Growing Up?

Andrew Keen (00:00:19):
Hello, everybody.

Andrew Keen (00:00:19):
It's Saturday, the 28th of March, 2026.

Andrew Keen (00:00:24):
As always, I'm talking to you from San Francisco.

Andrew Keen (00:00:28):
Saturday, as always,

Andrew Keen (00:00:30):
that was the weekday our summary of tech news two big trials uh in california on

Andrew Keen (00:00:35):
the west coast uh this week one in which meta and youtube were found negligent uh

Andrew Keen (00:00:43):
are in big trouble they were fined uh campaigners were thrilled women hugged one

Andrew Keen (00:00:49):
another outside the court

Andrew Keen (00:00:52):
Meanwhile,

Andrew Keen (00:00:52):
down the coast in San Francisco,

Andrew Keen (00:00:56):
a federal judge granted Anthropic an emergency reprieve from the Pentagon's

Andrew Keen (00:01:02):
unprecedented designation of the company as a supply chain risk,

Andrew Keen (00:01:08):
although this morning Politico came out with a piece suggesting that Anthropic is

Andrew Keen (00:01:13):
still in trouble.

Andrew Keen (00:01:14):
And in terms of these two court cases, Keith Teer

Andrew Keen (00:01:18):
has focused on the anthropic case for his editorial and for his focus of the week.

Andrew Keen (00:01:25):
Keith, you barely mentioned this meta YouTube thing.

Andrew Keen (00:01:30):
Do you just think it's irrelevant?

Andrew Keen (00:01:31):
Do you think it doesn't matter?

Keith Teare (00:01:33):
I think it's a small issue.

Keith Teare (00:01:37):
I mean, if you look at the fines levied, it was like $3 million times two.

Keith Teare (00:01:43):
So $6 million in the big picture.

Keith Teare (00:01:48):
It's a nothing event from the point of view, but obviously that's measuring in money.

Keith Teare (00:01:55):
If you measure it in opinion, I think it is quite a big event.

Keith Teare (00:02:00):
I think the issue is addiction.

Andrew Keen (00:02:05):
Right.

Andrew Keen (00:02:06):
That's why I thought I was expecting your editorial this week actually to be all

Andrew Keen (00:02:11):
about that because I know you don't see much of this technology in terms of its...

Andrew Keen (00:02:17):
addictive dangers.

Andrew Keen (00:02:19):
So I was struck with how much you might have objected to the decision of the jury.

Keith Teare (00:02:26):
Well, I do think it's intentionally addictive.

Andrew Keen (00:02:33):
You mean from that YouTube and Meta and all the others are designing these products

Andrew Keen (00:02:37):
to be addictive?

Keith Teare (00:02:39):
Yeah,

Keith Teare (00:02:39):
I mean,

Keith Teare (00:02:39):
their entire business model is about monetizing engagement,

Keith Teare (00:02:43):
and you can't get engagement unless people are compelled to engage.

Keith Teare (00:02:47):
So,

Keith Teare (00:02:48):
you know,

Keith Teare (00:02:48):
by definition,

Keith Teare (00:02:50):
just like TV,

Keith Teare (00:02:51):
by the way,

Keith Teare (00:02:51):
and newspapers,

Keith Teare (00:02:52):
they're also designed to be addictive.

Keith Teare (00:02:54):
They just fail.

Keith Teare (00:02:56):
um any any media business so any product then is designed to be so in the way

Andrew Keen (00:03:01):
you're you're you're you're arguing this anything whether it's a a piece of cake or

Andrew Keen (00:03:07):
a car or the infinite scroll on on social media they're all addicted there's no

Keith Teare (00:03:13):
difference between any of them yeah i mean look if the world is about supply and

Keith Teare (00:03:18):
demand

Keith Teare (00:03:19):
you try to boost demand for your product.

Keith Teare (00:03:21):
That's a given, right?

Keith Teare (00:03:22):
I mean, you wouldn't be a very good product manager if you didn't.

Keith Teare (00:03:26):
So addiction is successful demand management.

Keith Teare (00:03:32):
And every single product manager, no matter what the product is, is seeking to achieve that.

Keith Teare (00:03:37):
And that,

Keith Teare (00:03:38):
I don't even think that's to do with capitalism,

Keith Teare (00:03:40):
although it is also to do with capitalism.

Keith Teare (00:03:44):
And that, you know,

Keith Teare (00:03:47):
in social media, they've gotten better and better.

Keith Teare (00:03:50):
The recent experiences of scrolling through short videos is relatively recent.

Keith Teare (00:03:57):
But it's just the latest incarnation of those attempts.

Keith Teare (00:04:04):
So the real question is, why do we consumers get addicted?

Keith Teare (00:04:09):
And the reason we get addicted is nuanced.

Keith Teare (00:04:12):
There's a lot of

Keith Teare (00:04:14):
possible discussion points inside of there,

Keith Teare (00:04:18):
you know,

Keith Teare (00:04:18):
typically,

Keith Teare (00:04:18):
the more alienated you are from other things,

Keith Teare (00:04:22):
the more you will glue on to the things that amuse you or please you or feed your

Keith Teare (00:04:29):
your need to have a pleasure zone.

Keith Teare (00:04:32):
And so you could say there's a direct correlation between

Keith Teare (00:04:38):
the current zeitgeist for especially younger people,

Keith Teare (00:04:42):
where the received wisdom is they won't be as wealthy as their parents and the

Keith Teare (00:04:49):
ability to be addicted to trivial things.

