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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Nick, Dick and Paul Show. I am one of your co hosts, Nick Bilton, a former journalist turned screenwriter, turned documentary filmmaker turned oh author, did that too?
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Speaker 2: This is too long.
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Speaker 1: It's too long. I'll keep going. I have a dog named Maypole.
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Speaker 3: I'm Di Costello for this is gonna be the day of formers. Okay, Former Twitter CEO, former secret Service agent, former author, author. Also no, I never wrote anything. I've never written anything in my life. Now venture capital investor.
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Speaker 2: M hmmm, Paul Kadrowski, I actually former ski instructor.
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Speaker 3: Oh that's a good one.
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Speaker 1: Is that real?
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Speaker 3: Yeah?
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Speaker 2: It was Ski instructure multiple times. And then that's it.
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Speaker 1: I actually have a question for you, Paul. I know this is not part of what maybe this is part of what we're talking.
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Speaker 2: About cross country and downhill.
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Speaker 1: By the way, I read that you that you had an opportunity to do invest in Google and you thought it was a bad idea. Is that right or something like that?
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Speaker 3: No?
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Speaker 2: Well, yes, sort of? I uh really early right, pag Rank was still pag rank wow or BackRub? Sorry sorry sorry it was called BackRub. It was just Larry and Sergei and there was a weird little piece I read somewhere in like Electronic Engineering Times, because we all read that back then, and I emailed the guys Larry and Serge about it and I said, you know, this is kind of interesting, and because they were talking about the page rank algorithm and what have you. And I said, if you guys are they could do anything, I'd be interested. And then they got the seed round from I forgot who it was, John Dore or it was like a like I don't even know. It was like six million dollars at the at the seed evaluation, and I said it was too expensive?
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Speaker 1: Did you really could you? Could you do the math of like what one hundred thousand dollars turn to.
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Speaker 2: A lot? But not enough. I would have needed twice as much.
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Speaker 1: That's on a previous episode.
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Speaker 2: But yeah, no I did. I had the opportunity. Well I did with the Uber I had with a bunch of stuff, but we didn't do any of those because you know, Uber was stupid.
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Speaker 3: It'll never work.
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Speaker 1: It will never none of these things are They're terrible ideas.
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Speaker 2: No, I it was funny. It was BackRub. People don't realize that was the name of the Champague there was a BackRub because they got kicked out of Stanford because they were using up the campus network, too much capacity on the campus network, so they moved into I've forgotten who's groge Susan Susanickiy's garage, that's right.
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Speaker 1: Right, yeah, And I I broke the story at The New York Times on Evan Spiegel and snapchat. He was in his dorm room and I called him and I said, I'm writing a story for the Times or whatever, and he was like, can I call you back? I have a test and now, And they called me back, and I wrote the piece and I thought he was I thought he was very smart, and it was. It was really cool. And I was good friends with Tony Conrad at the time, the investor, and I emailed Tony and I said, you should look at this company. I think it's gonna be big. You should invest in them. And he never responded. I was like, yeah, whatever. Years later, he was about to go on stage to do a talk and i'd I'd email them something and he I guess it'd look for my email, and because the iPhone email search is horrific, it pulled up that email and he looked and he was like, oh my god. And then he went out on stage and the guy was like, what's the biggest miss you have? Funny you should ask.
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Speaker 2: I did that a lot. By the way, whenever this is completed, but whenever I see something and it rings a vague bell, I like close my eyes and I start searching in Gmail to see whether or not did I did I did? Someone tell me about this because it feels like something I should know about it because I'm terrified.
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Speaker 1: And there it is.
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Speaker 2: It's happened more than.
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Speaker 1: It's happened with me with bitcoin or early twenty eleven.
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Speaker 2: I got it.
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Speaker 3: No wonder this is your obsession with But I got an email and they were like it.
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Speaker 1: Was it was funny enough was my book publisher who the science guy, And he was like, do you have any bitcoin? It's like trading at like fifty cents? I think maybe the single a dollar twenty eleven. That's And I never responded to him to bitcoin.
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Speaker 2: What kind of nonsense is?
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Speaker 1: What is this ridiculousness?
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Speaker 2: That's funny?
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Speaker 1: Speaking of we're gonna be talking about software brain today? What is software?
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Speaker 2: But I think we should I think we should start somewhere else.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's start somewhere else.
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Speaker 3: Start with the Musk.
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Speaker 2: To start with the open I think to kind of understand software brain, you kind of have to start with understanding the people in the mentality of the people in AI. It's particular and a great instructive current example is this ongoing Bananas trial.
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Speaker 1: Bananas is the is the right word for that?
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Speaker 2: Yes, it's which is the Musk claim that he was defrauded out of being the legitimate owner of open ai, and that in particular, the company did this transition from being a not for profit to a for profit structure, and that this was a kind of I think this is Musk's were not mine, but I think was something like, I'm basically doing this to prevent all of America from being looted. Because if you can do this, if you can transition a not for profit company to a for profit one after it's taken all this risk capal, why wouldn't everyone do this, Because again, you don't have to pay taxes and it's a very cheap structure to run. So this this is I am doing this as a service to America. Now, obviously the backstory is what's much more interesting. To help you understand software brain because what's been coming out and yeah, just this most recently was just the beginning days of the trial. But the backstory about why Elon feels the way he feels is incredibly interesting because it goes to this notion of like of what it is to think of the world in software terms. And you know, specifically, Elon loves and tells this story. And Karen Howe, whose book Empires of AI is really good on this stuff alone, tells the story about how he was at dinner or.
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Speaker 1: They were like besties, there were.
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Speaker 2: Besties at the time, and they were talking about AI and Elon was going through his fear and drag moment with respect to AI and existential risk and it may kill us all. And Larry, who has a kind of offbeat sense of humor sometimes, I mean maybe he was kidding, Maybe he wasn't.
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Speaker 1: I don't think he was kidding.
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Speaker 2: Okay, Well, Elon said, you know, this stuff could kill us all, and he and Larry essentially accused him of being species Larry.
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Speaker 1: Larry said, well, yeah, of course, these robots are going to become sentient and more intelligent than us and they get rid of us, like that's just evolution. And and Eon was apparently shocked.
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Speaker 2: Right, But he's specifically this idea that he he accused him of being the speed species. This was really that was of the crocks. And he said in the early days, and do.
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Speaker 3: We know how to pronounce that? By the way, is it species?
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Speaker 2: I'm going to go with specieses, but I.
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Speaker 1: Don't actually speciest you have to do with a list? All right?
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Speaker 3: You know to do? What? What are you doing? Why do you have to constantly be offending people on our shows?
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Speaker 1: When I was a kid allowed to say okay?
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Speaker 2: So so he said this, and so Elon cited it both in the documentary leading up to the train and then in the opening test. So this was the reason why I had to do this, to protect the world from this maligna.
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Speaker 1: So people persons understand this. This was the He then went correct me if I'm wrong here. He then went to Sam Alman and said, we have to team up to save ourselves from from being destroyed by robots. That is what the beginning of Opening Eye.
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Speaker 3: Specifically, we have to create an open source version of what Larry is doing inside Google and owning it because we can't let them win. And then the robots destroy us all, you know.
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Speaker 2: They become like search algorithms. But just to be clear, by the way, he didn't it wasn't that that he approached Sam because Sam is the all knowing, all seeing font of all things AI or anything like that.
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Speaker 1: It was not he had nothing right.
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Speaker 2: This was just happenstance that there was a they were just all hanging out. They were all hanging out to people. There was Brockman, there was Iliositskiv and others who were all kind of in this millius no, I'm not.
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Speaker 3: Going to do this.
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Speaker 2: Species. And so they were all in the in the million, and there was this kind of general sense that, yeah, we need to make the world safe from Larry Page and Google and everything else or whatever, and and that this may be the approach to Tank and so that it was more organic, and I you know, I think it's but I think that's a really important point that Musk I think quite rightly characterizes himself as the prime mover at that point, who was driving it for his own reasons, which had to do with this this fear of what was happening at Google.
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Speaker 3: I just love the fact that, like the plot twist and all this is that Larry Page is to kill us all we have to protect ourselves from. Meanwhile, Larry Page is probably in his new fabulous mansion in Miami, going, wait a minute, trial, that's right.
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Speaker 2: I'm not going to get contest is going to get He's not gonna get called. It's not actually, I mean, this is just a sack story client. So, but that's the This all began though, because of his existential dread about what was going to happen, because Larry said he was a speciesist, and then in turns and then began pushing the whole thing forward. And so Musque's claim is, and he has a quote, but I remember it something really particularly Elanie, which is that I've I only contributed the idea of the name.
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Speaker 3: I contributed all. I contributed the idea, the name, the all the first initial money, all the talent and resources resources, taught them everything I knew Comma and nothing else. Right.
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Speaker 2: I think he literally said that on the stand. He said it on the stand. And making friends everywhere.
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Speaker 3: This is a jury trial goal Number one. Ingratiate yourself to the jury is Hey man, I'm just out to like help.
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Speaker 2: America, help America. I may be a controversial figure. You know what I misunderstood.
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Speaker 1: I think that like, look, we'll get well, we should talk through this whole thing. The thing that I cannot stop thinking about.
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Speaker 3: We are talking through this literally specifically right now. You know what we should talk about on the podcast, right.
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Speaker 1: Was paying attention? Just let me visit that is if you're a juror, right.
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Speaker 3: If you're a oh you're do it again.
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Speaker 1: If you're a juror. If you're a juror, yeah, it's.
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Speaker 3: It's the it's the old thirty, is.
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Speaker 1: The Ald thirty, Rock thirty, rural juror. So if you're on the jury and you see these two people that are both not the most likable human beings, like who you're who you're picking here, like it's like you were on the it's.
