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Dec 8, 2024 ยท 2024 #44. Read the transcript grouped by speaker, inspect word-level timecodes, and optionally turn subtitles on for direct video playback
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Speaker 1
Hello, everybody. It is Sunday, December the 8th, 2024. Three days ago on Thursday, December the 5th, Donald Trump announced...
Speaker 2
that he will make David O. Sachs the White House AI and Crypto Czar, with a C, not an S, eh? C-Z-A-R. I'm not sure if that's a favor to his friend Vladimir Putin. Anyway, this appointment is on the cover of That Was The Week, the excellent technology newsletter put together by my friend Keith Teer. using his uh ai art has uh david sax dressed up i'm not sure as napoleon or some sort of general or czar uh keith uh is this a big deal what do you make of the
Speaker 3
appointment of uh of sax a czar is a king remember so well a russian king which is kind of king right yeah um I think it's dramatic, actually. I think David Sachs, it's dramatic for AI and it's dramatic for crypto. How dramatic it is for the average human being is an altogether different question. But for AI and crypto, it's massive. It gives him a lot of power in two fields that he's an investor in. And, you know, there is an argument that says he's conflicted, but I would take the other side of that and say he's knowledgeable. And therefore, what he's likely to do in crypto and AI probably is going to be door opening for both of those platforms. And
Speaker 3
It's only one day a week, by the way, so it's not a full-time role.
Speaker 2
Although for Silicon Valley titans, moguls like Sachs, I'm assuming one day a week is probably about 300 hours.
Speaker 2
It's almost as if when we were thinking about the dot-com boom, it's almost as if Bill Clinton appointed... Jerry Yang as head of the internet. Of course, that didn't happen. Is this symbolic, Keith? I know you touch on this in your editorial this week, that Silicon Valley has now formally arrived in Washington DC, maybe thinking of that Russian czar. They've occupied Berlin or they've occupied Paris.
Speaker 3
I think part of Silicon Valley has. There's a lot of Silicon Valley that is still appalled and will focus on the downside of all this. Probably the majority of Silicon Valley will focus on the downside. But I think an increasing number of people are focusing on the upside, me included, and I see others doing the same. So I think it has arrived. More important than that is that government and industry... The relationship today has been a lobbying relationship where industry lobbies government and politicians and industry don't really think together about solving problems. This is more profound for the fact that that is changing. Trump is open to taking people in the know and putting them in positions of authority. Of course, they can't do anything without his approval.
Speaker 2
Right, although some people might say his expertise is bringing people not in the know to power. Tell me more about Sachs. I know there was an interesting piece a couple of months ago by Simon Cooper, a South African born, or certainly his father was South African, FT columnist, excellent writer, who... seem to think that Sachs and Musk as ex-South African people were somehow a reflection of apartheid thinking. I know you strongly disagree with this, but Sachs does have a South African background.
Speaker 3
Yeah, I mean, the right answer to that is and dot, dot, dot. So what? I mean, he's, I'd say he's a fairly average Silicon Valley entrepreneur.
Speaker 2
I don't think- Well, he's a bit more than average, Keith. He's one of the, for better or worse, you may not like him or you may love him, but he's one of the stars. He's one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 3
Well, Silicon Valley isn't average. So to say that he's average doesn't mean he's average in a world sense. But within Silicon Valley, he's certainly not an Elon Musk.
Speaker 2
Well, there's only one Elon Musk. But he's below. I mean, if they're the top rank, he's the next rank below, isn't he?
Speaker 3
Not really. I mean, look, what did he actually do? He built Yammer, which was a copy of another piece of software called Twitter, and he customized it to enterprise use. It never really took off. Microsoft bought it and eventually closed it down. So he's not exactly a product genius, but he made a lot of money doing things at the right time. And he's clever. So he's leveraged that into influence and investing. And it is true to say that by now, he's climbed the ladder to be quite important. I even think the All In podcast has been a fantastic platform for him. That podcast is- Yeah,
Speaker 2
would you put him on the same level as Jason Calacanis and Chamath, his fellow podcasters on All In?
Speaker 3
If I was to rank the All In, it probably would be Chamath first, David second, Sachs third. Sorry, I don't mean, I mean David Friedberg or Friedberg, I hope you pronounce that. David Sachs third and Jason, who really doesn't even claim to be in that group. He's more of a compere, a very good one as well, at the bottom. So I want to say this just because what Sachs has achieved doesn't require crazy success. He's achieved it through deliberative work, hard work, modest success transformed into great success when he became an investor. And he's just a, I think he's a regular guy in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2
How does he compare with Andreessen?