Keith Teare (00:04:54):
What's really hard,

Keith Teare (00:04:55):
and this is where I really think the jury was wrong,

Keith Teare (00:04:58):
is to blame social media for the underlying alienation and the consequences of it.

Keith Teare (00:05:06):
They feed off it for sure, and they're expert at doing that, but they don't cause it.

Andrew Keen (00:05:12):
Yeah,

Andrew Keen (00:05:14):
and as you know,

Andrew Keen (00:05:14):
my wife runs litigation at Google,

Andrew Keen (00:05:17):
who are on YouTube,

Andrew Keen (00:05:19):
so she was heavily involved.

Andrew Keen (00:05:20):
She was down at the trial for the closing arguments.

Andrew Keen (00:05:24):
And I think that was the Google YouTube argument,

Andrew Keen (00:05:27):
of course,

Andrew Keen (00:05:27):
that the woman involved in this case,

Andrew Keen (00:05:31):
her life had been pretty much ruined by a bullying,

Andrew Keen (00:05:33):
abusive father and mother and sister and everything else that could possibly go

Andrew Keen (00:05:38):
wrong before she ever saw YouTube or Meta for that matter.

Andrew Keen (00:05:43):
Keith,

Andrew Keen (00:05:43):
I know you've got a family friend who was on the other side arguing from Stanford

Andrew Keen (00:05:49):
Medical School,

Andrew Keen (00:05:50):
we won't mention names,

Andrew Keen (00:05:52):
a psychologist.

Andrew Keen (00:05:54):
Are the therapists only adding to the problem here?

Andrew Keen (00:06:01):
Do you reject any kind of psychological analysis of the addictive qualities of

Andrew Keen (00:06:08):
social media,

Andrew Keen (00:06:08):
the infinite scroll?

Andrew Keen (00:06:10):
Do you just think that that's irrelevant?

Keith Teare (00:06:13):
Well,

Keith Teare (00:06:14):
look,

Keith Teare (00:06:14):
I think,

Keith Teare (00:06:15):
and I'm very close to that friend,

Keith Teare (00:06:17):
this person I like a lot,

Keith Teare (00:06:20):
but we disagree and we talk about it openly.

Keith Teare (00:06:23):
And she was an expert witness for the prosecution.

Keith Teare (00:06:28):
And look, she imagines a world in which humans are perfect.

Keith Teare (00:06:36):
And then she measures actual humans against that paradigm.

Keith Teare (00:06:41):
And then she diagnoses why they're not perfect.

Keith Teare (00:06:46):
And so for her,

Keith Teare (00:06:47):
the world is a constant effort to achieve perfection in human beings who are not

Keith Teare (00:06:53):
dopamine addicts.

Keith Teare (00:06:55):
And her root cause is dopamine.

Keith Teare (00:06:58):
And what produces dopamine is the things you get addicted to.

Keith Teare (00:07:02):
And so she covers a whole spectrum of things,

Keith Teare (00:07:04):
not just social media,

Keith Teare (00:07:06):
drugs and alcohol and everything.

Keith Teare (00:07:08):
So

Keith Teare (00:07:13):
clearly,

Keith Teare (00:07:15):
if you go back in the history of all human history,

Keith Teare (00:07:19):
you're going to find that humans are not perfect.

Andrew Keen (00:07:22):
And you're rejecting any kind of

Andrew Keen (00:07:26):
Psychological analysis or investigation?

Keith Teare (00:07:29):
No, I'm not.

Keith Teare (00:07:31):
I'm not doing that.

Keith Teare (00:07:32):
I think it clearly can be damaging to a person to be addicted to social media.

Keith Teare (00:07:38):
I don't have TikTok on my phone for good reasons.

Keith Teare (00:07:41):
Because if I do, I will look at it and I waste time.

Keith Teare (00:07:43):
So I take it off.

Keith Teare (00:07:45):
So clearly there's an area of knowledge and activity there that's completely legitimate.

Keith Teare (00:07:54):
But it's a little bit like a labor of Sisyphus,

Keith Teare (00:07:59):
as in humans are always gonna find distractions for their alienation.

Keith Teare (00:08:05):
And if it isn't one thing, it'll be another thing.

Keith Teare (00:08:08):
And so the root is happiness.

Andrew Keen (00:08:11):
What are they alienated from?

Andrew Keen (00:08:12):
You're using your old Marxist terms.

Andrew Keen (00:08:14):
They always creep up, Keith.

Andrew Keen (00:08:16):
What does alienation mean?

Keith Teare (00:08:17):
Yeah, alienation is a term used by many traditions of thought, including Marx, that's true.

Keith Teare (00:08:24):
But he uses it in a different way than I am.

Keith Teare (00:08:27):
I'm talking about a psychological disposition to feel displaced and to want comfort.

Andrew Keen (00:08:37):
Yeah, and...

Andrew Keen (00:08:39):
Certainly there is a sense of alienation and anxiety.

Andrew Keen (00:08:42):
I was struck with a couple of things on the trial.

Andrew Keen (00:08:45):
Firstly,

Andrew Keen (00:08:45):
the way in which it's become this event where either you're for or against tech and

Andrew Keen (00:08:53):
the fact that

Andrew Keen (00:08:55):
Google and Meta were found guilty was celebrated by people who weren't even

Andrew Keen (00:09:00):
following the trial strikes me.