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Speaker 3: A fair question murderul kill but just okay, no, but it's your goal is I have to be more likable, correct than that person?
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Speaker 1: And that's really hard for these both of them.
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Speaker 2: I think it's harder for one of them, and he showed it in the first day of testimony when he made firm reports almost no attempt to be even.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, but okay, so it's harder for it's harder for Elon, but the emails that are going to come out and and the duplicitousness from Sam is going to be pretty hard to dispel.
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Speaker 3: Here's the Here's there's an old I can't I'm gonna get the name wrong. There was a Kennedy nephew or a second cousin or something. Do you remember this on a Cape cod that, like, you know, was on trial for murdering that woman in Knight and it had the with the golf club, et cetera. Yeah, yeah, no, not.
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Speaker 1: This is a different murdered.
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Speaker 3: The prosecutor shows the defendant on the witness stand the seven iron that's apparently the murder weapon, and the guy just breaks down and starts crying. Oh, and he goes back to you know when he's off the standing goes is back and and his lawyer's whispering something in his ear. And the person next to me I remember watching watching this into like a restaurant or something. And the person next to me goes, what do you think the lawyer is saying to him? And I said, I think he's saying next time, let's go with righteous indignation. Your job in front of the jury is do they believe me, and if they like me, they believe me. They want to believe me if they like me more so, answering questions in a sort of monotone, you know, voice as if you're disinterested, and then also saying I did this and this and this and this and this and nothing else like. But job is not to annoy the jurors.
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Speaker 1: But the jury is probably look at I like him because he's Elon Musk and he's worth billions and trillia.
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Speaker 2: They do or they don't. I think they will know the judgment. He said, it be warrant that they were having trouble picking a jury pool because because of you, the dislike ful answers that question.
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Speaker 3: What I wanted to say though about your your your specific point is I don't think it will Matt. I mean, in most cases, not just this case specifically, It ultimately won't matter the details of either case. What will come down to is which of these two people does the jury like more. I mean, whether that's well, that is that's always the case, right, I mean, it's always the case. But so your your job is to get up there and ingratiate yourself to those people over there, Yeah.
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Speaker 2: And show that you know, I'm I'm I may be a billionaire, but I'm your billionaire. I mean, I'm working. I'm doing this to save you from the threat of a Blairry page and a I.
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Speaker 1: I do wonder though, if just to play Devil's advocate here, if the if there is a version of it where people are afraid of AI, They're they're definitely And that's partially there's the whole conversation about, you know, the AI companies are spreading these rumors, if you will, that we're all going to die soon, and they need more funding, and that's part of the whole fundraising and so on and so forth.
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Speaker 3: That's part of their fundraise.
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Speaker 2: A lot of people I'm getting the wrong documents, you know, a lot of.
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Speaker 1: People specifically, there's a lot of There's been a ton of artists on it. There's a ton of discussions about the fact that and Elon has done it too, and opening eye that oh my god, A is gonna kill us all. We're all going to die soon. We have to we have to build up our our companies to make sure we avoid that from happening. That is, that's a big part of what's going on.
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Speaker 2: I don't disagree with that, and I think I think to Elon's credit, he actually not only says it but believed it.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I believe that. I do believe that. I don't believe that the Dario or Sam of those guys necessarily that. I think.
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Speaker 2: I think Elon legitimately he read a lot of sci fi. Yeah, he read a lot of Fi and believed it early on. And so this his backstory about the origins of opening Eye for me is actually credible, Like it did come from this source of this of this you know, fear about what was going to happen with this technology, and so that is part of his upset in this court case was that.
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Speaker 1: But I think that that's I think that's going to play a role. It's yes, who do I like more? But there is going to be the jury is going to say, oh fuck, am I are we going to die? Like if if we let Sam win this, like, is it good? Because that's going to be part of the legal argument, right.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, But I think it's much more likely. Do I believe this kind of vaguely satanic billionaire or do I like the sort of the Hollywood cast young entrepreneur who's just trying to you know, he's just moving fast and breaking things. I've been told that's good, and so I think that's going to be the struggle all the way through this is that, Okay, fine, he may have some of the facts on his side, but you know, this whole business of starting companies is very messy, and lots of things change and people move in and people move out, and and I think the thing that's going to be really hard for him is this idea that he does seem does seem a little like sour grapes or it's like Elan does. Yeah, because it was successful. Suddenly he started caring when it became successful. He started carrying a lot more when it became very successful, and not before that he kind of checked out created Grock and Xai and whatever.
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Speaker 1: I did hear from someone that there was their job.
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Speaker 3: Your again, your job is to get up there, smile at the jury and say, I'm really at the end of the day.
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Speaker 2: Just like you. I'm just a regular guy. Just put on a billion dollars. What am I going to time?
00:16:48
Speaker 1: Well, multiple billions when it comes to these guys, or a trillion for Elon will be a trillionaire. This year, he's at what eight eight sixty eight seventy.
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Speaker 2: Now, yeah, SpaceX goes out and he's he'll be truly, But I think that's going to be to Dick's point though, that's going to be the struggle, and that's that's what he should be doing, regardless of what you think the facts of the case are and everything else. But to go full financial wonk for a second, it is worth pointing out that like the argument that you shouldn't be able to do what open Ai did isn't a bad argument. No, I totally agree with, meaning not just take it away from you on I don't give you that's what I happened. But the idea that you start off in a not for profit structure, taking a boatload of cash under this capped return structure, which is this structure where you say, you know, here's the maximum you can earn in terms of your investment. As all kind of n runs around it being a not for profit structure, and then you flip to a for profit structure, I think is as right. It kind of it lays a path that lots of people can follow and say, well, it worked for them, why can't I do that?
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Speaker 3: Yeah?
00:17:48
Speaker 2: Right, and that's not it. That's not a very good thing.
00:17:51
Speaker 1: What are the potential outcomes for what happens here? Does is it? Does it hand it over to Elon and he becomes the CEO? Is that they cannot become the for profit and go public? Like what are they? All the all the versions of what happens in this scenario.
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Speaker 2: Lots of versions, and only the only woman's going to happen is he loses.
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Speaker 1: That's it.
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Speaker 3: I think.
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Speaker 2: I don't think he has a juris can do any kind of crazy thing. But I don't see how he wins this.
00:18:17
Speaker 1: H I do you have any thoughts on this?
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Speaker 3: No? My thoughts are that I agree with like what it doesn't?
00:18:22
Speaker 1: I agree?
00:18:23
Speaker 3: I don't just don't see any other outcome other than you're you know you're right, but you know, what are you going to do? This is something like that? Yeah, this is the or or at best if you want to say, at best in in in Laan. In the Alan case, they vote, they rule sort of for Elan. It's something that doesn't derail what's already in process with you and Ai, And.
00:18:50
Speaker 2: I mean you get that, and I think that's part of why the initial his initial testimony is so half hearted.
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Speaker 3: I just yeah, this is for him.
00:18:56
Speaker 2: He knows what's he knows what's going on, right, this is ship posting in legal.
00:18:59
Speaker 1: Well, it's also it's an attempt to slow down the IPO, but it's not going to do anything.
00:19:03
Speaker 2: It'll have no episode, be a relatively rapid I think, a relatively rapid trial, and it'll get to this conclusion that there's really not much for the course to do here. I mean, he's got a strong he's got two strong arguments. One is, you know, the organization shouldn't that this mutation from a not for profit to a for profit structure was really dubious. And uh, the second argument that he was one of the founders and wasn't and isn't has a bigger role here than was being laid out.
00:19:30
Speaker 1: He's true.
00:19:31
Speaker 2: But it's also true with Elon's role with Tesla. I mean, go back in time. I mean Elon his initial founding role with Tesla is that he wasn't really a founding role, right, I mean, it was a structure that already existed and he came in.
00:19:43
Speaker 1: Relative's the same with every story in the history of a successful company. For the most part, in the history of Silicon Valley, right.
00:19:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's lots of people involved, and people who've turned out to be foundations, came in at different times and all this sort of stuff. So, you know, I buy both of those arguments. I think they're both really strong arguments, and I don't think Sam has done himself any favors in this context. But I also think unfortunately it's not going to make any difference. But that doesn't mean that then this sort of leads to the software brain stuff and other things that it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be concerned about some of the arguments that are being made about this kind of you know, race towards widespread adoption of AI. And that's or that Elon's initial concerns that they was gonna turn us all into Larry's paper clips, not just paper clips.
00:20:25
Speaker 1: There's also there's the there's the like the the Smoking Gum, which is the the chavon Zilla's email where she had said he supported it for as a for profit so long as he was in control. It's like when you see that email, it's it's game over because it's its argument makes no sense.
00:20:44
Speaker 2: Well, that was if you read Empires of AI Karen House book, she makes that same really point, really compellingly from the from the documents, that that was really the crux of the issue was he wanted full control because he was the major capital contributor, which isn't a wrong instinct. And and Sam, you and Greg kind of formed a coalition on the other side and said, no, given the choice between Sam CEO and Elon and CEO, we kind of rather sort of maybe have Sam CEO and and Elon basically saibil the few. I don't want to be part of this good luck finding the money because he had initially made some large commitments good finding luck finding money that I'm now not going to give to you. And that's in turn turned into the relationship with Microsoft and other sources of capital. And so you know, they they moved on because he didn't he didn't get what he wanted, and he took his toys and went home.
00:21:33
Speaker 1: Dick, you've talked a little bit about Microsoft and and their strategy in the open AI. You know, in the relationship. Do you think it was a good idea for them or I.
