#155 — Chinese AI Model GLM 5.2 Beating Frontier Models | Meta Glasses, Polymarket Scandal, and More AI Talent War
June 26, 2026 · Listen · All episodes · Chat with the show's AI
Jessica Lessin, Dave Morin, Brit Morin and Sam Lessin debate the tech of the week.
Full transcript (AI-generated — may contain transcription errors):
Sam Lessin: Well, this happened at Facebook. Like, there's so many people on Facebook, right, in the early days, who like were very, very junior engineers and got hilariously uber wealthy in like the first three years of their career purely 'cause they literally couldn't sell and it appreciated so quickly. That would've never happened in the public market.
Brit Morin: Zuck is a guy that can carry a grudge, and I think Zuck is still savage about when he wanted to buy Snap and it didn't work out, so they copied everything, and he's just like putting the nail in the coffin.
Sam Lessin: To me, trading cards are infinitely dumber, right, than prediction markets. I would rather our son be addicted to prediction markets than to stupid unboxing trading cards.
Brit Morin: Here's where Dave used them. We went to the Vatican. We're like showing our kids the Vatican, obviously very like historical place. They're like, "No photos, Sistine Chapel." Who puts on the Meta glasses right away?
Guest: More or less. Is it no or is it yes? We'll debate the tech that's best. Will you get more or less? Dave and Brit plus Sam and Jess put it all right to the test. More or less.
Dave Morin: Why, hello, friends. Welcome to More or Less, and Morins, we're so happy to have you back. Welcome to the pod.
Brit Morin: We're glad to be back. I did listen last week.
Dave Morin: Yeah. I thought you guys had a good convo.
Sam Lessin: Yeah. We got a lot, a lot of people, lot, a lot of comments, a lot of, a lot of listens to just the lesses.
Brit Morin: Wait. Guys, guess what happened? We were in the Zurich Airport in an underground train. Lumi, our three-year-old, needed a place to sit down 'cause her legs were tired. Some woman moved over, then that woman's husband looked at us and goes, "Wait, I know you guys. Dave and Brit-"
Dave Morin: "I watch your podcast."
Brit Morin: "I watch your podcast." Guys, look how famous we are. Isn't that exciting?
Sam Lessin: The niche... I, I got recognized on an airplane the other day, and it is really funny because it is like, and talk about being niche famous. It's like, it turns out no one knows who we are except for the six routes we travel.
Dave Morin: Well, also the only-
Brit Morin: Hey, Zurich was weird. I would say Zurich was an outlier.
Dave Morin: My grandfather is proud of me for the Zurich one. The only time that I have a minor fan posse is a Silicon Valley developer conference. I was very popular at NVIDIA GTC. I couldn't even buy myself a coffee, but that was it, so.
Brit Morin: That's okay.
Dave Morin: We'll take it where we can get it.
Sam Lessin: This is the future. It's all about having your community, which is very small, but which you are relevant.
Dave Morin: It's pretty amazing, like this guy who we met on the Zurich airport, we ended up getting some really cool stuff done for OpenClaw within like 48 hours, and so I'm very grateful for it.
Brit Morin: He gave Dave a hot tip, and then they VIPCODE-ed that up real fast.
Dave Morin: Blue, Blue Horse- Blue Horseshoe loves Anacott Steel type stuff. What are we doing here?
Brit Morin: Can't tell you the secrets.
Dave Morin: I'll tell you offline, Sam.
Brit Morin: Whatever is smaller than a Pico influencer, that's what we are.
Dave Morin: Oh.
Brit Morin: What's smaller than a Pico influencer?
Dave Morin: Nano?
Brit Morin: Nano Pico.
Dave Morin: Nano.
Brit Morin: I thought n- it goes Nano Pico.
Dave Morin: Micro. Oh.
Brit Morin: Micro.
Dave Morin: Micro. Quantum?
Brit Morin: See, I'm not even smart enough to figure that out. Guys, it's been another exciting week in technology. Here are some of the things that have happened.
Dave Morin: Has it?
Brit Morin: Sam says no. I try to bring the hype, but you guys can tear it down.
Dave Morin: It's good.
Brit Morin: Okay. We had Cannes Lions.
Sam Lessin: That is not a thing.
Dave Morin: Not to be confused with Festival de Cannes, right?
Brit Morin: Okay. But actually, I have a profound tech one takeaway from that that I'm willing to share with people. We have 20 million new styles of Meta glasses backed by Kendall Jenner.
Dave Morin: They're cool. I like 'em.
Brit Morin: I actually like the look, too.
Dave Morin: Guys, you guys can't talk about the news.
Brit Morin: We're, we're, we're not talking about the news.
Dave Morin: We've always been Meta Glasses fanboys.
Brit Morin: Well, we're, this is the agenda section.
Dave Morin: Okay, we've got Meta Glasses. We have Cannes. We have hot AI recruiting poaching summer part two. You may remember last summer- Oh, God ... when Meta raided OpenAI. Well, the sequel is back, and Anthropic is raiding Google. Dun, dun, dun. We should talk about that or talk about why it doesn't matter, but the markets seem to think it matters. Dave has some thoughts about IPOs. I love when one of you tweets. It gives me so much fodder. SpaceX is also tanking.
Sam Lessin: Tanking.
Dave Morin: And Brit, there's something happening with the App Store that you wanted to talk about in Europe.
Brit Morin: Yeah, that sounds good. And Meta's launching like a Polymarket competitor. We should talk about that, too.
Dave Morin: Oh, God.
Sam Lessin: But for like virtual currency, no real money?
Dave Morin: I know. I knew. Sam, I wanted to ask you your opinion, 'cause I wanna do this for the information, but I get stuck on the virtual currency part, 'cause I don't think anyone would care.
Sam Lessin: No. Well, we- we've talked about this like six times, and it has to be real money. It's not a thing if it's not real money.
Dave Morin: I know. I know. Well, also, guys, I love the headline for that article, broken by The New York Times, pro- was CEO directs company to look at... I was like, I just thought that was very funny. Isn't that what CEOs do?
Sam Lessin: In an era of super everything is CEO devo- directs company to do thing.
Dave Morin: It's more like CEO directs company to do thing, company doesn't do thing.
Sam Lessin: Well, it's like, it's like, the, the headline should be, "In shocking twist of events, a non-CEO directed a company to do something."
Brit Morin: No, that doesn't happen at that company or any other company. Okay, let's start with the glasses. So we had the Snap came out with its latest spectacle thing. Meta basically went independent, dropped the ma- the Ray-Ban relationship.
Dave Morin: That's not true.
Sam Lessin: What'd it do to Ray-Ban's stock?
Dave Morin: That's not true. It's all Luxottica, right? Luxottica owns Ray-Ban. They just made their own label, right? So it's, it's all the same same. It's just that they've got their own label now, but they're manufacturing it in the s- exact same factories.
