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I think we're all going to start talking to ourselves in our cars, at our desks. We're just going to be talking to our AIs. [SPEAKER_02] And if we see power issues come up, then Trump will say, well, you need to pay for it.
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[SPEAKER_03] Did you guys see that the Fed introduced their latest data about AI adoption growth? And it's actually been flat or linear, nearly flat for the last three months.
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[SPEAKER_01] There were some charts running around yesterday that Claude Code and Codex have flatlined, their daily usage. Eleven Labs is also resurrecting Stan Lee's voice in a partnership with Marvel.
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[SPEAKER_04] CTO of Uber basically came out and said it. This had a huge impact saying he's not seeing the ROI to spend more on AI. This is a classic venture capitalist predicting the future, but not technically understanding where it was going to go at all.
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[SPEAKER_00] More or less.
SPEAKER_04
Why hello, friends. Welcome to more or less. And we have a special edition today. Mr. Co-Executive Editor of the information, Amir Efrati. Amir, welcome to your first more or less. Amir, what are you doing slumming it with us, man? [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, we are not organized like you are.
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[SPEAKER_03] I'm a religious listener and not just because my boss is part of this podcast. [SPEAKER_02] Oh, interesting. It's a nice compliment. I would listen to it anyway. So who's your favorite? Yeah, which one? Just tell us. Difficult to answer, but I will give a little shout out to Britt because I believe it was a week or two ago, she highlighted the trend of developers whispering to their AI. So if you go into an office of a startup, you shall see many a whispering. And we wrote about that this morning in AI Agenda.
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[SPEAKER_02] Oh, amazing. Wait, wait, wait.
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[SPEAKER_03] So wait, was she right or was she wrong? First of all, I was right. Second of all, I was not just right two weeks ago, Amir. I was right a year ago. This was my prediction for the year. I might have even said it in 2024, Jess. Maybe we should go back and check in December when I was saying I think we're all going to start talking to ourselves in our cars, at our desks. We're just going to be talking to our AI. [SPEAKER_03] Sorry, but you did not predict Whisper Flow in the way that people are talking to them. [SPEAKER_01] Exactly.
SPEAKER_04
We're going to have to go back. You predicted we'd be talking to these things called Echo devices. I just thought we'd be talking out loud to our AIs a lot. [SPEAKER_03] And I would call Whisper an AI that we talked to. This is a classic venture capitalist predicting the future, but not technically understanding where it was going to go at all.
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Oh, my God.
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That was a dig, Dave.
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[SPEAKER_03] Ouch. But the prediction of the future is fundamental to what we are as humans. It's true. Well, guys, as you can tell, Sam is not here. So Amir is, as much as I think Dave and I bring so much to this pod, I was thinking, you know who we need? We need Amir. Because Amir, we think we're in the center of AI. Amir is in the center of the AI infrastructure world, the AI, these models. He has been leading this coverage for the information for, I don't know, 12 years. Has AI been around for 12 years? [SPEAKER_03] I mean, depends who you ask. But yeah. But I do think I've always thought that journalists would make for the best investors.
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[SPEAKER_04] And we've actually seen many spin out to become investors like M.G. Siegler and others. [SPEAKER_03] So I'm saying I'm validating Amir here because I think he's going to give way better insight than all the rest of us. Yeah, Amir, you want to join our firm? [SPEAKER_01] Well, I'm thinking about Jack. You cannot recruit. What are you doing? [SPEAKER_03] I don't have a non-solicitation with you, Jess, in this podcast agreement. Before we started, he said that I was his favorite. But now that we're on air, he chose Britt. So now I'm going to recruit him to offline ventures.
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[SPEAKER_01] He's just being political because, honestly, he walks into the office and he's always saying, you know, Dave made some good points on the pod today. Dave's on fire on the pod today. You know, so I know that you are. Presumably, he never brings up Sam. He's had enough of listening to him around the information shop, I'm sure. [SPEAKER_01] Well, I don't have. He makes his way. [SPEAKER_04] I can't compete on BMI with Sam. None of us can.
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I don't use. You have to take a lot more peptides, man. I don't take peptides. I don't use Instagram. But I did just buy two gadgets for my kids that I could talk about if we go in that direction later. So should we talk about the real news? Let's talk about the real news.
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[SPEAKER_04] So let's pick up. And again, we hope everyone had an awesome Memorial Day weekend. We can get into some of the fun things in the latter half of the pod. I'm sure everyone was up to. But once again, AI occupying primo position. And let's start where we ended. So, Dave, I introduced an article that recently published in the information about briefing tech companies about this forthcoming executive AI order. You, before I finished my sentence, called it fake news. And the news wasn't fake and that this meeting actually did happen. But you were right that this executive order— [SPEAKER_04] You can say that again. [SPEAKER_01] You were right.
SPEAKER_03
[SPEAKER_04] I have no problem saying that. Just make sure. She's married to Sam. [SPEAKER_01] No, I know. I'm just modeling it for Brit. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] It appears that this thing is very, very much in limbo after some pullback from Trump. But Amir, I know you're actually following where this is at this moment. So what are you seeing and what do you think is going to happen here? And then, Dave, we'll let you talk a bit about why you predicted this. [SPEAKER_04] But you were right that this executive order. [SPEAKER_04] You can say that again. [SPEAKER_01] You were right.
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[SPEAKER_04] I have no problem saying that.
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Just make sure. She's married to Sam. No, I know. [SPEAKER_01] I'm just modeling it for Brit.
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[SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] It appears that this thing is very much in limbo after some pullback from Trump.
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_04] But Amir, I know you're actually following where this is at this moment. So what are you seeing and what do you think is going to happen here? And then, Dave, we'll let you talk a bit about why you predicted this.
SPEAKER_03
[SPEAKER_04] Well, the different factions are really interesting because while you have the fight between Anthropic and DoD over these various guardrails that Anthropic was insisting on, it's still the case that much of the national security establishment relies on and loves Anthropic models. [SPEAKER_02] And they want to keep using them and they want the relationship to be good or at least to have unfettered access to whatever the models are. [SPEAKER_02] Mythos and the introduction of Mythos only accelerated or emphasized that, but it's always been the case.
And I think people at Anthropic and OpenAI and other labs understand, fundamentally, that at the end of the day, the government is going to be involved in one way or the other with these models. So, yes, there's this EO in limbo. Maybe not a lot is going to happen in the near term, but through a combination of this becoming a national security thing and the growing backlash that you do see in public with trepidation around job loss. [SPEAKER_02] You saw it in Rome over the weekend with Pope Leo, who got a tremendous amount of attention for his encyclical on AI. [SPEAKER_02] I don't know how many of you read all 43,000 words. I only read maybe 5,000 words.
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[SPEAKER_02] I read the chat. [SPEAKER_03] Why didn't your agent summarize that? [SPEAKER_03] So I had my agent actually use a skill that I built to figure out what percentage of the encyclical was written by AI. [SPEAKER_01] Guess what the answer was? [SPEAKER_03] Guess what percent was written by AI? [SPEAKER_03] 64%.
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From the Pope. You think 64, Jess?
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[SPEAKER_03] Is that a biblical number?
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Amir, what do you think? I would guess a third. [SPEAKER_02] 10%.
[SPEAKER_02] 10%. [SPEAKER_03] 10%. [SPEAKER_02] Oh, okay. [SPEAKER_03] But still, 10%. [SPEAKER_01] Even so, is the word of God supposed to be written by AI or is it all just the word of God?
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Well, this is God. [SPEAKER_03] It's AGI, Dave. [SPEAKER_03] Dun, dun, dun.
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[SPEAKER_03] AI can be a good... [SPEAKER_01] Is that within the margin of error of your bot, Dave? [SPEAKER_03] It might be. [SPEAKER_01] I mean, because 10%...
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[SPEAKER_04] Well, these predictors actually predict the likelihood that it's written by AI. So it's a 10% likelihood that there are parts of it written by AI.
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[SPEAKER_01] Okay, that's...
