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Speaker 1: All media.

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Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Gosh darn Evans for you here and

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Speaker 2: you know, but for the end of the year, to

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Speaker 2: celebrate and stuff, we've got our normal behind the Bastards

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Speaker 2: content coming to you. Do not worry, that's all going

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Speaker 2: to continue as normal. But we also wanted to highlight

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Speaker 2: some other shows in our network, most of which are

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Speaker 2: new and launched this year. We've got some compilation best

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Speaker 2: of episodes that we think the Bastard's audience is going

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Speaker 2: to love, and we're delivering to you now in a

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Speaker 2: special format with fewer ads. So today you're going to

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Speaker 2: hear some episodes of Better Offline, ed Zytron's excellent critical

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Speaker 2: tech industry podcast, which has taken the tech world by storm.

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Speaker 2: And I'm excited for you to learn about the man

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Speaker 2: who killed Google Search, about Sam Altman, the CEO of

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Speaker 2: Open Ai, and why he's dangerous for society, and what

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Speaker 2: ed Zitron calls the rot economy.

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Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host, that Zichron, And.

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Speaker 4: In the next two episodes, I'm.

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Speaker 3: Going to tell you the names some of the people

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Speaker 3: responsible for destroying the Internet. And I'm going to start

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Speaker 3: on February fifth, twenty nineteen, when Ben Gomes, Google's former

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Speaker 3: head of Search, well, he had a problem.

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Speaker 4: Jerry Dishler, then.

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Speaker 3: The VP and GM of Ads at Google, and Shiv

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Speaker 3: Van Carterman, then the VP of Engineering, Search and Ads

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Speaker 3: on Google Properties, had called something called a code yellow

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Speaker 3: for search revenue due to and I quote emails that

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Speaker 3: came out as part of Google's anti trust hearing steady

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Speaker 3: weakness in the daily numbers, and a likeliness that it

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Speaker 3: would end the quarter significantly behind in metrics. That kind

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Speaker 3: of unclear for those unfamiliar with Google's internal kind of

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Speaker 3: scientology esque jargon, which means most people, let me explain,

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Speaker 3: a code yellow isn't a terrible need to piss or

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Speaker 3: some sort of crisis of moderate severity. The yellow, according

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Speaker 3: to Stephen Levy's Tell All book about Google, refers to

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Speaker 3: and I promise this is not a joke, the color

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Speaker 3: of a tank top that a former VP of Engineering

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Speaker 3: called Wayne Rosling used to wear during his time at

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Speaker 3: the company. It's essentially the equivalent of deafcom one and activates,

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Speaker 3: as Levy explained, a war room like situation where workers

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Speaker 3: are pulled from their desks and into a conference room

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Speaker 3: where they tackle the problem as a top priority. Any

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Speaker 3: other projects or concerns are sidelined and independently. I've heard

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Speaker 3: there are other colors like purple. I'm not going to

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Speaker 3: get into that, though, it's quite boring and irrelevant to

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Speaker 3: this situation. In emails released as part of the Department

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Speaker 3: of Justices antitrust case against Google, as I previously mentioned,

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Speaker 3: Dishla laid out several contributing factors. Search query growth was

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Speaker 3: significantly behind forecast, the timing of revenue launches was significantly behind,

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Speaker 3: and he had this vague worry that several advertiser specific

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Speaker 3: and sector weaknesses existed in search. Now I want to

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Speaker 3: cover something because I've messed up, and I've really want.

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Speaker 4: To be clear about this.

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Speaker 3: I've previously and erroneously referred to the code yellow as

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Speaker 3: something that Gomes raised as a means of calling attention

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Speaker 3: to the proximity of Google's ad side getting a little

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Speaker 3: too close to Search. I'm afraid the truth is extremely

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Speaker 3: depressing and so much grimmar. The code yellow was actually

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Speaker 3: the rumble of the goddamn rot economy, with Google's revenue

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Speaker 3: arms sounding the alarm that its golden goose wasn't laying

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Speaker 3: enough eggs. Gomes, a Googler of nineteen years that basically

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Speaker 3: built the foundation of modern search engines, should go down

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Speaker 3: as one of the few people in tech that actually

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Speaker 3: fought for an actual principle, and he was destroyed by

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Speaker 3: a guy called Prabaka Ragavan, a computer scientist class traitor

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Speaker 3: that sided with the management consultancy sect. More confusingly, one

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Speaker 3: of their problems was that there was insufficient growth in queries,

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Speaker 3: as in the amount of things that people were asking Google.

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Speaker 3: It's a bit like if Ford decided that things were

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Speaker 3: going poorly because their drivers weren't putting enough goddamn miles

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Speaker 3: on their truck. This whole story has personally upset me,

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Speaker 3: and I think you're going to hear that in this

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Speaker 3: but going through these emails is.

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Speaker 4: Just very depressing. Anyway.

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Speaker 3: A few days beforehand, on February first, twenty nineteen, Kristen

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Speaker 3: gil then Google's VP Business Finance Officer, had emailed Shashi Thakker,

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Speaker 3: then Google's VP of Engineering Search and Discover, saying that

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Speaker 3: the ADS team had been considering a code yellow to

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Speaker 3: close the search gap it was seeing, vaguely referring to

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Speaker 3: how critical that growth was to an unnamed company plan.

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Speaker 3: To be clear, this email was in response to Thaker

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Speaker 3: stating that there is nothing that the search team could

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Speaker 3: do to operate at the fidelity of growth that the

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Speaker 3: Ads department had demanded. Shashi forward did the email to

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Speaker 3: Gomes asking if there's any way to discuss this with

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Speaker 3: san Dar Pashai, Google CEO, and declared that there was

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Speaker 3: no way he would sign up for a high fidelity

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Speaker 3: business metric for daily active users on search. Thakkh also

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Speaker 3: said something that I've been thinking about constantly since I

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Speaker 3: read these emails, that there was a good reason that

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Speaker 3: Google's founders separated search from ads. I want you to

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Speaker 3: remember that line for later. A day later, on February second,

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Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, Thacker and Gomes shared their anxieties with Nick Fox,

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Speaker 3: a vice president of Search and Google assistant, entering a

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Speaker 3: multiple day long debate about Google's some lust for growth.

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Speaker 4: This thread is.

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Speaker 3: A dark window into the world of growth focus tech,

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Speaker 3: where the Kherr listed the multiple points of disconnection between

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Speaker 3: ads and search, discussing how the search team wasn't able

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Speaker 3: to finally optimize engagement on Google without hacking it, a

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Speaker 3: term that means effectively tricking users into spending more time

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Speaker 3: on a site, and that doing so would lead them

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Speaker 3: to and I quote, abandoned work on efficient journeys. In

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Speaker 3: one email, Fox adds that there was a pretty big

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Speaker 3: disconnect between what finance and ads wants and what Search

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Speaker 3: was doing. Every part of this story pisses me off

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Speaker 3: so much. When Gomes pushed back on the multiple requests

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Speaker 3: for growth, Fox added that all three of them were

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Speaker 3: responsible for Search and that Search was and again I

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Speaker 3: quote the revenue engine of the company, and that bartering

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Speaker 3: with the ads and finance teams was now potentially the

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Speaker 3: new reality of their jobs. On February sixth, twenty nineteen,

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Speaker 3: Gomes said that he believed that Search was getting too

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Speaker 3: close to the money and ended his email by saying

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Speaker 3: that he was concerned that growth is all that Google

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Speaker 3: was thinking about. On March twenty second, twenty nineteen, Google

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Speaker 3: VP of Product Management Darshan Cantac would declare the end

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Speaker 3: of the Code Yellow. The thread mostly consisted of congratulatory

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Speaker 3: emails until Gomes made the mistake of responding congratulating everyone,

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Speaker 3: saying that the plans architected as part of the Code

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Speaker 3: Yellow would do well throughout the year, enter probaka Ragavan,

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Speaker 3: then Google's head of Ads and the true mastermind behind

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Speaker 3: the code yellow, who would respond curtly saying that the

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Speaker 3: current revenue targets were addressed by heroic RPM engineering and

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Speaker 3: that the core query softness continued without mitigation, a very

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Speaker 3: clunky way of saying that despite these changes, query growth

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Speaker 3: was not happening at the rate he needed it to.

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Speaker 3: A day later, Gomes emailed Fox Andhaker an email he

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Speaker 3: intended to center Ragavan. He led by saying that he

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Speaker 3: was annoyed both personally and on behalf of the search team.

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Speaker 3: In this very long email, he explained in arduous detail

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Speaker 3: how one might increase engagement with Google Search, but specifically

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Speaker 3: added that they could increase queries quite easily in the

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Speaker 3: short term, but only in user negative ways, like turning

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Speaker 3: off spell correction or ranking improvements, or placing refinements effectively

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Speaker 3: labels all over the page, adding that it was possible

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Speaker 3: that there are trade offs here between the different kinds

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Speaker 3: of user negativity caused by engagement hacking, and that he

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Speaker 3: was deeply, deeply uncomfortable with this. He also added that

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Speaker 3: this was the reason he didn't believe that queries, as

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Speaker 3: in the amount of the things with people searching on Google,

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Speaker 3: were a good metric to measure search, and that the

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Speaker 3: best defense against the weaknesses of queries was to create

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Speaker 3: compelling user experiences that make users want to come back.

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Speaker 4: Crazy idea there, what if the product was good?

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Speaker 3: Not good enough of probaca, So little bit of history

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Speaker 3: about Google here. They regularly throughout the year do Core

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Speaker 3: updates to Search. These are updates that change the algorithm.

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Speaker 3: Let's say, okay, we're going to suppress this kind of thing,

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Speaker 3: we can elevate this kind of thing. And they are

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Speaker 3: actually the reason that search changes. It's why certain sites

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Speaker 3: suddenly disappear or reappear. It's why sites get a ton

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Speaker 3: of traffic, some don't get any, and so on and

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Speaker 3: so forth. But they do a lot of them. The

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Speaker 3: one that's really interesting and a little bastard and I

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Speaker 3: went and looked through pretty much the last decade of these.

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Speaker 3: The one that stood out to me was the March

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Speaker 3: twenty nineteen Core update to Search, which happened about a

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Speaker 3: week before the end of the code yellow, meaning that

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Speaker 3: it's very likely that this was a result of Prabaker's

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Speaker 3: blome shit. So This was expected to be one of

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Speaker 3: the largest updates to search in a very long time,

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Speaker 3: and I'm quoting Search Engine Journal there. Yet when it launched,

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Speaker 3: many found that the update mostly rolled back changes and

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Speaker 3: traffic was increasing to sites that had been suppressed by

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Speaker 3: previous updates, like Google Search's Penguin update from twenty twelve

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Speaker 3: that specifically targeted spami search results.

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Speaker 4: There were others that were.

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Speaker 3: Seeing traffic as well from an update that happened on

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Speaker 3: the first of August twenty eighteen that was a few

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Speaker 3: months after Gomes became head of Search. While I'm guessing here,

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Speaker 3: I really don't know. I do not work for Google.

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Speaker 4: I do not have friends there.

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Speaker 3: I think the timing of the March twenty nineteen Core update,

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Speaker 3: along with the traffic increases the previously suppressed sites that

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Speaker 3: one hundred percent were spamy SEO nonsense. I think these

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Speaker 3: suggest that Google's response to the Coyello was to roll

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Speaker 3: back changes that were made to maintain the quality of search.

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Speaker 3: A few months later, in May twenty nineteen, Google would

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Speaker 3: roll out a redesign of how ads we shown on

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Speaker 3: Google Search, specifically on mobile, replacing the bright green ad

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Speaker 3: label and URL color on ads with a tiny, little,

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Speaker 3: bolded black note that said ad in the smallest font

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Speaker 3: you could possibly put there, with the link looking otherwise

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Speaker 3: identical to a regular search link. I guess that's how

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Speaker 3: they managed to start hating their numbers.

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Speaker 4: Huh.

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Speaker 3: And then in January twenty twenty, Google would bring this

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Speaker 3: change to desktop, and the vergess John Porter would suggest

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Speaker 3: that it made Google's ads look just like search results

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Speaker 3: now awesome. Five months later, a little over a year

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Speaker 3: after the code yellow situation, Google would make Probakar Ragavan

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Speaker 3: the head of Google Search, with Jerry Dishler taking his

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Speaker 3: place as the head of Ads. After nearly twenty years

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Speaker 3: of building Google Search, Gomes would be relegated to the

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Speaker 3: SVP of Education at Google. Domes, who was a critical

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Speaker 3: part of the original team that made Google Search work,

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Speaker 3: who has been credited with establishing the culture of the

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Speaker 3: world's largest and most important search engine, was chased out

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Speaker 3: by a growth hungry managerial type several of them, actually

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Speaker 3: led by Probagar Ragavan, a management consultant wearing an engineer costume.

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Speaker 3: As a side note, by the way, I use the

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Speaker 3: term management consultant there as a pejorative. While he exhibits

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Speaker 3: all the same bean counting morally young guided behaviors of

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Speaker 3: a management consultant. From what I can tell, Ragavan has

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Speaker 3: never actually worked in that particular sector of the economy.

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Speaker 4: But you know who has. San Dhar Pashai, the CEO.

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Speaker 3: Of Google, who previously worked at McKinsey, arguably the most

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Speaker 3: morally abhorrent company that's ever existed, having played roles both

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Speaker 3: in the two thousand and eight financial crisis, where it

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Speaker 3: encouraged banks to load up on debt and floored mortgage

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Speaker 3: backed securities, and the ongoing opiord crisis, where it effectively

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Speaker 3: advised Perdue Farmer on how to growth hack sales of

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Speaker 3: oxy content, an extremely addictive painkiller. McKinsey has paid nearly

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Speaker 3: one billion dollars over several settlements due to its work

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Speaker 3: with Perdue. But I'm getting sidetracked, but one last point.

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Speaker 3: McKinsey is actively anti labor. When a company brings in

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Speaker 3: a McKinsey consultant, they're often there to advise on how

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Speaker 3: to cut costs, which inevitably means layoffs and outsourcing. McKinsey

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Speaker 3: is to the middle class what fleshy in bacteria.

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Speaker 4: Is the skin.

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Speaker 3: But back to the emails, which are a stark example

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Speaker 3: of the monstrous, disgusting rot economy, the growth that all

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Speaker 3: costs mindset that's dominating the tech ecosystem. And if you

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Speaker 3: take one thing away from this episode, I want it

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Speaker 3: to be the name Prabakar Ragavan and an understanding that

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Speaker 3: there are people responsible for the current state of the Internet.

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Speaker 3: These emails, which I really encourage you to look up

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Speaker 3: and if you go to where's youreaed dot at, you'll

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Speaker 3: be able to see a newslet that has links to them. Well,

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Speaker 3: these emails tell a dramatic story about how Google's finance

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Speaker 3: and advertising teams, led by Ragavan, with the blessing of

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Speaker 3: CEO Sandhar Pashai, the McKinsey guy, actively worked to make

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Speaker 3: Google worse to make the company more money. This is

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Speaker 3: exactly what I mean when I talk about the economy,

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Speaker 3: an illogical, product destroying mindset that turns products you love

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Speaker 3: into torturous, frustrating, quasi tools that require you to fight

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Speaker 3: the company to get the thing you want. Ben Gomes

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Speaker 3: was instrumental in making search work both as a product

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Speaker 3: and a business. He joined the company in nineteen ninety nine,

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Speaker 3: a time long before Google established dominance in the field,

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Speaker 3: and the same year when Larry Page and Serge Britain

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Speaker 3: tried to sell the company to Excite for one million dollars,

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Speaker 3: only to walk away after Vinnard Coosler and Excite investor

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Speaker 3: and co founder of some Microsystems that's now a VC

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Speaker 3: who tried to stop people going to a beach in

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Speaker 3: Half Moon Bay, Well, he tried to low ball them

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Speaker 3: with a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars offer, also

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Speaker 3: known as a one hundred square foot apartment in San Francisco.

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Speaker 3: In an interview with Fast Companies Harry mc crack him

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Speaker 3: from twenty eighteen, Gomes frayed Google's challenge as taking the

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Speaker 3: page erank algorithm from one machine to a whole bunch

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Speaker 3: of machines and they weren't very good machines at the time.

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Speaker 3: Despite his impact and tenure, Gomes had only been made

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Speaker 3: head of Search in the middle of twenty eighteen after

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Speaker 3: John Gianderia moved to Apple to work on its machine

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Speaker 3: learning in AR strategy.

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Speaker 4: Gomes had been.

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Speaker 3: Described as Google's searches are beloved for his ability to

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Speaker 3: communicate across Google's many quite decentralized departments. Every single article

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Speaker 3: I've read about Gomes and his tenure at Google spoke

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Speaker 3: of a man deeply ingrained in the foundation of one

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Speaker 3: of the most important technologies ever made, a man who

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Speaker 3: had dedicated decades to maintaining a product with a and

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Speaker 3: I quote Gomes here guiding light of serving the user

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Speaker 3: and using technology to do that.

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Speaker 4: And when finally given the keys.

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Speaker 3: To the kingdom, the ability to elevate Google Search even further,

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Speaker 3: he was rap fucked by a series of rotten careersts

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Speaker 3: trying to please Wall Street, led by Probakar Ragavan. Do

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Speaker 3: you want to know what Provakar Ragavan's old job was?

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Speaker 3: We Probacar Ragavan, the new head of Google Search, the

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Speaker 3: guy that ran Google Search, that runs Google Search right now,

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Speaker 3: that is running a Google Search into the goddamn ground.

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Speaker 3: Do you want to know what his job was? His

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Speaker 3: job before Google, He was the head of search for

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Speaker 3: god damn Yahoo from two thousand and five through two

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Speaker 3: thy and twelve when he joined the company. When Probakar

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Speaker 3: Ragavan took over Yahoo Search, they held a thirty point

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Speaker 3: four percent market share, not far from Google's own thirty

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Speaker 3: six point nine percent, and miles ahead of the fifteen

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Speaker 3: point seven percent that Microsoft's MSN Search had. By May

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Speaker 3: twenty twelve, Yahoo was down to just thirteen point four

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Speaker 3: percent and had shrunk for the previous nine consecutive months

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Speaker 3: and was being beaten by even the newly released Bing.

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Speaker 3: That same year, Yahoo had the largest layoffs in its

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Speaker 3: corporate history, shedding two thousand employees, or fourteen percent of

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Speaker 3: its overall work. For the man who deposed Ben Gomes,

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Speaker 3: someone who worked on Google Search from its very beginnings,

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Speaker 3: was so shit at his job that in two thousand

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Speaker 3: and nine, Yahoo effectively threw in the towel on its

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Speaker 3: own search tech, instead choosing to license Being's engine in

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Speaker 3: a ten year deal. If we take a long view

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Speaker 3: of things, this likely precipitated the overall decline of the company,

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Speaker 3: which went from being worth one hundred and twenty five

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Speaker 3: billion dollars at the peak of the dot com boom

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Speaker 3: to being sold to Verizon for four point eight billion

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Speaker 3: dollars in twenty seventeen, which is roughly a three thousand

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Speaker 3: square foot apartment in San Francisco. With Search no longer

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Speaker 3: a priority in making less money for the company, Yahoo

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Speaker 3: decided to pivot into web two point zero and original

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Speaker 3: content making sum beats that paid off, but far far

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Speaker 3: too many that did not. It spent one point one

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Speaker 3: billion dollars on Tumblr in twenty thirteen, only for Verizon

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Speaker 3: to sell it for just three million dollars in twenty nineteen.

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Speaker 3: It put Zimbra in two thousand and seven, ostensibly to

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Speaker 3: complete with the new Google Apps productivity, only to sell

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Speaker 3: it for a reported fraction of the original purchase price

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Speaker 3: to VMware a few years later. That's not his fault,

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Speaker 3: but nevertheless, Yahoo was a company without a mission, a purpose,

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Speaker 3: or an objective. Nobody, and I'll speculate even those leading

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Speaker 3: the company really knew what it was or what it did. Anyway,

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Speaker 3: just a big shout out right now to Kura Swisher,

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Speaker 3: who referred to Prabaka as well respected. When he moved

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Speaker 3: from Yahoo to Google. He absolutely nailed at Kara bang

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Speaker 3: up job. In an interview with zdnets Dan Farber from

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Speaker 3: two thousand and five, Ragavan spoke of his intent to

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Speaker 3: align the commercial incentives of a billion content providers with

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Speaker 3: social good intent while at Yahoo, and his eagerness to

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Speaker 3: inspire the audience to give more data. What anyway before that,

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Speaker 3: it's It's actually hard to find out exactly what Ragavan did,

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Speaker 3: though according to zd net, he spent fourteen years doing

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Speaker 3: search and data mining research ibm M. In April twenty eleven,

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Speaker 3: The Guardian ran an interview with Ragavan that called him

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Speaker 3: Yahoo's secret weapon, describing his plan to make rigorous scientific

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Speaker 3: research and practice to inform Yahoo's business from email to advertising,

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Speaker 3: and how under then CEO Carol Bart's the focus had

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Speaker 3: shifted to the direct development of new products. It speaks

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Speaker 3: of Ragavan's scientific approach and his steady process based logic

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Speaker 3: to innovation that is very different to the common perception

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Speaker 3: the ideas and development are more about luck and spontaneity.

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Speaker 3: A sentence that I'm only reading to you because I

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Speaker 3: really need you to hear how stupid it sounds and

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Speaker 3: how specious some of the tech press used to be. Frankly,

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Speaker 3: this entire article is ridiculous, so utterly vacuous that I'm

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00:18:42,840 --> 00:18:45,399
Speaker 3: actually astonished. I don't want to name the reporter. I

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Speaker 3: feel bad. What about Ragavan's career made this feel right?

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Speaker 3: How has nobody connected these thoughts before? I have a

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Speaker 3: day job. I run a PR firm. I am a

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Speaker 3: blogger with a podcast, and I'm the one who said, yeah, okay,

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Speaker 3: drag Killer is now the CEO of the blood Bank.

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Speaker 3: Nobody saw this. Nobody saw this at the time. I

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Speaker 3: just feel a bit crazy. I feel a bit crazy.

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Speaker 3: But to be clear, this was something written several years

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Speaker 3: after Yahoo had licensed its search technology to Microsoft in

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Speaker 3: a financial deal that the next CEO, Marissa Maya, who

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Speaker 3: replaced Barts, was still angry about for years. Ragavan's reign

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Speaker 3: as what zd net referred to as the search Master

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Speaker 3: was one so successful that it ended up being replaced

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Speaker 3: by a search engine that not a single person in

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Speaker 3: the world enjoys saying out loud. The Guardian article ran

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Speaker 3: exactly one year before dramatic layoffs at Yahoo that involved

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Speaker 3: firing entire divisions worth of people, and four months before

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Speaker 3: Carol Barts would be fired by telephone by then chairman

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Speaker 3: Roy Bostock. Her replacement, Scott Thompson, who previously served as

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Speaker 3: president of PayPal, would last a whole five months in

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Speaker 3: the role before he was replaced by former Google executive

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Speaker 3: a Mayor, in part because it emerged he lied on

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Speaker 3: his resume about having a computer science degree. Hey brabaka,

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Speaker 3: did you not notice that anyway, whatever Barts joined Yahoo

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Speaker 3: in two thousand and nine, so about four years into

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Speaker 3: Braba Kha's bign of terror, I guess, and she joined

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Speaker 3: in the aftermath of its previous CEO, Jerry Yang, refusing

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Speaker 3: to sell the company to Microsoft for forty five billion dollars.

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Speaker 3: In her first year, she laid off hundreds of people

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Speaker 3: and struck a deal that I've mentioned before to power

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Speaker 3: Yahoo Search using Microsoft's being search engine tech, with Microsoft

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Speaker 3: paying Yahoo eighty eight percent of the revenue it gained

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Speaker 3: from searches, a deal that made Ya who are couple

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Speaker 3: hundred million dollars for handing over the keys and the

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Speaker 3: tech to its most high traffic platform. As I previously stated,

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Speaker 3: when Brabakar Ragavan, Yahoo's secret weapon was doing his work,

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Speaker 3: Yahoo's search was so valuable that it was replaced by

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Speaker 3: Bing its sole value. In fact, I mean, maybe I'm

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Speaker 3: being a little unfair.

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Speaker 4: There's a way of.

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Speaker 3: Looking at this that you could say that Yahoo's entire

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Speaker 3: value at the end of his career was driven by

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Speaker 3: nostalgia and association with days before he worked there. Anyway,

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Speaker 3: thanks to the state of modern search, it's actually very,

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Speaker 3: very difficult to find much about Ragavan's history.

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Speaker 4: It took me.

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Speaker 3: Hours of digging through Google and at one point being

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Speaker 3: embarrassingly to find three or four articles that went into

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Speaker 3: any depth about him. But from what I've gleaned, his

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Speaker 3: expertise lies primarily in failing upwards ascending through the ranks

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Speaker 3: of technology on the momentum from the explosions he's coursed.

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Speaker 3: In a wide interview from twenty twenty one, GLAD handler

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Speaker 3: Stephen Levy said Ragavan isn't the CEO of Google, he

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Speaker 3: just runs the place, and described his addition to the

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Speaker 3: company as a move from research to management. While Levy

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Speaker 3: calls him a world class computer scientist who has authored

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Speaker 3: definitive text in the field, which is true, he also

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00:22:01,840 --> 00:22:05,840
Speaker 3: describes Ragavan as choosing a management track which definitely tracks

396
00:22:05,840 --> 00:22:09,359
Speaker 3: with everything I found out about him. Ragavan proudly declares

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Speaker 3: that Google's third party adtech plays a critical role in

398
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Speaker 3: keeping journalism alive and a really shitty answer to a

399
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Speaker 3: question that was also made at a time when he

400
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Speaker 3: was in aggressively incentivizing search engine optimized content and a

401
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Speaker 3: year after he'd deposed someone who actually gave a shit

402
00:22:24,240 --> 00:22:29,080
Speaker 3: about search. Under Ragavan, Google has become less reliable, and

403
00:22:29,119 --> 00:22:33,120
Speaker 3: it's dominated by search engine optimization and just outright spam.

404
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Speaker 4: And I've said this.

405
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Speaker 3: Before, but look, we complain about the state of Twitter

406
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Speaker 3: under Elon Musk and justifiably he's a vile, anti semi

407
00:22:41,040 --> 00:22:44,040
Speaker 3: racist bigger. We all know this, It's fully true. We

408
00:22:44,080 --> 00:22:48,560
Speaker 3: can say it a million times. However, I'd argue that Ragavan,

409
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Speaker 3: by extension Sundhar Pushai deserve one hundred times more criticism.

410
00:22:55,200 --> 00:22:59,760
Speaker 3: They've done unfathomable damage to society. You really can't fix

411
00:22:59,840 --> 00:23:02,440
Speaker 3: the damage they've been doing and the damage they'll continue

412
00:23:02,480 --> 00:23:05,960
Speaker 3: to do, especially as we go into an election. Ragavan

413
00:23:06,040 --> 00:23:08,760
Speaker 3: and his cronies worked to oust Ben Gomes, a man

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Speaker 3: who dedicated a good portion of his life to making

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Speaker 3: the world's information more accessible, in the process burning the

416
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Speaker 3: Library of Alexandria to the goddamn ground so that Sundar

417
00:23:18,240 --> 00:23:20,880
Speaker 3: Peshai could make more than two hundred million dollars a year,

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Speaker 3: and Ragavan, a manager high by Sundar Peshai, a former

419
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:28,439
Speaker 3: McKinsey man. The King of Managers, is an example of

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Speaker 3: everything wrong with the tech industry. Despite his history as

421
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Speaker 3: a true computer scientist with actual academic credentials. Ragavan chose

422
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Speaker 3: to bulldoze actual workers, people who did things, and people

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Speaker 3: that care about technology and replace them with horrifying toadies

424
00:23:44,040 --> 00:23:49,680
Speaker 3: that would make Google more profitable and less useful. Since

425
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Speaker 3: Prabakar took the reigns of Google in twenty twenty, Google

426
00:23:52,960 --> 00:23:56,919
Speaker 3: search has dramatically declined. With these core search updates are mentioned,

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00:23:56,960 --> 00:24:00,320
Speaker 3: allegedly made to improve the quality of results, having the

428
00:24:00,400 --> 00:24:05,160
Speaker 3: adverse effect increasing the prevalence of spammy shitty search optimized content.

429
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Speaker 3: It's frustrating. The anger you hear in my voice. The

430
00:24:09,720 --> 00:24:13,080
Speaker 3: emotion is because I've read all of these antitrust emails.