Brit Morin: Okay, fine. They're, they've got their own label.
Sam Lessin: Every glass is manufactured in the same fact... For some reason, there's only two things you can't manufacture in one factory. One is the most high-end chips in the world, and the other is sunglasses.
Dave Morin: Interesting.
Brit Morin: Well, I like them. I'm gonna buy them.
Dave Morin: Okay, so we like these new styles. Do we think it will matter? Brit, is this gonna become a new cate- is this the breakout moment for wearable glasses?
Sam Lessin: Isn't it already?
Brit Morin: The thing I think is hilarious is that last week, Evan-
Sam Lessin: Snap
Brit Morin: ... Evan from Snap launched, what's that glo- what are those glasses called?
Dave Morin: Spectacles.
Sam Lessin: The $2,000...
Brit Morin: Ridiculous looking.
Sam Lessin: Miranda Kerr is attractive.
Brit Morin: She's attractive in anything, though. She could wear a paper bag on her head and she'd be attractive.
Dave Morin: Yeah, that's true.
Brit Morin: Guys, Kylie Jenner is, I mean, Kendall Jenner is also attractive. Is it Kendall? It's Kendall.
Dave Morin: It's true.
Brit Morin: But the Snap glasses are-
Jessica: No, this is not gonna happen. Hilariously, I would bet you Zuck, like, pushed the timeline up to get this announcement live, like, within a week.
Guest: Doesn't care.
Dave Morin: No, he's been making this push for a while.
Sam Lessin: Guys, Snap is a $7 billion company. It's completely irrelevant- ... what Snap does. It's like-
Dave Morin: It's like a pre-Series A AI startup.
Jessica: Zuck is a guy that can carry a grudge, and I think he is still... I think Zuck is still savage about-
Sam Lessin: Yeah
Jessica: ... when he wanted to buy Snap and it didn't work out, so they copied everything, and he's just, like, dig- he's just putting the nail in the coffin.
Guest: No. This is some conspiracy shit.
Jessica: I love conspiracies, Dave.
Dave Morin: Trace the launch of these glasses to Mark going to the Prada show. This has been a long simmering fashion thing.
Jessica: I'm not saying they weren't in the pipeline, I just think he might have, he might have, like, buffered the marketing announcement a little bit.
Sam Lessin: No. No, they did that with Threads maybe, but, like, with this, j- keep in mind the fact that Snap is now about two Box.nets. That's how important and big a company it is, right? Like, it's about two Box.net. We love Aaron. We don't understand that company. We love Aaron. There's a-
Guest: I hung out with Aaron the whole Apple event.
Sam Lessin: To be clear, I adore Aaron. I don't understand the company.
Dave Morin: We all love Aaron. Aaron, we need you back on the pod.
Sam Lessin: There's a difference between loving the person and the company. So i- it's a two Box.net company.
Guest: You guys, stay focused on the glasses. Come on.
Sam Lessin: Two, well, Box- wait, for Box.net glasses. But the, uh- The second-
Guest: You can talk to your files in your- In your glasses
Sam Lessin: ... It's like, good news. You can see files in your glasses. All of the files. And second, like, in terms of the, these sunglasses, I do have to give, I give credit, I don't know Evan at all. I think I've met him once in passing.
Dave Morin: I actually like Evan.
Sam Lessin: The thing, the only thing I know about Evan, which I do quite appreciate and think is hilarious, is that on LinkedIn, his profile says something to the effect of, like, Head of Product for Meta, which is awesome. Because it's like
Jessica: See? I told you. There's still a grudge, you guys.
Dave Morin: So this i- d- did we decide if this was the watershed breakout moment for this category of wearable, or have we, is that jury's out?
Guest: No, Jess, it's just the evolution.
Jessica: Okay, Dave. It's not the evolution. You know why? Because from day one-
Guest: Brit, you're-
Jessica: When... Shh. Stop interrupting. From day one-
Dave Morin: Dave, s- stop the head shaking and let the woman speak.
Sam Lessin: This is like Austin Powers. Shh.
Jessica: Yeah. Our editors are, or else the editors are gonna cut this out. Okay, I said from day one when Meta launched the first Ray-Bans, w- women are not gonna wear these things. They, like, some women wore them fine. They are not attractive for women. They never have been. The Oakley ones sucked, too. Finally, this is the watershed moment of women buying smart glasses. Mark my words. Saying it now. That's all. So yes, I do think it was a big deal.
Dave Morin: Okay. Brit says it's a big deal. I think it's a slow evolution. I think it's slow evolution.
Sam Lessin: Look, I love the smart glasses. I have probably 10 pairs of them. I think they're great. I've had them for every generation. I ha- I used to have the original ones.
Dave Morin: How many times a year do you wear them, Sam? How many times a year?
Sam Lessin: That's the thing, is I love them and they're really cool for action shots. I do use them occasionally, but my hours of w- use per pair is quite low, right? Still, right? Is my problem. Like, I love the idea of them. They have great audio. I love popping them in Miata. Like, they're great on phone calls.
Guest: They're a very specific, they're a very specific, very specific use case.
Sam Lessin: They're fun for photos, but it's like I, they have not yet made it, despite my ownership of so many pairs of them, into, like, my daily rotation in any form.
Guest: Yeah, that's a good point. I use them on-
Jessica: Dave wore them all last week on travel, on our travels.
Guest: No, I didn't use them all last week. I brought them along and I had them in my, you know, I, I love photography.
Jessica: Here's where Dave used them. We went to the Vatican. We're, like, showing our kids the Vatican, obviously very, like, historical place. They're like, "No photos. Sistine Chapel."
Dave Morin: I love it.
Jessica: Who puts on the Meta glasses right away?
Sam Lessin: I, I tried to do that at the, at the Toronto Space Needle, where they're like, "You can't have anything, but, except for your glasses." So I put on my glasses. I'm like, "Great, I'm gonna get my own footage. I don't wanna pay you $40 for your pre-recorded roll of me on the Space Needle." And they're like, "No smart glasses." I'm like, "What if these are my prescription glasses? You can't tell me not to wear smart glasses." So I had a fight with Canadians about the same thing.
Guest: Well, it's interesting. Like, I've used them throughout the trip here and there, and even if you're doing that and you, if you have your s- smartphone, and, and then I have, I carry another camera with me usually. Like, the quality isn't there yet to exceed the-
Sam Lessin: Pretty good
Guest: ... smartphone quality.
Sam Lessin: Pretty good.
Guest: It, it is pretty good.
Dave Morin: The sound's great.
Guest: The quality's, like, still right below smartphone quality, and so when I look at my photo library in context, I'm less psyched about the photos from the Meta glasses than I am about-
Sam Lessin: But Dave, what you have to do is include at least one photo from the glasses in your Instagram carousel so you get boosted for distribution.