Andrew Keen (00:09:02):
And also the kind of the celebration outside the courthouse,

Andrew Keen (00:09:06):
I think,

Andrew Keen (00:09:07):
was slightly odd that perhaps reflects a broader cultural element.

Andrew Keen (00:09:11):
Anyway, moving on, maybe it wasn't the most important trial for Keith.

Andrew Keen (00:09:17):
The most,

Andrew Keen (00:09:19):
and I'm quoting you in your editorial,

Andrew Keen (00:09:22):
the ruling in the north in San Francisco on Anthropic is this week's most important

Andrew Keen (00:09:29):
event.

Andrew Keen (00:09:30):
You keep on coming back to this.

Andrew Keen (00:09:31):
The last three weeks we've been talking about Anthropic and the government.

Andrew Keen (00:09:35):
Why is this such a big deal in your view?

Andrew Keen (00:09:39):
Well,

Keith Teare (00:09:42):
It's a big deal because the future is going to be a future in which AI is

Keith Teare (00:09:46):
autonomously doing lots of things that today humans do.

Keith Teare (00:09:52):
And what's being contested is the canvas on which it's allowed to do it.

Keith Teare (00:09:59):
And so

Keith Teare (00:10:01):
the future is being defined in front of our eyes.

Keith Teare (00:10:04):
As it happens, that particular trial didn't really address that core issue.

Keith Teare (00:10:09):
It addressed what Anthropic asked it to address, which was whether

Keith Teare (00:10:15):
the punishment from the Trump administration was caused by a desire to constrain

Keith Teare (00:10:23):
Anthropik's free speech rights.

Keith Teare (00:10:25):
That by designating it a supply chain risk,

Keith Teare (00:10:28):
what Trump was really doing was limiting free speech,

Keith Teare (00:10:33):
which no matter how much you hate Trump,

Keith Teare (00:10:36):
I think that is a stretch to think that was the motivation.

Keith Teare (00:10:39):
The motivation clearly was to have full control over AI's use as a weapon.

Keith Teare (00:10:46):
and I'm sure it made the administration unhappy that Antarctic wouldn't go along

Keith Teare (00:10:52):
with that and then went very public with their views and then furthermore filed

Keith Teare (00:10:58):
this law case.

Keith Teare (00:10:59):
None of that would have been pleasant.

Keith Teare (00:11:01):
But the underlying motivation isn't a free speech motivation.

Andrew Keen (00:11:03):
Well, there's the politics there, and you know that it wasn't just Anthropic.

Andrew Keen (00:11:11):
All the big tech companies were supporting Anthropic in this case.

Andrew Keen (00:11:16):
I think one of the unspoken elements here is that big law...

Andrew Keen (00:11:24):
failed to stand up to Trump.

Andrew Keen (00:11:27):
Certainly the big universities have failed.

Andrew Keen (00:11:30):
Some have done a better job than others.

Andrew Keen (00:11:31):
So in a sense,

Andrew Keen (00:11:33):
the politics of this is the willingness of Silicon Valley,

Andrew Keen (00:11:36):
or at least some in Silicon Valley,

Andrew Keen (00:11:38):
exclude obviously Thiel and Andreessen and others,

Andrew Keen (00:11:42):
the willingness to stand up to Trump.

Andrew Keen (00:11:46):
Do you admire that,

Andrew Keen (00:11:47):
or is that something you think is...

Andrew Keen (00:11:50):
The subject of your editorial this week is growing up.

Andrew Keen (00:11:53):
In your mind, is this rather immature on the part of Anthropic, to be standing up to Trump?

Keith Teare (00:12:01):
In this domain of discussion, I think it's entirely juvenile.

Keith Teare (00:12:08):
It so happens, on this case, Trump is right.

Keith Teare (00:12:13):
So standing up to Trump has zero merit on this case, because Trump's in the right.

Keith Teare (00:12:19):
Governments get to decide how to use weapons.

Keith Teare (00:12:23):
That's it.

Keith Teare (00:12:24):
End of story.

Keith Teare (00:12:24):
There's nothing more to it.

Andrew Keen (00:12:26):
But companies can determine whether or not they sell their products to the government.

Keith Teare (00:12:31):
Well, yeah, but they didn't do that.

Keith Teare (00:12:34):
Anthropic, the opposite.

Keith Teare (00:12:35):
Anthropic wanted to sell to the government.

Keith Teare (00:12:38):
They didn't choose not to.

Keith Teare (00:12:39):
They wanted to sell to the government,

Keith Teare (00:12:41):
but they wanted to stipulate how the buyer used what they bought.

Andrew Keen (00:12:48):
Yeah, I saw one of the things.

Andrew Keen (00:12:49):
You haven't seen it yet.

Andrew Keen (00:12:50):
Maybe we can talk about it in more detail next week.

Andrew Keen (00:12:52):
I saw yesterday the AI doc, How I Became or How I Became an Apocalyptomist.

Andrew Keen (00:13:01):
It's a new documentary about AI,

Andrew Keen (00:13:04):
which features Dario Amadai and all the other players,

Andrew Keen (00:13:09):
Sam Altman as well.

Andrew Keen (00:13:11):
And I was struck with the immaturity of everyone in the business.

