I think the greatest brand destruction

over the last 18 months is the US brand

abroad and AI. So with America, Trump

has been convinced that this was his

defining moment of being known as the

president that liberated the Middle

East. But I think the Trump

administration will [music] be known for

criminal corruption and incompetence.

And that incompetence is bubbling up.

And then the second greatest fall is AI.

And also Sam Alman who's gone to the

dark side. And I'm an AI optimist. But

here's what we fail to understand. These

techs, they do not have our best

interests at heart. Scott, I often come

to you to help myself form my opinions

on some of the most sort of

consequential issues going on in the

world. And when I look at some of the

quotes from the CEOs of these AI

companies, I've got one here from Elon

that says, "AI and robots will replace

all jobs." What's your view here? I

think it's mostly the catastrophizing is

nothing more than thinly veiled attempt

to say my technology is so devastating

that it's going to shift society and you

should invest at this crazy valuation.

And the data doesn't reflect that

there's some big exogenous meteor coming

for the employment market. But I believe

it's actually going to create more jobs

than it destroys. But the scary thing

for me is that because of AI and because

of these frictionless relationships that

people are engaging in online. I think a

lot of young people are losing the

ability to endure rejection. But I think

a more important technology in terms of

how it's going to change the world and

what will create more shareholder value

is not AI. It's really

>> This is super interesting to me. My team

given me this report to show me how many

of you that watch this show subscribe.

And some of you have told us according

to this that you are unsubscribed from

the channel randomly. So favor to ask

all of you please could you check right

now if you've hit the subscribe button

if you are a regular viewer of the show

and you like what we do here. We're

approaching quite a significant landmark

on this show in terms of a subscriber

number. [clears throat] So if there was

one simple free thing that you could do

to help us, my team, everyone here to

keep this show free, to keep it

improving year over year and week over

week, it is just to hit that subscribe

button and to double check if you've hit

it. Only thing I'll ever ask of you. Do

we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell

you what I'll do. I'll make sure every

single week, every single month, we

fight harder and harder and harder and

harder to bring you the guests and

conversations that you want to hear.

I've stayed true to that promise since

the very beginning of the D of Sio, and

I will not let you down. Please help us.

Really appreciate it. Let's get on with

the show.

[music]

[music]

Scott, welcome back. I um I often come

to you to help myself form my opinions

on some of the most sort of

consequential issues going on in the

world because I I find you always have a

very interesting perspective and one of

the things that's been front of mind for

me and I think the audience as well is

this subject of artificial intelligence.

It's moving incredibly quickly. It feels

like a moving target. And I think I saw

some stats the other day that said the

subject of artificial intelligence is

less popular as like an industry than

even ICE in the United States. Mhm.

>> In part because the big CEOs of these

companies are saying that our jobs and

our way of life is going to be

fundamentally disrupted and people don't

feel like they have a say in that. We

didn't choose this.

>> What's your perspective on everything

that's going on?

>> There have been few brands that have

fallen further faster in the last 18

months than two brands. The United

States brand abroad. We used to be the

enforcer of the operating system to keep

rogue nations in check. The US is now

that rogue nation. So the US brand

abroad for the first time in history

more people feel that China is a force

of good in the world than the US. That's

never happened before. So the brand US

has fallen furthest fastest. The second

greatest fall is AI. Your view of AI is

directly correlated to your wealth. The

only cohort that has a positive rating

of AI is people making over $200,000.

Because generally speaking, wealthy

people look at AI as something that's

fueling their portfolios and uh wealthy

people are the biggest users of AI. So

they see it as a positive. They see it

as innovation. They see it as the S&P

going up. But if you're

an average middle class person, what you

may see is that your electricity bills

have gone up and you don't even have

access to invest in these companies. And

you see some statements from people Sam

Alman saying, "Stop complaining about

energy costs. Think about the amount of

energy it takes to raise a child." So

they haven't really managed the brand

well. In the last 18 months, it's gone

from something kind of scary, but we can

be optimistic and a wealth creator to

something that's very scary and

something that's a wealth creator for

the wealthiest already. The brand in the

last 18 months has had tremendous,

tremendous erosion. When I look at some

of the quotes from the CEOs of these AI

companies, I've got one here from Elon

that says, "AI and robots will replace

all jobs. Working will be optional, like

growing your own vegetables instead of

buying them from a store. The challenge

will be fulfillment. How do you derive

fulfillment and meaning in life?" And

Sam Molman said, "By the end of 2028,

more of the world's intellectual

capacity could reside inside data

centers than outside them." And when I

went through Sam's blog several times, I

mean, he's talking about a fairly

dystopian future. And many of the CEOs

are I mean even Amadea Enthropic talks a

lot about you know his his bare case for

AI and the job disruption that will

follow and so I think I'm trying to get

clarity for myself really on like what

what is the truth what's marketing and

what's the truth and I want to add

another point which is I hire a lot of

people

>> and I'm already finding that our

framework specifically for entry-level

roles

>> y

>> has has quite radically changed and so I

didn't believe this stuff like a lot of

people told me about oh Sam Alman these

guys they're doing marketing to make

their company seem powerful. But then

when I noticed a change in my own

behavior when I'm sifting through these

CVs, yeah, I thought, "Oh, maybe things

are going to change." I think it's

mostly and catastrophizing and

a means of fundraising. Every technology

in history goes through a similar arc.

There's some catastrophizing, there's

some job loss, that increase in

productivity results in additional

margin, new business opportunities, and

employment growth. I don't see any

reason why this would be any different.

And I think that catastrophizing and

talking about this massive destruction

in jobs is a way of saying or justifying

the massive investments these companies

want enterprises to make in their

companies. Because if you look at the

amount of capital they have committed

and the valuations of these companies,

one of two things needs to happen in the

next 5 years at least in the US. There

either needs to be a trillion dollars in

incremental revenue from new products

from companies that have licensed AI. So

L'Oreal does a big site license with say

open AI. Does it come up with new

products? It's like how does it justify

that investment? We're not seeing a lot

of AI moisturizer or cars that are built

by AI. I mean, there's AI has hit

industrialized robots at Amazon, but

there's not a lot you would call new

AIdriven or AI products. AI plays a role

in the background, but it's very hard

for companies right now to point to

incremental growth or revenues from AI.

So, in order to justify these

valuations, then they have to say, all

right, there's going to be massive cost

savings or efficiencies. And there's

some examples. I think Meta Meta has

just announced new layoffs because of

efficiencies they're getting with AI

targeting. So, one of two things needs

to happen in the next three three years.

Either these companies valuations need

to be cut by 50 or 70%. Or you need a

massive destruction in the labor market

that creates tons of efficiencies that

their customers can then flow to the

bottom line. And I think what the CEOs

are saying is that there's going to be

massive efficiencies. I also think that

you sound more interesting and it makes

your technology sound more seinal when

you say it's changing the world and we

don't know how to control it. And quite

frankly, I find it a little bit

obnoxious

that some of the founders in key figures

in AI catastrophize just about the time

they take a secondary and peace out to

the Kotazura. That's not helpful. I'm

I'm Dr. Frankenstein and I've created

this monster, but I don't know how to

deal with it. So, I'm going to go peace

out to Sanrope. That's just not very

helpful. They always talk about the

peril. It's like, well, what do you mean

by that? So, the first the first big

fear catastrophizing is just this

unprecedented job destruction. They've

been talking about that for three years,

but let's look at the data. The

unemployment rate in the US is 4 and a

half%. Among youth, it's 8.8%.