Guest: Oh, yes. Indeed. Look, the videos are definitely breakthrough. In terms of video, it's certainly a breakthrough.
Sam Lessin: So my big news of the week, which is relevant to this, is I unfortunately dropped my phone off a mountain, and I lost the greatest video ever taken in my entire life.
Guest: Oh, man.
Sam Lessin: Um, and but it's funny 'cause you're like, I should have been wearing my glasses, which case I wouldn't have dropped my camera off, I mean, my phone off the side of the mountain, and actually it would've been amazing for climbing the Middle Teton. But for whatever reason, despite owning several pairs and having them in my house, I didn't bring them. So, like, there's some gap still to cross there, if that makes sense. You know?
Guest: For sure. I was in the middle of the Roman Forum, and-
Sam Lessin: As one is
Guest: ... I had them o- I had them in, on, and I-
Dave Morin: You guys are just, like, pissing in each other's where I was last week Sorry. It's just like, "I was at the Forum." "I was on the Middle Teton."
Guest: Yeah.
Dave Morin: "I was..." You know, okay.
Guest: Let us do our man thing.
Dave Morin: Just keep going. Tell us when you're done. Yeah.
Sam Lessin: Listen, we're early stage VCs for a reason, Jess-
Guest: Yeah
Sam Lessin: ... because we get to do these things. We don't have real jobs.
Guest: Yeah. You know, it's, to the same point, Sam, I realized at, I was like, "Oh, yeah, I can ask it what I'm looking at and have it tell me the story."
Sam Lessin: And it's gonna be like, "The Sistine Chapel, you idiot." Like, like, like, like- The, I will say, one of the-
Guest: It's a pretty good use case, though. You can say, like, "Hey, Meta, tell me what I'm looking at."
Jessica: He was doing that a lot in Italy.
Guest: I learned a bunch of things about Rome that I didn't know, and that use case was pretty great.
Sam Lessin: Some of which may even be true.
Jessica: Wait, does Meta's- ... like, tracking apply to the glasses? Are they like-
Guest: Of course they are. What are you talking about?
Jessica: Doing, getting training data off of everything? And by the way, is this what's gonna start happening? 'Cause I've started getting startup pitches about this where, you know, everyone's wearing voice recorders now. So the thesis is, like, are all hus-
Guest: Everyone meaning you?
Jessica: Well, no, some people in Silicon Valley. So the thesis is, like, they need more training data of, like, real world, world people. Are, like, construction workers and, like, Disney, like, ride staff gonna start recording everything?
Guest: Sam knows all about this. I, I, I know of a deal he's working on in this zone.
Sam Lessin: It's done.
Dave Morin: Oh, now we're just ruining each other's deals. I love this. Okay, so we've decided the hardware is making progress, the sort of software and use cases. To g- don't you have to be at the toothbrush test to be a consumer product? You have to be used twice a day.
Guest: You use your toothbrush twice a day?
Jessica: That's, like, a very old... I forgot about that analogy.
Guest: Yeah, it's like coffee and toothbrushes.
Dave Morin: I just teed that up for you. I don't know. I, I'm optimistic. I, I also really like, I really like the sporting use cases of these things. I, I think they're fun to play tennis with and all that kind of stuff. So we're, we're pro, we're pro.
Sam Lessin: It's great, it's great. It looks great ski racing. There's-- We're pro, it's just, like, there's something still to cross.
Guest: How about this? Credit where credit's due, it is a great product, and I, I like it when Meta gets out of its own way and doubles down on products that it has that are already great. And so I kind of give them props for doing that on this. Like, it, it's a great product, just do it, you know?
Dave Morin: Okay. Dave, how would you feel about a Meta prediction market? 'Cause that will seg us into-
Guest: Don't care, doesn't matter.
Dave Morin: Don't care.
Guest: Yeah. Like-
Dave Morin: Okay.
Sam Lessin: Doesn't matter if it's not real money.
Dave Morin: I think you have all these companies unleashing vibe coding within their companies, which means you're gonna have, like, a lot of side projects and interesting things.
Sam Lessin: This predates vibe coding.
Dave Morin: Okay, well, I don't know. I mean, it's fine. I'm, I'm actually not that interested in it either, but I think you're gonna-- there'll be a lot of random apps from a lot of random companies.
Guest: I'm just not interested in the category in general. Like, it's doing-
Dave Morin: Oh, say more
Guest: ... it's just doing quite a bit of damage to kids in their 20s.
Sam Lessin: Oh, kids.
Guest: Like, they're very addicted. They're very addicted to sports gambling.
Dave Morin: Okay.
Sam Lessin: Everything's bad because kids.
Dave Morin: But, but Dave, so are you talking about just prediction markets, or are you talking about-
Guest: Prediction markets
Dave Morin: ... prediction and sports gambling? Because you-
Jessica: Well, they're losing a lot of money.
Guest: Oh, yes, we're not calling it gambling, sorry.
Dave Morin: They're bigger sports betting platforms than the prediction markets, from my understanding.
Jessica: Not that have taken off with 20-year-olds, though.
Guest: Yeah, not like Kalshi.
Sam Lessin: Listen, guys, I'll take the other side of this for once. I'll be the, I'll be the more on this. Look, I actually absolutely love this category and think it does make sense in the very abstract for Meta be doing it. Why? 'Cause my favorite person to read in college was Hayek. Markets are information machines, right? And especially as the world gets harder to predict, blah, blah, blah.
Guest: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can talk Austrian economics all day.
Sam Lessin: I love this stuff, and I think it makes a total sense abstractly, right? And, like, I'm actually, like, quite... I mean, if, if there were companies I would wanna go run, it would... This is, like, very high on the list of things I think matter and are interesting.
Jessica: Ooh, that's a big one.
Sam Lessin: No, it's super important to get right. Like, uh, this is, like, one of the key machines that we need for, like, the internet to be the internet, is, like, we need pricing mechanisms and machines that tell us what, what's real. So, like, I, I'm fully on board with this being awesome, and more distribution is good.
Dave Morin: The problem is they don't always tell us what's real.
Guest: Yeah.
Dave Morin: Sometimes-
Sam Lessin: No
Dave Morin: ... they tell us what people think you want to be real.
Sam Lessin: Well, no, they tell... Well, this is the same thing as the stock market. The stock market reflects not reality, the stock market reflects number, what number go up and number go down. And, like, there's this whole second order game to the whole thing. But, like, there, there's a lot of problems, though. But these fundament-
Guest: If that's already the truth of reality right now, Sam, then why wouldn't it just apply to this? You launch another one of these markets, you end up with number go up, number go down, crypto behavior all over again.