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[SPEAKER_04] So it's relatively low. [SPEAKER_01] Okay. [SPEAKER_04] So, Amir, you were saying... [SPEAKER_04] So do you think this papal... [SPEAKER_04] It wasn't a decree. [SPEAKER_04] It was a word that I hadn't even heard before. [SPEAKER_04] Yeah. [SPEAKER_04] Encyclical?
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Encyclical? [SPEAKER_02] Apparently, they'd been guiding about this for a while and a lot of people were anticipating it. [SPEAKER_02] First time I ever heard of it. [SPEAKER_02] And it was symbolically important that an Anthropic co-founder was in the room for this in Rome with the Holy See. [SPEAKER_02] And so I think a lot of the concerns... [SPEAKER_02] I'm surprised, by the way, that Rome got taken advantage of by Anthropic for marketing. [SPEAKER_01] I think that's the story here. [SPEAKER_01] Say more, Dave. [SPEAKER_01] No, I mean, I think that's... [SPEAKER_01] Such a journalist. [SPEAKER_01] Such a journalist response.
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[SPEAKER_03] No, it's the story.
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[SPEAKER_01] I'm going to sit back, guys. My work on this podcast is done. It's the story because the Pope shouldn't have had anybody on stage with him, let alone one of many of these different researchers, providers. [SPEAKER_01] And so I really think that the church was taken advantage of.
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And it became a marketing moment for Anthropic, not an encyclical moment for the church. I think that's pretty unfortunate because it could have been a much more egalitarian, neutral message that could have gotten people to think about these questions. Instead, it became marketing for Anthropic.
SPEAKER_04
[SPEAKER_01] I think it makes sense from the Pope's perspective because at least you're saying, well, look, a legitimate leader in the field is willing to come here and participate in this articulation of a broad set of concerns about AI causing a lot of pain while it also causes a lot of prosperity. [SPEAKER_02] So I could see why he did that. [SPEAKER_02] But okay, so what's the net net or where you think this regulatory action may be going broadly?
SPEAKER_04
Where we seem to be going is the government eventually, one way or the other, having much deeper participation in the—I don't want to call it vetting, but certainly getting an early access, early look into what is being developed.
SPEAKER_02
And that's just... [SPEAKER_01] Isn't that the actual real thing here, which is that these are powerful tools that now have national security implications in that these more powerful models are extremely powerful. [SPEAKER_01] They can—we're seeing it. They can find tons of bugs. [SPEAKER_01] I'm hearing that they can reverse engineer any software binary. [SPEAKER_01] And so software is no longer closed source. [SPEAKER_01] All software will be open source going forward because you can just rip open any binary and reconstruct the software.
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[SPEAKER_01] And so there's a massive national security implication to models that are more powerful than what we are currently using at the consumer level. [SPEAKER_01] And so it makes total sense that they would want to see them first. [SPEAKER_01] Right.
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[SPEAKER_01] And so that makes sense to me. [SPEAKER_01] Dave, you're saying that closed source models are not closed and anyone can reverse engineer them at this point?
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[SPEAKER_02] Is that what you're saying?
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[SPEAKER_01] Not models, binaries. [SPEAKER_01] So every app on your computer that is compiled into a binary may not matter anymore. [SPEAKER_01] It used to be that you couldn't open them up and figure out how they were written. [SPEAKER_01] Right. [SPEAKER_01] And so it appears as though traditional software may no longer be closed source anymore, which I think is a really interesting thing to think about. [SPEAKER_01] Who are the people reviewing these binaries? And what is their background?
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[SPEAKER_03] Within the White House? [SPEAKER_03] What do you mean reviewing the binaries?
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[SPEAKER_01] We're conflating words. You mean models.
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[SPEAKER_01] Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01] Not models, binaries.
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So every app on your computer that is compiled into a binary, that may not matter anymore. It used to be that you couldn't open them up and figure out how they were written.
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[SPEAKER_01] Right. [SPEAKER_01] And so it appears as though traditional software may no longer be closed source anymore, which I think is a really interesting thing to think about. [SPEAKER_01] Who are the people reviewing these binaries?
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[SPEAKER_03] And what is their background?
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Within the White House?
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[SPEAKER_03] What do you mean reviewing the binaries?
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[SPEAKER_01] We're conflating words.
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You mean models. Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03] The models, sorry.
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[SPEAKER_03] Who at the White House is reviewing the models?
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[SPEAKER_03] It's usually out of the cyber, homeland security kind of folks. Well, and you have Sriram who works in the White House from Silicon Valley that runs AI for the administration. [SPEAKER_01] So we feel good about their ability. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, Sriram's amazing. [SPEAKER_01] I feel good. I also think the question here, big picture again, is a very hands-off approach to AI regulation from this administration and all regulation. But the drumbeat of anti-AI sentiment pressure around jobs from voters is getting louder and louder, and the administration is facing more pressure to do something.
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[SPEAKER_04] You have Mythos coming out where I think the DOD did get an early look and that's held up as a somewhat productive kind of relationship on both sides. [SPEAKER_04] But it was a very narrow window. [SPEAKER_04] They had a week or two ahead of time. [SPEAKER_04] And so those are some of the things being ironed out. [SPEAKER_04] But I guess we're back to where we were, which is very little drumbeat of meaningful regulation, which I just don't think will hold.
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[SPEAKER_04] The question this raises for me is what else will the administration do to appear tough on tech? [SPEAKER_04] Because they're going to have to. [SPEAKER_04] And the election is getting closer and closer. [SPEAKER_04] And Eric Schmidt is getting booed at graduation speeches. Well, so this is actually something else I was going to bring up since you bring up the booing at graduation speeches.
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[SPEAKER_01] When I initially saw that, I was asking the question, why is this happening?
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This is much worse than it appears.
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[SPEAKER_01] We've talked about this on this pod. [SPEAKER_01] And then I had this weird feeling that the pattern seemed very similar to something else we've talked about on the pod quite a bit last year, which is the TikTok ban.
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And there's a similar feeling to what's going on with this data center activism, students at graduations, booing. This is the same thing that was going on with Palestine. This was the same thing that has gone on with many different topics over the last many years. And it's implying there's a common force behind them to destabilize the United States. [SPEAKER_04] Indeed, I am.
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[SPEAKER_01] And so I started asking around. [SPEAKER_01] I was asking a lot of friends and folks that I know around Washington and various places if this is China.
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[SPEAKER_01] And then I saw over the weekend that Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank, who's been trying to build a data center in Utah, actually started asking the same question.
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[SPEAKER_01] And then he hired forensic experts to go and factually prove that it is China actually funding all of this opposition in Utah.
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And he actually mapped it. You can go look on his Twitter and Instagram and he shares all of the data and apparently has now shared this with the national security establishment. And so I actually hadn't been thinking about it, maybe to my strategic detriment or something, but we're actually up against much more formidable foe than just people who are worried about their jobs. And Anthropic has used a fear-based message to scare the American public that they're all going to lose their jobs, et cetera. You're actually dealing with a foreign adversary that's trying to divide us on this technology as well, which makes sense.
SPEAKER_01
Of course that makes sense that that's happening, but I think it's more in the water than people realize. And it's now showing up at city council meetings in rural Utah. And that's a problem. Well, we talked at length about what the tech community and tech companies can do to try to combat this and what a bigger problem it is. I don't think we have to fully open the ban TikTok chapter because here it is again, causing social problems in the United States. [SPEAKER_04] I mean, we went through that and TikTok's still here and it's in the pseudo JV.
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[SPEAKER_01] And does anyone really care?
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[SPEAKER_04] I mean, it just sort of ends up there. [SPEAKER_04] The difference here is it's actually damaging our ability to innovate on a major, really important technology tool. [SPEAKER_04] Right. And so that's a problem. Anthropic is also up against scaling problems where they are unable to scale. Their downtime is really, really bad.
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[SPEAKER_01] You can just go look at their website and look, they've got demand through the roof, product market fit through the roof. [SPEAKER_01] Right. [SPEAKER_01] And so the prices they have to charge are unbelievably high.