That is slightly below the historical

average. The number of new business

permits or new businesses started per

capita in the United States has doubled

in the last 10 years. And we hear about,

well, what about Meta? They announced

they were laying off I think eight or

10,000 people yesterday. 2019 to 2025

they went from 16,000 people to 80. So

even if they go back to 60,000 it takes

them back to it takes them back about 24

months. So I don't doubt that there'll

be a real dip or a severe V down in

certain industries, customer service,

probably the legal field. But I believe

over the medium and the long term it's

actually going to create more jobs than

it destroys. And I don't I think some of

the catastrophizing is nothing more than

thinly veiled attempt to say my

technology is so devastating that it's

going to shift society and you should

invest at this crazy valuation. Could

you be wrong? Oh 100 I'm wrong all the

time, Stephen. No, but I mean like

what's the what's what would have to be

the case for you to find out that you

were wrong in terms of how you've

reasoned up from the first principles of

your thinking there?

>> Job destruction, layoffs.

>> But what would you have misunderstood

for that to be the case? like what what

did you miss would you have uh

misestimated for that to be the case?

>> Ground zero for the job that was going

to go go away was radiologists. You

could scan billions of images and

radiologists

kid mama don't let your your daughter

grow up to be a radiologist cuz that

job's going away. The new job listings

for radiologists in 2026 is up because

what it ends up is that while scanning

the image is important, it's a small

part of the job. The value out of a

radiologist is diagnosing the illness

and then coming up with a treatment

plan. And that's as important as ever.

The number of coders, job listings for

coders yearon year is up 11%. So people

who understand how to use these

technologies and come up with different

prompts or different means of vibe

coding that demand has gone up because

now AI can be applied to almost any

startup. Where I will be wrong is if

there is sustained job destruction and

the new jobs created and new businesses

and the employment those jobs create

doesn't keep up with new jobs. And there

is a scenario you don't need 100%

unemployment like Musk is predicting. At

20% unemployment the French had a

revolution in Weimar Germany turned very

ugly. At 20% unemployment especially

among youth especially young men tend to

get very angry and take to the streets.

So you could see a V that's so severe

even if there's a job recovery if it

hits 20% unemployment that could cause

real uh civil unrest. But I just look at

the data. I look at the employment

numbers. If you didn't know there was

this seminal technology that very smart

people were predict predicting a job

apocalypse around and you just looked at

the data, you wouldn't know there's

anything going on there. the the data

doesn't reflect that there's some big

exogenous meteor meteor coming for the

employment market. Is there a case that

this technology because it's you know

built on the internet so it has inherent

rapid distribution every day anthropic

release a model chat release something

it spreads across the world very quickly

and everybody's updating their

technology at the speed of light unlike

the industrial revolution where you had

to build infrastructure and physical

infrastructure is there a case that

because of the speed of this technology

and the proliferation of it that it will

be unlike the revolutions of the past

>> right that's the fear that the V is so

severe

>> and so vicious that we don't have time

to recover and even if there is more

jobs on the other side that there's too

much civil unrest around around the V.

But so far the V doesn't be decelerating

or diving as quickly as people had

predicted. I was kind of reminiscing on

the way over here. I moved here almost

four years ago. The first thing I did I

got off a plane at night and I went to

this amazing party at Annabelle's this

Brazilian party with all these hot

people everywhere and I thought I love

London. And the next morning I woke up

feeling pretty hung over and my team

said, "You have this podcast with this

young guy." And I said, "Cancel, I'm

hung over." And they said, [laughter]

they said, "No, he's really up and

coming. He'll like him. He's a nice

kid." And I came into this little place

in Shortitch or wherever with all these

like cool coffee houses. I had no idea

who you were. And within two years, you

were everywhere. It was like I'm

in the airport and I see your banner on

your book. And then I get on the plane

and the safety video has you in it. I'm

like, make him stop. And my point is

where I'm going with this is this place

is like uh I mean it feels like the

Google Plex. You're hiring like crazy.

You're one of the most technically

sophisticated people I know in media and

yet you're hiring a bunch of organic

things, walking around and eating and

and going out and drinking and having

kids. So you're you're the example. Old

media is going to lose jobs, but you're

creating how many people have you hired

in the last 24 months

>> across all of our companies? About I'd

say about 220.

>> Okay. And those are high-paying jobs.

Those are young people probably making

six figures plus. That's a lot of

employment. So is the BBC or is the

Daily Mail or whatever laying off

people? Yeah. But I'm not sure they're

laying off people faster than you're

hiring them.

>> Yeah. And what I found is that we're

hiring a different type of uh person and

AI fluency is becoming increasingly

important. I say the other thing is the

only thing I noticed was 60 days ago I'm

I consider myself to be head of

recruitment. We have a recruitment team

downstairs and I own a recruitment

business. But as I go through that inbox

people that I otherwise

two months ago ago would have been you

know jumping to hire, I'm now pausing

because there's new technology that's

been launched by these companies in

America. That means there's alternative

solutions and that's what's giving me

pause. People do need to consider ways

that they can upskill themselves with

these technologies.

>> The labor market is definitely reshaping

and it might reshape faster, but I'm not

sure it's going to be the apocalypse.

There'll be winners and losers. For

example,

for the last 30 or 40 years, the

unemployment rate among college grads

has been lower than non-ol grads. It's

shifted this year. The unemployment rate

among non-ol grads because of the boom

in vocational work is now lower than the

unemployment rate among college grads.

>> Mhm.

>> And if you think about it, you're like,

okay, well, that's bad for new college

grads. But at the same time, all of

these data centers need carpenters,

welders, plumbers. So, there's been

booms in other parts of the employment

market. But yeah, the employment

market's absolutely reshaping. But when

I graduated from business school, a lot

of it, quite frankly, is your generation

is spoiled. What do I mean by that? When

I graduated from Berkeley in 1992, 40%

of us had a job on graduation day.

Meaning 60% did not have a job. I would

bet that kids in my class at Stern, I

bet 40% of them were starting their own

business

>> because with AI when I graduated, there

were two there were two entrepreneurs in

my class and the second person was my

co-founder. We were the only business

started in the high school of business

from 1992. I would bet there's going to

be 30 to 50 businesses that are started

on graduation day. There's kids dropping

out of their second year of business

school to start businesses because they

just raised $10 million in a series A.

Now, you have to have certain skills, a

certain type of personality, a certain

facility with technology. I'm actually

quite excited about this. We're starting

to see an uptick in productivity, which

should result in incremental um

profitability. Will some people be on

the wrong side of the trade? Absolutely.

Do we need to do a better job of

providing more unemployment, more

retraining? Denmark spends 2% of GDP on

retraining and vocational training. We

spent 2% in the US. So, we're not good

at retraining. We're really bad at it,

actually. We're not good at taking care

of the people on the wrong side. But as

a global in terms of global employment,

I just don't I think that

catastrophizing is is dressed up

fundraising.