Sam Lessin: No, no, no, I, I get it. The reason, the reason it is intellectually interesting for Meta-
Guest: Of course
Sam Lessin: ... right, is because you have a bunch of normies who are, like, actually do have information about the world, right, from their personal lived experiences. And if you can get them engaged in the, in a market on that, you can learn about the real world. And, like, that's actually, like, using the humans to pump all the knowledge was, like, one of the most interesting things possible about a social network. Now, how it actually plays out and bal- the, the less intellectual side is all-
Guest: It's just never happened that way. We can go back through, like, the history of social networking launches, not just Meta, but across all of them, and it just never plays out that way.
Sam Lessin: I agree that it's extremely unlikely that a enormous company platform will successfully launch something as avant-garde as a... You know, it's not impossible, but very unlikely.
Guest: I don't know, it might be good. But I actually, I worry that it will be too good.
Sam Lessin: Ooh.
Guest: But I want it to be good.
Dave Morin: Say more, Dave.
Guest: That's what I mean. Like, you know, when you talk to parents, like, I've got a lot of friends around town that have kids in their 20s, and they are having, like, serious problems with sports prediction markets, and they can't stop. They are spending way too much money. The, these things are really good at addicting you to getting, you know, money out of you while watching a sports game. And I actually worry that Meta will be insanely good at this, actually.
Dave Morin: Mm.
Guest: And that's the problem.
Sam Lessin: Would you rather your kids be addicted to this or Pokemon?
Guest: Pokemon, probably.
Sam Lessin: I don't know. Like, our oldest son has discovered trading.
Guest: Like, yeah, what do you mean by Pokemon? Like, the-
Sam Lessin: Like, the trading cards. Like, our son has discovered, our oldest son has discovered trading cards, and it's the most annoying thing in the world to me, 'cause it's, like, so stupid.
Dave Morin: You have to go to a physical store.
Jessica: They grow out of it. This is the year that that happens.
Guest: But you don't actually, Jess. There's, like, these entire apps now that are about trading cards and, like-
Dave Morin: Yeah, no, I know.
Sam Lessin: To me, trading cards are infinitely dumber, right, than prediction markets. I would rather our son be addicted to prediction markets than to stupid unboxing trading cards. 'Cause at least there's some, like, risk, reward, learning markets.
Guest: It's interesting how hard it is to process that. It's like-
Dave Morin: What if he's, like, addicted to, like, playing with his friends outside, and doing his homework, and playing tennis? Like, I don't know. This is like a-
Sam Lessin: In all dream, I'm just saying, like, I don't... Like, to me, like, in the spectrum of dumbass shit for teens to do, I would rather them be learning about, like, bet sizing, risk reward, like, you know, stochastic markets than, like, watching idiots unbox Pokemon cards for the dopamine hit of getting some stupid jersey card.
Guest: Sure, but-
Dave Morin: The unboxing videos I hate. I just hate.
Guest: It's a huge thing. Not just the unboxing, but I think they call it ripping. It's like you rip open the trading card pack, and there's, like, an entire market around this. I'm, I'm not into it, but all the guys I know that coach baseball teams around the Bay Area, they're, like, super into this, and it's become, like, a major category.
Dave Morin: Okay, Brit, do you have prediction market thoughts? And then I have one.
Jessica: The one thing I wanted to say, back to the voice of the female user and consumer, women are only, like, less than a quarter of Kalshi and Polymarket right now. Really hasn't, like, struck with most of the women I know. I actually think it's going to hit on with Meta if they do this and they build it into things like Instagram because I think-
Guest: These things are already at large scale. Why would the behavior change?
Sam Lessin: It has to be like betting on Love Island.
Jessica: Exactly, like The Bachelor, and people are gonna be like, "Ooh, I bet it's gonna be Jake, not Chris." No, it is, and the women are gonna, like, get really vicious with each other about which guy's gonna be the winner or what Taylor Swift's gonna wear to her wedding. And I think it's gonna become tribal and, like, really community-oriented, and women are gonna get really into it.
Guest: I was looking at the numbers on X, and it's like, you know, X is actually, like, 85% men.
Sam Lessin: I could've told you that.
Guest: Instagram's the opposite. You know, it's like all women. So, like, really what Meta has to do to make this successful is make it successful on Instagram, and then it will crush.
Jessica: That's what's gonna happen.
Dave Morin: I like that angle. So I like Brit's angle. I have another angle. Intellectually, Polymarket and Kalshi are, like, really interesting businesses for all the reasons Sam talked about in markets and truth. And as a journalist, like, there's... You sort of have a complicated relationship with them, but, like, there is a wisdom of crowds undeniable, like, truth democratizing information element that is very compelling. The problem is these companies are not acting particularly responsibly, especially Polymarket, which I think, you know, is actually kind of a shame because it's allowing especially the media narrative around them. Like, they're dropping, like, low-hanging fruit for the media to rightfully criticize and attack them, which is actually obscuring some of these more bigger issues. So the latest one is, like, Polymarket's influencer program, which you can agree or disagree that influencer programs are good or bad. You should say they should be labeled. But Polymarket has been directing influencers to make fake videos about fake trades and reporting fake earnings for their influencer program. I think that's just, like, immature behavior, honestly. I don't know. I'm not saying it's illegal. I'm just saying, but, like, if you're in a business like this that is so potentially interesting yet disruptive, and you're gonna go and, like, rattle some cages, okay, but rattle the right cages. Like, just don't do stuff like that, that honestly reporters who, some of whom, like, aren't gonna take the time to understand, like, the intricacies of the platform, which is actually quite interesting. Like, actually, there are many things about the platform that are transparent, in that you can see all the transactions, which is unlike sports betting. Like, all of those things just are gonna get drowned out by, like, paying influencers to make fake videos reporting fake earnings and then, like, denying it and being nasty about it. So that is my current take on the prediction markets. They're not going away. And then I think things like, I think it's gonna be hard for anyone to compete with them if they're based off, like, a fake currency.
Guest: For sure.
Sam Lessin: No one cares about a fake currency.
Guest: Yeah, no question.
Sam Lessin: Fake currency is dumb.
Dave Morin: Awesome. Okay, we got that topic. Let's talk... Will you guys indulge me on the AI talent wars? I feel like no one's interested in this, but the markets are.
Guest: It's just boring.
Jessica: It's like ping pong.
Dave Morin: You know why I think it's not boring? This is why I think it's not boring.
Guest: It's just like people want money. AGI's not happening at any of these places. It's all, like, a big-
Dave Morin: But that's what's interesting about it
Guest: ... people are willing to do anything to make money.
Dave Morin: I think if you look at the layer of, like, who goes where, it's sort of profoundly uninteresting at this moment. And if you actually look, like, some of the people who went to Meta from OpenAI have gone back. Like, you know, people who were at Thinking Machines who went back to OpenAI are going back to Thinking Machines. What's interesting to me is, like, what investors and journalists are, like, putting into it, and it makes me realize everyone is, like, deeply insecure about the future of all of these companies, that they're hanging so much on these signals that are objectively determined by, like, so many other factors. So to me, it's actually a comment of, like, the kind of no one knows how to model out the future of all of this stuff.