Andrew Keen (00:13:15):
I mean,

Andrew Keen (00:13:16):
it's not just I'm not a big fan of Altman,

Andrew Keen (00:13:19):
but,

Andrew Keen (00:13:19):
you know,

Andrew Keen (00:13:19):
Amadai is also in his own way rather childish.

Keith Teare (00:13:24):
Well,

Keith Teare (00:13:25):
look,

Keith Teare (00:13:25):
it's so tempting when you despise an administration as much as this one is despised

Keith Teare (00:13:32):
for good reasons.

Keith Teare (00:13:36):
A trap is set.

Keith Teare (00:13:38):
And the trap that's set is, do your best to attack me.

Keith Teare (00:13:46):
And in so doing, I'll expose who you are.

Keith Teare (00:13:50):
And that's worked on what you might broadly think of as the left for now about 12

Keith Teare (00:13:55):
years,

Keith Teare (00:13:56):
which is the left behaving badly in an attempt to distinguish themselves from the

Keith Teare (00:14:02):
administration of the hate.

Keith Teare (00:14:05):
And there's lots of examples of it.

Keith Teare (00:14:07):
And it ends up that the elections end up being won by,

Keith Teare (00:14:11):
you know,

Keith Teare (00:14:12):
your enemy because you've exposed yourself as not worthy of being elected yourself.

Andrew Keen (00:14:19):
Although I'm not sure these elections are going to be one way or the other and

Andrew Keen (00:14:21):
Trump can't run again anyway.

Andrew Keen (00:14:23):
I'm not sure the next elections are going to have anything to do with Anthropik's

Andrew Keen (00:14:30):
case against the Pentagon.

Keith Teare (00:14:32):
Yeah, but I do think they've taken the bait and they're in the trap.

Keith Teare (00:14:36):
And now they're stuck.

Keith Teare (00:14:38):
I mean, Anthropic is going to have a... But Anthropic's a great product.

Keith Teare (00:14:43):
Don't forget that.

Keith Teare (00:14:44):
It may be the best product.

Andrew Keen (00:14:47):
Oh, you never used to say that, Keith.

Andrew Keen (00:14:49):
You used to say OpenAI was the best.

Keith Teare (00:14:52):
You know, it's pretty hard to say which is the best.

Keith Teare (00:14:54):
They're both excellent.

Keith Teare (00:14:56):
But Anthropic's certainly, you know, up there.

Keith Teare (00:15:01):
Yet the entire discussion is about the government and Anthropic,

Keith Teare (00:15:07):
which is ridiculous from their point of view.

Keith Teare (00:15:09):
They should want it to be about enterprises adopting it and making gains.

Keith Teare (00:15:13):
That should be the narrative that is everywhere.

Andrew Keen (00:15:16):
There's a piece that we missed the newsletter this week because it just came out

Andrew Keen (00:15:20):
this morning in the Wall Street Journal by Keach Hagee,

Andrew Keen (00:15:24):
who's a very well-connected tech reporter for the journal on the decade-long feud

Andrew Keen (00:15:30):
shaping the future of AI,

Andrew Keen (00:15:31):
which I'm sure she's writing,

Andrew Keen (00:15:33):
working on a new book.

Andrew Keen (00:15:35):
intense dislike between Altman and Amidai,

Andrew Keen (00:15:39):
not just Dario,

Andrew Keen (00:15:41):
but his sister,

Andrew Keen (00:15:42):
Daniela,

Andrew Keen (00:15:43):
who I didn't realize from the movie is also a very big player at Anthropic,

Andrew Keen (00:15:48):
maybe the business side of the company.

Andrew Keen (00:15:51):
There is again,

Andrew Keen (00:15:53):
and this comes out in the Hagee piece,

Andrew Keen (00:15:55):
and it certainly comes out in the AI doc,

Andrew Keen (00:15:59):
a kind of adolescent quality to everyone involved in this,

Andrew Keen (00:16:02):
doesn't matter who it is.

Andrew Keen (00:16:03):
The only person who came out of the AI doc looking like an adult was Mr. Google.

Andrew Keen (00:16:12):
Keith, we talked about this before we went live.

Andrew Keen (00:16:14):
Yeah, Demis.

Andrew Keen (00:16:16):
Demis Hassabis.

Andrew Keen (00:16:17):
So why are they all such children?

Keith Teare (00:16:23):
You know, if you think about the history of entrepreneurs in the Valley, they're not unusual.

Keith Teare (00:16:30):
I mean, you wouldn't describe Elon as an adult much of the time.

Andrew Keen (00:16:34):
Well, I certainly wouldn't.

Andrew Keen (00:16:35):
Sometimes you seem to.

Keith Teare (00:16:37):
No, I think he's amazing, but he's definitely got those characteristics.

Keith Teare (00:16:43):
So does Jeff Bezos, as we've seen recently.

Andrew Keen (00:16:47):
Bezos is certainly more mature than the others, for better or worse.

Keith Teare (00:16:53):
He has his moments where he isn't.

Keith Teare (00:16:56):
You know, I think you have to be emotionally driven with a passion to be successful.

Keith Teare (00:17:06):
Demis is the opposite.

Keith Teare (00:17:07):
He's a stone-cold scientist.

Keith Teare (00:17:10):
He does have passion, but he's at core a scientist, closer to Larry in Demena.

Keith Teare (00:17:19):
Larry Page, for those who don't know who Larry refers to.

Keith Teare (00:17:24):
but still successful because he does have drive, he's just less juvenile about it.