431
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Speaker 3: I have gone through this guy's history, and I've read

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Speaker 3: all the things about Ben Gomes too. Every article about

433
00:24:18,680 --> 00:24:21,720
Speaker 3: Ben Gomes where they interviewed, is this guy just having

434
00:24:21,760 --> 00:24:24,560
Speaker 3: these dreamy thoughts about the future of information and the

435
00:24:24,560 --> 00:24:27,320
Speaker 3: complexity of delivering it at high speed. Every interview with

436
00:24:27,400 --> 00:24:31,280
Speaker 3: Ragavan is some vague bullshit about how important data is.

437
00:24:31,560 --> 00:24:35,879
Speaker 3: It's so goddamn offensive to me, and all of this

438
00:24:35,920 --> 00:24:38,760
Speaker 3: stuff happening is just one example of what I think

439
00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:41,879
Speaker 3: are probably hundreds of things happening across startups or that

440
00:24:41,920 --> 00:24:43,919
Speaker 3: have happened across startups in the last ten or fifteen

441
00:24:43,960 --> 00:24:47,040
Speaker 3: years and big tech two. And it's because the people

442
00:24:47,280 --> 00:24:50,720
Speaker 3: running the tech industry are no longer those who built him.

443
00:24:51,240 --> 00:24:54,560
Speaker 3: Larry Page and Sergey Brin left Google in December twenty nineteen,

444
00:24:54,840 --> 00:24:56,800
Speaker 3: the same year, by the way as the Code Yellow thing,

445
00:24:57,240 --> 00:25:01,000
Speaker 3: and while they remained as controlling shareholders, they clearly don't

446
00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:04,640
Speaker 3: give a shit about what Google means anymore. Probakar Ragavan

447
00:25:04,760 --> 00:25:06,960
Speaker 3: is a manager, and his career, from what I can tell,

448
00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:09,960
Speaker 3: is mostly made up of did some stuff at IBM,

449
00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:12,720
Speaker 3: failed to make Yahoo anything of no, and fucked up

450
00:25:12,760 --> 00:25:15,119
Speaker 3: Google so badly that every news outlet has run a

451
00:25:15,119 --> 00:25:18,959
Speaker 3: story about how bad it is. This this is the

452
00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:21,880
Speaker 3: result of taking technology out of the hands of real

453
00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:24,560
Speaker 3: builders and handing it to managers at a time when

454
00:25:24,600 --> 00:25:27,800
Speaker 3: management is synonymous with staying as far away from actual

455
00:25:27,800 --> 00:25:31,280
Speaker 3: work as possible. When you're a do nothing looking to

456
00:25:31,359 --> 00:25:34,360
Speaker 3: profit as much as possible, who doesn't use tech, who

457
00:25:34,400 --> 00:25:37,720
Speaker 3: doesn't care about tech, and you only care about growth, well,

458
00:25:37,760 --> 00:25:38,560
Speaker 3: you're not a user.

459
00:25:38,840 --> 00:25:39,880
Speaker 4: You're a parasite.

460
00:25:39,920 --> 00:25:42,800
Speaker 3: And it's these parasites that have dominated and are now

461
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:45,120
Speaker 3: draining the tech industry of its value.

462
00:25:45,200 --> 00:25:47,639
Speaker 4: They're driving it into a goddamn ditch.

463
00:25:48,640 --> 00:25:51,320
Speaker 3: Ragavan's story is unique in so far as the damage

464
00:25:51,320 --> 00:25:54,200
Speaker 3: he's managed to inflict, or if we're being exceptionally charitable,

465
00:25:54,400 --> 00:25:58,040
Speaker 3: failed to avoid in the case of Yahoo on two

466
00:25:58,160 --> 00:26:00,480
Speaker 3: industry defining companies, and the fact that he did it

467
00:26:00,520 --> 00:26:05,040
Speaker 3: without being a CEO or founder is remarkable. Yeah, he's

468
00:26:05,359 --> 00:26:08,760
Speaker 3: far from the only example of a manager falling upwards.

469
00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 3: I'm going to editorialize a bit here. I want to

470
00:26:12,800 --> 00:26:14,640
Speaker 3: think about your job history. I want you to think

471
00:26:14,640 --> 00:26:17,840
Speaker 3: about the managers you've had. I've written a lot about management,

472
00:26:18,320 --> 00:26:21,080
Speaker 3: and specifically to do with remote work and the whole

473
00:26:21,119 --> 00:26:24,040
Speaker 3: thing around guys who don't do work, who are barely

474
00:26:24,040 --> 00:26:26,040
Speaker 3: in the office telling you you need to be in

475
00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:32,560
Speaker 3: the office. This problem is everywhere. Managers are everywhere, and

476
00:26:32,640 --> 00:26:36,639
Speaker 3: managers aren't doing work. I'm sure someone will email me

477
00:26:36,760 --> 00:26:39,239
Speaker 3: now and say, well, I'm a manager and off I'll

478
00:26:39,320 --> 00:26:39,960
Speaker 3: do work.

479
00:26:39,720 --> 00:26:41,159
Speaker 4: All the time. Yeah, make sure you do.

480
00:26:41,280 --> 00:26:43,359
Speaker 3: That's why you're emailing me telling me how good you

481
00:26:43,400 --> 00:26:46,280
Speaker 3: are at your job. People who actually do work don't

482
00:26:46,280 --> 00:26:50,440
Speaker 3: feel defensive about it. People who do things and are

483
00:26:50,480 --> 00:26:53,600
Speaker 3: part of the actual profit center, they don't need a

484
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:55,640
Speaker 3: podcast to tell them they're good at their job.

485
00:26:56,840 --> 00:26:58,320
Speaker 4: What I think the problem is.

486
00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:03,320
Speaker 3: In modern American corporate society is that management is no

487
00:27:03,440 --> 00:27:06,960
Speaker 3: longer synonymous with actually managing people. It's not about getting

488
00:27:06,960 --> 00:27:10,040
Speaker 3: the people what they need. It's not about organizing things

489
00:27:10,160 --> 00:27:13,520
Speaker 3: and making things efficient and good. It's not about execution.

490
00:27:14,040 --> 00:27:16,439
Speaker 3: It's about handing work off to other people and getting

491
00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:20,919
Speaker 3: paid handsomely. And if you disagree easy at better offline

492
00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:23,840
Speaker 3: dot com, I will read your email, maybe I'll even respond.

493
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:28,880
Speaker 3: But the thing is management has become a poison in America.

494
00:27:29,040 --> 00:27:33,520
Speaker 3: Managers have become poisonous because managers are not actually held

495
00:27:33,760 --> 00:27:36,879
Speaker 3: to any kind of standard. No, only the workers who

496
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:39,639
Speaker 3: do the work are What happened to Ben Gomes is

497
00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:42,840
Speaker 3: one of the most disgusting, disgraceful things to happen in

498
00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:46,600
Speaker 3: the tech industry. It's an absolute joke. Ben Gomes was

499
00:27:46,600 --> 00:27:49,760
Speaker 3: a goddamn hero. And I really need you to read

500
00:27:49,760 --> 00:27:52,399
Speaker 3: the newsletter and read these emails. I need you to

501
00:27:52,480 --> 00:27:55,840
Speaker 3: see how many times him and thaka Great Guy as

502
00:27:55,880 --> 00:28:00,160
Speaker 3: well were saying, hey, growth is bad for searching. Thing

503
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:02,640
Speaker 3: that Ben Gomes was being asked to do was increase

504
00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:07,280
Speaker 3: queries on Google. The literal amount that people search. There

505
00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:10,560
Speaker 3: are many ways of looking at that and thinking, oh shit,

506
00:28:10,920 --> 00:28:14,160
Speaker 3: that's not what you want. Surely you don't want no queries.

507
00:28:14,160 --> 00:28:16,240
Speaker 3: You don't want people not using it at all. But

508
00:28:16,440 --> 00:28:21,240
Speaker 3: queries going upwards linearly suggests that if you're not magic

509
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:23,680
Speaker 3: good to use the growth, at least the people are

510
00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:26,280
Speaker 3: not getting what they want on the first.

511
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:28,800
Speaker 4: Try, which, by the way, kind of feels like how

512
00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:30,080
Speaker 4: Google is nowadays.

513
00:28:30,840 --> 00:28:32,919
Speaker 3: When you go to Google and the first result, and

514
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:34,640
Speaker 3: the second result, and the fifth result and the tenth

515
00:28:34,640 --> 00:28:37,479
Speaker 3: result just don't get what you need because it's all

516
00:28:37,520 --> 00:28:41,000
Speaker 3: that SEO crap. Now, this is all theorizing, But what

517
00:28:41,080 --> 00:28:44,080
Speaker 3: I think prabagar Ragavan did was I think he took

518
00:28:44,120 --> 00:28:47,560
Speaker 3: off all the fucking guidelines on Google Search. I think

519
00:28:47,560 --> 00:28:50,880
Speaker 3: he rolled back changes specifically to make search worse, to

520
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:55,440
Speaker 3: increase queries, to give Google more chance to show you adverts.

521
00:28:55,880 --> 00:28:58,160
Speaker 3: I am guessing don't have a source telling me this,

522
00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:01,800
Speaker 3: but the pattern around on the core search updates. The

523
00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:05,760
Speaker 3: fact that Google Search started getting worse toward the middle

524
00:29:05,800 --> 00:29:11,440
Speaker 3: and end of twenty nineteen and unquestionably dipped in twenty twenty.

525
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:15,440
Speaker 3: Well that's when Prabaka took over that's when the big

526
00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:18,080
Speaker 3: Man took the reins. That's when drack Killer got his

527
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:21,000
Speaker 3: job at the blood bank. And this is the thing.

528
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:24,680
Speaker 3: There's very little that you and I can actually do

529
00:29:24,760 --> 00:29:27,000
Speaker 3: about this. But what we can do is say names

530
00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:29,800
Speaker 3: like Probakar Ragavan a great deal of times so that

531
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:33,240
Speaker 3: people like this can be known, so that the actions

532
00:29:33,280 --> 00:29:37,080
Speaker 3: of these scurrilous assholes can be seen and heard and

533
00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:40,959
Speaker 3: pointed at and spat upon. I'm not suggesting spitting on anyone,

534
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:44,160
Speaker 3: No violent acts. No can be pissy on the internet

535
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:47,800
Speaker 3: like the rest of us. Now I'm ranting. I realize

536
00:29:47,800 --> 00:29:51,320
Speaker 3: i'm ranting, but this subject really really got to me.

537
00:29:52,960 --> 00:29:56,200
Speaker 3: But it's not the only one. In the next episode,

538
00:29:56,480 --> 00:30:03,160
Speaker 3: I'm going to conclude this sordid three part fiasco with

539
00:30:03,280 --> 00:30:07,040
Speaker 3: a few more examples, and how many of these managers,

540
00:30:07,440 --> 00:30:11,160
Speaker 3: these bean counters, devoid of imagination or ability or anything

541
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:12,480
Speaker 3: of note save for that.

542
00:30:13,400 --> 00:30:15,680
Speaker 4: Utter slug likability.

543
00:30:15,760 --> 00:30:18,520
Speaker 3: To protect oneself, I want to talk about how these

544
00:30:18,560 --> 00:30:21,959
Speaker 3: people manage to obfiscate their true intentions by pretending to

545
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:25,000
Speaker 3: be engineers, by pretending to be technologists, and pretending to

546
00:30:25,040 --> 00:30:28,520
Speaker 3: be innovators. I want to tell you all about how

547
00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 3: Adam Masseri destroyed Instagram, and I want to tell you

548
00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:37,480
Speaker 3: how little Sam Altman has achieved other than making him

549
00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:51,040
Speaker 3: and his friends rich. See you next time. Thank you

550
00:30:51,120 --> 00:30:53,840
Speaker 3: for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of

551
00:30:53,840 --> 00:30:56,840
Speaker 3: the Better Offline theme song is Mattosowski. You can check

552
00:30:56,840 --> 00:30:59,760
Speaker 3: out more of his music and audio projects at Mattasowski

553
00:30:59,760 --> 00:31:03,360
Speaker 3: dot com, m A T T O s O W

554
00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:06,800
Speaker 3: s ki dot com. You can email me at easy

555
00:31:06,840 --> 00:31:09,440
Speaker 3: at better offline dot com or check out better offline

556
00:31:09,440 --> 00:31:11,560
Speaker 3: dot com to find my newsletter and more links to

557
00:31:11,600 --> 00:31:13,640
Speaker 3: this podcast. Thank you so much for listening.

558
00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:17,560
Speaker 5: Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For

559
00:31:17,640 --> 00:31:20,840
Speaker 5: more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia

560
00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:23,720
Speaker 5: dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

561
00:31:23,760 --> 00:31:26,240
Speaker 5: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

562
00:31:42,520 --> 00:31:45,000
Speaker 3: Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed

563
00:31:45,080 --> 00:31:59,720
Speaker 3: zait Tron. Also, as I discussed in the last episode,

564
00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:03,040
Speaker 3: Sam Mortman has spent more than a decade accumulating power

565
00:32:03,080 --> 00:32:06,040
Speaker 3: and wealth in Silicon Valley without ever having to actually

566
00:32:06,080 --> 00:32:09,280
Speaker 3: build anything, using a network of tech industry all stars

567
00:32:09,280 --> 00:32:12,560
Speaker 3: like LinkedIn co founder and investor Reid Hoffman, and Airbnb

568
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 3: CEO Brian Chesky to insulate himself from responsibility and accountability.

569
00:32:18,280 --> 00:32:21,280
Speaker 3: Yet things are beginning to fall apart as years of

570
00:32:21,320 --> 00:32:25,680
Speaker 3: half baked ideas and terrible, terrible product decisions have kind

571
00:32:25,720 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 3: of made society sour on the tech industry, and the

572
00:32:31,560 --> 00:32:35,360
Speaker 3: last month has been particularly difficult for Sam, starting with

573
00:32:35,400 --> 00:32:40,160
Speaker 3: the chaos cause by open ai blatantly mimicking Scarlet Johansson's

574
00:32:40,240 --> 00:32:43,640
Speaker 3: voice for the new version of chat GBT, followed by

575
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:47,240
Speaker 3: the resignation of researchers who claimed the open ai prioritized

576
00:32:47,280 --> 00:32:51,640
Speaker 3: and I quote shiny products over AI safety. After the

577
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 3: dissolution of open AI's safety team, I know, it's just

578
00:32:55,480 --> 00:33:00,160
Speaker 3: it's almost cliche. Shortly thereafter, former open ai bos bard

579
00:33:00,200 --> 00:33:03,240
Speaker 3: member Helen Toner revealed that Sam Altman was fired from

580
00:33:03,240 --> 00:33:05,880
Speaker 3: an open Ai because of a regular pattern of deception,

581
00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:09,360
Speaker 3: one where Aortman would give inaccurate info about the company's

582
00:33:09,360 --> 00:33:12,960
Speaker 3: safety processes on multiple occasions, and his deceat was so

583
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:16,120
Speaker 3: severe that open aye's board only found out about the

584
00:33:16,160 --> 00:33:19,360
Speaker 3: launch of chet GPT, which, by the way, is open

585
00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:23,120
Speaker 3: Ayes first product that really made money, arguably the biggest

586
00:33:23,120 --> 00:33:24,880
Speaker 3: product in tech. Do you wont know how they found

587
00:33:24,920 --> 00:33:26,600
Speaker 3: out about it, Well, they found out when they were

588
00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:31,320
Speaker 3: browsing Twitter. They found out then, not from the CEO

589
00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:33,280
Speaker 3: of open Ai, the company which they were the.

590
00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:34,240
Speaker 4: Border very weird.

591
00:33:35,080 --> 00:33:39,320
Speaker 3: Toner also noted that Aortman was an aggressive political player

592
00:33:39,560 --> 00:33:42,160
Speaker 3: with the board, correctly by the way, worrying the and

593
00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:46,000
Speaker 3: I quote again that if Sam Altman had any inkling

594
00:33:46,040 --> 00:33:48,320
Speaker 3: that the board might do something that went against him,

595
00:33:48,480 --> 00:33:50,840
Speaker 3: he'd pull out all the stops, do everything in his

596
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:54,200
Speaker 3: power to undermine the board and to prevent them from

597
00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:56,880
Speaker 3: even getting to the point of being able to fire him.

598
00:33:57,800 --> 00:34:00,480
Speaker 3: As a reminder, by the way, the Board's seeded in

599
00:34:00,560 --> 00:34:03,600
Speaker 3: firing Sam Altman in November last year, but not for long,

600
00:34:03,920 --> 00:34:06,960
Speaker 3: with Ortmand returning as CEO a few days later, kicking

601
00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:09,759
Speaker 3: Helen Toner off of the board along with Ilia Sudskava,

602
00:34:09,920 --> 00:34:12,800
Speaker 3: a technical co founder that Altman manipulated long enough to

603
00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:15,360
Speaker 3: build chat GBT and announced it him the moment that

604
00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:18,680
Speaker 3: he chose to complain Sidskava, by the way, has resigned now.

605
00:34:19,080 --> 00:34:21,879
Speaker 3: He's also one of the biggest technical minds there. It's

606
00:34:21,920 --> 00:34:26,040
Speaker 3: so how is open are going to continue anyway? Last week,

607
00:34:26,080 --> 00:34:29,279
Speaker 3: a group of insiders at various AI companies published an

608
00:34:29,320 --> 00:34:32,040
Speaker 3: open letter asking for their overlords, for the heads of

609
00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:35,640
Speaker 3: these companies, for the right to warn about advanced artificial

610
00:34:35,640 --> 00:34:40,720
Speaker 3: intelligence in a monument genuinely impressive monument to the bullshit

611
00:34:40,760 --> 00:34:43,600
Speaker 3: machine that Sam Altman has created. While there are genuine

612
00:34:43,600 --> 00:34:46,919
Speaker 3: safety concerns with AI, there really are, there are many

613
00:34:46,920 --> 00:34:50,200
Speaker 3: of them to consider. These people are desperately afraid of

614
00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:52,960
Speaker 3: the computer coming alive and killing them when they should

615
00:34:52,960 --> 00:34:56,839
Speaker 3: fear the non technical asshole manipulator getting rich making egregious

616
00:34:56,880 --> 00:35:01,400
Speaker 3: promises about what AI can do. Airis you have to

617
00:35:01,440 --> 00:35:04,560
Speaker 3: live up to Sam Altman's promises. Sam Alton doesn't. This

618
00:35:04,719 --> 00:35:07,840
Speaker 3: is not your friend. The problem is not the boogeyman

619
00:35:07,920 --> 00:35:10,960
Speaker 3: computer coming alive. That's not happening man. What's happening is

620
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:14,040
Speaker 3: this guy is leading your industry to ruin, and the

621
00:35:14,080 --> 00:35:16,840
Speaker 3: bigger concern that they should have should be about what

622
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:20,680
Speaker 3: Leo Ashenbrenner, a former safety researcher Open ai, had to

623
00:35:20,719 --> 00:35:23,920
Speaker 3: say on the Duaquesh Ptel podcast, where he claimed that

624
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:27,680
Speaker 3: security processes of open ai were and I quote egregiously

625
00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:30,800
Speaker 3: insufficient and that the priorities that the company were focused

626
00:35:30,800 --> 00:35:35,200
Speaker 3: on growth over stability of security. These people are afraid

627
00:35:35,360 --> 00:35:38,319
Speaker 3: of open AI potentially creating a computer that can think

628
00:35:38,360 --> 00:35:41,440
Speaker 3: for itself that will come and kill them at a

629
00:35:41,480 --> 00:35:44,319
Speaker 3: time where they should be far more concerned about this

630
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:48,480
Speaker 3: manipulative con artist that's running open AI. Sam Altman is

631
00:35:48,600 --> 00:35:53,360
Speaker 3: dangerous to artificial intelligence. Not because he's building artificial general intelligence,

632
00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:55,920
Speaker 3: which is a kind of AI that meets or surpasses

633
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:59,959
Speaker 3: human cove capabilities by the way, kind of like data

634
00:36:00,080 --> 00:36:03,359
Speaker 3: from Star Trek. They're afraid of that happening when they

635
00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:07,160
Speaker 3: should be afraid of Aortmand's focus. What does Sam Moortman

636
00:36:07,320 --> 00:36:11,040
Speaker 3: care about? Because the only thing I can find reading

637
00:36:11,080 --> 00:36:14,360
Speaker 3: about what Sam Mortman cares about is Sam bloody Aortman.

638
00:36:14,880 --> 00:36:19,240
Speaker 3: And right now the progress attached to Sam Mortman actually

639
00:36:19,280 --> 00:36:23,319
Speaker 3: isn't looking that great. Open AI's growth is stalling, with

640
00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:26,560
Speaker 3: Alex Cantruwitz reporting that user growth has effectively come to

641
00:36:26,600 --> 00:36:29,160
Speaker 3: a halt based on a recent release claiming that chat

642
00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:33,120
Speaker 3: gpt had one hundred million users a couple of weeks ago,

643
00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:35,400
Speaker 3: which is, by the way, the exact same number that

644
00:36:35,400 --> 00:36:39,160
Speaker 3: the company claimed chat gpt had in November twenty twenty three.

645
00:36:40,160 --> 00:36:43,480
Speaker 3: Chat gpt is also a goddamn expensive product to operate

646
00:36:43,960 --> 00:36:46,719
Speaker 3: with the company burning through capital at this insane rate.

647
00:36:47,040 --> 00:36:49,919
Speaker 3: It's definitely more than seven hundred thousand dollars a day.

648
00:36:51,520 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 3: It's got to be in the millions if not. What

649
00:36:53,320 --> 00:36:57,160
Speaker 3: it's insane and what open ai is aggressively monetizing chat GPT,

650
00:36:57,280 --> 00:37:00,560
Speaker 3: both the customers and to businesses. It's so old, fiercely

651
00:37:00,680 --> 00:37:06,000
Speaker 3: far from crossing the break even rubicon. They keep leaking

652
00:37:06,080 --> 00:37:08,560
Speaker 3: and they'll claim, oh, I didn't put that out there.

653
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:10,920
Speaker 3: They keep telling people, oh, it's making billions of revenue,

654
00:37:11,000 --> 00:37:15,040
Speaker 3: but they never say profit. And eventually someone's going to

655
00:37:15,080 --> 00:37:17,640
Speaker 3: turn to them and say, hey, man, you can't just

656
00:37:17,719 --> 00:37:21,280
Speaker 3: do this for free or for negative. At some point,

657
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:26,960
Speaker 3: Sacha Nadella is going to call Sam Ortman and say, Sammy, Sammy,

658
00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:28,080
Speaker 3: it's time, Sammy.

659
00:37:28,120 --> 00:37:29,360
Speaker 4: It's got to be a real business.

660
00:37:29,640 --> 00:37:32,680
Speaker 3: I assume he calls him that because the supernatural. But

661
00:37:32,760 --> 00:37:36,160
Speaker 3: as things get desperate, Samuel was going to use the

662
00:37:36,200 --> 00:37:40,680
Speaker 3: only approach he really has, sheer force of will. He's

663
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:42,959
Speaker 3: going to push open ai to grow and sell into

664
00:37:42,960 --> 00:37:46,440
Speaker 3: as many industries as possible. And he's a specious hype man.

665
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:49,120
Speaker 3: He's gonna be selling to other specious hype men, the

666
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:51,279
Speaker 3: Jim Kramers of the world are going to eat it up.

667
00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:54,680
Speaker 3: And they're all all of them. The mock Bernioff's, the

668
00:37:54,719 --> 00:37:59,320
Speaker 3: Sacha Nadellas, a Sun dapashies. They're all desperate to connect

669
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:02,759
Speaker 3: themselves with future and with generative AI and those that

670
00:38:02,840 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 3: he's selling to the company's brokering deals. Yes, even Apple,

671
00:38:08,160 --> 00:38:13,000
Speaker 3: they're desperate to connect their companies to another company which

672
00:38:13,080 --> 00:38:17,880
Speaker 3: is building a bubble, a bubble inflated by Sam Altman.

673
00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:19,960
Speaker 4: And I'd argue that this.

674
00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:23,560
Speaker 3: Is exceedingly dangerous for Silicon Valley and for the tech

675
00:38:23,600 --> 00:38:27,040
Speaker 3: industry writ large, as executives that have become disconnected from

676
00:38:27,040 --> 00:38:30,320
Speaker 3: the process of creating software and hardware follow yet another

677
00:38:30,480 --> 00:38:35,920
Speaker 3: non technical founder hooking unprofitable, unsustainable, and hallucination prone software.

678
00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:40,880
Speaker 3: It's just very frustrating. If there was a very technical

679
00:38:40,960 --> 00:38:44,239
Speaker 3: mind at these companies, they might walk away. And I'm

680
00:38:44,280 --> 00:38:47,080
Speaker 3: not going to give Tim Cook much credit, but looking

681
00:38:47,120 --> 00:38:50,279
Speaker 3: into it, I can't find any evidence that Apple is

682
00:38:50,320 --> 00:38:52,759
Speaker 3: buying a bunch of GPUs, the things that you use

683
00:38:52,840 --> 00:38:57,000
Speaker 3: to power these generative AI models. I found some researcher

684
00:38:57,000 --> 00:38:59,799
Speaker 3: and analysts suggesting that they would buy a lot. But

685
00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:02,880
Speaker 3: now open Ai is doing a deal with Apple to

686
00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:07,600
Speaker 3: power the next iOS, and it's interesting. It is interesting

687
00:39:07,640 --> 00:39:10,840
Speaker 3: that Apple isn't doing this themselves. Apple a company with

688
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:13,400
Speaker 3: hundreds of billions of dollars in the bank. I believe

689
00:39:14,200 --> 00:39:17,640
Speaker 3: that pretty much prints money. That alone makes me think

690
00:39:17,640 --> 00:39:19,440
Speaker 3: it's a bubble. Now, it might look like an asshole

691
00:39:19,440 --> 00:39:21,600
Speaker 3: if it comes out they have. But also, why are

692
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:25,520
Speaker 3: they subcontracting this to open ai when they could build

693
00:39:25,520 --> 00:39:31,279
Speaker 3: it themselves, as Apple has always done. Very strange, It's

694
00:39:31,360 --> 00:39:35,760
Speaker 3: all so peculiar. But I wanted to get a little

695
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:38,520
Speaker 3: bit deeper into the Sam Almonds story. And as I

696
00:39:38,560 --> 00:39:41,680
Speaker 3: discussed last episode, Ellen Hewett of Bloomberg she's been doing

697
00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:44,880
Speaker 3: this excellent reporting on the man and joins me today

698
00:39:44,920 --> 00:39:47,759
Speaker 3: to talk about the subject of a recent podcast, Sam

699
00:39:47,800 --> 00:39:58,880
Speaker 3: Almond's Rise to Power. So tell me a little bit

700
00:39:58,880 --> 00:39:59,880
Speaker 3: about the show you're working on.

701
00:40:01,120 --> 00:40:04,480
Speaker 1: The show is the new season of Foundering, which is

702
00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:08,440
Speaker 1: a serialized podcast from Bloomberg Technology. So this is season five,

703
00:40:08,920 --> 00:40:11,160
Speaker 1: and in every season we've told one story of a

704
00:40:11,280 --> 00:40:14,000
Speaker 1: high stakes drama in Silicon Valley. I was also the

705
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:16,000
Speaker 1: host of season one, which came out several years ago,

706
00:40:16,120 --> 00:40:19,120
Speaker 1: was about we work, and we've done other companies since then,

707
00:40:19,200 --> 00:40:22,480
Speaker 1: and season five is about Open AI and Sam Altman,

708
00:40:22,560 --> 00:40:27,120
Speaker 1: and I think we really tried to, you know, cover

709
00:40:27,160 --> 00:40:30,680
Speaker 1: the arc of the company's creation and where it is now.

710
00:40:31,200 --> 00:40:33,279
Speaker 1: But in doing so, we really tried to do a

711
00:40:33,360 --> 00:40:37,000
Speaker 1: character study of Sam Altman, like he's a very important

712
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:39,520
Speaker 1: person in the tech industry right now, with a lot

713
00:40:39,560 --> 00:40:42,560
Speaker 1: of power, and we really wanted to ask ourselves a

714
00:40:42,640 --> 00:40:46,800
Speaker 1: question and to help listeners ask themselves a question. Should

715
00:40:46,800 --> 00:40:50,120
Speaker 1: we trust him? Should we trust this person who is

716
00:40:50,239 --> 00:40:53,840
Speaker 1: currently in a position of a lot of influence and

717
00:40:53,880 --> 00:40:57,480
Speaker 1: about whom there have been very serious, you know, allegations

718
00:40:57,480 --> 00:41:00,520
Speaker 1: and questions raised about, you know, to put it in

719
00:41:00,560 --> 00:41:06,680
Speaker 1: the words of the opening eyeboard, his not consistently candid behavior.

