
Speaker 2: Education?
Speaker 1: It's a tutor in your pocket, like a really good
Speaker 1: if it's done well?
Speaker 2: Right? Is there any if I have, like a problem,
Speaker 2: I have this red spot on my arm? Why am
Speaker 2: I getting this red spot? Is it? Is it plant?
Speaker 2: Is it? In general? Yeah? I can't find that right.
Speaker 1: Well, eventually you'll take a picture and it will tell you.
Speaker 2: So you've been vocal about the ethics of social media
Speaker 2: and privacy, very vocal about all of that. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 2: And how do we how do we control that?
Speaker 1: We have legislators that could have made a privacy bill
Speaker 1: ten years ago and they got bought off by the
Speaker 1: tech industry. The tech industry has not like one point,
Speaker 1: Amy Klobuchar, I had one hundred and ten million dollars fighting.
Speaker 1: She was trying to get antitrust and a privacy bill gone,
Speaker 1: gone gone because they pressured a lot of senators in
Speaker 1: the midterms that should have passed last session. We don't
Speaker 1: have a national privacy bill. It's crazy.
Speaker 2: What do you do with your little kids in terms
Speaker 2: of technology? Or I just watch My.
Speaker 1: Daughter watches Frozen on continual loop. It was funny. I
Speaker 1: was texting with Bob Byger and he goes, I go,
Speaker 1: I can't stand Frozen. I really, you have to stop.
Speaker 1: And he goes that Frozen three is coming soon, and
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: Like, my grandchildren were not allowed to watch Frozen one
Speaker 2: two and now really no, no, my daughter their first
Speaker 2: movie was Castaway.
Speaker 1: Oh well that's a good movie. That is, there's something
Speaker 1: with Moana and Frozen. Disney is an evil, evil company.
Speaker 1: I love Disney.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there's the CEO who's really standing up for
Speaker 1: his beliefs.
Speaker 2: So glod he came back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love, I'm very I love, but I do.
Speaker 1: I think he's really an honorable CEO.
Speaker 2: He is and and cares about the future and cares
Speaker 2: about entertainment. That is, it's healthy and he stood up, totis,
Speaker 2: what did you think about that open letter to Sam Altman?
Speaker 2: And the other there were too.
Speaker 1: There was the first one. The first one was a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are making it or worried about
Speaker 1: and thought there should be a stoppage. That's not going
Speaker 1: to happen. No, that's not happening. It's very funny to
Speaker 1: talk about, but it's not. Their future doesn't stop. And
Speaker 1: then the people like him signed another one saying the
Speaker 1: government needs to get involved. And I think that's probably
Speaker 1: the appropriate answer is the government.
Speaker 2: Needs to get so we need it. We need a
Speaker 2: commission within the government that's good industry.
Speaker 1: Government, citizens that are talking about the implications and so
Speaker 1: we can all weigh in. Citizens are much smarter than
Speaker 1: you think about these things. They know what's happening, and
Speaker 1: so what they need to be do is not talked
Speaker 1: down to, and they understand the implications. I need to
Speaker 1: understand the positives and the negatives and so they can
Speaker 1: make decisions.
Speaker 2: So what's the story about the cars? Ok I just
Speaker 2: wrote in a bunch different ones the way we did
Speaker 2: that and the Aurora Aurora Yeah yeah, now those are
Speaker 2: driverless driverless Okay, what do you think I loved it.
Speaker 1: I thought I was surprised by I have been in
Speaker 1: every riot all around San Francisco. It did on the streets.
Speaker 1: On the street, okay, there's some glitches. It stopped sometimes
Speaker 1: in intersection, it doesn't. It tends not to get in
Speaker 1: an accident as humans tend to hit it. But there
Speaker 1: every now and then there's one or two accidents. Tesla
Speaker 1: has many more of them. I think Weimo is really
Speaker 1: I was so impressed about.
Speaker 2: What about Rivian.
Speaker 1: That's an electric I have written, and it's a very
Speaker 1: good truck. There's it's such a good you know, that's
Speaker 1: why Tesla's in trouble because there's so many more competitors.
Speaker 1: Now he's got the he's way ahead on lots of things.
Speaker 1: But eventually, as in all things, people people copied you,
Speaker 1: people copied me. Sure, that's what happens. And so I
Speaker 1: loved the Waimo ride. I have to say, and I
Speaker 1: know it has some problems, but boy is it improved
Speaker 1: since I first started riding it to now it's astonishing.
Speaker 2: And those high speed trains and tunnels that are going
Speaker 2: to take you to Boston, and why.
Speaker 1: Are you wasting your time on Amtrak, right, why why
Speaker 1: it's a waste of time.