Keith Teare (00:17:30):
I don't worry too much about that.

Keith Teare (00:17:32):
I mean, I don't even criticize Amidai for his juvenilness, except he needs counsel.

Keith Teare (00:17:40):
He's making the wrong calls and allowing the wrong instincts to dominate.

Keith Teare (00:17:47):
And I'm sure at core,

Keith Teare (00:17:49):
he's an excellent representative of entrepreneurialism,

Keith Teare (00:17:54):
but he needs some counsel.

Andrew Keen (00:17:56):
Are you available, Keith?

Andrew Keen (00:17:58):
Can he hire you?

Andrew Keen (00:17:59):
What's your hourly rate?

Keith Teare (00:18:02):
Exactly.

Andrew Keen (00:18:04):
Speaking of counsel, I know that...

Andrew Keen (00:18:08):
Sam Altman's counsel is Chris Lehman,

Andrew Keen (00:18:12):
very influential Silicon Valley power broker of one kind or another on the

Andrew Keen (00:18:16):
democratic side.

Andrew Keen (00:18:17):
Is Altman,

Andrew Keen (00:18:18):
in your view,

Andrew Keen (00:18:19):
you seem to be suggesting this in your editorial this week,

Andrew Keen (00:18:22):
growing up,

Andrew Keen (00:18:23):
winning wars involves losing battles.

Andrew Keen (00:18:26):
And this was a week in which you seem to be suggesting that OpenAI lost some

Andrew Keen (00:18:30):
battles,

Andrew Keen (00:18:30):
but actually is winning the war.

Andrew Keen (00:18:33):
Is Altman getting better counsel in your sense than Amidai?

Keith Teare (00:18:38):
Well, look, he made a decision this week to close down the standalone image app called Sora.

Andrew Keen (00:18:45):
And also to make it clear that they were shelving forever,

Andrew Keen (00:18:50):
their adult modes,

Andrew Keen (00:18:51):
ChatGPT adult mode,

Andrew Keen (00:18:53):
sort of the soft porn application of OpenAI.

Andrew Keen (00:18:56):
So they're clearly in, I don't know whether you call it repair mode or what is it?

Andrew Keen (00:19:02):
What is it?

Andrew Keen (00:19:03):
Code red?

Andrew Keen (00:19:04):
They keep on using that term.

Keith Teare (00:19:06):
I think it's a recommitment to the core business and

Keith Teare (00:19:11):
and pulling in things that had gotten out of hand but weren't merited by any economic criteria.

Keith Teare (00:19:17):
And that is a sign of maturity.

Keith Teare (00:19:23):
And it was widely reported as a fail.

Keith Teare (00:19:27):
But I think actually it's the opposite.

Keith Teare (00:19:29):
It's the end of a fail and the beginning of a period when they're going to...

Andrew Keen (00:19:33):
We're all so biased on this.

Andrew Keen (00:19:34):
Any kind of criticism of open AI is always,

Andrew Keen (00:19:37):
oh,

Andrew Keen (00:19:38):
these people,

Andrew Keen (00:19:39):
they're just against SAM for one reason or another.

Andrew Keen (00:19:41):
They're doomers.

Andrew Keen (00:19:42):
They're pessimists.

Andrew Keen (00:19:43):
They're reactionaries.

Andrew Keen (00:19:44):
I mean, there was a good piece in The Atlantic where...

Andrew Keen (00:19:47):
by Leela Shroff on OpenAI is doing everything poorly.

Andrew Keen (00:19:51):
There is an argument to suggest.

Andrew Keen (00:19:53):
I mean, you used to argue that OpenAI was the dominant company.

Andrew Keen (00:19:56):
It's going to be worth $10 or $15 trillion.

Andrew Keen (00:19:59):
No one else is going to compete.

Andrew Keen (00:20:00):
Things have changed.

Andrew Keen (00:20:02):
Not really, no.

Keith Teare (00:20:04):
Things haven't changed.

Keith Teare (00:20:05):
Why do you say that?

Andrew Keen (00:20:07):
I thought they'd change.

Andrew Keen (00:20:08):
So you're saying nothing much has changed?

Andrew Keen (00:20:09):
OpenAI still dominates?

Keith Teare (00:20:12):
It used to be 100% of consumer AI two years ago.

Keith Teare (00:20:16):
Today, it's about 70% of consumer AI.

Keith Teare (00:20:21):
In that time, consumer AI has grown about 10x.

Keith Teare (00:20:25):
So it's 70% of something 10 times bigger.

Keith Teare (00:20:28):
Its revenues are going through the roof.

Andrew Keen (00:20:35):
Well, that's not a very technical term, going through the roof.

Andrew Keen (00:20:39):
Well, it's the biggest revenue.

Andrew Keen (00:20:41):
Well, but then we can get into the argument.

Andrew Keen (00:20:42):
I don't want to get sucked into this of whether it's a personal company.

Keith Teare (00:20:45):
No, but there's nothing fundamentally broken about it.

Andrew Keen (00:20:48):
So is there, you talk about the notoriety.

Andrew Keen (00:20:51):
I think you call them the notoriety who are just against Sam.

Andrew Keen (00:20:56):
Two questions on that.

Keith Teare (00:20:57):
No, I don't say that.

Keith Teare (00:20:59):
In fact, I agree with the Atlantic article.

Keith Teare (00:21:01):
I do think they're doing lots of things poorly, but I think that's normal.