720
00:41:06,800 --> 00:41:10,800
Speaker 1: And I think it's, you know, my hope is that

721
00:41:11,239 --> 00:41:15,040
Speaker 1: we give listeners a chance to hear kind of the

722
00:41:15,080 --> 00:41:19,480
Speaker 1: whole story. And it's like broader you know, when there's

723
00:41:19,520 --> 00:41:21,560
Speaker 1: news that's happening, it can happen so quickly it's hard

724
00:41:21,600 --> 00:41:23,640
Speaker 1: to get a step back. And I think what the

725
00:41:23,640 --> 00:41:27,240
Speaker 1: show really does is it collects a lot of information

726
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:29,520
Speaker 1: in one place, and we also have lots of new

727
00:41:29,560 --> 00:41:32,920
Speaker 1: information that you won't hear anywhere else, and interviews with

728
00:41:32,920 --> 00:41:35,640
Speaker 1: people who you know have worked with Sam, who knew

729
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:38,399
Speaker 1: him when he was younger. We have an interview with

730
00:41:38,480 --> 00:41:42,560
Speaker 1: Sam's sister Annie, from whom he is estranged, and there's

731
00:41:42,560 --> 00:41:44,799
Speaker 1: a lot of material in there. I think that tries

732
00:41:44,840 --> 00:41:47,200
Speaker 1: to get closer to this answer of like, what should

733
00:41:47,200 --> 00:41:50,520
Speaker 1: we make of this person? How should we think about

734
00:41:50,719 --> 00:41:54,120
Speaker 1: checks and balances of power when we have these companies

735
00:41:54,160 --> 00:41:57,560
Speaker 1: that are, by all appearances, gathering a lot of power

736
00:41:57,600 --> 00:41:58,880
Speaker 1: and there for the people who are running them have

737
00:41:58,880 --> 00:42:01,280
Speaker 1: a lot of power as well. So we have it's

738
00:42:01,320 --> 00:42:06,360
Speaker 1: a five episode arc, five episode season, and the first

739
00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:10,200
Speaker 1: three episodes are out now to the general public and

740
00:42:10,239 --> 00:42:13,040
Speaker 1: the last two will come out on subsequent Thursdays, And

741
00:42:13,080 --> 00:42:15,239
Speaker 1: if you would like to binge the whole season right away,

742
00:42:16,320 --> 00:42:19,960
Speaker 1: the episodes are available early to Bloomberg dot com subscribers.

743
00:42:22,040 --> 00:42:27,120
Speaker 3: So you've just started this series about Sam Altman and

744
00:42:27,160 --> 00:42:30,520
Speaker 3: his upbringing indoors, so the growth of Open Ai and

745
00:42:30,560 --> 00:42:33,400
Speaker 3: Looved and everything. Who are the people that have helped

746
00:42:33,440 --> 00:42:34,760
Speaker 3: him get where he is today?

747
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:35,080
Speaker 4: Though?

748
00:42:36,239 --> 00:42:39,160
Speaker 1: So the making of Sam Altman is a really interesting

749
00:42:39,200 --> 00:42:42,000
Speaker 1: part of the overall story of Sam Altman. You know,

750
00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:46,160
Speaker 1: many people know him as the CEO of open Ai

751
00:42:46,320 --> 00:42:49,400
Speaker 1: because that's the role he's been in when he has

752
00:42:49,960 --> 00:42:53,160
Speaker 1: risen to prominence, you know, beyond Silicon Valley. Like I

753
00:42:53,200 --> 00:42:55,400
Speaker 1: think for many years he was well known in Silicon Valley,

754
00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:58,040
Speaker 1: but this is like now he's kind of a household name,

755
00:42:58,760 --> 00:43:02,120
Speaker 1: and so it's important to understand where Sam came from.

756
00:43:02,200 --> 00:43:04,680
Speaker 1: You know, he's been in the valley for you know,

757
00:43:04,760 --> 00:43:07,640
Speaker 1: since two thousand and five, I think is when he

758
00:43:07,719 --> 00:43:09,560
Speaker 1: started college two thousand and four, two thousand and five

759
00:43:09,560 --> 00:43:12,000
Speaker 1: at Stanford. Then he dropped out, and then he joined

760
00:43:12,719 --> 00:43:16,360
Speaker 1: y Combinator, the now famous startup accelerator. But he was

761
00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:21,520
Speaker 1: actually part of the first cohort of founders ever in

762
00:43:21,760 --> 00:43:22,840
Speaker 1: in YC.

763
00:43:22,719 --> 00:43:24,960
Speaker 3: Along with Witch as well, right, yes.

764
00:43:24,880 --> 00:43:28,880
Speaker 1: Including the the co founders of Twitch and of Reddit,

765
00:43:29,239 --> 00:43:30,960
Speaker 1: and so EMMITTT. Sheer, you know, for those who know

766
00:43:31,000 --> 00:43:33,600
Speaker 1: Emmit Sheer has a like very short seventy two hour

767
00:43:33,719 --> 00:43:37,880
Speaker 1: cameo in the open Ai very Sam been firing saga.

768
00:43:38,719 --> 00:43:41,360
Speaker 1: But yes, Emmett and Sam were both in the same

769
00:43:41,920 --> 00:43:46,879
Speaker 1: YC batch. So when we think about Sam's early career

770
00:43:46,920 --> 00:43:49,120
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley, I think what's important to know is

771
00:43:49,120 --> 00:43:52,480
Speaker 1: that he rose very quickly, in part because he was

772
00:43:52,600 --> 00:43:57,879
Speaker 1: very successful in making these strategic, advantageous friendships and connections

773
00:43:57,960 --> 00:44:01,800
Speaker 1: with already established people in the valley. The most important

774
00:44:01,800 --> 00:44:04,759
Speaker 1: one is Paul Graham, who is the you know, one

775
00:44:04,760 --> 00:44:09,600
Speaker 1: of the founders of y Combinator and you know basically

776
00:44:09,640 --> 00:44:13,200
Speaker 1: like immediately took Sam under his wing when Sam joined

777
00:44:13,239 --> 00:44:18,319
Speaker 1: this first batch of YC. And yeah, Paul's a really

778
00:44:18,360 --> 00:44:20,520
Speaker 1: important mentor to Sam. He's kind of the first person

779
00:44:20,560 --> 00:44:26,640
Speaker 1: who really sees in Sam this you know, ambition, this

780
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:31,360
Speaker 1: hunger for power, this like drive to really build bigger

781
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:33,680
Speaker 1: and bigger companies, even when you know, they met when

782
00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:36,840
Speaker 1: Sam Altman was nineteen, so Paul like sees him as

783
00:44:36,840 --> 00:44:40,920
Speaker 1: a teenager and sees this future potential. And so yes,

784
00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:44,719
Speaker 1: you know, not only did Paul become a mentor to

785
00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:48,319
Speaker 1: him and sort of helped build Sam's profile over those

786
00:44:48,360 --> 00:44:50,360
Speaker 1: early years because he would you know, Paul Graham is

787
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:52,680
Speaker 1: very famous for writing these essays about how to build

788
00:44:52,719 --> 00:44:55,440
Speaker 1: startups and how to build the best startups, and if

789
00:44:55,480 --> 00:44:57,719
Speaker 1: you're at all interested in building startups, you've read many

790
00:44:57,760 --> 00:45:00,560
Speaker 1: of them. They're kind of like almost like a startup bible,

791
00:45:01,040 --> 00:45:03,680
Speaker 1: and in many of them. He extols the virtues of

792
00:45:03,719 --> 00:45:06,120
Speaker 1: Sam Altman. He talks about Sam's ambition, He talks about

793
00:45:06,120 --> 00:45:10,280
Speaker 1: Sam's cunning, his ability to like you know, make deals

794
00:45:10,280 --> 00:45:11,160
Speaker 1: and like think big and.

795
00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:14,400
Speaker 3: Never actually think Sam Moltman is done. Is what I've found.

796
00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:17,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are some interesting you know, I've read many

797
00:45:17,560 --> 00:45:19,840
Speaker 1: of the things Paul has written about Sam. Some of

798
00:45:19,840 --> 00:45:25,400
Speaker 1: my favorite ones include Paul writing that within three minutes

799
00:45:25,400 --> 00:45:28,839
Speaker 1: of meeting Sam, this was when Sam was nineteen, Paul

800
00:45:28,920 --> 00:45:31,760
Speaker 1: thought to himself, Ah, so this is what a young

801
00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:33,839
Speaker 1: Bill Gates is like, or you know, this is what

802
00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:35,640
Speaker 1: Bill Gates was like at nineteen, I think is the

803
00:45:35,680 --> 00:45:38,040
Speaker 1: exact quote. So, you know, he really build him up

804
00:45:38,040 --> 00:45:40,640
Speaker 1: in this way. And I do think Paul had like

805
00:45:40,760 --> 00:45:43,520
Speaker 1: unique insight into Sam, like they were close. They in

806
00:45:43,560 --> 00:45:47,080
Speaker 1: many ways I'm sure still are. But it is this

807
00:45:47,200 --> 00:45:50,360
Speaker 1: interesting role where you know, Paul met Sam when he

808
00:45:50,400 --> 00:45:52,000
Speaker 1: really didn't have much to his name, and he really

809
00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:55,080
Speaker 1: elevated him early on through his writings as this like

810
00:45:55,200 --> 00:45:57,880
Speaker 1: startup founder to emulate right, that other founders should be

811
00:45:57,920 --> 00:46:01,000
Speaker 1: emulating Sam. And then of course, as Sam progresses in

812
00:46:01,040 --> 00:46:04,480
Speaker 1: the Valley, he also starts to write these like startup

813
00:46:05,239 --> 00:46:10,239
Speaker 1: Wisdom essays in a similar style to Paul. And then,

814
00:46:10,280 --> 00:46:12,120
Speaker 1: of course, the most important thing that happens is that

815
00:46:12,160 --> 00:46:15,080
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, when Paul decides he no longer wants

816
00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:17,200
Speaker 1: to run hy Combinator, which at this point is a

817
00:46:17,280 --> 00:46:19,799
Speaker 1: much bigger vehicle than it was when Sam first started.

818
00:46:19,800 --> 00:46:21,880
Speaker 1: It has no longer just a few stops totally. It

819
00:46:21,880 --> 00:46:26,000
Speaker 1: has produced Stripe, Dropbox, Airbnb. This is a big job,

820
00:46:26,080 --> 00:46:29,040
Speaker 1: right like running y Combinator. And when Paul wants to

821
00:46:29,040 --> 00:46:30,960
Speaker 1: hand it off to someone, you know, he has said

822
00:46:31,000 --> 00:46:34,000
Speaker 1: that the only person he considered giving this to was Sam.

823
00:46:34,040 --> 00:46:36,879
Speaker 1: So in twenty fourteen, when Sam is I believe twenty

824
00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:40,280
Speaker 1: eight years old, he becomes the president of y Combinator,

825
00:46:40,280 --> 00:46:42,520
Speaker 1: and this is you know, he had started a startup,

826
00:46:42,560 --> 00:46:45,640
Speaker 1: it didn't really work, he sold it and was starting

827
00:46:45,680 --> 00:46:48,640
Speaker 1: to tabble in angel investing. And at that point Paul

828
00:46:48,719 --> 00:46:52,239
Speaker 1: really elevated Sam to this new position of power. And

829
00:46:52,280 --> 00:46:54,720
Speaker 1: then he ran YC for a while and then started

830
00:46:54,719 --> 00:46:58,320
Speaker 1: open Ai. And in starting open Ai, he also leveraged

831
00:46:58,360 --> 00:47:03,080
Speaker 1: these like very useful connetions with particularly powerful people who

832
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:05,680
Speaker 1: could help him, such as Elon Musk, who was able

833
00:47:05,719 --> 00:47:09,000
Speaker 1: to give the vast majority of the pledged funding to

834
00:47:09,080 --> 00:47:13,839
Speaker 1: start open Ai. Later, when Elon Musk splits from open Ai,

835
00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:17,239
Speaker 1: Sam makes his very powerful partnership with Satya Nadella to

836
00:47:17,280 --> 00:47:21,040
Speaker 1: help fund open Ai. Another important partnership that Sam has made,

837
00:47:21,480 --> 00:47:24,680
Speaker 1: you know, much earlier on was his friendship with Peter Teel.

838
00:47:25,080 --> 00:47:26,840
Speaker 1: And one of the things Peter Teal does is also,

839
00:47:27,760 --> 00:47:31,600
Speaker 1: you know, gives him millions of dollars to start investing.

840
00:47:31,920 --> 00:47:35,040
Speaker 1: This is like before Sam takes over at White Yeah.

841
00:47:35,080 --> 00:47:37,840
Speaker 1: And you know another thing that Paul did that really

842
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:41,399
Speaker 1: Paul Graham did that really helped Sam was also he

843
00:47:41,440 --> 00:47:44,239
Speaker 1: gave Paul had the opportunity to be one of the

844
00:47:44,239 --> 00:47:47,960
Speaker 1: first investors in Stripe. He was offered the chance to

845
00:47:48,080 --> 00:47:51,319
Speaker 1: invest thirty thousand dollars for four percent of Stripe, which,

846
00:47:51,360 --> 00:47:54,680
Speaker 1: of course now that Stripe is enormous, we all know

847
00:47:54,719 --> 00:47:57,959
Speaker 1: how valuable that was, and Paul split it with Sam.

848
00:47:58,000 --> 00:48:00,560
Speaker 1: He was like, oh, I might as well this with Sam.

849
00:48:00,600 --> 00:48:03,440
Speaker 1: So Sam has said that that fifteen thousand dollars for

850
00:48:03,440 --> 00:48:06,440
Speaker 1: a two percent of Stripe has been you know, one

851
00:48:06,480 --> 00:48:08,040
Speaker 1: of his best performing Angel investments.

852
00:48:08,080 --> 00:48:09,919
Speaker 3: Ever, that was some point he Austen is always where

853
00:48:09,960 --> 00:48:13,360
Speaker 3: he got fifteen grand from He was still working on

854
00:48:13,480 --> 00:48:16,799
Speaker 3: looped at the time. It's funny how perf litric anyway.

855
00:48:16,560 --> 00:48:21,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, my guess is fifteen grand was I don't actually

856
00:48:21,320 --> 00:48:23,040
Speaker 1: know this, but my guess is fifteen gen was not

857
00:48:23,200 --> 00:48:25,120
Speaker 1: hard for him to pull up. And it's one of

858
00:48:25,160 --> 00:48:27,640
Speaker 1: those things where it's really is, you know, access to

859
00:48:28,719 --> 00:48:31,040
Speaker 1: access and relationships are the sorts of things that can

860
00:48:31,040 --> 00:48:33,759
Speaker 1: build a career and can lead to great wealth. Right

861
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:36,840
Speaker 1: like Sam is now you know, by our own internal

862
00:48:36,840 --> 00:48:40,080
Speaker 1: accounts and by other lists, a billionaire. And this money

863
00:48:40,120 --> 00:48:42,600
Speaker 1: comes from you know, not from open Ai, but from

864
00:48:42,600 --> 00:48:44,640
Speaker 1: these angel investments that he's made early on that have

865
00:48:45,560 --> 00:48:47,959
Speaker 1: been enormously successful.

866
00:48:48,200 --> 00:48:50,799
Speaker 3: So you called him in one of the titles, the

867
00:48:50,840 --> 00:48:53,759
Speaker 3: most Silicon Valley Man Alive. Is this what you're getting at,

868
00:48:53,760 --> 00:48:55,719
Speaker 3: this kind of power player mentality.

869
00:48:55,840 --> 00:48:59,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's it reflects a few things. One

870
00:48:59,080 --> 00:49:02,000
Speaker 1: that even though he is you know, he's in his

871
00:49:02,080 --> 00:49:04,840
Speaker 1: late thirties, he's been a player in Silicon Valley for

872
00:49:04,880 --> 00:49:06,760
Speaker 1: such a long time, you know, close to two decades.

873
00:49:07,600 --> 00:49:12,400
Speaker 1: And also that he's just someone who is extremely well connected.

874
00:49:12,480 --> 00:49:16,480
Speaker 1: So even before he took over y Combinator, which I

875
00:49:16,480 --> 00:49:20,160
Speaker 1: think you could argue is like kind of king of

876
00:49:20,200 --> 00:49:22,640
Speaker 1: the startup world in some sense, like Y combinators, like

877
00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:26,520
Speaker 1: you know, the topics totally. Even before he took over

878
00:49:26,560 --> 00:49:28,560
Speaker 1: I y comminator, I think he was extremely well connected.

879
00:49:28,600 --> 00:49:31,200
Speaker 1: He's very social, he's very helpful, he's very efficient, Like

880
00:49:31,280 --> 00:49:34,279
Speaker 1: many people have told me stories in which he you know,

881
00:49:34,400 --> 00:49:38,319
Speaker 1: calling Sam and talking for five minutes has solved their

882
00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:40,480
Speaker 1: problem because he knows exactly the right person to call

883
00:49:40,560 --> 00:49:42,520
Speaker 1: to fix it, or you know, he's really good at

884
00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:45,080
Speaker 1: making deals. I think it's just clear he's extremely well

885
00:49:45,120 --> 00:49:51,560
Speaker 1: integrated into this world and has very successfully moved up

886
00:49:51,760 --> 00:49:55,839
Speaker 1: the Silicon Valley status ladder to the point where he

887
00:49:55,880 --> 00:49:57,680
Speaker 1: is now, which is kind of you know, one of

888
00:49:57,680 --> 00:50:00,480
Speaker 1: the you know, he's the CEO of the one of

889
00:50:00,480 --> 00:50:02,880
Speaker 1: the arguably hardest companies in the valley right now. And

890
00:50:02,920 --> 00:50:05,560
Speaker 1: I think that that's not luck right, Like he didn't

891
00:50:05,600 --> 00:50:07,759
Speaker 1: just come up with He's not like a nobody who

892
00:50:07,800 --> 00:50:10,040
Speaker 1: came up with an idea. It's like he has the

893
00:50:10,040 --> 00:50:14,040
Speaker 1: connections and has parlayed his connections into power to bring

894
00:50:14,120 --> 00:50:15,200
Speaker 1: him to the point he is now.

895
00:50:16,320 --> 00:50:19,640
Speaker 3: So, in your experience talking to people about Sam Ortman,

896
00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:23,200
Speaker 3: how technical is he? Do you think what if you

897
00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:26,600
Speaker 3: heard because you say there he wasn't lucky. But he

898
00:50:26,640 --> 00:50:29,280
Speaker 3: also does not appear to have successfully run a business

899
00:50:30,000 --> 00:50:33,719
Speaker 3: because Luke shut down two people, well, two executives tried

900
00:50:33,719 --> 00:50:35,200
Speaker 3: to get him fired from there, he got fired from

901
00:50:35,320 --> 00:50:37,719
Speaker 3: y Combinator, which did very well, but at the same

902
00:50:37,719 --> 00:50:40,040
Speaker 3: time YSI was basically a conveyor belt for money at

903
00:50:40,040 --> 00:50:44,319
Speaker 3: one point, not so much recently. Yeah, it just it

904
00:50:44,440 --> 00:50:48,200
Speaker 3: feels weird that this completely non technical, semi non technical

905
00:50:48,239 --> 00:50:49,799
Speaker 3: guy has ascended so far.

906
00:50:51,040 --> 00:50:54,120
Speaker 1: My sense is that's not maybe the most fair description. Like,

907
00:50:54,160 --> 00:50:57,000
Speaker 1: I think Sam is incredibly smart, and people say this

908
00:50:57,080 --> 00:50:59,120
Speaker 1: a lot, and you know, I believe them. I think

909
00:50:59,480 --> 00:51:02,359
Speaker 1: his special skill, you know, he obviously knows how to

910
00:51:02,920 --> 00:51:05,040
Speaker 1: like he's an engineer, he has training. I'm sure he

911
00:51:05,040 --> 00:51:06,960
Speaker 1: can build a lot of stuff. It seems like his

912
00:51:07,160 --> 00:51:12,600
Speaker 1: comparative advantage. His special skill is relationships, deal making, figuring

913
00:51:12,600 --> 00:51:16,640
Speaker 1: out who exactly is the right person to help him

914
00:51:17,000 --> 00:51:19,240
Speaker 1: in whatever he's really trying to get done, and figuring

915
00:51:19,280 --> 00:51:22,520
Speaker 1: out the best way to get something to happen. You know,

916
00:51:22,600 --> 00:51:24,359
Speaker 1: one of the people I spoke to is someone who

917
00:51:25,080 --> 00:51:28,360
Speaker 1: knows Sam from when he was younger and knows him personally,

918
00:51:28,400 --> 00:51:32,520
Speaker 1: and said that his superpower is figuring out who's in

919
00:51:32,600 --> 00:51:34,920
Speaker 1: charge or figuring out who is in the best position

920
00:51:34,960 --> 00:51:37,359
Speaker 1: to help him, and then charming them so that they

921
00:51:38,120 --> 00:51:41,120
Speaker 1: help him with whatever goal he's trying to get done.

922
00:51:41,480 --> 00:51:43,840
Speaker 1: And I think that, like, yeah, one could argue that

923
00:51:43,840 --> 00:51:47,000
Speaker 1: that's actually a really good skill set if you want

924
00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:51,640
Speaker 1: to build a very big company, which you know, I

925
00:51:51,640 --> 00:51:53,600
Speaker 1: think at this current moment he has, right like opening

926
00:51:53,600 --> 00:51:57,600
Speaker 1: eyes really, you know, you can there's a lot that

927
00:51:57,640 --> 00:52:00,600
Speaker 1: you can say about whether they're upholding their digital mission

928
00:52:00,680 --> 00:52:01,960
Speaker 1: or that. You know, that's up for debate, but I

929
00:52:01,960 --> 00:52:07,359
Speaker 1: think that they've obviously been commercially successful so far, so.

930
00:52:08,200 --> 00:52:11,719
Speaker 3: It feels like Silicon Valley on some level. And I

931
00:52:11,960 --> 00:52:14,920
Speaker 3: just to give some thoughts here within the two episodes

932
00:52:14,920 --> 00:52:17,840
Speaker 3: I'm doing here, the pattern I've seen with sam Oltman

933
00:52:18,360 --> 00:52:22,200
Speaker 3: is that everyone seems to want him to win, and

934
00:52:22,239 --> 00:52:25,759
Speaker 3: there's almost a degree of they will make it. So

935
00:52:27,360 --> 00:52:31,040
Speaker 3: have you seen anyone who's really a detractor or anyone

936
00:52:31,040 --> 00:52:36,120
Speaker 3: who's not pro sam Oltman, because it's interesting how few

937
00:52:36,160 --> 00:52:37,560
Speaker 3: people are in tech.

938
00:52:38,640 --> 00:52:41,600
Speaker 1: Well, there is. I won't get too into it because

939
00:52:41,600 --> 00:52:43,600
Speaker 1: this is in some of the future episodes which will

940
00:52:43,680 --> 00:52:47,480
Speaker 1: drop in future weeks. But you know, I would say

941
00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:50,160
Speaker 1: in in in some of the conversations that I've had

942
00:52:50,239 --> 00:52:53,600
Speaker 1: off the record about people about in some of the

943
00:52:53,600 --> 00:52:56,160
Speaker 1: conversations I've had off the record with people about Sam,

944
00:52:56,880 --> 00:53:00,279
Speaker 1: I think, you know, my general impressions are people often

945
00:53:00,320 --> 00:53:02,920
Speaker 1: do find him impressive in terms of what he has

946
00:53:02,960 --> 00:53:07,280
Speaker 1: gotten done, you know, the size and scale of his ambitions,

947
00:53:07,320 --> 00:53:09,080
Speaker 1: and the way that he has generally been able to

948
00:53:11,000 --> 00:53:14,480
Speaker 1: make that happen. I think there's also a lot of

949
00:53:14,480 --> 00:53:17,719
Speaker 1: people who you know, are willing to privately share some

950
00:53:18,080 --> 00:53:22,120
Speaker 1: gripes that they might have about him. Also, you know,

951
00:53:22,200 --> 00:53:24,719
Speaker 1: in recent weeks, we've seen people be a lot more

952
00:53:24,760 --> 00:53:27,120
Speaker 1: public about some of those gripes. We have Helen Toner,

953
00:53:27,920 --> 00:53:30,880
Speaker 1: a former former board member at open AI who voted

954
00:53:30,880 --> 00:53:34,359
Speaker 1: to remove Sam last November, saying publicly in the last

955
00:53:34,400 --> 00:53:37,120
Speaker 1: few weeks that Sam lied to her and the other

956
00:53:37,160 --> 00:53:41,600
Speaker 1: former board members that his you know, misdirection made them

957
00:53:41,600 --> 00:53:45,279
Speaker 1: feel like they couldn't do their jobs. And she has

958
00:53:45,280 --> 00:53:49,879
Speaker 1: also said that people were intimidated to the point where

959
00:53:49,880 --> 00:53:52,720
Speaker 1: they did not feel comfortable speaking more publicly about negative

960
00:53:52,760 --> 00:53:56,160
Speaker 1: experiences they'd had about Sam, that they are afraid to

961
00:53:56,200 --> 00:53:59,839
Speaker 1: speak more publicly about you know, times that he has

962
00:54:00,520 --> 00:54:02,920
Speaker 1: been honest with them or you know, has in which

963
00:54:02,920 --> 00:54:07,840
Speaker 1: they've had challenging experiences. And that has also been reflected

964
00:54:07,840 --> 00:54:10,080
Speaker 1: in some of the private conversations I've had in which people,

965
00:54:10,760 --> 00:54:13,680
Speaker 1: you know, they might have complaints or they might have

966
00:54:13,719 --> 00:54:16,799
Speaker 1: had like challenging situations with him, and I think they

967
00:54:17,320 --> 00:54:19,160
Speaker 1: just feel like the risk calculus is not worth it

968
00:54:19,200 --> 00:54:23,560
Speaker 1: to come out and say something like that. But you know,

969
00:54:23,600 --> 00:54:26,960
Speaker 1: there have been bits and pieces where people have come

970
00:54:27,000 --> 00:54:29,680
Speaker 1: out and said things that you know, Sam has. You know,

971
00:54:30,000 --> 00:54:31,680
Speaker 1: another thing that the board members have said was that

972
00:54:31,719 --> 00:54:35,960
Speaker 1: Sam had been deceptive and manipulative, and that's also followed

973
00:54:36,040 --> 00:54:38,880
Speaker 1: up by or not followed up. There was also, I

974
00:54:38,880 --> 00:54:41,600
Speaker 1: think back in November, a former Open Eye employee who

975
00:54:41,680 --> 00:54:45,000
Speaker 1: had tweeted something publicly about that, you know, saying that

976
00:54:45,000 --> 00:54:46,680
Speaker 1: Sam had lied to him on occasion, even though he

977
00:54:46,719 --> 00:54:49,120
Speaker 1: had also always been nice to him, which I think

978
00:54:49,160 --> 00:54:51,080
Speaker 1: is a very interesting combination of.

979
00:54:52,680 --> 00:54:56,520
Speaker 3: Charter Silicon Valley though I'm afraid of dealing with them,

980
00:54:56,600 --> 00:54:57,800
Speaker 3: but they were so nice to me.

981
00:54:59,160 --> 00:55:00,759
Speaker 1: And yeah, of course that you know, that person has

982
00:55:00,800 --> 00:55:03,880
Speaker 1: not elaborated more publicly about what they meant. But I

983
00:55:03,960 --> 00:55:06,960
Speaker 1: think I think, you know, I think this is why

984
00:55:07,040 --> 00:55:11,680
Speaker 1: people are asking themselves these questions, which is like, you know,

985
00:55:11,760 --> 00:55:14,480
Speaker 1: the more that we hear about what the board uh

986
00:55:15,600 --> 00:55:17,799
Speaker 1: was thinking before they decided to fire Sam, I think

987
00:55:17,800 --> 00:55:20,280
Speaker 1: the more people are wondering about what are the patterns

988
00:55:20,280 --> 00:55:24,200
Speaker 1: of behavior that he shows that you know that led

989
00:55:24,239 --> 00:55:26,399
Speaker 1: to the board trying to make this drastic move.