>> What do you think about what Elon's

doing with um Optimus? Because if you

bring those two forces together, you got

Optimus robots, these humanoid robots

where he says there'll be I mean some of

the quotes that he said, I mean it might

be marketing, but he's predicting that

you won't need to be a surgeon because

there'll be so many Optimus robots that

are more advanced than any surgeon on

earth. So Optimus robots will be doing

surgery. Um, and if you combine

intelligence with sort of physical um,

physical power that comes from these

robots, it does beg the question where

human skills remain outside of the

relational stuff and Maslo serving Maslo

Maslo's hierarchy of needs. That's the

one of the things I contend with. I'm

like, you're seeing in China especially

how robots are really changing

production lines. And I saw this video

the other day of I think it was in India

or Bangladesh where they had their

factory workers have cameras on their

heads.

>> Yeah.

>> So that they could film their hands

because they're they're intent on

replacing them with robots.

>> Yeah.

>> This combination of intelligence plus

robotics feels like

>> it's two tsunamis at the same time.

>> I think that's right. But let's use the

surgeon as an example. I think the robot

in the context of surgery will be not a

replacement but a supplement. and that

is there'll be a large class of surgeons

who know how to weaponize robotics to be

better surgeons and quite frankly do two

surgeries a day instead of one. I think

most brain surgeries take four or six

hours using robotics and precision

instruments. A great neurosurgeon will

be able to increase the productivity and

the accuracy of their surgeries. My big

tech stock pick of 25 was Alphabet cuz

it was trading at a P of 17. I just saw

it as being ridiculously cheap cuz

everyone thought OpenAI was going to put

it out of business. My big tech stock

pick for 26 is Amazon because I think

where robotics really hit the rubber

meets the road in terms of shareholder

value is the collision of AI and

industrialized robots and there are

400,000 um industrialized robots in the

US and there's a million at Amazon. So

million Amazon has two and a half times

the number of industrialized robots as

the rest of the nation combined. But the

notion that we're going to have someone

in our house bringing our tea a robot, I

don't buy that at all. I think that

automated robotics, the collision of

advanced manufacturing in China and

using AI with robotics will yield

tremendous advantage. Amazon is saying

they're going to double their largest

business, which is their retail business

by 2032 without an incremental hire

using robotics, industrialized robots.

And they were early. They made an

acquisition 1015 years ago of a robotics

company called KA. But the notion that

there's going to be a robot bringing me

my tea here. Oh, that's The

scary thing for me that I'd want to know

more about is weaponized uh

industrialized robots as warriors

because I wonder, you know, there's just

you can go some weird places, but again,

I think AI and robotics, yes, this

notion that we're going to have robots

serving us our food or in our house, I

don't I don't see that. It's interesting

because well I guess one could argue

that we we already have robots in our

houses but they just don't move. So the

quite the leap really is would you allow

a robot to move through your house?

Because I mean a Hoover is a robot. A

fridge is kind of like a robot

especially the smart fridge is you one

could say a TV is a robot a smart TV but

the the difference is they don't move

through our house or would we allow the

Hoover to move itself and then once we

allow that would we allow it to

potentially bring us something?

>> Yeah, I get it. I just don't the the

stuff I've seen on actual application of

these robots and keep in mind these

individuals the job of the CEO now is it

used to be to underpromise and overd

deliver. Now it's to overpromise and

underdel and create a vision that

creates cheap capital so you can pull

the future forward. My understanding is

three years ago we had a million

autonomous Tesla taxis on the road and

that did not happen. In 2016 Mus said or

2017 there was going to be autonomous

was two years away driving. So their job

is to predict a very exciting future. I

also think Musk in particular is very

good at saying look over here as he

stuffs a rabbit into a hat. I mean Tesla

is an automobile company so he's got to

create a stories to justify its 155

times earnings when most automobile

companies trade at 10 or 15. So it's

robots it's space it's connectivity with

AI and autonomous and robots. It's

constantly look over here because I

think it's very difficult to justify the

valuations he's raising money at. So,

and to be clear, he [snorts] as much as

anybody is able to pull that vision

forward. He's launched 90% of the

rockets sent into space have been by

SpaceX, but this is a company that's

trading that has $16 billion in revenue

with 8 billion in profits and it's going

to go out in its IPO at a projected

valuation of 90 to 110 times revenues.

When Google went public, it went out at

10 times revenues and it was growing 10

times as fast. So, what is this? The key

attribute of an innovator right now is

storytelling. And that is to make sure

the promise is way ahead of the

performance such you can access cheap

capital and pull the future forward. But

a lot of this stuff I find is a lot of

jazz hands. He's always he's you know

he's often known for being wrong about

his timelines. But he does seem to

deliver magic to the world.

>> The best product in my mind, the two the

two products that have changed my life

from a technology standpoint, most

underrated product is AirPods.

If AirPods alone, you know, Tim Cook

just stepped down were its own product.

It'd be a Fortune50 company. I think

it's I don't even think it's technology.

I think it's the most profitable

ubiquitous piece of jewelry in history.

I just walk around with them in my ears

now, right? And then the best product I

think of the last few years has been

Starlink.

>> That's amazing.

>> I just think it's absolutely I've done

podcasts from planes. I can talk to my

sons on FaceTime. That product is, you

know, all airlines are flying the same

tin can, same routes, same bad food, a

real point of differentiation for them

and also in maritime. I think Starlink

is the best tech product. So, power to

him. When they go public, is it an is

SpaceX an amazing company or is it

overvalued? The answer is yes. Two can

be true at the same time.

>> What do you think of Tesla? Because for

me it's magic. I don't think people in

Britain realize this or other parts of

the world, but for me the first time I

got in the Tesla that I I got in LA and

pressed the location and took my hands

off the wheel. All I had to do is

occasionally look look forward, which

they're removing now. And it took me 3

and a half hours to Joshua Tree without

any intervention.

>> And the safety record in it is is safer

than if I had driven myself there.

>> It's just magic to me. And then when I

watched this, the space rockets come

down and be caught with the chopsticks.

Incredible.

>> How this is just magic.

>> Incredible.

>> And so when when he I've got to be

honest, when he says that these Optimus

robots are going to be I I go, do you

know what

>> he's delivered a lot of magic in the

past that no one would have thought

possible. Can you even imagine 10 years

ago him saying that what people would

have said if he said, "We're going to

launch this massive sort of 70ft

skyscraper into the air and then we're

going to catch it on chopsticks."

Staggering. Incredible.

>> And then we're going to relaunch it

again and then we're going to catch it

again.

>> You would have gone impossible.

>> Edison of our generation. But you asked

about Tesla.

Uh, I bought a Tesla. Incredible

product, far superior to anything on the

market. He deserves credit for inspiring

the EV race, which will be good for the

environment. But the reality is

everyone's caught up. The fastest

growing automobile company in history is

BYD. BY company

>> BYYD is basically an 80% of a Tesla.

