00:00Give me a sense here because you know we started this whole AI conversation at least publicly maybe about three
00:04or four years ago and it was kind of an extreme either it was going to save us all or
00:07it was going to kill us all. We're now getting to this stage of the cycle where we're starting to
00:11talk a little bit more about the nuances. Are we getting those nuances right? I don't think the right conversations
00:17are being had yet and I think you're right to think about the nuances. It's not going to be wholly
00:20good or wholly bad. I think a lot of people are very much in one of those two camps but
00:25the reality is much more complex. Even if this goes incredibly well and we have
00:29cures for cancer as a lot of these CEOs talk about there will still be mass job displacement right? Even
00:35if it goes poorly there will still be good things that come of it. I think it's so nuanced and
00:39so detailed and as I've been saying it means something different for every single person. Everybody has to think about
00:44what this means for their lives. When we talk about thinking about what it means for our lives and I
00:49want to talk more about broadly about what it means for the economy so more on an aggregate basis here.
00:54Have you heard from folks or have you read folks or spoken to folks where you do think they've gotten
00:59the message
00:59right or at least that they're asking the right questions and if so what are those questions? Yeah absolutely. I
01:03originally wrote this essay for my parents. Specifically my dad. Yes. And I did not think that it would go
01:11I mean orders of magnitude close to where it has gone. Right. The craziest thing that's come out of all
01:17of this among other things is that I'm receiving hundreds of messages every hour and it's been hard to keep
01:24up with of people saying wow I did not believe this was a thing a week ago.
01:29I read your essay. Now I went and tried this for X Y and Z in my life and I
01:35am seeing what you're saying. I can now do these things that I never thought I could do. I can
01:39start this business that I never thought I could start. It's opening up possibilities for people. At the same time
01:46there are these negative side effects and these things that I think we are really right to be thinking about
01:50and more people need to be talking about. So to your original question before there's positives there's negatives. It is
01:55going to be one of the most complex and most important topics
01:59over the next few years and beyond. Well Matt let's talk a little bit more about the discourse that this
02:03sparked because the reaction on social media I spent too much time on X but I mean it was fierce.
02:09It was really intense on both sides.
02:11One of the more cynical takes was that okay you work in AI. One of your recommendations is to sign
02:17up $20 a month for one of the paid versions of Claude or Chat GVT. So again a cynical take
02:22here that you know the answer is just to use AI more.
02:26I mean what is that sort of response reveal to you about how people are just feeling about the concept
02:31in general.
02:32I think people are looking for any way to dig their heels in and say that this is not happening.
02:36If you look at my article I had many opportunities to plug my own companies the things I've invested in.
02:42In fact I did none of that. I actually focused on companies that I have no stake in have no
02:46relationship with from a monetary gain perspective. I wanted the message to be pure. I wanted the message to be
02:51this is happening. Here's what you can do about it. Here's what you need to know about it. Not hey
02:55go use my
02:56thing. Right. There are going to be opportunities for that. I don't want to take that because I want this
03:00message to resonate in the way that I intended which is people need to know about it. But from what
03:04I learned it was that people will look for any excuse to say this isn't happening. This isn't real. People
03:09are saying there isn't data. Well this thing came out three weeks ago and the data actually came out a
03:13couple hours ago and happened to align with the article. Right. This is happening and I think people need to
03:17really take it seriously. Well it's really interesting to me that you know you wrote this with your parents in
03:22mind because you think about people who are in the workforce mid-career entering
03:26their careers and it seems like there's a lot of advice you could give them about AI. But for people
03:31you know later in life who have retired I mean why did you think that it was important and I
03:37don't know too much about your parents situation but for that generation why do you think it's important to put
03:42out an essay like this. I think people deserve to know knowledge is power. Right. And most people don't know
03:49what's happening. They deserve to. Even if you're close to retirement. My parents aren't quite there yet but you know
03:55they're getting there.
03:55They want to be able to ensure that the rest of their career goes smoothly. They deserve that. Right. People
04:01deserve the ability to say hey let me take the power into my own hands and do something about this.
04:05People my age. Right. I'm 26. I think about this in the context of my own career. If things go
04:11as I expect and I really really hope they don't and I want to be clear about that. I hope
04:16they don't. But if they go as I expect from everything that I've seen I don't know what my place
04:21in the world is in two three years.
04:23But that is some of the fear. I mean we don't have to get too deep into human psychology but
04:26I think for pretty much most people alive today have not been through a major transformative moment like AI might
04:33be promising where it not only will reshape the structure of our economy how we work how we live and
04:39at least for right now the narrative seems to be there will be need for fewer jobs or fewer people
04:43in those jobs at least.
04:44And that's got to be scary certainly for people who are mid-career but even for those people who are
04:48young who are entering the workforce and trying to find their place.
04:51What's the solution? Do they just all become entrepreneurs?
04:54I don't know that I have the right solution. I don't know that anybody does. I don't think anybody in
04:58the technology working on this at a fundamental level knows what the world is going to look like in three
05:02years.
05:02We are not as humans equipped to deal with exponential change. We can predict linear change but these models are
05:08improving in an exponential way which means it's easy to say hey this is where it's going to be in
05:13three years but seeing that in the real world will look entirely different.
05:17When you say exponential way is this like one of these situations where Moore's law is going to look cute
05:21like you know 50 years from now that that was almost like.
05:23Potentially.
05:24I know. Okay. Now I'm scared.
05:26There are a lot of there are a lot of inputs to this and it's very complex but we're seeing
05:30algorithmic progress. We're seeing data center build outs. We're seeing energy build outs.
05:34Yeah.
05:34Right. This is going to get bigger from here and it's not that far off from being at our intelligence
05:40level. It already is in many ways and better in some ways at this point. So a little bit of
05:45progress goes a long way at this point.
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