990
00:55:28,160 --> 00:55:32,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's actually an interesting point. So when Samulton was

991
00:55:33,040 --> 00:55:36,880
Speaker 3: fired from open AI, there was this very strange reaction

992
00:55:37,120 --> 00:55:40,600
Speaker 3: from Silicon Valley, including some in the media, where it

993
00:55:40,880 --> 00:55:46,279
Speaker 3: was almost like Hunger Games, everyone doing the symbol thing

994
00:55:46,320 --> 00:55:48,400
Speaker 3: where everyone's like, oh, we got to put Sam Alton

995
00:55:48,480 --> 00:55:52,000
Speaker 3: back in, isn't it kind of strange? We still don't

996
00:55:52,080 --> 00:55:54,760
Speaker 3: know why he was actually fired though, I mean Helen

997
00:55:54,800 --> 00:55:58,040
Speaker 3: Tona has elaborated like, I've never seen a have you

998
00:55:58,120 --> 00:55:59,560
Speaker 3: seen anything like this in your career?

999
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:04,120
Speaker 1: I think that it has been surprising that there has

1000
00:56:04,239 --> 00:56:09,880
Speaker 1: not been more of a clear answer. I think, you know,

1001
00:56:09,960 --> 00:56:13,200
Speaker 1: as as time has gone on, like we have heard

1002
00:56:13,280 --> 00:56:16,279
Speaker 1: a little bit more Like I think Helen Toner has,

1003
00:56:17,160 --> 00:56:20,200
Speaker 1: you know, to her credit, tried to give more information

1004
00:56:20,320 --> 00:56:24,560
Speaker 1: in recent weeks about what happened. I think, you know,

1005
00:56:24,960 --> 00:56:27,680
Speaker 1: people were obviously asking this question six months ago, and

1006
00:56:27,840 --> 00:56:29,279
Speaker 1: so I think like there's been a little bit of

1007
00:56:29,320 --> 00:56:33,360
Speaker 1: a delay and trying to get this this answer, and

1008
00:56:33,520 --> 00:56:36,000
Speaker 1: I wonder if maybe there just isn't like a very

1009
00:56:37,719 --> 00:56:40,200
Speaker 1: neat answer to it, and so and then in that

1010
00:56:40,960 --> 00:56:45,239
Speaker 1: absence we get this kind of more of a like murky, multifaceted,

1011
00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:48,040
Speaker 1: multi voiced answer. But I, yes, I agree that it

1012
00:56:48,320 --> 00:56:50,560
Speaker 1: is sort of surprising that there that there hasn't been

1013
00:56:51,440 --> 00:56:56,080
Speaker 1: more clarification on what exactly happened or a little bit

1014
00:56:56,200 --> 00:57:00,160
Speaker 1: more granular detail about what led up to it.

1015
00:57:01,520 --> 00:57:05,080
Speaker 3: So on today, aihype in general said that a bit weird.

1016
00:57:05,160 --> 00:57:08,279
Speaker 3: I'll keep going, why do you think there's such a

1017
00:57:08,360 --> 00:57:11,680
Speaker 3: doulf between what Sam Altman says and what chat GPT

1018
00:57:11,880 --> 00:57:12,560
Speaker 3: can actually do?

1019
00:57:13,920 --> 00:57:16,439
Speaker 1: What Sam Moltman says, what are you talking about specifically, as.

1020
00:57:16,400 --> 00:57:18,960
Speaker 3: In he says it will be a super smart company. Yeah, yeah,

1021
00:57:19,000 --> 00:57:20,280
Speaker 3: that he'll be all of these things.

1022
00:57:21,120 --> 00:57:23,400
Speaker 1: Well, this is something that we get into in episode three,

1023
00:57:23,440 --> 00:57:25,760
Speaker 1: which is a personal interest of mine, which is kind

1024
00:57:25,760 --> 00:57:29,560
Speaker 1: of the psychology of the AI industry right now. And

1025
00:57:30,440 --> 00:57:33,520
Speaker 1: you know, I what I find so interesting about this

1026
00:57:33,600 --> 00:57:36,280
Speaker 1: and what we try to delve into in episode three

1027
00:57:36,320 --> 00:57:39,760
Speaker 1: and kind of throughout the series is these kind of

1028
00:57:39,840 --> 00:57:43,320
Speaker 1: like extreme projections about AI. And in the industry you

1029
00:57:43,400 --> 00:57:45,960
Speaker 1: see both positive ones and negative ones, and I think,

1030
00:57:46,240 --> 00:57:49,560
Speaker 1: you know, the negative ones, that's what looks like AI dooomerism,

1031
00:57:49,680 --> 00:57:53,280
Speaker 1: AI existential risks, sometimes called AI safety depending on your

1032
00:57:53,320 --> 00:57:55,240
Speaker 1: point of view. But you know, it's these projections that

1033
00:57:56,360 --> 00:58:02,000
Speaker 1: you know, superintelligence might very quickly and very soon learned

1034
00:58:02,080 --> 00:58:05,720
Speaker 1: to self improve in a way that allows it to

1035
00:58:05,960 --> 00:58:09,360
Speaker 1: rapidly outstrip our control and our capabilities and could lead

1036
00:58:09,400 --> 00:58:13,080
Speaker 1: to the extinction of humanity. There are so many interesting

1037
00:58:13,120 --> 00:58:16,200
Speaker 1: things to say about the psychology of believing that our

1038
00:58:16,400 --> 00:58:19,880
Speaker 1: human race might either be wiped out or incredibly changed

1039
00:58:20,840 --> 00:58:24,480
Speaker 1: within our lifetimes, and we get into that in episode three.

1040
00:58:24,480 --> 00:58:26,680
Speaker 1: I think I really wanted to get into the psychology

1041
00:58:26,720 --> 00:58:29,520
Speaker 1: of someone who believes that AI doom is just around

1042
00:58:29,560 --> 00:58:32,000
Speaker 1: the corner, and so we talked to someone who sort

1043
00:58:32,000 --> 00:58:35,040
Speaker 1: of became convinced of this belief soon after the twenty

1044
00:58:35,080 --> 00:58:40,000
Speaker 1: sixteen Alpha Go matches in which the go playing AI

1045
00:58:40,120 --> 00:58:43,720
Speaker 1: beat the the world's champion in Go, and he talks

1046
00:58:43,720 --> 00:58:46,160
Speaker 1: about yeah, no longer, you know, deciding not to make

1047
00:58:46,240 --> 00:58:48,200
Speaker 1: a retirement account because he was like, what is the

1048
00:58:48,240 --> 00:58:52,160
Speaker 1: point by the time I reach retirement age, either the

1049
00:58:52,240 --> 00:58:55,240
Speaker 1: world will be dramatically different and money won't matter, or

1050
00:58:55,280 --> 00:58:58,760
Speaker 1: will all be dead. And I think that, even though

1051
00:58:58,800 --> 00:59:00,600
Speaker 1: some people might scoff at that, that's like a real

1052
00:59:00,640 --> 00:59:04,440
Speaker 1: belief that people believe that this, you know, these extreme

1053
00:59:04,680 --> 00:59:08,160
Speaker 1: possible scenarios are in our near future. And on the

1054
00:59:08,200 --> 00:59:12,080
Speaker 1: other hand, we also see extreme projections in a positive direction.

1055
00:59:12,200 --> 00:59:16,640
Speaker 1: You know, this idea that AI is going to unlock

1056
00:59:17,280 --> 00:59:20,720
Speaker 1: a whole new era of human flourishing, that we might

1057
00:59:21,360 --> 00:59:23,440
Speaker 1: expand beyond our planet, that we might be able to

1058
00:59:23,720 --> 00:59:28,720
Speaker 1: give say what abundance abundance, right exactly. You know, one

1059
00:59:28,720 --> 00:59:31,680
Speaker 1: of the things we do I believe in episode three

1060
00:59:31,800 --> 00:59:33,760
Speaker 1: is is do a little bit of a supercut of

1061
00:59:33,840 --> 00:59:36,120
Speaker 1: Sam all been talking about abundance. It's it's pretty clear

1062
00:59:36,200 --> 00:59:38,800
Speaker 1: that this is a way that he likes to frame

1063
00:59:39,240 --> 00:59:41,040
Speaker 1: our AI future is going to be this future in

1064
00:59:41,080 --> 00:59:45,320
Speaker 1: which everyone has plenty, right, everyone has, you know, access

1065
00:59:45,360 --> 00:59:50,000
Speaker 1: to intelligence, abundant energy, abundant access to superintelligence that can

1066
00:59:50,040 --> 00:59:52,200
Speaker 1: help us live kind of our best lives and beyond

1067
00:59:52,240 --> 00:59:57,880
Speaker 1: our wildest dreams. Right. And I you know, obviously Silicon

1068
00:59:57,920 --> 01:00:02,400
Speaker 1: Valley is a place where people like to make grandiose statements.

1069
01:00:02,920 --> 01:00:05,720
Speaker 1: But this is beyond that, right, This is not just yeah,

1070
01:00:06,280 --> 01:00:08,919
Speaker 1: this is not just like you know, we joked about

1071
01:00:08,960 --> 01:00:09,360
Speaker 1: we work.

1072
01:00:09,880 --> 01:00:10,200
Speaker 4: We works.

1073
01:00:10,240 --> 01:00:12,760
Speaker 1: Mission statement was to elevate the world's consciousness, like well,

1074
01:00:14,280 --> 01:00:17,960
Speaker 1: galaxies of human flourishing for eons beyond us. Like that

1075
01:00:18,120 --> 01:00:20,640
Speaker 1: is on another scale, right, Like we're talking about something

1076
01:00:20,680 --> 01:00:26,560
Speaker 1: that is sort of at an unprecedented level of extreme rhetoric.

1077
01:00:26,640 --> 01:00:28,880
Speaker 1: And I think that's really interesting. I think it is

1078
01:00:28,960 --> 01:00:31,960
Speaker 1: a very powerful motivator, both in a you know, in

1079
01:00:32,000 --> 01:00:34,520
Speaker 1: the Doumer sense and also in the abundance sense. People

1080
01:00:34,600 --> 01:00:37,280
Speaker 1: believing that what they're working on is the most important

1081
01:00:37,320 --> 01:00:42,720
Speaker 1: technological leap forward for humanity. Talk about a motivating reason

1082
01:00:42,880 --> 01:00:46,600
Speaker 1: to work on this technology, right, talk about a way

1083
01:00:46,680 --> 01:00:50,080
Speaker 1: to feel powerful, feel like you're making a huge difference.

1084
01:00:50,120 --> 01:00:53,040
Speaker 1: I think that's a really key part of what's driving

1085
01:00:53,240 --> 01:00:54,760
Speaker 1: a lot of work in AI right now.

1086
01:00:55,640 --> 01:00:56,720
Speaker 4: Striving a lot of work.

1087
01:00:56,840 --> 01:01:01,160
Speaker 3: Sure, But with Altman himself, there is the golf. It

1088
01:01:01,360 --> 01:01:05,120
Speaker 3: is a million mile golf between the things he says

1089
01:01:05,200 --> 01:01:08,480
Speaker 3: and what chat GBT is, even even on the most

1090
01:01:08,520 --> 01:01:11,160
Speaker 3: basic level, capable of doing and will be capable, And

1091
01:01:11,280 --> 01:01:14,360
Speaker 3: it just feels like it almost feels like he's become

1092
01:01:15,360 --> 01:01:19,880
Speaker 3: the propagandist for the tech industry, and it's very strange

1093
01:01:19,960 --> 01:01:23,200
Speaker 3: to me how far that distance is. Because you've got

1094
01:01:23,240 --> 01:01:27,160
Speaker 3: the AI doomers and the AI optimist I guess you'd

1095
01:01:27,200 --> 01:01:31,400
Speaker 3: call them, but Allmond doesn't even feel like he's in

1096
01:01:31,560 --> 01:01:34,040
Speaker 3: with He's just kind of He'll say one day that

1097
01:01:34,160 --> 01:01:36,400
Speaker 3: he doesn't think it's a creature, the next one will

1098
01:01:36,400 --> 01:01:39,000
Speaker 3: say it's gonna kill us, or it all just feels

1099
01:01:39,160 --> 01:01:42,320
Speaker 3: like a pr campaign but for nothing.

1100
01:01:43,760 --> 01:01:47,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, it has been interesting to try to answer the question.

1101
01:01:47,560 --> 01:01:47,680
Speaker 3: You know.

1102
01:01:47,720 --> 01:01:49,120
Speaker 1: One of the questions we tried to answer in the

1103
01:01:49,120 --> 01:01:53,240
Speaker 1: podcast is does Sam actually believe you know, because as

1104
01:01:53,280 --> 01:01:56,000
Speaker 1: you mentioned, there are some early clips of him, you know,

1105
01:01:56,080 --> 01:01:57,800
Speaker 1: and when I say earlier, I mean around the time

1106
01:01:57,840 --> 01:02:00,840
Speaker 1: of founding open Ai twenty fifteen or so. There's some

1107
01:02:00,920 --> 01:02:05,560
Speaker 1: clips of him talking about, you know, saying somewhat jokingly

1108
01:02:05,640 --> 01:02:07,600
Speaker 1: that AI might kill us all. But there's also this,

1109
01:02:08,120 --> 01:02:09,800
Speaker 1: you know, very famous blog post that he wrote in

1110
01:02:09,880 --> 01:02:12,720
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen in which he says that, you know, basically,

1111
01:02:12,760 --> 01:02:16,640
Speaker 1: super intelligence is one of the most serious risks to humanity,

1112
01:02:17,800 --> 01:02:20,200
Speaker 1: you know, full stop. And so it's clear that at

1113
01:02:20,280 --> 01:02:23,360
Speaker 1: some point in his life, he believed kind of what

1114
01:02:23,480 --> 01:02:27,480
Speaker 1: we might now call a more doom ory outlook. But

1115
01:02:27,600 --> 01:02:30,680
Speaker 1: as time has gone on, he has you know, offered

1116
01:02:30,760 --> 01:02:33,040
Speaker 1: views that are a little bit more measured and more positive.

1117
01:02:33,520 --> 01:02:35,920
Speaker 1: You know, he tends to you know, in his big

1118
01:02:36,000 --> 01:02:40,000
Speaker 1: media tour of twenty twenty three, he tended to talk

1119
01:02:40,040 --> 01:02:43,200
Speaker 1: about how AI was going to. You know, his projection

1120
01:02:43,360 --> 01:02:46,160
Speaker 1: was that AI would radically transform society, but that it

1121
01:02:46,200 --> 01:02:49,640
Speaker 1: would be net good, right that like, overall we would

1122
01:02:49,640 --> 01:02:53,240
Speaker 1: be glad that this happened, and that it would improve lives,

1123
01:02:53,680 --> 01:02:56,400
Speaker 1: even if in the short term or for some people

1124
01:02:56,440 --> 01:02:59,640
Speaker 1: it might prove to be bringing a lot of challenges

1125
01:02:59,680 --> 01:02:59,920
Speaker 1: as well.

1126
01:03:01,080 --> 01:03:02,440
Speaker 3: And so it is.

1127
01:03:02,560 --> 01:03:04,200
Speaker 1: You know, I think one of the interesting things about

1128
01:03:04,320 --> 01:03:06,400
Speaker 1: is about him is it is a little hard to

1129
01:03:06,440 --> 01:03:08,760
Speaker 1: pin down exactly what he thinks. I think you're right

1130
01:03:08,840 --> 01:03:13,560
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't consider him like a gung ho effective accelerationist.

1131
01:03:13,600 --> 01:03:15,360
Speaker 1: I would not consider him a dumer. He is like

1132
01:03:16,520 --> 01:03:19,400
Speaker 1: somewhere in this large gulf in between there. But I

1133
01:03:19,520 --> 01:03:24,800
Speaker 1: think he's also smart enough to know that making grandiose

1134
01:03:24,840 --> 01:03:30,800
Speaker 1: projections about what AI could bring is a compelling story, right,

1135
01:03:30,920 --> 01:03:35,080
Speaker 1: like is a story that he can help sell by

1136
01:03:35,120 --> 01:03:37,040
Speaker 1: being like a spokesman for it. And often that is

1137
01:03:37,120 --> 01:03:38,880
Speaker 1: the role of a CEO is to be a really

1138
01:03:38,880 --> 01:03:42,640
Speaker 1: good storyteller, to bring the pitch of the company to

1139
01:03:42,760 --> 01:03:47,600
Speaker 1: the public, to investors, to potential employees, to customers, to

1140
01:03:47,720 --> 01:03:49,240
Speaker 1: try to sell them on this vision of the future.

1141
01:03:49,280 --> 01:03:51,400
Speaker 1: And I do think Sam is good at that. There

1142
01:03:51,440 --> 01:03:56,040
Speaker 1: is an interesting tidbit in episode three in which we

1143
01:03:56,160 --> 01:03:59,560
Speaker 1: interview a fiction writer who was actually hired on contract

1144
01:03:59,720 --> 01:04:05,479
Speaker 1: by open Ai to write like a novella about AI

1145
01:04:05,720 --> 01:04:09,439
Speaker 1: futures and things like that. And yeah, he just talks

1146
01:04:09,480 --> 01:04:11,360
Speaker 1: a little bit about you know, the novella is not

1147
01:04:11,920 --> 01:04:14,760
Speaker 1: I think in active use within open ai, but they

1148
01:04:14,800 --> 01:04:17,320
Speaker 1: did at some point, see they did at some point

1149
01:04:17,440 --> 01:04:21,480
Speaker 1: see value in commissioning it. And I think you know

1150
01:04:21,560 --> 01:04:24,280
Speaker 1: something that the author Patrick House explains to us is

1151
01:04:24,920 --> 01:04:28,360
Speaker 1: you know that open a Ey, just like many other startups,

1152
01:04:29,160 --> 01:04:31,680
Speaker 1: is really motivated by story, right, and that Sam Altman

1153
01:04:31,840 --> 01:04:34,720
Speaker 1: is inspired by fiction. You know, it's inspired by certain

1154
01:04:34,760 --> 01:04:36,920
Speaker 1: kinds of sci fi. I think this is not unique

1155
01:04:36,920 --> 01:04:40,080
Speaker 1: to Sam. Many founders in Silicon Valley, you know, Elon

1156
01:04:40,160 --> 01:04:42,880
Speaker 1: Musk has talked about this as well, are driven to

1157
01:04:43,040 --> 01:04:47,000
Speaker 1: create things in part because of what they read about

1158
01:04:47,040 --> 01:04:49,160
Speaker 1: when they were younger, that you know, these dreams of

1159
01:04:49,200 --> 01:04:52,080
Speaker 1: the future. And so it's just interesting to get his

1160
01:04:52,200 --> 01:04:56,080
Speaker 1: perspective on how motivating a story can be, and how

1161
01:04:56,120 --> 01:04:59,160
Speaker 1: motivating this compelling story of like, oh, we're building something

1162
01:04:59,200 --> 01:05:01,840
Speaker 1: that's gonna change the course of human history. Like you

1163
01:05:01,960 --> 01:05:04,760
Speaker 1: just couldn't ask for a more powerful motivating force.

1164
01:05:06,160 --> 01:05:11,960
Speaker 3: So as Alman accumulates power and as he kind of

1165
01:05:12,160 --> 01:05:15,160
Speaker 3: sends to the top of open AI, do you think

1166
01:05:15,240 --> 01:05:17,640
Speaker 3: he's done there? Do you think there's going to be

1167
01:05:17,720 --> 01:05:20,800
Speaker 3: another thing he starts? Because it feels like you've discussed

1168
01:05:20,880 --> 01:05:22,760
Speaker 3: like UBI and all these other things. Do you think

1169
01:05:22,800 --> 01:05:26,000
Speaker 3: he has grander ideas that he wants to pursue?

1170
01:05:27,160 --> 01:05:31,920
Speaker 1: Well, obviously I can't speak to what's inside Sam's.

1171
01:05:31,880 --> 01:05:34,440
Speaker 3: I don't know the man's mind, but I.

1172
01:05:34,520 --> 01:05:38,240
Speaker 1: Mean past indicators would suggest yes, Like I think he

1173
01:05:38,320 --> 01:05:42,160
Speaker 1: has proven pretty consistently that he's someone who you know,

1174
01:05:42,440 --> 01:05:44,880
Speaker 1: is you know, as much as he might focus on

1175
01:05:44,960 --> 01:05:47,760
Speaker 1: one project with a lot of effort, like he is

1176
01:05:48,040 --> 01:05:50,120
Speaker 1: cooking things on the side, Like this is a man.

1177
01:05:50,680 --> 01:05:52,200
Speaker 1: This is going to be an extended metaphor, but this

1178
01:05:52,320 --> 01:05:54,200
Speaker 1: is a man working at a stove that has like

1179
01:05:54,280 --> 01:05:57,480
Speaker 1: six burners, not one. And you know he we already

1180
01:05:57,560 --> 01:05:57,840
Speaker 1: know that.

1181
01:05:58,800 --> 01:06:02,320
Speaker 3: What are you saying, sorry, he's got a big house, He's.

1182
01:06:02,200 --> 01:06:06,920
Speaker 1: Got multiple houses. The uh the you know, we already

1183
01:06:07,000 --> 01:06:10,479
Speaker 1: know that. You know. In addition to running open ai,

1184
01:06:11,240 --> 01:06:16,360
Speaker 1: he has funded and or helped prompt the founding of,

1185
01:06:16,880 --> 01:06:19,680
Speaker 1: or has you know, been very involved in investing in

1186
01:06:19,800 --> 01:06:23,360
Speaker 1: or supporting other startups that you know, are part of

1187
01:06:23,440 --> 01:06:28,680
Speaker 1: this kind of ecosystem of businesses that are connected to

1188
01:06:29,240 --> 01:06:31,880
Speaker 1: an AI future or might benefit in an AI future.

1189
01:06:31,960 --> 01:06:35,880
Speaker 1: So for example, Helion, which is a nuclear fusion company

1190
01:06:35,920 --> 01:06:38,400
Speaker 1: which he has invested a ton of money into. I

1191
01:06:38,480 --> 01:06:40,800
Speaker 1: think he has said publicly that you know, his his

1192
01:06:40,960 --> 01:06:44,040
Speaker 1: vision is that this is a potential way to provide

1193
01:06:44,400 --> 01:06:49,480
Speaker 1: abundant energy that could then power the technology that we

1194
01:06:49,560 --> 01:06:54,120
Speaker 1: need to you know, uh, improve AI to the level

1195
01:06:54,160 --> 01:06:55,440
Speaker 1: that we're hoping that it can get to, or that

1196
01:06:55,480 --> 01:06:57,960
Speaker 1: he's hoping that it can get to. At the same time,

1197
01:06:58,680 --> 01:07:01,000
Speaker 1: you know, we've talked a little bit about universal basic income.

1198
01:07:01,120 --> 01:07:04,200
Speaker 1: This has been something that Sam has been a proponent

1199
01:07:04,280 --> 01:07:07,760
Speaker 1: of and an advocate of since at least twenty sixteen,

1200
01:07:07,880 --> 01:07:10,680
Speaker 1: when he was running y Combinator and they started a

1201
01:07:11,000 --> 01:07:15,240
Speaker 1: side research project to study universal basic income by giving

1202
01:07:17,440 --> 01:07:20,440
Speaker 1: cash payments to families in Oakland of I believe a

1203
01:07:20,480 --> 01:07:24,440
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a month. That research project is still ongoing.

1204
01:07:24,520 --> 01:07:28,440
Speaker 1: It's now moved away from y Combinator and is associated

1205
01:07:29,040 --> 01:07:32,320
Speaker 1: with open Research, which is I believe funded by open Ai,

1206
01:07:32,480 --> 01:07:34,480
Speaker 1: and so it has kind of moved with Sam to

1207
01:07:34,600 --> 01:07:39,120
Speaker 1: his new role. And of course he also co founded

1208
01:07:39,200 --> 01:07:45,400
Speaker 1: this company called world Coin, which used these silver orbs

1209
01:07:45,960 --> 01:07:50,360
Speaker 1: machines to scan to take pictures of your iris and

1210
01:07:50,760 --> 01:07:55,680
Speaker 1: give everyone register every individual human as like a unique

1211
01:07:55,720 --> 01:07:59,800
Speaker 1: human individual, and to create this eyeball registry in which

1212
01:08:00,440 --> 01:08:03,440
Speaker 1: by which one could in the future distribute a universal

1213
01:08:03,480 --> 01:08:06,960
Speaker 1: basic income. So he's funding these energy companies. He's like

1214
01:08:07,160 --> 01:08:11,080
Speaker 1: involved in these sort the sort of crypto eyeball registry

1215
01:08:11,200 --> 01:08:13,920
Speaker 1: project that will help distribute UBI in this future that

1216
01:08:13,960 --> 01:08:16,200
Speaker 1: he's imagining. Like I think it's safe to say he's

1217
01:08:16,240 --> 01:08:19,920
Speaker 1: definitely thinking about things beyond just open AI for the

1218
01:08:20,000 --> 01:08:23,200
Speaker 1: future and imagining like, Okay, well, if we have this

1219
01:08:23,320 --> 01:08:25,320
Speaker 1: piece that's growing, what else will we need to support it?

1220
01:08:25,880 --> 01:08:27,840
Speaker 1: And I'm sure there are other things he's working on

1221
01:08:27,960 --> 01:08:29,920
Speaker 1: that we don't even know about, right, Like I know

1222
01:08:30,000 --> 01:08:34,720
Speaker 1: he has also funded some like longevity bioscience projects and

1223
01:08:34,800 --> 01:08:38,400
Speaker 1: things like that. He's I guarantee he's thinking about stuff

1224
01:08:38,439 --> 01:08:39,320
Speaker 1: beyond what we know about.

1225
01:08:41,360 --> 01:08:45,599
Speaker 3: Final question, why do you think the entire tech industry

1226
01:08:45,640 --> 01:08:47,400
Speaker 3: has become so fascinated with AI?

1227
01:08:47,640 --> 01:08:50,400
Speaker 4: Do you think it's just oldman or is it something more?

1228
01:08:51,840 --> 01:08:56,200
Speaker 1: I do think chat GBT started heating up this interest

1229
01:08:56,280 --> 01:08:58,479
Speaker 1: that was already percolating a little bit in the tech industry.

1230
01:08:58,920 --> 01:09:01,439
Speaker 1: But it does seem like something about chatchept capture the

1231
01:09:01,479 --> 01:09:05,400
Speaker 1: public imagination made people imagine very seriously for the first time,

1232
01:09:06,360 --> 01:09:10,920
Speaker 1: how AI could affect their lives, their lives individually. It

1233
01:09:11,000 --> 01:09:12,439
Speaker 1: used to be kind of this abstract thing that was

1234
01:09:12,439 --> 01:09:15,040
Speaker 1: a little farther away, or maybe you understood that like

1235
01:09:15,479 --> 01:09:18,960
Speaker 1: you were interacting with AI sometimes, like when you would

1236
01:09:19,080 --> 01:09:25,240
Speaker 1: look at like flight price predictors. Yeah, exactly. But you know,

1237
01:09:25,280 --> 01:09:27,200
Speaker 1: I think as we you know, we talk about this

1238
01:09:27,320 --> 01:09:30,000
Speaker 1: in episode three, but that you know, chat chipet wasn't

1239
01:09:30,040 --> 01:09:34,519
Speaker 1: even new technology. It was actually just a different user

1240
01:09:34,600 --> 01:09:38,639
Speaker 1: interface on a model that already existed GPT three point five.

1241
01:09:39,320 --> 01:09:39,559
Speaker 4: And so.

1242
01:09:41,200 --> 01:09:43,320
Speaker 1: To me, that actually speaks I guess to the power

1243
01:09:43,439 --> 01:09:47,519
Speaker 1: of like making a technology accessible to everyone. And in

1244
01:09:47,640 --> 01:09:49,600
Speaker 1: a way that was like easy to use and you know,

1245
01:09:49,680 --> 01:09:52,000
Speaker 1: for better or worse. That kind of got a lot

1246
01:09:52,080 --> 01:09:55,280
Speaker 1: of people in this like public momentum of people thinking

1247
01:09:55,320 --> 01:09:59,360
Speaker 1: about AI feeling you know, just feeling like it had

1248
01:10:00,560 --> 01:10:04,000
Speaker 1: rapidly increased its capabilities in a short period of time.

