#160 — Zuck says AI is for everyone, His Rivals Ask Washington To Slow it Down
July 31, 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):
Jessica: Can we call Meta the Miata of AI companies?
Sam Lessin: It's the opposite of a Miata. You can't spend $100 billion on a Miata.
Dave Morin: So much of what Anthropic does is guided by anger and spite towards OpenAI and the people involved in OpenAI, and because of that, I think what you end up with is a lot of opposing energy reaction to that.
Jessica: Have you guys been following the saga of Lillian Wang?
Sam Lessin: I don't even know who that is.
Jessica: So Lillian Wang was a co-founder of Thinking Machines Lab, Mira Murati's startup that is slowly but undoubtedly starting to release products, so we know what they're actually doing. Maybe the end of last week, she penned a lengthy missive, as one does of this age, about her mental health suffering by working so hard, so she was leaving. And this was met with Mira cheering her on for taking care of herself and, you know, a whole wave of all that, "Take the time you need." Guess I read in the information today that she's started at OpenAI.
Dave Morin: That's funny.
Sam Lessin: That was a bastion of mental health.
Brit Morin: More or less. Is it no or is it yes? We'll debate the test that's best. Will we get more or less? Dave and Brit, plus Sam and Jess. Put it all right to the test. More or less.
Jessica: Why, hello. Welcome to More or Less, Summer Storm Edition. Sam, you look like you're in the middle of a squall.
Sam Lessin: I was. I moved in, now there's children running around everywhere. I'm just trying to be outside so I can actually do More or Less.
Jessica: Because outside in a storm is the optimal audio condition for a podcast?
Sam Lessin: It's all I got, guys. It's all I got.
Jessica: Okay.
Dave Morin: The weather's beautiful here-
Jessica: Okay
Dave Morin: ... in San Francisco.
Jessica: Okay. I have a very good structured episode planned with lots of important topics, so I will just tune out the children in my ear.
Dave Morin: I'm coming to you live from South Park in San Francisco, the AI ground zero, so.
Jessica: Are you in a car? Am I the only person-
Dave Morin: Indeed
Jessica: ... who managed to find a table? What is going on?
Dave Morin: Y- indeed. This is the first time I'm pulling a Sam during the More or Less pod, so I feel proud of myself for being, uh, a little bit less, uh, buttoned up this time around.
Jessica: Okay. We're telling our audience exactly how much we care about them, which is a lot, because we're willing to fit this podcast-
Dave Morin: Yeah
Jessica: ... into extremely busy lives.
Dave Morin: Look, I was on a very important AI compute related mission and, you know, had to get it done.
Jessica: Oh my gosh.
Dave Morin: So here I am.
Jessica: Okay. Well, that is one of our three topics today, so buckle up, folks. We've got Meta, its new ad campaign, earnings, other things going on there. Mark has taken up the pen and is writing op-eds like it's his second job. Big news out of the information about China catching up and some very important technology that wildly moved the stock market this week, so we have to talk about that. We do have to talk about this compute debate raging on X that seems to be very, very hot at the moment. Anything else you guys wanna add to the list?
Dave Morin: Let's go.
Jessica: No.
Sam Lessin: No.
Jessica: Okay. Brit- Brit's working, so unfortunately we don't have her. I will try to channel Brit as much as possible. But first, guys, I have some big news this week. This has been a milestone week for me. Can I, can I tell you about it?
Dave Morin: Yes.
Sam Lessin: Is it about Benzon Boone?
Jessica: Uh, no. No, no Benzon news at the moment. I learned to make a proper cappuccino. So if you'll indulge me for one second, I am, uh, probably, Sam and I are probably customer number one of the Breville cappuccino machine. This was an item featured on the Information's Holiday Gift Guide circa four years ago. And we won't say how many we have 'cause it's embarrassing, but we have a number of them.
Sam Lessin: More than three.
Jessica: And... Great, Sam.
Dave Morin: Wait, does this mean-
Jessica: And-
Dave Morin: ... you're gonna upgrade to a real espresso machine?