Speaker 3
I mean, Andreessen seems to be celebrating this appointment. Not even close. Andreessen's way ahead of him.
Speaker 2
But what he's done, and this might reflect for some people just pure political opportunism, others a dark political agenda. Is he bet on Trump early? Is that fair?
Speaker 3
Well, he believes in it. That's why. He's a pretty much a straight line conservative when it comes to government and spending.
Speaker 2
When you say believes in it, does that mean he believes in rounding up immigrants? He seems to.
Speaker 3
I mean, if you listen to him, he actually seems to believe in that. Not because he's racist, but because he thinks you need to border that's under control and people who got across it because it was weak shouldn't be able to stay. So he's not exactly racist as much as he is operational and about it. So he's not like a fascist or even a right-wing racist, but he is a believer in borders.
Speaker 2
Yeah, you can be a believer in borders and be a progressive. In your editorial, Keith, and we're going to get to the Henry Farrell piece, a political scientist who analyzes what he believes is the shift in Silicon Valley to the right. But you say that Musk and Sachs are not on the right wing. Now, let's leave Musk out of it because we're talking this week about Sachs. We always talk about Musk. And I'm quoting you here. You say, they believe in progress and see capitalism as capable of delivering if it is freed from regulatory straitjacket. I mean, even if that's true, and some people would argue, that makes them right wing. I mean, you just use these terms to suit yourself.
Speaker 3
Well, I define, firstly, as you know, I don't really like the labels left and right wing.
Speaker 2
So I was probably- Yeah, but you're using it in the editorial.
Speaker 3
I am, yeah, yeah. So, and I'm probably wrong to have done that based on who I am, but I did it anyway. You might be right, Keith. My measure, if those labels were to survive, my measure is all to do with humanism. That is to say, what is the best outcome for human beings? And I don't think anyone who cares about that can be labeled right wing. Now, you can disagree about their journey, their pathway, their plans, their manifesto or whatever. But if their goal is humanistic, they're not right wing.
Speaker 2
Humanism is some vague concept. Everyone claims to be a humanist, except a few Marxist people. French philosophers? I mean, who isn't a humanist?
Speaker 3
What I mean by humanism is that you want the rising tide to lift all boats, and you don't want the concentration of wealth in a few hands. And you probably see a post-capitalist future driven by AI and automation. But right now, that requires capitalism.
Speaker 2
So you don't mention Reid Hoffman in this, and there have been a lot of pieces about the money from Silicon Valley going to Harris. Is there any, in your mind, ideological distinction between a Reid Hoffman or a Chris Sacker and a David Sachs?
Speaker 3
The main difference is the how to get there, not where we're going. So I do think there are differences about how to get there. You know, I was watching Meet the Press this morning and Trump was interviewed and talking about health. And it occurred to me that he should actually recruit Mark Cuban and Reid Hoffman into his office. group because they would contribute something, especially Cuban on health, where Trump's goal is better health delivered more cheaply, which is exactly Cuban's goal.
Speaker 2
Although I'm not sure Cuban or Hoffman would particularly want to work with JFK Jr. That's another story. That might be an interesting... It would depend on what influence they had.
Speaker 3
I mean, I don't think Reid would say no to influence if it was real. So I think the question is, is it real? And maybe this is a first for this podcast, Andrew, but let's propose it. Bring in Cuban and Hoffman inside the tent and give them some authority.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, the last thing I read about Hoffman is he was considering leaving the country because he feared retribution. It'll be interesting to see which side of Donald Trump We see whether it's the revengeful side or the more creative side. It's way too early to tell.
Speaker 3
Just for what it's worth, he did commit this morning on the record to not seek retribution. The exact phrase was being successful will be the best retribution.