Some people would say 100% of a Tesla

for 40% of the price. If there weren't

ter if there wasn't a ridiculous tariff

war right now BYYD I think would be the

number one EV in the United States it's

eating Tesla's launch in addition what I

think is going to happen about Tesla

credit where it's due change the market

inspired the EV race good for good for

the planet but when you look at its

valuation right now I think what you're

going to see is when SpaceX goes public

there's a lot of money in the market

that wants to get some of that Musk RZ

what you were talking about this guy is

incredible I I don't care how expensive

it is. I want to invest behind Elon

Musk. I get it. That money is about to

come out of Tesla, which people are

finally figuring out is just a great car

company that should be trading at 30

times earnings, not 150. And it's going

to go into SpaceX. So, I think the

boost, the retail surge in SpaceX you're

going to see, and the valuation they're

planning to go out at is just

extraordinary. Some of that is going to

come at the cost of Tesla. I just I

think people are waking up to the fact

that Tesla's a great auto company. It

should be trading at about a fifth of

the valuation it is. Now

>> on that point, what jobs do you think

will be impacted by AI? I've heard you

talk about logistics and transport. Um I

think London have just announced that

Whimo and Tesla's full self-driving

technology are on the way. They've

greenlighted Whimo, for example.

>> I'd hate to be a truck driver. To me, a

long haul truck driver is the first

place. Trucks can drive between 10:00

p.m. and 4:00 a.m. when there's no

traffic on the road. I don't think it's

a very good job. What's interesting

about or one of the things interesting

about truck drivers, it's the biggest

employer of non- high school grads in

America of non- high school graduate

males. It's the biggest employer. It's

actually one of the two or three I think

biggest jobs by number of people in the

United States. I would think within 10

years we're going to have very few long

haul truckers. Obviously, customer

service, it feels like that will likely

go away.

>> Yeah. But where I see job destruction in

my world is that I used to anytime I got

an agreement from anybody, an advertiser

for a contract, an employment agreement,

whatever it is, I'd send it to my lawyer

and say, "Can you review this?" And

because the bills, there's latency in

the bills, it probably cost somewhere

between 400 bucks and 2,000 to review

every contract, right? Because I'm I'm a

narcissist and I think I signal by

having a name brand law firm. And so

they hire some kid at 120 or 80 to 120

bucks an hour and they charge me 4 to

500. Right now I say to the person in

charge of that project and they say,

"Well, I'm sending it the contract

review to our lawyer." I'm like, "No,

no, no, no. Put it put the agreement.

Describe what we're looking for. Ask

Claude or uh Chat GPT to pretend it's a

$1,200 lawyer, an hour lawyer,

employment lawyer or contract lawyer,

and ask them to review this document,

redline it, and do the same thing at

another LLM." and then you make those

changes. Congratulations, you are now a

senior associate at a law firm. I

probably spend a hundred or $300,000 a

year on legal fees across my

organization. I think I'll cut that

easily by a third this year. So, that's

one way I see it.

>> But I have a podcast company, not nearly

the industrial behemoth this thing is,

but I keep asking everybody, how do we

use AI to do this? And I find that

they're getting better at it and it

enhances our work, but we're still

hiring. Again, I think it's a

supplement. And if you want to protect

against AI, it's pretty easy. I've said

this for a while. AI is not going to

take your job. Someone who understands

AI is going to take your job. So, what I

tell people is have a second screen. And

that is always have a second screen open

that has nothing but AI on it, LLMs. And

anything you get digitally,

>> port it into your AI screen and start

playing with it. Do you know that quote

is so interesting because I've heard

that quote a lot that AI won't take your

job someone that understands AI will

take your job and I as you said it then

I thought you know I was thinking about

different um roles in my team and my

open roles that we haven't hired for and

I thought

>> someone with AI will take your job but

they won't just take one job

they'll take five of those jobs and so

if you think about an analyst

>> right

>> we've got Molly downstairs analyst for

my investment fund we were well intent

on hiring maybe five analysts for my

second fund we only need Molly now

because Molly's He's got two agents that

she works with in two two Mac minis and

she's got a a setup that screens the

inbound interest and also goes

proactively into the market looking for

new opportunities and pulls them back

into her runs them through a framework

scores them prepares them for the IC. So

Molly enabled by AI, she's probably

taken out five jobs. And this is I think

even with the law example, that that

lawyer that's using these models um

probably doesn't need to have five

junior lawyers now um if they're really

really competent with and if you think

about an executive assistant.

>> Mhm.

>> So with executive assistants, we might

for our executives would have hired

maybe probably 10 um EAS in total. Mhm.

>> Now, you really need one that has is

powered by a to do all the travel, one

that does all of the scheduling, and

then one that meets people at the door.

>> So, you need three versus potentially

10. And this is kind of what I'm saying.

Um, in most roles, but not all of them.

There are still some roles when I looked

at the rogue chart where I go, actually,

you know, this sales, a lot of the sales

we do from a media perspective are take

someone for lunch, whine and dine, call

them, relationships, pitch the deck.

>> Those kinds of things seem to be

completely un uh untouched. But let's

continue down that path. You no longer

need five mollies than you'd want.

>> Yeah.

>> That creates additional EBIT margin.

Creates a more profitable diary of a CEO

empire means you can raise more money

and then you go buy more podcasts or

invest in them who hire more people. So,

>> and it creates a faster cycle of money

and new ideas and when we were walking

in here, you're talking about acquiring

podcasting and you're getting into CPG

and you're getting into different forms

of media and you're driving growth and

innovation. Will some people be on the

wrong end of it? My mom was a secretary.

She started as a typist. Typus went

away. She oversaw the the the

secretarial typist pool at a law school

downtown and I worked in the mail room

in high school. But my mom realized that

the hard part of her job was interacting

with the senior level executive and she

became an executive assistant and she

never made a lot of money but she made

good money. Realizing the typing was the

easy part of her job. The hard part was

managing some dude's life. Right.

[clears throat]

>> So accounting should go away. But what

you're saying is there's actually more

accountants this year than there was

last year because accountants, the smart

ones, are moving into wealth management

and tax optimization, which keeps

getting more and more complicated. So

yeah, do you have an onus to update your

skills to understand new? I remember

when I first moved to New York and they

hired an assistant for me and she came

in and said, "Oh, I don't use

computers." And I'm like, "Well, you

can't work here." So it's like it to say

you're not going to learn AI or at least

the basics on how to use it. It's like

being in 1998 and saying, "Well, I don't

use PCs." Mhm.

>> So I don't Yeah, you got to update your

skills. The cycle times decreasing. A

lot of people will find themselves on

the wrong side of the trade. I have to

force myself to use AI. I don't, you

know, I'm the part of your brain around

understanding new technologies begins to

die, right? I can no longer perceive a

calendar. I can't tell you what I have

next. For some reason, I used to be able

to do fant I could do a Scotsman accent,

Stephen, like no one's business a few

years ago. That part of my brain has

died. And when I try to do an accent, it

sounds like a dead language that twins

speak to each other and it offends

everybody. There's parts of your brain

that die. And the part that where you

can understand new technologies or at

least have the will to learn them starts

to go away as you get older. I have to

force myself to play with these new

technologies. Everyone who wants to make

more money or wants to hold on to their

job should have the same onus to learn

these new skills.

>> On that individual level, there's people

listening now that that want to make

sure that they have the skills, their

kids have the skills of the future,

right? What are some of those important

skills? I mean, you've got kids. What do

you What would you say to them?

>> I get asked that all the time. What is

the skill? So, the honest answer is I

have a view, but nobody knows. Do you

realize 10 years ago in private schools,

the biggest incremental investments in

curriculum were two things? Computer

science and Mandarin.