Keith Teare (00:21:07):
How could they not be?

Keith Teare (00:21:09):
They're learning.

Keith Teare (00:21:11):
They're doing something brand new and learning as they do it.

Keith Teare (00:21:15):
So, of course, they're doing lots of things poorly.

Keith Teare (00:21:17):
But that's not, you know, unusual.

Keith Teare (00:21:20):
That's normal.

Andrew Keen (00:21:21):
Why are they what you call, I think, the notoriety?

Andrew Keen (00:21:24):
Why are they so against them in your mind?

Andrew Keen (00:21:26):
Why are they so against Sam Altman?

Andrew Keen (00:21:27):
Are they envious?

Andrew Keen (00:21:28):
Are they reactionaries?

Keith Teare (00:21:32):
You know, I think his personality doesn't lend itself to being liked.

Keith Teare (00:21:36):
He's very, very confidently declarative.

Keith Teare (00:21:44):
He's clearly capable of navigating difficult negotiations and giving the appearance

Keith Teare (00:21:52):
of being devious,

Keith Teare (00:21:54):
let's say.

Keith Teare (00:21:57):
So if you measure him by likability, you're not going to like him.

Keith Teare (00:22:02):
If you're measuring by outcomes,

Keith Teare (00:22:04):
which is,

Keith Teare (00:22:05):
as we said last week,

Keith Teare (00:22:06):
what the market prices is outcomes,

Keith Teare (00:22:09):
he's fantastic.

Andrew Keen (00:22:12):
Yeah,

Andrew Keen (00:22:13):
as I said to my wife when we were coming out of the movie last night,

Andrew Keen (00:22:16):
would you buy a used car from Sam Altman?

Andrew Keen (00:22:19):
I don't think I'd buy anything.

Andrew Keen (00:22:20):
But maybe, Keith, you need to see the movie and we can talk about it next week.

Andrew Keen (00:22:23):
Yeah.

Andrew Keen (00:22:25):
So it hasn't been such a bad week for...

Andrew Keen (00:22:31):
for Sora, sorry, for not Sora, that was an error for OpenAI.

Andrew Keen (00:22:37):
You think jettisoning Sora, moving clearly away from the porn stuff is a good thing.

Andrew Keen (00:22:47):
And probably Sam is getting good advice from Chris Lehman.

Andrew Keen (00:22:50):
What about on the product side this week for Anthropic?

Andrew Keen (00:22:53):
Did anything happen or is it just another week for Claude?

Keith Teare (00:22:59):
Nothing major happened this week.

Keith Teare (00:23:00):
Claude actually was way more prolific this week.

Keith Teare (00:23:06):
It's focused in on,

Keith Teare (00:23:07):
for those of you who don't use it,

Keith Teare (00:23:08):
the Claude desktop app on Mac has three behaviors.

Keith Teare (00:23:14):
One is called chat, one is called co-work, and one is called code.

Keith Teare (00:23:19):
and there are tabs at the top, and you can choose which one you're in.

Keith Teare (00:23:23):
And they released a lot of new elements.

Keith Teare (00:23:27):
One is called Dispatch.

Keith Teare (00:23:29):
Dispatch is where you can continue a conversation with Claude on your mobile that

Keith Teare (00:23:33):
you began on your desktop.

Keith Teare (00:23:35):
A little bit like with OpenClaw,

Keith Teare (00:23:37):
you can be remotely connected to your computer and direct what you want to happen

Keith Teare (00:23:43):
even when you're not there.

Keith Teare (00:23:45):
And lots of connectors,

Keith Teare (00:23:47):
connectors meaning that Claude can access your Gmail or your calendar or other

Keith Teare (00:23:52):
applications.

Keith Teare (00:23:54):
So they're rapidly moving to,

Keith Teare (00:23:57):
if you think of AI as being in three eras,

Keith Teare (00:24:01):
the first era being all about LLMs and chat,

Keith Teare (00:24:04):
the second era being about agents that you can direct,

Keith Teare (00:24:10):
and the third era which we're entering being autonomous agents that do things for

Keith Teare (00:24:15):
you when you're not present.

Keith Teare (00:24:17):
We're moving into that third era,

Keith Teare (00:24:19):
and Claude's announcement this week,

Keith Teare (00:24:21):
almost all were to do with that third era.

Andrew Keen (00:24:24):
Yeah, and that was the other thing about the AI doc.

Andrew Keen (00:24:27):
It was made earlier this year.

Andrew Keen (00:24:29):
They call it a 2026 documentary.

Andrew Keen (00:24:31):
It was mostly filmed last year.

Andrew Keen (00:24:33):
But it already seems very outdated.

Andrew Keen (00:24:36):
One of the things that also strikes me is the comparison between the social media

Andrew Keen (00:24:42):
trial and the stuff that's going on on AI is that the social media stuff is

Andrew Keen (00:24:46):
fighting yesterday's war,

Andrew Keen (00:24:49):
isn't it?

Andrew Keen (00:24:49):
I mean,

Andrew Keen (00:24:50):
it always seems to be the case with the law,

Andrew Keen (00:24:52):
that they're always at least one step behind.

Keith Teare (00:24:55):
Yeah.

Keith Teare (00:24:56):
I mean, it could prefigure the future as well.

Keith Teare (00:24:59):
I mean, can you imagine the trial a few years from now that AI is addictive?