00:21:43
Speaker 3: Mean it's gone, it's it's certainly it's certainly changed. It seems to change every couple of months.
00:21:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's sort of.
00:21:50
Speaker 3: It's one of these like I mean, if it were a Facebook relationship, it would be. It's complicated. I mean seriously, like it's I don't truly under it's complicated, and they keep on and it seems to be back. You know, it's one of these on again, off again marriages that seems to be off again. Last the last week or so, Sata seems to have distanced trying to distance my coat.
00:22:14
Speaker 2: That's just I mean, you know, it.
00:22:16
Speaker 3: Could who knows what's really going on behind the scenes, but it could be for any number of like, hey, you guys keep on saying X and then doing why and you know I can't. I'm not going to keep doing this. So I think there's I think it probably is more split up longer term than here we are together again.
00:22:34
Speaker 1: But there's been there.
00:22:36
Speaker 3: I saw a report less, you know, one of the more level head headed yeah, CEOs. So I think it might just beginning to the point where he's like, Okay, I'm not going to keep doing this, and you know, we don't need to keep doing this.
00:22:49
Speaker 1: There's a report that that that some people are talking about if Sam is the right CEO to take the company public, and do you do you does Sati get to be involved in that discussion? I doubt it. Do you think that Sam is going to take it public? And that's just it?
00:23:05
Speaker 2: It's yes, yes, yeah, I'd be really surprised.
00:23:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's at this stage.
00:23:08
Speaker 2: It's kind of like a movie launch, right the stars are cast. You're not going to recast the guys.
00:23:13
Speaker 3: Yes, we've already shot most of the film.
00:23:15
Speaker 1: We're in editing.
00:23:16
Speaker 3: It's due the summer blood the big blockbuster are opening.
00:23:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, the teasers around and everything else, and so that's I think that's kind of set in stone and for better, for worse, and so you know, any people's concerns about him.
00:23:28
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter, nothing matter.
00:23:31
Speaker 3: I would say that the person you I mean, and you know I know this person personally and think they're a wonderful human being. But the person with the most difficult job right now is Sarah Fryar the CFL because you've got this trial, you've got the commitments that the CEO is out there making and deal doing with the Oracles and the Microsofts and the AWSS and Stargate and you know, we've talked about a bunch of this stuff before that, you know, pile up and add up to something like one point six trillion dollars I think, give her take a few billion dollars, which is, you know, quite a bit less than the current revenue trend line. And it changes from time to time. And you can kind of do that if you're the CEO and you're out there free wheeling it. But if you're the CFO and you're on the hook for what's in the S one and you're probably in the midst of writing the S one, or when most of it's written and you've written your risk sections and on and on and on, you got to be very careful about how you answer questions about, well, your CEO just said X y.
00:24:33
Speaker 1: Z, how do you navigate that, you public, how do you deal with that?
00:24:37
Speaker 3: It's a challenge you have to. She's got to be super careful about what she says. But she also can't get up there and go, well, you know, he's he's crazy, and he's wanted by the he's crazy and he's wanted by the campus police. You know, you know, he took he ate it, he ate too much polio vaccine this morning, and you know, God only knows.
00:24:57
Speaker 2: What he's going to say.
00:24:58
Speaker 3: She just can't do that or know he's going to say, hey, you know, I didn't like what you said about me on the you know, in front of the in front of the interview or whatever. So she's got that's possible job. Yeah, it's an impossible job.
00:25:10
Speaker 2: But the other thing that's kind of interesting, and it ties to the S one and the and the open AI i PO and it goes back to the cord case, is there's a bit of game theory going on here, which is specifically, there's three major I po is likely to come out this year that are unprecedented in terms of their size. Right, So there's SpaceX, which is the eleven.
00:25:30
Speaker 1: Point five trillion. There was a joke about about how that's what he wanted to see that one.
00:25:37
Speaker 2: So there's space X, which is kind of like this conglomerate of who knows what, but nevertheless is going to have a high valuation when it comes out. There's Anthropic, which is Claude.
00:25:45
Speaker 1: These are all going to be this year trillion dollar valuation.
00:25:48
Speaker 2: So in all likelihood some of the all of them will be something in excess of four trillion dollars on that order of things, and the other one's open AI, which is the one we've been talking to. You said this four three four trillion dollars three three major eye pos.
00:26:00
Speaker 3: But here's you know, even with inflation for trillion dollars, there's still a lot of money.
00:26:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
00:26:08
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:26:28
Speaker 2: So so here's the thing. If you're playing playing this out, if I'm elon, what would I like to have happened? Do I want to go out? I'm SpaceX. Do I want to go out before open AI or after it open A? Well, I want to go up before open AI. Well, why do I want to go out before open AI?
00:26:44
Speaker 1: That's interesting?
00:26:44
Speaker 2: I want to go out before open AI because institutional investors who are going to be these are massive deals. This isn't going to be just some dude on e Trade right or Robin Hood or whatever this is. These are the kinds of things that have to take huge amounts of sovereign wealth funds to purchase. Now, there's all kinds of like intricacy in terms of the size of the float and blah blah blah, but nevertheless, these are going to be there very large require large investors. So there's only so much capacity for purchasing these kind I want to oxygen. I want to suck as oxygen other room as possible by going out as early as possible. And there's two ways I can go out early. One I can just go out early, or two I can hold everybody else up. I can slow down the other IPOs so I can go out earlier so that the institutional flow of capital is available to support the valuation I want. Now there's other like weird intricacies, like well, where's that money coming from? Well, these large sovereign wealth funds don't have just cash sitting around. Which is this this misnomer that they're oh, they've got a lot of money. No, the money is all spent, it's all invested, right. It's like it's like banks, they're not just sitting on huge piles of cash. They're using it for something. So to fund the SpaceX IPO or whoever goes out first, they have to sell something else, right, So they've got to sell a lot of something else. If you're buying a big thing, right, big things require lots of sales. So the thing to think through is, so what's what gets old? Well, it has to be things that they say, Well, that's kind of like SpaceX, but in lieu of holding SpaceX or in lou holding that, I'll hold SpaceX. So it's going to be all these other tech companies. You're going to get the living crap sold out of them because these companies or these large funds have to generate cash to purchase SpaceX, and once they do that, they're going to be very loath to continue doing that. Right, because now I've sold down all these other positions.
00:28:23
Speaker 1: But what happens with the part that I don't understand is what happens if you know when you look at these these s ones that are going to come out right, they're not. The numbers are going to be so far off right?
00:28:36
Speaker 3: What do you mean?
00:28:36
Speaker 1: Well, the the the risk, the debt, the you know when they're going to be profitable and so on and so forth.
00:28:44
Speaker 2: What nobody cares.
00:28:46
Speaker 3: I don't think that. I look at the look at Tesla.
00:28:53
Speaker 1: Tesla, but can you have four teslas?
00:28:56
Speaker 2: Like can you?
00:28:57
Speaker 1: It's that that size, like how longer than that? Inevitably go on for long time.
00:29:02
Speaker 2: So it's no, it's so the issue but the game is not that the game isn't saying like, oh, in ten years, this will all go bad. The game is how do I make sure I step out early enough such that the flows of capital support the valuation so I can sell into it and get enough of my stock out there. And the way you do that is by being first out the door.
00:29:21
Speaker 1: And the ones that come after they're just not going to be as successful as an ibo.
00:29:26
Speaker 2: They'll be harder to do. They'll be much harder to do as a result. So you can one way to think about what's going on here is I'm simply trying to like hold up traffic while I get my vehicle down the road first, because I want to make sure that the institutional flows that support this, that support my IPO, given these are I was doing them out there the day. It's like, these three IPOs together are more than the issuance during the entire dot com period. These three IPOs alone are more than every ipo since World War II inflation adjusted, pre dot com. Wow, it's like people have known the scale of this in terms of the capital You're just.
00:30:01
Speaker 1: Really it really is a lot like Hollywood. What they One of the things that happens in Hollywood is is you set a date even if the movie is not written or anything. And it's like, and you set that date because you do not because people will only go see two or three movies that you're in the movie theater. And if you and if no one can have that date once you do it and you go first and all those things, it's and it's like you've got your actors, and you've got your you've got your story and.
00:30:24
Speaker 2: But imagine like you know, you know there's only going to be three movies at all this yeah, right, and all the tickets are going to go to those three. This is what's going on. And so this is the thing that I what's going on under the hood that I don't think people understand that there's this incredible dynamic in terms of the cash flows. This is not just about the soap opera in the courtroom. There's also an element of how do I make sure that I position myself such that you know, cash flows to my IPO not to others. And that's part of the game here, and that's unprecedented. I mean, that's the idea that like three IPOs are more than the total of all i pos pre dot com since World War Two? Do we don't even have capital markets anymore? I mean, what does that even mean? That's the craziest, right.
00:31:01
Speaker 3: The other interesting thing will be the the enormous liquidity that will accrue to the early space and Elan and the other early spaces investors. That's going to be more than you know, I mean people talk about things like the snowflake I p o or whatever is being generated, like this is going to make those look like tiny, like you know, and.
00:31:23
Speaker 1: That equidity is going to go across three I p o s the first.
00:31:27
Speaker 3: One SpaceX was going to generate. I mean, you know, look at Founder's Fund and a couple others who were in there early and and in size like DFJ growth are I mean, the liquidity that accrues to them is.
00:31:39
Speaker 1: Like they going to want to liquidate immediately or are they going to want.
