WEBVTT - Behind the Bastards Presents: Better Offline 0:00:02.120 --> 0:00:03.279 All media. 0:00:04.040 --> 0:00:06.800 Hey everybody, Robert Gosh darn Evans for you here and 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:08.720 you know, but for the end of the year, to 0:00:08.800 --> 0:00:11.879 celebrate and stuff, we've got our normal behind the Bastards 0:00:11.920 --> 0:00:14.760 content coming to you. Do not worry, that's all going 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:17.720 to continue as normal. But we also wanted to highlight 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:20.440 some other shows in our network, most of which are 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:23.800 new and launched this year. We've got some compilation best 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:27.040 of episodes that we think the Bastard's audience is going 0:00:27.080 --> 0:00:29.680 to love, and we're delivering to you now in a 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:33.640 special format with fewer ads. So today you're going to 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:38.000 hear some episodes of Better Offline, ed Zytron's excellent critical 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:41.440 tech industry podcast, which has taken the tech world by storm. 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:43.800 And I'm excited for you to learn about the man 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:47.640 who killed Google Search, about Sam Altman, the CEO of 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:51.600 Open Ai, and why he's dangerous for society, and what 0:00:51.760 --> 0:00:54.160 ed Zitron calls the rot economy. 0:00:54.960 --> 0:01:09.880 Hello, and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host, that Zichron, And. 0:01:09.880 --> 0:01:11.880 In the next two episodes, I'm. 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:13.640 Going to tell you the names some of the people 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:17.160 responsible for destroying the Internet. And I'm going to start 0:01:17.160 --> 0:01:21.120 on February fifth, twenty nineteen, when Ben Gomes, Google's former 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:23.680 head of Search, well, he had a problem. 0:01:23.920 --> 0:01:25.000 Jerry Dishler, then. 0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:27.280 The VP and GM of Ads at Google, and Shiv 0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:30.520 Van Carterman, then the VP of Engineering, Search and Ads 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:33.679 on Google Properties, had called something called a code yellow 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:36.280 for search revenue due to and I quote emails that 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:39.480 came out as part of Google's anti trust hearing steady 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:42.760 weakness in the daily numbers, and a likeliness that it 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:46.520 would end the quarter significantly behind in metrics. That kind 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:50.720 of unclear for those unfamiliar with Google's internal kind of 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:54.840 scientology esque jargon, which means most people, let me explain, 0:01:55.200 --> 0:01:58.120 a code yellow isn't a terrible need to piss or 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:02.120 some sort of crisis of moderate severity. The yellow, according 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:05.320 to Stephen Levy's Tell All book about Google, refers to 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:07.560 and I promise this is not a joke, the color 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:10.120 of a tank top that a former VP of Engineering 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:12.280 called Wayne Rosling used to wear during his time at 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:16.880 the company. It's essentially the equivalent of deafcom one and activates, 0:02:16.880 --> 0:02:20.280 as Levy explained, a war room like situation where workers 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:22.639 are pulled from their desks and into a conference room 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:25.440 where they tackle the problem as a top priority. Any 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:30.119 other projects or concerns are sidelined and independently. I've heard 0:02:30.120 --> 0:02:32.800 there are other colors like purple. I'm not going to 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:35.120 get into that, though, it's quite boring and irrelevant to 0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:38.800 this situation. In emails released as part of the Department 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:42.400 of Justices antitrust case against Google, as I previously mentioned, 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:46.360 Dishla laid out several contributing factors. Search query growth was 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:50.760 significantly behind forecast, the timing of revenue launches was significantly behind, 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:54.399 and he had this vague worry that several advertiser specific 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:57.720 and sector weaknesses existed in search. Now I want to 0:02:57.760 --> 0:03:00.600 cover something because I've messed up, and I've really want. 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:01.120 To be clear about this. 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:05.120 I've previously and erroneously referred to the code yellow as 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:07.560 something that Gomes raised as a means of calling attention 0:03:07.840 --> 0:03:10.280 to the proximity of Google's ad side getting a little 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:14.239 too close to Search. I'm afraid the truth is extremely 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:17.920 depressing and so much grimmar. The code yellow was actually 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:21.040 the rumble of the goddamn rot economy, with Google's revenue 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:24.000 arms sounding the alarm that its golden goose wasn't laying 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:28.239 enough eggs. Gomes, a Googler of nineteen years that basically 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:31.680 built the foundation of modern search engines, should go down 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:34.079 as one of the few people in tech that actually 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:37.440 fought for an actual principle, and he was destroyed by 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:41.480 a guy called Prabaka Ragavan, a computer scientist class traitor 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:45.720 that sided with the management consultancy sect. More confusingly, one 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:49.040 of their problems was that there was insufficient growth in queries, 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:53.480 as in the amount of things that people were asking Google. 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:56.520 It's a bit like if Ford decided that things were 0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:59.480 going poorly because their drivers weren't putting enough goddamn miles 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:03.680 on their truck. This whole story has personally upset me, 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:05.200 and I think you're going to hear that in this 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:08.080 but going through these emails is. 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:10.800 Just very depressing. Anyway. 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:14.800 A few days beforehand, on February first, twenty nineteen, Kristen 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:19.400 gil then Google's VP Business Finance Officer, had emailed Shashi Thakker, 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:22.960 then Google's VP of Engineering Search and Discover, saying that 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:25.599 the ADS team had been considering a code yellow to 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:30.720 close the search gap it was seeing, vaguely referring to 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:34.279 how critical that growth was to an unnamed company plan. 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:37.680 To be clear, this email was in response to Thaker 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:40.360 stating that there is nothing that the search team could 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:42.719 do to operate at the fidelity of growth that the 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:46.359 Ads department had demanded. Shashi forward did the email to 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:49.080 Gomes asking if there's any way to discuss this with 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:52.680 san Dar Pashai, Google CEO, and declared that there was 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:55.040 no way he would sign up for a high fidelity 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:59.159 business metric for daily active users on search. Thakkh also 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:02.200 said something that I've been thinking about constantly since I 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:05.720 read these emails, that there was a good reason that 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:10.000 Google's founders separated search from ads. I want you to 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:14.520 remember that line for later. A day later, on February second, 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:18.440 twenty nineteen, Thacker and Gomes shared their anxieties with Nick Fox, 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:21.440 a vice president of Search and Google assistant, entering a 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:24.600 multiple day long debate about Google's some lust for growth. 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:26.600 This thread is. 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:29.279 A dark window into the world of growth focus tech, 0:05:29.640 --> 0:05:32.480 where the Kherr listed the multiple points of disconnection between 0:05:32.520 --> 0:05:36.239 ads and search, discussing how the search team wasn't able 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:39.919 to finally optimize engagement on Google without hacking it, a 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:43.559 term that means effectively tricking users into spending more time 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:45.840 on a site, and that doing so would lead them 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:50.360 to and I quote, abandoned work on efficient journeys. In 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:52.839 one email, Fox adds that there was a pretty big 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:55.920 disconnect between what finance and ads wants and what Search 0:05:56.040 --> 0:06:01.000 was doing. Every part of this story pisses me off 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:05.040 so much. When Gomes pushed back on the multiple requests 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:07.240 for growth, Fox added that all three of them were 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:09.919 responsible for Search and that Search was and again I 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:13.279 quote the revenue engine of the company, and that bartering 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:15.839 with the ads and finance teams was now potentially the 0:06:15.880 --> 0:06:19.839 new reality of their jobs. On February sixth, twenty nineteen, 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:22.760 Gomes said that he believed that Search was getting too 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:25.600 close to the money and ended his email by saying 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:28.080 that he was concerned that growth is all that Google 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:32.599 was thinking about. On March twenty second, twenty nineteen, Google 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:36.400 VP of Product Management Darshan Cantac would declare the end 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:40.520 of the Code Yellow. The thread mostly consisted of congratulatory 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:44.239 emails until Gomes made the mistake of responding congratulating everyone, 0:06:44.400 --> 0:06:46.520 saying that the plans architected as part of the Code 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:51.920 Yellow would do well throughout the year, enter probaka Ragavan, 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:55.360 then Google's head of Ads and the true mastermind behind 0:06:55.360 --> 0:06:58.240 the code yellow, who would respond curtly saying that the 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:02.360 current revenue targets were addressed by heroic RPM engineering and 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:06.760 that the core query softness continued without mitigation, a very 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:09.920 clunky way of saying that despite these changes, query growth 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:12.120 was not happening at the rate he needed it to. 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:16.320 A day later, Gomes emailed Fox Andhaker an email he 0:07:16.360 --> 0:07:19.480 intended to center Ragavan. He led by saying that he 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:23.040 was annoyed both personally and on behalf of the search team. 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:27.280 In this very long email, he explained in arduous detail 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:31.000 how one might increase engagement with Google Search, but specifically 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:34.600 added that they could increase queries quite easily in the 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:38.239 short term, but only in user negative ways, like turning 0:07:38.280 --> 0:07:42.520 off spell correction or ranking improvements, or placing refinements effectively 0:07:42.560 --> 0:07:45.400 labels all over the page, adding that it was possible 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:47.600 that there are trade offs here between the different kinds 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:50.600 of user negativity caused by engagement hacking, and that he 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:55.000 was deeply, deeply uncomfortable with this. He also added that 0:07:55.040 --> 0:07:58.120 this was the reason he didn't believe that queries, as 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:01.680 in the amount of the things with people searching on Google, 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:04.320 were a good metric to measure search, and that the 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:07.800 best defense against the weaknesses of queries was to create 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:10.840 compelling user experiences that make users want to come back. 0:08:11.360 --> 0:08:13.600 Crazy idea there, what if the product was good? 0:08:14.440 --> 0:08:19.160 Not good enough of probaca, So little bit of history 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:21.840 about Google here. They regularly throughout the year do Core 0:08:21.960 --> 0:08:25.200 updates to Search. These are updates that change the algorithm. 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:27.480 Let's say, okay, we're going to suppress this kind of thing, 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:30.600 we can elevate this kind of thing. And they are 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:35.240 actually the reason that search changes. It's why certain sites 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:38.120 suddenly disappear or reappear. It's why sites get a ton 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:40.360 of traffic, some don't get any, and so on and 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:42.960 so forth. But they do a lot of them. The 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:45.240 one that's really interesting and a little bastard and I 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:48.320 went and looked through pretty much the last decade of these. 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:50.840 The one that stood out to me was the March 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:53.720 twenty nineteen Core update to Search, which happened about a 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:56.560 week before the end of the code yellow, meaning that 0:08:56.640 --> 0:08:59.760 it's very likely that this was a result of Prabaker's 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:03.000 blome shit. So This was expected to be one of 0:09:03.040 --> 0:09:05.440 the largest updates to search in a very long time, 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:09.000 and I'm quoting Search Engine Journal there. Yet when it launched, 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:12.679 many found that the update mostly rolled back changes and 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:15.679 traffic was increasing to sites that had been suppressed by 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:19.239 previous updates, like Google Search's Penguin update from twenty twelve 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:22.320 that specifically targeted spami search results. 0:09:23.600 --> 0:09:24.520 There were others that were. 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:26.880 Seeing traffic as well from an update that happened on 0:09:26.920 --> 0:09:29.400 the first of August twenty eighteen that was a few 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:33.880 months after Gomes became head of Search. While I'm guessing here, 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:36.160 I really don't know. I do not work for Google. 0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:37.240 I do not have friends there. 0:09:38.040 --> 0:09:41.160 I think the timing of the March twenty nineteen Core update, 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:44.520 along with the traffic increases the previously suppressed sites that 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:48.600 one hundred percent were spamy SEO nonsense. I think these 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:51.160 suggest that Google's response to the Coyello was to roll 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:54.120 back changes that were made to maintain the quality of search. 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:58.360 A few months later, in May twenty nineteen, Google would 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:00.560 roll out a redesign of how ads we shown on 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:05.319 Google Search, specifically on mobile, replacing the bright green ad 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:08.200 label and URL color on ads with a tiny, little, 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:11.120 bolded black note that said ad in the smallest font 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:14.240 you could possibly put there, with the link looking otherwise 0:10:14.280 --> 0:10:18.120 identical to a regular search link. I guess that's how 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:20.040 they managed to start hating their numbers. 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:20.280 Huh. 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:23.280 And then in January twenty twenty, Google would bring this 0:10:23.360 --> 0:10:26.319 change to desktop, and the vergess John Porter would suggest 0:10:26.520 --> 0:10:29.440 that it made Google's ads look just like search results 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:35.720 now awesome. Five months later, a little over a year 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:39.720 after the code yellow situation, Google would make Probakar Ragavan 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:43.320 the head of Google Search, with Jerry Dishler taking his 0:10:43.400 --> 0:10:47.360 place as the head of Ads. After nearly twenty years 0:10:47.400 --> 0:10:50.120 of building Google Search, Gomes would be relegated to the 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:53.760 SVP of Education at Google. Domes, who was a critical 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:56.800 part of the original team that made Google Search work, 0:10:57.000 --> 0:10:59.760 who has been credited with establishing the culture of the 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:02.960 world's largest and most important search engine, was chased out 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:06.800 by a growth hungry managerial type several of them, actually 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:11.560 led by Probagar Ragavan, a management consultant wearing an engineer costume. 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:14.480 As a side note, by the way, I use the 0:11:14.559 --> 0:11:18.120 term management consultant there as a pejorative. While he exhibits 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:21.400 all the same bean counting morally young guided behaviors of 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:24.199 a management consultant. From what I can tell, Ragavan has 0:11:24.240 --> 0:11:26.680 never actually worked in that particular sector of the economy. 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:31.160 But you know who has. San Dhar Pashai, the CEO. 0:11:30.880 --> 0:11:34.520 Of Google, who previously worked at McKinsey, arguably the most 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:37.959 morally abhorrent company that's ever existed, having played roles both 0:11:38.000 --> 0:11:40.240 in the two thousand and eight financial crisis, where it 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:42.800 encouraged banks to load up on debt and floored mortgage 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:46.160 backed securities, and the ongoing opiord crisis, where it effectively 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:48.960 advised Perdue Farmer on how to growth hack sales of 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:54.200 oxy content, an extremely addictive painkiller. McKinsey has paid nearly 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:56.920 one billion dollars over several settlements due to its work 0:11:56.920 --> 0:12:00.720 with Perdue. But I'm getting sidetracked, but one last point. 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:04.600 McKinsey is actively anti labor. When a company brings in 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:08.160 a McKinsey consultant, they're often there to advise on how 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:12.640 to cut costs, which inevitably means layoffs and outsourcing. McKinsey 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:16.199 is to the middle class what fleshy in bacteria. 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:16.800 Is the skin. 