Andrew Keen (00:25:04):
Well, that's given.

Andrew Keen (00:25:06):
I mean, that's inevitable one way or the other.

Andrew Keen (00:25:09):
Yeah.

Andrew Keen (00:25:09):
And it won't be a few years.

Andrew Keen (00:25:12):
I mean, it will be a handful of years, certainly by the end of the 20s.

Keith Teare (00:25:16):
Right.

Keith Teare (00:25:17):
And, you know, happiness is a rare commodity.

Keith Teare (00:25:19):
So there's a lot of fuel for the claim that unhappiness is caused by some software,

Keith Teare (00:25:28):
when in fact,

Keith Teare (00:25:29):
the roots of unhappiness are way deeper than that.

Andrew Keen (00:25:32):
Thank you, Dr. Teer.

Andrew Keen (00:25:33):
There was one other interesting piece.

Andrew Keen (00:25:35):
You didn't put it in the newsletter,

Andrew Keen (00:25:36):
but it struck me in the context of what we're talking about.

Andrew Keen (00:25:40):
This week, lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill banning sports bets in prediction markets.

Andrew Keen (00:25:46):
There was a good piece in the New York Times,

Andrew Keen (00:25:48):
too,

Andrew Keen (00:25:49):
on the predictive market,

Andrew Keen (00:25:51):
the casino that's eating the world.

Andrew Keen (00:25:53):
Are you in favor of

Andrew Keen (00:25:56):
much more regulation on the prediction markets these prediction engines are

Andrew Keen (00:26:00):
enormously influential especially with young people and many people see them as

Andrew Keen (00:26:06):
addictive like social media like perhaps ai yeah well you know if i tell you uh i

Keith Teare (00:26:12):
hate sports betting um

Keith Teare (00:26:16):
those who are British will know this,

Keith Teare (00:26:18):
but in the UK on pretty much every,

Keith Teare (00:26:22):
I was raised in a small council estate that had like 5,000 homes and there was two

Keith Teare (00:26:27):
bedding shops on the council estate and the dads and sometimes the moms

Keith Teare (00:26:34):
would go on a Saturday and place bets on horses or football or whatever.

Keith Teare (00:26:38):
There's also the football pool,

Keith Teare (00:26:40):
which is you guess the results of the soccer every week,

Keith Teare (00:26:43):
and some people become millionaires if they guess right.

Keith Teare (00:26:48):
So sports betting is deep in British culture.

Keith Teare (00:26:50):
And I hated it because, you know, you discover very quickly that you never win.

Andrew Keen (00:26:57):
That's our alienation argument.

Andrew Keen (00:26:59):
We get out our unhappiness,

Andrew Keen (00:27:03):
our misery,

Andrew Keen (00:27:04):
our alienation from ourselves or from the world through betting on miracles.

Andrew Keen (00:27:10):
Well,

Keith Teare (00:27:10):
not only that,

Keith Teare (00:27:11):
but they'd come back from the betting shop and spend the next three hours happy,

Keith Teare (00:27:17):
excited and full of hope in case they would win.

Keith Teare (00:27:21):
So that is probably some truth in that.

Andrew Keen (00:27:25):
Well, isn't that a good way to cheer them up?

Andrew Keen (00:27:27):
As Marx famously said, the opium of the people.

Andrew Keen (00:27:29):
It's cheaper than opium.

Keith Teare (00:27:31):
It's certainly cheaper than opium.

Keith Teare (00:27:33):
So, you know, my natural habitat is to hate sports betting.

Keith Teare (00:27:37):
That said, I think my belief in...

Keith Teare (00:27:44):
choice trumps that.

Keith Teare (00:27:46):
I think if people want to sports bet, you know, it's not the job of regulators to stop them.

Keith Teare (00:27:51):
They should put rules around it in terms of, you know,

Keith Teare (00:27:58):
fraud shouldn't be allowed.

Andrew Keen (00:27:59):
Well, that goes without saying, fraud is against the law.

Keith Teare (00:28:03):
Yeah.

Keith Teare (00:28:04):
But I think the right to spend your money any way you want is pretty basic.

Keith Teare (00:28:10):
So, no, I'm against regulation.

Andrew Keen (00:28:12):
No, we are.

Andrew Keen (00:28:13):
The new left libertarian Keith wins out over the old British Yorkshire left regulatory Keith.

Andrew Keen (00:28:24):
Yeah.

Andrew Keen (00:28:26):
Well,

Andrew Keen (00:28:26):
finally,

Andrew Keen (00:28:27):
you end this week's newsletter in your editorial saying nothing new to see,

Andrew Keen (00:28:32):
meaning not much has changed.

Andrew Keen (00:28:34):
So it wasn't such a big week, really, Keith.

Andrew Keen (00:28:38):
Nothing new to see?

Keith Teare (00:28:39):
I think the canvas we're sitting on top of and the trends are pretty unchanged.

Keith Teare (00:28:49):
I think the bigger trend is happening in the stock markets where software companies

Keith Teare (00:28:54):
are being priced down based on their likely future value.

Keith Teare (00:29:01):
And the AI companies are teed up to do IPOs.

Keith Teare (00:29:06):
I think OpenAI,

Keith Teare (00:29:07):
Anthropic and SpaceX with XAI inside out probably all going to do IPOs this year.

Keith Teare (00:29:15):
The markets are basically saying that the future is an AI future.