00:31:42
Speaker 3: To it doesn't really matter. They'll have liquid liquid stock that they can do whatever they want with but distribute it whatever. But it's just it's crazy amounts. It's crazy amounts of money. And so you know, one thing's yes, is like what does that even? What are those people? He doesn't even do? You know? Like wells well, like fold up your tent and go home, like we're not going to do that again. No, but it's true, right, Yeah, this isn't going to happen for me a second time. Yeah, right, So this is what's really I mean, those flows, the changes in people's behavior, it's already shown, it's already forecasted next year's California budget. The the income that they'll see from the i PO sales, which, in turn, California is hugely levered to what happens in capital markets because of capital gains on stock issuance and subsequent IPOs.
00:32:35
Speaker 2: So it's already being it's already being tied into state budgetscinating.
00:32:38
Speaker 3: Not surprisingly, California has already spent it yes on the high speed rail line that will never be completed.
00:32:46
Speaker 2: That's right, it's already done. But all of these like pieces are the idea that it's already in the budget forecast for next year, the idea that, as Dick says, you know, this incredible liquidity flow, like I wouldn't want to be or maybe I would want to be an Aspen real estate agent. I don't know. I mean, you're just going to be overwhelmed with the flows coming in and the idea that this trial in a weird sort of way, you can think about it as an attempt to throw some some sand in the gears of all of the other i pos out there. And and that's we've never we've never seen anything like it.
00:33:17
Speaker 1: No, it's it's it's it is mind boggling because all the Twitter, I p O, the Facebook, these are tiny in comparison. Yeah, just minuscule, right.
00:33:25
Speaker 2: And even though they're not obviously going to be selling all the shares, is like in this notion of float, and how much of the shares are actually tradable, it doesn't matter. Yeah, over time, all of that stock will come out, and then of course all that money has to find a new home and all of it will start, you know, flowing around the economy and all sorts of strange and perverse ways. And this is we've never we've never seen anything on the skill ever.
00:33:45
Speaker 1: Can we transition back to this this concept of software brain and how this is all relevant to this?
00:33:50
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's the piece that's really interesting for me is watching the people. For me like this was what's his name? Patel Es? Yeah, whose rights?
00:33:58
Speaker 1: He's like the end of the tel He's a lawyer, the verge who writes.
00:34:02
Speaker 2: For the Verge. Is he like an editor there or something.
00:34:05
Speaker 1: He's like the top the top editor. He was a reporter who you know, covered the tech fee for a long time and then kind of took over the Verge and has made it really what it is today.
00:34:16
Speaker 2: So the piece that I thought was interesting about that was you wrote, think about software brain and this idea that the people don't people don't want what software the software industry is selling, which kind of goes to your point about how long this can last. And I thought it was really interesting that he argued software people have a tendency to look at the world as everything's an algorithm, and everything's a database, and everything's a database, right, and so everything's a database and an algorithm that can act on it, and they see the world through that lens. Like so, for example, my favorite example is that people start comparing large language models AI models on the basis of how well they do math, and it's like, wow, that's exciting, but who keeps a fuck The life is not a math problem. And yet they'll extrapolate from that and say, oh, look they're improving and they're solving all of these math problems that have absolutely new bearing on what will happen in terms of what AMI models will do in the world. But that's because they have software brain. They think about the world in terms of algorithms and data and sort of extrapolate from that and say, well, this is what's going to happen because look what's happening in math, Look what's happening in code, or look what's happening in all these places.
00:35:17
Speaker 3: But it's a really well it can like move this information into out of the database and manipulate it and put it back in, but.
00:35:24
Speaker 2: It's a really blinkered way of looking at the world.
00:35:26
Speaker 1: I kind of imagine a New Yorker cartoon of like a guy sitting in the office, yeah, and it's like, well, we got some bad news. You got software brain.
00:35:36
Speaker 3: Good news and bad news, and.
00:35:39
Speaker 1: So it's so.
00:35:40
Speaker 2: But I think that's part of what pisses people off is these is these software engineers who are extrapolating from the way that it's impacting the way that they think about the world and using that to say, well, here's what's going to happen in law, here's what's going to happen in finance, here's what's going to happen in all these domains, and it's this kind of it's tone deaf, and it's a complete misunderstanding of what people think. And you may think this will be really helpful for you because you hate understanding how Python works. But it has no bearing on whether or not I find this stuff scary, useful, or anything else. And it's because of software bain you think about the world in this very narrow, blinkered way.
00:36:13
Speaker 3: Patel actually argues that software brain and lawyer brain are similar diseases. Right, Lawyer brain just thinks of everything in terms of procedure and statutes and citations and not outcomes. Right. I mean, one of the reasons you might you could argue it's one of the reasons the US Congress is so ineffective right now, is it's mostly lawyers who think about that, Well, that's not the right procedure to go through. The procedure we should use is x y Z, And this is the process. That's how lawyers think about things again, procedures and statutes and so forth. But you know, the world manages to outcomes, or when it's successful, you managed outcomes, and so lawyer brain and software brain are more about you know, that's not how people think about what they're going to do to day. They don't think about it in terms of I've got to get the right numbers into and out of this database using this particular process.
00:37:07
Speaker 2: But that's why this case is so interesting, because you're seeing software brain on full display.
00:37:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, but in front of people who don't but in front of this is this is my point, trying it all back in front of people who don't have software, We're going and are like, well, gases five dollars a gallon? What this is this guy talking about that has And that's why what they should be trying to do is, hey man again, I'm just I'm just like you, trying to you know, help America by providing an open source AI platform, not arguing about the you know, bickering with each other about the minutia of the details or.
00:37:45
Speaker 2: The relative you know, consequences of whether we can say I will kill you before that one.
00:37:50
Speaker 1: Yeah right, right, yeah, right, that's right right, yeah, But that's such a.
00:37:54
Speaker 2: Classic software brain we're thinking about it that I can just present these things and then yeah, I'll tell I'll explain to them.
00:38:00
Speaker 3: By doing it this way, my AI wasn't going to kill you as fast as is me, and.
00:38:06
Speaker 2: I'm much more sympathetic because I actually am building a way for you to get to Mars before the AI is kill you. And it's like, wait a minute, wait a minute, minute, Yeah, this the whole point. Yeah, but none of this is appealing to me. And that's the problem with a lot of these discussions.
00:38:17
Speaker 3: Also actually goes back to I mean there's there in the media, there's this disconnect between wait a minute, the vast not vast maybe, but the majority of us, like eighteen to thirty year olds sort of disapprove, if you will.
00:38:35
Speaker 1: Of AI. Yeah, oh yeah, yea.
00:38:38
Speaker 3: More and more of them use it, and so there's this like, well, how can that be true? We're talking about exactly how it can be true, Like, well, I have to use it or I'll fall behind. Yeah, but I hate the fact that this is being done to me instead of you know, I actually think and this is going to sound seemingly crazy, but it's one of the reasons I feel like smoking is coming back, like cigarette smoking, which is really making it Yeah, yeah, totally. In New York big cities, you see people like smoking cigarettes, real ones, not the fake ones, real ones.
00:39:16
Speaker 2: Really.
00:39:17
Speaker 3: I think people are like I gotta, like, I gotta get out of this like vortex I've been pulled into and go back to the analog world, like truly cres are a cool analog thing that is not using chat GPT. I mean, I mean, I mean, that's sincerely.
00:39:35
Speaker 1: Stretch.
00:39:35
Speaker 3: But I think that's part of the Yes, how in the world can people go back to smoking when it's so obviously horrible and life shortening for you? But it's people are like, I'm sick of this nonsense.
00:39:47
Speaker 1: I think that this is happening across a number of things. I think, like I went to see the movie Michael and the Michael Jackson biopic, and the critics it was sub forty percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It's a disaster. They didn't tell the real story. It is going to make a billion dollars because it's just fun. I just I don't need a fucking woke explanation of why I shouldn't watch it or listen to Michael Like it was a fun movie. Yeah, And I think like people are sick of with tech. You know you have this. There was a bill that was passed in Texas recently banning cell phones in schools, and the number of kids that you know, the report of taking out books, it's like it jumps sixty one percent. Like I think that in the school libraries, I think that we.
00:40:36
Speaker 3: Are mostly so they could hold the book up in front of their cell phone to hide Hey it's me on book doc.
00:40:44
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:40:44
Speaker 3: When they returned the books, there's a big hole cut out of the size of an iPhone.
00:40:48
Speaker 1: I used to have one of those, uh what to hide your phone?
00:40:51
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the thing where you had to I could hide stuff inside of a book.
00:40:53
Speaker 1: You glue, Yeah, just to get I did the same thing. Yeah, kind of thumb drives in it.
00:40:57
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:40:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know what was on thumb drives, but it just felt fun.
00:41:00
Speaker 2: It felt like something really super spiky.
00:41:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. But I think that there is this pushback. I mean it's it's and it's we want to be outside. We want to be out in the real world. We want to be we don't want to have to interact with all these things all the time. And yet all the people in Silicon Valley are like, but this is the only.
00:41:17
Speaker 2: Way you can do it right, And that's because they have this. They have software brain, have software brain.
00:41:22
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:41:23
Speaker 1: Well, this has been another episode of the Nick, Dick and Poul Show. We have podcast brain.
00:41:30
Speaker 3: We do have podcast brain.
00:41:33
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Nick, Dick and Paul Show. I am one of your co hosts, Nick Bilton, a former journalist turned screenwriter, turned documentary filmmaker turned oh author, did that too?
00:00:13
Speaker 2: This is too long.
00:00:14
Speaker 1: It's too long. I'll keep going. I have a dog named Maypole.
00:00:19
Speaker 3: I'm Di Costello for this is gonna be the day of formers. Okay, Former Twitter CEO, former secret Service agent, former author, author. Also no, I never wrote anything. I've never written anything in my life. Now venture capital investor.
00:00:35
Speaker 2: M hmmm, Paul Kadrowski, I actually former ski instructor.