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:29.559 But back to the emails, which are a stark example 0:12:29.800 --> 0:12:33.720 of the monstrous, disgusting rot economy, the growth that all 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:37.040 costs mindset that's dominating the tech ecosystem. And if you 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:39.840 take one thing away from this episode, I want it 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:43.520 to be the name Prabakar Ragavan and an understanding that 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:46.760 there are people responsible for the current state of the Internet. 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:50.560 These emails, which I really encourage you to look up 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:52.640 and if you go to where's youreaed dot at, you'll 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:55.959 be able to see a newslet that has links to them. Well, 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:59.360 these emails tell a dramatic story about how Google's finance 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:02.360 and advertising teams, led by Ragavan, with the blessing of 0:13:02.480 --> 0:13:06.880 CEO Sandhar Pashai, the McKinsey guy, actively worked to make 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:10.520 Google worse to make the company more money. This is 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:13.199 exactly what I mean when I talk about the economy, 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:17.000 an illogical, product destroying mindset that turns products you love 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:20.680 into torturous, frustrating, quasi tools that require you to fight 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:24.200 the company to get the thing you want. Ben Gomes 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:27.480 was instrumental in making search work both as a product 0:13:27.559 --> 0:13:30.720 and a business. He joined the company in nineteen ninety nine, 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:33.880 a time long before Google established dominance in the field, 0:13:34.120 --> 0:13:36.880 and the same year when Larry Page and Serge Britain 0:13:36.960 --> 0:13:40.000 tried to sell the company to Excite for one million dollars, 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:43.280 only to walk away after Vinnard Coosler and Excite investor 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:46.440 and co founder of some Microsystems that's now a VC 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:48.600 who tried to stop people going to a beach in 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:50.960 Half Moon Bay, Well, he tried to low ball them 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:53.800 with a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars offer, also 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:56.920 known as a one hundred square foot apartment in San Francisco. 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:00.400 In an interview with Fast Companies Harry mc crack him 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:03.920 from twenty eighteen, Gomes frayed Google's challenge as taking the 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:06.760 page erank algorithm from one machine to a whole bunch 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:09.840 of machines and they weren't very good machines at the time. 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:14.160 Despite his impact and tenure, Gomes had only been made 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:16.720 head of Search in the middle of twenty eighteen after 0:14:16.800 --> 0:14:19.880 John Gianderia moved to Apple to work on its machine 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:21.160 learning in AR strategy. 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:22.720 Gomes had been. 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:25.880 Described as Google's searches are beloved for his ability to 0:14:25.920 --> 0:14:32.080 communicate across Google's many quite decentralized departments. Every single article 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:35.600 I've read about Gomes and his tenure at Google spoke 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:38.600 of a man deeply ingrained in the foundation of one 0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:41.560 of the most important technologies ever made, a man who 0:14:41.560 --> 0:14:44.360 had dedicated decades to maintaining a product with a and 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:48.200 I quote Gomes here guiding light of serving the user 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:50.760 and using technology to do that. 0:14:51.520 --> 0:14:53.520 And when finally given the keys. 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:56.880 To the kingdom, the ability to elevate Google Search even further, 0:14:57.160 --> 0:14:59.960 he was rap fucked by a series of rotten careersts 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:04.080 trying to please Wall Street, led by Probakar Ragavan. Do 0:15:04.120 --> 0:15:06.680 you want to know what Provakar Ragavan's old job was? 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:09.400 We Probacar Ragavan, the new head of Google Search, the 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:12.360 guy that ran Google Search, that runs Google Search right now, 0:15:12.360 --> 0:15:15.080 that is running a Google Search into the goddamn ground. 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:17.000 Do you want to know what his job was? His 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:20.240 job before Google, He was the head of search for 0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:23.560 god damn Yahoo from two thousand and five through two 0:15:23.640 --> 0:15:27.280 thy and twelve when he joined the company. When Probakar 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:30.840 Ragavan took over Yahoo Search, they held a thirty point 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:34.720 four percent market share, not far from Google's own thirty 0:15:34.760 --> 0:15:38.120 six point nine percent, and miles ahead of the fifteen 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:42.200 point seven percent that Microsoft's MSN Search had. By May 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:45.280 twenty twelve, Yahoo was down to just thirteen point four 0:15:45.320 --> 0:15:48.640 percent and had shrunk for the previous nine consecutive months 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:51.720 and was being beaten by even the newly released Bing. 0:15:52.680 --> 0:15:55.520 That same year, Yahoo had the largest layoffs in its 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:59.080 corporate history, shedding two thousand employees, or fourteen percent of 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:03.000 its overall work. For the man who deposed Ben Gomes, 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:06.359 someone who worked on Google Search from its very beginnings, 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:08.680 was so shit at his job that in two thousand 0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:11.360 and nine, Yahoo effectively threw in the towel on its 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:15.200 own search tech, instead choosing to license Being's engine in 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:18.000 a ten year deal. If we take a long view 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:22.040 of things, this likely precipitated the overall decline of the company, 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:24.320 which went from being worth one hundred and twenty five 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:27.000 billion dollars at the peak of the dot com boom 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:29.560 to being sold to Verizon for four point eight billion 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:32.920 dollars in twenty seventeen, which is roughly a three thousand 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:37.000 square foot apartment in San Francisco. With Search no longer 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:40.400 a priority in making less money for the company, Yahoo 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:42.920 decided to pivot into web two point zero and original 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:46.000 content making sum beats that paid off, but far far 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:48.880 too many that did not. It spent one point one 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:52.640 billion dollars on Tumblr in twenty thirteen, only for Verizon 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:55.040 to sell it for just three million dollars in twenty nineteen. 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:57.800 It put Zimbra in two thousand and seven, ostensibly to 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:01.080 complete with the new Google Apps productivity, only to sell 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:03.880 it for a reported fraction of the original purchase price 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:06.879 to VMware a few years later. That's not his fault, 0:17:07.960 --> 0:17:11.439 but nevertheless, Yahoo was a company without a mission, a purpose, 0:17:11.520 --> 0:17:15.280 or an objective. Nobody, and I'll speculate even those leading 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:19.000 the company really knew what it was or what it did. Anyway, 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:21.400 just a big shout out right now to Kura Swisher, 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:24.480 who referred to Prabaka as well respected. When he moved 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:29.120 from Yahoo to Google. He absolutely nailed at Kara bang 0:17:29.160 --> 0:17:33.040 up job. In an interview with zdnets Dan Farber from 0:17:33.080 --> 0:17:36.119 two thousand and five, Ragavan spoke of his intent to 0:17:36.160 --> 0:17:39.679 align the commercial incentives of a billion content providers with 0:17:39.800 --> 0:17:42.560 social good intent while at Yahoo, and his eagerness to 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:47.200 inspire the audience to give more data. What anyway before that, 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:50.840 it's It's actually hard to find out exactly what Ragavan did, 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:54.320 though according to zd net, he spent fourteen years doing 0:17:54.400 --> 0:18:00.679 search and data mining research ibm M. In April twenty eleven, 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:03.199 The Guardian ran an interview with Ragavan that called him 0:18:03.280 --> 0:18:07.840 Yahoo's secret weapon, describing his plan to make rigorous scientific 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:11.920 research and practice to inform Yahoo's business from email to advertising, 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:15.359 and how under then CEO Carol Bart's the focus had 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:19.000 shifted to the direct development of new products. It speaks 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:23.679 of Ragavan's scientific approach and his steady process based logic 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:26.920 to innovation that is very different to the common perception 0:18:27.160 --> 0:18:30.160 the ideas and development are more about luck and spontaneity. 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:32.600 A sentence that I'm only reading to you because I 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:34.919 really need you to hear how stupid it sounds and 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:39.480 how specious some of the tech press used to be. Frankly, 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:42.800 this entire article is ridiculous, so utterly vacuous that I'm 0:18:42.840 --> 0:18:45.399 actually astonished. I don't want to name the reporter. I 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:50.000 feel bad. What about Ragavan's career made this feel right? 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:53.399 How has nobody connected these thoughts before? I have a 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:55.560 day job. I run a PR firm. I am a 0:18:55.600 --> 0:19:01.000 blogger with a podcast, and I'm the one who said, yeah, okay, 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:03.560 drag Killer is now the CEO of the blood Bank. 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:06.520 Nobody saw this. Nobody saw this at the time. I 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:09.040 just feel a bit crazy. I feel a bit crazy. 0:19:09.080 --> 0:19:12.320 But to be clear, this was something written several years 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:16.439 after Yahoo had licensed its search technology to Microsoft in 0:19:16.480 --> 0:19:20.080 a financial deal that the next CEO, Marissa Maya, who 0:19:20.080 --> 0:19:24.320 replaced Barts, was still angry about for years. Ragavan's reign 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:27.080 as what zd net referred to as the search Master 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:31.800 was one so successful that it ended up being replaced 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:34.040 by a search engine that not a single person in 0:19:34.080 --> 0:19:38.800 the world enjoys saying out loud. The Guardian article ran 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:42.960 exactly one year before dramatic layoffs at Yahoo that involved 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:46.320 firing entire divisions worth of people, and four months before 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:49.480 Carol Barts would be fired by telephone by then chairman 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:53.679 Roy Bostock. Her replacement, Scott Thompson, who previously served as 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:56.199 president of PayPal, would last a whole five months in 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:59.800 the role before he was replaced by former Google executive 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:02.480 a Mayor, in part because it emerged he lied on 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:07.240 his resume about having a computer science degree. Hey brabaka, 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:23.879 did you not notice that anyway, whatever Barts joined Yahoo 0:20:24.000 --> 0:20:26.320 in two thousand and nine, so about four years into 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:30.960 Braba Kha's bign of terror, I guess, and she joined 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:33.880 in the aftermath of its previous CEO, Jerry Yang, refusing 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:37.080 to sell the company to Microsoft for forty five billion dollars. 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:39.679 In her first year, she laid off hundreds of people 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:43.000 and struck a deal that I've mentioned before to power 0:20:43.080 --> 0:20:46.520 Yahoo Search using Microsoft's being search engine tech, with Microsoft 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:48.920 paying Yahoo eighty eight percent of the revenue it gained 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:51.400 from searches, a deal that made Ya who are couple 0:20:51.440 --> 0:20:53.560 hundred million dollars for handing over the keys and the 0:20:53.600 --> 0:20:57.439 tech to its most high traffic platform. As I previously stated, 0:20:57.440 --> 0:21:01.080 when Brabakar Ragavan, Yahoo's secret weapon was doing his work, 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:04.080 Yahoo's search was so valuable that it was replaced by 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:08.520 Bing its sole value. In fact, I mean, maybe I'm 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:09.560 being a little unfair. 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:10.840 There's a way of. 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:13.639 Looking at this that you could say that Yahoo's entire 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:16.000 value at the end of his career was driven by 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:19.800 nostalgia and association with days before he worked there. Anyway, 0:21:20.760 --> 0:21:23.200 thanks to the state of modern search, it's actually very, 0:21:23.280 --> 0:21:25.679 very difficult to find much about Ragavan's history. 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:26.240 It took me. 0:21:26.320 --> 0:21:29.720 Hours of digging through Google and at one point being 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:33.760 embarrassingly to find three or four articles that went into 0:21:33.760 --> 0:21:35.960 any depth about him. But from what I've gleaned, his 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:39.879 expertise lies primarily in failing upwards ascending through the ranks 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:43.720 of technology on the momentum from the explosions he's coursed. 0:21:44.480 --> 0:21:46.959 In a wide interview from twenty twenty one, GLAD handler 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:49.840 Stephen Levy said Ragavan isn't the CEO of Google, he 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:52.280 just runs the place, and described his addition to the 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:55.879 company as a move from research to management. While Levy 0:21:55.920 --> 0:21:58.840 calls him a world class computer scientist who has authored 0:21:58.840 --> 0:22:01.800 definitive text in the field, which is true, he also 0:22:01.840 --> 0:22:05.840 describes Ragavan as choosing a management track which definitely tracks 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:09.359 with everything I found out about him. Ragavan proudly declares 0:22:09.400 --> 0:22:12.240 that Google's third party adtech plays a critical role in 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:14.920 keeping journalism alive and a really shitty answer to a 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:17.359 question that was also made at a time when he 0:22:17.440 --> 0:22:21.879 was in aggressively incentivizing search engine optimized content and a 0:22:21.960 --> 0:22:24.160 year after he'd deposed someone who actually gave a shit 0:22:24.240 --> 0:22:29.080 about search. Under Ragavan, Google has become less reliable, and 0:22:29.119 --> 0:22:33.120 it's dominated by search engine optimization and just outright spam. 0:22:33.600 --> 0:22:34.480 And I've said this. 0:22:34.359 --> 0:22:37.439 Before, but look, we complain about the state of Twitter 0:22:37.560 --> 0:22:40.800 under Elon Musk and justifiably he's a vile, anti semi 0:22:41.040 --> 0:22:44.040 racist bigger. We all know this, It's fully true. We 0:22:44.080 --> 0:22:48.560 can say it a million times. However, I'd argue that Ragavan, 0:22:48.760 --> 0:22:54.560 by extension Sundhar Pushai deserve one hundred times more criticism. 0:22:55.200 --> 0:22:59.760 They've done unfathomable damage to society. You really can't fix 0:22:59.840 --> 0:23:02.440 the damage they've been doing and the damage they'll continue 0:23:02.480 --> 0:23:05.960 to do, especially as we go into an election. Ragavan 0:23:06.040 --> 0:23:08.760 and his cronies worked to oust Ben Gomes, a man 0:23:08.800 --> 0:23:11.320 who dedicated a good portion of his life to making 0:23:11.359 --> 0:23:15.040 the world's information more accessible, in the process burning the 0:23:15.040 --> 0:23:18.159 Library of Alexandria to the goddamn ground so that Sundar 0:23:18.240 --> 0:23:20.880 Peshai could make more than two hundred million dollars a year, 0:23:21.359 --> 0:23:24.920 and Ragavan, a manager high by Sundar Peshai, a former 0:23:25.000 --> 0:23:28.439 McKinsey man. The King of Managers, is an example of 0:23:28.520 --> 0:23:32.439 everything wrong with the tech industry. Despite his history as 0:23:32.480 --> 0:23:36.600 a true computer scientist with actual academic credentials. Ragavan chose 0:23:36.640 --> 0:23:39.920 to bulldoze actual workers, people who did things, and people 0:23:39.920 --> 0:23:43.800 that care about technology and replace them with horrifying toadies 0:23:44.040 --> 0:23:49.680 that would make Google more profitable and less useful. Since 0:23:49.680 --> 0:23:52.959 Prabakar took the reigns of Google in twenty twenty, Google 0:23:52.960 --> 0:23:56.919 search has dramatically declined. With these core search updates are mentioned, 0:23:56.960 --> 0:24:00.320 allegedly made to improve the quality of results, having the 0:24:00.400 --> 0:24:05.160 adverse effect increasing the prevalence of spammy shitty search optimized content. 0:24:05.920 --> 0:24:09.720 It's frustrating. The anger you hear in my voice. The 0:24:09.720 --> 0:24:13.080 emotion is because I've read all of these antitrust emails. 0:24:13.400 --> 0:24:15.800 I have gone through this guy's history, and I've read 0:24:15.840 --> 0:24:18.680 all the things about Ben Gomes too. Every article about 0:24:18.680 --> 0:24:21.720 Ben Gomes where they interviewed, is this guy just having 0:24:21.760 --> 0:24:24.560 these dreamy thoughts about the future of information and the 0:24:24.560 --> 0:24:27.320 complexity of delivering it at high speed. Every interview with 0:24:27.400 --> 0:24:31.280 Ragavan is some vague bullshit about how important data is. 0:24:31.560 --> 0:24:35.879 It's so goddamn offensive to me, and all of this 0:24:35.920 --> 0:24:38.760 stuff happening is just one example of what I think 0:24:38.800 --> 0:24:41.879 are probably hundreds of things happening across startups or that 0:24:41.920 --> 0:24:43.919 have happened across startups in the last ten or fifteen 0:24:43.960 --> 0:24:47.040 years and big tech two. And it's because the people 0:24:47.280 --> 0:24:50.720 running the tech industry are no longer those who built him. 0:24:51.240 --> 0:24:54.560 Larry Page and Sergey Brin left Google in December twenty nineteen, 0:24:54.840 --> 0:24:56.800 the same year, by the way as the Code Yellow thing, 0:24:57.240 --> 0:25:01.000 and while they remained as controlling shareholders, they clearly don't 0:25:01.000 --> 0:25:04.640 give a shit about what Google means anymore. Probakar Ragavan 0:25:04.760 --> 0:25:06.960 is a manager, and his career, from what I can tell, 0:25:07.240 --> 0:25:09.960 is mostly made up of did some stuff at IBM, 0:25:10.280 --> 0:25:12.720 failed to make Yahoo anything of no, and fucked up 0:25:12.760 --> 0:25:15.119 Google so badly that every news outlet has run a 0:25:15.119 --> 0:25:18.959 story about how bad it is. This this is the 0:25:19.000 --> 0:25:21.880 result of taking technology out of the hands of real 0:25:21.960 --> 0:25:24.560 builders and handing it to managers at a time when 0:25:24.600 --> 0:25:27.800 management is synonymous with staying as far away from actual 0:25:27.800 --> 0:25:31.280 work as possible. When you're a do nothing looking to 0:25:31.359 --> 0:25:34.360 profit as much as possible, who doesn't use tech, who 0:25:34.400 --> 0:25:37.720 doesn't care about tech, and you only care about growth, well, 0:25:37.760 --> 0:25:38.560 you're not a user. 0:25:38.840 --> 0:25:39.880 You're a parasite. 0:25:39.920 --> 0:25:42.800 And it's these parasites that have dominated and are now 0:25:42.920 --> 0:25:45.120 draining the tech industry of its value. 0:25:45.200 --> 0:25:47.639 They're driving it into a goddamn ditch. 