Speaker 2
Yeah, we will see, Keith. But let's talk about this shift to the right. One of the links you have is Marc Andreessen suggesting that, and I'm quoting him here, big tech spent a decade doing everything possible to be the best conceivable progressive ally. They got treated with utter contempt, pounded daily, crucified in return. He's using some Christian language there. A full rethinking is required. So Andreessen is calling for... silicon valley response or pivot if you like to the right um henry farrell a washington dc based an influential political scientist has a piece that you link to why did silicon valley turn right so there is a growing consensus that silicon valley has turned right i know you've got these rather odd definitions of what right and left wing is but but but something's going on in silicon valley there's something in the political water isn't there
Speaker 3
Yeah, I mean, I think Andreessen's thing you could just take as, you know, bitter narrative,
Speaker 2
but I think the- I think it's multi-billionaires. I never quite understand why a man of Andreessen's power and wealth success should be so bitter, but that's another story.
Speaker 3
Well, he's basically a child in a man's body when it comes to these fights. And, you know, it is what it is. Actually, I'm not against him for being like that. It's honest. It's who he is. Mask is the same, isn't he?
Speaker 2
Mask is Andreessen with hair and children.
Speaker 3
Yeah, but, you know, that's fine. But Farrell's a bit different. And what Farrell does is he questions the default narrative, which is that the Valley is reacting against the Democratic Party for being so anti-tech. And he says that something more profound is going on.
Speaker 2
Yeah, he talks about the end of what he calls, and I'm not sure if this is his term, the Silicon Valley consensus.
Speaker 3
Yeah, and you do see that. I mean, it's hard in these moments to understand what the future might look like. But the present contains, you know, backward looking romantics who yearn for a Silicon Valley as it was. I'm a bit bit one of those I kind of look back to when I first came here, and I kind of feel good about it. And it feels less certain now. And there's those who look forward to a much more influential, operational execution driven, Andreessen's American dynamism is a good example of that thinking. So in the present, there's a bit of a fight between backward looking and forward looking views. And the forward looking ones are characterized as right wing. I don't think they are right wing, but that's how they're characterized. And I think a political framing anyway is wrong. I think it's more of a technical term.
Speaker 2
Coming back to this term right wing, it's a term for you that's bad. And you seem to think that anyone who believes in progress is good. So what is a right? Give me an example of someone who's right wing.
Speaker 3
I would characterize right wing. Well, firstly, I don't like the label, so it's hard for me to answer. Let's pretend I do. I associate right wing with wanting to freeze privilege and protect it.
Speaker 2
And there are, and this is not a political show, but there are a lot of people who argue that... Silicon Valley has arrived in Washington DC, Musk, Sachs, Andreessen, and they will use the Trump regime to simply amass more economic power, protect their own privilege, their own monopolies. I mean, that is a credible argument, Keith, isn't it? It may not be right, but there is some evidence for that.
Speaker 3
Yeah, but when you know these people, Andrew, they don't think about their own privilege at all. They're not kind of kings with a moat and a castle wondering how to survive. They literally are thinking, what can I do next?
Speaker 2
The dominant thought- Yeah, no, I take that point. But I mean, I think your point earlier is a good one, that the age of Silicon Valley spending money on DC lobbying is finished. So in the old days, Google and Facebook and Amazon would have big offices in D.C. where they would pay lobbyists to influence government. Now the big guns have arrived. So they're not formal lobbyists. But when Musk or Saks, well, particularly Musk, when he sits in a meeting about government efficiency, There has to be some element in his mind that suggests this would be good for my network, for my wealth, for my interests. Or do you think he just doesn't even think in those terms?
Speaker 3
I think only people who don't have anything think like that. If you have something, You are not defensive. You've learned from your experience that doing things produces value. And you focus on what to do next. And so the whole critique of these people as being self-serving comes from people who have nothing and probably would be self-serving if they were in that position.
Speaker 2
So you're suggesting that having great wealth makes you less selfish.
Speaker 3
It's almost... Not having wealth. Having created wealth from doing things. It's very different.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, I had Jeff Jarvis on my show this week who has this weird argument, in my view at least, that Murdoch's behind a lot of the anti-Silicon Valley sentiment because he's against the internet. Would you include press barons like Murdoch in that kind of camp, or are they different?
Speaker 3
I think the old money, if you will, is much more close to what you described as being self-serving. and Murdoch's definitely part of that. Now, he did build things, and he did get wealthy through building things, but he's not a person who understands how to build the future. So if you can't build the future...
Speaker 2
Yeah, but building the future, Keith, sounds like a TED talk. I mean, what exactly does that mean?
Speaker 3
Well, it means taking all of the advances in human capability and putting them together into new things that serve us collectively.