00:00:39
Speaker 3: Oh that's a good one.
00:00:40
Speaker 1: Is that real?
00:00:41
Speaker 3: Yeah?
00:00:41
Speaker 2: It was Ski instructure multiple times. And then that's it.
00:01:01
Speaker 1: I actually have a question for you, Paul. I know this is not part of what maybe this is part of what we're talking.
00:01:05
Speaker 2: About cross country and downhill.
00:01:07
Speaker 1: By the way, I read that you that you had an opportunity to do invest in Google and you thought it was a bad idea. Is that right or something like that?
00:01:13
Speaker 3: No?
00:01:14
Speaker 2: Well, yes, sort of? I uh really early right, pag Rank was still pag rank wow or BackRub? Sorry sorry sorry it was called BackRub. It was just Larry and Sergei and there was a weird little piece I read somewhere in like Electronic Engineering Times, because we all read that back then, and I emailed the guys Larry and Serge about it and I said, you know, this is kind of interesting, and because they were talking about the page rank algorithm and what have you. And I said, if you guys are they could do anything, I'd be interested. And then they got the seed round from I forgot who it was, John Dore or it was like a like I don't even know. It was like six million dollars at the at the seed evaluation, and I said it was too expensive?
00:01:55
Speaker 1: Did you really could you? Could you do the math of like what one hundred thousand dollars turn to.
00:02:03
Speaker 2: A lot? But not enough. I would have needed twice as much.
00:02:07
Speaker 1: That's on a previous episode.
00:02:09
Speaker 2: But yeah, no I did. I had the opportunity. Well I did with the Uber I had with a bunch of stuff, but we didn't do any of those because you know, Uber was stupid.
00:02:16
Speaker 3: It'll never work.
00:02:17
Speaker 1: It will never none of these things are They're terrible ideas.
00:02:20
Speaker 2: No, I it was funny. It was BackRub. People don't realize that was the name of the Champague there was a BackRub because they got kicked out of Stanford because they were using up the campus network, too much capacity on the campus network, so they moved into I've forgotten who's groge Susan Susanickiy's garage, that's right.
00:02:36
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, And I I broke the story at The New York Times on Evan Spiegel and snapchat. He was in his dorm room and I called him and I said, I'm writing a story for the Times or whatever, and he was like, can I call you back? I have a test and now, And they called me back, and I wrote the piece and I thought he was I thought he was very smart, and it was. It was really cool. And I was good friends with Tony Conrad at the time, the investor, and I emailed Tony and I said, you should look at this company. I think it's gonna be big. You should invest in them. And he never responded. I was like, yeah, whatever. Years later, he was about to go on stage to do a talk and i'd I'd email them something and he I guess it'd look for my email, and because the iPhone email search is horrific, it pulled up that email and he looked and he was like, oh my god. And then he went out on stage and the guy was like, what's the biggest miss you have? Funny you should ask.
00:03:27
Speaker 2: I did that a lot. By the way, whenever this is completed, but whenever I see something and it rings a vague bell, I like close my eyes and I start searching in Gmail to see whether or not did I did I did? Someone tell me about this because it feels like something I should know about it because I'm terrified.
00:03:41
Speaker 1: And there it is.
00:03:42
Speaker 2: It's happened more than.
00:03:43
Speaker 1: It's happened with me with bitcoin or early twenty eleven.
00:03:46
Speaker 2: I got it.
00:03:47
Speaker 3: No wonder this is your obsession with But I got an email and they were like it.
00:03:51
Speaker 1: Was it was funny enough was my book publisher who the science guy, And he was like, do you have any bitcoin? It's like trading at like fifty cents? I think maybe the single a dollar twenty eleven. That's And I never responded to him to bitcoin.
00:04:07
Speaker 2: What kind of nonsense is?
00:04:08
Speaker 1: What is this ridiculousness?
00:04:10
Speaker 2: That's funny?
00:04:12
Speaker 1: Speaking of we're gonna be talking about software brain today? What is software?
00:04:17
Speaker 2: But I think we should I think we should start somewhere else.
00:04:19
Speaker 1: Okay, let's start somewhere else.
00:04:20
Speaker 3: Start with the Musk.
00:04:21
Speaker 2: To start with the open I think to kind of understand software brain, you kind of have to start with understanding the people in the mentality of the people in AI. It's particular and a great instructive current example is this ongoing Bananas trial.
00:04:37
Speaker 1: Bananas is the is the right word for that?
00:04:40
Speaker 2: Yes, it's which is the Musk claim that he was defrauded out of being the legitimate owner of open ai, and that in particular, the company did this transition from being a not for profit to a for profit structure, and that this was a kind of I think this is Musk's were not mine, but I think was something like, I'm basically doing this to prevent all of America from being looted. Because if you can do this, if you can transition a not for profit company to a for profit one after it's taken all this risk capal, why wouldn't everyone do this, Because again, you don't have to pay taxes and it's a very cheap structure to run. So this this is I am doing this as a service to America. Now, obviously the backstory is what's much more interesting. To help you understand software brain because what's been coming out and yeah, just this most recently was just the beginning days of the trial. But the backstory about why Elon feels the way he feels is incredibly interesting because it goes to this notion of like of what it is to think of the world in software terms. And you know, specifically, Elon loves and tells this story. And Karen Howe, whose book Empires of AI is really good on this stuff alone, tells the story about how he was at dinner or.
00:05:53
Speaker 1: They were like besties, there were.
00:05:55
Speaker 2: Besties at the time, and they were talking about AI and Elon was going through his fear and drag moment with respect to AI and existential risk and it may kill us all. And Larry, who has a kind of offbeat sense of humor sometimes, I mean maybe he was kidding, Maybe he wasn't.
00:06:10
Speaker 1: I don't think he was kidding.
00:06:11
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, Elon said, you know, this stuff could kill us all, and he and Larry essentially accused him of being species Larry.
00:06:17
Speaker 1: Larry said, well, yeah, of course, these robots are going to become sentient and more intelligent than us and they get rid of us, like that's just evolution. And and Eon was apparently shocked.
00:06:29
Speaker 2: Right, But he's specifically this idea that he he accused him of being the speed species. This was really that was of the crocks. And he said in the early days, and do.
00:06:39
Speaker 3: We know how to pronounce that? By the way, is it species?
00:06:42
Speaker 2: I'm going to go with specieses, but I.
00:06:43
Speaker 1: Don't actually speciest you have to do with a list? All right?
00:06:46
Speaker 3: You know to do? What? What are you doing? Why do you have to constantly be offending people on our shows?
00:06:52
Speaker 1: When I was a kid allowed to say okay?
00:06:56
Speaker 2: So so he said this, and so Elon cited it both in the documentary leading up to the train and then in the opening test. So this was the reason why I had to do this, to protect the world from this maligna.
00:07:08
Speaker 1: So people persons understand this. This was the He then went correct me if I'm wrong here. He then went to Sam Alman and said, we have to team up to save ourselves from from being destroyed by robots. That is what the beginning of Opening Eye.
00:07:25
Speaker 3: Specifically, we have to create an open source version of what Larry is doing inside Google and owning it because we can't let them win. And then the robots destroy us all, you know.
00:07:38
Speaker 2: They become like search algorithms. But just to be clear, by the way, he didn't it wasn't that that he approached Sam because Sam is the all knowing, all seeing font of all things AI or anything like that.
00:07:49
Speaker 1: It was not he had nothing right.
00:07:52
Speaker 2: This was just happenstance that there was a they were just all hanging out. They were all hanging out to people. There was Brockman, there was Iliositskiv and others who were all kind of in this millius no, I'm not.
00:08:04
Speaker 3: Going to do this.
00:08:06
Speaker 2: Species. And so they were all in the in the million, and there was this kind of general sense that, yeah, we need to make the world safe from Larry Page and Google and everything else or whatever, and and that this may be the approach to Tank and so that it was more organic, and I you know, I think it's but I think that's a really important point that Musk I think quite rightly characterizes himself as the prime mover at that point, who was driving it for his own reasons, which had to do with this this fear of what was happening at Google.
00:08:40
Speaker 3: I just love the fact that, like the plot twist and all this is that Larry Page is to kill us all we have to protect ourselves from. Meanwhile, Larry Page is probably in his new fabulous mansion in Miami, going, wait a minute, trial, that's right.
00:08:58
Speaker 2: I'm not going to get contest is going to get He's not gonna get called. It's not actually, I mean, this is just a sack story client. So, but that's the This all began though, because of his existential dread about what was going to happen, because Larry said he was a speciesist, and then in turns and then began pushing the whole thing forward. And so Musque's claim is, and he has a quote, but I remember it something really particularly Elanie, which is that I've I only contributed the idea of the name.
00:09:27
Speaker 3: I contributed all. I contributed the idea, the name, the all the first initial money, all the talent and resources resources, taught them everything I knew Comma and nothing else. Right.
00:09:40
Speaker 2: I think he literally said that on the stand. He said it on the stand. And making friends everywhere.
00:09:48
Speaker 3: This is a jury trial goal Number one. Ingratiate yourself to the jury is Hey man, I'm just out to like help.
00:09:56
Speaker 2: America, help America. I may be a controversial figure. You know what I misunderstood.
00:10:01
Speaker 1: I think that like, look, we'll get well, we should talk through this whole thing. The thing that I cannot stop thinking about.
00:10:06
Speaker 3: We are talking through this literally specifically right now. You know what we should talk about on the podcast, right.
00:10:18
Speaker 1: Was paying attention? Just let me visit that is if you're a juror, right.
00:10:24
Speaker 3: If you're a oh you're do it again.