0:25:48.640 --> 0:25:51.320 Ragavan's story is unique in so far as the damage 0:25:51.320 --> 0:25:54.200 he's managed to inflict, or if we're being exceptionally charitable, 0:25:54.400 --> 0:25:58.040 failed to avoid in the case of Yahoo on two 0:25:58.160 --> 0:26:00.480 industry defining companies, and the fact that he did it 0:26:00.520 --> 0:26:05.040 without being a CEO or founder is remarkable. Yeah, he's 0:26:05.359 --> 0:26:08.760 far from the only example of a manager falling upwards. 0:26:10.000 --> 0:26:12.760 I'm going to editorialize a bit here. I want to 0:26:12.800 --> 0:26:14.640 think about your job history. I want you to think 0:26:14.640 --> 0:26:17.840 about the managers you've had. I've written a lot about management, 0:26:18.320 --> 0:26:21.080 and specifically to do with remote work and the whole 0:26:21.119 --> 0:26:24.040 thing around guys who don't do work, who are barely 0:26:24.040 --> 0:26:26.040 in the office telling you you need to be in 0:26:26.080 --> 0:26:32.560 the office. This problem is everywhere. Managers are everywhere, and 0:26:32.640 --> 0:26:36.639 managers aren't doing work. I'm sure someone will email me 0:26:36.760 --> 0:26:39.239 now and say, well, I'm a manager and off I'll 0:26:39.320 --> 0:26:39.960 do work. 0:26:39.720 --> 0:26:41.159 All the time. Yeah, make sure you do. 0:26:41.280 --> 0:26:43.359 That's why you're emailing me telling me how good you 0:26:43.400 --> 0:26:46.280 are at your job. People who actually do work don't 0:26:46.280 --> 0:26:50.440 feel defensive about it. People who do things and are 0:26:50.480 --> 0:26:53.600 part of the actual profit center, they don't need a 0:26:53.640 --> 0:26:55.640 podcast to tell them they're good at their job. 0:26:56.840 --> 0:26:58.320 What I think the problem is. 0:26:58.480 --> 0:27:03.320 In modern American corporate society is that management is no 0:27:03.440 --> 0:27:06.960 longer synonymous with actually managing people. It's not about getting 0:27:06.960 --> 0:27:10.040 the people what they need. It's not about organizing things 0:27:10.160 --> 0:27:13.520 and making things efficient and good. It's not about execution. 0:27:14.040 --> 0:27:16.439 It's about handing work off to other people and getting 0:27:16.440 --> 0:27:20.919 paid handsomely. And if you disagree easy at better offline 0:27:20.960 --> 0:27:23.840 dot com, I will read your email, maybe I'll even respond. 0:27:25.040 --> 0:27:28.880 But the thing is management has become a poison in America. 0:27:29.040 --> 0:27:33.520 Managers have become poisonous because managers are not actually held 0:27:33.760 --> 0:27:36.879 to any kind of standard. No, only the workers who 0:27:36.960 --> 0:27:39.639 do the work are What happened to Ben Gomes is 0:27:39.640 --> 0:27:42.840 one of the most disgusting, disgraceful things to happen in 0:27:42.880 --> 0:27:46.600 the tech industry. It's an absolute joke. Ben Gomes was 0:27:46.600 --> 0:27:49.760 a goddamn hero. And I really need you to read 0:27:49.760 --> 0:27:52.399 the newsletter and read these emails. I need you to 0:27:52.480 --> 0:27:55.840 see how many times him and thaka Great Guy as 0:27:55.880 --> 0:28:00.160 well were saying, hey, growth is bad for searching. Thing 0:28:00.160 --> 0:28:02.640 that Ben Gomes was being asked to do was increase 0:28:02.920 --> 0:28:07.280 queries on Google. The literal amount that people search. There 0:28:07.280 --> 0:28:10.560 are many ways of looking at that and thinking, oh shit, 0:28:10.920 --> 0:28:14.160 that's not what you want. Surely you don't want no queries. 0:28:14.160 --> 0:28:16.240 You don't want people not using it at all. But 0:28:16.440 --> 0:28:21.240 queries going upwards linearly suggests that if you're not magic 0:28:21.280 --> 0:28:23.680 good to use the growth, at least the people are 0:28:24.240 --> 0:28:26.280 not getting what they want on the first. 0:28:25.880 --> 0:28:28.800 Try, which, by the way, kind of feels like how 0:28:28.840 --> 0:28:30.080 Google is nowadays. 0:28:30.840 --> 0:28:32.919 When you go to Google and the first result, and 0:28:32.920 --> 0:28:34.640 the second result, and the fifth result and the tenth 0:28:34.640 --> 0:28:37.479 result just don't get what you need because it's all 0:28:37.520 --> 0:28:41.000 that SEO crap. Now, this is all theorizing, But what 0:28:41.080 --> 0:28:44.080 I think prabagar Ragavan did was I think he took 0:28:44.120 --> 0:28:47.560 off all the fucking guidelines on Google Search. I think 0:28:47.560 --> 0:28:50.880 he rolled back changes specifically to make search worse, to 0:28:50.960 --> 0:28:55.440 increase queries, to give Google more chance to show you adverts. 0:28:55.880 --> 0:28:58.160 I am guessing don't have a source telling me this, 0:28:58.760 --> 0:29:01.800 but the pattern around on the core search updates. The 0:29:01.880 --> 0:29:05.760 fact that Google Search started getting worse toward the middle 0:29:05.800 --> 0:29:11.440 and end of twenty nineteen and unquestionably dipped in twenty twenty. 0:29:11.720 --> 0:29:15.440 Well that's when Prabaka took over that's when the big 0:29:15.480 --> 0:29:18.080 Man took the reins. That's when drack Killer got his 0:29:18.160 --> 0:29:21.000 job at the blood bank. And this is the thing. 0:29:22.440 --> 0:29:24.680 There's very little that you and I can actually do 0:29:24.760 --> 0:29:27.000 about this. But what we can do is say names 0:29:27.000 --> 0:29:29.800 like Probakar Ragavan a great deal of times so that 0:29:29.840 --> 0:29:33.240 people like this can be known, so that the actions 0:29:33.280 --> 0:29:37.080 of these scurrilous assholes can be seen and heard and 0:29:37.160 --> 0:29:40.959 pointed at and spat upon. I'm not suggesting spitting on anyone, 0:29:41.000 --> 0:29:44.160 No violent acts. No can be pissy on the internet 0:29:44.200 --> 0:29:47.800 like the rest of us. Now I'm ranting. I realize 0:29:47.800 --> 0:29:51.320 i'm ranting, but this subject really really got to me. 0:29:52.960 --> 0:29:56.200 But it's not the only one. In the next episode, 0:29:56.480 --> 0:30:03.160 I'm going to conclude this sordid three part fiasco with 0:30:03.280 --> 0:30:07.040 a few more examples, and how many of these managers, 0:30:07.440 --> 0:30:11.160 these bean counters, devoid of imagination or ability or anything 0:30:11.200 --> 0:30:12.480 of note save for that. 0:30:13.400 --> 0:30:15.680 Utter slug likability. 0:30:15.760 --> 0:30:18.520 To protect oneself, I want to talk about how these 0:30:18.560 --> 0:30:21.959 people manage to obfiscate their true intentions by pretending to 0:30:21.960 --> 0:30:25.000 be engineers, by pretending to be technologists, and pretending to 0:30:25.040 --> 0:30:28.520 be innovators. I want to tell you all about how 0:30:28.560 --> 0:30:33.320 Adam Masseri destroyed Instagram, and I want to tell you 0:30:34.000 --> 0:30:37.480 how little Sam Altman has achieved other than making him 0:30:37.760 --> 0:30:51.040 and his friends rich. See you next time. Thank you 0:30:51.120 --> 0:30:53.840 for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of 0:30:53.840 --> 0:30:56.840 the Better Offline theme song is Mattosowski. You can check 0:30:56.840 --> 0:30:59.760 out more of his music and audio projects at Mattasowski 0:30:59.760 --> 0:31:03.360 dot com, m A T T O s O W 0:31:03.640 --> 0:31:06.800 s ki dot com. You can email me at easy 0:31:06.840 --> 0:31:09.440 at better offline dot com or check out better offline 0:31:09.440 --> 0:31:11.560 dot com to find my newsletter and more links to 0:31:11.600 --> 0:31:13.640 this podcast. Thank you so much for listening. 0:31:14.840 --> 0:31:17.560 Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For 0:31:17.640 --> 0:31:20.840 more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia 0:31:20.880 --> 0:31:23.720 dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, 0:31:23.760 --> 0:31:26.240 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 0:31:42.520 --> 0:31:45.000 Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed 0:31:45.080 --> 0:31:59.720 zait Tron. Also, as I discussed in the last episode, 0:32:00.080 --> 0:32:03.040 Sam Mortman has spent more than a decade accumulating power 0:32:03.080 --> 0:32:06.040 and wealth in Silicon Valley without ever having to actually 0:32:06.080 --> 0:32:09.280 build anything, using a network of tech industry all stars 0:32:09.280 --> 0:32:12.560 like LinkedIn co founder and investor Reid Hoffman, and Airbnb 0:32:12.720 --> 0:32:17.360 CEO Brian Chesky to insulate himself from responsibility and accountability. 0:32:18.280 --> 0:32:21.280 Yet things are beginning to fall apart as years of 0:32:21.320 --> 0:32:25.680 half baked ideas and terrible, terrible product decisions have kind 0:32:25.720 --> 0:32:31.480 of made society sour on the tech industry, and the 0:32:31.560 --> 0:32:35.360 last month has been particularly difficult for Sam, starting with 0:32:35.400 --> 0:32:40.160 the chaos cause by open ai blatantly mimicking Scarlet Johansson's 0:32:40.240 --> 0:32:43.640 voice for the new version of chat GBT, followed by 0:32:43.680 --> 0:32:47.240 the resignation of researchers who claimed the open ai prioritized 0:32:47.280 --> 0:32:51.640 and I quote shiny products over AI safety. After the 0:32:51.640 --> 0:32:55.440 dissolution of open AI's safety team, I know, it's just 0:32:55.480 --> 0:33:00.160 it's almost cliche. Shortly thereafter, former open ai bos bard 0:33:00.200 --> 0:33:03.240 member Helen Toner revealed that Sam Altman was fired from 0:33:03.240 --> 0:33:05.880 an open Ai because of a regular pattern of deception, 0:33:06.400 --> 0:33:09.360 one where Aortman would give inaccurate info about the company's 0:33:09.360 --> 0:33:12.960 safety processes on multiple occasions, and his deceat was so 0:33:13.200 --> 0:33:16.120 severe that open aye's board only found out about the 0:33:16.160 --> 0:33:19.360 launch of chet GPT, which, by the way, is open 0:33:19.400 --> 0:33:23.120 Ayes first product that really made money, arguably the biggest 0:33:23.120 --> 0:33:24.880 product in tech. Do you wont know how they found 0:33:24.920 --> 0:33:26.600 out about it, Well, they found out when they were 0:33:26.640 --> 0:33:31.320 browsing Twitter. They found out then, not from the CEO 0:33:31.400 --> 0:33:33.280 of open Ai, the company which they were the. 0:33:33.280 --> 0:33:34.240 Border very weird. 0:33:35.080 --> 0:33:39.320 Toner also noted that Aortman was an aggressive political player 0:33:39.560 --> 0:33:42.160 with the board, correctly by the way, worrying the and 0:33:42.240 --> 0:33:46.000 I quote again that if Sam Altman had any inkling 0:33:46.040 --> 0:33:48.320 that the board might do something that went against him, 0:33:48.480 --> 0:33:50.840 he'd pull out all the stops, do everything in his 0:33:50.960 --> 0:33:54.200 power to undermine the board and to prevent them from 0:33:54.240 --> 0:33:56.880 even getting to the point of being able to fire him. 0:33:57.800 --> 0:34:00.480 As a reminder, by the way, the Board's seeded in 0:34:00.560 --> 0:34:03.600 firing Sam Altman in November last year, but not for long, 0:34:03.920 --> 0:34:06.960 with Ortmand returning as CEO a few days later, kicking 0:34:07.000 --> 0:34:09.759 Helen Toner off of the board along with Ilia Sudskava, 0:34:09.920 --> 0:34:12.800 a technical co founder that Altman manipulated long enough to 0:34:12.840 --> 0:34:15.360 build chat GBT and announced it him the moment that 0:34:15.400 --> 0:34:18.680 he chose to complain Sidskava, by the way, has resigned now. 0:34:19.080 --> 0:34:21.879 He's also one of the biggest technical minds there. It's 0:34:21.920 --> 0:34:26.040 so how is open are going to continue anyway? Last week, 0:34:26.080 --> 0:34:29.279 a group of insiders at various AI companies published an 0:34:29.320 --> 0:34:32.040 open letter asking for their overlords, for the heads of 0:34:32.080 --> 0:34:35.640 these companies, for the right to warn about advanced artificial 0:34:35.640 --> 0:34:40.720 intelligence in a monument genuinely impressive monument to the bullshit 0:34:40.760 --> 0:34:43.600 machine that Sam Altman has created. While there are genuine 0:34:43.600 --> 0:34:46.919 safety concerns with AI, there really are, there are many 0:34:46.920 --> 0:34:50.200 of them to consider. These people are desperately afraid of 0:34:50.239 --> 0:34:52.960 the computer coming alive and killing them when they should 0:34:52.960 --> 0:34:56.839 fear the non technical asshole manipulator getting rich making egregious 0:34:56.880 --> 0:35:01.400 promises about what AI can do. Airis you have to 0:35:01.440 --> 0:35:04.560 live up to Sam Altman's promises. Sam Alton doesn't. This 0:35:04.719 --> 0:35:07.840 is not your friend. The problem is not the boogeyman 0:35:07.920 --> 0:35:10.960 computer coming alive. That's not happening man. What's happening is 0:35:11.000 --> 0:35:14.040 this guy is leading your industry to ruin, and the 0:35:14.080 --> 0:35:16.840 bigger concern that they should have should be about what 0:35:17.000 --> 0:35:20.680 Leo Ashenbrenner, a former safety researcher Open ai, had to 0:35:20.719 --> 0:35:23.920 say on the Duaquesh Ptel podcast, where he claimed that 0:35:23.960 --> 0:35:27.680 security processes of open ai were and I quote egregiously 0:35:27.760 --> 0:35:30.800 insufficient and that the priorities that the company were focused 0:35:30.800 --> 0:35:35.200 on growth over stability of security. These people are afraid 0:35:35.360 --> 0:35:38.319 of open AI potentially creating a computer that can think 0:35:38.360 --> 0:35:41.440 for itself that will come and kill them at a 0:35:41.480 --> 0:35:44.319 time where they should be far more concerned about this 0:35:44.440 --> 0:35:48.480 manipulative con artist that's running open AI. Sam Altman is 0:35:48.600 --> 0:35:53.360 dangerous to artificial intelligence. Not because he's building artificial general intelligence, 0:35:53.400 --> 0:35:55.920 which is a kind of AI that meets or surpasses 0:35:56.000 --> 0:35:59.959 human cove capabilities by the way, kind of like data 0:36:00.080 --> 0:36:03.359 from Star Trek. They're afraid of that happening when they 0:36:03.400 --> 0:36:07.160 should be afraid of Aortmand's focus. What does Sam Moortman 0:36:07.320 --> 0:36:11.040 care about? Because the only thing I can find reading 0:36:11.080 --> 0:36:14.360 about what Sam Mortman cares about is Sam bloody Aortman. 0:36:14.880 --> 0:36:19.240 And right now the progress attached to Sam Mortman actually 0:36:19.280 --> 0:36:23.319 isn't looking that great. Open AI's growth is stalling, with 0:36:23.480 --> 0:36:26.560 Alex Cantruwitz reporting that user growth has effectively come to 0:36:26.600 --> 0:36:29.160 a halt based on a recent release claiming that chat 0:36:29.200 --> 0:36:33.120 gpt had one hundred million users a couple of weeks ago, 0:36:33.280 --> 0:36:35.400 which is, by the way, the exact same number that 0:36:35.400 --> 0:36:39.160 the company claimed chat gpt had in November twenty twenty three. 0:36:40.160 --> 0:36:43.480 Chat gpt is also a goddamn expensive product to operate 0:36:43.960 --> 0:36:46.719 with the company burning through capital at this insane rate. 0:36:47.040 --> 0:36:49.919 It's definitely more than seven hundred thousand dollars a day. 0:36:51.520 --> 0:36:53.200 It's got to be in the millions if not. What 0:36:53.320 --> 0:36:57.160 it's insane and what open ai is aggressively monetizing chat GPT, 0:36:57.280 --> 0:37:00.560 both the customers and to businesses. It's so old, fiercely 0:37:00.680 --> 0:37:06.000 far from crossing the break even rubicon. They keep leaking 0:37:06.080 --> 0:37:08.560 and they'll claim, oh, I didn't put that out there. 0:37:08.600 --> 0:37:10.920 They keep telling people, oh, it's making billions of revenue, 0:37:11.000 --> 0:37:15.040 but they never say profit. And eventually someone's going to 0:37:15.080 --> 0:37:17.640 turn to them and say, hey, man, you can't just 0:37:17.719 --> 0:37:21.280 do this for free or for negative. At some point, 0:37:21.800 --> 0:37:26.960 Sacha Nadella is going to call Sam Ortman and say, Sammy, Sammy, 0:37:27.000 --> 0:37:28.080 it's time, Sammy. 0:37:28.120 --> 0:37:29.360 It's got to be a real business. 0:37:29.640 --> 0:37:32.680 I assume he calls him that because the supernatural. But 0:37:32.760 --> 0:37:36.160 as things get desperate, Samuel was going to use the 0:37:36.200 --> 0:37:40.680 only approach he really has, sheer force of will. He's 0:37:40.680 --> 0:37:42.959 going to push open ai to grow and sell into 0:37:42.960 --> 0:37:46.440 as many industries as possible. And he's a specious hype man. 0:37:46.480 --> 0:37:49.120 He's gonna be selling to other specious hype men, the 0:37:49.200 --> 0:37:51.279 Jim Kramers of the world are going to eat it up. 0:37:51.600 --> 0:37:54.680 And they're all all of them. The mock Bernioff's, the 0:37:54.719 --> 0:37:59.320 Sacha Nadellas, a Sun dapashies. They're all desperate to connect 0:37:59.320 --> 0:38:02.759 themselves with future and with generative AI and those that 0:38:02.840 --> 0:38:06.960 he's selling to the company's brokering deals. Yes, even Apple, 0:38:08.160 --> 0:38:13.000 they're desperate to connect their companies to another company which 0:38:13.080 --> 0:38:17.880 is building a bubble, a bubble inflated by Sam Altman. 0:38:18.960 --> 0:38:19.960 And I'd argue that this. 0:38:20.040 --> 0:38:23.560 Is exceedingly dangerous for Silicon Valley and for the tech 0:38:23.600 --> 0:38:27.040 industry writ large, as executives that have become disconnected from 0:38:27.040 --> 0:38:30.320 the process of creating software and hardware follow yet another 0:38:30.480 --> 0:38:35.920 non technical founder hooking unprofitable, unsustainable, and hallucination prone software. 0:38:36.200 --> 0:38:40.880 It's just very frustrating. If there was a very technical 0:38:40.960 --> 0:38:44.239 mind at these companies, they might walk away. And I'm 0:38:44.280 --> 0:38:47.080 not going to give Tim Cook much credit, but looking 0:38:47.120 --> 0:38:50.279 into it, I can't find any evidence that Apple is 0:38:50.320 --> 0:38:52.759 buying a bunch of GPUs, the things that you use 0:38:52.840 --> 0:38:57.000 to power these generative AI models. I found some researcher 0:38:57.000 --> 0:38:59.799 and analysts suggesting that they would buy a lot. But 0:39:00.080 --> 0:39:02.880 now open Ai is doing a deal with Apple to 0:39:03.000 --> 0:39:07.600 power the next iOS, and it's interesting. It is interesting 0:39:07.640 --> 0:39:10.840 that Apple isn't doing this themselves. Apple a company with 0:39:11.280 --> 0:39:13.400 hundreds of billions of dollars in the bank. I believe 0:39:14.200 --> 0:39:17.640 that pretty much prints money. That alone makes me think 0:39:17.640 --> 0:39:19.440 it's a bubble. Now, it might look like an asshole 0:39:19.440 --> 0:39:21.600 if it comes out they have. But also, why are 0:39:21.680 --> 0:39:25.520 they subcontracting this to open ai when they could build 0:39:25.520 --> 0:39:31.279 it themselves, as Apple has always done. Very strange, It's 0:39:31.360 --> 0:39:35.760 all so peculiar. But I wanted to get a little 0:39:35.760 --> 0:39:38.520 bit deeper into the Sam Almonds story. And as I 0:39:38.560 --> 0:39:41.680 discussed last episode, Ellen Hewett of Bloomberg she's been doing 0:39:41.680 --> 0:39:44.880 this excellent reporting on the man and joins me today 0:39:44.920 --> 0:39:47.759 to talk about the subject of a recent podcast, Sam 0:39:47.800 --> 0:39:58.880 Almond's Rise to Power. So tell me a little bit 0:39:58.880 --> 0:39:59.880 about the show you're working on. 0:40:01.120 --> 0:40:04.480 The show is the new season of Foundering, which is 0:40:04.560 --> 0:40:08.440 a serialized podcast from Bloomberg Technology. So this is season five, 0:40:08.920 --> 0:40:11.160 and in every season we've told one story of a 0:40:11.280 --> 0:40:14.000 high stakes drama in Silicon Valley. I was also the 0:40:14.000 --> 0:40:16.000 host of season one, which came out several years ago, 0:40:16.120 --> 0:40:19.120 was about we work, and we've done other companies since then, 0:40:19.200 --> 0:40:22.480 and season five is about Open AI and Sam Altman, 0:40:22.560 --> 0:40:27.120 and I think we really tried to, you know, cover 0:40:27.160 --> 0:40:30.680 the arc of the company's creation and where it is now. 0:40:31.200 --> 0:40:33.279 But in doing so, we really tried to do a 0:40:33.360 --> 0:40:37.000 character study of Sam Altman, like he's a very important 0:40:37.000 --> 0:40:39.520 person in the tech industry right now, with a lot 0:40:39.560 --> 0:40:42.560 of power, and we really wanted to ask ourselves a 0:40:42.640 --> 0:40:46.800 question and to help listeners ask themselves a question. Should 0:40:46.800 --> 0:40:50.120 we trust him? Should we trust this person who is 0:40:50.239 --> 0:40:53.840 currently in a position of a lot of influence and 0:40:53.880 --> 0:40:57.480 about whom there have been very serious, you know, allegations 0:40:57.480 --> 0:41:00.520 and questions raised about, you know, to put it in 0:41:00.560 --> 0:41:06.680 the words of the opening eyeboard, his not consistently candid behavior. 0:41:06.800 --> 0:41:10.800 And I think it's, you know, my hope is that 0:41:11.239 --> 0:41:15.040 we give listeners a chance to hear kind of the 0:41:15.080 --> 0:41:19.480 whole story. And it's like broader you know, when there's 0:41:19.520 --> 0:41:21.560 news that's happening, it can happen so quickly it's hard 0:41:21.600 --> 0:41:23.640 to get a step back. And I think what the 0:41:23.640 --> 0:41:27.240 show really does is it collects a lot of information 0:41:27.320 --> 0:41:29.520 in one place, and we also have lots of new 0:41:29.560 --> 0:41:32.920 information that you won't hear anywhere else, and interviews with 0:41:32.920 --> 0:41:35.640 people who you know have worked with Sam, who knew 0:41:35.680 --> 0:41:38.399 him when he was younger. We have an interview with 0:41:38.480 --> 0:41:42.560 Sam's sister Annie, from whom he is estranged, and there's 0:41:42.560 --> 0:41:44.799 a lot of material in there. I think that tries 0:41:44.840 --> 0:41:47.200 to get closer to this answer of like, what should 0:41:47.200 --> 0:41:50.520 we make of this person? How should we think about 0:41:50.719 --> 0:41:54.120 checks and balances of power when we have these companies 0:41:54.160 --> 0:41:57.560 that are, by all appearances, gathering a lot of power 0:41:57.600 --> 0:41:58.880 and there for the people who are running them have 0:41:58.880 --> 0:42:01.280 a lot of power as well. So we have it's 0:42:01.320 --> 0:42:06.360 a five episode arc, five episode season, and the first 0:42:06.800 --> 0:42:10.200 three episodes are out now to the general public and 0:42:10.239 --> 0:42:13.040 the last two will come out on subsequent Thursdays, And 0:42:13.080 --> 0:42:15.239 if you would like to binge the whole season right away, 0:42:16.320 --> 0:42:19.960 the episodes are available early to Bloomberg dot com subscribers. 0:42:22.040 --> 0:42:27.120 So you've just started this series about Sam Altman and 0:42:27.160 --> 0:42:30.520 his upbringing indoors, so the growth of Open Ai and 0:42:30.560 --> 0:42:33.400 Looved and everything. Who are the people that have helped 0:42:33.440 --> 0:42:34.760 him get where he is today? 0:42:34.800 --> 0:42:35.080 Though? 