1249
01:10:04,880 --> 01:10:11,240
Speaker 1: And yeah, something about that really captured not just you know,

1250
01:10:11,400 --> 01:10:14,080
Speaker 1: the minds, but also the hearts of people and like

1251
01:10:14,360 --> 01:10:17,519
Speaker 1: getting them really thinking about, like what could a future

1252
01:10:17,640 --> 01:10:19,880
Speaker 1: like this look like? And I think while some people

1253
01:10:19,880 --> 01:10:22,280
Speaker 1: were excited, a lot of people also reacted with fear

1254
01:10:22,360 --> 01:10:23,840
Speaker 1: right and like I think in the valley like you

1255
01:10:23,960 --> 01:10:28,080
Speaker 1: will hear a lot of people more openly discussing their

1256
01:10:28,200 --> 01:10:34,840
Speaker 1: fears of sort of like job loss or or just

1257
01:10:34,920 --> 01:10:37,080
Speaker 1: like dramatic social change that might come about in the

1258
01:10:37,160 --> 01:10:40,439
Speaker 1: next ten or twenty years. The feeling I get in

1259
01:10:40,520 --> 01:10:42,680
Speaker 1: conversations that I have in and around San Francisco is,

1260
01:10:43,400 --> 01:10:44,920
Speaker 1: you know, even people who are pretty deep in this

1261
01:10:45,000 --> 01:10:50,280
Speaker 1: technology are uncertain about whether it's going to be overall

1262
01:10:50,640 --> 01:10:53,040
Speaker 1: good or bad. Like they're just uncertain of how to

1263
01:10:53,080 --> 01:10:55,720
Speaker 1: look back on this time, like whether it will have

1264
01:10:56,000 --> 01:10:59,960
Speaker 1: ended up being elite forward for humanity or something differ.

1265
01:11:12,680 --> 01:11:14,720
Speaker 3: Aortman has taken advantage of the fact that the tech

1266
01:11:14,800 --> 01:11:18,680
Speaker 3: industry might not have any hypergrowth markets left, knowing that

1267
01:11:18,800 --> 01:11:22,439
Speaker 3: chat GPT is much like Sam Altman, incredibly adept at

1268
01:11:22,520 --> 01:11:26,400
Speaker 3: mimicking depth and experience by parroting the experiences of those

1269
01:11:26,479 --> 01:11:30,679
Speaker 3: that have actually done things. Like Sam Altman, chat GPT

1270
01:11:30,840 --> 01:11:34,080
Speaker 3: consumes information and feeds it back to the people using

1271
01:11:34,160 --> 01:11:38,599
Speaker 3: it in a way that feels superficially satisfying, and it's

1272
01:11:38,640 --> 01:11:41,600
Speaker 3: quite impressive to those who don't really care about creativity

1273
01:11:41,720 --> 01:11:44,360
Speaker 3: or depth, And like I've said, it takes advantage of

1274
01:11:44,400 --> 01:11:47,160
Speaker 3: the fact that the teche CoSystem has been dominated and

1275
01:11:47,280 --> 01:11:52,120
Speaker 3: funded like people who don't really build tech. As I've

1276
01:11:52,160 --> 01:11:56,880
Speaker 3: said before, generative AI things like chat gpt, anthropics Claude,

1277
01:11:57,200 --> 01:11:59,880
Speaker 3: Microsoft's co Pilot, which is also powered by chat gp.

1278
01:12:00,720 --> 01:12:03,920
Speaker 3: It's not going to become the incredible supercomputer that Sam

1279
01:12:03,960 --> 01:12:07,240
Speaker 3: Mortman is promising. It will not be a virtual brain

1280
01:12:07,560 --> 01:12:10,600
Speaker 3: or imminently human like or a super smart person that

1281
01:12:10,760 --> 01:12:14,720
Speaker 3: knows everything about you, because it is, at its deepest complexity,

1282
01:12:15,120 --> 01:12:19,160
Speaker 3: a fundamentally different technology based on mathematics and the probabilistic

1283
01:12:19,240 --> 01:12:22,280
Speaker 3: answer to what you have asked it, rather than anything

1284
01:12:22,400 --> 01:12:26,639
Speaker 3: resembling how human beings think, or act or even know things.

1285
01:12:26,880 --> 01:12:30,920
Speaker 3: Generative AI does not know anything. How can a thing

1286
01:12:31,040 --> 01:12:34,600
Speaker 3: think when it doesn't know a anyone? I want to

1287
01:12:34,680 --> 01:12:39,040
Speaker 3: ask bradlight Cap Miramurati, Sam Ortman any of these questions

1288
01:12:39,320 --> 01:12:43,840
Speaker 3: just once hear what they fart out. No, Well, chat

1289
01:12:43,920 --> 01:12:48,240
Speaker 3: GBT isn't inherently useless. Almand realizes that it's impossible to

1290
01:12:48,360 --> 01:12:51,240
Speaker 3: generate the kind of funding and hype he needs based

1291
01:12:51,280 --> 01:12:54,520
Speaker 3: on its actual achievements, and that to continue to accumulate

1292
01:12:54,640 --> 01:12:57,240
Speaker 3: power and money, which is his only goal, he has

1293
01:12:57,280 --> 01:12:59,439
Speaker 3: the speciously hype it and he has the hype it

1294
01:12:59,680 --> 01:13:02,519
Speaker 3: to wear healthy and powerful people who also do not

1295
01:13:02,680 --> 01:13:04,599
Speaker 3: participate in the creation of anything.

1296
01:13:06,200 --> 01:13:09,439
Speaker 4: And that's who he is. I've been pretty mean about

1297
01:13:09,479 --> 01:13:11,880
Speaker 4: this guy, I really have. But he does have a skill.

1298
01:13:12,479 --> 01:13:16,479
Speaker 3: He knows a mark, he knows he knows how to

1299
01:13:16,600 --> 01:13:18,679
Speaker 3: say the right things and get in the right rooms

1300
01:13:18,880 --> 01:13:21,880
Speaker 3: with the people who aren't really touching the software or

1301
01:13:21,960 --> 01:13:24,560
Speaker 3: the hardware. He knows what they need to hear, he

1302
01:13:24,640 --> 01:13:28,960
Speaker 3: knows what the vcs need to hear. He knows quite

1303
01:13:29,040 --> 01:13:33,080
Speaker 3: aptly what this needs to sound like. But if he

1304
01:13:33,200 --> 01:13:35,679
Speaker 3: had to say what chat GBT does today, what would

1305
01:13:35,720 --> 01:13:38,640
Speaker 3: he say, Yeah, yeah, it's really good at generating a

1306
01:13:38,680 --> 01:13:40,120
Speaker 3: bunch of TEGs that's kind of shitty.

1307
01:13:41,000 --> 01:13:41,200
Speaker 4: Yeah.

1308
01:13:41,240 --> 01:13:43,160
Speaker 3: Sometimes it does math right and sometimes it does it

1309
01:13:43,240 --> 01:13:45,160
Speaker 3: really wrong. Sometimes you ask it to do It can

1310
01:13:45,240 --> 01:13:47,320
Speaker 3: draw a picture, Hey, what do you think of that?

1311
01:13:48,680 --> 01:13:50,640
Speaker 3: These are all things, by the way, that if like

1312
01:13:50,720 --> 01:13:52,160
Speaker 3: a six year old told you'd be like, wow, that's

1313
01:13:52,200 --> 01:13:55,000
Speaker 3: really impressive, or like a ten year old, perhaps because

1314
01:13:55,040 --> 01:13:59,040
Speaker 3: that's a living being. CHATGBT does these things, and it

1315
01:13:59,160 --> 01:14:01,160
Speaker 3: does it I know it's cheesy to say, but in

1316
01:14:01,240 --> 01:14:03,560
Speaker 3: a soulless way, but it really does that because and

1317
01:14:03,640 --> 01:14:06,479
Speaker 3: the reason all of this, the writing and the horrible

1318
01:14:06,600 --> 01:14:09,280
Speaker 3: video and the images, the reason it feels so empty

1319
01:14:09,400 --> 01:14:15,320
Speaker 3: is because even the most manure adjacent press release still

1320
01:14:15,400 --> 01:14:20,719
Speaker 3: has gone through someone's manure adjacent brain. Even the most

1321
01:14:20,840 --> 01:14:24,519
Speaker 3: pallid empty copy you've read has gone through someone. A

1322
01:14:24,600 --> 01:14:27,559
Speaker 3: person has put thought and intention in, even if they're

1323
01:14:27,600 --> 01:14:31,880
Speaker 3: not great with the English language. What chat GPT does

1324
01:14:32,479 --> 01:14:35,479
Speaker 3: is use math to generate the next thing, and sometimes

1325
01:14:35,520 --> 01:14:38,600
Speaker 3: it gets it pretty right. But pretty right is not

1326
01:14:38,880 --> 01:14:42,880
Speaker 3: enough to mimic human creation. But look at Sam Altman.

1327
01:14:43,400 --> 01:14:46,599
Speaker 4: Look who he is. What has he created? Other than wealth?

1328
01:14:46,680 --> 01:14:51,040
Speaker 3: For him and other people. What about Sam Moltman is

1329
01:14:51,240 --> 01:14:56,479
Speaker 3: particularly exciting. Well, he's been rich before and his money

1330
01:14:57,080 --> 01:14:58,080
Speaker 3: made him even richer.

1331
01:14:58,439 --> 01:14:59,200
Speaker 4: That's pretty good.

1332
01:14:59,520 --> 01:15:02,439
Speaker 3: He was why Combinator don't ask too much about what

1333
01:15:02,560 --> 01:15:07,559
Speaker 3: happened there. Just feels like sometimes Silicon Valley caun't wipe

1334
01:15:07,600 --> 01:15:11,400
Speaker 3: its own ass. It can't see when there's a wolf

1335
01:15:11,479 --> 01:15:15,120
Speaker 3: amongst the sheep. It can't see when someone isn't really

1336
01:15:15,240 --> 01:15:18,080
Speaker 3: part of the system other than finding new ways to

1337
01:15:18,160 --> 01:15:21,360
Speaker 3: manipulate and extract value from it. And Sam Altman is

1338
01:15:21,439 --> 01:15:25,240
Speaker 3: a monster created by Silicon Valley's sin, and their sin,

1339
01:15:25,479 --> 01:15:28,519
Speaker 3: by the way, is empowering and elevating those who don't

1340
01:15:28,800 --> 01:15:32,080
Speaker 3: build software, which in turn has led to the greater

1341
01:15:32,280 --> 01:15:35,400
Speaker 3: sin of allowing the tech industry to drift away from

1342
01:15:35,479 --> 01:15:40,120
Speaker 3: fixing the problems of actual human beings. Sam Altman's manipulative

1343
01:15:40,200 --> 01:15:43,280
Speaker 3: little power plays have been so effective because so many

1344
01:15:43,400 --> 01:15:46,559
Speaker 3: of the power players in venture capital and the public markets,

1345
01:15:46,600 --> 01:15:49,880
Speaker 3: and even tech companies are disconnected from the process of

1346
01:15:50,000 --> 01:15:53,439
Speaker 3: building things, of building software and hardware, and that makes

1347
01:15:53,520 --> 01:15:57,559
Speaker 3: them incapable or perhaps unwilling to understand that sam Altman

1348
01:15:57,800 --> 01:16:01,320
Speaker 3: is leading them to a deeply desolate place and on

1349
01:16:01,439 --> 01:16:04,280
Speaker 3: some level it's kind of impressive how he succeeded in

1350
01:16:04,400 --> 01:16:07,320
Speaker 3: bending these fools to his whims, to the point that

1351
01:16:07,439 --> 01:16:09,880
Speaker 3: executives like Sunned Up a Shi of Google, are willing

1352
01:16:09,960 --> 01:16:13,120
Speaker 3: to break Google Search in pursuit of this next big

1353
01:16:13,240 --> 01:16:18,400
Speaker 3: hype cycle created by Sam Altman. He might not create anything,

1354
01:16:18,479 --> 01:16:22,200
Speaker 3: but he's excellent at spotting market opportunities, even if these

1355
01:16:22,240 --> 01:16:26,679
Speaker 3: opportunities involve him transparently lying about the technology he creates,

1356
01:16:27,680 --> 01:16:31,880
Speaker 3: or while having his nasty little boosters further propagate these bullshit,

1357
01:16:32,479 --> 01:16:35,800
Speaker 3: mostly because they don't know, or perhaps they don't care

1358
01:16:36,160 --> 01:16:38,840
Speaker 3: if Sam Morton's full of shit. Maybe it doesn't matter

1359
01:16:38,880 --> 01:16:42,160
Speaker 3: to them. It doesn't matter that Google Search is still

1360
01:16:42,240 --> 01:16:46,960
Speaker 3: plagued with nonsensical AI answers that sometimes steal other people's work,

1361
01:16:47,240 --> 01:16:50,479
Speaker 3: or that AI in legal research has been proven to

1362
01:16:50,600 --> 01:16:53,360
Speaker 3: regularly hallucinate, which, by the way, is a problem that's

1363
01:16:53,520 --> 01:16:58,120
Speaker 3: impossible to fix. It's all happening because AI is the

1364
01:16:58,200 --> 01:17:00,280
Speaker 3: new thing that can be sold to the market, and

1365
01:17:00,360 --> 01:17:04,000
Speaker 3: it's all happening because Sam Altman, intentionally or otherwise has

1366
01:17:04,080 --> 01:17:08,200
Speaker 3: created a totally hollow hype cycle. And all of this

1367
01:17:08,400 --> 01:17:11,040
Speaker 3: is thanks to Sam Moltman. And a tech industry that's

1368
01:17:11,080 --> 01:17:14,280
Speaker 3: lost its ability to create things worthy of an actual

1369
01:17:14,439 --> 01:17:17,599
Speaker 3: hype cycle to the point that this spacious, non technical

1370
01:17:17,680 --> 01:17:21,880
Speaker 3: manipulator can lead it down this nasty, ugly offensive anti

1371
01:17:22,120 --> 01:17:27,000
Speaker 3: tech path. The tech industry has spent years pissing off customers,

1372
01:17:27,120 --> 01:17:30,839
Speaker 3: with platforms like Facebook and Google actively making their products

1373
01:17:30,920 --> 01:17:34,240
Speaker 3: worse in the pursuit of perpetual growth and ashamedly turning

1374
01:17:34,280 --> 01:17:36,519
Speaker 3: their backs on the people that made them rich and

1375
01:17:36,600 --> 01:17:40,439
Speaker 3: acting with this horrifying contempt for their users. And I

1376
01:17:40,520 --> 01:17:42,920
Speaker 3: believe the result will be that tech is going to

1377
01:17:43,000 --> 01:17:47,439
Speaker 3: face a harsh reprimand from society. As I mentioned in

1378
01:17:47,479 --> 01:17:50,840
Speaker 3: the rock Com bubble, things are already falling apart. WHEB

1379
01:17:50,920 --> 01:17:55,000
Speaker 3: traffic is already dropping. And what sucks is the people

1380
01:17:55,080 --> 01:17:57,560
Speaker 3: around Sam Moultman should have been able to see this,

1381
01:17:58,800 --> 01:18:03,479
Speaker 3: even putting aside his I've listened to an alarming amount

1382
01:18:03,520 --> 01:18:06,960
Speaker 3: of Sam Onman talk, and I'm a public relations person,

1383
01:18:07,000 --> 01:18:09,080
Speaker 3: who the hell am I I'm someone who's been around

1384
01:18:09,120 --> 01:18:11,320
Speaker 3: a lot of people who make shit up. I've been

1385
01:18:11,360 --> 01:18:13,720
Speaker 3: around a lot of people whose job it is to

1386
01:18:13,840 --> 01:18:19,519
Speaker 3: kind of obfuscate things, and quite frankly, almost really obvious.

1387
01:18:20,120 --> 01:18:22,519
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna do any weird light to me esque

1388
01:18:22,640 --> 01:18:26,000
Speaker 3: ways of proving he's lying. He just doesn't ever get

1389
01:18:26,080 --> 01:18:30,599
Speaker 3: pushed into any depth. No one ever asks him really

1390
01:18:30,760 --> 01:18:34,000
Speaker 3: technical questions or even just a question like, Hey, Sam,

1391
01:18:34,320 --> 01:18:36,479
Speaker 3: did you work on any of the code at open AI?

1392
01:18:36,800 --> 01:18:39,080
Speaker 4: What did you work on? Yeah?

1393
01:18:39,080 --> 01:18:41,920
Speaker 3: I know you can't talk about the future, Sam, but

1394
01:18:42,040 --> 01:18:44,599
Speaker 3: how close are we actually to AGI? And if he says, ah,

1395
01:18:44,600 --> 01:18:48,360
Speaker 3: a few years, that's not specific enough, Sam, how about

1396
01:18:48,439 --> 01:18:52,200
Speaker 3: give me a ballpark? And then when he lies again,

1397
01:18:52,280 --> 01:18:55,080
Speaker 3: you say, okay, Sam, how do we get from generative

1398
01:18:55,120 --> 01:18:59,720
Speaker 3: AI to AGI? And when he starts waffling, say no, no, no,

1399
01:18:59,840 --> 01:19:04,439
Speaker 3: be specific, Sam. This is how you actually ask questions.

1400
01:19:04,520 --> 01:19:06,960
Speaker 3: And when you say things like this, by the way,

1401
01:19:07,040 --> 01:19:11,559
Speaker 3: to technical founders, they don't get worried. They don't offer skate.

1402
01:19:11,840 --> 01:19:13,479
Speaker 3: They may say I can't talk about this duty of

1403
01:19:13,560 --> 01:19:17,040
Speaker 3: legal things, which is fine, but they'll generally try and

1404
01:19:17,320 --> 01:19:21,120
Speaker 3: talk to you. Listen to any interview with any other

1405
01:19:21,600 --> 01:19:25,880
Speaker 3: technical AI person, listen to them, and then listen to

1406
01:19:25,960 --> 01:19:26,599
Speaker 3: Sam Altman.

1407
01:19:27,000 --> 01:19:27,800
Speaker 4: He's full of it.

1408
01:19:28,080 --> 01:19:31,760
Speaker 3: It's so obvious and one deeply unfair thing with the

1409
01:19:31,880 --> 01:19:34,479
Speaker 3: value is there are people that get held to these

1410
01:19:34,520 --> 01:19:38,200
Speaker 3: standards early stage startups generally do the ones that aren't

1411
01:19:38,280 --> 01:19:41,120
Speaker 3: handed to people like Aortman or Alexis Ohanian have read it,

1412
01:19:41,320 --> 01:19:44,880
Speaker 3: or Paul Graham or read Hoffman. They don't get those

1413
01:19:45,000 --> 01:19:47,320
Speaker 3: chances because they're not saying the things that need to

1414
01:19:47,360 --> 01:19:52,080
Speaker 3: be said to the venture capitalists. They're not in the circles.

1415
01:19:52,800 --> 01:19:55,679
Speaker 3: They're not doing the right things because the right things

1416
01:19:55,960 --> 01:19:58,960
Speaker 3: are no longer the right thing for the tech industry.

1417
01:20:00,800 --> 01:20:03,800
Speaker 3: And when all of this falls apart, Sam Almon's going

1418
01:20:03,880 --> 01:20:07,639
Speaker 3: to be fine. When this all collapses, He'll find something

1419
01:20:07,720 --> 01:20:11,240
Speaker 3: to blame it on, market forces, a lack of energy, breakthroughs,

1420
01:20:11,720 --> 01:20:15,759
Speaker 3: unfortunate economic things, all of that nonsense, and he'll remain

1421
01:20:15,800 --> 01:20:19,360
Speaker 3: a billionaire, capable of doing anything he wants. The people

1422
01:20:19,439 --> 01:20:21,560
Speaker 3: that are going to suffer are the people working in

1423
01:20:21,640 --> 01:20:24,800
Speaker 3: Silicon Valley who aren't Sam Almon, The people that did

1424
01:20:24,880 --> 01:20:27,920
Speaker 3: not get born with a silver spoon in each hand

1425
01:20:27,960 --> 01:20:30,479
Speaker 3: and then handed further silver spoons as they walk the

1426
01:20:30,560 --> 01:20:34,360
Speaker 3: streets of San Francisco, people that don't live in nine

1427
01:20:34,400 --> 01:20:38,559
Speaker 3: and a half thousand square foot mansions, the people trying

1428
01:20:38,600 --> 01:20:40,880
Speaker 3: to raise money who can't write now because all the

1429
01:20:41,000 --> 01:20:45,720
Speaker 3: vcs are obsessed with AI the people that will get

1430
01:20:45,800 --> 01:20:49,599
Speaker 3: fired from public tech companies when a depression hits, because

1431
01:20:49,640 --> 01:20:53,000
Speaker 3: the markets realize that the generative AI boom was a bubble,

1432
01:20:53,960 --> 01:20:56,639
Speaker 3: when they realize that the most famous people in tech

1433
01:20:56,880 --> 01:21:02,120
Speaker 3: have been making these promises for nobody other than the markets. Well,

1434
01:21:02,439 --> 01:21:04,840
Speaker 3: the markets need you to do something eventually, and I

1435
01:21:05,000 --> 01:21:08,439
Speaker 3: just don't think it's gonna happen. And I think that

1436
01:21:08,720 --> 01:21:11,840
Speaker 3: we need to really think why was Sam Altman allowed

1437
01:21:11,840 --> 01:21:14,759
Speaker 3: to get to this point? Why did so many people

1438
01:21:15,160 --> 01:21:18,560
Speaker 3: like Paul Graham, like Reid Hoffman, like Brian Chesky, like

1439
01:21:18,680 --> 01:21:22,559
Speaker 3: Sacha Nadella. Back up, it's obvious con artists who has

1440
01:21:22,680 --> 01:21:27,120
Speaker 3: acted like this forever? And what sucks is I don't

1441
01:21:27,120 --> 01:21:28,960
Speaker 3: know if the valley is going to learn anything unless

1442
01:21:28,960 --> 01:21:30,519
Speaker 3: it's really bad, and I don't want it to be

1443
01:21:30,600 --> 01:21:32,519
Speaker 3: by the way. I would love to be wrong. I

1444
01:21:32,560 --> 01:21:34,439
Speaker 3: would love for all of this to just be like

1445
01:21:34,520 --> 01:21:37,479
Speaker 3: Sam Ortman's actually a genius. Turns out the whole thing

1446
01:21:37,560 --> 01:21:39,679
Speaker 3: is no, no, it's not gonna happen.

1447
01:21:41,000 --> 01:21:41,800
Speaker 4: And I worry that.

1448
01:21:42,520 --> 01:21:44,599
Speaker 3: There is no smooth way out of this, that there

1449
01:21:44,720 --> 01:21:49,040
Speaker 3: is no way to just casually integrate OpenAI with Microsoft,

1450
01:21:50,479 --> 01:21:53,280
Speaker 3: because now there's an antitrust thing going in with Microsoft

1451
01:21:53,360 --> 01:21:57,080
Speaker 3: and acquiring Inflection Ai, another AI company, and that's the thing.

1452
01:21:57,960 --> 01:22:01,720
Speaker 3: It feels like we were approaching a press apiss here,

1453
01:22:03,160 --> 01:22:06,240
Speaker 3: and the only way to avoid it is for people

1454
01:22:06,320 --> 01:22:09,080
Speaker 3: to come clean, which is never going to happen, or

1455
01:22:09,200 --> 01:22:12,040
Speaker 3: of course for Sam Wortman not to be laying for

1456
01:22:12,280 --> 01:22:14,559
Speaker 3: Agi to actually come out of open AI. And by

1457
01:22:14,560 --> 01:22:15,720
Speaker 3: the way, it's going to need to be in the

1458
01:22:15,800 --> 01:22:19,599
Speaker 3: next year. I don't think they've got even three quarters left.

1459
01:22:20,320 --> 01:22:24,959
Speaker 3: I think that once this falls apart, once the markets realize,

1460
01:22:25,080 --> 01:22:28,440
Speaker 3: oh shit, this is not profitable, this is not sustainable,

1461
01:22:28,680 --> 01:22:31,639
Speaker 3: they're going to walk away from it. When companies realize

1462
01:22:31,680 --> 01:22:34,759
Speaker 3: that generative AI it's given him a couple percent profit,

1463
01:22:34,960 --> 01:22:39,800
Speaker 3: maybe they're going to be pissed because this is not

1464
01:22:40,280 --> 01:22:46,240
Speaker 3: a stock rally worthy boondoggle. This is not going to

1465
01:22:46,320 --> 01:22:49,719
Speaker 3: be pretty when things fall apart from it. For Nvidia,

1466
01:22:49,840 --> 01:22:52,479
Speaker 3: you're still over one thousand dollars. When those orders stop

1467
01:22:52,640 --> 01:22:55,680
Speaker 3: coming in quite as fast. What do you think is

1468
01:22:55,760 --> 01:22:59,840
Speaker 3: going to happen to tech stocks? Startups are already having

1469
01:23:00,000 --> 01:23:03,160
Speaker 3: trouble raising money, and they're having trouble raising money because

1470
01:23:03,160 --> 01:23:06,880
Speaker 3: the people giving out the money are too disconnected from

1471
01:23:06,920 --> 01:23:10,000
Speaker 3: the creation of software and hardware. The only way to

1472
01:23:10,120 --> 01:23:14,960
Speaker 3: fix Silicon Valley perhaps is an apocalypse. Perhaps is people

1473
01:23:15,120 --> 01:23:17,560
Speaker 3: like Sam Ortman getting washed out. I don't want it

1474
01:23:17,640 --> 01:23:22,200
Speaker 3: to happen. I really must be bloody clear. But maybe

1475
01:23:22,240 --> 01:23:25,400
Speaker 3: it won't be apocalyptic. Maybe it would just be a

1476
01:23:25,560 --> 01:23:29,800
Speaker 3: brutal realignment. And maybe Silicon Valley needs that realignment because

1477
01:23:29,840 --> 01:23:35,280
Speaker 3: this industry desperately needs a big bathful of ice and

1478
01:23:35,400 --> 01:23:37,639
Speaker 3: need to dunk the head in it aggressively and wake

1479
01:23:37,840 --> 01:23:42,360
Speaker 3: the hell up. Venture capital needs to put money back

1480
01:23:42,439 --> 01:23:46,040
Speaker 3: into real things. The largest tech companies need to realign

1481
01:23:46,120 --> 01:23:49,200
Speaker 3: and build for sustainability so they're not binging and purging

1482
01:23:49,320 --> 01:23:53,160
Speaker 3: staff with every boom. And if we really are at

1483
01:23:53,240 --> 01:23:57,160
Speaker 3: the end of the hypergrowth era, every tech company needs

1484
01:23:57,200 --> 01:23:59,760
Speaker 3: to be thinking profit and sustainability again. And that's a

1485
01:24:00,080 --> 01:24:03,200
Speaker 3: to Silicon Valley because a better Silicon Valley builds things

1486
01:24:03,240 --> 01:24:06,280
Speaker 3: for people, It solves real problems. It doesn't have to

1487
01:24:06,479 --> 01:24:08,759
Speaker 3: lie about what the thing could do in the future

1488
01:24:08,960 --> 01:24:11,920
Speaker 3: so that it can sell a thing today. And I

1489
01:24:12,000 --> 01:24:14,639
Speaker 3: realize that sounds like the foundation of most venture capital.

1490
01:24:15,479 --> 01:24:18,920
Speaker 3: That's fine at the seed stage, that's fine at this

1491
01:24:19,200 --> 01:24:22,519
Speaker 3: moonshot stage where your early early days. It is not

1492
01:24:22,760 --> 01:24:26,360
Speaker 3: befitting the most famous company in tech, It is not

1493
01:24:26,520 --> 01:24:31,240
Speaker 3: befitting a multi billionaire, It is not befitting anyone, and

1494
01:24:31,360 --> 01:24:34,080
Speaker 3: it is insulting to the people actually building things, both

1495
01:24:34,160 --> 01:24:35,640
Speaker 3: in and outside of technology.

1496
01:24:36,160 --> 01:24:37,639
Speaker 4: The people I hear from after.

1497
01:24:37,520 --> 01:24:41,559
Speaker 3: Every episode, they are angry, They are frustrated because there

1498
01:24:41,640 --> 01:24:43,800
Speaker 3: are good people in tech. There are people building real things.

1499
01:24:43,840 --> 01:24:46,280
Speaker 3: There are people that remember a time when the tech

1500
01:24:46,320 --> 01:24:50,760
Speaker 3: industry was exciting, when people were talking about cool shit

1501
01:24:50,800 --> 01:24:54,040
Speaker 3: in the future, and then they'd actually do it. Returning

1502
01:24:54,120 --> 01:24:56,839
Speaker 3: to that is better for society and the tech industry.