Keith Teare (00:29:22):
And unless you can benefit from that, you are not worth as much as we thought you were worth.

Andrew Keen (00:29:27):
Which is hardly,

Andrew Keen (00:29:29):
I mean,

Andrew Keen (00:29:30):
it's hardly rockets,

Andrew Keen (00:29:31):
excusing the cliche,

Andrew Keen (00:29:32):
it's hardly rocket science,

Andrew Keen (00:29:33):
pretty obvious,

Andrew Keen (00:29:34):
isn't it?

Keith Teare (00:29:35):
It's obvious.

Keith Teare (00:29:36):
And I think the other things that are winning are anything to do with leisure.

Keith Teare (00:29:41):
You know,

Keith Teare (00:29:42):
real world human activities like Disney World,

Keith Teare (00:29:46):
for example,

Keith Teare (00:29:46):
not that I would suggest anyone spends any time at Disney World,

Keith Teare (00:29:52):
but people do on Netflix or any of the leisure focused stuff is gaining.

Andrew Keen (00:30:01):
And you end with an interesting remark.

Andrew Keen (00:30:05):
You say intelligence is getting cheaper.

Andrew Keen (00:30:09):
That is good.

Andrew Keen (00:30:10):
More people need to have access to it and at a price that is inclusive.

Andrew Keen (00:30:17):
Fast forward to that and policy helps determine outcomes and markets will price them favorably.

Andrew Keen (00:30:23):
Anything else is fear wrapped up as principle.

Andrew Keen (00:30:26):
Time as you end to grow up.

Andrew Keen (00:30:30):
But this idea of intelligence getting cheaper,

Andrew Keen (00:30:32):
it's getting cheaper for you and I.

Andrew Keen (00:30:34):
Not that we even need it.

Andrew Keen (00:30:38):
that intelligence in the first place.

Andrew Keen (00:30:40):
You and I are already the most intelligent two people in the world.

Andrew Keen (00:30:43):
But one of the things that struck me from this movie is it's still the AI movie.

Andrew Keen (00:30:51):
Is it still very much a Silicon Valley thing or a tech thing?

Andrew Keen (00:30:54):
Most people,

Andrew Keen (00:30:55):
most people,

Andrew Keen (00:30:56):
if you talk to most people,

Andrew Keen (00:30:59):
maybe in Scarborough in your old estate,

Andrew Keen (00:31:01):
the idea of intelligence getting cheaper is,

Andrew Keen (00:31:04):
It's like talking Chinese to them.

Andrew Keen (00:31:06):
Does that actually,

Andrew Keen (00:31:06):
is it mean,

Andrew Keen (00:31:07):
is it breaking through in any way to anyone outside Silicon Valley,

Andrew Keen (00:31:11):
Keith?

Keith Teare (00:31:13):
I think it's fairly ubiquitous for young people still in school.

Keith Teare (00:31:19):
And that is the future generation.

Keith Teare (00:31:22):
When these people who today are between the ages of seven and 13 are between the

Keith Teare (00:31:29):
ages of 20 and 30,

Keith Teare (00:31:33):
they'll be running the world and that isn't going to take very long.

Keith Teare (00:31:38):
And for them, AI is ever present and increasingly present in their lives.

Keith Teare (00:31:45):
So I do think you're not wrong if you look at,

Keith Teare (00:31:49):
you know,

Keith Teare (00:31:50):
there's about a billion people use open AI and there's 8 billion people in the

Keith Teare (00:31:53):
world.

Keith Teare (00:31:54):
So clearly that says it isn't yet ubiquitous.

Keith Teare (00:31:58):
But if you narrow it down to young people in school and you want that to be true in

Keith Teare (00:32:04):
Ghana as much as it is in Palo Alto,

Keith Teare (00:32:07):
and I think that will happen,

Keith Teare (00:32:10):
then it is going to become ubiquitous and we're going to sit on top of it.

Keith Teare (00:32:14):
And whatever is built,

Keith Teare (00:32:16):
one of the interesting consequences of that is the life cycle of companies,

Keith Teare (00:32:21):
which used to be decades.

Keith Teare (00:32:23):
might be reduced down to single digit years as disruptions accelerate.

Keith Teare (00:32:29):
And therefore pricing outcomes for companies becomes very perilous.

Andrew Keen (00:32:35):
There you have it.

Andrew Keen (00:32:36):
Growing up.

Andrew Keen (00:32:37):
That was the theme of this week's editorial.

Andrew Keen (00:32:40):
That was the week.

Andrew Keen (00:32:41):
Growing up.

Andrew Keen (00:32:41):
Winning wars involve losing battles.

Andrew Keen (00:32:43):
It's a good lesson for kids.

Andrew Keen (00:32:46):
You talked about kids.

Andrew Keen (00:32:48):
If we were allowed,

Andrew Keen (00:32:49):
Keith,

Andrew Keen (00:32:49):
we would end this show with Bruce Springsteen's Growing Up,

Andrew Keen (00:32:54):
but we can't because we'll get sued by the lawyers.

Andrew Keen (00:32:57):
But you can all imagine you will remember the wonderful song from Springsteen, Growing Up.

Andrew Keen (00:33:02):
There you are, Keith.

Andrew Keen (00:33:03):
You will grow up.

Andrew Keen (00:33:04):
Bye next week and we will talk again.

Andrew Keen (00:33:06):
Thank you so much.

Andrew Keen (00:33:07):
Thank you.