0:42:36.239 --> 0:42:39.160 So the making of Sam Altman is a really interesting 0:42:39.200 --> 0:42:42.000 part of the overall story of Sam Altman. You know, 0:42:42.040 --> 0:42:46.160 many people know him as the CEO of open Ai 0:42:46.320 --> 0:42:49.400 because that's the role he's been in when he has 0:42:49.960 --> 0:42:53.160 risen to prominence, you know, beyond Silicon Valley. Like I 0:42:53.200 --> 0:42:55.400 think for many years he was well known in Silicon Valley, 0:42:55.400 --> 0:42:58.040 but this is like now he's kind of a household name, 0:42:58.760 --> 0:43:02.120 and so it's important to understand where Sam came from. 0:43:02.200 --> 0:43:04.680 You know, he's been in the valley for you know, 0:43:04.760 --> 0:43:07.640 since two thousand and five, I think is when he 0:43:07.719 --> 0:43:09.560 started college two thousand and four, two thousand and five 0:43:09.560 --> 0:43:12.000 at Stanford. Then he dropped out, and then he joined 0:43:12.719 --> 0:43:16.360 y Combinator, the now famous startup accelerator. But he was 0:43:16.360 --> 0:43:21.520 actually part of the first cohort of founders ever in 0:43:21.760 --> 0:43:22.840 in YC. 0:43:22.719 --> 0:43:24.960 Along with Witch as well, right, yes. 0:43:24.880 --> 0:43:28.880 Including the the co founders of Twitch and of Reddit, 0:43:29.239 --> 0:43:30.960 and so EMMITTT. Sheer, you know, for those who know 0:43:31.000 --> 0:43:33.600 Emmit Sheer has a like very short seventy two hour 0:43:33.719 --> 0:43:37.880 cameo in the open Ai very Sam been firing saga. 0:43:38.719 --> 0:43:41.360 But yes, Emmett and Sam were both in the same 0:43:41.920 --> 0:43:46.879 YC batch. So when we think about Sam's early career 0:43:46.920 --> 0:43:49.120 in Silicon Valley, I think what's important to know is 0:43:49.120 --> 0:43:52.480 that he rose very quickly, in part because he was 0:43:52.600 --> 0:43:57.879 very successful in making these strategic, advantageous friendships and connections 0:43:57.960 --> 0:44:01.800 with already established people in the valley. The most important 0:44:01.800 --> 0:44:04.759 one is Paul Graham, who is the you know, one 0:44:04.760 --> 0:44:09.600 of the founders of y Combinator and you know basically 0:44:09.640 --> 0:44:13.200 like immediately took Sam under his wing when Sam joined 0:44:13.239 --> 0:44:18.319 this first batch of YC. And yeah, Paul's a really 0:44:18.360 --> 0:44:20.520 important mentor to Sam. He's kind of the first person 0:44:20.560 --> 0:44:26.640 who really sees in Sam this you know, ambition, this 0:44:26.719 --> 0:44:31.360 hunger for power, this like drive to really build bigger 0:44:31.360 --> 0:44:33.680 and bigger companies, even when you know, they met when 0:44:33.719 --> 0:44:36.840 Sam Altman was nineteen, so Paul like sees him as 0:44:36.840 --> 0:44:40.920 a teenager and sees this future potential. And so yes, 0:44:40.960 --> 0:44:44.719 you know, not only did Paul become a mentor to 0:44:44.800 --> 0:44:48.319 him and sort of helped build Sam's profile over those 0:44:48.360 --> 0:44:50.360 early years because he would you know, Paul Graham is 0:44:50.440 --> 0:44:52.680 very famous for writing these essays about how to build 0:44:52.719 --> 0:44:55.440 startups and how to build the best startups, and if 0:44:55.480 --> 0:44:57.719 you're at all interested in building startups, you've read many 0:44:57.760 --> 0:45:00.560 of them. They're kind of like almost like a startup bible, 0:45:01.040 --> 0:45:03.680 and in many of them. He extols the virtues of 0:45:03.719 --> 0:45:06.120 Sam Altman. He talks about Sam's ambition, He talks about 0:45:06.120 --> 0:45:10.280 Sam's cunning, his ability to like you know, make deals 0:45:10.280 --> 0:45:11.160 and like think big and. 0:45:11.200 --> 0:45:14.400 Never actually think Sam Moltman is done. Is what I've found. 0:45:14.880 --> 0:45:17.520 Yeah, there are some interesting you know, I've read many 0:45:17.560 --> 0:45:19.840 of the things Paul has written about Sam. Some of 0:45:19.840 --> 0:45:25.400 my favorite ones include Paul writing that within three minutes 0:45:25.400 --> 0:45:28.839 of meeting Sam, this was when Sam was nineteen, Paul 0:45:28.920 --> 0:45:31.760 thought to himself, Ah, so this is what a young 0:45:31.960 --> 0:45:33.839 Bill Gates is like, or you know, this is what 0:45:33.880 --> 0:45:35.640 Bill Gates was like at nineteen, I think is the 0:45:35.680 --> 0:45:38.040 exact quote. So, you know, he really build him up 0:45:38.040 --> 0:45:40.640 in this way. And I do think Paul had like 0:45:40.760 --> 0:45:43.520 unique insight into Sam, like they were close. They in 0:45:43.560 --> 0:45:47.080 many ways I'm sure still are. But it is this 0:45:47.200 --> 0:45:50.360 interesting role where you know, Paul met Sam when he 0:45:50.400 --> 0:45:52.000 really didn't have much to his name, and he really 0:45:52.000 --> 0:45:55.080 elevated him early on through his writings as this like 0:45:55.200 --> 0:45:57.880 startup founder to emulate right, that other founders should be 0:45:57.920 --> 0:46:01.000 emulating Sam. And then of course, as Sam progresses in 0:46:01.040 --> 0:46:04.480 the Valley, he also starts to write these like startup 0:46:05.239 --> 0:46:10.239 Wisdom essays in a similar style to Paul. And then, 0:46:10.280 --> 0:46:12.120 of course, the most important thing that happens is that 0:46:12.160 --> 0:46:15.080 in twenty fourteen, when Paul decides he no longer wants 0:46:15.120 --> 0:46:17.200 to run hy Combinator, which at this point is a 0:46:17.280 --> 0:46:19.799 much bigger vehicle than it was when Sam first started. 0:46:19.800 --> 0:46:21.880 It has no longer just a few stops totally. It 0:46:21.880 --> 0:46:26.000 has produced Stripe, Dropbox, Airbnb. This is a big job, 0:46:26.080 --> 0:46:29.040 right like running y Combinator. And when Paul wants to 0:46:29.040 --> 0:46:30.960 hand it off to someone, you know, he has said 0:46:31.000 --> 0:46:34.000 that the only person he considered giving this to was Sam. 0:46:34.040 --> 0:46:36.879 So in twenty fourteen, when Sam is I believe twenty 0:46:36.920 --> 0:46:40.280 eight years old, he becomes the president of y Combinator, 0:46:40.280 --> 0:46:42.520 and this is you know, he had started a startup, 0:46:42.560 --> 0:46:45.640 it didn't really work, he sold it and was starting 0:46:45.680 --> 0:46:48.640 to tabble in angel investing. And at that point Paul 0:46:48.719 --> 0:46:52.239 really elevated Sam to this new position of power. And 0:46:52.280 --> 0:46:54.720 then he ran YC for a while and then started 0:46:54.719 --> 0:46:58.320 open Ai. And in starting open Ai, he also leveraged 0:46:58.360 --> 0:47:03.080 these like very useful connetions with particularly powerful people who 0:47:03.080 --> 0:47:05.680 could help him, such as Elon Musk, who was able 0:47:05.719 --> 0:47:09.000 to give the vast majority of the pledged funding to 0:47:09.080 --> 0:47:13.839 start open Ai. Later, when Elon Musk splits from open Ai, 0:47:14.040 --> 0:47:17.239 Sam makes his very powerful partnership with Satya Nadella to 0:47:17.280 --> 0:47:21.040 help fund open Ai. Another important partnership that Sam has made, 0:47:21.480 --> 0:47:24.680 you know, much earlier on was his friendship with Peter Teel. 0:47:25.080 --> 0:47:26.840 And one of the things Peter Teal does is also, 0:47:27.760 --> 0:47:31.600 you know, gives him millions of dollars to start investing. 0:47:31.920 --> 0:47:35.040 This is like before Sam takes over at White Yeah. 0:47:35.080 --> 0:47:37.840 And you know another thing that Paul did that really 0:47:38.360 --> 0:47:41.399 Paul Graham did that really helped Sam was also he 0:47:41.440 --> 0:47:44.239 gave Paul had the opportunity to be one of the 0:47:44.239 --> 0:47:47.960 first investors in Stripe. He was offered the chance to 0:47:48.080 --> 0:47:51.319 invest thirty thousand dollars for four percent of Stripe, which, 0:47:51.360 --> 0:47:54.680 of course now that Stripe is enormous, we all know 0:47:54.719 --> 0:47:57.959 how valuable that was, and Paul split it with Sam. 0:47:58.000 --> 0:48:00.560 He was like, oh, I might as well this with Sam. 0:48:00.600 --> 0:48:03.440 So Sam has said that that fifteen thousand dollars for 0:48:03.440 --> 0:48:06.440 a two percent of Stripe has been you know, one 0:48:06.480 --> 0:48:08.040 of his best performing Angel investments. 0:48:08.080 --> 0:48:09.919 Ever, that was some point he Austen is always where 0:48:09.960 --> 0:48:13.360 he got fifteen grand from He was still working on 0:48:13.480 --> 0:48:16.799 looped at the time. It's funny how perf litric anyway. 0:48:16.560 --> 0:48:21.320 Yeah, my guess is fifteen grand was I don't actually 0:48:21.320 --> 0:48:23.040 know this, but my guess is fifteen gen was not 0:48:23.200 --> 0:48:25.120 hard for him to pull up. And it's one of 0:48:25.160 --> 0:48:27.640 those things where it's really is, you know, access to 0:48:28.719 --> 0:48:31.040 access and relationships are the sorts of things that can 0:48:31.040 --> 0:48:33.759 build a career and can lead to great wealth. Right 0:48:33.800 --> 0:48:36.840 like Sam is now you know, by our own internal 0:48:36.840 --> 0:48:40.080 accounts and by other lists, a billionaire. And this money 0:48:40.120 --> 0:48:42.600 comes from you know, not from open Ai, but from 0:48:42.600 --> 0:48:44.640 these angel investments that he's made early on that have 0:48:45.560 --> 0:48:47.959 been enormously successful. 0:48:48.200 --> 0:48:50.799 So you called him in one of the titles, the 0:48:50.840 --> 0:48:53.759 most Silicon Valley Man Alive. Is this what you're getting at, 0:48:53.760 --> 0:48:55.719 this kind of power player mentality. 0:48:55.840 --> 0:48:59.000 Yeah, I think it's it reflects a few things. One 0:48:59.080 --> 0:49:02.000 that even though he is you know, he's in his 0:49:02.080 --> 0:49:04.840 late thirties, he's been a player in Silicon Valley for 0:49:04.880 --> 0:49:06.760 such a long time, you know, close to two decades. 0:49:07.600 --> 0:49:12.400 And also that he's just someone who is extremely well connected. 0:49:12.480 --> 0:49:16.480 So even before he took over y Combinator, which I 0:49:16.480 --> 0:49:20.160 think you could argue is like kind of king of 0:49:20.200 --> 0:49:22.640 the startup world in some sense, like Y combinators, like 0:49:22.680 --> 0:49:26.520 you know, the topics totally. Even before he took over 0:49:26.560 --> 0:49:28.560 I y comminator, I think he was extremely well connected. 0:49:28.600 --> 0:49:31.200 He's very social, he's very helpful, he's very efficient, Like 0:49:31.280 --> 0:49:34.279 many people have told me stories in which he you know, 0:49:34.400 --> 0:49:38.319 calling Sam and talking for five minutes has solved their 0:49:38.360 --> 0:49:40.480 problem because he knows exactly the right person to call 0:49:40.560 --> 0:49:42.520 to fix it, or you know, he's really good at 0:49:42.520 --> 0:49:45.080 making deals. I think it's just clear he's extremely well 0:49:45.120 --> 0:49:51.560 integrated into this world and has very successfully moved up 0:49:51.760 --> 0:49:55.839 the Silicon Valley status ladder to the point where he 0:49:55.880 --> 0:49:57.680 is now, which is kind of you know, one of 0:49:57.680 --> 0:50:00.480 the you know, he's the CEO of the one of 0:50:00.480 --> 0:50:02.880 the arguably hardest companies in the valley right now. And 0:50:02.920 --> 0:50:05.560 I think that that's not luck right, Like he didn't 0:50:05.600 --> 0:50:07.759 just come up with He's not like a nobody who 0:50:07.800 --> 0:50:10.040 came up with an idea. It's like he has the 0:50:10.040 --> 0:50:14.040 connections and has parlayed his connections into power to bring 0:50:14.120 --> 0:50:15.200 him to the point he is now. 0:50:16.320 --> 0:50:19.640 So, in your experience talking to people about Sam Ortman, 0:50:20.440 --> 0:50:23.200 how technical is he? Do you think what if you 0:50:23.280 --> 0:50:26.600 heard because you say there he wasn't lucky. But he 0:50:26.640 --> 0:50:29.280 also does not appear to have successfully run a business 0:50:30.000 --> 0:50:33.719 because Luke shut down two people, well, two executives tried 0:50:33.719 --> 0:50:35.200 to get him fired from there, he got fired from 0:50:35.320 --> 0:50:37.719 y Combinator, which did very well, but at the same 0:50:37.719 --> 0:50:40.040 time YSI was basically a conveyor belt for money at 0:50:40.040 --> 0:50:44.319 one point, not so much recently. Yeah, it just it 0:50:44.440 --> 0:50:48.200 feels weird that this completely non technical, semi non technical 0:50:48.239 --> 0:50:49.799 guy has ascended so far. 0:50:51.040 --> 0:50:54.120 My sense is that's not maybe the most fair description. Like, 0:50:54.160 --> 0:50:57.000 I think Sam is incredibly smart, and people say this 0:50:57.080 --> 0:50:59.120 a lot, and you know, I believe them. I think 0:50:59.480 --> 0:51:02.359 his special skill, you know, he obviously knows how to 0:51:02.920 --> 0:51:05.040 like he's an engineer, he has training. I'm sure he 0:51:05.040 --> 0:51:06.960 can build a lot of stuff. It seems like his 0:51:07.160 --> 0:51:12.600 comparative advantage. His special skill is relationships, deal making, figuring 0:51:12.600 --> 0:51:16.640 out who exactly is the right person to help him 0:51:17.000 --> 0:51:19.240 in whatever he's really trying to get done, and figuring 0:51:19.280 --> 0:51:22.520 out the best way to get something to happen. You know, 0:51:22.600 --> 0:51:24.359 one of the people I spoke to is someone who 0:51:25.080 --> 0:51:28.360 knows Sam from when he was younger and knows him personally, 0:51:28.400 --> 0:51:32.520 and said that his superpower is figuring out who's in 0:51:32.600 --> 0:51:34.920 charge or figuring out who is in the best position 0:51:34.960 --> 0:51:37.359 to help him, and then charming them so that they 0:51:38.120 --> 0:51:41.120 help him with whatever goal he's trying to get done. 0:51:41.480 --> 0:51:43.840 And I think that, like, yeah, one could argue that 0:51:43.840 --> 0:51:47.000 that's actually a really good skill set if you want 0:51:47.000 --> 0:51:51.640 to build a very big company, which you know, I 0:51:51.640 --> 0:51:53.600 think at this current moment he has, right like opening 0:51:53.600 --> 0:51:57.600 eyes really, you know, you can there's a lot that 0:51:57.640 --> 0:52:00.600 you can say about whether they're upholding their digital mission 0:52:00.680 --> 0:52:01.960 or that. You know, that's up for debate, but I 0:52:01.960 --> 0:52:07.359 think that they've obviously been commercially successful so far, so. 0:52:08.200 --> 0:52:11.719 It feels like Silicon Valley on some level. And I 0:52:11.960 --> 0:52:14.920 just to give some thoughts here within the two episodes 0:52:14.920 --> 0:52:17.840 I'm doing here, the pattern I've seen with sam Oltman 0:52:18.360 --> 0:52:22.200 is that everyone seems to want him to win, and 0:52:22.239 --> 0:52:25.759 there's almost a degree of they will make it. So 0:52:27.360 --> 0:52:31.040 have you seen anyone who's really a detractor or anyone 0:52:31.040 --> 0:52:36.120 who's not pro sam Oltman, because it's interesting how few 0:52:36.160 --> 0:52:37.560 people are in tech. 0:52:38.640 --> 0:52:41.600 Well, there is. I won't get too into it because 0:52:41.600 --> 0:52:43.600 this is in some of the future episodes which will 0:52:43.680 --> 0:52:47.480 drop in future weeks. But you know, I would say 0:52:47.520 --> 0:52:50.160 in in in some of the conversations that I've had 0:52:50.239 --> 0:52:53.600 off the record about people about in some of the 0:52:53.600 --> 0:52:56.160 conversations I've had off the record with people about Sam, 0:52:56.880 --> 0:53:00.279 I think, you know, my general impressions are people often 0:53:00.320 --> 0:53:02.920 do find him impressive in terms of what he has 0:53:02.960 --> 0:53:07.280 gotten done, you know, the size and scale of his ambitions, 0:53:07.320 --> 0:53:09.080 and the way that he has generally been able to 0:53:11.000 --> 0:53:14.480 make that happen. I think there's also a lot of 0:53:14.480 --> 0:53:17.719 people who you know, are willing to privately share some 0:53:18.080 --> 0:53:22.120 gripes that they might have about him. Also, you know, 0:53:22.200 --> 0:53:24.719 in recent weeks, we've seen people be a lot more 0:53:24.760 --> 0:53:27.120 public about some of those gripes. We have Helen Toner, 0:53:27.920 --> 0:53:30.880 a former former board member at open AI who voted 0:53:30.880 --> 0:53:34.359 to remove Sam last November, saying publicly in the last 0:53:34.400 --> 0:53:37.120 few weeks that Sam lied to her and the other 0:53:37.160 --> 0:53:41.600 former board members that his you know, misdirection made them 0:53:41.600 --> 0:53:45.279 feel like they couldn't do their jobs. And she has 0:53:45.280 --> 0:53:49.879 also said that people were intimidated to the point where 0:53:49.880 --> 0:53:52.720 they did not feel comfortable speaking more publicly about negative 0:53:52.760 --> 0:53:56.160 experiences they'd had about Sam, that they are afraid to 0:53:56.200 --> 0:53:59.839 speak more publicly about you know, times that he has 0:54:00.520 --> 0:54:02.920 been honest with them or you know, has in which 0:54:02.920 --> 0:54:07.840 they've had challenging experiences. And that has also been reflected 0:54:07.840 --> 0:54:10.080 in some of the private conversations I've had in which people, 0:54:10.760 --> 0:54:13.680 you know, they might have complaints or they might have 0:54:13.719 --> 0:54:16.799 had like challenging situations with him, and I think they 0:54:17.320 --> 0:54:19.160 just feel like the risk calculus is not worth it 0:54:19.200 --> 0:54:23.560 to come out and say something like that. But you know, 0:54:23.600 --> 0:54:26.960 there have been bits and pieces where people have come 0:54:27.000 --> 0:54:29.680 out and said things that you know, Sam has. You know, 0:54:30.000 --> 0:54:31.680 another thing that the board members have said was that 0:54:31.719 --> 0:54:35.960 Sam had been deceptive and manipulative, and that's also followed 0:54:36.040 --> 0:54:38.880 up by or not followed up. There was also, I 0:54:38.880 --> 0:54:41.600 think back in November, a former Open Eye employee who 0:54:41.680 --> 0:54:45.000 had tweeted something publicly about that, you know, saying that 0:54:45.000 --> 0:54:46.680 Sam had lied to him on occasion, even though he 0:54:46.719 --> 0:54:49.120 had also always been nice to him, which I think 0:54:49.160 --> 0:54:51.080 is a very interesting combination of. 0:54:52.680 --> 0:54:56.520 Charter Silicon Valley though I'm afraid of dealing with them, 0:54:56.600 --> 0:54:57.800 but they were so nice to me. 0:54:59.160 --> 0:55:00.759 And yeah, of course that you know, that person has 0:55:00.800 --> 0:55:03.880 not elaborated more publicly about what they meant. But I 0:55:03.960 --> 0:55:06.960 think I think, you know, I think this is why 0:55:07.040 --> 0:55:11.680 people are asking themselves these questions, which is like, you know, 0:55:11.760 --> 0:55:14.480 the more that we hear about what the board uh 0:55:15.600 --> 0:55:17.799 was thinking before they decided to fire Sam, I think 0:55:17.800 --> 0:55:20.280 the more people are wondering about what are the patterns 0:55:20.280 --> 0:55:24.200 of behavior that he shows that you know that led 0:55:24.239 --> 0:55:26.399 to the board trying to make this drastic move. 0:55:28.160 --> 0:55:32.920 Yeah, that's actually an interesting point. So when Samulton was 0:55:33.040 --> 0:55:36.880 fired from open AI, there was this very strange reaction 0:55:37.120 --> 0:55:40.600 from Silicon Valley, including some in the media, where it 0:55:40.880 --> 0:55:46.279 was almost like Hunger Games, everyone doing the symbol thing 0:55:46.320 --> 0:55:48.400 where everyone's like, oh, we got to put Sam Alton 0:55:48.480 --> 0:55:52.000 back in, isn't it kind of strange? We still don't 0:55:52.080 --> 0:55:54.760 know why he was actually fired though, I mean Helen 0:55:54.800 --> 0:55:58.040 Tona has elaborated like, I've never seen a have you 0:55:58.120 --> 0:55:59.560 seen anything like this in your career? 0:56:00.200 --> 0:56:04.120 I think that it has been surprising that there has 0:56:04.239 --> 0:56:09.880 not been more of a clear answer. I think, you know, 0:56:09.960 --> 0:56:13.200 as as time has gone on, like we have heard 0:56:13.280 --> 0:56:16.279 a little bit more Like I think Helen Toner has, 0:56:17.160 --> 0:56:20.200 you know, to her credit, tried to give more information 0:56:20.320 --> 0:56:24.560 in recent weeks about what happened. I think, you know, 0:56:24.960 --> 0:56:27.680 people were obviously asking this question six months ago, and 0:56:27.840 --> 0:56:29.279 so I think like there's been a little bit of 0:56:29.320 --> 0:56:33.360 a delay and trying to get this this answer, and 0:56:33.520 --> 0:56:36.000 I wonder if maybe there just isn't like a very 0:56:37.719 --> 0:56:40.200 neat answer to it, and so and then in that 0:56:40.960 --> 0:56:45.239 absence we get this kind of more of a like murky, multifaceted, 0:56:45.320 --> 0:56:48.040 multi voiced answer. But I, yes, I agree that it 0:56:48.320 --> 0:56:50.560 is sort of surprising that there that there hasn't been 0:56:51.440 --> 0:56:56.080 more clarification on what exactly happened or a little bit 0:56:56.200 --> 0:57:00.160 more granular detail about what led up to it. 0:57:01.520 --> 0:57:05.080 So on today, aihype in general said that a bit weird. 0:57:05.160 --> 0:57:08.279 I'll keep going, why do you think there's such a 0:57:08.360 --> 0:57:11.680 doulf between what Sam Altman says and what chat GPT 0:57:11.880 --> 0:57:12.560 can actually do? 0:57:13.920 --> 0:57:16.439 What Sam Moltman says, what are you talking about specifically, as. 0:57:16.400 --> 0:57:18.960 In he says it will be a super smart company. Yeah, yeah, 0:57:19.000 --> 0:57:20.280 that he'll be all of these things. 0:57:21.120 --> 0:57:23.400 Well, this is something that we get into in episode three, 0:57:23.440 --> 0:57:25.760 which is a personal interest of mine, which is kind 0:57:25.760 --> 0:57:29.560 of the psychology of the AI industry right now. And 0:57:30.440 --> 0:57:33.520 you know, I what I find so interesting about this 0:57:33.600 --> 0:57:36.280 and what we try to delve into in episode three 0:57:36.320 --> 0:57:39.760 and kind of throughout the series is these kind of 0:57:39.840 --> 0:57:43.320 like extreme projections about AI. And in the industry you 0:57:43.400 --> 0:57:45.960 see both positive ones and negative ones, and I think, 0:57:46.240 --> 0:57:49.560 you know, the negative ones, that's what looks like AI dooomerism, 0:57:49.680 --> 0:57:53.280 AI existential risks, sometimes called AI safety depending on your 0:57:53.320 --> 0:57:55.240 point of view. But you know, it's these projections that 0:57:56.360 --> 0:58:02.000 you know, superintelligence might very quickly and very soon learned 0:58:02.080 --> 0:58:05.720 to self improve in a way that allows it to 0:58:05.960 --> 0:58:09.360 rapidly outstrip our control and our capabilities and could lead 0:58:09.400 --> 0:58:13.080 to the extinction of humanity. There are so many interesting 0:58:13.120 --> 0:58:16.200 things to say about the psychology of believing that our 0:58:16.400 --> 0:58:19.880 human race might either be wiped out or incredibly changed 0:58:20.840 --> 0:58:24.480 within our lifetimes, and we get into that in episode three. 0:58:24.480 --> 0:58:26.680 I think I really wanted to get into the psychology 0:58:26.720 --> 0:58:29.520 of someone who believes that AI doom is just around 0:58:29.560 --> 0:58:32.000 the corner, and so we talked to someone who sort 0:58:32.000 --> 0:58:35.040 of became convinced of this belief soon after the twenty 0:58:35.080 --> 0:58:40.000 sixteen Alpha Go matches in which the go playing AI 0:58:40.120 --> 0:58:43.720 beat the the world's champion in Go, and he talks 0:58:43.720 --> 0:58:46.160 about yeah, no longer, you know, deciding not to make 0:58:46.240 --> 0:58:48.200 a retirement account because he was like, what is the 0:58:48.240 --> 0:58:52.160 point by the time I reach retirement age, either the 0:58:52.240 --> 0:58:55.240 world will be dramatically different and money won't matter, or 0:58:55.280 --> 0:58:58.760 will all be dead. And I think that, even though 0:58:58.800 --> 0:59:00.600 some people might scoff at that, that's like a real 0:59:00.640 --> 0:59:04.440 belief that people believe that this, you know, these extreme 0:59:04.680 --> 0:59:08.160 possible scenarios are in our near future. And on the 0:59:08.200 --> 0:59:12.080 other hand, we also see extreme projections in a positive direction. 0:59:12.200 --> 0:59:16.640 You know, this idea that AI is going to unlock 0:59:17.280 --> 0:59:20.720 a whole new era of human flourishing, that we might 0:59:21.360 --> 0:59:23.440 expand beyond our planet, that we might be able to 0:59:23.720 --> 0:59:28.720 give say what abundance abundance, right exactly. You know, one 0:59:28.720 --> 0:59:31.680 of the things we do I believe in episode three 0:59:31.800 --> 0:59:33.760 is is do a little bit of a supercut of 0:59:33.840 --> 0:59:36.120 Sam all been talking about abundance. It's it's pretty clear 0:59:36.200 --> 0:59:38.800 that this is a way that he likes to frame 0:59:39.240 --> 0:59:41.040 our AI future is going to be this future in 0:59:41.080 --> 0:59:45.320 which everyone has plenty, right, everyone has, you know, access 0:59:45.360 --> 0:59:50.000 to intelligence, abundant energy, abundant access to superintelligence that can 0:59:50.040 --> 0:59:52.200 help us live kind of our best lives and beyond 0:59:52.240 --> 0:59:57.880 our wildest dreams. Right. And I you know, obviously Silicon 0:59:57.920 --> 1:00:02.400 Valley is a place where people like to make grandiose statements. 