00:10:27
Speaker 1: If you're a juror. If you're a juror, yeah, it's.
00:10:31
Speaker 3: It's the it's the old thirty, is.
00:10:34
Speaker 1: The Ald thirty, Rock thirty, rural juror. So if you're on the jury and you see these two people that are both not the most likable human beings, like who you're who you're picking here, like it's like you were on the it's.
00:10:48
Speaker 3: A fair question murderul kill but just okay, no, but it's your goal is I have to be more likable, correct than that person?
00:11:01
Speaker 1: And that's really hard for these both of them.
00:11:03
Speaker 2: I think it's harder for one of them, and he showed it in the first day of testimony when he made firm reports almost no attempt to be even.
00:11:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, but okay, so it's harder for it's harder for Elon, but the emails that are going to come out and and the duplicitousness from Sam is going to be pretty hard to dispel.
00:11:20
Speaker 3: Here's the Here's there's an old I can't I'm gonna get the name wrong. There was a Kennedy nephew or a second cousin or something. Do you remember this on a Cape cod that, like, you know, was on trial for murdering that woman in Knight and it had the with the golf club, et cetera. Yeah, yeah, no, not.
00:11:38
Speaker 1: This is a different murdered.
00:11:44
Speaker 3: The prosecutor shows the defendant on the witness stand the seven iron that's apparently the murder weapon, and the guy just breaks down and starts crying. Oh, and he goes back to you know when he's off the standing goes is back and and his lawyer's whispering something in his ear. And the person next to me I remember watching watching this into like a restaurant or something. And the person next to me goes, what do you think the lawyer is saying to him? And I said, I think he's saying next time, let's go with righteous indignation. Your job in front of the jury is do they believe me, and if they like me, they believe me. They want to believe me if they like me more so, answering questions in a sort of monotone, you know, voice as if you're disinterested, and then also saying I did this and this and this and this and this and nothing else like. But job is not to annoy the jurors.
00:12:43
Speaker 1: But the jury is probably look at I like him because he's Elon Musk and he's worth billions and trillia.
00:12:50
Speaker 2: They do or they don't. I think they will know the judgment. He said, it be warrant that they were having trouble picking a jury pool because because of you, the dislike ful answers that question.
00:13:02
Speaker 3: What I wanted to say though about your your your specific point is I don't think it will Matt. I mean, in most cases, not just this case specifically, It ultimately won't matter the details of either case. What will come down to is which of these two people does the jury like more. I mean, whether that's well, that is that's always the case, right, I mean, it's always the case. But so your your job is to get up there and ingratiate yourself to those people over there, Yeah.
00:13:30
Speaker 2: And show that you know, I'm I'm I may be a billionaire, but I'm your billionaire. I mean, I'm working. I'm doing this to save you from the threat of a Blairry page and a I.
00:14:02
Speaker 1: I do wonder though, if just to play Devil's advocate here, if the if there is a version of it where people are afraid of AI, They're they're definitely And that's partially there's the whole conversation about, you know, the AI companies are spreading these rumors, if you will, that we're all going to die soon, and they need more funding, and that's part of the whole fundraising and so on and so forth.
00:14:23
Speaker 3: That's part of their fundraise.
00:14:24
Speaker 2: A lot of people I'm getting the wrong documents, you know, a lot of.
00:14:27
Speaker 1: People specifically, there's a lot of There's been a ton of artists on it. There's a ton of discussions about the fact that and Elon has done it too, and opening eye that oh my god, A is gonna kill us all. We're all going to die soon. We have to we have to build up our our companies to make sure we avoid that from happening. That is, that's a big part of what's going on.
00:14:49
Speaker 2: I don't disagree with that, and I think I think to Elon's credit, he actually not only says it but believed it.
00:14:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I believe that. I do believe that. I don't believe that the Dario or Sam of those guys necessarily that. I think.
00:15:04
Speaker 2: I think Elon legitimately he read a lot of sci fi. Yeah, he read a lot of Fi and believed it early on. And so this his backstory about the origins of opening Eye for me is actually credible, Like it did come from this source of this of this you know, fear about what was going to happen with this technology, and so that is part of his upset in this court case was that.
00:15:24
Speaker 1: But I think that that's I think that's going to play a role. It's yes, who do I like more? But there is going to be the jury is going to say, oh fuck, am I are we going to die? Like if if we let Sam win this, like, is it good? Because that's going to be part of the legal argument, right.
00:15:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I think it's much more likely. Do I believe this kind of vaguely satanic billionaire or do I like the sort of the Hollywood cast young entrepreneur who's just trying to you know, he's just moving fast and breaking things. I've been told that's good, and so I think that's going to be the struggle all the way through this is that, Okay, fine, he may have some of the facts on his side, but you know, this whole business of starting companies is very messy, and lots of things change and people move in and people move out, and and I think the thing that's going to be really hard for him is this idea that he does seem does seem a little like sour grapes or it's like Elan does. Yeah, because it was successful. Suddenly he started caring when it became successful. He started carrying a lot more when it became very successful, and not before that he kind of checked out created Grock and Xai and whatever.
00:16:31
Speaker 1: I did hear from someone that there was their job.
00:16:35
Speaker 3: Your again, your job is to get up there, smile at the jury and say, I'm really at the end of the day.
00:16:43
Speaker 2: Just like you. I'm just a regular guy. Just put on a billion dollars. What am I going to time?
00:16:48
Speaker 1: Well, multiple billions when it comes to these guys, or a trillion for Elon will be a trillionaire. This year, he's at what eight eight sixty eight seventy.
00:16:57
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, SpaceX goes out and he's he'll be truly, But I think that's going to be to Dick's point though, that's going to be the struggle, and that's that's what he should be doing, regardless of what you think the facts of the case are and everything else. But to go full financial wonk for a second, it is worth pointing out that like the argument that you shouldn't be able to do what open Ai did isn't a bad argument. No, I totally agree with, meaning not just take it away from you on I don't give you that's what I happened. But the idea that you start off in a not for profit structure, taking a boatload of cash under this capped return structure, which is this structure where you say, you know, here's the maximum you can earn in terms of your investment. As all kind of n runs around it being a not for profit structure, and then you flip to a for profit structure, I think is as right. It kind of it lays a path that lots of people can follow and say, well, it worked for them, why can't I do that?
00:17:48
Speaker 3: Yeah?
00:17:48
Speaker 2: Right, and that's not it. That's not a very good thing.
00:17:51
Speaker 1: What are the potential outcomes for what happens here? Does is it? Does it hand it over to Elon and he becomes the CEO? Is that they cannot become the for profit and go public? Like what are they? All the all the versions of what happens in this scenario.
00:18:07
Speaker 2: Lots of versions, and only the only woman's going to happen is he loses.
00:18:10
Speaker 1: That's it.
00:18:11
Speaker 3: I think.
00:18:11
Speaker 2: I don't think he has a juris can do any kind of crazy thing. But I don't see how he wins this.
00:18:17
Speaker 1: H I do you have any thoughts on this?
00:18:19
Speaker 3: No? My thoughts are that I agree with like what it doesn't?
00:18:22
Speaker 1: I agree?
00:18:23
Speaker 3: I don't just don't see any other outcome other than you're you know you're right, but you know, what are you going to do? This is something like that? Yeah, this is the or or at best if you want to say, at best in in in Laan. In the Alan case, they vote, they rule sort of for Elan. It's something that doesn't derail what's already in process with you and Ai, And.
00:18:50
Speaker 2: I mean you get that, and I think that's part of why the initial his initial testimony is so half hearted.
00:18:54
Speaker 3: I just yeah, this is for him.
00:18:56
Speaker 2: He knows what's he knows what's going on, right, this is ship posting in legal.
00:18:59
Speaker 1: Well, it's also it's an attempt to slow down the IPO, but it's not going to do anything.
00:19:03
Speaker 2: It'll have no episode, be a relatively rapid I think, a relatively rapid trial, and it'll get to this conclusion that there's really not much for the course to do here. I mean, he's got a strong he's got two strong arguments. One is, you know, the organization shouldn't that this mutation from a not for profit to a for profit structure was really dubious. And uh, the second argument that he was one of the founders and wasn't and isn't has a bigger role here than was being laid out.
00:19:30
Speaker 1: He's true.
00:19:31
Speaker 2: But it's also true with Elon's role with Tesla. I mean, go back in time. I mean Elon his initial founding role with Tesla is that he wasn't really a founding role, right, I mean, it was a structure that already existed and he came in.
00:19:43
Speaker 1: Relative's the same with every story in the history of a successful company. For the most part, in the history of Silicon Valley, right.
00:19:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's lots of people involved, and people who've turned out to be foundations, came in at different times and all this sort of stuff. So, you know, I buy both of those arguments. I think they're both really strong arguments, and I don't think Sam has done himself any favors in this context. But I also think unfortunately it's not going to make any difference. But that doesn't mean that then this sort of leads to the software brain stuff and other things that it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be concerned about some of the arguments that are being made about this kind of you know, race towards widespread adoption of AI. And that's or that Elon's initial concerns that they was gonna turn us all into Larry's paper clips, not just paper clips.
00:20:25
Speaker 1: There's also there's the there's the like the the Smoking Gum, which is the the chavon Zilla's email where she had said he supported it for as a for profit so long as he was in control. It's like when you see that email, it's it's game over because it's its argument makes no sense.