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They're ridiculous luxury prices for their tokens. And it's all because they need more capacity. Right.
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[SPEAKER_01] And so if foreign adversaries are successful in stopping us from being able to build the capacity for frontier models, then that's a real national security issue. [SPEAKER_01] So I guess I get it. [SPEAKER_01] Well, the Trump administration is unlikely to do something so heavy-handed that it tanks the economy.
SPEAKER_04
[SPEAKER_01] This is why going after Anthropic was quite interesting in calling them a supply chain risk, because if Anthropic were to fail, that would have a massive cascading effect on the entire economy.
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[SPEAKER_02] And AI and data centers in general are what is literally keeping this economy going.
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[SPEAKER_02] So I think they're going to have to find a very specific balance.
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[SPEAKER_02] Maybe they can go after these companies on speech issues and national security access.
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[SPEAKER_02] We have the whole scenario now where there is a model that exists called Mythos. [SPEAKER_02] Nobody really has it except for Anthropic. [SPEAKER_02] And who knows if the actual real model, as opposed to distilled versions of it that they give access to, will ever come out. [SPEAKER_02] And maybe that's the thing that the government gets exclusive access to. [SPEAKER_02] But as far as the data center story, which is a very local story, I can't see the government federally doing anything to make life harder. [SPEAKER_02] And certainly all of the companies have made very specific pledges around power.
SPEAKER_04
[SPEAKER_02] And if we see power issues come up, then Trump will say, well, you need to pay for it. [SPEAKER_02] So, yeah, I think that's what's going to happen. [SPEAKER_02] By the way, did you guys see that the Fed introduced their latest data about AI adoption growth? [SPEAKER_02] And it's actually been flat or linear, nearly flat for the last three months. [SPEAKER_03] So it's interesting. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, there's a bunch of data that suggests this, actually.
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[SPEAKER_02] But as far as the data center story, which is a very local story, I can't see the government federally doing anything to make life harder. [SPEAKER_02] And certainly all of the companies have made very specific pledges around power. [SPEAKER_02] And if we see power issues come up, then Trump will say, well, you need to pay for it. [SPEAKER_02] So, yeah, I think that's what's going to happen. [SPEAKER_02] By the way, did you guys see that the Fed introduced their latest data about AI adoption growth? [SPEAKER_02] And it's actually been flat or linear, nearly flat for the last three months. [SPEAKER_03] So it's interesting.
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[SPEAKER_03] Yeah, there's a bunch of data that suggests this, actually.
SPEAKER_04
[SPEAKER_03] To see the curve starting to flatten out and where do we go from here, at least in the U.S., right?
SPEAKER_01
I think it's just price, personally. [SPEAKER_03] This is a great next topic. Yeah, go ahead. [SPEAKER_04] Okay, so Dave, you think it's price? Yeah, I mean, I think they hit it. [SPEAKER_04] I think that you're seeing signals of this all over the place. Although I don't, it's hard to get really, maybe you guys have better data. There were some charts running around yesterday that Claude Code and Codex have flatlined, you know, their daily usage. I asked around. I don't think that's actually true. But there are a bunch of signals that suggest that there's a flattening happening right now on a bunch of different metrics.
SPEAKER_01
And to me, the only explanation has to be price, right? It's just too expensive to use the frontier models. And we're seeing this in the open source community where people just hit a ceiling really fast. And they're like, I'm just not paying for this.
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[SPEAKER_01] And we're also seeing founders that are running massive agentic stacks.
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And they're swapping out for open source models left, right, and sideways because it's just unsustainable for their margins.
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[SPEAKER_01] They just cannot pay these luxury prices. [SPEAKER_01] Amir, someone on your team, sorry, but just relative to that, Laura on Amir's team, Laura Bratton, who writes our Applied AI newsletter, spoke to the CTO of Uber, right, on this point? [SPEAKER_01] CTO.
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[SPEAKER_04] Am I getting this wrong? [SPEAKER_02] CTO of Uber, where he raised the point? [SPEAKER_04] He just basically came out and said it. [SPEAKER_04] I mean, this had a huge impact. [SPEAKER_04] Got a lot of attention saying he's not seeing the ROI to spend more on AI. [SPEAKER_04] And we've done a number of stories. [SPEAKER_04] Nikesh Arora, Palo Alto, probably told us this about six months ago, 12 months ago when DeepSeek came out. [SPEAKER_04] He said he was keeping his budget relatively flat, but just getting more for it. [SPEAKER_04] Now, that could have changed dramatically. [SPEAKER_04] Am I remembering those facts correctly, Amir? [SPEAKER_04] Almost.
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[SPEAKER_04] So the CTO almost bragged about blowing through the AI budget in the first few months of the year. [SPEAKER_02] And the COO over the weekend in a podcast said that I think that this led to a bunch of internal meetings and that he, this is Andrew McDonald, did not see much of a return on this investment yet.
SPEAKER_02
But the thing is, it's way easier to spend on these models, Dave, than to hire more people. And it's something that you can shut off unless you're using it in production very specifically. So I'm just curious how you reconcile what you were saying about the cost and everything with just the unprecedented growth that Anthropic has seen and the flippening with OpenAI where it has completely overtaken OpenAI from a revenue perspective. I think both things can be true, right? [SPEAKER_01] Agents hitting the API 100 plus times per day, just in default mode, let alone doing work on behalf of people, right?
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[SPEAKER_01] And so it makes total sense that you see this parabolic curve happening once the agents came into the game because their consumption is just massively larger than humans. [SPEAKER_01] But at the same time, I think the article you guys did with Uber, that is reflective of startup CEOs that we're hearing from. [SPEAKER_01] It's reflective of CIOs that I'm talking to. [SPEAKER_01] I spoke at Dell World last week and there were 10,000 people in the audience. [SPEAKER_01] I was talking to CIOs all day long. [SPEAKER_01] And everybody's asking the same question, which is what is the productivity of the tokens?
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[SPEAKER_01] And yes, it's amazing that we can do work now, either by individual humans using AI to do work or individual humans building agents that then do work. [SPEAKER_01] And yes, it's easier to build an agent than it is to go do a recruiting loop.
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[SPEAKER_01] But the productivity per token is totally unclear in how to measure that. [SPEAKER_01] And so that's the question everybody's asking. [SPEAKER_01] So that's what I'm saying.
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Both of these things can be true.
SPEAKER_03
[SPEAKER_04] Here's something I've been wondering.
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[SPEAKER_04] And I'm just channeling Sam a little bit because what would be doing more or less pod without a wild and controversial, but not entirely wrong point of view.
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I am starting to feel, having hooked up Claude Code to various things, as it relates to my own personal productivity, not the productivity of everything across the information or whatever, but my own personal productivity.
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[SPEAKER_04] The number of use cases on a given day is somewhat bounded, right?
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It can help me with emails.
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[SPEAKER_04] It can help me with scheduling. [SPEAKER_04] It can help me with research, right? [SPEAKER_04] And I can get a lot of value from it, but the people are more like me than you. [SPEAKER_04] So let's— [SPEAKER_04] Right now, they're going to be me soon. [SPEAKER_04] I'm not sure they are.
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_04] As it relates to my own personal productivity, not the productivity of everything across the information or whatever, but my own personal productivity. The number of use cases on a given day is somewhat bounded, right? It can help me with emails. It can help me with scheduling. It can help me with research, right? And I can get a lot of value from it, but I know, Brett, you're shaking your head, but the people are more like me than you. So let's- [SPEAKER_04] Right now, they're going to be me soon. I'm not sure they are. [SPEAKER_03] I think, and I'm not an AI- [SPEAKER_04] I know they are. [SPEAKER_04] There. I'm not.
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[SPEAKER_04] They're for sure going to be me.
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Great.
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[SPEAKER_03] I agree.