Speaker 2
Right, but, you know, this, we've been through so many cycles of this. I'll give you an example. You talk about building the future with Facebook. I mean, a lot of people argue that that didn't build a particularly good future.
Speaker 3
Well, I think there's a nuanced understanding there. I mean, look, bottom line, Murdoch didn't create YouTube. He didn't create Substack or anything close to those.
Speaker 2
And he didn't even buy some. I mean, he bought, which one did he buy that failed?
Speaker 3
Yeah, exactly. And Zuckerberg, to his credit, has produced Lama, which is a world-class AI model that you can download for free. So it isn't as if Zuckerberg isn't contributing to the future. He really is. But he also did 3D face masks that probably represent a dead end. at least for...
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, we all know the one model of Silicon Valley is you fail, you fail fast and you go on to the next thing. I wonder if you took, I'm just thinking out loud, if you took David Sachs and, say, Reid Hoffman, to the Tenderloin in San Francisco and saw these medieval tableaus of armies of people living in the street, drug addicts, crazy people. I wonder what each of their response would be. Would they be responding differently? I mean, San Francisco is a notoriously ungovernable place and nobody seems to be able to fix this. But how do you think each of them would respond?
Speaker 3
Hard question, Andrew.
Speaker 2
Well, we'll have to do it.
Speaker 3
I'll offer to drive them. Just to give an attempted answer, I think there is a consensus amongst that group that the cause of San Francisco's tenderloin is the Democratic administration's reluctance to address it. And so they'd probably start with policies and politics, not the consequence, but the cause. I actually think that's a mistake. I think the cause is even deeper than that, which is to do with where America is at. And to change that, you need to turn around America's fortunes. But I think San Francisco has both local causes, but they're also macro causes.
Speaker 2
yeah well we maybe we'll do a whole show on that you link to some there's some very very good uh pieces in this week's newsletter one by clay shirky we haven't heard from clay shirky for for a number of years he sort of disappeared i had a few emails with him he was one of the most influential writers and thinkers within the digital progressive movement he had an interesting op-ed in the new york times this week the fragility of blue skies difference And I'm quoting him here. He said, liberals moving away from X are giving up on the 20th century ideal of a public square. Are progressives falling into the nostalgia trap? I mean, Clay is a progressive, but a very smart one. Are networks like Blue Sky essentially attempts to return to the Twitter of 2008?
Speaker 3
No. Well, Twitter of 2008 never existed. Twitter was always pretty open. It's just that the early adopters were technically savvy people.
Speaker 2
But also, there was a lot of agreement, a lot of... There was agreement about... When I was on it, or at least actively on it.
Speaker 3
Well, there was agreement about technology. I don't know if there was any real political discussion in those days, to be honest. But I think Clay Shurky's sentence you read out is the best sentence in the piece. I'm not sure the whole piece really stands up, but that sentence does. And I would question the word progressives. I think it's identitarians, people who are believers in identity politics and believers in seeing the world through the eyes of minorities, not everyone. can't stand being in Twitter because they get offended that there are different points of view there. And so they're seeking a space where they can meet themselves. Shirky makes the point that the people they don't like are going to show up sooner or later if it's successful, and they're going to have to deal with it. And so the real underlying question that Shirky puts on the table is, how do you deal with difference of opinion in a world of digital
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, I went on Blue Sky because everybody else went on after with me. It's really annoying because it's just echo chamber. I mean, maybe it's the people I follow. I'm not even sure why I follow them, but echo chamber progressivism, not a lot of debate. Let's just quickly go back to Henry Farrell. He's a man of the left. What does he want? Is there anything in his piece that suggests this is what we want? We know what Trump wants. We know what David Sachs wants. We know what Marc Andreessen wants. And they're getting it certainly for the next four years. There is the sort of the reactionary progressives who simply want to go back to 1998 or 2008, which, of course, is impossible.
Speaker 2
Farrell seems a little more intelligent. Is there anything constructive in his argument about what progressives should embrace in this new world?
Speaker 3
I don't think there's anything as precise as a list of things, but there is a kind of a reading between the lines narrative, which is roughly that Democrats need to re-embrace their neoliberal stance that he describes on markets and trade. And they need to understand the new intellectual frameworks for thinking about the world and America's place in it and the role of technology in shaping that in a positive narrative, not a negative one. So there's implied reading between the lines stuff.