Guest: So you're saying that's why they're switching?
Dave Morin: No, no. This is why everyone's hanging so much on this. Like, why the entire, you know, Google stock is sliding X percent on the news. Like, investors don't know. Like, they're looking for, like, any signal or, like, any alpha, but they're picking the wrong one.
Sam Lessin: Well, that's the problem when you're modeling. Is it infinity or zero?
Guest: Interesting.
Sam Lessin: I think you're right, but let me try to, like, build on that. I think here's the simple thing. Everyone's model looks like this: infinity or zero and probability of infinity, right?
Dave Morin: Yeah, exactly.
Sam Lessin: That's it.
Dave Morin: Mm-hmm.
Sam Lessin: There's, there's no, there's no more modeling than that, and, like, everything, is this risk-adjusted, is this gonna be infinity or not? And so as a result, because there's no actual year-over-year grow- There's no model, right? Then you take any incremental signal, and especially 'cause everyone else is gonna trade on it, so you have to trade on it faster, and it just, like, cycles into being a much bigger thing than it should be, right? Because the models are so... I mean, I've, we've all made these models when we were 22, right? When working for other people. It's like you know what it's supposed to look like, and then you know what it looks like now, and, like, that's why it's happening, 'cause there is no, "Oh, this was growing at 32%, and now it's gonna grow at 38% compounded five-year CAGR." It's just infinity, zero, probability of infinity.
Guest: I would add to that, maybe one more thing to add is that the level of commitment people have made to investing into these things is extraordinary. Like, the amount of risk-
Dave Morin: Yeah, the stakes are high
Guest: ... the amount of risk that is actually into all of these positions is really big. And so I think you've also got that anxiety out there in the market because people don't know whether or not... Like the example I'll give is yesterday, I've been testing this eight NVIDIA B200s, like basically stock eight, eight of these things running GLM 2, uh, 5.2, and it's like really amazing. This is an open source model.
Dave Morin: Dave, give, what is the context of the B? Give us the-
Sam Lessin: The B, where did you get eight B200s?
Guest: It's a long story. It's a friend of mine.
Sam Lessin: That's like the thing I'm interested in, is not what you're doing with them, but where the, where did you source eight of them?
Guest: Uh, I can tell you later.
Jessica: The dark web, Sam.
Sam Lessin: Those are also quite expensive. Are you just like personally paying for those?
Guest: We're renting them right now, but they're-
Sam Lessin: But they're really... That's a lot. That's expensive, Dave.
Dave Morin: And what is special about that B200?
Guest: It's the top end GPU that N- NVIDIA makes, right?
Sam Lessin: It's the new hotness.
Dave Morin: Oh, I see. It's the Blackwell.
Guest: Yeah, they're the Blackwell, Blackwell 200s.
Dave Morin: It's not the Vera Rubin though.
Guest: No, the Vera Rubins, you can't get Vera Rubins right now unless you're way out on the frontier.
Sam Lessin: If it's a Porsche, then an H100 is like a Miata.
Dave Morin: Okay. And so h- Dave, what's your takeaway from this?
Guest: GLM 5.2 is a, you know, a new open source, open weights model that was released like last week, and I was playing with it in the cloud and was really shocked by its performance. And so I started talking with a couple of... These are like hacker friends of mine actually from the 2000s, and we were like, "Let's see if we can get a rig together and test this." And we got this thing up and running, and out of the box it's doing 150 tokens per second, which is like 10 times what you get out of frontier models, and it's really extraordinary to play with. And this is an open source model. I was testing it doing the exact same coding tasks that I'm doing with frontier models. It's like as good or better. And so that's like a really interesting thing that's happening right now. Like, I'm sitting here going, "I don't need the frontier models anymore. I can run these open weight models on standard NVIDIA hardware, get a bunch of people together, rent one, and it works really, really, really well." And this is kind of Sam's point for years, that we've just been waiting for this moment to come, and I felt like I experienced it yesterday. So like, what does that mean for all of these enormous positions that are out there in these frontier labs? I think it's kind of shaky.
Sam Lessin: Yeah. I agree with all that. But I also, Dave, I'm confused as to what heavy lifting you're doing here, 'cause I do a lot of freaking coding with these things and like a lot of tasks, and like I'm not even close to pushing the limits of what they can do. Like, what are you doing in your spare time that's requiring this level of compute? 'Cause I, I'm pretty heavy user.
Guest: Building OpenClaw.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, but like what specifically? Like what, like what, like what are you finding you need that level of sophistication for?
Guest: Well, this is not about I need it individually. It's that we've got a engineering team that's doing an enormous amount of token spend to do all of the engineering across a month. And so you start to ask this question, like, do you want to pay frontier prices for these things, or do you want to buy the rig yourself and then be able to generate infinity token at 10 times the speed?
Sam Lessin: I totally understand. I'm actually just asking a more specific, more pertinent question, 'cause like I gotta say, I'm like a pretty heavy user of this stuff. I build apps all the time, blah, blah, blah. I am shocked at some people's level of spend on these things, at least what they say they spend. 'Cause I'm literally like, what are you possibly doing?
Jessica: What are you spending, Sam? What's your, uh, monthly bill?
Sam Lessin: I don't even know, but it's probably a few thousand bucks a month. You know? Like, which is a lot by like human standards, but it's not like... When people are like, "Oh, I make, I'm crushing tokens, I'm spending..." I'm like, doing what? Like, I've had this thing do entire market analysis back testing on crazy stock theories, and it's like 100 bucks. Like, what, what are we doing?
Jessica: Think the cron jobs is where they get you.
Guest: No, no, no. It's, it's loops. It's these like long running goal loops.
Dave Morin: Okay. What's a loop? Now, now I get to play the dumb person part.
Jessica: By the way, I think a lot of people are gonna not know how much money they're spending and freak out, 'cause once you start getting really into this, like I have like all these recurring jobs that run all the time, and I had no idea that some of them were spending way more than others. And I, I really batched it down yesterday.
Sam Lessin: I'm not usually someone who's, uh, I'm usually able to figure out how to spend the maximum amount of money on something, and I've tried, and I'm just like, I can't do it. Like, I wanna be the type of venture capitalist like, "Oh, I spent $20,000 yesterday." Like, how? How? I'm trying. I'm like, I go to the thing, I'm like, "Spend up to $1,000 completing this task," and it comes back, it's like I spent $14.95. I'm like, that's not really-
Dave Morin: Dear listeners, please help Sam spend more money. Just tell him how to do it. We'd all be grateful, and then we don't have to talk about this. No, just kidding.
Jessica: Token maxing.