1:00:02.920 --> 1:00:05.720 But this is beyond that, right, This is not just yeah, 1:00:06.280 --> 1:00:08.919 this is not just like you know, we joked about 1:00:08.960 --> 1:00:09.360 we work. 1:00:09.880 --> 1:00:10.200 We works. 1:00:10.240 --> 1:00:12.760 Mission statement was to elevate the world's consciousness, like well, 1:00:14.280 --> 1:00:17.960 galaxies of human flourishing for eons beyond us. Like that 1:00:18.120 --> 1:00:20.640 is on another scale, right, Like we're talking about something 1:00:20.680 --> 1:00:26.560 that is sort of at an unprecedented level of extreme rhetoric. 1:00:26.640 --> 1:00:28.880 And I think that's really interesting. I think it is 1:00:28.960 --> 1:00:31.960 a very powerful motivator, both in a you know, in 1:00:32.000 --> 1:00:34.520 the Doumer sense and also in the abundance sense. People 1:00:34.600 --> 1:00:37.280 believing that what they're working on is the most important 1:00:37.320 --> 1:00:42.720 technological leap forward for humanity. Talk about a motivating reason 1:00:42.880 --> 1:00:46.600 to work on this technology, right, talk about a way 1:00:46.680 --> 1:00:50.080 to feel powerful, feel like you're making a huge difference. 1:00:50.120 --> 1:00:53.040 I think that's a really key part of what's driving 1:00:53.240 --> 1:00:54.760 a lot of work in AI right now. 1:00:55.640 --> 1:00:56.720 Striving a lot of work. 1:00:56.840 --> 1:01:01.160 Sure, But with Altman himself, there is the golf. It 1:01:01.360 --> 1:01:05.120 is a million mile golf between the things he says 1:01:05.200 --> 1:01:08.480 and what chat GBT is, even even on the most 1:01:08.520 --> 1:01:11.160 basic level, capable of doing and will be capable, And 1:01:11.280 --> 1:01:14.360 it just feels like it almost feels like he's become 1:01:15.360 --> 1:01:19.880 the propagandist for the tech industry, and it's very strange 1:01:19.960 --> 1:01:23.200 to me how far that distance is. Because you've got 1:01:23.240 --> 1:01:27.160 the AI doomers and the AI optimist I guess you'd 1:01:27.200 --> 1:01:31.400 call them, but Allmond doesn't even feel like he's in 1:01:31.560 --> 1:01:34.040 with He's just kind of He'll say one day that 1:01:34.160 --> 1:01:36.400 he doesn't think it's a creature, the next one will 1:01:36.400 --> 1:01:39.000 say it's gonna kill us, or it all just feels 1:01:39.160 --> 1:01:42.320 like a pr campaign but for nothing. 1:01:43.760 --> 1:01:47.560 Yeah, it has been interesting to try to answer the question. 1:01:47.560 --> 1:01:47.680 You know. 1:01:47.720 --> 1:01:49.120 One of the questions we tried to answer in the 1:01:49.120 --> 1:01:53.240 podcast is does Sam actually believe you know, because as 1:01:53.280 --> 1:01:56.000 you mentioned, there are some early clips of him, you know, 1:01:56.080 --> 1:01:57.800 and when I say earlier, I mean around the time 1:01:57.840 --> 1:02:00.840 of founding open Ai twenty fifteen or so. There's some 1:02:00.920 --> 1:02:05.560 clips of him talking about, you know, saying somewhat jokingly 1:02:05.640 --> 1:02:07.600 that AI might kill us all. But there's also this, 1:02:08.120 --> 1:02:09.800 you know, very famous blog post that he wrote in 1:02:09.880 --> 1:02:12.720 twenty fifteen in which he says that, you know, basically, 1:02:12.760 --> 1:02:16.640 super intelligence is one of the most serious risks to humanity, 1:02:17.800 --> 1:02:20.200 you know, full stop. And so it's clear that at 1:02:20.280 --> 1:02:23.360 some point in his life, he believed kind of what 1:02:23.480 --> 1:02:27.480 we might now call a more doom ory outlook. But 1:02:27.600 --> 1:02:30.680 as time has gone on, he has you know, offered 1:02:30.760 --> 1:02:33.040 views that are a little bit more measured and more positive. 1:02:33.520 --> 1:02:35.920 You know, he tends to you know, in his big 1:02:36.000 --> 1:02:40.000 media tour of twenty twenty three, he tended to talk 1:02:40.040 --> 1:02:43.200 about how AI was going to. You know, his projection 1:02:43.360 --> 1:02:46.160 was that AI would radically transform society, but that it 1:02:46.200 --> 1:02:49.640 would be net good, right that like, overall we would 1:02:49.640 --> 1:02:53.240 be glad that this happened, and that it would improve lives, 1:02:53.680 --> 1:02:56.400 even if in the short term or for some people 1:02:56.440 --> 1:02:59.640 it might prove to be bringing a lot of challenges 1:02:59.680 --> 1:02:59.920 as well. 1:03:01.080 --> 1:03:02.440 And so it is. 1:03:02.560 --> 1:03:04.200 You know, I think one of the interesting things about 1:03:04.320 --> 1:03:06.400 is about him is it is a little hard to 1:03:06.440 --> 1:03:08.760 pin down exactly what he thinks. I think you're right 1:03:08.840 --> 1:03:13.560 that I wouldn't consider him like a gung ho effective accelerationist. 1:03:13.600 --> 1:03:15.360 I would not consider him a dumer. He is like 1:03:16.520 --> 1:03:19.400 somewhere in this large gulf in between there. But I 1:03:19.520 --> 1:03:24.800 think he's also smart enough to know that making grandiose 1:03:24.840 --> 1:03:30.800 projections about what AI could bring is a compelling story, right, 1:03:30.920 --> 1:03:35.080 like is a story that he can help sell by 1:03:35.120 --> 1:03:37.040 being like a spokesman for it. And often that is 1:03:37.120 --> 1:03:38.880 the role of a CEO is to be a really 1:03:38.880 --> 1:03:42.640 good storyteller, to bring the pitch of the company to 1:03:42.760 --> 1:03:47.600 the public, to investors, to potential employees, to customers, to 1:03:47.720 --> 1:03:49.240 try to sell them on this vision of the future. 1:03:49.280 --> 1:03:51.400 And I do think Sam is good at that. There 1:03:51.440 --> 1:03:56.040 is an interesting tidbit in episode three in which we 1:03:56.160 --> 1:03:59.560 interview a fiction writer who was actually hired on contract 1:03:59.720 --> 1:04:05.479 by open Ai to write like a novella about AI 1:04:05.720 --> 1:04:09.439 futures and things like that. And yeah, he just talks 1:04:09.480 --> 1:04:11.360 a little bit about you know, the novella is not 1:04:11.920 --> 1:04:14.760 I think in active use within open ai, but they 1:04:14.800 --> 1:04:17.320 did at some point, see they did at some point 1:04:17.440 --> 1:04:21.480 see value in commissioning it. And I think you know 1:04:21.560 --> 1:04:24.280 something that the author Patrick House explains to us is 1:04:24.920 --> 1:04:28.360 you know that open a Ey, just like many other startups, 1:04:29.160 --> 1:04:31.680 is really motivated by story, right, and that Sam Altman 1:04:31.840 --> 1:04:34.720 is inspired by fiction. You know, it's inspired by certain 1:04:34.760 --> 1:04:36.920 kinds of sci fi. I think this is not unique 1:04:36.920 --> 1:04:40.080 to Sam. Many founders in Silicon Valley, you know, Elon 1:04:40.160 --> 1:04:42.880 Musk has talked about this as well, are driven to 1:04:43.040 --> 1:04:47.000 create things in part because of what they read about 1:04:47.040 --> 1:04:49.160 when they were younger, that you know, these dreams of 1:04:49.200 --> 1:04:52.080 the future. And so it's just interesting to get his 1:04:52.200 --> 1:04:56.080 perspective on how motivating a story can be, and how 1:04:56.120 --> 1:04:59.160 motivating this compelling story of like, oh, we're building something 1:04:59.200 --> 1:05:01.840 that's gonna change the course of human history. Like you 1:05:01.960 --> 1:05:04.760 just couldn't ask for a more powerful motivating force. 1:05:06.160 --> 1:05:11.960 So as Alman accumulates power and as he kind of 1:05:12.160 --> 1:05:15.160 sends to the top of open AI, do you think 1:05:15.240 --> 1:05:17.640 he's done there? Do you think there's going to be 1:05:17.720 --> 1:05:20.800 another thing he starts? Because it feels like you've discussed 1:05:20.880 --> 1:05:22.760 like UBI and all these other things. Do you think 1:05:22.800 --> 1:05:26.000 he has grander ideas that he wants to pursue? 1:05:27.160 --> 1:05:31.920 Well, obviously I can't speak to what's inside Sam's. 1:05:31.880 --> 1:05:34.440 I don't know the man's mind, but I. 1:05:34.520 --> 1:05:38.240 Mean past indicators would suggest yes, Like I think he 1:05:38.320 --> 1:05:42.160 has proven pretty consistently that he's someone who you know, 1:05:42.440 --> 1:05:44.880 is you know, as much as he might focus on 1:05:44.960 --> 1:05:47.760 one project with a lot of effort, like he is 1:05:48.040 --> 1:05:50.120 cooking things on the side, Like this is a man. 1:05:50.680 --> 1:05:52.200 This is going to be an extended metaphor, but this 1:05:52.320 --> 1:05:54.200 is a man working at a stove that has like 1:05:54.280 --> 1:05:57.480 six burners, not one. And you know he we already 1:05:57.560 --> 1:05:57.840 know that. 1:05:58.800 --> 1:06:02.320 What are you saying, sorry, he's got a big house, He's. 1:06:02.200 --> 1:06:06.920 Got multiple houses. The uh the you know, we already 1:06:07.000 --> 1:06:10.479 know that. You know. In addition to running open ai, 1:06:11.240 --> 1:06:16.360 he has funded and or helped prompt the founding of, 1:06:16.880 --> 1:06:19.680 or has you know, been very involved in investing in 1:06:19.800 --> 1:06:23.360 or supporting other startups that you know, are part of 1:06:23.440 --> 1:06:28.680 this kind of ecosystem of businesses that are connected to 1:06:29.240 --> 1:06:31.880 an AI future or might benefit in an AI future. 1:06:31.960 --> 1:06:35.880 So for example, Helion, which is a nuclear fusion company 1:06:35.920 --> 1:06:38.400 which he has invested a ton of money into. I 1:06:38.480 --> 1:06:40.800 think he has said publicly that you know, his his 1:06:40.960 --> 1:06:44.040 vision is that this is a potential way to provide 1:06:44.400 --> 1:06:49.480 abundant energy that could then power the technology that we 1:06:49.560 --> 1:06:54.120 need to you know, uh, improve AI to the level 1:06:54.160 --> 1:06:55.440 that we're hoping that it can get to, or that 1:06:55.480 --> 1:06:57.960 he's hoping that it can get to. At the same time, 1:06:58.680 --> 1:07:01.000 you know, we've talked a little bit about universal basic income. 1:07:01.120 --> 1:07:04.200 This has been something that Sam has been a proponent 1:07:04.280 --> 1:07:07.760 of and an advocate of since at least twenty sixteen, 1:07:07.880 --> 1:07:10.680 when he was running y Combinator and they started a 1:07:11.000 --> 1:07:15.240 side research project to study universal basic income by giving 1:07:17.440 --> 1:07:20.440 cash payments to families in Oakland of I believe a 1:07:20.480 --> 1:07:24.440 thousand dollars a month. That research project is still ongoing. 1:07:24.520 --> 1:07:28.440 It's now moved away from y Combinator and is associated 1:07:29.040 --> 1:07:32.320 with open Research, which is I believe funded by open Ai, 1:07:32.480 --> 1:07:34.480 and so it has kind of moved with Sam to 1:07:34.600 --> 1:07:39.120 his new role. And of course he also co founded 1:07:39.200 --> 1:07:45.400 this company called world Coin, which used these silver orbs 1:07:45.960 --> 1:07:50.360 machines to scan to take pictures of your iris and 1:07:50.760 --> 1:07:55.680 give everyone register every individual human as like a unique 1:07:55.720 --> 1:07:59.800 human individual, and to create this eyeball registry in which 1:08:00.440 --> 1:08:03.440 by which one could in the future distribute a universal 1:08:03.480 --> 1:08:06.960 basic income. So he's funding these energy companies. He's like 1:08:07.160 --> 1:08:11.080 involved in these sort the sort of crypto eyeball registry 1:08:11.200 --> 1:08:13.920 project that will help distribute UBI in this future that 1:08:13.960 --> 1:08:16.200 he's imagining. Like I think it's safe to say he's 1:08:16.240 --> 1:08:19.920 definitely thinking about things beyond just open AI for the 1:08:20.000 --> 1:08:23.200 future and imagining like, Okay, well, if we have this 1:08:23.320 --> 1:08:25.320 piece that's growing, what else will we need to support it? 1:08:25.880 --> 1:08:27.840 And I'm sure there are other things he's working on 1:08:27.960 --> 1:08:29.920 that we don't even know about, right, Like I know 1:08:30.000 --> 1:08:34.720 he has also funded some like longevity bioscience projects and 1:08:34.800 --> 1:08:38.400 things like that. He's I guarantee he's thinking about stuff 1:08:38.439 --> 1:08:39.320 beyond what we know about. 1:08:41.360 --> 1:08:45.599 Final question, why do you think the entire tech industry 1:08:45.640 --> 1:08:47.400 has become so fascinated with AI? 1:08:47.640 --> 1:08:50.400 Do you think it's just oldman or is it something more? 1:08:51.840 --> 1:08:56.200 I do think chat GBT started heating up this interest 1:08:56.280 --> 1:08:58.479 that was already percolating a little bit in the tech industry. 1:08:58.920 --> 1:09:01.439 But it does seem like something about chatchept capture the 1:09:01.479 --> 1:09:05.400 public imagination made people imagine very seriously for the first time, 1:09:06.360 --> 1:09:10.920 how AI could affect their lives, their lives individually. It 1:09:11.000 --> 1:09:12.439 used to be kind of this abstract thing that was 1:09:12.439 --> 1:09:15.040 a little farther away, or maybe you understood that like 1:09:15.479 --> 1:09:18.960 you were interacting with AI sometimes, like when you would 1:09:19.080 --> 1:09:25.240 look at like flight price predictors. Yeah, exactly. But you know, 1:09:25.280 --> 1:09:27.200 I think as we you know, we talk about this 1:09:27.320 --> 1:09:30.000 in episode three, but that you know, chat chipet wasn't 1:09:30.040 --> 1:09:34.519 even new technology. It was actually just a different user 1:09:34.600 --> 1:09:38.639 interface on a model that already existed GPT three point five. 1:09:39.320 --> 1:09:39.559 And so. 1:09:41.200 --> 1:09:43.320 To me, that actually speaks I guess to the power 1:09:43.439 --> 1:09:47.519 of like making a technology accessible to everyone. And in 1:09:47.640 --> 1:09:49.600 a way that was like easy to use and you know, 1:09:49.680 --> 1:09:52.000 for better or worse. That kind of got a lot 1:09:52.080 --> 1:09:55.280 of people in this like public momentum of people thinking 1:09:55.320 --> 1:09:59.360 about AI feeling you know, just feeling like it had 1:10:00.560 --> 1:10:04.000 rapidly increased its capabilities in a short period of time. 1:10:04.880 --> 1:10:11.240 And yeah, something about that really captured not just you know, 1:10:11.400 --> 1:10:14.080 the minds, but also the hearts of people and like 1:10:14.360 --> 1:10:17.519 getting them really thinking about, like what could a future 1:10:17.640 --> 1:10:19.880 like this look like? And I think while some people 1:10:19.880 --> 1:10:22.280 were excited, a lot of people also reacted with fear 1:10:22.360 --> 1:10:23.840 right and like I think in the valley like you 1:10:23.960 --> 1:10:28.080 will hear a lot of people more openly discussing their 1:10:28.200 --> 1:10:34.840 fears of sort of like job loss or or just 1:10:34.920 --> 1:10:37.080 like dramatic social change that might come about in the 1:10:37.160 --> 1:10:40.439 next ten or twenty years. The feeling I get in 1:10:40.520 --> 1:10:42.680 conversations that I have in and around San Francisco is, 1:10:43.400 --> 1:10:44.920 you know, even people who are pretty deep in this 1:10:45.000 --> 1:10:50.280 technology are uncertain about whether it's going to be overall 1:10:50.640 --> 1:10:53.040 good or bad. Like they're just uncertain of how to 1:10:53.080 --> 1:10:55.720 look back on this time, like whether it will have 1:10:56.000 --> 1:10:59.960 ended up being elite forward for humanity or something differ. 1:11:12.680 --> 1:11:14.720 Aortman has taken advantage of the fact that the tech 1:11:14.800 --> 1:11:18.680 industry might not have any hypergrowth markets left, knowing that 1:11:18.800 --> 1:11:22.439 chat GPT is much like Sam Altman, incredibly adept at 1:11:22.520 --> 1:11:26.400 mimicking depth and experience by parroting the experiences of those 1:11:26.479 --> 1:11:30.679 that have actually done things. Like Sam Altman, chat GPT 1:11:30.840 --> 1:11:34.080 consumes information and feeds it back to the people using 1:11:34.160 --> 1:11:38.599 it in a way that feels superficially satisfying, and it's 1:11:38.640 --> 1:11:41.600 quite impressive to those who don't really care about creativity 1:11:41.720 --> 1:11:44.360 or depth, And like I've said, it takes advantage of 1:11:44.400 --> 1:11:47.160 the fact that the teche CoSystem has been dominated and 1:11:47.280 --> 1:11:52.120 funded like people who don't really build tech. As I've 1:11:52.160 --> 1:11:56.880 said before, generative AI things like chat gpt, anthropics Claude, 1:11:57.200 --> 1:11:59.880 Microsoft's co Pilot, which is also powered by chat gp. 1:12:00.720 --> 1:12:03.920 It's not going to become the incredible supercomputer that Sam 1:12:03.960 --> 1:12:07.240 Mortman is promising. It will not be a virtual brain 1:12:07.560 --> 1:12:10.600 or imminently human like or a super smart person that 1:12:10.760 --> 1:12:14.720 knows everything about you, because it is, at its deepest complexity, 1:12:15.120 --> 1:12:19.160 a fundamentally different technology based on mathematics and the probabilistic 1:12:19.240 --> 1:12:22.280 answer to what you have asked it, rather than anything 1:12:22.400 --> 1:12:26.639 resembling how human beings think, or act or even know things. 1:12:26.880 --> 1:12:30.920 Generative AI does not know anything. How can a thing 1:12:31.040 --> 1:12:34.600 think when it doesn't know a anyone? I want to 1:12:34.680 --> 1:12:39.040 ask bradlight Cap Miramurati, Sam Ortman any of these questions 1:12:39.320 --> 1:12:43.840 just once hear what they fart out. No, Well, chat 1:12:43.920 --> 1:12:48.240 GBT isn't inherently useless. Almand realizes that it's impossible to 1:12:48.360 --> 1:12:51.240 generate the kind of funding and hype he needs based 1:12:51.280 --> 1:12:54.520 on its actual achievements, and that to continue to accumulate 1:12:54.640 --> 1:12:57.240 power and money, which is his only goal, he has 1:12:57.280 --> 1:12:59.439 the speciously hype it and he has the hype it 1:12:59.680 --> 1:13:02.519 to wear healthy and powerful people who also do not 1:13:02.680 --> 1:13:04.599 participate in the creation of anything. 1:13:06.200 --> 1:13:09.439 And that's who he is. I've been pretty mean about 1:13:09.479 --> 1:13:11.880 this guy, I really have. But he does have a skill. 1:13:12.479 --> 1:13:16.479 He knows a mark, he knows he knows how to 1:13:16.600 --> 1:13:18.679 say the right things and get in the right rooms 1:13:18.880 --> 1:13:21.880 with the people who aren't really touching the software or 1:13:21.960 --> 1:13:24.560 the hardware. He knows what they need to hear, he 1:13:24.640 --> 1:13:28.960 knows what the vcs need to hear. He knows quite 1:13:29.040 --> 1:13:33.080 aptly what this needs to sound like. But if he 1:13:33.200 --> 1:13:35.679 had to say what chat GBT does today, what would 1:13:35.720 --> 1:13:38.640 he say, Yeah, yeah, it's really good at generating a 1:13:38.680 --> 1:13:40.120 bunch of TEGs that's kind of shitty. 1:13:41.000 --> 1:13:41.200 Yeah. 1:13:41.240 --> 1:13:43.160 Sometimes it does math right and sometimes it does it 1:13:43.240 --> 1:13:45.160 really wrong. Sometimes you ask it to do It can 1:13:45.240 --> 1:13:47.320 draw a picture, Hey, what do you think of that? 1:13:48.680 --> 1:13:50.640 These are all things, by the way, that if like 1:13:50.720 --> 1:13:52.160 a six year old told you'd be like, wow, that's 1:13:52.200 --> 1:13:55.000 really impressive, or like a ten year old, perhaps because 1:13:55.040 --> 1:13:59.040 that's a living being. CHATGBT does these things, and it 1:13:59.160 --> 1:14:01.160 does it I know it's cheesy to say, but in 1:14:01.240 --> 1:14:03.560 a soulless way, but it really does that because and 1:14:03.640 --> 1:14:06.479 the reason all of this, the writing and the horrible 1:14:06.600 --> 1:14:09.280 video and the images, the reason it feels so empty 1:14:09.400 --> 1:14:15.320 is because even the most manure adjacent press release still 1:14:15.400 --> 1:14:20.719 has gone through someone's manure adjacent brain. Even the most 1:14:20.840 --> 1:14:24.519 pallid empty copy you've read has gone through someone. A 1:14:24.600 --> 1:14:27.559 person has put thought and intention in, even if they're 1:14:27.600 --> 1:14:31.880 not great with the English language. What chat GPT does 1:14:32.479 --> 1:14:35.479 is use math to generate the next thing, and sometimes 1:14:35.520 --> 1:14:38.600 it gets it pretty right. But pretty right is not 1:14:38.880 --> 1:14:42.880 enough to mimic human creation. But look at Sam Altman. 1:14:43.400 --> 1:14:46.599 Look who he is. What has he created? Other than wealth? 1:14:46.680 --> 1:14:51.040 For him and other people. What about Sam Moltman is 1:14:51.240 --> 1:14:56.479 particularly exciting. Well, he's been rich before and his money 1:14:57.080 --> 1:14:58.080 made him even richer. 1:14:58.439 --> 1:14:59.200 That's pretty good. 1:14:59.520 --> 1:15:02.439 He was why Combinator don't ask too much about what 1:15:02.560 --> 1:15:07.559 happened there. Just feels like sometimes Silicon Valley caun't wipe 1:15:07.600 --> 1:15:11.400 its own ass. It can't see when there's a wolf 1:15:11.479 --> 1:15:15.120 amongst the sheep. It can't see when someone isn't really 1:15:15.240 --> 1:15:18.080 part of the system other than finding new ways to 1:15:18.160 --> 1:15:21.360 manipulate and extract value from it. And Sam Altman is 1:15:21.439 --> 1:15:25.240 a monster created by Silicon Valley's sin, and their sin, 1:15:25.479 --> 1:15:28.519 by the way, is empowering and elevating those who don't 1:15:28.800 --> 1:15:32.080 build software, which in turn has led to the greater 1:15:32.280 --> 1:15:35.400 sin of allowing the tech industry to drift away from 1:15:35.479 --> 1:15:40.120 fixing the problems of actual human beings. Sam Altman's manipulative 1:15:40.200 --> 1:15:43.280 little power plays have been so effective because so many 1:15:43.400 --> 1:15:46.559 of the power players in venture capital and the public markets, 1:15:46.600 --> 1:15:49.880 and even tech companies are disconnected from the process of 1:15:50.000 --> 1:15:53.439 building things, of building software and hardware, and that makes 1:15:53.520 --> 1:15:57.559 them incapable or perhaps unwilling to understand that sam Altman 1:15:57.800 --> 1:16:01.320 is leading them to a deeply desolate place and on 1:16:01.439 --> 1:16:04.280 some level it's kind of impressive how he succeeded in 1:16:04.400 --> 1:16:07.320 bending these fools to his whims, to the point that 1:16:07.439 --> 1:16:09.880 executives like Sunned Up a Shi of Google, are willing 1:16:09.960 --> 1:16:13.120 to break Google Search in pursuit of this next big 1:16:13.240 --> 1:16:18.400 hype cycle created by Sam Altman. He might not create anything, 1:16:18.479 --> 1:16:22.200 but he's excellent at spotting market opportunities, even if these 1:16:22.240 --> 1:16:26.679 opportunities involve him transparently lying about the technology he creates, 1:16:27.680 --> 1:16:31.880 or while having his nasty little boosters further propagate these bullshit, 1:16:32.479 --> 1:16:35.800 mostly because they don't know, or perhaps they don't care 1:16:36.160 --> 1:16:38.840 if Sam Morton's full of shit. Maybe it doesn't matter 1:16:38.880 --> 1:16:42.160 to them. It doesn't matter that Google Search is still 1:16:42.240 --> 1:16:46.960 plagued with nonsensical AI answers that sometimes steal other people's work, 1:16:47.240 --> 1:16:50.479 or that AI in legal research has been proven to 1:16:50.600 --> 1:16:53.360 regularly hallucinate, which, by the way, is a problem that's 1:16:53.520 --> 1:16:58.120 impossible to fix. It's all happening because AI is the 1:16:58.200 --> 1:17:00.280 new thing that can be sold to the market, and 1:17:00.360 --> 1:17:04.000 it's all happening because Sam Altman, intentionally or otherwise has 1:17:04.080 --> 1:17:08.200 created a totally hollow hype cycle. And all of this 1:17:08.400 --> 1:17:11.040 is thanks to Sam Moltman. And a tech industry that's 1:17:11.080 --> 1:17:14.280 lost its ability to create things worthy of an actual 1:17:14.439 --> 1:17:17.599 hype cycle to the point that this spacious, non technical 1:17:17.680 --> 1:17:21.880 manipulator can lead it down this nasty, ugly offensive anti 1:17:22.120 --> 1:17:27.000 tech path. The tech industry has spent years pissing off customers, 1:17:27.120 --> 1:17:30.839 with platforms like Facebook and Google actively making their products 1:17:30.920 --> 1:17:34.240 worse in the pursuit of perpetual growth and ashamedly turning 1:17:34.280 --> 1:17:36.519 their backs on the people that made them rich and 1:17:36.600 --> 1:17:40.439 acting with this horrifying contempt for their users. And I 1:17:40.520 --> 1:17:42.920 believe the result will be that tech is going to 1:17:43.000 --> 1:17:47.439 face a harsh reprimand from society. As I mentioned in 1:17:47.479 --> 1:17:50.840 the rock Com bubble, things are already falling apart. WHEB 1:17:50.920 --> 1:17:55.000 traffic is already dropping. And what sucks is the people 1:17:55.080 --> 1:17:57.560 around Sam Moultman should have been able to see this, 1:17:58.800 --> 1:18:03.479 even putting aside his I've listened to an alarming amount 1:18:03.520 --> 1:18:06.960 of Sam Onman talk, and I'm a public relations person, 1:18:07.000 --> 1:18:09.080 who the hell am I I'm someone who's been around 1:18:09.120 --> 1:18:11.320 a lot of people who make shit up. I've been 1:18:11.360 --> 1:18:13.720 around a lot of people whose job it is to 1:18:13.840 --> 1:18:19.519 kind of obfuscate things, and quite frankly, almost really obvious. 