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Guys, I haven't even finished. [SPEAKER_01] That's like being in 1984 and saying people aren't going to use computers. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] All right. I'll stay out of this. This is not an anti-AI diffusion statement, right? I believe AI is going to transform society. I think the ways- I do. I really do. And I think the ways that- I'm not letting you guys bully me into a different position. But I think we are at a point- Someone's got to play Sam. Where a lot of new things are going to have to be built pretty fast in a way that normal people can use it to realize a lot of these benefits. And increasingly, what shifted for me-
SPEAKER_04
So I think I totally understand that adoption takes time. Look at the history of the personal computer. Look at the history of the internet. We're in the pre-DARPA days. I get all that. But it is also true that work is very defined and segmented by what people do. And I don't think AI is going to be as transformative to all types of work universally. And I think what we're likely to see is that there are some segments of the working population that are going to be able to deploy it to a much higher ROI and to a degree of much more adoption. And there might be some that don't. And I actually think that it's very possible we live in a world where over the next 10 years, most people don't need to be paying $20 a month for a personal agent that can do all these amazing things. And even if, in theory, their lives would be so much better if they had this personalized health concierge or personalized this or that, they're going to be like, I don't really need it. Not because they hate AI or they hate big tech companies, but just the universe of things that they spend their time on in a given day, they're making a very rational trade-off. And I think AI will transform work, but it's not going to transform all things equally. And I think this is a real experience. And I've talked to a lot of people. I mean, you guys are as bot-pilled as anyone on the planet. I'm not saying that is a bad thing.
SPEAKER_02
[SPEAKER_01] Why do you say that? I don't know why you would say that. Who are more bot-pilled than me. At least they're very self-aware of it.
SPEAKER_02
[SPEAKER_04] And they're kind of like, I've built everything I need on a daily basis. I actually spend about X percent of my life doing this and it's gotten Y percent better. So I think when we're thinking about what AI adoption curves are going to be looking like, I do believe economics is probably the best way to understand them. And you're right, Dave. The price is probably the best way to understand the flattening. But I think as we continue, we can't actually just acknowledge that the utility isn't going to be as transformative or as ROI positive universally. And I think that's going to look wildly different. And I think there are going to be segments of the population where it's totally rational for them to not have a bot be the center of their lives. I really believe that.
SPEAKER_02
[SPEAKER_04] Okay. Here's my take.
SPEAKER_02
[SPEAKER_03] I hear what you're saying. I have a lot of normie friends too. I'm from Texas and I think two things. One, there are so many ways I use AI and have been using agents outside of normal chatbot prompting that normal people have no idea about. And I think will want to adopt. Like I have created financial dashboards for our family. I understand down to the penny. Most people don't manage their finances as actively as the number of people that look at their bank accounts and just want a bank account update. Money is the number one thing people care about. ChatGPT just launched a literal mode for this. Flat integration with ChatGPT.
SPEAKER_02
[SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_03] I think there's a difference between, I think there are many people.
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_03] Those are good acknowledge. [SPEAKER_04] Today, right? You can use plain old Gmail or you could use Superhuman or you could use all these productivity enhancing things. But you have to have the context on the person. [SPEAKER_03] And I took my daughter to Legoland this past weekend. It knew things about her already from all the conversations and context that I have with my- [SPEAKER_03] Look, I very candidly think most people don't care. I really do.
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_04] Okay. Do moms and parents not care about summer camp signups, about all the school emails and the things they need to do? Like moms will always pay $20 a month if literally 2% of their mental load gets shaved off, then the health thing you talked about, then finances. And then wait, wait, wait, I'm not done. I have two more points. One is I think that the communication layer that has not been invented yet by agentic AI and the ability for my agent to talk to your agent to not bother you, but I just need a quick answer on something. Maybe it's about scheduling the next morning or something else. There's so much interesting stuff to think about there.
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_03] Moms will always pay $20 a month. If literally 2% of their mental load gets shaved off, then the health thing you talked about, then finances. And then wait, wait, wait, I'm not done. I have two more points. One is I think that the communication layer that has not been invented yet by agentic AI and the ability for my agent to talk to your agent to not bother you, but I just need a quick answer on something. Maybe it's about scheduling the next more or less or something else. There's so much interesting stuff to think about there. When my son's teacher can have a full personality profile on him based on what my agent knows about what's been happening with him behind the scenes over the last month. So she knows why he's being quiet in school and she can treat him differently at school. That stuff is going to be transformative. And the last thing I'll say is I do agree with you that this is a lot of friction for a lot of people and they don't want to spend their day with an AI agent and app. I think a lot of it's going to be invisible. You're going to be adding things to your shopping cart when you're shopping and you're not going to realize AI is running in the background, figuring out the next thing to show you to buy. It's like TikTok is invisible with AI and Netflix has invisible algorithms. But I'm not talking about that. I just think history is full of examples.
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_04] This is a fundamental mistake I think the technology industry makes: that every human on the planet wants to march towards efficiency. And I think just because a better product exists, even if it was free, some people just wouldn't adopt it. I don't think that building the best free product guarantees adoption. I want to respond to this, but I also want to hear Amir because he's been making faces that suggest a great response in so many ways. Look, I think that's the fundamental thing. Tech people assume that if it's more efficient and cost effective, people will just adopt it. And it turns out people make a variety of choices that can range from very personalized choices for a whole lot of reasons. And there is a general march of fundamentally useful tools and technologies having wider penetration in society through different channels. But I get as many school communications as the rest of them. I could make a million choices based on existing technology about how to be better on top of it. And I choose not to. I'm not optimizing towards that. So I think we have to be very careful to assume that just because something is technologically possible and getting easier and easier, that people will naturally adopt it. Humans make a bunch of different choices for a whole lot of reasons. And I think this is a very core issue. And when I hear OpenAI say something like, who wouldn't want this amazing doctor in their pocket for all of this, I think some people want that. And some people would say, you know what, I actually still prefer to talk to a human. Or who wouldn't want a personalized body scan of your body. There are just different types of people who want different things. And the AI industry needs to learn this fast, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_01
Look, I agree with you. There's always been this problem in Silicon Valley, which is that the narrative gets way ahead of the actual user experiences, the customer experiences. The obsession with the technology goes like ten years ahead usually of where reality actually is. And the difference between today and a world where more people are actually using these tools to not just make their life more efficient, but perhaps have more fun, more delight in their life is usually user experience. And Apple, one of the number one companies on the planet, is proof of this, right? The way that you create great technology experiences in people's lives is by actually spending the long haul on creating simple, usable, delightful technology that actually can fit into people's very busy lives that you're absolutely right about. People don't care about technology. They care about their family. They care about their emotional state every day. They care about making money to put food on the table. They care about going on some travel. They care about things we all universally care about. And the only way that you're going to fit into that is by actually doing the hard work of user experience. This is actually the number one thing that's driving me absolutely crazy in AI right now: that nobody uses this stuff. Nobody uses Claude, code, and Codex in the grand scheme of the internet. There are like single digit millions of people using it. They're incredibly technical. They're like computers from 1984 that you have to literally compile the kernel and talk to it in this weird language. It's still super, super hard to use. And those of us that have spent the time to tinker with it and figure it out are all like, this is awesome. It's changing the way that I work. And maybe work is going to be completely different years from now. I fully understand this. I've actually spent most of my career working in user experience. The thing I am good at is user experience and design and product. And that's why I'm passionate about it because I want to spend the next five to ten years of my life working on agents because I do think that just like computers, somebody had to go on that mission and try to figure out how to make it usable for everyone. But the broad conversation in Silicon Valley is that there's this new narrative game and I think it's partially that the new generation grew up with the internet, they massively amplify each other into these crazy narrative spirals. You kind of have this narrative gloss over the whole thing right now. And everybody's just trying to out narrative each other about their new way, their new take on the current version of the technology. When guys, we really need to go on a serious user experience odyssey to figure out how to get this stuff to more people. And I just also think, maybe this is putting a finer point on it.
SPEAKER_01
But the broad conversation in Silicon Valley is because there's this new narrative game and I think it's partially that the new generation grew up with the internet, they massively amplify each other into these crazy narrative spirals. You have this narrative gloss over the whole thing right now. And everybody's just trying to out narrative each other about their new way, their new take on the current version of the technology. When guys, we really need to go on a serious user experience odyssey to figure out how to get this stuff to more people. I just also think, and maybe this is putting a finer point on it. So thank you guys for indulging me in this, but not everyone wants to productivity max.