Speaker 2
But in other words, he's not really saying because he doesn't know. I mean, we're living in and that's to me, the Trump narrative is interesting, of course. But what's really interesting is that the left or progressive, they don't seem to understand the dramatic historical moment. Maureen, one of your other links is from somebody called Mark Daly. I'd never heard of him. I actually subscribed after the link to his sub stack in which he asks, he's a university person, what if intelligence were free? And he imagines the end of intelligence, what he calls this post- anthropocentric intelligence paradigm. Now, maybe it's an exaggeration, but there's some truth to that in the AI age. Maybe it's a post-work world, but progressives don't... They seem to want to just simply avoid it and go back to the cheerful certainties of Kamala Harris.
Speaker 3
Yeah, it's a very good piece. It mirrors a previous conversation we had, Andrew, about... when we talked about specialisms being taken care of by AI and generalists being more and more important, in a way he's mirroring the same thing. He's basically saying that, and his focus is education, that higher education, university education,
Speaker 3
will be commoditized by AI. Whether the actual degree will be commoditized is more of a business question, but the process of learning will be commoditized and therefore professors and seminars and lectures will decline in value. And, you know, question mark, what does that mean?
Speaker 2
Yeah, and I'm quoting him here, all these, when he says, prestigious fellowships, methodological mastery, even the PhD itself become risks. And it's in this age where so many people are sceptical of expertise. So there's these weird historical forces going on. On the one hand, there's this reaction against expertise. On the other hand, there's this technology which undermines expertise. And it's no coincidence that perhaps the two frontline leaders sectors that are going to be decimated by this at first are healthcare and academia, which are the most vulnerable, but also speak to the old regime. This is the week, of course, where somebody assassinated one of the senior executives at a healthcare insurance company in New York, and there was considerable glee and delight on the internet.
Speaker 3
Yeah, that was kind of disgusting, I thought.
Speaker 2
But interesting as well, Keith. And interesting. It speaks to our times.
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, agreed. Look, I wouldn't use the word decimated, Andrew, the way you did. I would say that's an open question. It could be the right word. I hope the right word is modernized and reinvented or reimagined, because that's certainly possible. Decimated is what happens in the absence of imagination. where you're just seeking to save costs. And that, I do think, is Elon Musk's weak blind spot, is he's more focused on saving money than he is on reimagining and reinventing. But I hope that's wrong. I hope his tech genes kick in and he reimagines and reinvents. And so as I put my finger on the pulse every week and see which way the wind is blowing, I'm looking for signs of modernization, re-imagination. And that essay about intelligence certainly contributes towards that if read in the right way. It could be read in a completely different way as well, I agree.
Speaker 2
Yes, it's certainly not the last we hear of it. You've been very kind to make... keen on interview as the interview of the week. This week, I chose Mitchell Baker, who is the woman behind Mozilla. She's an Internet Hall of Famer. It's an interesting interview, although in a sense, in my view, at least a little bit depressing because she is also part of an old world and she doesn't seem to really have an answer to which way we go now. Another of the interviews that I didn't choose, which was also interesting, was with Stanford's Steve Blank, who's a thinker on military stuff. And you have a link to a piece he wrote, How to Flip the Script, Beat China and Russia and Fix the Broken Department of Defense. For Blank, the Pentagon is like the universities and healthcare and needs to be fundamentally reformed. So that speaks... of our radical moment, Keith, doesn't it?
Speaker 3
It does. It does. And Steve Blank is a super clever guy. I didn't watch her interview. Maybe you can say something about what he said. Well, everybody to watch.
Speaker 2
I'm not going to give it away. People watch. It was episode 2262, and I entitled it Steve Blank on how to hack the 21st century. In an odd way, I mean, if I was going to be unkind to Mitchell Baker, hers was on how to hack the 20th century.
Speaker 3
So Blank is basically saying the Department of Defense has to allow civilians to control innovation in warfare, which is kind of interesting. He's basically saying that the permanent secretariat of the Department of Defense and the political heads aren't capable of understanding what's possible. And in order to succeed, they need to bring in civilians, like Palantir, one would guess, or the other guys have got their name, beginning with an A.
Speaker 2
Peter Thiel, and another A. I know you don't like this term, but most people describe them as very rivaling.