Dave Morin: Yeah. All I know is that, you know, you go through these eras where there's like the information version of clickbait, like the thing that if you just put it in a headline, like you're gonna get a huge number of subs. And it's changed over the years. Like, it's always something different. Believe it or not, it was Kubernetes at one point. That's how wonky our audience is. Then it was like SoftBank and the Vision Fund. And now if you have AI bills in a headline, like the information community is here for it. Now-
Guest: Interesting
Dave Morin: ... being responsible journalists, we do not, you know, therefore, you know, maybe only one article a week will be on such topics, so maybe we're dumb journalists, but it is amazing how tuned people are is this. The other thing that does really well is anything to do with data center loans and new structures there. But anyway, that's current window into the, the psyche of our subscribers. Speaking of which, guys, our new app will be out probably by the time this hits, I hope. So anyway, if-
Jessica: Oh, what are the new features?
Dave Morin: I'm glad you asked
Jessica: Did you vibe code it?
Dave Morin: No, we sh- probably should have.
Jessica: How much did you pay in tokens?
Sam Lessin: No, you did vibe code it. You just vibe coded V as someone else who paid targeted, not-
Dave Morin: Yeah, I paid someone else to vibe code it. Um-
Jessica: You double, you double ch- got double charged, tokens and a person.
Dave Morin: Brit, let me tell you the two things I love about this app. First of all, video. So we brought TiTV to mobile, where it has always belonged. You can see the awesome work of our team. There's a video tab that is a great way to just get... it's basically summarizing all the biggest news. So I love it. And then our deep research chat bot is also slightly redesigned and front and center, so I use it all the time to say, what'd I miss? What is the biggest thing that was reported this week? I go into a meeting and say what's the latest we've reported on this or that, and it's unlike ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini. It's, like, really smart about tech. So those are the two things, and I'd love feedback on it. What else is happening, guys?
Sam Lessin: Do you actually want feedback on it, or do you just wanna say... Is that just what you say?
Dave Morin: I am so feed- no one believes this about me. I, I like kind of went talking to someone. I was like, "How do we get more feedback?" I love feedback. Because you know what? I can't use all of our products every second of the day, so I would love feedback. And Sam, you have objectively been testing it for a month and given me no feedback, so I'm sure it's perfect.
Jessica: Ooh. Jess? I mean, all feedback is helpful. Jess, do you have your agents giving you feedback every day?
Dave Morin: Uh, no, but I've had some great agent use this week. It's been really helpful to me. But Brit, how does that, what does that look like?
Jessica: Oh. Well, so I, this is part of my recurring loop. I have my agents now. When I have an external meeting with, like, an LP or a founder or something, I get graded on how the meeting went, but for me, for them, the whole meeting. And I think that you should also... And then every time I have new content or something, um, you can also run it through and get a grade or get, like, you know, edits. So I was just curious if you've, like, run your app through any sort of agent and had them pick apart the pros and cons.
Dave Morin: Someti- uh, it's various points in this, I got some screenshots, and I, like, would ask Claude if it had a perspective on it. So, like, if, you know, I wasn't sure of, like, X byline style or Y byline style, but I haven't done it in a, a super sophisticated way. I have had, like, meetings that I just felt haven't gone well, and I have a- I have proactively asked my agent, like, how to improve the meeting or something I could have done better. It always just tells me that, like, it, you know, there should've been more actua- like, it just should've been more concrete, every aspect of the meeting. Like, the beginning of the meeting should've been more concrete with the agenda. The end should've been more concrete with the takeaway, so.
Jessica: Hmm. We should grade all of our episodes too.
Sam Lessin: I'm using your app now, and I'm actually... You changed my number one piece of feedback I didn't give you, which is that the TiTV shorts, I don't wanna watch the whole episodes. The episodes are long and boring. I want the clips.
Dave Morin: I made shorts default for you. I made it. No, the shorts is great.
Sam Lessin: That's the only thing. That was my only feedback, 'cause the shorts are good.
Dave Morin: You will never use Reels or TikTok again. Not quite. But it's really good. And, and Sam, the next piece of feedback you gave, which I've put to the team, is to sort them based on a recommendation algorithm based on your interests, so.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, I don't want random shit.
Dave Morin: But it's not that random.
Sam Lessin: You know what you should totally do? Why don't you put some ads in this, in the shorts thing? Make a lot of money.
Dave Morin: 'Cause we don't have to, 'cause we already make so much money off TiTV.
Sam Lessin: Oh, you can always make more. Why don't you just, like, every fifth should be an ad? It can be an ad for More or Less podcast.
Dave Morin: Okay. You hear that, Lindsay? We gotta put some ads. We gotta put some ads in.
Sam Lessin: Lindsay, fire it up. Every fifth scroll can be like-
Dave Morin: You know what everyone wants? Fifth scroll, Gemini. Woo
Jessica: Throw in a More or Less ad every fifth scroll.
Sam Lessin: My favorite part of Instagram is the ads, so, like, I like this, but I need ads. I need to buy something.
Dave Morin: You need to buy something. This is really good. We're, you know, we have designed a fully designed merch store that I just haven't gotten around to launching, but maybe we should be putting our merch in this.
Jessica: Is this, like, a full app review now? Okay. With Jess.
Sam Lessin: I also for what it's like, I like the full flip vertical script thing. I think you should change the home page so the articles are also, like, full-screen flippers as opposed to, like, scrolling, 'cause I don't like... I don't wanna scroll anymore. Scrolling's lame.
Dave Morin: You can go sideways through the sections. You can, you can scroll horizontally.
Sam Lessin: No, that's not what I want. I want to, like, one story, one view, best quote from it, click on it to see more. Just kinda like you have the shorts.
Jessica: He wants an Instagram Stories view, not a feed.
Dave Morin: He wants to take the writing out of the journalism. I get it. I get it.
Jessica: But you know what? I would, I would guess the internet's split on that, feeds versus stories, and people want discretion.
Dave Morin: You know, it's an interesting... Do you guys remember, like, Vox launched on, like, it's now a big company that's now a smaller company that's now been split into four companies, but at the time it was cards. You explain the world through, like, cards. That's sort of what Sam wants. You want the playing cards.
Jessica: A bunch of companies did that, yeah.
Dave Morin: I could vibe code that experience on top of this app, and you could pick which one you wanted, right?
Sam Lessin: No, never give users choice. You have to tell them what to do. But I do think that way I could just, like, flip, flip, flip and be, it'd give me a count of how many stories I haven't flipped through, and I can be done. 'Cause I don't, I just don't, I'm not gonna scroll stories anymore.
Dave Morin: Okay. Cover your ears, all journalists. Now, I do wanna make a quick point about CAD, but Dave, do you wanna make a point about IPOs, because I've teed it up and I thought you had a good point.