1:18:20.120 --> 1:18:22.519 I'm not gonna do any weird light to me esque 1:18:22.640 --> 1:18:26.000 ways of proving he's lying. He just doesn't ever get 1:18:26.080 --> 1:18:30.599 pushed into any depth. No one ever asks him really 1:18:30.760 --> 1:18:34.000 technical questions or even just a question like, Hey, Sam, 1:18:34.320 --> 1:18:36.479 did you work on any of the code at open AI? 1:18:36.800 --> 1:18:39.080 What did you work on? Yeah? 1:18:39.080 --> 1:18:41.920 I know you can't talk about the future, Sam, but 1:18:42.040 --> 1:18:44.599 how close are we actually to AGI? And if he says, ah, 1:18:44.600 --> 1:18:48.360 a few years, that's not specific enough, Sam, how about 1:18:48.439 --> 1:18:52.200 give me a ballpark? And then when he lies again, 1:18:52.280 --> 1:18:55.080 you say, okay, Sam, how do we get from generative 1:18:55.120 --> 1:18:59.720 AI to AGI? And when he starts waffling, say no, no, no, 1:18:59.840 --> 1:19:04.439 be specific, Sam. This is how you actually ask questions. 1:19:04.520 --> 1:19:06.960 And when you say things like this, by the way, 1:19:07.040 --> 1:19:11.559 to technical founders, they don't get worried. They don't offer skate. 1:19:11.840 --> 1:19:13.479 They may say I can't talk about this duty of 1:19:13.560 --> 1:19:17.040 legal things, which is fine, but they'll generally try and 1:19:17.320 --> 1:19:21.120 talk to you. Listen to any interview with any other 1:19:21.600 --> 1:19:25.880 technical AI person, listen to them, and then listen to 1:19:25.960 --> 1:19:26.599 Sam Altman. 1:19:27.000 --> 1:19:27.800 He's full of it. 1:19:28.080 --> 1:19:31.760 It's so obvious and one deeply unfair thing with the 1:19:31.880 --> 1:19:34.479 value is there are people that get held to these 1:19:34.520 --> 1:19:38.200 standards early stage startups generally do the ones that aren't 1:19:38.280 --> 1:19:41.120 handed to people like Aortman or Alexis Ohanian have read it, 1:19:41.320 --> 1:19:44.880 or Paul Graham or read Hoffman. They don't get those 1:19:45.000 --> 1:19:47.320 chances because they're not saying the things that need to 1:19:47.360 --> 1:19:52.080 be said to the venture capitalists. They're not in the circles. 1:19:52.800 --> 1:19:55.679 They're not doing the right things because the right things 1:19:55.960 --> 1:19:58.960 are no longer the right thing for the tech industry. 1:20:00.800 --> 1:20:03.800 And when all of this falls apart, Sam Almon's going 1:20:03.880 --> 1:20:07.639 to be fine. When this all collapses, He'll find something 1:20:07.720 --> 1:20:11.240 to blame it on, market forces, a lack of energy, breakthroughs, 1:20:11.720 --> 1:20:15.759 unfortunate economic things, all of that nonsense, and he'll remain 1:20:15.800 --> 1:20:19.360 a billionaire, capable of doing anything he wants. The people 1:20:19.439 --> 1:20:21.560 that are going to suffer are the people working in 1:20:21.640 --> 1:20:24.800 Silicon Valley who aren't Sam Almon, The people that did 1:20:24.880 --> 1:20:27.920 not get born with a silver spoon in each hand 1:20:27.960 --> 1:20:30.479 and then handed further silver spoons as they walk the 1:20:30.560 --> 1:20:34.360 streets of San Francisco, people that don't live in nine 1:20:34.400 --> 1:20:38.559 and a half thousand square foot mansions, the people trying 1:20:38.600 --> 1:20:40.880 to raise money who can't write now because all the 1:20:41.000 --> 1:20:45.720 vcs are obsessed with AI the people that will get 1:20:45.800 --> 1:20:49.599 fired from public tech companies when a depression hits, because 1:20:49.640 --> 1:20:53.000 the markets realize that the generative AI boom was a bubble, 1:20:53.960 --> 1:20:56.639 when they realize that the most famous people in tech 1:20:56.880 --> 1:21:02.120 have been making these promises for nobody other than the markets. Well, 1:21:02.439 --> 1:21:04.840 the markets need you to do something eventually, and I 1:21:05.000 --> 1:21:08.439 just don't think it's gonna happen. And I think that 1:21:08.720 --> 1:21:11.840 we need to really think why was Sam Altman allowed 1:21:11.840 --> 1:21:14.759 to get to this point? Why did so many people 1:21:15.160 --> 1:21:18.560 like Paul Graham, like Reid Hoffman, like Brian Chesky, like 1:21:18.680 --> 1:21:22.559 Sacha Nadella. Back up, it's obvious con artists who has 1:21:22.680 --> 1:21:27.120 acted like this forever? And what sucks is I don't 1:21:27.120 --> 1:21:28.960 know if the valley is going to learn anything unless 1:21:28.960 --> 1:21:30.519 it's really bad, and I don't want it to be 1:21:30.600 --> 1:21:32.519 by the way. I would love to be wrong. I 1:21:32.560 --> 1:21:34.439 would love for all of this to just be like 1:21:34.520 --> 1:21:37.479 Sam Ortman's actually a genius. Turns out the whole thing 1:21:37.560 --> 1:21:39.679 is no, no, it's not gonna happen. 1:21:41.000 --> 1:21:41.800 And I worry that. 1:21:42.520 --> 1:21:44.599 There is no smooth way out of this, that there 1:21:44.720 --> 1:21:49.040 is no way to just casually integrate OpenAI with Microsoft, 1:21:50.479 --> 1:21:53.280 because now there's an antitrust thing going in with Microsoft 1:21:53.360 --> 1:21:57.080 and acquiring Inflection Ai, another AI company, and that's the thing. 1:21:57.960 --> 1:22:01.720 It feels like we were approaching a press apiss here, 1:22:03.160 --> 1:22:06.240 and the only way to avoid it is for people 1:22:06.320 --> 1:22:09.080 to come clean, which is never going to happen, or 1:22:09.200 --> 1:22:12.040 of course for Sam Wortman not to be laying for 1:22:12.280 --> 1:22:14.559 Agi to actually come out of open AI. And by 1:22:14.560 --> 1:22:15.720 the way, it's going to need to be in the 1:22:15.800 --> 1:22:19.599 next year. I don't think they've got even three quarters left. 1:22:20.320 --> 1:22:24.959 I think that once this falls apart, once the markets realize, 1:22:25.080 --> 1:22:28.440 oh shit, this is not profitable, this is not sustainable, 1:22:28.680 --> 1:22:31.639 they're going to walk away from it. When companies realize 1:22:31.680 --> 1:22:34.759 that generative AI it's given him a couple percent profit, 1:22:34.960 --> 1:22:39.800 maybe they're going to be pissed because this is not 1:22:40.280 --> 1:22:46.240 a stock rally worthy boondoggle. This is not going to 1:22:46.320 --> 1:22:49.719 be pretty when things fall apart from it. For Nvidia, 1:22:49.840 --> 1:22:52.479 you're still over one thousand dollars. When those orders stop 1:22:52.640 --> 1:22:55.680 coming in quite as fast. What do you think is 1:22:55.760 --> 1:22:59.840 going to happen to tech stocks? Startups are already having 1:23:00.000 --> 1:23:03.160 trouble raising money, and they're having trouble raising money because 1:23:03.160 --> 1:23:06.880 the people giving out the money are too disconnected from 1:23:06.920 --> 1:23:10.000 the creation of software and hardware. The only way to 1:23:10.120 --> 1:23:14.960 fix Silicon Valley perhaps is an apocalypse. Perhaps is people 1:23:15.120 --> 1:23:17.560 like Sam Ortman getting washed out. I don't want it 1:23:17.640 --> 1:23:22.200 to happen. I really must be bloody clear. But maybe 1:23:22.240 --> 1:23:25.400 it won't be apocalyptic. Maybe it would just be a 1:23:25.560 --> 1:23:29.800 brutal realignment. And maybe Silicon Valley needs that realignment because 1:23:29.840 --> 1:23:35.280 this industry desperately needs a big bathful of ice and 1:23:35.400 --> 1:23:37.639 need to dunk the head in it aggressively and wake 1:23:37.840 --> 1:23:42.360 the hell up. Venture capital needs to put money back 1:23:42.439 --> 1:23:46.040 into real things. The largest tech companies need to realign 1:23:46.120 --> 1:23:49.200 and build for sustainability so they're not binging and purging 1:23:49.320 --> 1:23:53.160 staff with every boom. And if we really are at 1:23:53.240 --> 1:23:57.160 the end of the hypergrowth era, every tech company needs 1:23:57.200 --> 1:23:59.760 to be thinking profit and sustainability again. And that's a 1:24:00.080 --> 1:24:03.200 to Silicon Valley because a better Silicon Valley builds things 1:24:03.240 --> 1:24:06.280 for people, It solves real problems. It doesn't have to 1:24:06.479 --> 1:24:08.759 lie about what the thing could do in the future 1:24:08.960 --> 1:24:11.920 so that it can sell a thing today. And I 1:24:12.000 --> 1:24:14.639 realize that sounds like the foundation of most venture capital. 1:24:15.479 --> 1:24:18.920 That's fine at the seed stage, that's fine at this 1:24:19.200 --> 1:24:22.519 moonshot stage where your early early days. It is not 1:24:22.760 --> 1:24:26.360 befitting the most famous company in tech, It is not 1:24:26.520 --> 1:24:31.240 befitting a multi billionaire, It is not befitting anyone, and 1:24:31.360 --> 1:24:34.080 it is insulting to the people actually building things, both 1:24:34.160 --> 1:24:35.640 in and outside of technology. 1:24:36.160 --> 1:24:37.639 The people I hear from after. 1:24:37.520 --> 1:24:41.559 Every episode, they are angry, They are frustrated because there 1:24:41.640 --> 1:24:43.800 are good people in tech. There are people building real things. 1:24:43.840 --> 1:24:46.280 There are people that remember a time when the tech 1:24:46.320 --> 1:24:50.760 industry was exciting, when people were talking about cool shit 1:24:50.800 --> 1:24:54.040 in the future, and then they'd actually do it. Returning 1:24:54.120 --> 1:24:56.839 to that is better for society and the tech industry. 1:24:58.000 --> 1:25:07.640 Just don't know when it's going to happen. Thank you 1:25:07.680 --> 1:25:10.400 for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of 1:25:10.400 --> 1:25:13.400 the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You can check 1:25:13.439 --> 1:25:16.360 out more of his music and audio projects at Mattasowski 1:25:16.400 --> 1:25:17.519 dot com, m. 1:25:17.560 --> 1:25:21.639 A T T O S O W s ki dot com. 1:25:22.400 --> 1:25:24.920 You can email me at easy at better Offline dot com, 1:25:25.120 --> 1:25:27.400 or visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast 1:25:27.479 --> 1:25:30.799 links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend 1:25:30.800 --> 1:25:32.760 you go to chat dot Where's youreed dot at to 1:25:32.840 --> 1:25:35.639 visit the discord and go to our slash Better Offline 1:25:35.680 --> 1:25:38.880 to check out our reddit. Thank you so much for listening. 1:25:39.720 --> 1:25:42.400 Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For 1:25:42.560 --> 1:25:45.719 more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia 1:25:45.760 --> 1:25:48.599 dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, 1:25:48.640 --> 1:25:51.040 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1:26:07.160 --> 1:26:09.600 Hello, and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed 1:26:09.720 --> 1:26:23.479 ze Tron. It's been a hard couple of weeks. It's 1:26:23.560 --> 1:26:27.080 been pretty hard to focus. I've written a few newsletters, 1:26:27.160 --> 1:26:29.400 I've gone to Portugal, I've done a bunch of shit. 1:26:29.760 --> 1:26:32.759 Just try not to think about everything happening outside. 1:26:32.880 --> 1:26:34.519 But it's time to do so. 1:26:35.840 --> 1:26:38.600 Seemingly every single person on Earth with a blog or 1:26:38.600 --> 1:26:41.479 a podcast store, or even a Twitter account or XD everything, Apple, 1:26:41.560 --> 1:26:43.920 whatever it's called now, they've all tried to drill down 1:26:43.960 --> 1:26:47.360 into what happened on November fifth, to find the people 1:26:47.400 --> 1:26:51.760 to blame, to explain what could have gone differently. Really 1:26:51.840 --> 1:26:54.519 looking for who to blame though, and find out why 1:26:54.680 --> 1:26:57.360 so many actions led to a result that well overwhelmingly 1:26:57.400 --> 1:27:02.040 home woman, minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ people, and lower income workers 1:27:03.280 --> 1:27:06.360 is terrifying. It fucking sucks. I'm not going to mince words, 1:27:06.600 --> 1:27:09.920 not that I would usually anyway, and I don't feel 1:27:09.960 --> 1:27:12.439 fully equipped to respond to the moment. I don't have 1:27:13.080 --> 1:27:16.040 any real answers, at least not political ones. I'm not 1:27:16.080 --> 1:27:19.799 a political analyst, and I'd feel disingenuous trying to dissect 1:27:19.840 --> 1:27:22.680 either the Harris or the Trump campaigns, because I just 1:27:22.800 --> 1:27:24.920 feel like there's a take Olympics right now. It's the 1:27:25.000 --> 1:27:28.400 Dunning Kruger Festival out there. Everyone is trying to rationalize 1:27:28.439 --> 1:27:32.559 and intellectualize these events that ultimately come down to something 1:27:32.640 --> 1:27:37.439 quite simple. People don't trust authority, and yet it's pretty 1:27:37.520 --> 1:27:42.000 ironic that this often leads them towards authoritarianism. Now, I 1:27:42.000 --> 1:27:43.559 don't want to give you the impression that I'm going 1:27:43.640 --> 1:27:46.719 to go on my crank mode that and somehow against 1:27:46.800 --> 1:27:48.200 institutions on their face. 1:27:48.320 --> 1:27:48.560 I'm not. 1:27:48.840 --> 1:27:52.240 But at the same time, understanding this moment requires us 1:27:52.280 --> 1:27:55.840 to acknowledge that institutions have failed us and failed most people, 1:27:56.200 --> 1:27:59.799 and how certain institutions missteps have led us to exactly 1:27:59.840 --> 1:28:04.000 what we are today. Legacy media, and while oftentimes they're 1:28:04.000 --> 1:28:06.080 staffed by people who truly love their readers and care 1:28:06.120 --> 1:28:09.680 about their beats, they're weighed down by this hysterical, nonsensical 1:28:09.720 --> 1:28:13.479 attachment to the imaginary concept of objectivity and the will 1:28:13.520 --> 1:28:17.880 of the markets. Case in point, regular people have spent 1:28:18.080 --> 1:28:20.960 years watching the price of goods increase due to inflation, 1:28:21.360 --> 1:28:23.679 despite the fact that the increase in pricing was mostly 1:28:23.800 --> 1:28:28.240 driven by get this, corporations raising their prices. Now, that's 1:28:28.320 --> 1:28:30.320 not to say that external factors like the war in 1:28:30.400 --> 1:28:34.160 Ukraine or lingering COVID restrictions in China, these things did 1:28:34.360 --> 1:28:37.920 play a role in it. They did, But the bulk 1:28:38.000 --> 1:28:42.000 of these price increases were caused by these fucking companies 1:28:42.120 --> 1:28:45.320 raising the prices. It was in their earnings. 1:28:45.680 --> 1:28:46.920 It was right there. 1:28:47.160 --> 1:28:50.679 Pepsi Cola said it on the news. Yet some parts 1:28:50.720 --> 1:28:53.360 of the legacy media spent an alarming amount of time 1:28:53.479 --> 1:28:56.680 chiding their readers for thinking otherwise, even going against their 1:28:56.720 --> 1:28:59.719 own reporting. And there will be links in the episode 1:28:59.760 --> 1:29:03.920 notes promise as a means of providing balanced coverage, insisting 1:29:04.000 --> 1:29:07.840 again and again that the economy is actually good, contorting 1:29:07.920 --> 1:29:10.679 their little bodies to prove that prices aren't actually higher, 1:29:10.760 --> 1:29:14.040 even as companies literally boasted about raising their prices on earnings. 1:29:14.520 --> 1:29:17.920 In fact, the media spent years debating with itself, where 1:29:17.920 --> 1:29:20.720 the price scouging was actually happening despite years of proof 1:29:20.800 --> 1:29:23.439 that it was. Some of them even reported that the 1:29:23.520 --> 1:29:27.920 price gouging was happening, So like, get this. I just 1:29:27.960 --> 1:29:31.200 don't think people trust authority, and they especially don't trust 1:29:31.240 --> 1:29:35.519 the media, especially the legacy media. It also probably didn't 1:29:35.600 --> 1:29:38.120 help that the legacy media implored readers and viewers to 1:29:38.200 --> 1:29:40.640 ignore what they saw at the supermarket or at the 1:29:40.720 --> 1:29:42.720 pump and the growing hits that their wallets from the 1:29:42.800 --> 1:29:47.000 daily incessities of life. It was just a national level 1:29:47.120 --> 1:29:49.920 gas lighting and it was disgusting. And I know some 1:29:50.080 --> 1:29:53.280 of you might say, you know where to email me. 1:29:53.640 --> 1:29:54.560 Oh, it's not just this. 1:29:54.800 --> 1:29:57.479 No, of course, it's not just this asshole, but I 1:29:57.560 --> 1:29:59.920 think this is a big thing now. Before a go 1:30:00.160 --> 1:30:03.320 any further, I've used the term legacy media here repeatedly, 1:30:03.600 --> 1:30:05.960 but I don't completely intend for it to come across 1:30:06.000 --> 1:30:09.519 as a pejorative despite my criticism. Believe me, I've got 1:30:09.520 --> 1:30:12.080 a few of them. There are people in the legacy 1:30:12.120 --> 1:30:14.280 media doing a good job. They're reporting the truth, they're 1:30:14.280 --> 1:30:16.200 doing the kinds of work that matters, and they're actually 1:30:16.240 --> 1:30:18.599 trying to teach their reader's stuff and tell them what's 1:30:18.640 --> 1:30:22.240 happening and giving them context. I read and pay for 1:30:22.520 --> 1:30:24.720 several legacy media outlets. I think the world is a 1:30:24.760 --> 1:30:28.439 better place for them existing despite their flaws. The problem is, 1:30:28.560 --> 1:30:33.040 as I'll explain, is this editorial industrial complex and how 1:30:33.560 --> 1:30:36.040 these people are writing about the powerful don't seem to 1:30:36.120 --> 1:30:38.280 be able to or maybe they don't want to actually 1:30:38.360 --> 1:30:42.200 interrogate the powerful. This could be an entire episode on 1:30:42.280 --> 1:30:44.000 its sign, But I don't think the answer to these 1:30:44.040 --> 1:30:46.639 failings is to simply discard legacy media entirely. 1:30:47.520 --> 1:30:48.000 But I want to. 1:30:48.040 --> 1:30:50.680 Implore them to do better and to strive for the 1:30:50.760 --> 1:30:54.280 values of truth hunting and truth telling and actually explaining 1:30:54.360 --> 1:30:57.880 what's happening and criticizing the people that don't have pr 1:30:58.040 --> 1:31:01.679 firms and lobbying groups, lawyers and the means to protect 1:31:01.720 --> 1:31:06.200 themselves from the world. The time for fucking around is 1:31:06.320 --> 1:31:12.240 over and we're currently finding out now. Anyway, as you know, 1:31:12.400 --> 1:31:14.599 as a person existing in the real world, the price 1:31:14.640 --> 1:31:17.360 of everything has kept increasing despite the fact that wages 1:31:17.400 --> 1:31:19.920 are stagnating. It's forcing many of the poorest people to 1:31:20.000 --> 1:31:23.759 choose between food and fuel or I don't know, eating 1:31:23.920 --> 1:31:28.360 and having heat simultaneously. Businesses have spent several years telling 1:31:28.439 --> 1:31:30.599 workers they're asking for too much and doing too little, 1:31:30.800 --> 1:31:33.040 telling people a few years ago they were quiet quitting, 1:31:33.439 --> 1:31:35.840 which is a fucking stupid term that just means going 1:31:35.880 --> 1:31:37.240 to your job and doing the thing you're paying to 1:31:37.280 --> 1:31:40.920 do any anyway, And a year later, in twenty twenty three, 1:31:41.000 --> 1:31:44.320 they insisted that the years of remote work were actually 1:31:44.560 --> 1:31:47.680 bad because profits didn't reach the same profit levels of 1:31:47.760 --> 1:31:50.920 twenty twenty one, which was something to do with remote work. Now, 1:31:51.000 --> 1:31:53.479 did anyone actually prove this, did anyone actually going. 1:31:53.439 --> 1:31:54.000 No, they didn't. 1:31:54.040 --> 1:31:56.840 They just well, I just listened to Mark Benioff, who's 1:31:57.080 --> 1:32:00.040 one of the more evil people alive. Now I also so, 1:32:00.120 --> 1:32:02.320 I think a lot of these problems come to twenty 1:32:02.400 --> 1:32:04.400 twenty one, a year that we really need to dig 1:32:04.479 --> 1:32:06.400 into more. We might not do so today, but we 1:32:06.479 --> 1:32:10.000 will in the future. But one of the big things 1:32:10.040 --> 1:32:12.000 that punish workers and led to so many layoffs in 1:32:12.040 --> 1:32:14.000 twenty twenty three was the fact that we couldn't get 1:32:14.080 --> 1:32:16.559 back to the post lockdown boot of twenty twenty one, 1:32:16.760 --> 1:32:19.960 when everyone bought everything always as they left the house 1:32:20.040 --> 1:32:23.680 for the first time in a while. Now, any corporation 1:32:25.000 --> 1:32:27.479 would be smart enough to know that that was a phase, 1:32:27.560 --> 1:32:31.080 that that was not going to be forever. Except every 1:32:31.560 --> 1:32:33.960 single big company seemed to make the same mistake and 1:32:34.000 --> 1:32:37.000 say number going up forever, line go up forever. When 1:32:37.040 --> 1:32:40.760 it didn't, well, they started punishing workers and they started thinking, well, 1:32:41.320 --> 1:32:44.360 could it be that we as companies we set unrealistic 1:32:44.520 --> 1:32:48.360 expectations for the markets and we just thought that we'd 1:32:48.400 --> 1:32:50.439 keep growing forever. Or maybe it was the people using 1:32:50.479 --> 1:32:56.000 the computer at home. Yeah, that seems way better anyway, Well, 1:32:56.040 --> 1:32:58.600 the majority of people don't work remotely. From talking to 1:32:58.640 --> 1:33:00.800 the people I know outside of tech business, there's this 1:33:00.960 --> 1:33:03.799 genuine sense that the media has allied itself with the bosses, 1:33:04.000 --> 1:33:05.920 and I imagine it's because of the many articles that 1:33:06.000 --> 1:33:08.960 literally call workers lazy and have done so for years. 1:33:09.360 --> 1:33:12.160 Yet when it comes to the powerful legacy, media doesn't 1:33:12.200 --> 1:33:14.640 seem to have that much pisson vinegar. They just have 1:33:14.920 --> 1:33:19.599 much more guarded critiques. The appetite for shaming and finger wagging. 1:33:19.800 --> 1:33:23.080 It's always directed that middle and working class workers and 1:33:23.240 --> 1:33:25.920 seemingly disappears what a person has a three character job 1:33:26.000 --> 1:33:30.120 title like CEO. It's fucking stupid, it's insulting, and yes 1:33:30.160 --> 1:33:33.320 it's demoralizing for the average person, despite the fact that 1:33:33.360 --> 1:33:36.120 Elon Musk has spent years telegraphing is intent to uses 1:33:36.160 --> 1:33:38.360 billions of dollars to wield power equivalent to that of 1:33:38.400 --> 1:33:40.479 a nation state. As you may remember from my first 1:33:40.520 --> 1:33:42.960 episode of Anything over On, it could happen here. 1:33:43.760 --> 1:33:45.280 Too. Much of the media, both. 1:33:45.200 --> 1:33:48.599 Legacy and otherwise, responded slowly, cautiously, failing to call him 1:33:48.600 --> 1:33:51.040 a liar, a con artist, an aggress or, a manipula 1:33:51.120 --> 1:33:53.320 of rasis the deadbeat dad, you know all the thing's 1:33:53.320 --> 1:33:54.080 actually happening. 