1503
01:24:58,000 --> 01:25:07,640
Speaker 3: Just don't know when it's going to happen. Thank you

1504
01:25:07,680 --> 01:25:10,400
Speaker 3: for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of

1505
01:25:10,400 --> 01:25:13,400
Speaker 3: the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You can check

1506
01:25:13,439 --> 01:25:16,360
Speaker 3: out more of his music and audio projects at Mattasowski

1507
01:25:16,400 --> 01:25:17,519
Speaker 3: dot com, m.

1508
01:25:17,560 --> 01:25:21,639
Speaker 4: A T T O S O W s ki dot com.

1509
01:25:22,400 --> 01:25:24,920
Speaker 3: You can email me at easy at better Offline dot com,

1510
01:25:25,120 --> 01:25:27,400
Speaker 3: or visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast

1511
01:25:27,479 --> 01:25:30,799
Speaker 3: links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend

1512
01:25:30,800 --> 01:25:32,760
Speaker 3: you go to chat dot Where's youreed dot at to

1513
01:25:32,840 --> 01:25:35,639
Speaker 3: visit the discord and go to our slash Better Offline

1514
01:25:35,680 --> 01:25:38,880
Speaker 3: to check out our reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

1515
01:25:39,720 --> 01:25:42,400
Speaker 5: Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For

1516
01:25:42,560 --> 01:25:45,719
Speaker 5: more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia

1517
01:25:45,760 --> 01:25:48,599
Speaker 5: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1518
01:25:48,640 --> 01:25:51,040
Speaker 5: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1519
01:26:07,160 --> 01:26:09,600
Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed

1520
01:26:09,720 --> 01:26:23,479
Speaker 3: ze Tron. It's been a hard couple of weeks. It's

1521
01:26:23,560 --> 01:26:27,080
Speaker 3: been pretty hard to focus. I've written a few newsletters,

1522
01:26:27,160 --> 01:26:29,400
Speaker 3: I've gone to Portugal, I've done a bunch of shit.

1523
01:26:29,760 --> 01:26:32,759
Speaker 3: Just try not to think about everything happening outside.

1524
01:26:32,880 --> 01:26:34,519
Speaker 4: But it's time to do so.

1525
01:26:35,840 --> 01:26:38,600
Speaker 3: Seemingly every single person on Earth with a blog or

1526
01:26:38,600 --> 01:26:41,479
Speaker 3: a podcast store, or even a Twitter account or XD everything, Apple,

1527
01:26:41,560 --> 01:26:43,920
Speaker 3: whatever it's called now, they've all tried to drill down

1528
01:26:43,960 --> 01:26:47,360
Speaker 3: into what happened on November fifth, to find the people

1529
01:26:47,400 --> 01:26:51,760
Speaker 3: to blame, to explain what could have gone differently. Really

1530
01:26:51,840 --> 01:26:54,519
Speaker 3: looking for who to blame though, and find out why

1531
01:26:54,680 --> 01:26:57,360
Speaker 3: so many actions led to a result that well overwhelmingly

1532
01:26:57,400 --> 01:27:02,040
Speaker 3: home woman, minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ people, and lower income workers

1533
01:27:03,280 --> 01:27:06,360
Speaker 3: is terrifying. It fucking sucks. I'm not going to mince words,

1534
01:27:06,600 --> 01:27:09,920
Speaker 3: not that I would usually anyway, and I don't feel

1535
01:27:09,960 --> 01:27:12,439
Speaker 3: fully equipped to respond to the moment. I don't have

1536
01:27:13,080 --> 01:27:16,040
Speaker 3: any real answers, at least not political ones. I'm not

1537
01:27:16,080 --> 01:27:19,799
Speaker 3: a political analyst, and I'd feel disingenuous trying to dissect

1538
01:27:19,840 --> 01:27:22,680
Speaker 3: either the Harris or the Trump campaigns, because I just

1539
01:27:22,800 --> 01:27:24,920
Speaker 3: feel like there's a take Olympics right now. It's the

1540
01:27:25,000 --> 01:27:28,400
Speaker 3: Dunning Kruger Festival out there. Everyone is trying to rationalize

1541
01:27:28,439 --> 01:27:32,559
Speaker 3: and intellectualize these events that ultimately come down to something

1542
01:27:32,640 --> 01:27:37,439
Speaker 3: quite simple. People don't trust authority, and yet it's pretty

1543
01:27:37,520 --> 01:27:42,000
Speaker 3: ironic that this often leads them towards authoritarianism. Now, I

1544
01:27:42,000 --> 01:27:43,559
Speaker 3: don't want to give you the impression that I'm going

1545
01:27:43,640 --> 01:27:46,719
Speaker 3: to go on my crank mode that and somehow against

1546
01:27:46,800 --> 01:27:48,200
Speaker 3: institutions on their face.

1547
01:27:48,320 --> 01:27:48,560
Speaker 4: I'm not.

1548
01:27:48,840 --> 01:27:52,240
Speaker 3: But at the same time, understanding this moment requires us

1549
01:27:52,280 --> 01:27:55,840
Speaker 3: to acknowledge that institutions have failed us and failed most people,

1550
01:27:56,200 --> 01:27:59,799
Speaker 3: and how certain institutions missteps have led us to exactly

1551
01:27:59,840 --> 01:28:04,000
Speaker 3: what we are today. Legacy media, and while oftentimes they're

1552
01:28:04,000 --> 01:28:06,080
Speaker 3: staffed by people who truly love their readers and care

1553
01:28:06,120 --> 01:28:09,680
Speaker 3: about their beats, they're weighed down by this hysterical, nonsensical

1554
01:28:09,720 --> 01:28:13,479
Speaker 3: attachment to the imaginary concept of objectivity and the will

1555
01:28:13,520 --> 01:28:17,880
Speaker 3: of the markets. Case in point, regular people have spent

1556
01:28:18,080 --> 01:28:20,960
Speaker 3: years watching the price of goods increase due to inflation,

1557
01:28:21,360 --> 01:28:23,679
Speaker 3: despite the fact that the increase in pricing was mostly

1558
01:28:23,800 --> 01:28:28,240
Speaker 3: driven by get this, corporations raising their prices. Now, that's

1559
01:28:28,320 --> 01:28:30,320
Speaker 3: not to say that external factors like the war in

1560
01:28:30,400 --> 01:28:34,160
Speaker 3: Ukraine or lingering COVID restrictions in China, these things did

1561
01:28:34,360 --> 01:28:37,920
Speaker 3: play a role in it. They did, But the bulk

1562
01:28:38,000 --> 01:28:42,000
Speaker 3: of these price increases were caused by these fucking companies

1563
01:28:42,120 --> 01:28:45,320
Speaker 3: raising the prices. It was in their earnings.

1564
01:28:45,680 --> 01:28:46,920
Speaker 4: It was right there.

1565
01:28:47,160 --> 01:28:50,679
Speaker 3: Pepsi Cola said it on the news. Yet some parts

1566
01:28:50,720 --> 01:28:53,360
Speaker 3: of the legacy media spent an alarming amount of time

1567
01:28:53,479 --> 01:28:56,680
Speaker 3: chiding their readers for thinking otherwise, even going against their

1568
01:28:56,720 --> 01:28:59,719
Speaker 3: own reporting. And there will be links in the episode

1569
01:28:59,760 --> 01:29:03,920
Speaker 3: notes promise as a means of providing balanced coverage, insisting

1570
01:29:04,000 --> 01:29:07,840
Speaker 3: again and again that the economy is actually good, contorting

1571
01:29:07,920 --> 01:29:10,679
Speaker 3: their little bodies to prove that prices aren't actually higher,

1572
01:29:10,760 --> 01:29:14,040
Speaker 3: even as companies literally boasted about raising their prices on earnings.

1573
01:29:14,520 --> 01:29:17,920
Speaker 3: In fact, the media spent years debating with itself, where

1574
01:29:17,920 --> 01:29:20,720
Speaker 3: the price scouging was actually happening despite years of proof

1575
01:29:20,800 --> 01:29:23,439
Speaker 3: that it was. Some of them even reported that the

1576
01:29:23,520 --> 01:29:27,920
Speaker 3: price gouging was happening, So like, get this. I just

1577
01:29:27,960 --> 01:29:31,200
Speaker 3: don't think people trust authority, and they especially don't trust

1578
01:29:31,240 --> 01:29:35,519
Speaker 3: the media, especially the legacy media. It also probably didn't

1579
01:29:35,600 --> 01:29:38,120
Speaker 3: help that the legacy media implored readers and viewers to

1580
01:29:38,200 --> 01:29:40,640
Speaker 3: ignore what they saw at the supermarket or at the

1581
01:29:40,720 --> 01:29:42,720
Speaker 3: pump and the growing hits that their wallets from the

1582
01:29:42,800 --> 01:29:47,000
Speaker 3: daily incessities of life. It was just a national level

1583
01:29:47,120 --> 01:29:49,920
Speaker 3: gas lighting and it was disgusting. And I know some

1584
01:29:50,080 --> 01:29:53,280
Speaker 3: of you might say, you know where to email me.

1585
01:29:53,640 --> 01:29:54,560
Speaker 4: Oh, it's not just this.

1586
01:29:54,800 --> 01:29:57,479
Speaker 3: No, of course, it's not just this asshole, but I

1587
01:29:57,560 --> 01:29:59,920
Speaker 3: think this is a big thing now. Before a go

1588
01:30:00,160 --> 01:30:03,320
Speaker 3: any further, I've used the term legacy media here repeatedly,

1589
01:30:03,600 --> 01:30:05,960
Speaker 3: but I don't completely intend for it to come across

1590
01:30:06,000 --> 01:30:09,519
Speaker 3: as a pejorative despite my criticism. Believe me, I've got

1591
01:30:09,520 --> 01:30:12,080
Speaker 3: a few of them. There are people in the legacy

1592
01:30:12,120 --> 01:30:14,280
Speaker 3: media doing a good job. They're reporting the truth, they're

1593
01:30:14,280 --> 01:30:16,200
Speaker 3: doing the kinds of work that matters, and they're actually

1594
01:30:16,240 --> 01:30:18,599
Speaker 3: trying to teach their reader's stuff and tell them what's

1595
01:30:18,640 --> 01:30:22,240
Speaker 3: happening and giving them context. I read and pay for

1596
01:30:22,520 --> 01:30:24,720
Speaker 3: several legacy media outlets. I think the world is a

1597
01:30:24,760 --> 01:30:28,439
Speaker 3: better place for them existing despite their flaws. The problem is,

1598
01:30:28,560 --> 01:30:33,040
Speaker 3: as I'll explain, is this editorial industrial complex and how

1599
01:30:33,560 --> 01:30:36,040
Speaker 3: these people are writing about the powerful don't seem to

1600
01:30:36,120 --> 01:30:38,280
Speaker 3: be able to or maybe they don't want to actually

1601
01:30:38,360 --> 01:30:42,200
Speaker 3: interrogate the powerful. This could be an entire episode on

1602
01:30:42,280 --> 01:30:44,000
Speaker 3: its sign, But I don't think the answer to these

1603
01:30:44,040 --> 01:30:46,639
Speaker 3: failings is to simply discard legacy media entirely.

1604
01:30:47,520 --> 01:30:48,000
Speaker 2: But I want to.

1605
01:30:48,040 --> 01:30:50,680
Speaker 3: Implore them to do better and to strive for the

1606
01:30:50,760 --> 01:30:54,280
Speaker 3: values of truth hunting and truth telling and actually explaining

1607
01:30:54,360 --> 01:30:57,880
Speaker 3: what's happening and criticizing the people that don't have pr

1608
01:30:58,040 --> 01:31:01,679
Speaker 3: firms and lobbying groups, lawyers and the means to protect

1609
01:31:01,720 --> 01:31:06,200
Speaker 3: themselves from the world. The time for fucking around is

1610
01:31:06,320 --> 01:31:12,240
Speaker 3: over and we're currently finding out now. Anyway, as you know,

1611
01:31:12,400 --> 01:31:14,599
Speaker 3: as a person existing in the real world, the price

1612
01:31:14,640 --> 01:31:17,360
Speaker 3: of everything has kept increasing despite the fact that wages

1613
01:31:17,400 --> 01:31:19,920
Speaker 3: are stagnating. It's forcing many of the poorest people to

1614
01:31:20,000 --> 01:31:23,759
Speaker 3: choose between food and fuel or I don't know, eating

1615
01:31:23,920 --> 01:31:28,360
Speaker 3: and having heat simultaneously. Businesses have spent several years telling

1616
01:31:28,439 --> 01:31:30,599
Speaker 3: workers they're asking for too much and doing too little,

1617
01:31:30,800 --> 01:31:33,040
Speaker 3: telling people a few years ago they were quiet quitting,

1618
01:31:33,439 --> 01:31:35,840
Speaker 3: which is a fucking stupid term that just means going

1619
01:31:35,880 --> 01:31:37,240
Speaker 3: to your job and doing the thing you're paying to

1620
01:31:37,280 --> 01:31:40,920
Speaker 3: do any anyway, And a year later, in twenty twenty three,

1621
01:31:41,000 --> 01:31:44,320
Speaker 3: they insisted that the years of remote work were actually

1622
01:31:44,560 --> 01:31:47,680
Speaker 3: bad because profits didn't reach the same profit levels of

1623
01:31:47,760 --> 01:31:50,920
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, which was something to do with remote work. Now,

1624
01:31:51,000 --> 01:31:53,479
Speaker 3: did anyone actually prove this, did anyone actually going.

1625
01:31:53,439 --> 01:31:54,000
Speaker 4: No, they didn't.

1626
01:31:54,040 --> 01:31:56,840
Speaker 3: They just well, I just listened to Mark Benioff, who's

1627
01:31:57,080 --> 01:32:00,040
Speaker 3: one of the more evil people alive. Now I also so,

1628
01:32:00,120 --> 01:32:02,320
Speaker 3: I think a lot of these problems come to twenty

1629
01:32:02,400 --> 01:32:04,400
Speaker 3: twenty one, a year that we really need to dig

1630
01:32:04,479 --> 01:32:06,400
Speaker 3: into more. We might not do so today, but we

1631
01:32:06,479 --> 01:32:10,000
Speaker 3: will in the future. But one of the big things

1632
01:32:10,040 --> 01:32:12,000
Speaker 3: that punish workers and led to so many layoffs in

1633
01:32:12,040 --> 01:32:14,000
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three was the fact that we couldn't get

1634
01:32:14,080 --> 01:32:16,559
Speaker 3: back to the post lockdown boot of twenty twenty one,

1635
01:32:16,760 --> 01:32:19,960
Speaker 3: when everyone bought everything always as they left the house

1636
01:32:20,040 --> 01:32:23,680
Speaker 3: for the first time in a while. Now, any corporation

1637
01:32:25,000 --> 01:32:27,479
Speaker 3: would be smart enough to know that that was a phase,

1638
01:32:27,560 --> 01:32:31,080
Speaker 3: that that was not going to be forever. Except every

1639
01:32:31,560 --> 01:32:33,960
Speaker 3: single big company seemed to make the same mistake and

1640
01:32:34,000 --> 01:32:37,000
Speaker 3: say number going up forever, line go up forever. When

1641
01:32:37,040 --> 01:32:40,760
Speaker 3: it didn't, well, they started punishing workers and they started thinking, well,

1642
01:32:41,320 --> 01:32:44,360
Speaker 3: could it be that we as companies we set unrealistic

1643
01:32:44,520 --> 01:32:48,360
Speaker 3: expectations for the markets and we just thought that we'd

1644
01:32:48,400 --> 01:32:50,439
Speaker 3: keep growing forever. Or maybe it was the people using

1645
01:32:50,479 --> 01:32:56,000
Speaker 3: the computer at home. Yeah, that seems way better anyway, Well,

1646
01:32:56,040 --> 01:32:58,600
Speaker 3: the majority of people don't work remotely. From talking to

1647
01:32:58,640 --> 01:33:00,800
Speaker 3: the people I know outside of tech business, there's this

1648
01:33:00,960 --> 01:33:03,799
Speaker 3: genuine sense that the media has allied itself with the bosses,

1649
01:33:04,000 --> 01:33:05,920
Speaker 3: and I imagine it's because of the many articles that

1650
01:33:06,000 --> 01:33:08,960
Speaker 3: literally call workers lazy and have done so for years.

1651
01:33:09,360 --> 01:33:12,160
Speaker 3: Yet when it comes to the powerful legacy, media doesn't

1652
01:33:12,200 --> 01:33:14,640
Speaker 3: seem to have that much pisson vinegar. They just have

1653
01:33:14,920 --> 01:33:19,599
Speaker 3: much more guarded critiques. The appetite for shaming and finger wagging.

1654
01:33:19,800 --> 01:33:23,080
Speaker 3: It's always directed that middle and working class workers and

1655
01:33:23,240 --> 01:33:25,920
Speaker 3: seemingly disappears what a person has a three character job

1656
01:33:26,000 --> 01:33:30,120
Speaker 3: title like CEO. It's fucking stupid, it's insulting, and yes

1657
01:33:30,160 --> 01:33:33,320
Speaker 3: it's demoralizing for the average person, despite the fact that

1658
01:33:33,360 --> 01:33:36,120
Speaker 3: Elon Musk has spent years telegraphing is intent to uses

1659
01:33:36,160 --> 01:33:38,360
Speaker 3: billions of dollars to wield power equivalent to that of

1660
01:33:38,400 --> 01:33:40,479
Speaker 3: a nation state. As you may remember from my first

1661
01:33:40,520 --> 01:33:42,960
Speaker 3: episode of Anything over On, it could happen here.

1662
01:33:43,760 --> 01:33:45,280
Speaker 4: Too. Much of the media, both.

1663
01:33:45,200 --> 01:33:48,599
Speaker 3: Legacy and otherwise, responded slowly, cautiously, failing to call him

1664
01:33:48,600 --> 01:33:51,040
Speaker 3: a liar, a con artist, an aggress or, a manipula

1665
01:33:51,120 --> 01:33:53,320
Speaker 3: of rasis the deadbeat dad, you know all the thing's

1666
01:33:53,320 --> 01:33:54,080
Speaker 3: actually happening.

1667
01:33:54,400 --> 01:33:54,880
Speaker 4: No, no, no.

1668
01:33:55,920 --> 01:33:58,640
Speaker 3: They kind of danced around him. They reported stories that

1669
01:33:58,760 --> 01:34:01,880
Speaker 3: might make you think they maybe noticed it, But there

1670
01:34:01,960 --> 01:34:06,479
Speaker 3: was this desperation to guard objectivity, and it was just

1671
01:34:07,800 --> 01:34:10,920
Speaker 3: it lacked any real intent. It lacked any interest in

1672
01:34:11,040 --> 01:34:14,320
Speaker 3: calling account to a man who has pretty much bought

1673
01:34:14,360 --> 01:34:17,640
Speaker 3: an election for Donald Trump, a racist billionaire using his

1674
01:34:17,720 --> 01:34:20,360
Speaker 3: outsized capital the Benz Society to his will. Just isn't

1675
01:34:20,400 --> 01:34:22,479
Speaker 3: a fucking problem for the media, or at least not

1676
01:34:22,560 --> 01:34:24,559
Speaker 3: as much of a problem as a worker who might

1677
01:34:24,680 --> 01:34:26,880
Speaker 3: not work fifty to one hundred hours a week for

1678
01:34:26,960 --> 01:34:28,640
Speaker 3: a boss who makes one hundred and thirty times what

1679
01:34:28,760 --> 01:34:32,000
Speaker 3: they do. The news at least outside of the right wing,

1680
01:34:32,600 --> 01:34:37,160
Speaker 3: is always separate from opinion, always guarded, always safe for

1681
01:34:37,280 --> 01:34:40,120
Speaker 3: fear that they might piss somebody off and be declared biased,

1682
01:34:40,680 --> 01:34:44,280
Speaker 3: something that happens anyway. And while there are columnists are

1683
01:34:44,320 --> 01:34:47,519
Speaker 3: given some space to have their own thoughts, sometimes in

1684
01:34:47,600 --> 01:34:51,240
Speaker 3: the newspaper, sometimes online, the stories themselves are delivered with

1685
01:34:51,320 --> 01:34:54,360
Speaker 3: the kind of reserved hmmmm tone that often fails to

1686
01:34:54,479 --> 01:34:58,160
Speaker 3: express any actual consequences or context around the news itself,

1687
01:34:59,080 --> 01:35:01,800
Speaker 3: and just doesn't I seem to care about making sure

1688
01:35:01,920 --> 01:35:05,719
Speaker 3: that the reader or listener learns something. My mate Casey

1689
01:35:05,760 --> 01:35:08,080
Speaker 3: has a good point about podcasts, and I applied some

1690
01:35:08,200 --> 01:35:10,320
Speaker 3: of the news too, that there's too much stuff out

1691
01:35:10,320 --> 01:35:13,240
Speaker 3: there that is there to make you feel intelligent rather

1692
01:35:13,280 --> 01:35:14,200
Speaker 3: than make you intelligent.

1693
01:35:14,479 --> 01:35:15,599
Speaker 4: I think this falls into him.

1694
01:35:16,479 --> 01:35:16,599
Speaker 5: Now.

1695
01:35:16,680 --> 01:35:18,720
Speaker 3: This isn't to say that outlets are incapable of doing

1696
01:35:18,760 --> 01:35:20,880
Speaker 3: this correctly. I love the Washington Post. They've done an

1697
01:35:20,960 --> 01:35:24,680
Speaker 3: excellent job on analyzing major tech stories. But a lot

1698
01:35:24,760 --> 01:35:27,240
Speaker 3: of these outlets feel custom built to be bulldozed the

1699
01:35:27,280 --> 01:35:30,960
Speaker 3: moment an authoritarian turns up. This force that exists to

1700
01:35:31,040 --> 01:35:35,479
Speaker 3: crush those desperately attached to norms and objectivity authoritarians know

1701
01:35:35,600 --> 01:35:38,720
Speaker 3: that they're ideologically charged words we quoted ad verbatim with

1702
01:35:38,800 --> 01:35:39,840
Speaker 3: the occasional.

1703
01:35:39,600 --> 01:35:43,320
Speaker 4: Ah, this could mean little dribble, this drizzle, this.

1704
01:35:43,360 --> 01:35:46,040
Speaker 3: Spunk of context that's lost in the headline that repeats

1705
01:35:46,120 --> 01:35:49,040
Speaker 3: exactly what the fucking authoritarian wants them to.

1706
01:35:49,400 --> 01:35:50,000
Speaker 4: And guess what.

1707
01:35:50,640 --> 01:35:54,200
Speaker 3: Some people don't read the article, They just read the headline.

1708
01:35:54,520 --> 01:35:56,880
Speaker 3: And Musk is the most brutal example of this. By

1709
01:35:56,920 --> 01:35:59,479
Speaker 3: the way, despite the fact that he's turned Twitter into

1710
01:35:59,520 --> 01:36:02,360
Speaker 3: a website pump full of racism and hatred that literally

1711
01:36:02,439 --> 01:36:05,360
Speaker 3: helped make Donald Trump president, Musk was still able to

1712
01:36:05,400 --> 01:36:08,120
Speaker 3: get mostly positive coverage from the majority of the mainstream

1713
01:36:08,200 --> 01:36:12,040
Speaker 3: media for his fucking robotaxi nonsense, despite the fact that

1714
01:36:12,080 --> 01:36:14,479
Speaker 3: he spent the best part of a decade lying about

1715
01:36:14,520 --> 01:36:17,600
Speaker 3: what Tesla will do next. There are entire websites just

1716
01:36:17,800 --> 01:36:21,080
Speaker 3: based on how much Elon Musk lies, yet they still

1717
01:36:21,400 --> 01:36:25,080
Speaker 3: report this shit. It makes me very upset, And it

1718
01:36:25,160 --> 01:36:27,920
Speaker 3: doesn't matter that some of these outlets, by the way,

1719
01:36:28,000 --> 01:36:30,519
Speaker 3: had a company in coverage that suggested that the markets

1720
01:36:30,560 --> 01:36:34,800
Speaker 3: weren't impressed by Tesla's theoretical robotaxi plans or their fake

1721
01:36:34,880 --> 01:36:36,240
Speaker 3: cass robots run by people.

1722
01:36:36,760 --> 01:36:38,520
Speaker 4: Musk is still able.

1723
01:36:38,400 --> 01:36:41,640
Speaker 3: To use the media's desperation for objectivity against them, and

1724
01:36:41,760 --> 01:36:44,960
Speaker 3: he knows that they never dare to combine reporting on

1725
01:36:45,120 --> 01:36:48,280
Speaker 3: stuff with thinking about stuff for fear that Elon Musk

1726
01:36:48,400 --> 01:36:51,479
Speaker 3: might say their bias, which he has been doing for years.

1727
01:36:51,840 --> 01:36:55,200
Speaker 3: Do you see my goddamn point yet? And this, by

1728
01:36:55,240 --> 01:36:56,880
Speaker 3: the way, is not always the fault of the rayers.

1729
01:36:57,200 --> 01:37:01,200
Speaker 3: There are entire foundations of editors that have more faith

1730
01:37:01,240 --> 01:37:03,040
Speaker 3: in the markets and the powerful than they do the

1731
01:37:03,120 --> 01:37:05,800
Speaker 3: people writing or the people reading their fucking words. And

1732
01:37:05,880 --> 01:37:09,599
Speaker 3: above them are entire editorial superstructures that exist to make

1733
01:37:09,640 --> 01:37:13,320
Speaker 3: sure that the editorial vision never colors too far outside

1734
01:37:13,320 --> 01:37:16,680
Speaker 3: the lines or informs people a little too much. And

1735
01:37:16,840 --> 01:37:19,559
Speaker 3: not even talking about Jeff Bezos or Lauren Powell jobs

1736
01:37:19,640 --> 01:37:21,360
Speaker 3: or any number of billionaires who are in any number

1737
01:37:21,400 --> 01:37:24,719
Speaker 3: of publications, but the editors editing business and tech reporters

1738
01:37:24,720 --> 01:37:27,840
Speaker 3: who don't know anything about business and tech, or the

1739
01:37:27,920 --> 01:37:31,280
Speaker 3: senior editors the terrified of any byline that might dare

1740
01:37:31,320 --> 01:37:33,680
Speaker 3: get the outlet under fire from somebody who could call

1741
01:37:33,720 --> 01:37:49,920
Speaker 3: their boss it's fucking cowardice. There are, however, I should add,

1742
01:37:50,000 --> 01:37:52,400
Speaker 3: also those who simply defer to the powerful that assume

1743
01:37:52,439 --> 01:37:55,519
Speaker 3: that this much money can't be wrong, even if said money,

1744
01:37:55,640 --> 01:37:58,320
Speaker 3: in the case of Elon Musk, is repeatedly wrong, and

1745
01:37:58,360 --> 01:38:00,439
Speaker 3: there's an entire website about the wrong US and the

1746
01:38:00,520 --> 01:38:03,959
Speaker 3: liars and the bullshit, and I'm talking about Elon Musk still. Obviously,

1747
01:38:04,600 --> 01:38:06,400
Speaker 3: these editors are the people that look at the current

1748
01:38:06,439 --> 01:38:08,639
Speaker 3: crop of powerful tech companies that have failed to deliver

1749
01:38:08,760 --> 01:38:11,120
Speaker 3: any truly meaningful innovation in years, and they.

1750
01:38:11,080 --> 01:38:12,639
Speaker 4: Go ooh, oh, send me more.

1751
01:38:12,720 --> 01:38:15,800
Speaker 3: Daddy showed me more of the apps. It's fucking disgraceful.

1752
01:38:16,200 --> 01:38:17,840
Speaker 3: Just look at the coverage of Sam Mortman from the

1753
01:38:17,920 --> 01:38:20,080
Speaker 3: last year. You know, the guy who spent years lying

1754
01:38:20,120 --> 01:38:22,880
Speaker 3: about what AI can do, and tell me why every

1755
01:38:23,000 --> 01:38:26,559
Speaker 3: single thought he says must be uncritically catalog is every

1756
01:38:26,640 --> 01:38:30,240
Speaker 3: goddamn decision applauded, his every claim, trumpeted as certain, his

1757
01:38:30,400 --> 01:38:33,200
Speaker 3: brittle little company that burns five billion dollars a year

1758
01:38:33,560 --> 01:38:37,400
Speaker 3: talked about like it's a fucking living god. Sam Moltman

1759
01:38:37,520 --> 01:38:40,160
Speaker 3: is a liar who's been fired from two companies, including

1760
01:38:40,200 --> 01:38:42,360
Speaker 3: open Ai, and yet because he's a billionaire with a

1761
01:38:42,400 --> 01:38:45,600
Speaker 3: buzzy company, he's left totally unscathed. The powerful get a

1762
01:38:45,640 --> 01:38:47,960
Speaker 3: completely different set of rules to live by and exist

1763
01:38:48,040 --> 01:38:51,880
Speaker 3: in a totally different media environment. Their geniuses, entrepreneurs, fire brands.