Guest: I put out, you know, I put out this tweet a couple days ago because I saw Michael Dell posted that 38 years ago today, Dell Computer went public. We raised $30 million at an $85 million valuation, uh, when they went public.
Sam Lessin: So, like, a series seed.
Guest: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah.
Guest: And so I said, you know, 80, that's around 200 and th- what? I'm sorry, 84.5 at a $239 million market cap in today's dollars. If Anthropic had gone public at the same price and grown to its current valuation of $965 billion, a $100 investment would be worth 1.35 million today.
Sam Lessin: Wow, it sounds like you're a degenerate teen on a gambling app there, Dave, with wanting those types of returns.
Guest: It's true, but the question is, and then I just said, like, bring back ... earlier public listings so that every, the every person can bet on tech too, right?
Sam Lessin: So you do like prediction markets.
Guest: I've made this point a lot of times, Aud, but I think that it's interesting the responses that I got. I got a lot of people being like, "There's definitely the same amount of growth from here on out for the next 30 years." And I'm like-
Sam Lessin: People are idiots
Guest: ... you're gonna see, like, that would imply that we're gonna, Anthropic's gonna be worth $11 quadrillion.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, those are the types of people who put $100 in SpaceX when it goes public. Those are not real people.
Guest: It's shocking to me the sheer amount of them though, Sam.
Brit Morin: Speaking of which, that $100, well, let's see. I don't think that $100 is worth-
Jessica: It's 96.
Guest: It's shocking.
Sam Lessin: But Dave, but here's the thing, here's the thing. I don't under- Like, I actually... Look, it's funny 'cause I'm the one who's pro-prediction market, and I'm fairly libertarian. I'd be fine if there was no Sarbanes-Oxley and you had a much more-
Guest: Me too
Sam Lessin: ... open public mar- I mean-
Guest: Me too
Sam Lessin: ... like, Sarbanes-Oxley is, like, so stupid and, like-
Guest: That's my point
Sam Lessin: ... bad for everyone. But-
Guest: Actually
Sam Lessin: ... but here's the flip side, is I don't know how you can believe that but then also be anti-prediction market because the whole point of all these regulations and accounting standards and why things aren't public and the cost, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the reasons it's expensive to be public, is effectively if, in theory, if not practice, consumer protection, so that you're investing in real companies at real prices, right? And so it's a really hard one, right? Because I, I think y- I'm more in your camp of, like, fuck it. Like, there should be much lighter regulation. Everything is effectively gambling, right? Like, don't worry about accounting standards. Don't worry about what's real and what's not real. Have at it. But I don't think you can simultaneously be against the prediction markets and pro earlier companies going public with lighter standards.
Guest: That's interesting. I'm willing to consider that.
Sam Lessin: 'Cause it's the same thing. It's the same thing. It's like, here's some made-up shit I made up that's worth 50-
Guest: I mean, I don't know. It's not exactly the same thing, Sam, right? Like, there is a something to going public and committing to report something to the every man, right? Like-
Sam Lessin: Look, I don't know. We, we just had a company... I actually am proud of this. So Teamshares, which I seeded originally at an even lower price than Dell, it was like-
Guest: Love that company
Sam Lessin: ... 400K on a four million post was my first check into that when they were getting started.
Guest: How are they doing in the public market?
Sam Lessin: They're public, and they're up, you know? But, like, that-
Brit Morin: But they're SPACs.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, they SPA-
Brit Morin: And SPACs are everywhere, I feel like. Ano- a robotics company did a SPAC today. There's, like, a SPAC every day.
Guest: SPACs have got, SPACs have got us back.
Sam Lessin: 'Cause it's so hard and expensive to deal with getting public, right? And, like, the, the standards to it as well as just the, uh, like, where you need to be scale-wise, the attention is so high. That's why you're seeing the SPACs. That's the closest thing you have to that type of asymmetry. Like, Teamshares being public is obviously much bigger than Dell going public, but it's not many orders of magnitude more. It's, like, one order of magnitude more, not two, not 10, right? And so, like, that is... You say, like, let things be public earlier. Teamshares, which just went out and I'm really proud of, is a great example of something that goes out at a really low price where there should be 100X ahead of it, in theory. Like, that's not advice, but, like, it's got the dynamics where it's not a quadrillion dollars, right, if it works. But it's really, really hard for companies to get out that way right now, and expensive, and you just have to either accept much lower standards and totally change the dynamics and, like... Or, but then you have to accept the fact there's gonna be a lot more fraudulent companies that are public, and people are gonna lose more money. And, you know, like, it even relates to the indices, right? Which is like, to the extent that everyone's gotten into passive investing and, like, auto-clicking on the whole market, well, then it really matters what's in the market, right? Like, versus it being individual stock picking. So I don't know. It's a complicated set of issues. I, it's easy to agree with it intellectually, but when you get into the details-
Guest: It's just a shame, right?
Sam Lessin: It's a... Well, yeah. I mean, it's also just, like, the rich got richer.
Guest: Yeah. I, it's just a shame. Like-
Sam Lessin: The rich got richer. Like, you don't need a public market when, like, 1% or even 0.1% of the people have plenty of money to pay for everything.
Guest: Yeah. It's just... You know, I look at Dell, and, like a lot of people, like, we all grew up in the era that Dell and Apple and, you know, all of these great companies that are still public today. You know, there was about a 3,000X between when Dell went public and today.
Sam Lessin: But wait, so but Dave, but Dell also got taken private and then went public again, and there's a lot of g- things in the middle.
Guest: Dell was very nuanced.
Sam Lessin: They, there were drawdowns. I mean, I think, I'm ev- I don't know if this is at all notable. My bet is it's not. I'm very curious how many people actually put $100 into Dell at zero, and they couldn't have rode it all the way through, or Apple, and still holds it today. Like, no one does that, right? So it's a, it's a very intellectual argument based on, like, oh, in theory, if you had done this, whereas in practice... I know one of our neighbors, actually, who's not at all in the tech world, is one of these guys who put money into Apple in the '80s and now, and kept it, and good for him, but, like, I think there's very few people that actually do that, right?
Guest: But I think that's why the Anthropic example is so interesting, because it's happened in under five years.