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_04] I'm not talking about productivity, Jess. I'm actually just talking about delight in your life. It's most computers suck to use. Not just UX has to change. We need entire new use cases because right now these things are geared towards productivity maxing. [SPEAKER_04] Yeah, but that's an artifact of the generation is what I'm saying is that this generation is obsessed with token maxing, productivity maxing, looks maxing. It's all about what can I optimize? Right? Guys, Amir should jump in, by the way. You're maxing, you're maxing this convo and you're doing it without Amir.
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_03] Well, but I think it's really important because I think this is not, I think it's really important. It's not just a question, Dave, of do you build a better UX on the thing? [SPEAKER_04] It's what are you even building? [SPEAKER_04] Well, Jess, I guess that's what I'm saying is I both agree with you, but I also think that computers suck and they waste an enormous amount of people's time in today's world.
SPEAKER_01
I'm not talking about AI. I am talking about the Mac that you were talking to me on. I'm talking about the iPhone that you use or the Android that you use. These things are awful. They take an enormous amount of time and energy away from people that could otherwise be going towards human relationships, their friends, the work that they're actually trying to do. Oftentimes pen and paper are better than trying to design something on a computer today. And so I guess that's to me, the great thing about AI is that we can now just talk to computers with English and we're still trying to figure out how to do that in an effective way and help everybody else do that in an effective way. But to me, that's the thing we're trying to get to is that computers no longer suck in our lives and waste huge amounts of time. And it's not even about productivity maxing. It's actually about getting the time that is being wasted out of people's lives and making computers a more productive citizen in society. And that's the exciting thing about AI to me. It's not the productivity maxing thing, but the way we have to get there is through design and user experience and improving the way that the stuff works. And so anyway, that's my take on it. And Amir, you should talk. I agree with a lot of what was said. I always think back to the question of how big is a market?
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_02] I'm responding to Jessica's earlier comments. And for a long time, people were like, oh, Google's best days are behind it. And it's not going to grow. It's not going to accelerate growth. And the market is X big. And it was 10 times bigger than anyone thought. I think it was the same for a lot of companies. If I'm not mistaken, Jess, you wrote a whole column about this seven years ago. And so I think in this case, just like Dave was saying and Britt too, we are living in the future here in Silicon Valley. We're at 1% penetration of what is the market in terms of what you can currently do with these tools. Only 1% of the people are actually doing it. We're still only 12 or 24 months out from the point where you were still telling people, oh, you can put your blood work into this and it will actually give you extremely useful information. And I realized, Jess, you're saying not everyone needs that or wants that, but people still have no clue what they can do. So bridging back to Dave's point, there is still a discovery problem. It will be solved over time. I'm sure. Maybe it's already being solved, but the market is enormous.
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_02] No, it's going to take years, man. It's going to take literally 10 years. I'm not anti. I started by saying AI is going to transform society and how we live and work, right? [SPEAKER_04] I think the market for these all encompassing personal agents is very unclear. And I think the mentality of look at all the things that I do as a power user, therefore the market size is X, is not actually how this technology rolls out. What percentage of people in America, the United States, even use Google Docs? [SPEAKER_04] Sure. I do a lot actually. [SPEAKER_04] But Jess- [SPEAKER_04] I don't think so actually. [SPEAKER_02] You're talking about agents.
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_04] I view these things right now.
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_02] I'm not in agent land the rest of you might be, but I still view these things as a friend who can help solve problems, give you ideas for how to solve problems, whether it's being your car mechanic or plumber or anything else or doctor, and to just help you measure things that you never could before. And we're in this environment where a lot of white collar industries are shrinking, having layoffs. You talk to people who are left at these companies, they are being forced to think about how to be more efficient and use these tools. Every conversation, I'm sure you have the same conversations every weekend, are very illuminating. You have an advertising executive who's like, I had no idea I could measure all this data that we have to create a dashboard or create a report telling-
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_02] I don't go a day without hearing this, Amir. It's amazing. And I think-
SPEAKER_04
[SPEAKER_01] But I also hear, yeah, I built a bunch of stuff and I'm good for now. [SPEAKER_01] I guess your job is to be skeptical. Amir is way more skeptical than I am. [SPEAKER_02] Be more efficient and use these tools never before. [SPEAKER_02] So every conversation, I'm sure you have the same conversations every weekend, are very, very illuminating. [SPEAKER_02] You have an advertising executive who's like, I had no idea I could measure all this data that we have to create a dashboard or create a report telling- [SPEAKER_02] I don't go a day without hearing this, Amir. [SPEAKER_02] It's amazing. [SPEAKER_01] And I think-
SPEAKER_04
[SPEAKER_01] But I also hear, yeah, I built a bunch of stuff and I'm good for now. [SPEAKER_01] I guess your job is to be skeptical. Amir is way more skeptical than I am. [SPEAKER_01] But we're also running- we're on a super insider podcast and part of what we do in Silicon Valley is work through these things, right? [SPEAKER_01] We talk about them to try to figure out how to take this technology further. [SPEAKER_01] How do we make this tool better? [SPEAKER_01] Can we fit it?
SPEAKER_03
[SPEAKER_01] And sometimes the technologies don't fit, right?
SPEAKER_04
[SPEAKER_01] Like crypto tried to fit itself into a lot of different use cases that it turned out to be absolutely terrible for. [SPEAKER_01] And normal databases were just fine.
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And that might be the case for agents too.
SPEAKER_04
[SPEAKER_01] But I'm also hearing every single day the same thing that Amir is hearing, which is literally every day I have somebody, usually they're pretty normal small business owner that's like, oh my God, I didn't know that I could load in 20 years of legal files into an agent. [SPEAKER_01] And I've been trying to, literally this weekend, I was on a dad's trip in Zion with UTVs.
SPEAKER_03
[SPEAKER_01] And there were some guys I never met before.
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[SPEAKER_01] And this guy doesn't work in tech.
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And he's just like, I've had this 20 year legal problem that I could never solve.
SPEAKER_04
[SPEAKER_01] And I uploaded all of my legal docs and all the emails from 20 years of negotiation.
SPEAKER_01
And I'm literally going to be able to solve this with the counterparty next week on Tuesday, because we can now finally see where it all connects. And it's reducing the confusion. And that's amazing for him. I don't know how he's gotten to this point.
SPEAKER_04
[SPEAKER_01] Sure, that's great. And he'll come up with a bunch more things and he'll use increasingly open source models. But he is a lawyer. That is a very specific job. No, no, he's not a lawyer. He's just a real estate- [SPEAKER_01] He's a real estate professional that works in commercial real estate. [SPEAKER_01] And he had this deal that had gone on for, it was a local deal down in Southern California, in the counties around San Diego. [SPEAKER_01] And it's normal work. [SPEAKER_01] Right. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] I just don't think that moms across America are going to have personal agents. I don't think. Okay. What are we wagering? Just disagree.
SPEAKER_04
[SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] You need to make a bet on this. [SPEAKER_01] What percentage a year from now? [SPEAKER_01] I can't make bets, unfortunately. [SPEAKER_03] Amir, you want in? Why can't you make bets? [SPEAKER_03] Because you guys are journalists. [SPEAKER_01] What? [SPEAKER_03] You never use Polymarket? [SPEAKER_03] Guys, you have to go soon. [SPEAKER_03] We're moving on time. [SPEAKER_03] But also, it's a pointless bet because you'll just redefine agent. No, agents are going to be the thing for a long time, Jess. It's going to take, it's going to be like computers. We're going to be talking about agents like we talk about computers.
SPEAKER_04
[SPEAKER_01] Is Gmail adding something to my calendar an agent? [SPEAKER_01] Or do I have to be using Spark or what? I mean, my fundamental point is, we cannot assume that the goal is more productivity for everyone. No, I agree. There are fields and people where it is. [SPEAKER_01] But this technology is being designed by people who think that. And I think that could be its undoing. What's going on, Brie?