1764
01:38:52,000 --> 01:38:54,519
Speaker 3: Their challenges are framed as missteps and their victories framed

1765
01:38:54,560 --> 01:38:56,920
Speaker 3: as certainties by the same outlets that told us that

1766
01:38:57,000 --> 01:38:59,559
Speaker 3: we were quiet quitting and that the economy is actually good,

1767
01:38:59,720 --> 01:39:02,720
Speaker 3: and that we're the problem for high prices. Well, it's

1768
01:39:02,800 --> 01:39:06,000
Speaker 3: correct to suggest that the right wing is horrendously ideological

1769
01:39:06,240 --> 01:39:08,760
Speaker 3: and they're terribly biased. It's very hard to look at

1770
01:39:08,800 --> 01:39:10,479
Speaker 3: the rest of the media and claim that they are not.

1771
01:39:11,120 --> 01:39:14,000
Speaker 3: The problem is that the so called left media, which

1772
01:39:14,080 --> 01:39:17,040
Speaker 3: usually is just the center, isn't biased towards what we

1773
01:39:17,120 --> 01:39:20,599
Speaker 3: may consider left wing causes like universal health care, strong unions,

1774
01:39:20,960 --> 01:39:22,720
Speaker 3: expanded social safety, and it's you know, the stuff that

1775
01:39:22,760 --> 01:39:25,080
Speaker 3: would actually be helpful. Now, they're biased in favor of

1776
01:39:25,160 --> 01:39:29,240
Speaker 3: filating an ever growing carousel of sociopathic billionaire assholes, elevating

1777
01:39:29,320 --> 01:39:31,800
Speaker 3: them to the status of American royalty, where they exist

1778
01:39:31,880 --> 01:39:35,519
Speaker 3: above expectations and norms that you and I must live by.

1779
01:39:36,320 --> 01:39:40,920
Speaker 3: This is the definition of elitism. The media has literally

1780
01:39:41,040 --> 01:39:43,639
Speaker 3: created a class of people who can lie and cheat

1781
01:39:43,880 --> 01:39:47,280
Speaker 3: and steal, and rather than condemn them for it. They're celebrated.

1782
01:39:48,320 --> 01:39:50,919
Speaker 3: While it might feel a little tangential to bring technology

1783
01:39:50,960 --> 01:39:54,559
Speaker 3: into this, I truly believe that everybody is affected by

1784
01:39:54,560 --> 01:39:58,040
Speaker 3: the rot economy, the growth or costs ecosystem where number

1785
01:39:58,120 --> 01:40:01,559
Speaker 3: must always go up because everybody is using technology all

1786
01:40:01,640 --> 01:40:04,679
Speaker 3: the time, and the technology in question is getting worse.

1787
01:40:05,520 --> 01:40:08,479
Speaker 3: This election cycle saw more than twenty five billion text

1788
01:40:08,520 --> 01:40:11,720
Speaker 3: messages sent to potential voters, and seemingly every website was

1789
01:40:11,720 --> 01:40:15,400
Speaker 3: crown full of random election advertising. Here's the thing about elections.

1790
01:40:15,600 --> 01:40:19,560
Speaker 3: They're not really always about policy. No, they're a referendum

1791
01:40:19,640 --> 01:40:22,360
Speaker 3: on the incumbent party you're president, and by proxy, a

1792
01:40:22,439 --> 01:40:25,400
Speaker 3: poll on how people feel. And the reality is that

1793
01:40:25,520 --> 01:40:29,519
Speaker 3: most people are fucking miserable. There's this all encompassing feeling

1794
01:40:29,600 --> 01:40:32,280
Speaker 3: that things are just harder now. It's harder to pay

1795
01:40:32,320 --> 01:40:34,519
Speaker 3: your bills, it's harder to keep in touch with your friends.

1796
01:40:34,760 --> 01:40:36,800
Speaker 3: It's harder to start a family, it's harder to buy

1797
01:40:36,840 --> 01:40:38,679
Speaker 3: a house, it's harder to fall in love, it's harder

1798
01:40:38,720 --> 01:40:41,800
Speaker 3: to do everything. And what we're seeing is an in

1799
01:40:41,840 --> 01:40:43,440
Speaker 3: shitification of existence.

1800
01:40:43,520 --> 01:40:45,400
Speaker 4: To use mister doctor Roe's phrase.

1801
01:40:45,680 --> 01:40:47,840
Speaker 3: Everything just I don't want to be this much of

1802
01:40:47,880 --> 01:40:51,479
Speaker 3: a commudgeon. But everything just kind of sucks. It's all terrible,

1803
01:40:51,520 --> 01:40:53,880
Speaker 3: it's miserable, and hardly anyone thinks it's going.

1804
01:40:53,800 --> 01:40:54,320
Speaker 4: To get better.

1805
01:40:54,720 --> 01:40:57,120
Speaker 3: And this creates the kind of fertile conditions for a

1806
01:40:57,160 --> 01:41:00,360
Speaker 3: strong man to have emerged, one who arises and says

1807
01:41:00,360 --> 01:41:02,479
Speaker 3: that only he can fix things, even if he spent

1808
01:41:02,560 --> 01:41:05,800
Speaker 3: four years proving how he could not. And the problem

1809
01:41:05,880 --> 01:41:08,240
Speaker 3: for democrats and for institutions more broadly is that the

1810
01:41:08,320 --> 01:41:11,000
Speaker 3: all encompassing nature of this milieu is kind of hard

1811
01:41:11,040 --> 01:41:13,599
Speaker 3: to solve. It's hard to change the perception that everything's

1812
01:41:13,680 --> 01:41:15,439
Speaker 3: terrible when you're reminded of it when you're trying to

1813
01:41:15,520 --> 01:41:18,040
Speaker 3: do the most basic of tasks. Our phones are full

1814
01:41:18,040 --> 01:41:20,439
Speaker 3: of notifications trying to growth hack us into doing things

1815
01:41:20,520 --> 01:41:23,360
Speaker 3: that companies want. Our apps are full of micro transactions.

1816
01:41:23,520 --> 01:41:26,120
Speaker 3: Our websites are slower and harder to use, with endless

1817
01:41:26,160 --> 01:41:28,320
Speaker 3: demands of our emails and our phone numbers, and the

1818
01:41:28,400 --> 01:41:30,559
Speaker 3: nay to log back in because they couldn't possibly lose

1819
01:41:30,600 --> 01:41:32,559
Speaker 3: a dollar to someone who dared to consume a Washington

1820
01:41:32,600 --> 01:41:35,040
Speaker 3: Post article. And yes, I'm talking about the post, which

1821
01:41:35,040 --> 01:41:36,800
Speaker 3: I fucking pay for, despite the fact it logs me

1822
01:41:36,840 --> 01:41:40,080
Speaker 3: out all the time. Our social networks are so algorithmically

1823
01:41:40,160 --> 01:41:41,880
Speaker 3: charged that they barely show us the things we want

1824
01:41:41,920 --> 01:41:44,800
Speaker 3: them to anymore, With executives dedicated to filling our feeds

1825
01:41:44,840 --> 01:41:47,719
Speaker 3: full of AI generated slop. Because despite being the customer,

1826
01:41:47,880 --> 01:41:51,080
Speaker 3: we're also the revenue mechanism, our search engines do less

1827
01:41:51,160 --> 01:41:52,880
Speaker 3: as a means of making us use them more. Our

1828
01:41:52,960 --> 01:41:55,360
Speaker 3: dating apps have become vehicles of private equity to add

1829
01:41:55,360 --> 01:41:57,360
Speaker 3: a toll to falling in love. Our video games are

1830
01:41:57,400 --> 01:41:59,719
Speaker 3: constantly nagging us to give them more money, and despite

1831
01:41:59,800 --> 01:42:02,000
Speaker 3: it losting money and being attached to our account, we

1832
01:42:02,080 --> 01:42:04,679
Speaker 3: don't actually own any of the streaming media we purchase.

1833
01:42:04,960 --> 01:42:08,000
Speaker 3: We're drowning in spam, both in our emails and our phones,

1834
01:42:08,040 --> 01:42:10,320
Speaker 3: and at this point in our lives, we've probably agreed

1835
01:42:10,360 --> 01:42:13,439
Speaker 3: to three million pages of privacy policies allowing companies to

1836
01:42:13,560 --> 01:42:16,920
Speaker 3: use our information as they see fit. We get one

1837
01:42:17,120 --> 01:42:20,200
Speaker 3: value transaction with every company they get eleven, they get

1838
01:42:20,240 --> 01:42:23,280
Speaker 3: one hundred. We really actually don't know because there's no

1839
01:42:23,400 --> 01:42:26,280
Speaker 3: legislation to tell us what they're fucking doing. And these

1840
01:42:26,360 --> 01:42:30,760
Speaker 3: are the issues that hit everything we do all the time, constantly, unrelentingly.

1841
01:42:31,080 --> 01:42:34,040
Speaker 3: Technology is our lives now. We wake up, we use

1842
01:42:34,080 --> 01:42:36,559
Speaker 3: our phone, we check our text, three spam calls, two

1843
01:42:36,600 --> 01:42:38,800
Speaker 3: spam texts. We look at our bank balance, two factor

1844
01:42:38,840 --> 01:42:40,599
Speaker 3: authentication check, we're rid the news.

1845
01:42:40,640 --> 01:42:41,759
Speaker 4: A quarter of the pages bot.

1846
01:42:41,640 --> 01:42:44,080
Speaker 3: Bone advertisement asking for our email that's deliberately built to

1847
01:42:44,120 --> 01:42:46,040
Speaker 3: hide the button to get rid of them. And then

1848
01:42:46,080 --> 01:42:48,440
Speaker 3: we log into slack and feel a pang of anxiety.

1849
01:42:48,520 --> 01:42:51,320
Speaker 3: Is fifteen different notifications appear in a way there is

1850
01:42:51,439 --> 01:42:53,720
Speaker 3: really not built for us to find what we need,

1851
01:42:54,080 --> 01:42:59,080
Speaker 3: just to let us know something happen. Modern existence is

1852
01:42:59,240 --> 01:43:03,559
Speaker 3: just engulfed in sludge. The institutions that exist to cut

1853
01:43:03,640 --> 01:43:06,360
Speaker 3: through it seem to bounce between the ignorance of their

1854
01:43:06,439 --> 01:43:10,720
Speaker 3: masters and this misplaced duty to objectivity. Our mechanisms for

1855
01:43:10,880 --> 01:43:13,679
Speaker 3: exploring and enjoying the world are interfered with by powerful

1856
01:43:13,720 --> 01:43:17,479
Speaker 3: forces that are just basically left unchecked. Opening our devices

1857
01:43:17,560 --> 01:43:21,080
Speaker 3: is wilfully subjecting us to attack after attack after attack

1858
01:43:21,160 --> 01:43:23,920
Speaker 3: from applications, websites, and devices that are built to make

1859
01:43:24,000 --> 01:43:26,919
Speaker 3: us do things for them, rather than operate with dignity

1860
01:43:27,000 --> 01:43:29,559
Speaker 3: and freedom that much of the Internet was actually founded upon.

1861
01:43:30,360 --> 01:43:33,120
Speaker 3: These millions of invisible acts of terror are too often

1862
01:43:33,200 --> 01:43:36,719
Speaker 3: left undiscussed because accepting the truth requires you to accept

1863
01:43:36,960 --> 01:43:39,320
Speaker 3: that most of the tech ecosystem is rotten, and that

1864
01:43:39,439 --> 01:43:42,640
Speaker 3: billions of dollars are made harassing and punishing billions of

1865
01:43:42,680 --> 01:43:45,479
Speaker 3: people every single day of their lives through the devices

1866
01:43:45,520 --> 01:43:47,640
Speaker 3: that we're required to use in order to exist in

1867
01:43:47,680 --> 01:43:51,479
Speaker 3: the modern world. Most users suffer the consequences, and most

1868
01:43:51,520 --> 01:43:53,880
Speaker 3: of the media fails to account for them, and in turn,

1869
01:43:54,160 --> 01:43:56,639
Speaker 3: people walk around knowing something is wrong, but not knowing

1870
01:43:56,680 --> 01:44:00,960
Speaker 3: who to blame until somebody provides a convenient excuse, like immigrants,

1871
01:44:01,760 --> 01:44:05,040
Speaker 3: like the Democrats, like whatever fucking works. Because we can't

1872
01:44:05,120 --> 01:44:08,960
Speaker 3: actually call the people out, the corporations crushing our existence,

1873
01:44:10,200 --> 01:44:11,840
Speaker 3: Why wouldn't people crave change?

1874
01:44:12,040 --> 01:44:14,800
Speaker 4: Why wouldn't people be angry? Living in the current world?

1875
01:44:14,840 --> 01:44:18,760
Speaker 3: Absolutely fucking sucks. Sometimes it's miserable. It's bereft of industry

1876
01:44:18,920 --> 01:44:24,920
Speaker 3: and filthy with manipulation. It's undignified, it's disrespectful, and it

1877
01:44:25,040 --> 01:44:27,720
Speaker 3: must be crushed if we want to escape this depressing,

1878
01:44:27,840 --> 01:44:32,120
Speaker 3: goddamn world we've found ourselves in. Our media institutions are

1879
01:44:32,200 --> 01:44:35,439
Speaker 3: fully fucking capable of dealing with these problems, but it

1880
01:44:35,600 --> 01:44:39,840
Speaker 3: starts with actually evaluating them and aggressively interrogating them without

1881
01:44:39,880 --> 01:44:43,519
Speaker 3: fearing accusations of bias that, as I've said, repeatedly, happen

1882
01:44:43,720 --> 01:44:46,920
Speaker 3: either way. The truth is that the media is more

1883
01:44:46,920 --> 01:44:49,639
Speaker 3: afraid of accusations of bias than they are of misleading

1884
01:44:49,680 --> 01:44:52,479
Speaker 3: their readers. And while that seems like a slippery slope,

1885
01:44:52,479 --> 01:44:54,519
Speaker 3: and it may very well be one, there must be

1886
01:44:54,640 --> 01:44:56,960
Speaker 3: room to inject the writer's voice back into their work,

1887
01:44:57,320 --> 01:44:59,320
Speaker 3: and a willingness to call out bad actors as such,

1888
01:44:59,520 --> 01:45:01,320
Speaker 3: no matter and how rich they are, no matter how

1889
01:45:01,360 --> 01:45:03,720
Speaker 3: big their products are, no matter how willing they are

1890
01:45:03,800 --> 01:45:05,960
Speaker 3: to bark and scream that things are unfair as they

1891
01:45:05,960 --> 01:45:09,800
Speaker 3: accumulate more power and money. We need context in our news.

1892
01:45:10,520 --> 01:45:13,040
Speaker 3: We need it, we need it now. We need opinion,

1893
01:45:13,120 --> 01:45:16,040
Speaker 3: we need voice, we need character, we need life, because

1894
01:45:16,080 --> 01:45:20,240
Speaker 3: as long as we follow this bullshit objectivity path, we're screwed.

1895
01:45:20,880 --> 01:45:23,000
Speaker 3: And if you're in the tech industry and hearing this

1896
01:45:23,160 --> 01:45:23,759
Speaker 3: and saying.

1897
01:45:23,720 --> 01:45:25,960
Speaker 4: Oh, the media is tea critical of tech, if that

1898
01:45:26,120 --> 01:45:27,759
Speaker 4: fucking wrong, kiss my asshole.

1899
01:45:28,120 --> 01:45:30,599
Speaker 3: Everything we're seeing happening right now is a direct result

1900
01:45:30,720 --> 01:45:32,960
Speaker 3: of a society that let technology in the ultra rich

1901
01:45:33,040 --> 01:45:35,840
Speaker 3: run rampant, free of both the governmental guardrails that might

1902
01:45:35,840 --> 01:45:38,080
Speaker 3: have stopped them and the media ecosystem that might have

1903
01:45:38,120 --> 01:45:41,800
Speaker 3: actually held them in check. Our default position in interrogating

1904
01:45:41,840 --> 01:45:44,360
Speaker 3: the intentions and actions of the tech industry has become

1905
01:45:44,400 --> 01:45:47,040
Speaker 3: that they will work it out, as they continually redefine

1906
01:45:47,040 --> 01:45:49,160
Speaker 3: what work it out means and turn it into make

1907
01:45:49,240 --> 01:45:53,920
Speaker 3: their products worse but more profitable. Covering Meta, Twitter, Google,

1908
01:45:54,040 --> 01:45:56,360
Speaker 3: open Ai, and other huge tech companies as if the

1909
01:45:56,400 --> 01:45:59,600
Speaker 3: products they make are remarkable and perfect is disrespectable to

1910
01:45:59,640 --> 01:46:03,840
Speaker 3: the reader intelligence and a disgusting abdication of responsibility, as

1911
01:46:03,920 --> 01:46:08,080
Speaker 3: their products, even when they're functional, are significantly worse, more annoying,

1912
01:46:08,160 --> 01:46:11,320
Speaker 3: more frustrating, and more convoluted than ever. And that's before

1913
01:46:11,360 --> 01:46:13,400
Speaker 3: you get to the ones like Facebook and Instagram that

1914
01:46:13,439 --> 01:46:17,160
Speaker 3: are out right broken. I don't give a shit if

1915
01:46:17,240 --> 01:46:19,240
Speaker 3: these people have raised a lot of money unless you

1916
01:46:19,320 --> 01:46:21,560
Speaker 3: use that as proof that something is fundamentally wrong with

1917
01:46:21,640 --> 01:46:24,920
Speaker 3: the tech industry. Meta making billions of dollars of profit

1918
01:46:25,000 --> 01:46:27,240
Speaker 3: is a sign that something is wrong with society, not

1919
01:46:27,400 --> 01:46:29,679
Speaker 3: proof that it's a good company or anything that should

1920
01:46:29,680 --> 01:46:32,800
Speaker 3: grant Mark Zuckerberg any kind of special treatment. Shove your

1921
01:46:32,880 --> 01:46:36,120
Speaker 3: chains up your ass, Mark open Ai being worth one

1922
01:46:36,200 --> 01:46:38,400
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty seven billion dollars for a company that

1923
01:46:38,439 --> 01:46:40,840
Speaker 3: burns five billion or more a year to make a

1924
01:46:40,840 --> 01:46:42,960
Speaker 3: product that destroys our environment. For a product yet to

1925
01:46:43,000 --> 01:46:45,200
Speaker 3: find any real meaning, isn't a sign that it should

1926
01:46:45,200 --> 01:46:48,560
Speaker 3: get more coverage or be taken more seriously. No, it

1927
01:46:48,600 --> 01:46:51,200
Speaker 3: should be a sign that something is broken, that something

1928
01:46:51,320 --> 01:46:55,160
Speaker 3: is wrong with society. Whatever you may feel about chat GPT,

1929
01:46:55,320 --> 01:46:58,000
Speaker 3: the coverage it received is outsized compared to its actual

1930
01:46:58,120 --> 01:47:00,360
Speaker 3: utility and the things built on top of it. And

1931
01:47:00,439 --> 01:47:02,599
Speaker 3: that's a direct result of a media industry that seems

1932
01:47:02,640 --> 01:47:05,960
Speaker 3: incapable of holding the powerful accountable or actually learning about

1933
01:47:05,960 --> 01:47:09,720
Speaker 3: the subject matter in question. It's time to accept that

1934
01:47:09,880 --> 01:47:12,880
Speaker 3: most people's digital life fucking sucks, as does the way

1935
01:47:12,960 --> 01:47:16,680
Speaker 3: we consume our information, and that there are people directly responsible.

1936
01:47:17,680 --> 01:47:20,000
Speaker 3: Be as angry as you want at Jeff Bezos, whose

1937
01:47:20,040 --> 01:47:23,320
Speaker 3: wealth and the inherent cruelty of Amazon's labor practices makes

1938
01:47:23,360 --> 01:47:26,360
Speaker 3: him an obvious target, but please don't forget Mark Zuckerberg,

1939
01:47:26,439 --> 01:47:29,800
Speaker 3: Elon Musk, Sander Peshai, Tim Cook, and every single other

1940
01:47:29,880 --> 01:47:33,200
Speaker 3: tech executive that has allowed our digital experiences to become

1941
01:47:33,320 --> 01:47:38,480
Speaker 3: fucked up through algorithms that we know nothing about. Similarly,

1942
01:47:38,800 --> 01:47:42,040
Speaker 3: governments have entirely failed to push through any legislation that

1943
01:47:42,160 --> 01:47:44,519
Speaker 3: might stop the raw, both in terms of dominance and

1944
01:47:44,600 --> 01:47:47,240
Speaker 3: a patness of algorithmic manipulation and the ways in which

1945
01:47:47,280 --> 01:47:51,280
Speaker 3: tach products exist with few real quality standards. We may have,

1946
01:47:51,439 --> 01:47:53,840
Speaker 3: at least for now, consumer standards for the majority of

1947
01:47:53,920 --> 01:47:57,000
Speaker 3: consumer goods, but software is left effectively untouched, which is

1948
01:47:57,040 --> 01:47:59,120
Speaker 3: why so much of our digital lives are such unfettered.

1949
01:47:59,160 --> 01:47:59,639
Speaker 4: Doug shit.

1950
01:48:00,600 --> 01:48:02,360
Speaker 3: And if you're hearing this and saying I'm being a

1951
01:48:02,400 --> 01:48:04,360
Speaker 3: hater or a pess and miss shut the fuck up,

1952
01:48:04,360 --> 01:48:06,680
Speaker 3: I'm tired of you. I'm so fucking tired of being

1953
01:48:06,720 --> 01:48:09,160
Speaker 3: told to calm down about this as we stare down

1954
01:48:09,439 --> 01:48:12,240
Speaker 3: the barrel of four years of authoritarianism built on top

1955
01:48:12,280 --> 01:48:14,519
Speaker 3: of the decay of our lives, both physical and digital,

1956
01:48:14,720 --> 01:48:16,840
Speaker 3: with a media ecosystem that doesn't do a great job

1957
01:48:16,880 --> 01:48:19,800
Speaker 3: explaining what's being done to the people in an ideologically

1958
01:48:19,880 --> 01:48:24,800
Speaker 3: consistent way. There's this extremely common assumption in the tech media,

1959
01:48:24,840 --> 01:48:27,719
Speaker 3: based on what I'm really not sure that these companies

1960
01:48:27,720 --> 01:48:29,320
Speaker 3: are all doing a good job, and that good job

1961
01:48:29,400 --> 01:48:31,400
Speaker 3: means having lots of users and making lots of money,

1962
01:48:31,600 --> 01:48:35,240
Speaker 3: and it drives tons of editorial decision making. If three

1963
01:48:35,360 --> 01:48:38,320
Speaker 3: quarters of the biggest car manufacturers were making record profits

1964
01:48:38,360 --> 01:48:39,920
Speaker 3: by making half of their cars or the break that

1965
01:48:40,040 --> 01:48:44,320
Speaker 3: sometimes didn't work, that'd be international news. Government inquiries would

1966
01:48:44,320 --> 01:48:46,240
Speaker 3: app but people will go to prison. And this isn't

1967
01:48:46,240 --> 01:48:50,040
Speaker 3: even conjecture. It actually happened after Volkswagen was caught deliberately

1968
01:48:50,080 --> 01:48:53,439
Speaker 3: programming its engines to only meet emission standards during laboratory testing.

1969
01:48:53,920 --> 01:48:56,960
Speaker 3: They were left to spew excessive pollution into the real world,

1970
01:48:57,479 --> 01:49:00,920
Speaker 3: but once lawmakers found out, they responded with civil and

1971
01:49:00,960 --> 01:49:04,080
Speaker 3: criminal action. The executives and engineers responsible were indicted, one

1972
01:49:04,280 --> 01:49:07,120
Speaker 3: received seven years in jail, and their former CEO is

1973
01:49:07,160 --> 01:49:09,439
Speaker 3: currently being tried in Germany and being indicted in the

1974
01:49:09,560 --> 01:49:13,080
Speaker 3: US too. And here we are in the tech industry.

1975
01:49:13,640 --> 01:49:18,519
Speaker 3: Facebook barely works, used to nigenocides and bully people and

1976
01:49:18,840 --> 01:49:21,920
Speaker 3: harassed teen girls. Pedophiles run rampant on there. There was

1977
01:49:21,920 --> 01:49:23,840
Speaker 3: a Wall Street Journal about story about it.

1978
01:49:24,400 --> 01:49:24,920
Speaker 4: They're fine.

1979
01:49:25,479 --> 01:49:28,320
Speaker 3: So much of the tech industry consumer software like Google

1980
01:49:28,360 --> 01:49:31,360
Speaker 3: or Facebook, Twitter, and even chat GBT and business software

1981
01:49:31,360 --> 01:49:32,880
Speaker 3: from companies like Microsoft and Slack.

1982
01:49:33,520 --> 01:49:37,200
Speaker 4: It sucks. It sucks, It's bad. You use it every day.

1983
01:49:37,240 --> 01:49:39,920
Speaker 3: You've been listening to be Ramble for fifty episodes, now

1984
01:49:40,000 --> 01:49:43,040
Speaker 3: you know what I'm talking about. It's everywhere, Yet the

1985
01:49:43,160 --> 01:49:45,680
Speaker 3: media covers it just like, eh, you know, it's just

1986
01:49:45,760 --> 01:49:49,320
Speaker 3: how things are mate now. Meta, by the admission of

1987
01:49:49,360 --> 01:49:52,320
Speaker 3: its own internal documents, makes products that are ruinous to

1988
01:49:52,360 --> 01:49:54,840
Speaker 3: the mental health of teenage girls, and it hasn't made

1989
01:49:54,880 --> 01:49:57,639
Speaker 3: any substantial changes as a result, nor has it received

1990
01:49:57,680 --> 01:50:01,000
Speaker 3: any significant pushback for fame to do so. Little bit

1991
01:50:01,040 --> 01:50:03,200
Speaker 3: of a side note here, big shout out to Jeff

1992
01:50:03,240 --> 01:50:04,800
Speaker 3: Horwitz and the rest of the Wall Street General people

1993
01:50:04,840 --> 01:50:07,200
Speaker 3: who did the Facebook files. There are our legacy media

1994
01:50:07,240 --> 01:50:11,400
Speaker 3: people doing a good job on this. Nevertheless, Meta exercises

1995
01:50:11,439 --> 01:50:15,080
Speaker 3: this reckless disregard for public safety, kind of like the

1996
01:50:15,200 --> 01:50:17,559
Speaker 3: auto industry in the sixties, and that was when Ralph

1997
01:50:17,640 --> 01:50:20,160
Speaker 3: Nader wrote Unsafe at Any Speed in his book. It

1998
01:50:20,280 --> 01:50:22,479
Speaker 3: actually brought about change. It led to the Department of

1999
01:50:22,520 --> 01:50:25,599
Speaker 3: Transportation and the passage of seatbelt laws in forty nine states,

2000
01:50:25,600 --> 01:50:27,320
Speaker 3: and a bunch of other things that can get overlooked.

2001
01:50:28,080 --> 01:50:30,960
Speaker 3: But the tech industry is somehow inoculated against any kind

2002
01:50:31,000 --> 01:50:33,400
Speaker 3: of public pressure or shame because it operates in this

2003
01:50:33,560 --> 01:50:35,800
Speaker 3: completely different world with this different rule book and a

2004
01:50:35,840 --> 01:50:39,080
Speaker 3: different criteria for success, as well as this completely different

2005
01:50:39,120 --> 01:50:56,480
Speaker 3: set of expectations. By allowing the market to become disconnected

2006
01:50:56,520 --> 01:50:58,720
Speaker 3: from the value it creates, we enable companies like I

2007
01:50:58,760 --> 01:51:01,800
Speaker 3: don't know, in Vidia that reduce the quality of their

2008
01:51:01,840 --> 01:51:04,320
Speaker 3: services they make more money for their g Force now service,

2009
01:51:04,439 --> 01:51:07,920
Speaker 3: or Facebook they can just destroy our political discourse so

2010
01:51:08,000 --> 01:51:10,960
Speaker 3: they can facilitate genocide in Myanmar, and then well, they

2011
01:51:11,040 --> 01:51:13,640
Speaker 3: get headlines about how good a CEO Mark Zuckerbig is

2012
01:51:13,720 --> 01:51:16,599
Speaker 3: and how cool his chains are, and how how everything's

2013
01:51:16,720 --> 01:51:18,639
Speaker 3: just fine with Facebook and they're making more money.