1:33:54.400 --> 1:33:54.880 No, no, no. 1:33:55.920 --> 1:33:58.640 They kind of danced around him. They reported stories that 1:33:58.760 --> 1:34:01.880 might make you think they maybe noticed it, But there 1:34:01.960 --> 1:34:06.479 was this desperation to guard objectivity, and it was just 1:34:07.800 --> 1:34:10.920 it lacked any real intent. It lacked any interest in 1:34:11.040 --> 1:34:14.320 calling account to a man who has pretty much bought 1:34:14.360 --> 1:34:17.640 an election for Donald Trump, a racist billionaire using his 1:34:17.720 --> 1:34:20.360 outsized capital the Benz Society to his will. Just isn't 1:34:20.400 --> 1:34:22.479 a fucking problem for the media, or at least not 1:34:22.560 --> 1:34:24.559 as much of a problem as a worker who might 1:34:24.680 --> 1:34:26.880 not work fifty to one hundred hours a week for 1:34:26.960 --> 1:34:28.640 a boss who makes one hundred and thirty times what 1:34:28.760 --> 1:34:32.000 they do. The news at least outside of the right wing, 1:34:32.600 --> 1:34:37.160 is always separate from opinion, always guarded, always safe for 1:34:37.280 --> 1:34:40.120 fear that they might piss somebody off and be declared biased, 1:34:40.680 --> 1:34:44.280 something that happens anyway. And while there are columnists are 1:34:44.320 --> 1:34:47.519 given some space to have their own thoughts, sometimes in 1:34:47.600 --> 1:34:51.240 the newspaper, sometimes online, the stories themselves are delivered with 1:34:51.320 --> 1:34:54.360 the kind of reserved hmmmm tone that often fails to 1:34:54.479 --> 1:34:58.160 express any actual consequences or context around the news itself, 1:34:59.080 --> 1:35:01.800 and just doesn't I seem to care about making sure 1:35:01.920 --> 1:35:05.719 that the reader or listener learns something. My mate Casey 1:35:05.760 --> 1:35:08.080 has a good point about podcasts, and I applied some 1:35:08.200 --> 1:35:10.320 of the news too, that there's too much stuff out 1:35:10.320 --> 1:35:13.240 there that is there to make you feel intelligent rather 1:35:13.280 --> 1:35:14.200 than make you intelligent. 1:35:14.479 --> 1:35:15.599 I think this falls into him. 1:35:16.479 --> 1:35:16.599 Now. 1:35:16.680 --> 1:35:18.720 This isn't to say that outlets are incapable of doing 1:35:18.760 --> 1:35:20.880 this correctly. I love the Washington Post. They've done an 1:35:20.960 --> 1:35:24.680 excellent job on analyzing major tech stories. But a lot 1:35:24.760 --> 1:35:27.240 of these outlets feel custom built to be bulldozed the 1:35:27.280 --> 1:35:30.960 moment an authoritarian turns up. This force that exists to 1:35:31.040 --> 1:35:35.479 crush those desperately attached to norms and objectivity authoritarians know 1:35:35.600 --> 1:35:38.720 that they're ideologically charged words we quoted ad verbatim with 1:35:38.800 --> 1:35:39.840 the occasional. 1:35:39.600 --> 1:35:43.320 Ah, this could mean little dribble, this drizzle, this. 1:35:43.360 --> 1:35:46.040 Spunk of context that's lost in the headline that repeats 1:35:46.120 --> 1:35:49.040 exactly what the fucking authoritarian wants them to. 1:35:49.400 --> 1:35:50.000 And guess what. 1:35:50.640 --> 1:35:54.200 Some people don't read the article, They just read the headline. 1:35:54.520 --> 1:35:56.880 And Musk is the most brutal example of this. By 1:35:56.920 --> 1:35:59.479 the way, despite the fact that he's turned Twitter into 1:35:59.520 --> 1:36:02.360 a website pump full of racism and hatred that literally 1:36:02.439 --> 1:36:05.360 helped make Donald Trump president, Musk was still able to 1:36:05.400 --> 1:36:08.120 get mostly positive coverage from the majority of the mainstream 1:36:08.200 --> 1:36:12.040 media for his fucking robotaxi nonsense, despite the fact that 1:36:12.080 --> 1:36:14.479 he spent the best part of a decade lying about 1:36:14.520 --> 1:36:17.600 what Tesla will do next. There are entire websites just 1:36:17.800 --> 1:36:21.080 based on how much Elon Musk lies, yet they still 1:36:21.400 --> 1:36:25.080 report this shit. It makes me very upset, And it 1:36:25.160 --> 1:36:27.920 doesn't matter that some of these outlets, by the way, 1:36:28.000 --> 1:36:30.519 had a company in coverage that suggested that the markets 1:36:30.560 --> 1:36:34.800 weren't impressed by Tesla's theoretical robotaxi plans or their fake 1:36:34.880 --> 1:36:36.240 cass robots run by people. 1:36:36.760 --> 1:36:38.520 Musk is still able. 1:36:38.400 --> 1:36:41.640 To use the media's desperation for objectivity against them, and 1:36:41.760 --> 1:36:44.960 he knows that they never dare to combine reporting on 1:36:45.120 --> 1:36:48.280 stuff with thinking about stuff for fear that Elon Musk 1:36:48.400 --> 1:36:51.479 might say their bias, which he has been doing for years. 1:36:51.840 --> 1:36:55.200 Do you see my goddamn point yet? And this, by 1:36:55.240 --> 1:36:56.880 the way, is not always the fault of the rayers. 1:36:57.200 --> 1:37:01.200 There are entire foundations of editors that have more faith 1:37:01.240 --> 1:37:03.040 in the markets and the powerful than they do the 1:37:03.120 --> 1:37:05.800 people writing or the people reading their fucking words. And 1:37:05.880 --> 1:37:09.599 above them are entire editorial superstructures that exist to make 1:37:09.640 --> 1:37:13.320 sure that the editorial vision never colors too far outside 1:37:13.320 --> 1:37:16.680 the lines or informs people a little too much. And 1:37:16.840 --> 1:37:19.559 not even talking about Jeff Bezos or Lauren Powell jobs 1:37:19.640 --> 1:37:21.360 or any number of billionaires who are in any number 1:37:21.400 --> 1:37:24.719 of publications, but the editors editing business and tech reporters 1:37:24.720 --> 1:37:27.840 who don't know anything about business and tech, or the 1:37:27.920 --> 1:37:31.280 senior editors the terrified of any byline that might dare 1:37:31.320 --> 1:37:33.680 get the outlet under fire from somebody who could call 1:37:33.720 --> 1:37:49.920 their boss it's fucking cowardice. There are, however, I should add, 1:37:50.000 --> 1:37:52.400 also those who simply defer to the powerful that assume 1:37:52.439 --> 1:37:55.519 that this much money can't be wrong, even if said money, 1:37:55.640 --> 1:37:58.320 in the case of Elon Musk, is repeatedly wrong, and 1:37:58.360 --> 1:38:00.439 there's an entire website about the wrong US and the 1:38:00.520 --> 1:38:03.959 liars and the bullshit, and I'm talking about Elon Musk still. Obviously, 1:38:04.600 --> 1:38:06.400 these editors are the people that look at the current 1:38:06.439 --> 1:38:08.639 crop of powerful tech companies that have failed to deliver 1:38:08.760 --> 1:38:11.120 any truly meaningful innovation in years, and they. 1:38:11.080 --> 1:38:12.639 Go ooh, oh, send me more. 1:38:12.720 --> 1:38:15.800 Daddy showed me more of the apps. It's fucking disgraceful. 1:38:16.200 --> 1:38:17.840 Just look at the coverage of Sam Mortman from the 1:38:17.920 --> 1:38:20.080 last year. You know, the guy who spent years lying 1:38:20.120 --> 1:38:22.880 about what AI can do, and tell me why every 1:38:23.000 --> 1:38:26.559 single thought he says must be uncritically catalog is every 1:38:26.640 --> 1:38:30.240 goddamn decision applauded, his every claim, trumpeted as certain, his 1:38:30.400 --> 1:38:33.200 brittle little company that burns five billion dollars a year 1:38:33.560 --> 1:38:37.400 talked about like it's a fucking living god. Sam Moltman 1:38:37.520 --> 1:38:40.160 is a liar who's been fired from two companies, including 1:38:40.200 --> 1:38:42.360 open Ai, and yet because he's a billionaire with a 1:38:42.400 --> 1:38:45.600 buzzy company, he's left totally unscathed. The powerful get a 1:38:45.640 --> 1:38:47.960 completely different set of rules to live by and exist 1:38:48.040 --> 1:38:51.880 in a totally different media environment. Their geniuses, entrepreneurs, fire brands. 1:38:52.000 --> 1:38:54.519 Their challenges are framed as missteps and their victories framed 1:38:54.560 --> 1:38:56.920 as certainties by the same outlets that told us that 1:38:57.000 --> 1:38:59.559 we were quiet quitting and that the economy is actually good, 1:38:59.720 --> 1:39:02.720 and that we're the problem for high prices. Well, it's 1:39:02.800 --> 1:39:06.000 correct to suggest that the right wing is horrendously ideological 1:39:06.240 --> 1:39:08.760 and they're terribly biased. It's very hard to look at 1:39:08.800 --> 1:39:10.479 the rest of the media and claim that they are not. 1:39:11.120 --> 1:39:14.000 The problem is that the so called left media, which 1:39:14.080 --> 1:39:17.040 usually is just the center, isn't biased towards what we 1:39:17.120 --> 1:39:20.599 may consider left wing causes like universal health care, strong unions, 1:39:20.960 --> 1:39:22.720 expanded social safety, and it's you know, the stuff that 1:39:22.760 --> 1:39:25.080 would actually be helpful. Now, they're biased in favor of 1:39:25.160 --> 1:39:29.240 filating an ever growing carousel of sociopathic billionaire assholes, elevating 1:39:29.320 --> 1:39:31.800 them to the status of American royalty, where they exist 1:39:31.880 --> 1:39:35.519 above expectations and norms that you and I must live by. 1:39:36.320 --> 1:39:40.920 This is the definition of elitism. The media has literally 1:39:41.040 --> 1:39:43.639 created a class of people who can lie and cheat 1:39:43.880 --> 1:39:47.280 and steal, and rather than condemn them for it. They're celebrated. 1:39:48.320 --> 1:39:50.919 While it might feel a little tangential to bring technology 1:39:50.960 --> 1:39:54.559 into this, I truly believe that everybody is affected by 1:39:54.560 --> 1:39:58.040 the rot economy, the growth or costs ecosystem where number 1:39:58.120 --> 1:40:01.559 must always go up because everybody is using technology all 1:40:01.640 --> 1:40:04.679 the time, and the technology in question is getting worse. 1:40:05.520 --> 1:40:08.479 This election cycle saw more than twenty five billion text 1:40:08.520 --> 1:40:11.720 messages sent to potential voters, and seemingly every website was 1:40:11.720 --> 1:40:15.400 crown full of random election advertising. Here's the thing about elections. 1:40:15.600 --> 1:40:19.560 They're not really always about policy. No, they're a referendum 1:40:19.640 --> 1:40:22.360 on the incumbent party you're president, and by proxy, a 1:40:22.439 --> 1:40:25.400 poll on how people feel. And the reality is that 1:40:25.520 --> 1:40:29.519 most people are fucking miserable. There's this all encompassing feeling 1:40:29.600 --> 1:40:32.280 that things are just harder now. It's harder to pay 1:40:32.320 --> 1:40:34.519 your bills, it's harder to keep in touch with your friends. 1:40:34.760 --> 1:40:36.800 It's harder to start a family, it's harder to buy 1:40:36.840 --> 1:40:38.679 a house, it's harder to fall in love, it's harder 1:40:38.720 --> 1:40:41.800 to do everything. And what we're seeing is an in 1:40:41.840 --> 1:40:43.440 shitification of existence. 1:40:43.520 --> 1:40:45.400 To use mister doctor Roe's phrase. 1:40:45.680 --> 1:40:47.840 Everything just I don't want to be this much of 1:40:47.880 --> 1:40:51.479 a commudgeon. But everything just kind of sucks. It's all terrible, 1:40:51.520 --> 1:40:53.880 it's miserable, and hardly anyone thinks it's going. 1:40:53.800 --> 1:40:54.320 To get better. 1:40:54.720 --> 1:40:57.120 And this creates the kind of fertile conditions for a 1:40:57.160 --> 1:41:00.360 strong man to have emerged, one who arises and says 1:41:00.360 --> 1:41:02.479 that only he can fix things, even if he spent 1:41:02.560 --> 1:41:05.800 four years proving how he could not. And the problem 1:41:05.880 --> 1:41:08.240 for democrats and for institutions more broadly is that the 1:41:08.320 --> 1:41:11.000 all encompassing nature of this milieu is kind of hard 1:41:11.040 --> 1:41:13.599 to solve. It's hard to change the perception that everything's 1:41:13.680 --> 1:41:15.439 terrible when you're reminded of it when you're trying to 1:41:15.520 --> 1:41:18.040 do the most basic of tasks. Our phones are full 1:41:18.040 --> 1:41:20.439 of notifications trying to growth hack us into doing things 1:41:20.520 --> 1:41:23.360 that companies want. Our apps are full of micro transactions. 1:41:23.520 --> 1:41:26.120 Our websites are slower and harder to use, with endless 1:41:26.160 --> 1:41:28.320 demands of our emails and our phone numbers, and the 1:41:28.400 --> 1:41:30.559 nay to log back in because they couldn't possibly lose 1:41:30.600 --> 1:41:32.559 a dollar to someone who dared to consume a Washington 1:41:32.600 --> 1:41:35.040 Post article. And yes, I'm talking about the post, which 1:41:35.040 --> 1:41:36.800 I fucking pay for, despite the fact it logs me 1:41:36.840 --> 1:41:40.080 out all the time. Our social networks are so algorithmically 1:41:40.160 --> 1:41:41.880 charged that they barely show us the things we want 1:41:41.920 --> 1:41:44.800 them to anymore, With executives dedicated to filling our feeds 1:41:44.840 --> 1:41:47.719 full of AI generated slop. Because despite being the customer, 1:41:47.880 --> 1:41:51.080 we're also the revenue mechanism, our search engines do less 1:41:51.160 --> 1:41:52.880 as a means of making us use them more. Our 1:41:52.960 --> 1:41:55.360 dating apps have become vehicles of private equity to add 1:41:55.360 --> 1:41:57.360 a toll to falling in love. Our video games are 1:41:57.400 --> 1:41:59.719 constantly nagging us to give them more money, and despite 1:41:59.800 --> 1:42:02.000 it losting money and being attached to our account, we 1:42:02.080 --> 1:42:04.679 don't actually own any of the streaming media we purchase. 1:42:04.960 --> 1:42:08.000 We're drowning in spam, both in our emails and our phones, 1:42:08.040 --> 1:42:10.320 and at this point in our lives, we've probably agreed 1:42:10.360 --> 1:42:13.439 to three million pages of privacy policies allowing companies to 1:42:13.560 --> 1:42:16.920 use our information as they see fit. We get one 1:42:17.120 --> 1:42:20.200 value transaction with every company they get eleven, they get 1:42:20.240 --> 1:42:23.280 one hundred. We really actually don't know because there's no 1:42:23.400 --> 1:42:26.280 legislation to tell us what they're fucking doing. And these 1:42:26.360 --> 1:42:30.760 are the issues that hit everything we do all the time, constantly, unrelentingly. 1:42:31.080 --> 1:42:34.040 Technology is our lives now. We wake up, we use 1:42:34.080 --> 1:42:36.559 our phone, we check our text, three spam calls, two 1:42:36.600 --> 1:42:38.800 spam texts. We look at our bank balance, two factor 1:42:38.840 --> 1:42:40.599 authentication check, we're rid the news. 1:42:40.640 --> 1:42:41.759 A quarter of the pages bot. 1:42:41.640 --> 1:42:44.080 Bone advertisement asking for our email that's deliberately built to 1:42:44.120 --> 1:42:46.040 hide the button to get rid of them. And then 1:42:46.080 --> 1:42:48.440 we log into slack and feel a pang of anxiety. 1:42:48.520 --> 1:42:51.320 Is fifteen different notifications appear in a way there is 1:42:51.439 --> 1:42:53.720 really not built for us to find what we need, 1:42:54.080 --> 1:42:59.080 just to let us know something happen. Modern existence is 1:42:59.240 --> 1:43:03.559 just engulfed in sludge. The institutions that exist to cut 1:43:03.640 --> 1:43:06.360 through it seem to bounce between the ignorance of their 1:43:06.439 --> 1:43:10.720 masters and this misplaced duty to objectivity. Our mechanisms for 1:43:10.880 --> 1:43:13.679 exploring and enjoying the world are interfered with by powerful 1:43:13.720 --> 1:43:17.479 forces that are just basically left unchecked. Opening our devices 1:43:17.560 --> 1:43:21.080 is wilfully subjecting us to attack after attack after attack 1:43:21.160 --> 1:43:23.920 from applications, websites, and devices that are built to make 1:43:24.000 --> 1:43:26.919 us do things for them, rather than operate with dignity 1:43:27.000 --> 1:43:29.559 and freedom that much of the Internet was actually founded upon. 1:43:30.360 --> 1:43:33.120 These millions of invisible acts of terror are too often 1:43:33.200 --> 1:43:36.719 left undiscussed because accepting the truth requires you to accept 1:43:36.960 --> 1:43:39.320 that most of the tech ecosystem is rotten, and that 1:43:39.439 --> 1:43:42.640 billions of dollars are made harassing and punishing billions of 1:43:42.680 --> 1:43:45.479 people every single day of their lives through the devices 1:43:45.520 --> 1:43:47.640 that we're required to use in order to exist in 1:43:47.680 --> 1:43:51.479 the modern world. Most users suffer the consequences, and most 1:43:51.520 --> 1:43:53.880 of the media fails to account for them, and in turn, 1:43:54.160 --> 1:43:56.639 people walk around knowing something is wrong, but not knowing 1:43:56.680 --> 1:44:00.960 who to blame until somebody provides a convenient excuse, like immigrants, 1:44:01.760 --> 1:44:05.040 like the Democrats, like whatever fucking works. Because we can't 1:44:05.120 --> 1:44:08.960 actually call the people out, the corporations crushing our existence, 1:44:10.200 --> 1:44:11.840 Why wouldn't people crave change? 1:44:12.040 --> 1:44:14.800 Why wouldn't people be angry? Living in the current world? 1:44:14.840 --> 1:44:18.760 Absolutely fucking sucks. Sometimes it's miserable. It's bereft of industry 1:44:18.920 --> 1:44:24.920 and filthy with manipulation. It's undignified, it's disrespectful, and it 1:44:25.040 --> 1:44:27.720 must be crushed if we want to escape this depressing, 1:44:27.840 --> 1:44:32.120 goddamn world we've found ourselves in. Our media institutions are 1:44:32.200 --> 1:44:35.439 fully fucking capable of dealing with these problems, but it 1:44:35.600 --> 1:44:39.840 starts with actually evaluating them and aggressively interrogating them without 1:44:39.880 --> 1:44:43.519 fearing accusations of bias that, as I've said, repeatedly, happen 1:44:43.720 --> 1:44:46.920 either way. The truth is that the media is more 1:44:46.920 --> 1:44:49.639 afraid of accusations of bias than they are of misleading 1:44:49.680 --> 1:44:52.479 their readers. And while that seems like a slippery slope, 1:44:52.479 --> 1:44:54.519 and it may very well be one, there must be 1:44:54.640 --> 1:44:56.960 room to inject the writer's voice back into their work, 1:44:57.320 --> 1:44:59.320 and a willingness to call out bad actors as such, 1:44:59.520 --> 1:45:01.320 no matter and how rich they are, no matter how 1:45:01.360 --> 1:45:03.720 big their products are, no matter how willing they are 1:45:03.800 --> 1:45:05.960 to bark and scream that things are unfair as they 1:45:05.960 --> 1:45:09.800 accumulate more power and money. We need context in our news. 1:45:10.520 --> 1:45:13.040 We need it, we need it now. We need opinion, 1:45:13.120 --> 1:45:16.040 we need voice, we need character, we need life, because 1:45:16.080 --> 1:45:20.240 as long as we follow this bullshit objectivity path, we're screwed. 1:45:20.880 --> 1:45:23.000 And if you're in the tech industry and hearing this 1:45:23.160 --> 1:45:23.759 and saying. 1:45:23.720 --> 1:45:25.960 Oh, the media is tea critical of tech, if that 1:45:26.120 --> 1:45:27.759 fucking wrong, kiss my asshole. 1:45:28.120 --> 1:45:30.599 Everything we're seeing happening right now is a direct result 1:45:30.720 --> 1:45:32.960 of a society that let technology in the ultra rich 1:45:33.040 --> 1:45:35.840 run rampant, free of both the governmental guardrails that might 1:45:35.840 --> 1:45:38.080 have stopped them and the media ecosystem that might have 1:45:38.120 --> 1:45:41.800 actually held them in check. Our default position in interrogating 1:45:41.840 --> 1:45:44.360 the intentions and actions of the tech industry has become 1:45:44.400 --> 1:45:47.040 that they will work it out, as they continually redefine 1:45:47.040 --> 1:45:49.160 what work it out means and turn it into make 1:45:49.240 --> 1:45:53.920 their products worse but more profitable. Covering Meta, Twitter, Google, 1:45:54.040 --> 1:45:56.360 open Ai, and other huge tech companies as if the 1:45:56.400 --> 1:45:59.600 products they make are remarkable and perfect is disrespectable to 1:45:59.640 --> 1:46:03.840 the reader intelligence and a disgusting abdication of responsibility, as 1:46:03.920 --> 1:46:08.080 their products, even when they're functional, are significantly worse, more annoying, 1:46:08.160 --> 1:46:11.320 more frustrating, and more convoluted than ever. And that's before 1:46:11.360 --> 1:46:13.400 you get to the ones like Facebook and Instagram that 1:46:13.439 --> 1:46:17.160 are out right broken. I don't give a shit if 1:46:17.240 --> 1:46:19.240 these people have raised a lot of money unless you 1:46:19.320 --> 1:46:21.560 use that as proof that something is fundamentally wrong with 1:46:21.640 --> 1:46:24.920 the tech industry. Meta making billions of dollars of profit 1:46:25.000 --> 1:46:27.240 is a sign that something is wrong with society, not 1:46:27.400 --> 1:46:29.679 proof that it's a good company or anything that should 1:46:29.680 --> 1:46:32.800 grant Mark Zuckerberg any kind of special treatment. Shove your 1:46:32.880 --> 1:46:36.120 chains up your ass, Mark open Ai being worth one 1:46:36.200 --> 1:46:38.400 hundred and fifty seven billion dollars for a company that 1:46:38.439 --> 1:46:40.840 burns five billion or more a year to make a 1:46:40.840 --> 1:46:42.960 product that destroys our environment. For a product yet to 1:46:43.000 --> 1:46:45.200 find any real meaning, isn't a sign that it should 1:46:45.200 --> 1:46:48.560 get more coverage or be taken more seriously. No, it 1:46:48.600 --> 1:46:51.200 should be a sign that something is broken, that something 1:46:51.320 --> 1:46:55.160 is wrong with society. Whatever you may feel about chat GPT, 1:46:55.320 --> 1:46:58.000 the coverage it received is outsized compared to its actual 1:46:58.120 --> 1:47:00.360 utility and the things built on top of it. And 1:47:00.439 --> 1:47:02.599 that's a direct result of a media industry that seems 1:47:02.640 --> 1:47:05.960 incapable of holding the powerful accountable or actually learning about 1:47:05.960 --> 1:47:09.720 the subject matter in question. It's time to accept that 1:47:09.880 --> 1:47:12.880 most people's digital life fucking sucks, as does the way 1:47:12.960 --> 1:47:16.680 we consume our information, and that there are people directly responsible. 1:47:17.680 --> 1:47:20.000 Be as angry as you want at Jeff Bezos, whose 1:47:20.040 --> 1:47:23.320 wealth and the inherent cruelty of Amazon's labor practices makes 1:47:23.360 --> 1:47:26.360 him an obvious target, but please don't forget Mark Zuckerberg, 1:47:26.439 --> 1:47:29.800 Elon Musk, Sander Peshai, Tim Cook, and every single other 1:47:29.880 --> 1:47:33.200 tech executive that has allowed our digital experiences to become 1:47:33.320 --> 1:47:38.480 fucked up through algorithms that we know nothing about. Similarly, 1:47:38.800 --> 1:47:42.040 governments have entirely failed to push through any legislation that 1:47:42.160 --> 1:47:44.519 might stop the raw, both in terms of dominance and 1:47:44.600 --> 1:47:47.240 a patness of algorithmic manipulation and the ways in which 1:47:47.280 --> 1:47:51.280 tach products exist with few real quality standards. We may have, 1:47:51.439 --> 1:47:53.840 at least for now, consumer standards for the majority of 1:47:53.920 --> 1:47:57.000 consumer goods, but software is left effectively untouched, which is 1:47:57.040 --> 1:47:59.120 why so much of our digital lives are such unfettered. 1:47:59.160 --> 1:47:59.639 Doug shit. 1:48:00.600 --> 1:48:02.360 And if you're hearing this and saying I'm being a 1:48:02.400 --> 1:48:04.360 hater or a pess and miss shut the fuck up, 1:48:04.360 --> 1:48:06.680 I'm tired of you. I'm so fucking tired of being 1:48:06.720 --> 1:48:09.160 told to calm down about this as we stare down 1:48:09.439 --> 1:48:12.240 the barrel of four years of authoritarianism built on top 1:48:12.280 --> 1:48:14.519 of the decay of our lives, both physical and digital, 1:48:14.720 --> 1:48:16.840 with a media ecosystem that doesn't do a great job 1:48:16.880 --> 1:48:19.800 explaining what's being done to the people in an ideologically 1:48:19.880 --> 1:48:24.800 consistent way. There's this extremely common assumption in the tech media, 1:48:24.840 --> 1:48:27.719 based on what I'm really not sure that these companies 1:48:27.720 --> 1:48:29.320 are all doing a good job, and that good job 1:48:29.400 --> 1:48:31.400 means having lots of users and making lots of money, 1:48:31.600 --> 1:48:35.240 and it drives tons of editorial decision making. If three 1:48:35.360 --> 1:48:38.320 quarters of the biggest car manufacturers were making record profits 1:48:38.360 --> 1:48:39.920 by making half of their cars or the break that 1:48:40.040 --> 1:48:44.320 sometimes didn't work, that'd be international news. Government inquiries would 1:48:44.320 --> 1:48:46.240 app but people will go to prison. And this isn't 1:48:46.240 --> 1:48:50.040 even conjecture. It actually happened after Volkswagen was caught deliberately 1:48:50.080 --> 1:48:53.439 programming its engines to only meet emission standards during laboratory testing. 