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_04] You got any pop culture? [SPEAKER_04] I got a book recommendation.
SPEAKER_04
I just drove 400 miles through Zion in a UTV. Tell us more. [SPEAKER_01] You know, I've never done this before and I had never even considered doing it. But a friend of mine does this dad's trip every couple of years and invited me to go. [SPEAKER_01] And it's the most dusty, dirty, crazy experience. [SPEAKER_01] But these four-person UTVs are a magic technology. [SPEAKER_01] You can go 50 miles an hour across the desert in super bumpy terrain and you barely feel the terrain. [SPEAKER_01] It's floating. [SPEAKER_01] And it was a really cool experience that's pretty accessible. [SPEAKER_01] You go to Zion, go to the national park, rent one of these things and go camping.
SPEAKER_04
[SPEAKER_01] We pitched our own tents. [SPEAKER_01] It was a great experience for my boys. [SPEAKER_01] I couldn't recommend it more. [SPEAKER_01] It's very challenging, very difficult. [SPEAKER_01] Full of dust every day.
SPEAKER_03
[SPEAKER_01] But it was really neat. [SPEAKER_01] So they went offline. [SPEAKER_01] And to me, when I was at Burning Man, yes. Oh, yeah. They actually took our phones away and made us put our phones away for the whole weekend. [SPEAKER_01] So everybody was completely off the grid. [SPEAKER_01] And it reminded me, it took me the whole first day to stop thinking about some things I had been reading on the internet. [SPEAKER_01] There is really something about truly getting off the internet and detoxing from it. [SPEAKER_01] And I think we all talk about it, but don't actually do it.
SPEAKER_03
[SPEAKER_01] And so I was thinking about that, now that you can generate anything you want on the internet for free and the internet's full of infinite content. [SPEAKER_01] I do think actually these offline, truly offline experiences are going to become extremely valuable. [SPEAKER_01] I could not recommend it more. [SPEAKER_01] So it was great.
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I'll bridge from that back to the online side, which is, there's been a lot of news this week with AI.
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[SPEAKER_01] But there is really something about truly getting off the internet and detoxing from it. [SPEAKER_01] And I think we all talk about it, but don't actually do it. [SPEAKER_01] And so I was thinking about that a lot because we've talked about it a lot on the pod.
SPEAKER_04
[SPEAKER_01] But now that you can generate anything you want on the internet for free and the internet's just full of infinite content. [SPEAKER_01] I do think actually these offline, truly offline experiences are going to become extremely valuable. [SPEAKER_01] I could not recommend it more. [SPEAKER_01] So it was great.
SPEAKER_03
[SPEAKER_01] I'll bridge from that back to the online world, which is there's been a lot of news this week with AI. [SPEAKER_01] So Suno raised around 5 billion. Eleven Labs has all these new launches of new music verticals where the track can actually change genres mid-song. So you can start listening to a song with pop and then it moves to rock. Then it can go to country with the same lyric base.
SPEAKER_04
[SPEAKER_03] And Eleven Labs is also resurrecting Stan Lee's voice in a partnership with Marvel, which is the second big one after Val Kilmer licensed his voice for movies. [SPEAKER_03] And then Steven Spielberg, at Cannes happening over in Europe, is warning Hollywood.
SPEAKER_03
Guys, you have to make original stories or this industry is toast. And so I think Steven Spielberg saying it is like Steve Jobs saying it in tech. I think we all know this is happening to the entertainment industry. But it's the people are finally trying to take it seriously. And yet there's this binary thing happening where AI, Canva is happening in Suno and Eleven Labs world. And so I'm fascinated by the binary nature of AI entertainment and original films. And then I'll end with two original films I did watch this weekend while Dave was offline and I had two nights to myself. One was called Remarkably Bright Creatures, Sally Field on Netflix. So good.
SPEAKER_03
And the other is an A24 film on Apple TV called Eternity, where this woman had two different husbands in her lifetime. And then they all die and she has to choose who she's spending eternity with. I think you'd it, Jess. You better choose me. I have one recommendation and a story. [SPEAKER_01] But Amir, do you have my story. I want to hear your Mark Rober story. Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] Tell the story. [SPEAKER_02] Are you meeting him? [SPEAKER_02] Do we know him? [SPEAKER_04] Is he coming on the pod? First, I highly recommend a novel called Yesteryear.
SPEAKER_03
[SPEAKER_04] And when I heard what this novel was about, I did not think I would enjoy this novel because it's about a trad wife. [SPEAKER_04] Of which I am quite far from one. [SPEAKER_04] You might be kind of a Silicon Valley trad wife. [SPEAKER_04] You know, guys, I got nothing.
SPEAKER_04
[SPEAKER_01] No, what that means in Silicon Valley is that you're working. You're that's how you do it around this town. [SPEAKER_01] I don't even think there is a way anymore. [SPEAKER_01] But that's actually this book. So I was skeptical. But I saw it and I was reading The Information Summer Books recommendation. I was triangulating all these lists. I'm, yesteryear is on all of them. So I start reading it and I cannot put this book down. I'm planning my evening in my head. And I'm, I'm going to read some Yesteryear. I am right now because I'm so engaged in this podcast. But so the premise is a trad wife who is a huge influencer with a huge following.
SPEAKER_04
But the twist, which sounds corny, but I promise you it's not, is that she gets transported back to the 1800s. But it is not weird. And I really have felt that this book captures the experience of being a woman better than anything else I've ever read. So I highly recommend it. Secondly, Yesteryear, and I can't reveal too much because I will be writing about this. But I did get to go to Crunch Labs yesterday and meet the amazing Mark Rober and spend some time with him. And he is wonderful. For those of you who don't have parents in school, Mark is an amazing YouTuber who has kindled kids' love of science through his very wacky, outrageous experiments that are crazy.
SPEAKER_04
He's been doing one video a month since, I believe, 2015. First upon hearing that at the end of the day, they were waiting for parent pickup, they showed our kids Mark Rober on YouTube, had a mini conniption. They were throwing up YouTube videos waiting for the bus. And then after watching them, I kind of got it. So anyway, an amazing experience, which I will be writing about. But for those of you who know, one of the things, if you visit Crunch Labs, which is top secret, so I can't tell you where it is, is you shoot a tennis ball cannon. And if you hit the bullseye, you get $10,000. Four people in history have done this. No, you didn't.
SPEAKER_04
Until yesterday when I hit the bullseye! [SPEAKER_03] Woohoo! Editors, all I do is win. The video.
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_03] Right now, please. [SPEAKER_03] The video is forthcoming because we have the video of my reaction to which Mark just falls to the floor and it's hilarious. [SPEAKER_03] We will get the video of the shot. [SPEAKER_04] For those of you ready to ring my neck about journalistic ethics, I will not be accepting the money. [SPEAKER_04] So have no fear. [SPEAKER_04] But it was really, I'm sure I can donate something else. [SPEAKER_04] I'll work with the Crunch Lab team to find something. [SPEAKER_04] That would create more problems. [SPEAKER_04] We're trying to absorb the journalistic issue. [SPEAKER_04] We write about Open Cloud. [SPEAKER_02] We can't contribute.
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_02] But anyway, it's cool. [SPEAKER_02] I mean, it's obviously completely dumb luck. [SPEAKER_04] Although I have taken a few shooting classes and I did remember you tune into your heartbeat, take a deep breath. [SPEAKER_04] So I had some fundamental skill. [SPEAKER_04] My kids think I'm the coolest person in the world, which is important. [SPEAKER_04] And number five in history, you're looking at her. [SPEAKER_04] We do not need to plug Mark Rober on this podcast. [SPEAKER_04] But more cool things coming for him. [SPEAKER_04] We write about Open Cloud. [SPEAKER_02] We can't contribute. [SPEAKER_02] But anyway, it's cool.