>> How's that worked out? Like, thank God

my kid knows Mandarin. I mean, said

nobody right now, but they thought it

was going to be computer science. And

you could argue that hasn't worked out

as well as everyone thought. I would say

that the enduring skill is storytelling

and that is that your ability to look at

data, create a narrative arc and then

communicate that story in a compelling

way via all the different mediums

>> whether it's podcasting I think you have

to write well to be a great storyteller

but if you think about the most

successful people in the world at the

end of the day they're usually

storytellers the great CEOs I read Jeff

Bezos's 1997 letter to shareholders

where he focused on those three

principles and I'm like take my money

right I see even a guy like Alex Karp at

Palunteer walking around doing a live

earnings call on his phone. It's very

compelling. Um Jensen Hang, you know,

when he does these giant Buffett-like

stadiums where he gets up and he's like

a rockstar. That's storytelling.

Technology is, I think, going to create

a equalization among the product.

Reverse engineering created parity among

manufactured products. I think most

technology are technologies are going to

converge and we're seeing that

convergence in AI models. So I think the

point of differentiation is

relationships, right? Do I want to work

with this person? Do I know about their

kids? Do I like them? At the end of the

day, I have three different law firms

pitching me business, three different

investment banks, three different CRM

companies. Who do I have the best

relationship with and who do I want to

work with? So storytelling, it sounds

very p, but the ability to establish

strong relationships with other sentient

beings. I still believe that everything

reverse engineers to biology. I think a

certain fundamental understanding of the

sciences, those seem to be pretty

enduring. You know, my my oldest said he

wanted to be a marine biologist. I'm

like, who are you kidding? You got

seasick. I mean, at 18, what you want

it? You want them to be smart, good

people, aggressive, support them

becoming their own person, which I've

had trouble with. I want them to be mini

me. And then helping them find something

they're great at. But telling your kid,

"No, you need to go into this because

this is where the future's going." Nope,

we don't know. I We have We know the

basics. I would want my kid to be able

to write well, to be able to look

someone in the eye, to be competitive.

You know, I I encourage them to play

sports, to do chores, which they do none

of. But other than that, I don't know.

What do you think are going to be the

skills of the future? I think it's

really difficult to know.

>> I think what you said about

relationships is really important. You

said storytelling, and I think

storytelling is a proxy of of sales and

persuasion. And whether that's

persuading an investor to believe in you

or people to come and work for you or

customers to come and buy your thing. So

I think I think storytelling and sales

is is going to be an enduring skill. The

skill that is the biggest threat that

people are young people are losing

especially young men and this is a skill

and it's hugely underrated

is the ability to endure rejection.

And because of AI and because of these

frictionless relationships that people

are engaging in online, I think a lot of

young people, especially young men, are

losing the perseverance, endurance,

willingness to hear no. Whether it's

expressing friendship, whether it's

applying for a job you're not qualified

for, whether it's approaching someone

and expressing romantic interest, I

think a lot of young people, especially

young men, I think they can have a

frictionless relationship online and are

they're losing this sense of resilience

and aggressiveness. Uh, so I think that

skill when I mentor young men, the first

skill I try to reinccorporate back into

their life is what I call no. And that

is I need you to go out. I need you to

go put yourself in the agency of

strangers, whether it's a church group,

a sports league, a riding class, and I

want you to make an overture, an

expression of friendship. Hey, do you

want to grab the Arsenal game or watch

come over my house and watch it? And

then most of these kids, when you ask

them what they want, they usually want

two things. The men I mentor, they want

to move out of their parents house and

they want a girlfriend. And so once we

do the friend approach, then I say,

"Okay, find someone you may be

potentially interested in. Ask them out

for coffee." And this is the goal. The

goal is no. Because what's going to

happen is you might get a no. Probably

going to get a no. And then I'm going to

call you the next day and I'm going to

say, "Are you okay?" And the answer is

going to be yes. Is he or she okay? The

person who said no. Yeah, they're fine.

Because

And I'm I'm boasting. The secret to my

success is rejection. I ran for

sophomore, junior, and senior class

president of my high school. I lost all

three times and based on my track

record, I decided to run for senior body

or student body president where I went

on to get this lose. Never bothered me.

I mean, I mourned and I moved on. Every

entrepreneur, how many nos have you

gotten?

>> Oh, hell. Yeah, more so than

anybody.

>> I mean, so the any person you look at

and think that person has made more

money than I would have thought or any

person who's hanging out with someone

much higher character and hotter than

them has one thing in common. They

either have very rich parents or more

likely.

>> They're they're comfortable with no. So,

and unfortunately, I think young people,

especially young men, are becoming less

and less resilient to know. Apply for

jobs you're not qualified for. Apply to

graduate programs you shouldn't get

into. Approach people who you perceive

as being cooler and hotter than you. And

express friendship and romantic

interest. That is the key. You want to

punch above your weight class, get out a

big spoon and get ready to eat

That is the only thing that is common

across all great entrepreneurs who are

self-made is they have the ability to

mourn and move on.

>> I've been thinking about this a lot

lately. It was inspired by listening to

Adam Newman on that podcast a couple of

uh a couple of weeks ago. He did one

with um Rick Rubin I think it was and

and in it he tells the story of sitting

in the back of the cab with Massa who's

the the owner of SoftBank and ask he was

going to ask him to give him $300

million and Massa turns to him and says

you're just not ambitious enough. And he

says by the time that 23minute cab drive

had finished, Massa had offered him 4

billion and he had signed a little

napkin thing that Massa had in the back

of the cab. And that story and other

stories like it have inspired have made

me realize that like some of the game in

life and success is what I now call

selling yourself long and most of us go

through our lives selling ourselves

short. And I think in part because we

don't see ourselves on an exponential

curve. We see ourselves as a fixed

state. This is who I am. This is what

I'm worth. But you've almost got to like

factor in your own expon exponential

improvement. If you take you from 21 to

now, how your intelligence and wisdom

and connections have all compounded. But

you would have sold yourself at the

value of you at 21 years old. So I'm now

I actually now think in every season of

my life I've sold myself short. When I

was 18 years old, my I sold 20% of my

company for 5K, $5,000.

And then I thought that was I couldn't

believe it. I was celebrating in my room

at the time. I was stealing Chicago Town

pizzas to feed myself. And then a couple

of years later, I sold another 30% of

that company uh 30% of my company for

300k and I thought I'd hit the

euromillions,

>> right?

>> That company ran up and was on the stock

market for many hundreds of millions

many years later. I thought, God, I've

sold myself short my whole life. So

assume I'm doing the same now. And if I

if I assume that, how

how what would I say? What would I what

what opportunities would I go for? And I

think that app for me that apply should

apply to everybody. I think it's

self-fulfilling.

>> Yeah. I there's something about

imagining where you want to be in 5

years outrageously in the reverse

engineering back. But the moment you

took that 300K, you really needed it. I

mean that was so it's a function of your

opportunity set and what's actually the

market says to you. Uh I think pricing

is a signal. I struggle with pricing and

what I tell whenever we're writing a

proposal or okay whatever I get back I'm

like okay increase the pricing 30 or 50%

more because pricing is a signal and

it's you can always take the price down

and the client the person will always

will always come back and ask for the

price down but I mean quite frankly and

this is sexist I think men are better at

imagining an unrealistic self and women

are more measured

>> and I think that's one of the things

that has held back women as

entrepreneurs and the fact that not as

much capital has been available to them

because the people allocating capital

have been white dudes from Stanford or

Harvard. 40% of VCs are from two schools

of I think it was Charlie Munger who

said someone who has a crazy vision of

their own potential

that's stupid and obnoxious.