2014
01:51:18,800 --> 01:51:18,840
Speaker 1: No.

2015
01:51:19,120 --> 01:51:22,040
Speaker 4: No, I actually want to take a step back, though.

2016
01:51:22,040 --> 01:51:23,479
Speaker 4: I want to take a little bit of step back.

2017
01:51:23,560 --> 01:51:28,400
Speaker 3: I previously mentioned I said it twice now, Oh, Meta

2018
01:51:28,640 --> 01:51:32,799
Speaker 3: enables genocide and it destroys our politic our political discourse.

2019
01:51:32,840 --> 01:51:35,320
Speaker 3: I want to be clear when I say that everything

2020
01:51:35,439 --> 01:51:40,120
Speaker 3: is justified at Meta, I'm actually quoting their chief technology officer.

2021
01:51:40,760 --> 01:51:44,240
Speaker 3: That's quite literally what Andrew Bosworth said in an internal

2022
01:51:44,320 --> 01:51:46,800
Speaker 3: memo from twenty sixteen where he said that and I

2023
01:51:46,960 --> 01:51:52,479
Speaker 3: quote ahem, all the work Facebook does in growth is justified,

2024
01:51:52,880 --> 01:51:56,400
Speaker 3: even if that includes and I'm quoting him directly, somebody

2025
01:51:56,520 --> 01:52:01,559
Speaker 3: dying in a terrorist attack coordinated using Facebook's tool. Now,

2026
01:52:01,640 --> 01:52:04,200
Speaker 3: the mere mention of violent crime is enough to create

2027
01:52:04,520 --> 01:52:07,280
Speaker 3: dreams of articles questioning whether society is safe and whether

2028
01:52:07,320 --> 01:52:10,080
Speaker 3: we need more plastic in our walgreens. Yeah, our digital

2029
01:52:10,160 --> 01:52:13,920
Speaker 3: lives are this wasteland that people still discuss like a utopia,

2030
01:52:14,520 --> 01:52:17,280
Speaker 3: seriously putting aside the social networks. Have you visited a

2031
01:52:17,360 --> 01:52:20,160
Speaker 3: website on the phone recently? Have you tried to use

2032
01:52:20,240 --> 01:52:22,719
Speaker 3: a new app? Have you tried to buy something online

2033
01:52:22,840 --> 01:52:26,360
Speaker 3: starting with a Google search? Within those experiences, sis, has

2034
01:52:26,439 --> 01:52:29,080
Speaker 3: anything gone wrong? You know it, I know it has,

2035
01:52:29,800 --> 01:52:30,519
Speaker 3: you know it has.

2036
01:52:31,520 --> 01:52:35,639
Speaker 4: It's time to wake up. We the users of products.

2037
01:52:35,920 --> 01:52:38,200
Speaker 3: We're at war with the products we're using and the

2038
01:52:38,280 --> 01:52:41,080
Speaker 3: people that make them, and right now we are losing.

2039
01:52:41,840 --> 01:52:45,000
Speaker 3: The media must realign to fight for how things should be.

2040
01:52:45,560 --> 01:52:48,200
Speaker 3: This doesn't mean that they can't cover things positively, or

2041
01:52:48,240 --> 01:52:50,360
Speaker 3: give credit where credit is due, or be willing to

2042
01:52:50,439 --> 01:52:54,000
Speaker 3: accept that something could be something cool. But has the

2043
01:52:54,160 --> 01:52:56,880
Speaker 3: change is the evaluation of the products themselves, which have

2044
01:52:57,000 --> 01:52:58,720
Speaker 3: been allowed to decay to a level that has become

2045
01:52:58,760 --> 01:53:02,760
Speaker 3: at best annoying and at actively harmful for society. Our

2046
01:53:02,840 --> 01:53:06,120
Speaker 3: networks are rotten, Our information ecosystem is poisoned with its

2047
01:53:06,200 --> 01:53:10,160
Speaker 3: pure parts ideologically and strategically concussed. Our means of speaking

2048
01:53:10,240 --> 01:53:12,439
Speaker 3: to those that we love and making new connections are

2049
01:53:12,479 --> 01:53:15,600
Speaker 3: so constantly interfered with that personal choice and dignity is.

2050
01:53:15,560 --> 01:53:19,360
Speaker 4: All but removed. But there is hope, there really is.

2051
01:53:19,760 --> 01:53:21,960
Speaker 3: Those covering the tech industry right now have one of

2052
01:53:22,000 --> 01:53:24,800
Speaker 3: the most consequential jobs in journalism if they choose to

2053
01:53:24,880 --> 01:53:28,920
Speaker 3: fucking do it. Those willing to guide people through the wasteland,

2054
01:53:29,320 --> 01:53:31,920
Speaker 3: those willing to discuss what needs to change, how bad

2055
01:53:32,000 --> 01:53:35,040
Speaker 3: things have gone, and hold the powerful accountable and say

2056
01:53:35,080 --> 01:53:37,519
Speaker 3: what good might look like have the opportunity to push

2057
01:53:37,560 --> 01:53:39,720
Speaker 3: for a better future by spitting in the faces of

2058
01:53:39,800 --> 01:53:42,439
Speaker 3: those ruining it. I don't know where I sit, by

2059
01:53:42,479 --> 01:53:44,760
Speaker 3: the way, I don't know what to call myself. Am

2060
01:53:44,800 --> 01:53:47,360
Speaker 3: I legacy media? I got my start writing in print magazines.

2061
01:53:47,600 --> 01:53:49,520
Speaker 3: Am I an independent contractor?

2062
01:53:49,600 --> 01:53:51,479
Speaker 4: Am I an influencer? Am I content?

2063
01:53:51,760 --> 01:53:53,800
Speaker 3: I truly don't know, and I don't know over care.

2064
01:53:53,880 --> 01:53:55,920
Speaker 3: But all that I know is that I feel like

2065
01:53:56,040 --> 01:53:58,360
Speaker 3: I'm at war two and that we, if I can

2066
01:53:58,439 --> 01:54:00,920
Speaker 3: be considered part of the media, are at war with

2067
01:54:01,040 --> 01:54:03,160
Speaker 3: people that have changed the terms of innovation so that

2068
01:54:03,200 --> 01:54:07,200
Speaker 3: it's synonymous with value extraction. Technology is how I became

2069
01:54:07,240 --> 01:54:09,880
Speaker 3: a person, how I met my closest friends and loved ones.

2070
01:54:10,000 --> 01:54:11,720
Speaker 3: And without it, I wouldn't be able to write, I

2071
01:54:11,720 --> 01:54:12,400
Speaker 3: wouldn't be able to.

2072
01:54:12,400 --> 01:54:14,360
Speaker 4: Read this podcast. I wouldn't have got this podcast.

2073
01:54:15,240 --> 01:54:18,800
Speaker 3: And I feel this poison flowing through my veins as

2074
01:54:18,840 --> 01:54:21,000
Speaker 3: I see what these motherfuckers have done and what they're

2075
01:54:21,000 --> 01:54:25,519
Speaker 3: continuing to do, and I see how inconsistently and tipidly

2076
01:54:25,600 --> 01:54:30,160
Speaker 3: they're interrogated. Now is the time to talk bluntly about

2077
01:54:30,200 --> 01:54:34,440
Speaker 3: what is happening. The declining quality of tech products, the

2078
01:54:34,600 --> 01:54:38,440
Speaker 3: scourge of growth, hacking, the cancellrous growth at all cost mindset.

2079
01:54:38,640 --> 01:54:40,440
Speaker 3: These are all the things that need to be raised

2080
01:54:40,480 --> 01:54:44,120
Speaker 3: in every single piece, and judgments must be unrelenting.

2081
01:54:44,800 --> 01:54:45,760
Speaker 4: The companies will.

2082
01:54:45,640 --> 01:54:49,400
Speaker 3: Squeal ooh that they're being so unfairly treated by the

2083
01:54:49,520 --> 01:54:54,080
Speaker 3: biased legacy media. Oh oh save me, hey, Nelle Patel

2084
01:54:54,200 --> 01:54:56,800
Speaker 3: interview with Sandhar Pishchai. This is how you sounded when

2085
01:54:56,840 --> 01:54:59,520
Speaker 3: you handed him your phone. It was pathetic. They should

2086
01:54:59,560 --> 01:55:03,240
Speaker 3: be scared you, Nille. The powerful should be scared of

2087
01:55:03,320 --> 01:55:06,080
Speaker 3: the media. They shouldn't be sitting there sending letters to

2088
01:55:06,120 --> 01:55:10,320
Speaker 3: the editor like fucking customer support. No, they should see

2089
01:55:10,400 --> 01:55:12,960
Speaker 3: this podcast, they should see these news letters. They should

2090
01:55:13,000 --> 01:55:15,800
Speaker 3: see everything published by the tech media and go uh oh.

2091
01:55:17,000 --> 01:55:18,800
Speaker 4: And there can be good people. There can be good

2092
01:55:18,800 --> 01:55:20,160
Speaker 4: boys and girls than others.

2093
01:55:20,720 --> 01:55:23,040
Speaker 3: There can be plenty of people that make good products

2094
01:55:23,080 --> 01:55:25,760
Speaker 3: and get great press for it. But do you really

2095
01:55:25,920 --> 01:55:30,160
Speaker 3: think meta Google, Apple to an extent, frankly, do you

2096
01:55:30,240 --> 01:55:32,280
Speaker 3: think Amazon looks good right now? Do you think it's

2097
01:55:32,320 --> 01:55:34,280
Speaker 3: easy to find stuff? Or do you think it's slop

2098
01:55:34,360 --> 01:55:37,360
Speaker 3: full of more slop? Mark Zuckerberg said on an Earning

2099
01:55:37,440 --> 01:55:40,080
Speaker 3: Score the other day that he intends there to be

2100
01:55:40,160 --> 01:55:46,040
Speaker 3: an AI specific slop feed that should These are harmful things.

2101
01:55:46,080 --> 01:55:51,520
Speaker 3: This is pouring vants of oil into rivers and then

2102
01:55:51,680 --> 01:55:55,440
Speaker 3: getting told you're the best boy in town. These companies,

2103
01:55:55,440 --> 01:55:58,000
Speaker 3: they're poisoning the digital world and they must be held

2104
01:55:58,040 --> 01:55:59,640
Speaker 3: accountable for the damage they're causing.

2105
01:56:00,200 --> 01:56:01,320
Speaker 4: Readers are already aware.

2106
01:56:02,000 --> 01:56:05,000
Speaker 3: But ah, and this is really thanks to members of

2107
01:56:05,000 --> 01:56:08,040
Speaker 3: the media, by the way, the gaslighting themselves into believing that, oh,

2108
01:56:08,440 --> 01:56:10,960
Speaker 3: I just don't I don't keep up with technology. He

2109
01:56:11,080 --> 01:56:13,400
Speaker 3: is getting away from me. I'm not technical enough to

2110
01:56:13,520 --> 01:56:15,720
Speaker 3: use this. When the thing that they don't get that

2111
01:56:15,760 --> 01:56:17,879
Speaker 3: the average person doesn't get is that the tech industry

2112
01:56:17,920 --> 01:56:22,040
Speaker 3: has built legions of obfiscations, legions of legal tricks, and

2113
01:56:22,120 --> 01:56:26,280
Speaker 3: these horrible little user interface traps specifically made to trick

2114
01:56:26,360 --> 01:56:29,160
Speaker 3: you into doing things, to make the experience kind of

2115
01:56:29,240 --> 01:56:32,560
Speaker 3: subordinate to getting the money off of you. And I

2116
01:56:32,680 --> 01:56:35,480
Speaker 3: think that this is one of the biggest issues in society.

2117
01:56:35,560 --> 01:56:37,839
Speaker 3: And yes, of course I'm biased. I'm doing a podcast

2118
01:56:37,880 --> 01:56:41,480
Speaker 3: about tech, but for real, though, billions of people use smartphones,

2119
01:56:41,600 --> 01:56:43,920
Speaker 3: billions of people are on the computer every day. It's

2120
01:56:43,960 --> 01:56:48,480
Speaker 3: how we do everything. And it stinks. It stinks so bad.

2121
01:56:48,920 --> 01:56:51,480
Speaker 3: This is the rot economy. We're in the rot society.

2122
01:56:52,360 --> 01:56:55,640
Speaker 3: But things can change, and for them to change, it

2123
01:56:55,720 --> 01:56:58,360
Speaker 3: has to start with the information sources, and that starts

2124
01:56:58,480 --> 01:57:02,280
Speaker 3: with journalism. Work has already begun and will continue, but

2125
01:57:02,400 --> 01:57:04,360
Speaker 3: it must scale up and it must do so quickly.

2126
01:57:05,040 --> 01:57:08,160
Speaker 3: And you, the user, have the power learn to read

2127
01:57:08,160 --> 01:57:10,000
Speaker 3: a privacy policy and the link there is to the

2128
01:57:10,080 --> 01:57:12,440
Speaker 3: Washington Post. Yes, there are plenty of great reporters there.

2129
01:57:12,800 --> 01:57:15,440
Speaker 3: Fuck Bezos. You can move to Signal, which is an

2130
01:57:15,480 --> 01:57:18,520
Speaker 3: encrypted messaging app that works on just about everything. Get

2131
01:57:18,560 --> 01:57:20,560
Speaker 3: a service like delete me, and by the way I

2132
01:57:20,680 --> 01:57:22,360
Speaker 3: pay for it, I work from four years ago.

2133
01:57:22,560 --> 01:57:24,680
Speaker 4: I have no financial relationship with them.

2134
01:57:24,920 --> 01:57:27,040
Speaker 3: But they're great for removing you from data brokers.

2135
01:57:27,880 --> 01:57:29,200
Speaker 4: Molly White, who's a dear.

2136
01:57:29,040 --> 01:57:30,960
Speaker 3: Friend of mine and even better right who might remember

2137
01:57:31,200 --> 01:57:33,600
Speaker 3: from one of the early episodes about Wikipedia. She's also

2138
01:57:33,680 --> 01:57:36,000
Speaker 3: written this extremely long guide about what to do next

2139
01:57:36,040 --> 01:57:37,680
Speaker 3: that are linked to in the notes, and it runs

2140
01:57:37,720 --> 01:57:40,200
Speaker 3: through a ton of great things you can do unionization,

2141
01:57:40,400 --> 01:57:43,480
Speaker 3: finding your communities, dropping apps that collect and store sensitive data,

2142
01:57:43,520 --> 01:57:46,240
Speaker 3: and so on. I also heartily recommend Wired's guide to

2143
01:57:46,280 --> 01:57:48,640
Speaker 3: protecting yourself from government surveillance, which is linked in the

2144
01:57:48,680 --> 01:57:54,520
Speaker 3: show notes. Now, before we go, I want to leave

2145
01:57:54,520 --> 01:57:56,680
Speaker 3: you with something that I posted on November sixth on

2146
01:57:56,800 --> 01:57:57,280
Speaker 3: the Better.

2147
01:57:57,120 --> 01:57:57,880
Speaker 4: Offline redd app.

2148
01:57:59,800 --> 01:58:01,640
Speaker 3: The last twenty four hours of felt bleak and will

2149
01:58:01,720 --> 01:58:03,840
Speaker 3: likely feel more bleak as the months and years go on.

2150
01:58:04,160 --> 01:58:05,920
Speaker 3: It'll be easy to give in to doom, to assume

2151
01:58:05,960 --> 01:58:07,840
Speaker 3: the fight is lost, to assume that the bad guys

2152
01:58:07,880 --> 01:58:10,280
Speaker 3: have permanently won and there will never be any justice

2153
01:58:10,320 --> 01:58:14,080
Speaker 3: or joy again. Now's the time for solidarity to crystallize

2154
01:58:14,120 --> 01:58:16,400
Speaker 3: around ideas that matter, even if their a position in

2155
01:58:16,480 --> 01:58:19,200
Speaker 3: society is delayed. Even as the clouds darken and the

2156
01:58:19,280 --> 01:58:22,840
Speaker 3: storm's brew and the darkness feels all encompassing and suffocating.

2157
01:58:23,600 --> 01:58:26,000
Speaker 3: Reach out to those you love and don't just commiserate.

2158
01:58:26,200 --> 01:58:29,040
Speaker 3: Plan It doesn't have to be political, it doesn't even

2159
01:58:29,160 --> 01:58:31,879
Speaker 3: really have to matter, but shit on your fucking calendar.

2160
01:58:32,000 --> 01:58:34,440
Speaker 3: Keep yourself active and busy and if not distracted, at

2161
01:58:34,600 --> 01:58:36,160
Speaker 3: very least animated.

2162
01:58:36,760 --> 01:58:38,160
Speaker 4: Darkness feeds an idleness.

2163
01:58:38,360 --> 01:58:40,760
Speaker 3: Darkness feasts on a sense of failure and a sense

2164
01:58:40,800 --> 01:58:44,760
Speaker 3: of inability to make change. You don't know me very well,

2165
01:58:44,920 --> 01:58:47,280
Speaker 3: but know that I'm aware of the darkness and the

2166
01:58:47,400 --> 01:58:50,720
Speaker 3: sadness and the suffocation of when things feel overwhelming, give

2167
01:58:50,760 --> 01:58:53,160
Speaker 3: yourself some mercy and then the days to come. Don't

2168
01:58:53,240 --> 01:58:57,240
Speaker 3: castigate yourself a feeling gutted, Then keep going. I realize

2169
01:58:57,280 --> 01:58:59,160
Speaker 3: it's little solace to think, well, if I keep saying

2170
01:58:59,160 --> 01:59:01,440
Speaker 3: stuff out loud, things will get better. But I promise

2171
01:59:01,520 --> 01:59:04,840
Speaker 3: you doing so as an effect and actually matters. Keep

2172
01:59:04,880 --> 01:59:07,400
Speaker 3: talking about how fucked up things are, Make sure it's

2173
01:59:07,400 --> 01:59:09,560
Speaker 3: written down, make sure it's spoken cleanly, and with the

2174
01:59:09,680 --> 01:59:12,800
Speaker 3: rage and fire and piss and vinegar it deserves. Things

2175
01:59:12,840 --> 01:59:14,720
Speaker 3: will change for the better, even if it takes more

2176
01:59:14,760 --> 01:59:15,680
Speaker 3: time than it should.

2177
01:59:17,880 --> 01:59:18,120
Speaker 4: Look.

2178
01:59:19,160 --> 01:59:23,120
Speaker 3: I know I'm imperfect, emotional, off kill or at times

2179
01:59:23,200 --> 01:59:25,800
Speaker 3: I get emails saying that too angry.

2180
01:59:26,960 --> 01:59:28,160
Speaker 4: I'm sorry if it's ever triggered.

2181
01:59:28,160 --> 01:59:31,320
Speaker 3: You really do mean that. It's not intentional. I just

2182
01:59:31,440 --> 01:59:34,919
Speaker 3: I feel this in everything I do. I use technology

2183
01:59:34,960 --> 01:59:36,960
Speaker 3: all the time, and it is extremely annoying. But also

2184
01:59:37,360 --> 01:59:39,919
Speaker 3: I'm aware that I have privilege, and the more privilege

2185
01:59:39,920 --> 01:59:41,800
Speaker 3: you have with intake, the more you're able to escape

2186
01:59:41,800 --> 01:59:44,400
Speaker 3: the little things. Go and buy a cheap laptop today.

2187
01:59:44,520 --> 01:59:47,400
Speaker 3: Try and see what two hundred and three hundred.

2188
01:59:47,120 --> 01:59:47,840
Speaker 4: Dollars laptop is.

2189
01:59:47,840 --> 01:59:50,040
Speaker 3: It's slow, It's full of eighteen pop ups trying to

2190
01:59:50,040 --> 01:59:52,080
Speaker 3: sell you access to cloud storage, to shit that you'll

2191
01:59:52,120 --> 01:59:56,680
Speaker 3: never use, Tricking grannies and people who can't afford laptops,

2192
01:59:56,680 --> 01:59:59,760
Speaker 3: so people that just don't know. When I see this stuff,

2193
02:00:00,000 --> 02:00:02,320
Speaker 3: it enrages me, not just for me, but because I

2194
02:00:02,440 --> 02:00:04,920
Speaker 3: know that I'm at least lucky enough to know how

2195
02:00:04,920 --> 02:00:07,800
Speaker 3: to get around this shit. Spent most of my life online,

2196
02:00:08,000 --> 02:00:09,720
Speaker 3: spent most of my life playing with tech and how

2197
02:00:09,840 --> 02:00:14,080
Speaker 3: it works. And I know I have my tangents and

2198
02:00:14,200 --> 02:00:17,320
Speaker 3: my biases, but I wear them kind oft my heart,

2199
02:00:17,360 --> 02:00:20,280
Speaker 3: on my sleeve. I care about all this stuff in

2200
02:00:20,320 --> 02:00:22,160
Speaker 3: a way that might be a little different to some,

2201
02:00:23,120 --> 02:00:27,360
Speaker 3: and it's because I've I've watched an industry that really

2202
02:00:27,440 --> 02:00:30,480
Speaker 3: made me as a person, that allowed me to grow

2203
02:00:30,520 --> 02:00:34,320
Speaker 3: as a person, to actually meet people, to not feel

2204
02:00:34,360 --> 02:00:37,080
Speaker 3: as alone. And I imagine some of you feel like

2205
02:00:37,120 --> 02:00:40,680
Speaker 3: this too, and then watching what happens to it every day,

2206
02:00:41,120 --> 02:00:44,160
Speaker 3: watching the people who get so rich off of making

2207
02:00:44,200 --> 02:00:45,800
Speaker 3: it so much worse, and then seeing what happen on

2208
02:00:45,840 --> 02:00:48,840
Speaker 3: November fifth, and you can draw a line from it.

2209
02:00:50,160 --> 02:00:54,839
Speaker 3: People are scared, they're lost. Their lives are spent digitally,

2210
02:00:55,120 --> 02:00:59,800
Speaker 3: and your digital lives are just endless terrorism, endless harm.

2211
02:01:01,440 --> 02:01:03,600
Speaker 3: Some of you know your way around take so you

2212
02:01:03,640 --> 02:01:05,880
Speaker 3: can escape some of it, but it's impossible to escape

2213
02:01:05,920 --> 02:01:09,400
Speaker 3: all of it. Try meeting people these days, you can't.

2214
02:01:09,520 --> 02:01:13,080
Speaker 3: Everything is online, and everything online, everything on your phone

2215
02:01:13,160 --> 02:01:17,000
Speaker 3: is mitigated and interfered with. It's an assault on your senses,

2216
02:01:17,040 --> 02:01:21,720
Speaker 3: one deprived of dignity. And I see the people doing

2217
02:01:21,840 --> 02:01:25,480
Speaker 3: this and it feels me full of fucking rage, and

2218
02:01:25,600 --> 02:01:29,080
Speaker 3: it makes me angry for you and for me, for

2219
02:01:29,240 --> 02:01:31,680
Speaker 3: my son growing up, and what will probably be a

2220
02:01:31,800 --> 02:01:34,640
Speaker 3: worse world for my friends and loved ones who are

2221
02:01:34,720 --> 02:01:37,880
Speaker 3: harder to see, harder to speak to, whose lives too

2222
02:01:38,000 --> 02:01:41,440
Speaker 3: are interfered with. And there are the millions and millions

2223
02:01:41,480 --> 02:01:44,960
Speaker 3: of people who have no fucking idea it's happening, that

2224
02:01:45,160 --> 02:01:48,600
Speaker 3: just exist in this swill, in this active digital terrorism,

2225
02:01:49,000 --> 02:01:55,160
Speaker 3: poked and prodded and nagged and notified constantly, And I

2226
02:01:55,880 --> 02:01:58,640
Speaker 3: don't want Early on in this I got a message saying,

2227
02:01:58,760 --> 02:02:00,840
Speaker 3: don't tell people to be angry, and I stick by that.

2228
02:02:02,320 --> 02:02:04,760
Speaker 3: But I'm not going to hide that I am. I'm

2229
02:02:04,800 --> 02:02:06,360
Speaker 3: not going to hide the pain I feel. I'm not

2230
02:02:06,400 --> 02:02:08,600
Speaker 3: going to hide the pain I feel seeing this shit happen.

2231
02:02:10,960 --> 02:02:15,120
Speaker 3: And I've watched this thing that I love technology, really

2232
02:02:15,280 --> 02:02:17,120
Speaker 3: do love tech, I really do deeply.

2233
02:02:17,600 --> 02:02:18,200
Speaker 4: I've watched it.

2234
02:02:18,560 --> 02:02:23,160
Speaker 3: Corrupted and broken, and the people breaking it. They don't

2235
02:02:23,280 --> 02:02:25,760
Speaker 3: just make billions of dollars. They get articles in, they

2236
02:02:25,800 --> 02:02:29,840
Speaker 3: get interviewed on the news. Mark Zuckerbug, he wears a

2237
02:02:29,960 --> 02:02:32,320
Speaker 3: chain and there's articles about how cool he is. He

2238
02:02:32,400 --> 02:02:34,920
Speaker 3: should be in fucking prison. He should be on a

2239
02:02:35,000 --> 02:02:37,480
Speaker 3: prison on a boat that just circles the world, and

2240
02:02:37,600 --> 02:02:40,080
Speaker 3: he shouldn't have air conditioning or heat depending on how

2241
02:02:40,120 --> 02:02:43,080
Speaker 3: the weather is. And I know that I'm kind of

2242
02:02:43,280 --> 02:02:48,160
Speaker 3: errand and again tons of tangents. But look, the reason

2243
02:02:48,200 --> 02:02:50,520
Speaker 3: I'm like this is because I really care. And I

2244
02:02:50,560 --> 02:02:53,280
Speaker 3: think caring. I think being angry at the things that

2245
02:02:53,360 --> 02:02:57,800
Speaker 3: actually matter and giving context as a result. I think

2246
02:02:57,840 --> 02:03:01,120
Speaker 3: that's deeply valuable. And I realize I do for to

2247
02:03:01,160 --> 02:03:03,000
Speaker 3: handle a lot, but it really.

2248
02:03:02,960 --> 02:03:03,560
Speaker 4: Is because I care.

2249
02:03:04,120 --> 02:03:06,360
Speaker 3: I care about you, I care about the subject matter.

2250
02:03:07,600 --> 02:03:10,440
Speaker 3: I'm so grateful and so honored that you spend your

2251
02:03:10,440 --> 02:03:12,080
Speaker 3: time listening to me every week, and I hope you'll

2252
02:03:12,080 --> 02:03:22,640
Speaker 3: continue to do so because I'm not going anywhere. Thank

2253
02:03:22,680 --> 02:03:25,360
Speaker 3: you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer

2254
02:03:25,440 --> 02:03:28,240
Speaker 3: of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You can

2255
02:03:28,320 --> 02:03:30,640
Speaker 3: check out more of his music and audio projects at

2256
02:03:30,720 --> 02:03:32,120
Speaker 3: Matasowski dot com.

2257
02:03:32,520 --> 02:03:35,880
Speaker 4: M A T T O s O W s ki

2258
02:03:36,280 --> 02:03:36,720
Speaker 4: dot com.

2259
02:03:37,480 --> 02:03:39,760
Speaker 3: You can email me at easy at Better Offline dot

2260
02:03:39,800 --> 02:03:42,040
Speaker 3: com or visit Better Offline dot com to find more

2261
02:03:42,080 --> 02:03:45,440
Speaker 3: podcast links and of course, my newsletter. I also really

2262
02:03:45,480 --> 02:03:47,680
Speaker 3: recommend you go to chat dot Where's youreed dot at

2263
02:03:47,800 --> 02:03:50,200
Speaker 3: to visit the discord, and go to our slash Better

2264
02:03:50,240 --> 02:03:53,400
Speaker 3: Offline to check out our reddit. Thank you so much

2265
02:03:53,480 --> 02:03:54,240
Speaker 3: for listening.

2266
02:03:54,800 --> 02:03:57,480
Speaker 5: Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For

2267
02:03:57,640 --> 02:04:00,800
Speaker 5: more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia

2268
02:04:00,840 --> 02:04:03,680
Speaker 5: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

2269
02:04:03,720 --> 02:04:06,160
Speaker 5: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.