00:20:44
Speaker 2: Well, that was if you read Empires of AI Karen House book, she makes that same really point, really compellingly from the from the documents, that that was really the crux of the issue was he wanted full control because he was the major capital contributor, which isn't a wrong instinct. And and Sam, you and Greg kind of formed a coalition on the other side and said, no, given the choice between Sam CEO and Elon and CEO, we kind of rather sort of maybe have Sam CEO and and Elon basically saibil the few. I don't want to be part of this good luck finding the money because he had initially made some large commitments good finding luck finding money that I'm now not going to give to you. And that's in turn turned into the relationship with Microsoft and other sources of capital. And so you know, they they moved on because he didn't he didn't get what he wanted, and he took his toys and went home.
00:21:33
Speaker 1: Dick, you've talked a little bit about Microsoft and and their strategy in the open AI. You know, in the relationship. Do you think it was a good idea for them or I.
00:21:43
Speaker 3: Mean it's gone, it's it's certainly it's certainly changed. It seems to change every couple of months.
00:21:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's sort of.
00:21:50
Speaker 3: It's one of these like I mean, if it were a Facebook relationship, it would be. It's complicated. I mean seriously, like it's I don't truly under it's complicated, and they keep on and it seems to be back. You know, it's one of these on again, off again marriages that seems to be off again. Last the last week or so, Sata seems to have distanced trying to distance my coat.
00:22:14
Speaker 2: That's just I mean, you know, it.
00:22:16
Speaker 3: Could who knows what's really going on behind the scenes, but it could be for any number of like, hey, you guys keep on saying X and then doing why and you know I can't. I'm not going to keep doing this. So I think there's I think it probably is more split up longer term than here we are together again.
00:22:34
Speaker 1: But there's been there.
00:22:36
Speaker 3: I saw a report less, you know, one of the more level head headed yeah, CEOs. So I think it might just beginning to the point where he's like, Okay, I'm not going to keep doing this, and you know, we don't need to keep doing this.
00:22:49
Speaker 1: There's a report that that that some people are talking about if Sam is the right CEO to take the company public, and do you do you does Sati get to be involved in that discussion? I doubt it. Do you think that Sam is going to take it public? And that's just it?
00:23:05
Speaker 2: It's yes, yes, yeah, I'd be really surprised.
00:23:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's at this stage.
00:23:08
Speaker 2: It's kind of like a movie launch, right the stars are cast. You're not going to recast the guys.
00:23:13
Speaker 3: Yes, we've already shot most of the film.
00:23:15
Speaker 1: We're in editing.
00:23:16
Speaker 3: It's due the summer blood the big blockbuster are opening.
00:23:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, the teasers around and everything else, and so that's I think that's kind of set in stone and for better, for worse, and so you know, any people's concerns about him.
00:23:28
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter, nothing matter.
00:23:31
Speaker 3: I would say that the person you I mean, and you know I know this person personally and think they're a wonderful human being. But the person with the most difficult job right now is Sarah Fryar the CFL because you've got this trial, you've got the commitments that the CEO is out there making and deal doing with the Oracles and the Microsofts and the AWSS and Stargate and you know, we've talked about a bunch of this stuff before that, you know, pile up and add up to something like one point six trillion dollars I think, give her take a few billion dollars, which is, you know, quite a bit less than the current revenue trend line. And it changes from time to time. And you can kind of do that if you're the CEO and you're out there free wheeling it. But if you're the CFO and you're on the hook for what's in the S one and you're probably in the midst of writing the S one, or when most of it's written and you've written your risk sections and on and on and on, you got to be very careful about how you answer questions about, well, your CEO just said X y.
00:24:33
Speaker 1: Z, how do you navigate that, you public, how do you deal with that?
00:24:37
Speaker 3: It's a challenge you have to. She's got to be super careful about what she says. But she also can't get up there and go, well, you know, he's he's crazy, and he's wanted by the he's crazy and he's wanted by the campus police. You know, you know, he took he ate it, he ate too much polio vaccine this morning, and you know, God only knows.
00:24:57
Speaker 2: What he's going to say.
00:24:58
Speaker 3: She just can't do that or know he's going to say, hey, you know, I didn't like what you said about me on the you know, in front of the in front of the interview or whatever. So she's got that's possible job. Yeah, it's an impossible job.
00:25:10
Speaker 2: But the other thing that's kind of interesting, and it ties to the S one and the and the open AI i PO and it goes back to the cord case, is there's a bit of game theory going on here, which is specifically, there's three major I po is likely to come out this year that are unprecedented in terms of their size. Right, So there's SpaceX, which is the eleven.
00:25:30
Speaker 1: Point five trillion. There was a joke about about how that's what he wanted to see that one.
00:25:37
Speaker 2: So there's space X, which is kind of like this conglomerate of who knows what, but nevertheless is going to have a high valuation when it comes out. There's Anthropic, which is Claude.
00:25:45
Speaker 1: These are all going to be this year trillion dollar valuation.
00:25:48
Speaker 2: So in all likelihood some of the all of them will be something in excess of four trillion dollars on that order of things, and the other one's open AI, which is the one we've been talking to. You said this four three four trillion dollars three three major eye pos.
00:26:00
Speaker 3: But here's you know, even with inflation for trillion dollars, there's still a lot of money.
00:26:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
00:26:08
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:26:28
Speaker 2: So so here's the thing. If you're playing playing this out, if I'm elon, what would I like to have happened? Do I want to go out? I'm SpaceX. Do I want to go out before open AI or after it open A? Well, I want to go up before open AI. Well, why do I want to go out before open AI?
00:26:44
Speaker 1: That's interesting?
00:26:44
Speaker 2: I want to go out before open AI because institutional investors who are going to be these are massive deals. This isn't going to be just some dude on e Trade right or Robin Hood or whatever this is. These are the kinds of things that have to take huge amounts of sovereign wealth funds to purchase. Now, there's all kinds of like intricacy in terms of the size of the float and blah blah blah, but nevertheless, these are going to be there very large require large investors. So there's only so much capacity for purchasing these kind I want to oxygen. I want to suck as oxygen other room as possible by going out as early as possible. And there's two ways I can go out early. One I can just go out early, or two I can hold everybody else up. I can slow down the other IPOs so I can go out earlier so that the institutional flow of capital is available to support the valuation I want. Now there's other like weird intricacies, like well, where's that money coming from? Well, these large sovereign wealth funds don't have just cash sitting around. Which is this this misnomer that they're oh, they've got a lot of money. No, the money is all spent, it's all invested, right. It's like it's like banks, they're not just sitting on huge piles of cash. They're using it for something. So to fund the SpaceX IPO or whoever goes out first, they have to sell something else, right, So they've got to sell a lot of something else. If you're buying a big thing, right, big things require lots of sales. So the thing to think through is, so what's what gets old? Well, it has to be things that they say, Well, that's kind of like SpaceX, but in lieu of holding SpaceX or in lou holding that, I'll hold SpaceX. So it's going to be all these other tech companies. You're going to get the living crap sold out of them because these companies or these large funds have to generate cash to purchase SpaceX, and once they do that, they're going to be very loath to continue doing that. Right, because now I've sold down all these other positions.
00:28:23
Speaker 1: But what happens with the part that I don't understand is what happens if you know when you look at these these s ones that are going to come out right, they're not. The numbers are going to be so far off right?
00:28:36
Speaker 3: What do you mean?
00:28:36
Speaker 1: Well, the the the risk, the debt, the you know when they're going to be profitable and so on and so forth.
00:28:44
Speaker 2: What nobody cares.
00:28:46
Speaker 3: I don't think that. I look at the look at Tesla.
00:28:53
Speaker 1: Tesla, but can you have four teslas?
00:28:56
Speaker 2: Like can you?
00:28:57
Speaker 1: It's that that size, like how longer than that? Inevitably go on for long time.
00:29:02
Speaker 2: So it's no, it's so the issue but the game is not that the game isn't saying like, oh, in ten years, this will all go bad. The game is how do I make sure I step out early enough such that the flows of capital support the valuation so I can sell into it and get enough of my stock out there. And the way you do that is by being first out the door.
00:29:21
Speaker 1: And the ones that come after they're just not going to be as successful as an ibo.
00:29:26
Speaker 2: They'll be harder to do. They'll be much harder to do as a result. So you can one way to think about what's going on here is I'm simply trying to like hold up traffic while I get my vehicle down the road first, because I want to make sure that the institutional flows that support this, that support my IPO, given these are I was doing them out there the day. It's like, these three IPOs together are more than the issuance during the entire dot com period. These three IPOs alone are more than every ipo since World War II inflation adjusted, pre dot com. Wow, it's like people have known the scale of this in terms of the capital You're just.
00:30:01
Speaker 1: Really it really is a lot like Hollywood. What they One of the things that happens in Hollywood is is you set a date even if the movie is not written or anything. And it's like, and you set that date because you do not because people will only go see two or three movies that you're in the movie theater. And if you and if no one can have that date once you do it and you go first and all those things, it's and it's like you've got your actors, and you've got your you've got your story and.
00:30:24
Speaker 2: But imagine like you know, you know there's only going to be three movies at all this yeah, right, and all the tickets are going to go to those three. This is what's going on. And so this is the thing that I what's going on under the hood that I don't think people understand that there's this incredible dynamic in terms of the cash flows. This is not just about the soap opera in the courtroom. There's also an element of how do I make sure that I position myself such that you know, cash flows to my IPO not to others. And that's part of the game here, and that's unprecedented. I mean, that's the idea that like three IPOs are more than the total of all i pos pre dot com since World War Two? Do we don't even have capital markets anymore? I mean, what does that even mean? That's the craziest, right.
00:31:01
Speaker 3: The other interesting thing will be the the enormous liquidity that will accrue to the early space and Elan and the other early spaces investors. That's going to be more than you know, I mean people talk about things like the snowflake I p o or whatever is being generated, like this is going to make those look like tiny, like you know, and.
00:31:23
Speaker 1: That equidity is going to go across three I p o s the first.