Speaker 2: They can do it. They have the chick knowledge.
Speaker 1: Even got mad at me for those pieces about autonomous cars.
Speaker 1: I'm like, are you enjoying turning your butter still? Like
Speaker 1: like come on, like, obviously humans are the problems with cars.
Speaker 1: It's not the machines, it's humans.
Speaker 2: So see, I go back to the old movies, like
Speaker 2: like Blade Runner. Remember Blade Runners. That's a dystopian view.
Speaker 2: It's too great.
Speaker 1: It's grim.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very grim. But when we had the fires
Speaker 2: from Canada, New York looked like blade it did. And
Speaker 2: then the rain came and the and the it was yellow. End.
Speaker 1: We're used to that in California.
Speaker 2: No, I bet you are. And oh it was just
Speaker 2: if there's.
Speaker 1: Not big chunks you're putting in your mouth, then you're like,
Speaker 1: ahh whatever, You're like, not big chunks, I'm fine. But
Speaker 1: it was disturbing in every level.
Speaker 2: But and then there's convoy, you know, convoy shoo, the yes,
Speaker 2: the truck, the driver list truck should do all the
Speaker 2: driving up. Well, that's what AA is doing. When is
Speaker 2: that going to happen?
Speaker 1: It's happening. It's they're moving from Dallas to Houston. They're
Speaker 1: moving stuff at night. They're fantastic. That's another job.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: People are like, oh, it's going to kill jobs. There's
Speaker 1: not enough drivers in this country. We have a we
Speaker 1: have a deficity, we have as and it shouldn't be
Speaker 1: done by people. I'm sorry to say that, but eighteen
Speaker 1: hours a night with a person, give me a break.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't. That's not a job people should do, if
Speaker 1: it could be done in a safer way for everybody.
Speaker 2: Topic because you're so up to the minute on everything
Speaker 2: is the heads.
Speaker 1: I'm going to see it tomorrow?
Speaker 2: Which one the new Apple?
Speaker 1: New Apple? One morning?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, nine am I'm who's showing it to you?
Speaker 1: Probably? Uh want Jaws? Maybe?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, that's the thirty five hundred dollars one.
Speaker 1: The thirty yes?
Speaker 2: Eight or five? Yeah? Five?
Speaker 1: Are you going to get one?
Speaker 2: Martha? Well, I tried them at Cees. I tried several
Speaker 2: of them. That one wasn't there, that's not there.
Speaker 1: This just got in uced.
Speaker 2: But they're disrienting.
Speaker 1: I think Apple. I'm going with Apple.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well it looks it looks better, it looks more comfortable.
Speaker 2: I had one on that made me so easy, that's correct.
Speaker 1: There's still that issue with spatial it's called it's called
Speaker 1: spatial computing. Yes, I call it a face computer essentially,
Speaker 1: but I'm really interested in where it goes for for
Speaker 1: for meetings.
Speaker 2: I remember Meta Meta Facebook had early on, Remember that one.
Speaker 1: This has both, This has AR and V Yes, yes, Meta.
Speaker 2: Is just the original one which VR.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's fine, they're perfectly. I just think eventually we
Speaker 1: will have something on our face that will give us
Speaker 1: a ton of information and recognizing people. I've been interested
Speaker 1: since Google Glass, since and early on. Directionally it's absolutely correct.
Speaker 1: Executionally it's been bad. I mean I just found my
Speaker 1: Google glass the other day.
Speaker 2: I have one someplace.
Speaker 1: You do keep it, sell it, sell it for you know,
Speaker 1: keep it as a as a collector's item. Well I'm
Speaker 1: sure they gave it to you, right yea early on.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But all of those things, it's just like, have
Speaker 2: you have you saved all your them? You do everything?
Speaker 1: Every every Apple, every Apple computer. No, I just have
Speaker 1: them boxes and stuff. I'll leave to my kids how
Speaker 1: they can sell them. They would buy something. I don't care,
Speaker 1: but I have, you know, the original, all the original stuff,
Speaker 1: and it's really interesting. The palm pilot, pilot with a
Speaker 1: mirror on the back for the ladies, and that was
Speaker 1: something that guy said that to me on stage. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you remember that the mirrors for the ladies.
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? Sexist?
Speaker 2: Good for the men to look, I.
Speaker 1: Know, because women are the most narcissistic people on the planet.
Speaker 1: Let's well, we could go on hours and hours, and
Speaker 1: you and I are going to talk tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I'm going to be on Cara's.
Speaker 1: Talking about and what she's learned.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, but this is fascinating your your knowledge
Speaker 2: is so extensive in the world. You have it all there,
Speaker 2: and I really admire what you've done.