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_02] It's obviously completely dumb luck. [SPEAKER_04] Although I have taken a few shooting classes and I did remember you pause your heartbeat. [SPEAKER_04] You don't pause your heartbeat. [SPEAKER_04] You tune into your heartbeat, take a deep breath. [SPEAKER_04] So I had some fundamental skill. [SPEAKER_04] My kids think I'm the coolest person in the world, which is important. [SPEAKER_04] And number five in history, you're looking at her. [SPEAKER_04] We do not need to plug Mark Rober on this podcast. [SPEAKER_04] But more cool things coming for him. [SPEAKER_04] And that was a pretty wild experience.
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_04] And just the nicest guy who really has the stoke for kids loving problem solving and science. [SPEAKER_04] It was great. [SPEAKER_04] So anyway. [SPEAKER_04] Okay, guys. [SPEAKER_04] Nothing happened on this pod. [SPEAKER_04] No fireworks. [SPEAKER_04] No energy. [SPEAKER_04] Same old topics. [SPEAKER_04] I think it was Amir. [SPEAKER_04] Amir, we're going to have you back. [SPEAKER_04] I hope you didn't feel like I ganged up on you, Jasmine. [SPEAKER_04] I hope you did. [SPEAKER_02] No, I can handle it. [SPEAKER_02] Believe me.
SPEAKER_04
I think my husband's going to be very proud of me. So that's what I meant it for.
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[SPEAKER_04] And it was great to be here with you all. [SPEAKER_04] So we will see you again. [SPEAKER_04] Next week, I might have a conflict.
SPEAKER_04
I might not. I have to look at my calendar, but maybe Amir will come back. Some company.
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_04] If I have a conflict, Amir is the conflict. [SPEAKER_04] But some combination of friendly faces will be here next week. [SPEAKER_04] Maybe Mark Rober. [SPEAKER_04] Maybe.
SPEAKER_03
[SPEAKER_04] No, not that. [SPEAKER_04] No, it's happening.
SPEAKER_04
For another episode, more or less. [SPEAKER_03] Bye. Bye, guys.
SPEAKER_01
[SPEAKER_04] Bye-bye. [SPEAKER_03] If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. [SPEAKER_03] Find more information about each episode in the show notes and follow us on social media by searching for at more or less, at Dave Morin, at Lesson, at Jay Lesson. [SPEAKER_03] And as for me, I'm at Britt. [SPEAKER_03] See you guys next time. [SPEAKER_03] Bye. towards human relationships, their friends, the work that they're actually trying to do. Like oftentimes pen and paper are better than trying to design something on a computer today.
SPEAKER_01
And so I guess that's to me, like the great thing about AI is that we can now just talk to computers with English and we're still trying to figure out how to do that in an effective way and help everybody else do that in an effective way. But like, to me, that's kind of the thing we're trying to get to is that computers are no longer suck in our lives and waste huge amounts of time. And it's not even about productivity maxing. It's actually about getting the time that is being wasted out of people's lives and making computers a more productive citizen in society. And that's like the exciting thing about AI to me.
SPEAKER_01
It's not the productivity maxing thing, but the way we have to get there is through design and user experience and like improving the way that the stuff works. And so anyway, that's like kind of my take on it. And Amir, you should talk. I agree with a lot of what was said. I always think back to the question of like, how big is a market?
SPEAKER_02
I'm sort of responding to Jessica's earlier comments. And for a long time, people were like, oh, you know, Google's best days are behind it. And it's not going to grow. It's not going to accelerate growth. And, you know, the market is X big. And it was like 10 times bigger than anyone thought. I think it was the same for a lot of companies. If I'm not mistaken, Jess, you wrote a whole column about this like seven years ago. And so I think in this case, just like Dave was saying and Britt too, we are living in the future here in Silicon Valley. We're like at 1% penetration of what is the market in terms of what you can currently do with these tools.
SPEAKER_02
Only 1% of the people are actually doing it. We're still only like 12 or 24 months out from like past, you know, the point where you were still telling people, oh, you can put your blood work into this and it will actually give you extremely useful information. And I realized, Jess, you're saying not everyone needs that or wants that, but people still have no clue what they can do. So bridging back to Dave's point, there is still a discovery problem. It will be solved over time. I'm sure. Maybe it's already being solved, but the market is enormous. No, it's going to take years, man. It's going to take like literally 10 years.
SPEAKER_01
I'm not anti. I started by saying AI is going to transform society and how we live and work, right?
SPEAKER_04
I think the market for these like all encompassing personal agents is very unclear. And I think the sort of mentality of like, look at all the things that I do as a power user, therefore the market size is X, is not actually how this technology rolls out. What percentage of people in America, the United States, even use Google Docs? Sure. I do a lot actually. But Jess- I don't think so actually.
SPEAKER_02
You're talking about agents.
SPEAKER_04
I view these things right now.
SPEAKER_02
I'm not in like agent land like the rest of you might be, but I still view these things as that a friend who can like help solve problems, give you ideas for how to solve problems, whether it's being your car mechanic or plumber or anything else or doctor, and to just help you measure things that you never could before. And we're in this environment where a lot of white collar industries are shrinking, having layoffs. You talk to people who are left at these companies, they are being forced to think about how to be more efficient and use these tools like never before. So every conversation, I'm sure you have the same conversations every weekend, are very,
SPEAKER_02
very illuminating. You have like an advertising executive who's like, I had no idea I could measure all this data that we have to create a dashboard or create a report telling- I don't go a day without hearing this, Amir. It's amazing.
SPEAKER_01
And I think- But I also hear, yeah, I built a bunch of stuff and I'm good for now. I guess your job is to be skeptical.
SPEAKER_04
Amir is way more skeptical than I am.
SPEAKER_01
But we're also running- we're on a super insider podcast and part of what we do in Silicon Valley
SPEAKER_04
is work through these things, right?
SPEAKER_01
We talk about them to try to figure out how to take this technology further. How do we make this tool better? Can we fit it? And sometimes the technologies don't fit, right? Like crypto tried to fit itself into a lot of different use cases that it turned out to be absolutely terrible for. And normal databases were just fine. And that might be the case for agents too. But I'm also hearing every single day the same thing that Amir is hearing, which is like literally every day I have somebody, usually they're like pretty normal small business owner that's like, oh my God, I didn't know that like I could load in 20 years of legal files into an agent.
SPEAKER_01
And like I've been trying to, like literally this weekend, I was on a dad's trip in Zion with UTVs. And there were some guys I never met before. And this guy's like, doesn't work in tech. And he's just like, I've had this 20 year legal problem that I could never solve. And I uploaded all of my legal docs and all the emails for from 20 years of negotiation. And I'm literally going to be able to solve this with the counterparty next week on Tuesday, because we can now finally see where it all connects. And it's like, it's like reducing the confusion. And like, that's amazing for him. I don't know how he's gotten a point of this. Sure, that's great.
SPEAKER_04
And he'll come up with a bunch more things and he'll use increasingly open source models. But he is a lawyer. That is a very specific job. No, no, he's not a lawyer. He's just a, he's just a real estate.
SPEAKER_01
He was, he's like a real estate professional that like works in commercial real estate. And he had this, like this deal that had gone on for, you know, it was a local deal down in Southern California, like in the, you know, counties around San Diego. And like, it's just, you know, normal, normal work. Right. Yeah. I just don't think that moms across America are going to have personal agents.
SPEAKER_04
I don't, I don't, I think. Okay. What are we wagering? Just like disagree.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. You need to make a bet on this. What percentage a year from now? I can't make bets, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_03
Amir, you want in?
SPEAKER_04
Why can't you make bets?
SPEAKER_03
Because you guys are journalists.
SPEAKER_01
What?
SPEAKER_03
You never use Polymarket? Guys, you have to go soon. We're moving on time. But also like, it's a pointless bet because you'll just redefine agent.
SPEAKER_04
No, agents are going to, agents are going to be the thing for a long time, Jess. Like it's going to take, it's like, we're going to be talking about agents.
SPEAKER_01
Like we talk about computers, you know, it's going to be like computers. Is Gmail adding something to my calendar, an agent? Or do I have to be using Spark or what?