His attitude was never bet against that

person because occasionally they're

right. And so for we talked about Musk

for a guy to think I'm going to raise so

much money and command technology that I

can be responsible for 90% of launches

and control 70% of the Earth's low orbit

satellites.

That's pretty arrogant. So yeah, I agree

with you and you know it. Let me put it

this way. If you're going to air to the

upside because the market will bring you

back on its own. [laughter]

>> That's so true. Um Sam Salman has been

in all the news lately in part because

of this article that the New Yorker did,

two reporters there, Ronan Faroh and

Andrew Morren.

>> Um which was this article and then he

responded with with this blog post here

two years ago. I thought Sam had a

really good brand

>> cuz he was out in Congress. He was

saying this tech, you know, he was

asking for regulation. It seemed it has

turned unbelievably quickly,

unbelievably fast. Well, we've said this

before, he's a proxy for all of AI. I

think the greatest brand destruction

other than the US over the last 18

months has been AI and also Sam Alman.

But we keep falling into this trap over

and over and that is something happened

through the 70s, 80s and 90s and that is

America used its heroes used to be

athletes, government officials and

actors and then there was a dramatic

decline in um attendance to religious

institutions but people still have

really big questions and want sort of an

authority or a godlike figure. The

closest thing we have to religion is

technology. Most people don't understand

it. It has a mystical feel to it. I have

no idea how my phone works. I can ask it

anything and it comes back with a

relatively authoritative answer that I

trust. Similar if I was talking or

praying. Like most of the time when

we're on AI, we're kind of praying.

We're we're sending a question into the

echo to a being thinking it's smarter

than us and it's going to come back with

an empathetic, loving, correct answer.

So the new Jesus Christ was born in the

'9s and that was Steve Jobs. And he was

taken from us early like Jesus Christ.

The idolatry of innovators has

absolutely gone crazy. And the new Jesus

Christ, if you will, are these tax CEOs.

And here's what we fail to understand.

They do not have our best interests at

heart. They are not concerned with our

emotional well-being. They are not going

to comfort us when we're older. They are

there, and they play a key component in

capitalism to do anything that is

required to get their earnings up 1 cent

per share every day. and they will make

incremental decisions that justify the

harming and self harm of teen girls.

Cheryl Samberg, the weaponization of our

platforms to make our the coarsening of

our discourse, Mark Zuckerberg,

I mean, the radicalization of young men,

uh, the people running YouTube,

they we keep thinking that the newest

tech CEO is going to save us, that this

guy cares. Sam Alman was the gay son we

all wanted. Like super nice, super

friendly, hush voices, well senator. I'm

worried about that as well. Right. These

guys would sleep with their cousin for a

nickel. That's their job. Their job is

to increase earnings. They're not here

to save us. We're supposed to elect

people who put in guard rails for them.

So everyone is saying or asking me, can

we trust Sam Alman? I'm like, no. And we

shouldn't have to. We should have

regulators putting in guard rails on AI.

We should be testing these things.

Government agencies should be testing

these things. We should be ensuring that

these technologies are not used to

surveil Americans, right? That we would

still have cartoons like characters on

cigarettes marketing to 12y olds if we

hadn't put in place regulation. And the

tobacco executives would claim that they

weren't marketing to young people. Ford

would still be pouring mercury into the

river if we didn't have an EPA and

regulation. So Sam is doing exactly what

he's supposed to be doing. The latest

hero that's going to save us is Dario

Amod. We've decided he's the good guy.

Now the villain's journey in tech is the

same. Some compelling person we think is

a wonderful guy and it's almost always a

guy, occasionally a woman. You know, we

need to do better gender balance. That

was Cheryl Samberg in the workplace. And

then we find out that they are doing

their job and that is doing anything

they can legally to increase shareholder

value regardless of whether it prevents

a tragedy of the commons or not. And

then we get angry at them. The journey

from Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader

gets shorter and shorter, but they all

follow the same path. And then 18 months

later, we realize that they would too

will do will say and do whatever they

can to try and delay and opuscate

regulation. And that sometimes when we

don't have a government with a lack of

domain expertise, with a lack of

insight, with people who are a cross

between the land of the dead and the

golden girls and don't understand these

technologies, that when these

technologies are allowed to run just

free with no regulation, they do bad

things. So Sam Alman is the latest

person we've discovered as Darth Vader,

who's gone to the dark side. It happens

with all of them because they're doing

their job. We as citizens aren't doing

our job. and that is we're not putting

in place elected officials that regulate

these companies. So yeah, can we trust

Sam Alman? No. But we shouldn't need to

trust him. We should be able to trust

that we have smart elected officials

that will regulate these companies.

>> Did you see this article he wrote in

response to being having a Molotov

cocktail thrown at his house?

>> I read this article without reading it.

So there's been death threats on his

life. And let me be clear, there's

absolutely no justification whatsoever

for this. And it needs to be I don't

even like it when people yell at JD

Vance when he's skiing with his family.

One of the we don't want to be that

nation or we don't in the west we have a

if you're operating with the confines of

the law which Sam is he deserves to live

in peace. It is sad. Do you realize in

the US now there's no more people

working in private security than there

are cops really because there's always

going to be a number of people who are

likely I don't know about the

perpetrator here who are mentally ill

and who will find an excuse essentially

the the makeup usually of these

perpetrators or these these these

criminal actors is they're usually young

men looking to restore their social

capital through what they perceive as a

historic act of violence against a

famous person. This has gone on for a

long time. He's now famous. I don't

think it's fair. I've seen some people

try to equate AI's dangers as if these

acts of violence are somehow justified.

They're not. There's no justification

for a healthcare executive being

executed in the streets. There's no

justification for violence against Sam

or attempted violence against Sam and

his family. I think it's young men with

a lack of opportunity, mental illness,

and unfortunately access to firearms

everywhere. But it's always happened. I

don't make the connection that somehow

it's more justified. I think famous

people, one in three presidents has been

shot at.

>> Crazy, isn't it?

>> So, the more famous you get, quite

frankly, the more personal risk there is

because someone is going to decide that

taking you out for whatever reason is

going to restore their social capital.

Um, actually, if you look at

assassination attempts and violence, the

it's actually gone down. But these

stories are cinematic and very

interesting and they get a lot of

attention. But I think it's a shame we

live in a society where especially in

the west where they have to endure that

kind of risk. The one of the really most

lovely moments I've seen, I don't know

if I don't know if it was the Danish or

the Norwegian prime minister who stepped

down, they applauded and he got on a

bike and rode home.

>> I thought you can't do that in the US.

You know, Obama's kids still have Secret

Service protection.

>> So there's definitely something I I

quite frankly blame it on big tech that

tries to convince people that this

person is their enemy and this person is

evil. Sam's not evil. I don't I don't

know him personally. I sat next to him

at this party I went to, but he's doing

his job. Quite frankly, we're not doing

ours.

>> Do you think he's a nihilist? And I

don't really know the definition of the

word nihilist, but I guess it's someone

who believes that life is essentially

meaningless.