Speaker 3
Yeah, but that's another sign of this big overarching theme of... government and industry working together.
Speaker 2
Well, that's the euphemism. But actually, it's just as David Sachs has arrived in DC, it's Peter Thiel and the Palantir guys arriving in DC, arriving in the Pentagon. and reshaping it. There's a book actually called Unit X written by a couple of Silicon Valley based technologists, which is on the FT shortlist of best business books of the year. I think it's going to win it. It's perfectly timed. It's a very good book about this experiment of creating what they call Unit X within the Pentagon that imports Silicon Valley thinking and technology into how run But for some people, of course, Keith, this is really chilling. I mean, we rely or we trust government to make the right decisions. Do we want Teal or Musk or somebody else, Marc Andreessen, to be deciding whether or not we go to war?
Speaker 3
I don't think they'll be deciding, but I think they'll be contributing thinking to the question of how and what. Not whether to go to war, but how and what, what with. And, you know, you kind of want the best, the minds that are most aware of current possibilities to be answering.
Speaker 2
The best and the brightest. I remember that term, Keith, from the 60s, Robert McNamara, and it was him and those kind of smart people, quote unquote, who dragged America into Vietnam.
Speaker 3
Well, look, I'm an unashamed globalist. I don't believe nation states should go to war. And I think the human race would be best served at a global level by figuring out the better use of resources. But I'm also aware that's an idealistic point of view that isn't likely to happen anytime soon. So then you want to make sure the backward looking trends in the world don't succeed.
Speaker 2
Yeah, and in a way, it's been such an odd week. Remember all the hysteria over the Arab Spring? Clay Shirky was one of the people who argued that. This week, the Assad Syrian regime collapsed in about a day, and there's no celebration on the left. Mark Zuckerberg isn't claiming victory. Nobody's claiming victory because no one knows what's going to happen next. So we're living in... And I'm usually a bit skeptical of saying these sorts of things, but we're living in particularly... and whether you call it exciting or turbulent times.
Speaker 3
Well, not to shock our audience, but, and I don't know enough, I'm dangerous in this area, but let's just say my uneducated, instinctive set of thoughts is that Assad is a little bit like Saddam Hussein, that is to say a Ba'athist, a secular leader, And the rebels, in quotes, which always you imagine when the word rebel is said, these are good people, better than the people they're replacing. But historically in the Middle East, the rebels have been backward looking Muslim fundamentalists who, once they get in power, end up creating an even worse situation. I don't know about these rebels. I know nothing about them. But I would certainly want to ask the question, who are they?
Speaker 2
Yeah, they could be much worse than Assad. Meanwhile, we've always been warned by the Biden administration of how, and by Trump, of the Iranians and the Russians and Hezbollah, but they don't seem to be able to even maintain the Assad regime. Anyway, this is not a politics issue. A start-up of the week, Keith, and your old friend Elon Musk features here. Of course, his SpaceX is exhibit one in terms of how private organizations are replacing state organizations like NASA. XAI landed $6 billion of new cash to fuel the AI ambitions. Is XAI, is it an also run here or is it a real player in the AI race?
Speaker 3
I think it is. This will shock you, Andrew. And I say this having listened to this week's All In podcast that had two new members, one of whom was highly educated on what's going on at XAI. I think it may be ChatGPT's first genuine replacement.
Speaker 2
What Musk has done... You're the one who doesn't even believe it's conceivable to compete with OpenAI. You've been talking about it as a multi-trillion dollar company.
Speaker 3
Nothing I'm saying now probably changes that, but it does mean there may be more than one. What XAI has done by buying 100,000 GPUs from NVIDIA,
Speaker 3
is solved a problem no one else could solve. What happens is these things are neural networks. And what that means is every node has to talk to every other node. So if you have 100,000 nodes, each one has to talk to the other 99,900 in real time. And that's a massive networking communications problem. How do you link them together? And how do you get enough bandwidth that they can talk to each other in real time? everyone thought it was impossible, and Musk did it in 90 days. No one knows how, apart from the insiders, but it seems like he's successful. And he's now stating that he's going to go to a million nodes, not 100,000. And if he does that, the ability of XAI will...
Speaker 3
be far ahead, one assumes, assuming the scaling laws work, which they may or may not, far ahead of what ChatGP can do. And everyone else apparently is going around trying to figure out how he did it and whether they can copy it.