SPEAKER_04
I mean, it's just too, my just fundamental point is like, we cannot assume that the goal is more productivity for everyone. No, I agree. There are fields and people where it is.
SPEAKER_01
But this technology is being designed by people who think that.
SPEAKER_04
And I think that could be its undoing. What's going on, Brie? You got any pop culture? I got a book recommendation. I just drove 400 miles through Zion in a UTV with. Tell us more.
SPEAKER_01
You know, I've never done this before and I had never even considered doing it.
SPEAKER_04
But a friend of mine does this dad's trip every couple of years and invited me to go.
SPEAKER_01
And it's like the most dusty, dirty, crazy experience. But these four-person UTVs are kind of a magic technology. Like you can go 50 miles an hour across the desert in super bumpy terrain and you barely feel the terrain. It's like you're floating. And it was a really cool experience that, you know, is like pretty accessible. You go to Zion, go to the national park, rent one of these things and go camping. You know, we pitched our own tents. It was a great experience for my boys. I kind of couldn't recommend it more. It's very challenging, very difficult. Like hard to be, you know, full of dust every day. But, you know, it was really neat. So they went offline.
SPEAKER_01
And to me, when I was a burning man, yes.
SPEAKER_03
Oh, yeah. They actually, they also took our, they took our phones away and made us put our phones away for the whole weekend.
SPEAKER_01
So everybody was completely off the grid. And it just reminded me, it took me like the whole first day to stop thinking about some things I had been reading on the internet. It's just, you know, we all talk about this all the time. But there is really something about truly getting off the internet and detoxing from it. And I think we all talk about it, but don't actually do it. And so I was thinking about that a lot that, you know, we've talked about it a lot on the pod. But now that you can generate anything you want on the internet for free and that like the internet's just like full of infinity content.
SPEAKER_01
I do think actually these offline, truly offline experiences like are going to become extremely valuable. Like, I don't know, I could not recommend it more. So it was great. I'll bridge from that back to the online sort of, which is, you know, there's been a lot of news this week with AI. So Suno raised around like 5 billion.
SPEAKER_03
Eleven Labs has all these new launches of new music verticals where the track can actually change genres mid-song. So you can like start listening to a song with pop and then it moves to rock. Then it can go to like country with the same lyric base. And Eleven Labs is also resurrecting Stan Lee's voice in a partnership with Marvel, which is, you know, kind of the second big one after Val Kilmer has licensed his voice for movies. And then Steven Spielberg, you know, Cannes happening over in Europe and Steven Spielberg is like warning Hollywood. Like, guys, you have to make original stories or like this industry is toast.
SPEAKER_03
And so I think that, you know, Steven Spielberg saying it is like Steve Jobs saying it in tech. And I think that, you know, we all know this is happening to the entertainment industry. But it's like the people are finally, I think, trying to take it seriously. And yet there's this binary thing happening where like AI Canva is happening in Suno and Eleven Labs world. And so I'm fascinated by the sort of the binary nature of AI entertainment and original films. And then I'll end with two original films I did watch this weekend while Dave was offline and I had two nights to myself. One was called Remarkably Bright Creatures, Sally Field on Netflix. So good.
SPEAKER_03
And the other is an A24 film on Apple TV called Eternity, where this woman had two different husbands in her lifetime. And then they all die and she has to choose who she's spending eternity with. I think you'd like it, Jess. You better choose me. I have one recommendation in a story.
SPEAKER_01
But Amir, do you, my story.
SPEAKER_03
I want to hear your Mark Rober story. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02
Tell the story. Are you meeting him? Do we know him?
SPEAKER_04
Is he coming on the pod?
SPEAKER_03
First, I highly recommend a story called Yesteryear. Now, this is a novel.
SPEAKER_04
And when I heard what this novel was about, I did not think I would enjoy this novel because it's about a trad wife. Of which I am quite far from one. I don't know. You might be kind of a Silicon Valley trad wife. You know, guys, I got no sour.
SPEAKER_01
No, what that means in Silicon Valley is that you're working.
SPEAKER_04
You're like, you know, that's like the way you do it around this town.
SPEAKER_01
I don't even think there is a way anymore. But that's actually this book.
SPEAKER_04
So I was like skeptical. But I saw it and I was reading the information. Summer Books recommendation. I was triangulating all these lists. I'm like, yesteryear is on all of them. So I start reading it and I cannot put this book down. I'm planning my evening in my head. And I'm like, I'm going to read some yesteryear. Like I am right now because, you know, I'm so engaged in this podcast. But so the premise is, of course, a trad wife who is a huge influencer with a huge following. But the twist, which sounds corny, but I promise you it's not, is that she gets transported back to the 1800s. But it is not weird.
SPEAKER_04
And I really have felt that this book captures like the experience of being a woman better than anything else I've ever read. So I highly, highly recommend it.
SPEAKER_04
Secondly, yesteryear, and I can't reveal too much because I will be writing about this. But I did get to go to Crunch Labs yesterday and meet the amazing Mark Rober and spend some time with him. And he is wonderful. For those of you who don't have parents in school, Mark is an amazing YouTuber who has kindled kids' love of science through his very, very wacky, outrageous experiments that are crazy. He's been doing one video a month since, I believe, 2015. I, first upon hearing that at the end of the day, well, like they were waiting for parent pickup, they showed our kids Mark Rober on YouTube, like had a mini conniption.
SPEAKER_04
That they were like throwing up YouTube videos waiting for the bus. And then after watching them, I kind of like got it. So anyway, an amazing experience, which I will be writing about. But for those of you who know, one of the things, if you visit Crunch Labs, which is top secret, so I can't tell you where it is, is you shoot a tennis ball cannon. And if you hit the bullseye, you get $10,000. Four people in history have done this. No, you didn't. Until yesterday when I hit the bullseye!
SPEAKER_03
Woohoo!
SPEAKER_04
Editors, all I do is win. The video.
SPEAKER_03
Right now, please. The video is forthcoming because we have the video of my reaction to which Mark just like falls to the floor and it's hilarious. We will get the video of the shot.
SPEAKER_04
For those of you ready to like ring my neck about journalistic ethics, I will be not, I will not be accepting the money. So have no fear. But it was really, I'm sure, I'm sure I can donate something else. I'll work with the Crunch Lab team to find something. I don't know. That would create more problems. We're trying to absorb the journalistic up. We write about Open Cloud.
SPEAKER_02
We can't contribute. But anyway, it's kind of cool. I mean, it's obviously like completely dumb luck.
SPEAKER_04
Although I have taken a few like shooting classes and I did remember like you like pause your heartbeat. You not pause your heartbeat. You like tune into your heartbeat, take a deep breath. So I had like some fundamental skill. My kids think I'm the coolest person in the world, which is important. And number five in history, you're looking at her. We do not need to plug Mark Rober on this podcast. But more cool things coming for him. And that was like a pretty wild experience. And just the nicest guy who really has the stoke for kids loving problem solving and science. It was great. So anyway. Okay, guys. Nothing happened on this pod. No fireworks. No energy.
SPEAKER_04
Same old topics. I think it was Amir. Amir, we're going to have you back. I hope you didn't feel like me ganged up on you, Jasmine. I hope you did.
SPEAKER_02
No, I can handle it. Believe me.
SPEAKER_04
I think my husband's going to be very proud of me. So that's what I meant it for. And it was great to be here with you all. So we will see you again. Next week, I might have a conflict. I might not. I have to look at my calendar, but maybe Amir will come back. Some company. If I have a conflict, Amir is the conflict. But some combination of friendly faces will be here next week. Maybe Mark Rober. Maybe. No, not that. No, it's happening. For another episode, more or less.
SPEAKER_03
Bye.
SPEAKER_04
Bye, guys. Bye-bye.
SPEAKER_03
If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Find more information about each episode in the show notes and follow us on social media by searching for at more or less, at Dave Morin, at Lesson, at Jay Lesson. And as for me, I'm at Britt. See you guys next time. Bye.