>> I think there's a nihilist vein running

through big tech where a lot of them

have go bags.

They have a plan for if gets real.

If there's a zombie apocalypse or

there's a revolution or there's a

massive pandemic, they have definitive

plans and they've spent tens of millions

of dollars. They meet their pilots at uh

Oakland airport. They get on their

Gulfream 650. They fly to New Zealand to

Auckland and they have a bunker built

out.

>> Is this true?

>> Oh, there's a lot of them.

>> Really?

>> There's a lot of goat plans amongst the

wealthy. And sometimes it's not as

dramatic. Sometimes it's just a home

nuclear attack, cyber attack,

revolution, but there I would say

amongst billionaires, I would bet

conservatively one in three have some

sort of go plan. And that's nihilist.

And also I to a certain extent I think

wanting to be an interplanetary species

is a little bit nihilist.

>> Also, you know, if they're saying that

in the future people aren't going to

have jobs and there's robotics and

there's this AGI, this super

intelligence which is going to be

smarter than everybody. Um, and even if

there was a 1% chance, a 1% chance that

these doomer predictions around AI could

come true, I would I would stop. A 1%

chance of humanity um sort of

self-imploding or destroying itself.

Wouldn't a rational person stop?

>> Well, okay, you're Oenheimer. It's going

to take 3 million American deaths to

invade Japan. Japan will not surrender.

And you're you're been charged with

splitting the atom. there was much more

than a 1% chance that our ability to

split the atom and then show and then

show we would use it against a civilian

population would result in the end of

the world should he have stopped

development of it. So a lot of

scientists nuclear scientists killed

themselves. They committed suicide

because they were convinced once we'd

split the atom and used it against

civilians it was the end of the world.

It was just a matter of time before we

all all using nuclear devices. So I

don't I think you keep moving forward

and nihilism where nihilism impacts

these people. Let me go back to the go

bag. I talked to one of these people. He

outlined his plan for me. Right.

>> He's a billionaire.

>> Yeah. Outlined his plan. His plan B if

things get really ugly, right?

And my view was, "Okay, boss, let's play

this out. Something happens. There's an

event. It's too dangerous to stay here.

You meet your pilots at the airport. I

mean, really gets real. People

scouring for food. People become feral.

Like, you don't think your pilots are

going to kill you and your wife?

Like what what do you think's going to

happen? You don't think the people in

New Zealand are going to be like let's

go take the rich guys Like it

strikes me that these are such mil

misallocated

efforts and capital that if you're

really focused on your own future,

whether you're wealthy or not wealthy,

that your resources and your talent

should be allocated towards trying to

make this place a little bit more

habitable, not trying to colonize Mars,

not having a go bag. And this is part of

the problem with the 0.1%. There are 900

billionaires in the United States and I

would imagine 300 of them 300 of them

give money. They're responsible for 20%

of all political donations. And that 20%

number is misleading because they can be

more strategic. So unions are big

givers, but they just give money to

whoever's pro- union. So it's not that

strategic. Billionaires can allocate

capital to a specific issue, really ramp

it up. So they have a disproportionate

amount of control over our elected

population. And the problem is the 0.1%

are not invested in the health of

America. Why? They don't have to put up

with TSA lines. They fly private. They

don't have to put up with shitty

healthcare. They have concierge medicine

and access to the best medicine in the

world. They don't have to put up with

40% of third graders can't read or

write. Their kids go to amazing schools

that spend on average $75,000 a year on

their kid versus 15,000 at a public

school, 10,000 at a public school in a

low-inccome area. They don't need

police. They have dormant security.

Where I live in Soho, there's no

homeless. As far as I can tell, there's

no crime. There's no cops. There's

cameras everywhere and dormant

everywhere. My point is, they are no

longer invested in the well-being of

America. They've totally dissociated

from the investments required to make

America a better place because they're

sequestered from it. They're no longer

invested in the well-being of America.

And what I find strange about this

nihilism is that these individuals think

that they are no longer as invested in

the well-being or the safety of the

world. I think that's very unhealthy.

>> These are some of the most concerning

conversations I've had. So, like one of

the things that happens when you have a

podcast and you, you know, interesting

people come on and you start hanging

around with more interesting people and

more powerful people is you get a world,

you get little peaks into new worlds

that you didn't know existed. You kind

of get to see behind certain curtains.

And I remember having a particular

conversation in um in London at a

kitchen table where someone was

describing one of these AI CEOs to me

and basically making the case that they

believe there's a roughly 10% chance I

think they said seven if I'm not

misunderstanding percent chance that

it's um that it will result in the end

of the world some sort of catastrophic

event. But they really didn't care

because

they think that being the person that

summoned this new intelligence amongst

us was probably more consequential than

whatever happens. And like if I wasn't

privy to, again, hearing this secondhand

from someone I know who knows this

person extremely well, I know he knows

him extremely well cuz they hang out.

Him telling me that, I would have

wouldn't have believed this. I would

have thought that's nonsense. I would

have thought to myself, you know, they

must be kind because they have kids and

they're, you know, but actually now I I

very much believe what you're saying

about this nihilism where I don't

actually believe they give a Some

of them I actually don't believe some of

them give a I actually think some

of them are playing a game and they're

playing a video game with with our

futures

or they the incentives. Look, in the

United States, when I was growing up, my

dad's boss had a slightly bigger house

and he drove a Cadillac and we drove a

Grand Torino, but we were members of the

same country club and his house was a

5-minute drive away.

>> And maybe my dad's boss got to fly

business class and we flew coach. The

delta in having money, having a decent,

you know, having a middle class life and

an upper class was like this. Now the

delta is this. Let's look at air

transportation. Flying on Spirit

Airlines is a humiliating, dangerous

experience. United Airlines, economy,

economy, comfort, economy, plus business

class, first class. Oh, wait, that's not

enough. Let's go to private. There's

charter. There's fractional. There's a

cessence nitation. There's a Bombardier

Challenger 300. There's a global 650.

Now there's a new G7. The delta in your

life, in your healthcare. My mom was

very sick when I was very young. And

when I think about how humiliating it

was for the two of us having her to

endure cancer when we were underinsured,

>> it was a devastating, traumatic,

humiliating experience.

>> Now, if I need I take Lunesto when I

travel cuz I have trouble sleeping. I

have a medical concierge company. They

get me the drug delivered within two

hours to my house. I have NAD

treatments. They arrange for someone to

come to my house when it's convenient

for me and do it in my my living room. I

can text my doctor. I have a medical kit

with all these things in it. If I'm

abroad, I can text my doctor and say,

"My son's not feeling well." They

FaceTime me. I open the kit. They can

tell me exactly what to do. The the

healthc care I am receiving right now, I

have my blood taken every 3 months. They

send it to some bond layer in Norway

with PhDs who can tell me that I have

less than a 7% chance of any cancers as

evidenced by a lack of whatever it is

antibodies, the cancer cells. The health

care now for the point for the 1% is

dramatic. And it's all the same thing.

The bottom 99% of Western societies are

essentially being optimized and

monetized to make the life of the 1%

just unbelievable.