00:31:27
Speaker 3: One SpaceX was going to generate. I mean, you know, look at Founder's Fund and a couple others who were in there early and and in size like DFJ growth are I mean, the liquidity that accrues to them is.
00:31:39
Speaker 1: Like they going to want to liquidate immediately or are they going to want.
00:31:42
Speaker 3: To it doesn't really matter. They'll have liquid liquid stock that they can do whatever they want with but distribute it whatever. But it's just it's crazy amounts. It's crazy amounts of money. And so you know, one thing's yes, is like what does that even? What are those people? He doesn't even do? You know? Like wells well, like fold up your tent and go home, like we're not going to do that again. No, but it's true, right, Yeah, this isn't going to happen for me a second time. Yeah, right, So this is what's really I mean, those flows, the changes in people's behavior, it's already shown, it's already forecasted next year's California budget. The the income that they'll see from the i PO sales, which, in turn, California is hugely levered to what happens in capital markets because of capital gains on stock issuance and subsequent IPOs.
00:32:35
Speaker 2: So it's already being it's already being tied into state budgetscinating.
00:32:38
Speaker 3: Not surprisingly, California has already spent it yes on the high speed rail line that will never be completed.
00:32:46
Speaker 2: That's right, it's already done. But all of these like pieces are the idea that it's already in the budget forecast for next year, the idea that, as Dick says, you know, this incredible liquidity flow, like I wouldn't want to be or maybe I would want to be an Aspen real estate agent. I don't know. I mean, you're just going to be overwhelmed with the flows coming in and the idea that this trial in a weird sort of way, you can think about it as an attempt to throw some some sand in the gears of all of the other i pos out there. And and that's we've never we've never seen anything like it.
00:33:17
Speaker 1: No, it's it's it's it is mind boggling because all the Twitter, I p O, the Facebook, these are tiny in comparison. Yeah, just minuscule, right.
00:33:25
Speaker 2: And even though they're not obviously going to be selling all the shares, is like in this notion of float, and how much of the shares are actually tradable, it doesn't matter. Yeah, over time, all of that stock will come out, and then of course all that money has to find a new home and all of it will start, you know, flowing around the economy and all sorts of strange and perverse ways. And this is we've never we've never seen anything on the skill ever.
00:33:45
Speaker 1: Can we transition back to this this concept of software brain and how this is all relevant to this?
00:33:50
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's the piece that's really interesting for me is watching the people. For me like this was what's his name? Patel Es? Yeah, whose rights?
00:33:58
Speaker 1: He's like the end of the tel He's a lawyer, the verge who writes.
00:34:02
Speaker 2: For the Verge. Is he like an editor there or something.
00:34:05
Speaker 1: He's like the top the top editor. He was a reporter who you know, covered the tech fee for a long time and then kind of took over the Verge and has made it really what it is today.
00:34:16
Speaker 2: So the piece that I thought was interesting about that was you wrote, think about software brain and this idea that the people don't people don't want what software the software industry is selling, which kind of goes to your point about how long this can last. And I thought it was really interesting that he argued software people have a tendency to look at the world as everything's an algorithm, and everything's a database, and everything's a database, right, and so everything's a database and an algorithm that can act on it, and they see the world through that lens. Like so, for example, my favorite example is that people start comparing large language models AI models on the basis of how well they do math, and it's like, wow, that's exciting, but who keeps a fuck The life is not a math problem. And yet they'll extrapolate from that and say, oh, look they're improving and they're solving all of these math problems that have absolutely new bearing on what will happen in terms of what AMI models will do in the world. But that's because they have software brain. They think about the world in terms of algorithms and data and sort of extrapolate from that and say, well, this is what's going to happen because look what's happening in math, Look what's happening in code, or look what's happening in all these places.
00:35:17
Speaker 3: But it's a really well it can like move this information into out of the database and manipulate it and put it back in, but.
00:35:24
Speaker 2: It's a really blinkered way of looking at the world.
00:35:26
Speaker 1: I kind of imagine a New Yorker cartoon of like a guy sitting in the office, yeah, and it's like, well, we got some bad news. You got software brain.
00:35:36
Speaker 3: Good news and bad news, and.
00:35:39
Speaker 1: So it's so.
00:35:40
Speaker 2: But I think that's part of what pisses people off is these is these software engineers who are extrapolating from the way that it's impacting the way that they think about the world and using that to say, well, here's what's going to happen in law, here's what's going to happen in finance, here's what's going to happen in all these domains, and it's this kind of it's tone deaf, and it's a complete misunderstanding of what people think. And you may think this will be really helpful for you because you hate understanding how Python works. But it has no bearing on whether or not I find this stuff scary, useful, or anything else. And it's because of software bain you think about the world in this very narrow, blinkered way.
00:36:13
Speaker 3: Patel actually argues that software brain and lawyer brain are similar diseases. Right, Lawyer brain just thinks of everything in terms of procedure and statutes and citations and not outcomes. Right. I mean, one of the reasons you might you could argue it's one of the reasons the US Congress is so ineffective right now, is it's mostly lawyers who think about that, Well, that's not the right procedure to go through. The procedure we should use is x y Z, And this is the process. That's how lawyers think about things again, procedures and statutes and so forth. But you know, the world manages to outcomes, or when it's successful, you managed outcomes, and so lawyer brain and software brain are more about you know, that's not how people think about what they're going to do to day. They don't think about it in terms of I've got to get the right numbers into and out of this database using this particular process.
00:37:07
Speaker 2: But that's why this case is so interesting, because you're seeing software brain on full display.
00:37:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, but in front of people who don't but in front of this is this is my point, trying it all back in front of people who don't have software, We're going and are like, well, gases five dollars a gallon? What this is this guy talking about that has And that's why what they should be trying to do is, hey man again, I'm just I'm just like you, trying to you know, help America by providing an open source AI platform, not arguing about the you know, bickering with each other about the minutia of the details or.
00:37:45
Speaker 2: The relative you know, consequences of whether we can say I will kill you before that one.
00:37:50
Speaker 1: Yeah right, right, yeah, right, that's right right, yeah, But that's such a.
00:37:54
Speaker 2: Classic software brain we're thinking about it that I can just present these things and then yeah, I'll tell I'll explain to them.
00:38:00
Speaker 3: By doing it this way, my AI wasn't going to kill you as fast as is me, and.
00:38:06
Speaker 2: I'm much more sympathetic because I actually am building a way for you to get to Mars before the AI is kill you. And it's like, wait a minute, wait a minute, minute, Yeah, this the whole point. Yeah, but none of this is appealing to me. And that's the problem with a lot of these discussions.
00:38:17
Speaker 3: Also actually goes back to I mean there's there in the media, there's this disconnect between wait a minute, the vast not vast maybe, but the majority of us, like eighteen to thirty year olds sort of disapprove, if you will.
00:38:35
Speaker 1: Of AI. Yeah, oh yeah, yea.
00:38:38
Speaker 3: More and more of them use it, and so there's this like, well, how can that be true? We're talking about exactly how it can be true, Like, well, I have to use it or I'll fall behind. Yeah, but I hate the fact that this is being done to me instead of you know, I actually think and this is going to sound seemingly crazy, but it's one of the reasons I feel like smoking is coming back, like cigarette smoking, which is really making it Yeah, yeah, totally. In New York big cities, you see people like smoking cigarettes, real ones, not the fake ones, real ones.
00:39:16
Speaker 2: Really.
00:39:17
Speaker 3: I think people are like I gotta, like, I gotta get out of this like vortex I've been pulled into and go back to the analog world, like truly cres are a cool analog thing that is not using chat GPT. I mean, I mean, I mean, that's sincerely.
00:39:35
Speaker 1: Stretch.
00:39:35
Speaker 3: But I think that's part of the Yes, how in the world can people go back to smoking when it's so obviously horrible and life shortening for you? But it's people are like, I'm sick of this nonsense.
00:39:47
Speaker 1: I think that this is happening across a number of things. I think, like I went to see the movie Michael and the Michael Jackson biopic, and the critics it was sub forty percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It's a disaster. They didn't tell the real story. It is going to make a billion dollars because it's just fun. I just I don't need a fucking woke explanation of why I shouldn't watch it or listen to Michael Like it was a fun movie. Yeah, And I think like people are sick of with tech. You know you have this. There was a bill that was passed in Texas recently banning cell phones in schools, and the number of kids that you know, the report of taking out books, it's like it jumps sixty one percent. Like I think that in the school libraries, I think that we.
00:40:36
Speaker 3: Are mostly so they could hold the book up in front of their cell phone to hide Hey it's me on book doc.
00:40:44
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:40:44
Speaker 3: When they returned the books, there's a big hole cut out of the size of an iPhone.
00:40:48
Speaker 1: I used to have one of those, uh what to hide your phone?
00:40:51
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the thing where you had to I could hide stuff inside of a book.
00:40:53
Speaker 1: You glue, Yeah, just to get I did the same thing. Yeah, kind of thumb drives in it.
00:40:57
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:40:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know what was on thumb drives, but it just felt fun.
00:41:00
Speaker 2: It felt like something really super spiky.
00:41:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. But I think that there is this pushback. I mean it's it's and it's we want to be outside. We want to be out in the real world. We want to be we don't want to have to interact with all these things all the time. And yet all the people in Silicon Valley are like, but this is the only.
00:41:17
Speaker 2: Way you can do it right, And that's because they have this. They have software brain, have software brain.
00:41:22
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:41:23
Speaker 1: Well, this has been another episode of the Nick, Dick and Poul Show. We have podcast brain.
00:41:30
Speaker 3: We do have podcast brain.
00:41:33
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.