Speaker 2
And also in this context, this comes back to politics. You have a piece from Fortune, which is entitled by Sharon Goldman, Open AI's Nightmare, what David Sachs' AIs are and Elon Musk's wingman could mean for Altman's 157 billion startup. I'm guessing that Altman isn't particularly thrilled. with the power of people, certainly Musk and Sachs. What's Altman's doing on the Trump front? And how are they dealing with all this uncertainty?
Speaker 3
He did a one word tweet afterwards saying congratulations to Sachs, which I assume means he's got to go and kiss some ass. I wouldn't want to kiss David Sachs's ass.
Speaker 2
That's my personal preference.
Speaker 3
Yeah. But anyway, I think it's going to be super hard for Sachs and Musk to pursue their personal gripes with OpenAI through these positions. Musk is pursuing it through the courts, though, aggressively, and he probably will continue. We do have a question from the audience, Andrew. Do you think that anthropic is relevant in the AI race?
Speaker 2
That's a key tier question. You seem to still be a little bullish on anthropic.
Speaker 3
Yeah, this person says that their coding experience, writing code, seems to be the best. I told Andrew off screen earlier, I've spent the week building a CRM app for SignalRank using Cursor and Anthropics 3.5 Sonnet model. And I built an entire CRM that normally would have taken three engineers a month. I did it myself in a week and it's up and running and my team are using it. So I think Anthropics is fantastic. I think ultimately that level of capability is going to be commoditized. And, you know, I'm running a Lama $70 billion 3.3 model on my local machine, and it can code as well as Claude. So I do think we're in a world of abundance when it comes to... It's a remarkable week.
Speaker 2
I mean, it's also that we haven't even talked about this, where Bitcoin hit $100,000.
Speaker 2
and the US Treasury named Bitcoin Digital Gold. We haven't got time to talk about it. You don't have that many links, but that's also profoundly changing everything, particularly in terms of government power and the Federal Reserve. Finally, Keith, let's go back to your friends at OpenAI. You've always been very bullish, and you're post of the week is from somebody called sally omar and he talks about o2 pro o1 pro open ai's o1 pro the best model i've used for coding hands down uh you've talked uh about um anthropic uh what about open ai's o1 is this a big deal um i
Speaker 3
started using it this weekend um Too early for me to have an opinion, to be honest. But this guy, Sully, is a very trustworthy commentator. So I think it's likely to be really good.
Speaker 2
He's not the guy who brought the plane down. This is a different Sully, right?
Speaker 3
Yeah. By the way, we knew that Open Eye was at $3.5 billion, saying they were going to get to $11 billion in revenue next year. They've increased the price of their top model to $200 a month. Yeah, I saw that. From 20. And I think people will pay it. I mean, with wearing my Stiglerank hat, I'll be pretty happy if it's as good as he says to pay $200 a month.
Speaker 2
So what do you get for 200? Is it only for programmers like yourself, or is it for ordinary people like you?
Speaker 3
You get a more... more computer resources for reasoning in quotes, which of course isn't really reasoning, but we know what it is.
Speaker 2
There was a piece this week, you didn't cite it, I don't think I sent it to you, about OpenAI also experimenting with advertising.
Speaker 3
They haven't experimented with it, but they said that you shouldn't assume they'll never have it. I think they're going to make so much money without advertising that it'd be stupid if they did.
Speaker 2
Well, it's been quite a week, Keith. That was the week. That was an astonishing week, and I think it will continue. I see no reason why anything's going to slow down, do you think?
Speaker 3
What does it mean for your book on America, Andrew? What's your framing in your head?
Speaker 2
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I'm optimistic about America, but every week it changes. Every week, I don't want to seem as a... a supporter of Sachs or Musk, but certainly what they're doing is interesting. I mean, I think it has to be acknowledged and that progressives need to come up with an alternative, which isn't just a reaction going back to strong government or the certainty of the 20th century, because that's just not going to work.
Speaker 3
Yep, agreed.
Speaker 2
Well, we will see, Keith. I expect more big news next week. Maybe the entire world economy will collapse. Maybe Bitcoin will go from $100,000 to $1. We will see.
Speaker 2
But much to discuss. Have a great week, Keith. And we will talk again next week. Bye, everyone.
Speaker 1
That was a week.
Speaker
That was a week. Stand back. Think big.
Speaker 1
That was a week.