The life you can lead in the 1% is so

dramatic and so incredible. Broader

selections set of mates. Your kids have

better health care, better educational

opportunities, you have influence,

people want to know you. So the the

incentives to not be rich but to be very

rich are so incredible. And the way you

get very rich is through stock options

typically in technology that I think the

incentives are so great that people will

make incremental decisions and ignore

the fact that oh one in 18 girls who are

self harming in the UK site Instagram as

a reason for that. Well, let's find

research that maybe create some doubts

because once I become a billionaire,

I'll be a better person. and they're

getting so much criticism and so much

posting and it's so competitive and

there's fewer and fewer winners that

become much bigger, right? It used to be

five companies won and got hundreds of

millions of dollars. Now one company

wins and gets tens of billions. So you

can see how incrementally this path to

Darth Vader is pretty tempting. So I I

think these I think they just get caught

up in they get caught up in this

competition and they lose all sight.

Also my uh co-host on the pivot podcast

said something that was illuminating to

me during co I was walking down the

street with my sister and a homeless

person kind of stirred. There was a lot

of homeless people because they to the

homeless shelters turned out everybody

and she jumped out of her skin and I

said well that was a bit of an

overreaction. He's not going to hurt us.

And she said, "You know, you're 6'2",

190. Easy for you to say. You

understand? She women walk around in a

constant state of fear. And that fear is

rational. And it really struck me. And

then Cara said, "These guys don't

understand anything about victimization

because they've never been victims.

They're traditionally white males who

have grown up in upper income households

and they've never really understood what

it's like to be a victim. So they don't

put in place the safeguards. It's so

competitive that it's just easier for

them to give money, some strategic money

to key people and ensure that they're

not regulated such that they can get to

be billionaires because all the

incentives are do whatever is required

to win. Sam Alman isn't going to be

remembered for being a good or a bad

guy. He's going to be remembered for the

guy who either was the number one AI

company or blew it. That's what he's

going to be remembered for. And right

now he's blowing it, it appears, right?

But people are going to look back and

say, "Well, he didn't get public.

Anthropic ended up being at worth more.

It was kind of a disappointment

financially, but he was a good guy."

That's not what he's going for. And

quite frankly, that's not what our

society rewards.

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I think your assessment of AI in terms

of it creating more opportunity than it

destroys is accurate. I also think that

in the near term and all of our lives

are going to be quite quite different. I

spend a lot of time on this podcast. We

talk we've spoken to a lot of the big

CEOs from AI companies and tried to pass

through this and I've never really

gotten to a solid a solid conclusion of

what the future looks like. But um do

you have a a a case for the future where

this technology is the first that

actually delivers on the promise of

making us more human? There's talk about

loneliness. There's talk, you know,

algorithms are going to get get more

attentive. But I have this like thesis

that potentially, you know, social

networking say it's going to connect us

and make us more human. That's kind of

the narrative of all these tools. But

maybe this technology renders us only

useful for that which humans can do,

which is the relationships thing you

were talking about and connection and

being out touching grass with our

friends and family. Is there a utopia

>> just with social media has some real

upsides? I would argue at this point

meta is actually a net negative. It's I

think done so much damage.

>> But with AI, there's a lot of upsides. A

really encouraging piece of data I saw

is that when you spend time on social

media, it takes you to the extremes. The

algorithms see money and more Nissan ads

in figuring out if you're conservative

or liberal and then demonizing the other

side and tickling your sensors. Right.

>> Yeah. I'll get served a video of Ted

Cruz or Victor Orban looking like an ass

because that I'm a progressive and that

makes me happy. And then they elevate

content of some progressive of AOC

calling out somebody and I start to hate

the other side. What they're finding

with AI is it's actually people who

spend more time in AI, it's actually

moderating their views because AI is

about uh taking the medium or the

average of every piece of data. Also, do

you notice how nice AI is?

>> Yeah,

>> great question, Stephen. You know, no

matter what you say or how stupid it is,

it won't say, "That's a really stupid

idea, Stephen." It'll say, "I can

understand why you're asking this

question." And generally speaking,

because it looks for the median of

things, it looks for the average. What

is the most often used seventh word

after these six words are strung

together?

>> Mh. [clears throat]

>> That it's pushing people towards the

middle. It's actually having a

moderating effect, which I find very

encouraging. I think old people in

senior care who maybe have lost family

members or don't have a lot of

relationships in their life, I can see

AI characters playing a big role in

their life. I believe for a long time

that the biggest danger of AI is not

weapons, it's not income inequality. We

voted for income inequality or

contamination of our elections. I mean,

all of these things are big issues. The

biggest downside of AI in my view is

loneliness. And that is, and we talk

about this a lot, AI is convincing

people they can have a reasonable

faximile of life on a screen with an

algorithm. Why go through the effort of

having friends when you have Discord and

Reddit? Why go through the hassle of

getting a job when you can make money on

Coinbase or Robin Hood supposedly? And

why would you go through the effort of

trying to have a romantic relationship

when you have lifelike synthetic porn?

And the young male brain, I think, is

especially susceptible to this. Men aged

20 to 30 are spending less time outdoors

in prison inmates. 42% of men 18 to 24

and we talked about this on your last

show have never asked a woman out in

person. So people are starting to

believe they can have a reasonable

faximile of life. And what they need to

know is that 40% of the S&P our economy

is trying to sequester you from the most

important and rewarding thing in your

life and that is your relationships. So

my prediction for America is we will

never be as prosperous. incredible

prosperity, incredible economic growth,

and massive loneliness, depression,

anxiety, and obesity.

>> I wanted to get your POV as well on all

this war stuff that's going on over in

the Middle East. What you thought Trump

was trying to do and actually what

happened because, you know, he's he's

talking about, oh, no, we said it would

be 6 weeks, it's 5 and a half weeks,

everything's going to plan. We're we're

winning the war. And I you're good at

seeing through things. What what

actually happened in your view here? I

think that he was talked into by some of

his security adviserss and Netanyahu

that his legacy could be restoring or

making the Middle East more peaceful and

being the the president that that

severely diminished the capacity of what

has been arguably the number one um

source of terror in the region and maybe

even around the world for a long time.

that this was his defining moment as a

president to go in that they were

weakened, they were hobbled and we had

the military assets and the intelligence

to go in and topple the regime and he

would be known as the president that

liberated the Middle East. I think he

bought into that

>> off the back of Venezuela.

>> Well,

>> which was a kind of a success.

>> Not kind of. That was arguably one of

the greatest military operations in

history, but it was a military

operation. It wasn't a war. I mean,

supposedly his guards didn't know what

happened. and all of a sudden they were

on the floor throwing up because there

was some sort of crazy radiation or

radio waves. Not a single American

soldier uh killed, lifted him out. I

mean that that was that was an

incredible operation. I think he got

drunk on that macho and that success and

thought well I can do the same thing.

And the problem with wars is that the

enemy has a say. And what we have found

since I think a lot of our leaders

believe that wars could ultimately if

you have a bigger army will result in

unconditional surrender on the other

side. And there really hasn't been

unconditional surrender since World War

II. And all the enemy needs to do

whether it's the Vietkong or the Taliban

or the IRGC, all they need to do is

survive and they win. In addition, I

would describe the war as being

operational excellence and strategic

incompetence. I actually believe there

was justification and some merit to the

idea of a military operation that tried

to take advantage of a weakened Iran

whose air defenses were down to take out

the IRGC or at least maybe provide cloud

cover for a revolution against the IRGC

to diminish their navy, diminish their