Sam Lessin: Like, the Anthropic thing is so funny, 'cause, like, that's not a natural design pattern. It's also not based on anything other than speculation, really, right? And, like, I think part of the story there is, like, um... Like, here's a funny thing. There's a bunch of people who are gonna make a ton of mo- money on Anthropic purely because they didn't have the time to sell, right? Like, this happened a little bit with Facebook, but it's definitely happening with these companies where, like, if you had gone to a rational early employee and it had been public, hypothetically, and they went from having $2 million to $20 million, they would've been like, "Fuck yeah, I'm out," right? They'd be thrilled. The fact that it grew so quickly is you have this whole class of people that irrationally should never have been concentrated in that asset, and never would've been had they had the option and it had been public. But because they had no option to sell and it happened so meteorically fast, there's all these random people that are now gonna be worth hundreds of millions of dollars by accident, right? And, like-
Guest: Interesting
Sam Lessin: ... it's, like, an interesting counterargument to this whole thing, which is, like, there's random walk... This happened at Facebook. Like, there were so many people at Facebook, right, in the early days, who, like, were very, very junior engineers- And got hilariously uber wealthy in, like, the first three years of their career purely 'cause they literally couldn't sell and it appreciated so quickly, right? Uh, that would've never happened in the public markets because people would've been like, "Oh, I made 10 times my money. I can pay off my mortgage and pay for my mom. Fabulous," right?
Guest: Yeah.
Dave Morin: That's an interesting point, but somewhat niche to- compared to the bigger point, but I s- but interesting.
Sam Lessin: Well, it's just the point is that, like, y- y- whether these things are public or private or you're locked up or you're not locked up, like, there's a whole bunch of random elements to this, you know? And there are trade-offs to the whole thing.
Dave Morin: Okay, I'm gonna end us by, by sending us over to the Riviera, where none of us were. Brit, did you ever do Cannes in your media days?
Jessica: Oh, I've done many, many Cannes before. Lots of rosé on yachts.
Sam Lessin: Is it Cannes or Canne?
Jessica: Cannes and Canne if you're American, and not Cannes like Dave said at the beginning of this podcast.
Dave Morin: It's like paddle, paddle. Paddle, paddle.
Sam Lessin: Isn't it all relevant anymore?
Guest: It was never relevant.
Sam Lessin: Is this, like, now the least relevant thing in the world?
Guest: Yes, it is.
Jessica: No, what happened was it used to be legit, and then-
Guest: No, Brit, it's always been an ad conference.
Dave Morin: Well, Dave, ads are legitimate.
Jessica: Ads are legitimate. It's a big business. It's the business of the internet, actually.
Guest: Yes, but people get very confused. They think it's the Cannes Film Festival, which is actually cool and interesting.
Jessica: There are two festivals. There's the film festival and the media festival. The media festival is always about advertisers, creative industry, like creative people and media. And then big brands came in, so of course Google and every big tech brand comes in, and then the whole thing does the same as South by Southwest did, which is jump the shark. And you have, like, Pepsi booths and all kinds of things.
Guest: Get real. It's an excuse for a boondoggle.
Jessica: And so people still go. You drink a lot of rosé on a lot of yachts. You go to a lot of parties. There's, like, speaker panels, and it's fine, but it's really hot in France right now. It's, like, 112 degrees, and I'm really glad I'm not there.
Sam Lessin: Here's the thing, like, I heard someone was like, the cool event is the UTA Beach. And I'm like, I can't think of a company-
Guest: What?
Sam Lessin: ... that is less relevant than UTA. So, like, what, like, what planet are we on? I think, and, like, my experience is a bunch of, like, people, like the people who go there, like there's a guy on my team who went, and I was like, "I'm not paying for that." He's like, "It's fine. I'll just go for fun and keep working." He's like, "If I find a deal, can I expense part of it?" And I'm like, "Fine, if you find a deal, which you're not gonna find." So, like, it just seems to me like a bunch of 20-year-olds who, like, are underemployed or can work remote, like, pretending like they're doing important things when they're not.
Dave Morin: We're ch- we're conflating a lot of things. So Brit's totally right. There's this underlying, like, creativity, like, award component that is, like, totally trumped by the business.
Guest: It's a sales conference.
Jessica: No, it's like the Super Bowl. It's, like, ads.
Dave Morin: Which has been trumped by the just boondoggle conference. Uh, I am now on record as a fan of the boondoggle known as Davos.
Sam Lessin: You are? What?
Dave Morin: Because I did a shit ton of business there this year. So I am, like... I was so productive in those three days that I set, I helped so many parts of my team by being there for three days, so-
Guest: I should probably be less cynical
Dave Morin: ... a boondoggle done well-
Guest: It is good to hang out in person and get things done
Dave Morin: ... is effective.
Guest: Better than Zoom.
Dave Morin: I will say, though, my takeaway from, I always watch, and Brit points out, the media c- the tech companies who have all the money, you know, put up these fancy things, and I'm always interested in their messaging. And their messaging this year basically boiled, boiled down to AI is not evil. Now, Google was out there showing the pro-creativity side of AI, which I believe in, by the way, but their whole thing was like, you know, you can still be creative with AI. It doesn't kill creativity. And then Meta, which riffing off the glasses launch, which I don't think was there, their slogan is, "The future is for everybody," which I think is really weird, but is also like-
Jessica: Including your AI friends
Dave Morin: ... right, but also, like, trying to say, you too, person who doesn't feel like AI is for you, AI is for you, AKA, don't regulate us out of oblivion. So my take was that the interesting threads to look at were sort of, we've talked about how tech companies could work to change the positioning around AI, and this is a small example in the creative.
Sam Lessin: Guys, aiisevil.com is for sale for $100,000.
Dave Morin: Oh, God. What about aiisgood.com?
Sam Lessin: Well, AI is not evil might be available. We might need that. We can sell it at the Cannes Festival for millions of dollars to tech. Join the AI is Not Evil Consortium. I can't believe you're not a member of the AI is Not Evil Consortium.
Dave Morin: Oh, God, Sam is gonna hold people to the-
Sam Lessin: See, I'm gonna have Claude make that for me in two seconds and, like, go pitch it to all the heads of, uh, tech companies. They're gonna cost, like, $12, not 10,000.
Dave Morin: Good luck with that. And dear listeners, well, I hope you enjoyed having the quad back. I hope that you heard us, because these editors are gonna have to do some major interrupting cleanup from this episode. But I hope you take that as a sign of how happy we are to be back together talking tech, talking shop, and I maintain it's gonna be an exciting summer, so-
Sam Lessin: And you should enjoy The Information's new vertical scrolling newsfeed, 'cause I kinda like it. I'm glad you made that change.
Dave Morin: And, and actually, I m- I made, this is, the biggest decision I made was to make shorts the default in the video tab.
Sam Lessin: That's a great decision. Good job.
Dave Morin: That is really the only consequential thing I did.
Sam Lessin: Compared to Instagram, there are far fewer bikinis in this, though.
Dave Morin: And that is exactly where I sign off. Um, because anything else I say can and will be used against me in all aspects of my life. And so with that, I say thank you, dear listeners, and we'll see you back here next week for another episode of More or Less. Bye.
Jessica: Bye.
Guest: See you later.
Jessica: If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Find more information about each episode in the show notes, and follow us on social media by searching for @moreorless, @davemorin, @lesson, @jlesson, and as for me, I'm @brit. See you guys next time.