1:48:53.920 --> 1:48:56.960 They were left to spew excessive pollution into the real world, 1:48:57.479 --> 1:49:00.920 but once lawmakers found out, they responded with civil and 1:49:00.960 --> 1:49:04.080 criminal action. The executives and engineers responsible were indicted, one 1:49:04.280 --> 1:49:07.120 received seven years in jail, and their former CEO is 1:49:07.160 --> 1:49:09.439 currently being tried in Germany and being indicted in the 1:49:09.560 --> 1:49:13.080 US too. And here we are in the tech industry. 1:49:13.640 --> 1:49:18.519 Facebook barely works, used to nigenocides and bully people and 1:49:18.840 --> 1:49:21.920 harassed teen girls. Pedophiles run rampant on there. There was 1:49:21.920 --> 1:49:23.840 a Wall Street Journal about story about it. 1:49:24.400 --> 1:49:24.920 They're fine. 1:49:25.479 --> 1:49:28.320 So much of the tech industry consumer software like Google 1:49:28.360 --> 1:49:31.360 or Facebook, Twitter, and even chat GBT and business software 1:49:31.360 --> 1:49:32.880 from companies like Microsoft and Slack. 1:49:33.520 --> 1:49:37.200 It sucks. It sucks, It's bad. You use it every day. 1:49:37.240 --> 1:49:39.920 You've been listening to be Ramble for fifty episodes, now 1:49:40.000 --> 1:49:43.040 you know what I'm talking about. It's everywhere, Yet the 1:49:43.160 --> 1:49:45.680 media covers it just like, eh, you know, it's just 1:49:45.760 --> 1:49:49.320 how things are mate now. Meta, by the admission of 1:49:49.360 --> 1:49:52.320 its own internal documents, makes products that are ruinous to 1:49:52.360 --> 1:49:54.840 the mental health of teenage girls, and it hasn't made 1:49:54.880 --> 1:49:57.639 any substantial changes as a result, nor has it received 1:49:57.680 --> 1:50:01.000 any significant pushback for fame to do so. Little bit 1:50:01.040 --> 1:50:03.200 of a side note here, big shout out to Jeff 1:50:03.240 --> 1:50:04.800 Horwitz and the rest of the Wall Street General people 1:50:04.840 --> 1:50:07.200 who did the Facebook files. There are our legacy media 1:50:07.240 --> 1:50:11.400 people doing a good job on this. Nevertheless, Meta exercises 1:50:11.439 --> 1:50:15.080 this reckless disregard for public safety, kind of like the 1:50:15.200 --> 1:50:17.559 auto industry in the sixties, and that was when Ralph 1:50:17.640 --> 1:50:20.160 Nader wrote Unsafe at Any Speed in his book. It 1:50:20.280 --> 1:50:22.479 actually brought about change. It led to the Department of 1:50:22.520 --> 1:50:25.599 Transportation and the passage of seatbelt laws in forty nine states, 1:50:25.600 --> 1:50:27.320 and a bunch of other things that can get overlooked. 1:50:28.080 --> 1:50:30.960 But the tech industry is somehow inoculated against any kind 1:50:31.000 --> 1:50:33.400 of public pressure or shame because it operates in this 1:50:33.560 --> 1:50:35.800 completely different world with this different rule book and a 1:50:35.840 --> 1:50:39.080 different criteria for success, as well as this completely different 1:50:39.120 --> 1:50:56.480 set of expectations. By allowing the market to become disconnected 1:50:56.520 --> 1:50:58.720 from the value it creates, we enable companies like I 1:50:58.760 --> 1:51:01.800 don't know, in Vidia that reduce the quality of their 1:51:01.840 --> 1:51:04.320 services they make more money for their g Force now service, 1:51:04.439 --> 1:51:07.920 or Facebook they can just destroy our political discourse so 1:51:08.000 --> 1:51:10.960 they can facilitate genocide in Myanmar, and then well, they 1:51:11.040 --> 1:51:13.640 get headlines about how good a CEO Mark Zuckerbig is 1:51:13.720 --> 1:51:16.599 and how cool his chains are, and how how everything's 1:51:16.720 --> 1:51:18.639 just fine with Facebook and they're making more money. 1:51:18.800 --> 1:51:18.840 No. 1:51:19.120 --> 1:51:22.040 No, I actually want to take a step back, though. 1:51:22.040 --> 1:51:23.479 I want to take a little bit of step back. 1:51:23.560 --> 1:51:28.400 I previously mentioned I said it twice now, Oh, Meta 1:51:28.640 --> 1:51:32.799 enables genocide and it destroys our politic our political discourse. 1:51:32.840 --> 1:51:35.320 I want to be clear when I say that everything 1:51:35.439 --> 1:51:40.120 is justified at Meta, I'm actually quoting their chief technology officer. 1:51:40.760 --> 1:51:44.240 That's quite literally what Andrew Bosworth said in an internal 1:51:44.320 --> 1:51:46.800 memo from twenty sixteen where he said that and I 1:51:46.960 --> 1:51:52.479 quote ahem, all the work Facebook does in growth is justified, 1:51:52.880 --> 1:51:56.400 even if that includes and I'm quoting him directly, somebody 1:51:56.520 --> 1:52:01.559 dying in a terrorist attack coordinated using Facebook's tool. Now, 1:52:01.640 --> 1:52:04.200 the mere mention of violent crime is enough to create 1:52:04.520 --> 1:52:07.280 dreams of articles questioning whether society is safe and whether 1:52:07.320 --> 1:52:10.080 we need more plastic in our walgreens. Yeah, our digital 1:52:10.160 --> 1:52:13.920 lives are this wasteland that people still discuss like a utopia, 1:52:14.520 --> 1:52:17.280 seriously putting aside the social networks. Have you visited a 1:52:17.360 --> 1:52:20.160 website on the phone recently? Have you tried to use 1:52:20.240 --> 1:52:22.719 a new app? Have you tried to buy something online 1:52:22.840 --> 1:52:26.360 starting with a Google search? Within those experiences, sis, has 1:52:26.439 --> 1:52:29.080 anything gone wrong? You know it, I know it has, 1:52:29.800 --> 1:52:30.519 you know it has. 1:52:31.520 --> 1:52:35.639 It's time to wake up. We the users of products. 1:52:35.920 --> 1:52:38.200 We're at war with the products we're using and the 1:52:38.280 --> 1:52:41.080 people that make them, and right now we are losing. 1:52:41.840 --> 1:52:45.000 The media must realign to fight for how things should be. 1:52:45.560 --> 1:52:48.200 This doesn't mean that they can't cover things positively, or 1:52:48.240 --> 1:52:50.360 give credit where credit is due, or be willing to 1:52:50.439 --> 1:52:54.000 accept that something could be something cool. But has the 1:52:54.160 --> 1:52:56.880 change is the evaluation of the products themselves, which have 1:52:57.000 --> 1:52:58.720 been allowed to decay to a level that has become 1:52:58.760 --> 1:53:02.760 at best annoying and at actively harmful for society. Our 1:53:02.840 --> 1:53:06.120 networks are rotten, Our information ecosystem is poisoned with its 1:53:06.200 --> 1:53:10.160 pure parts ideologically and strategically concussed. Our means of speaking 1:53:10.240 --> 1:53:12.439 to those that we love and making new connections are 1:53:12.479 --> 1:53:15.600 so constantly interfered with that personal choice and dignity is. 1:53:15.560 --> 1:53:19.360 All but removed. But there is hope, there really is. 1:53:19.760 --> 1:53:21.960 Those covering the tech industry right now have one of 1:53:22.000 --> 1:53:24.800 the most consequential jobs in journalism if they choose to 1:53:24.880 --> 1:53:28.920 fucking do it. Those willing to guide people through the wasteland, 1:53:29.320 --> 1:53:31.920 those willing to discuss what needs to change, how bad 1:53:32.000 --> 1:53:35.040 things have gone, and hold the powerful accountable and say 1:53:35.080 --> 1:53:37.519 what good might look like have the opportunity to push 1:53:37.560 --> 1:53:39.720 for a better future by spitting in the faces of 1:53:39.800 --> 1:53:42.439 those ruining it. I don't know where I sit, by 1:53:42.479 --> 1:53:44.760 the way, I don't know what to call myself. Am 1:53:44.800 --> 1:53:47.360 I legacy media? I got my start writing in print magazines. 1:53:47.600 --> 1:53:49.520 Am I an independent contractor? 1:53:49.600 --> 1:53:51.479 Am I an influencer? Am I content? 1:53:51.760 --> 1:53:53.800 I truly don't know, and I don't know over care. 1:53:53.880 --> 1:53:55.920 But all that I know is that I feel like 1:53:56.040 --> 1:53:58.360 I'm at war two and that we, if I can 1:53:58.439 --> 1:54:00.920 be considered part of the media, are at war with 1:54:01.040 --> 1:54:03.160 people that have changed the terms of innovation so that 1:54:03.200 --> 1:54:07.200 it's synonymous with value extraction. Technology is how I became 1:54:07.240 --> 1:54:09.880 a person, how I met my closest friends and loved ones. 1:54:10.000 --> 1:54:11.720 And without it, I wouldn't be able to write, I 1:54:11.720 --> 1:54:12.400 wouldn't be able to. 1:54:12.400 --> 1:54:14.360 Read this podcast. I wouldn't have got this podcast. 1:54:15.240 --> 1:54:18.800 And I feel this poison flowing through my veins as 1:54:18.840 --> 1:54:21.000 I see what these motherfuckers have done and what they're 1:54:21.000 --> 1:54:25.519 continuing to do, and I see how inconsistently and tipidly 1:54:25.600 --> 1:54:30.160 they're interrogated. Now is the time to talk bluntly about 1:54:30.200 --> 1:54:34.440 what is happening. The declining quality of tech products, the 1:54:34.600 --> 1:54:38.440 scourge of growth, hacking, the cancellrous growth at all cost mindset. 1:54:38.640 --> 1:54:40.440 These are all the things that need to be raised 1:54:40.480 --> 1:54:44.120 in every single piece, and judgments must be unrelenting. 1:54:44.800 --> 1:54:45.760 The companies will. 1:54:45.640 --> 1:54:49.400 Squeal ooh that they're being so unfairly treated by the 1:54:49.520 --> 1:54:54.080 biased legacy media. Oh oh save me, hey, Nelle Patel 1:54:54.200 --> 1:54:56.800 interview with Sandhar Pishchai. This is how you sounded when 1:54:56.840 --> 1:54:59.520 you handed him your phone. It was pathetic. They should 1:54:59.560 --> 1:55:03.240 be scared you, Nille. The powerful should be scared of 1:55:03.320 --> 1:55:06.080 the media. They shouldn't be sitting there sending letters to 1:55:06.120 --> 1:55:10.320 the editor like fucking customer support. No, they should see 1:55:10.400 --> 1:55:12.960 this podcast, they should see these news letters. They should 1:55:13.000 --> 1:55:15.800 see everything published by the tech media and go uh oh. 1:55:17.000 --> 1:55:18.800 And there can be good people. There can be good 1:55:18.800 --> 1:55:20.160 boys and girls than others. 1:55:20.720 --> 1:55:23.040 There can be plenty of people that make good products 1:55:23.080 --> 1:55:25.760 and get great press for it. But do you really 1:55:25.920 --> 1:55:30.160 think meta Google, Apple to an extent, frankly, do you 1:55:30.240 --> 1:55:32.280 think Amazon looks good right now? Do you think it's 1:55:32.320 --> 1:55:34.280 easy to find stuff? Or do you think it's slop 1:55:34.360 --> 1:55:37.360 full of more slop? Mark Zuckerberg said on an Earning 1:55:37.440 --> 1:55:40.080 Score the other day that he intends there to be 1:55:40.160 --> 1:55:46.040 an AI specific slop feed that should These are harmful things. 1:55:46.080 --> 1:55:51.520 This is pouring vants of oil into rivers and then 1:55:51.680 --> 1:55:55.440 getting told you're the best boy in town. These companies, 1:55:55.440 --> 1:55:58.000 they're poisoning the digital world and they must be held 1:55:58.040 --> 1:55:59.640 accountable for the damage they're causing. 1:56:00.200 --> 1:56:01.320 Readers are already aware. 1:56:02.000 --> 1:56:05.000 But ah, and this is really thanks to members of 1:56:05.000 --> 1:56:08.040 the media, by the way, the gaslighting themselves into believing that, oh, 1:56:08.440 --> 1:56:10.960 I just don't I don't keep up with technology. He 1:56:11.080 --> 1:56:13.400 is getting away from me. I'm not technical enough to 1:56:13.520 --> 1:56:15.720 use this. When the thing that they don't get that 1:56:15.760 --> 1:56:17.879 the average person doesn't get is that the tech industry 1:56:17.920 --> 1:56:22.040 has built legions of obfiscations, legions of legal tricks, and 1:56:22.120 --> 1:56:26.280 these horrible little user interface traps specifically made to trick 1:56:26.360 --> 1:56:29.160 you into doing things, to make the experience kind of 1:56:29.240 --> 1:56:32.560 subordinate to getting the money off of you. And I 1:56:32.680 --> 1:56:35.480 think that this is one of the biggest issues in society. 1:56:35.560 --> 1:56:37.839 And yes, of course I'm biased. I'm doing a podcast 1:56:37.880 --> 1:56:41.480 about tech, but for real, though, billions of people use smartphones, 1:56:41.600 --> 1:56:43.920 billions of people are on the computer every day. It's 1:56:43.960 --> 1:56:48.480 how we do everything. And it stinks. It stinks so bad. 1:56:48.920 --> 1:56:51.480 This is the rot economy. We're in the rot society. 1:56:52.360 --> 1:56:55.640 But things can change, and for them to change, it 1:56:55.720 --> 1:56:58.360 has to start with the information sources, and that starts 1:56:58.480 --> 1:57:02.280 with journalism. Work has already begun and will continue, but 1:57:02.400 --> 1:57:04.360 it must scale up and it must do so quickly. 1:57:05.040 --> 1:57:08.160 And you, the user, have the power learn to read 1:57:08.160 --> 1:57:10.000 a privacy policy and the link there is to the 1:57:10.080 --> 1:57:12.440 Washington Post. Yes, there are plenty of great reporters there. 1:57:12.800 --> 1:57:15.440 Fuck Bezos. You can move to Signal, which is an 1:57:15.480 --> 1:57:18.520 encrypted messaging app that works on just about everything. Get 1:57:18.560 --> 1:57:20.560 a service like delete me, and by the way I 1:57:20.680 --> 1:57:22.360 pay for it, I work from four years ago. 1:57:22.560 --> 1:57:24.680 I have no financial relationship with them. 1:57:24.920 --> 1:57:27.040 But they're great for removing you from data brokers. 1:57:27.880 --> 1:57:29.200 Molly White, who's a dear. 1:57:29.040 --> 1:57:30.960 Friend of mine and even better right who might remember 1:57:31.200 --> 1:57:33.600 from one of the early episodes about Wikipedia. She's also 1:57:33.680 --> 1:57:36.000 written this extremely long guide about what to do next 1:57:36.040 --> 1:57:37.680 that are linked to in the notes, and it runs 1:57:37.720 --> 1:57:40.200 through a ton of great things you can do unionization, 1:57:40.400 --> 1:57:43.480 finding your communities, dropping apps that collect and store sensitive data, 1:57:43.520 --> 1:57:46.240 and so on. I also heartily recommend Wired's guide to 1:57:46.280 --> 1:57:48.640 protecting yourself from government surveillance, which is linked in the 1:57:48.680 --> 1:57:54.520 show notes. Now, before we go, I want to leave 1:57:54.520 --> 1:57:56.680 you with something that I posted on November sixth on 1:57:56.800 --> 1:57:57.280 the Better. 1:57:57.120 --> 1:57:57.880 Offline redd app. 1:57:59.800 --> 1:58:01.640 The last twenty four hours of felt bleak and will 1:58:01.720 --> 1:58:03.840 likely feel more bleak as the months and years go on. 1:58:04.160 --> 1:58:05.920 It'll be easy to give in to doom, to assume 1:58:05.960 --> 1:58:07.840 the fight is lost, to assume that the bad guys 1:58:07.880 --> 1:58:10.280 have permanently won and there will never be any justice 1:58:10.320 --> 1:58:14.080 or joy again. Now's the time for solidarity to crystallize 1:58:14.120 --> 1:58:16.400 around ideas that matter, even if their a position in 1:58:16.480 --> 1:58:19.200 society is delayed. Even as the clouds darken and the 1:58:19.280 --> 1:58:22.840 storm's brew and the darkness feels all encompassing and suffocating. 1:58:23.600 --> 1:58:26.000 Reach out to those you love and don't just commiserate. 1:58:26.200 --> 1:58:29.040 Plan It doesn't have to be political, it doesn't even 1:58:29.160 --> 1:58:31.879 really have to matter, but shit on your fucking calendar. 1:58:32.000 --> 1:58:34.440 Keep yourself active and busy and if not distracted, at 1:58:34.600 --> 1:58:36.160 very least animated. 1:58:36.760 --> 1:58:38.160 Darkness feeds an idleness. 1:58:38.360 --> 1:58:40.760 Darkness feasts on a sense of failure and a sense 1:58:40.800 --> 1:58:44.760 of inability to make change. You don't know me very well, 1:58:44.920 --> 1:58:47.280 but know that I'm aware of the darkness and the 1:58:47.400 --> 1:58:50.720 sadness and the suffocation of when things feel overwhelming, give 1:58:50.760 --> 1:58:53.160 yourself some mercy and then the days to come. Don't 1:58:53.240 --> 1:58:57.240 castigate yourself a feeling gutted, Then keep going. I realize 1:58:57.280 --> 1:58:59.160 it's little solace to think, well, if I keep saying 1:58:59.160 --> 1:59:01.440 stuff out loud, things will get better. But I promise 1:59:01.520 --> 1:59:04.840 you doing so as an effect and actually matters. Keep 1:59:04.880 --> 1:59:07.400 talking about how fucked up things are, Make sure it's 1:59:07.400 --> 1:59:09.560 written down, make sure it's spoken cleanly, and with the 1:59:09.680 --> 1:59:12.800 rage and fire and piss and vinegar it deserves. Things 1:59:12.840 --> 1:59:14.720 will change for the better, even if it takes more 1:59:14.760 --> 1:59:15.680 time than it should. 1:59:17.880 --> 1:59:18.120 Look. 1:59:19.160 --> 1:59:23.120 I know I'm imperfect, emotional, off kill or at times 1:59:23.200 --> 1:59:25.800 I get emails saying that too angry. 1:59:26.960 --> 1:59:28.160 I'm sorry if it's ever triggered. 1:59:28.160 --> 1:59:31.320 You really do mean that. It's not intentional. I just 1:59:31.440 --> 1:59:34.919 I feel this in everything I do. I use technology 1:59:34.960 --> 1:59:36.960 all the time, and it is extremely annoying. But also 1:59:37.360 --> 1:59:39.919 I'm aware that I have privilege, and the more privilege 1:59:39.920 --> 1:59:41.800 you have with intake, the more you're able to escape 1:59:41.800 --> 1:59:44.400 the little things. Go and buy a cheap laptop today. 1:59:44.520 --> 1:59:47.400 Try and see what two hundred and three hundred. 1:59:47.120 --> 1:59:47.840 Dollars laptop is. 1:59:47.840 --> 1:59:50.040 It's slow, It's full of eighteen pop ups trying to 1:59:50.040 --> 1:59:52.080 sell you access to cloud storage, to shit that you'll 1:59:52.120 --> 1:59:56.680 never use, Tricking grannies and people who can't afford laptops, 1:59:56.680 --> 1:59:59.760 so people that just don't know. When I see this stuff, 2:00:00.000 --> 2:00:02.320 it enrages me, not just for me, but because I 2:00:02.440 --> 2:00:04.920 know that I'm at least lucky enough to know how 2:00:04.920 --> 2:00:07.800 to get around this shit. Spent most of my life online, 2:00:08.000 --> 2:00:09.720 spent most of my life playing with tech and how 2:00:09.840 --> 2:00:14.080 it works. And I know I have my tangents and 2:00:14.200 --> 2:00:17.320 my biases, but I wear them kind oft my heart, 2:00:17.360 --> 2:00:20.280 on my sleeve. I care about all this stuff in 2:00:20.320 --> 2:00:22.160 a way that might be a little different to some, 2:00:23.120 --> 2:00:27.360 and it's because I've I've watched an industry that really 2:00:27.440 --> 2:00:30.480 made me as a person, that allowed me to grow 2:00:30.520 --> 2:00:34.320 as a person, to actually meet people, to not feel 2:00:34.360 --> 2:00:37.080 as alone. And I imagine some of you feel like 2:00:37.120 --> 2:00:40.680 this too, and then watching what happens to it every day, 2:00:41.120 --> 2:00:44.160 watching the people who get so rich off of making 2:00:44.200 --> 2:00:45.800 it so much worse, and then seeing what happen on 2:00:45.840 --> 2:00:48.840 November fifth, and you can draw a line from it. 2:00:50.160 --> 2:00:54.839 People are scared, they're lost. Their lives are spent digitally, 2:00:55.120 --> 2:00:59.800 and your digital lives are just endless terrorism, endless harm. 2:01:01.440 --> 2:01:03.600 Some of you know your way around take so you 2:01:03.640 --> 2:01:05.880 can escape some of it, but it's impossible to escape 2:01:05.920 --> 2:01:09.400 all of it. Try meeting people these days, you can't. 2:01:09.520 --> 2:01:13.080 Everything is online, and everything online, everything on your phone 2:01:13.160 --> 2:01:17.000 is mitigated and interfered with. It's an assault on your senses, 2:01:17.040 --> 2:01:21.720 one deprived of dignity. And I see the people doing 2:01:21.840 --> 2:01:25.480 this and it feels me full of fucking rage, and 2:01:25.600 --> 2:01:29.080 it makes me angry for you and for me, for 2:01:29.240 --> 2:01:31.680 my son growing up, and what will probably be a 2:01:31.800 --> 2:01:34.640 worse world for my friends and loved ones who are 2:01:34.720 --> 2:01:37.880 harder to see, harder to speak to, whose lives too 2:01:38.000 --> 2:01:41.440 are interfered with. And there are the millions and millions 2:01:41.480 --> 2:01:44.960 of people who have no fucking idea it's happening, that 2:01:45.160 --> 2:01:48.600 just exist in this swill, in this active digital terrorism, 2:01:49.000 --> 2:01:55.160 poked and prodded and nagged and notified constantly, And I 2:01:55.880 --> 2:01:58.640 don't want Early on in this I got a message saying, 2:01:58.760 --> 2:02:00.840 don't tell people to be angry, and I stick by that. 2:02:02.320 --> 2:02:04.760 But I'm not going to hide that I am. I'm 2:02:04.800 --> 2:02:06.360 not going to hide the pain I feel. I'm not 2:02:06.400 --> 2:02:08.600 going to hide the pain I feel seeing this shit happen. 2:02:10.960 --> 2:02:15.120 And I've watched this thing that I love technology, really 2:02:15.280 --> 2:02:17.120 do love tech, I really do deeply. 2:02:17.600 --> 2:02:18.200 I've watched it. 2:02:18.560 --> 2:02:23.160 Corrupted and broken, and the people breaking it. They don't 2:02:23.280 --> 2:02:25.760 just make billions of dollars. They get articles in, they 2:02:25.800 --> 2:02:29.840 get interviewed on the news. Mark Zuckerbug, he wears a 2:02:29.960 --> 2:02:32.320 chain and there's articles about how cool he is. He 2:02:32.400 --> 2:02:34.920 should be in fucking prison. He should be on a 2:02:35.000 --> 2:02:37.480 prison on a boat that just circles the world, and 2:02:37.600 --> 2:02:40.080 he shouldn't have air conditioning or heat depending on how 2:02:40.120 --> 2:02:43.080 the weather is. And I know that I'm kind of 2:02:43.280 --> 2:02:48.160 errand and again tons of tangents. But look, the reason 2:02:48.200 --> 2:02:50.520 I'm like this is because I really care. And I 2:02:50.560 --> 2:02:53.280 think caring. I think being angry at the things that 2:02:53.360 --> 2:02:57.800 actually matter and giving context as a result. I think 2:02:57.840 --> 2:03:01.120 that's deeply valuable. And I realize I do for to 2:03:01.160 --> 2:03:03.000 handle a lot, but it really. 2:03:02.960 --> 2:03:03.560 Is because I care. 2:03:04.120 --> 2:03:06.360 I care about you, I care about the subject matter. 2:03:07.600 --> 2:03:10.440 I'm so grateful and so honored that you spend your 2:03:10.440 --> 2:03:12.080 time listening to me every week, and I hope you'll 2:03:12.080 --> 2:03:22.640 continue to do so because I'm not going anywhere. Thank 2:03:22.680 --> 2:03:25.360 you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer 2:03:25.440 --> 2:03:28.240 of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You can 2:03:28.320 --> 2:03:30.640 check out more of his music and audio projects at 2:03:30.720 --> 2:03:32.120 Matasowski dot com. 2:03:32.520 --> 2:03:35.880 M A T T O s O W s ki 2:03:36.280 --> 2:03:36.720 dot com. 2:03:37.480 --> 2:03:39.760 You can email me at easy at Better Offline dot 2:03:39.800 --> 2:03:42.040 com or visit Better Offline dot com to find more 2:03:42.080 --> 2:03:45.440 podcast links and of course, my newsletter. I also really 2:03:45.480 --> 2:03:47.680 recommend you go to chat dot Where's youreed dot at 2:03:47.800 --> 2:03:50.200 to visit the discord, and go to our slash Better 2:03:50.240 --> 2:03:53.400 Offline to check out our reddit. Thank you so much 2:03:53.480 --> 2:03:54.240 for listening. 2:03:54.800 --> 2:03:57.480 Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For 2:03:57.640 --> 2:04:00.800 more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia 2:04:00.840 --> 2:04:03.680 dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, 2:04:03.720 --> 2:04:06.160 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.