Jessica: No, no, no.
Sam Lessin: No.
Jessica: But I, I was, I was yesterday years old when I learned that the pressure dial on the front-
Dave Morin: Yeah
Jessica: ... of the Breville is not a mere ornament.
Dave Morin: No.
Jessica: But rather a signal of whether you are getting the right amount of pressure through your cappuccino making process. And I've got to give credit where credit is due, the great Jessica Sitig, one of the most prolific espresso drinkers in the world, has, um-
Dave Morin: Yeah, she is one of the greats
Jessica: ... has tutored me in this and, um, it's game changing. Now, unfortunately though, it also led to an overuse of said machine that tripped all the breakers in our cottage. So it's not without its consequences, but, but it's been life-changing.
Sam Lessin: What tripped all the breakers was the wire fraying to the cottages, which apparently there's an emergency PG&E check or whatever it is, Constellation, whatever.
Jessica: Well, it did only fray the ones adjacent to the cappuccino machine, so I still think there is a connection, but-
Dave Morin: No, it was, like, on the street, like literally several cabins don't have power properly.
Jessica: Well... Sam, are you letting facts get in the way of a good story?
Sam Lessin: Listen, I'm, I have to, I'm tethering on Wi-
Dave Morin: I'm looking forward to getting you guys into upgraded espresso gear.
Sam Lessin: It's never gonna happen.
Jessica: Well, I just wanna say that I appreciate this because I feel like it has taught me to slow down and pay more attention in life in general. So, because I've stared at that pressure gauge forever, all the time, and it never once occurred to me that I was trying to get the red arrow into the, uh, espresso range.
Sam Lessin: I have a different interpretation.
Jessica: Okay, Sam, you get a turn.
Sam Lessin: Which is I... Listen, coffee's not cheap, and watching Jessica Sitig sit there and twist the dial and pour out coffee grinds and twist the dial and po- this is like, like pounds of coffee going through the machine and directly into the trash.
Dave Morin: Oh, Sam.
Sam Lessin: Um, I'm like, I'm like how-
Dave Morin: It's exactly how you're-
Jessica: Bullshit, Sam
Dave Morin: ... spending tokens
Jessica: It's called a pull. It's called a pull, like a pull request.
Dave Morin: How is this any different than tokens?
Sam Lessin: I don't throw the tokens in the garbage.
Dave Morin: Where would they go?
Jessica: I think, I think there was one or two spare pulls, one or two spare pulls. And honestly-
Sam Lessin: There's a lot more than one or two
Jessica: ... it was just in the pursuit of perfect pressure, so
Sam Lessin: Okay, for the pressure. I mean, I drank all the... I, I kept saying, "Let me have the ones that don't have the espresso mark," 'cause they're fine.
Jessica: You got the slop. You got the AI slop.
Sam Lessin: I'm happy to drink slop all day long. It's caffeine.
Dave Morin: Sam's fine drinking coffee slop.
Sam Lessin: It's... I don't understand people's like... I don't... Coffee tastes like coffee. It doesn't matter. But I'm glad that you have a new dial to look at.
Jessica: It's so less bitter, and it's so satisfying because you watch it and you're like, "Is it gonna get there? Is it gonna get to espresso range? Ah, I don't know."
Sam Lessin: It sounds like we should introduce you to a gap, something called Calci. So you can bet on it, Jess. We can have a Calci betting.
Dave Morin: In my mind, getting the coffee to pull properly actually increases the amount of caffeine, uh, per shot. I don't think that that's the actual chemistry, but that's in my mind, uh, what's happening.
Jessica: I just feel like I have a new artisanal routine for a gadget that I have a lot of CapEx invested in, and I feel good about that.
Dave Morin: Hey, man.
Jessica: And, uh, Sam can have the slop, but I'm a new person.
Dave Morin: Caffeine runs Silicon Valley, so-
Sam Lessin: Listen, Jess had a good insight, although, about these Breville machines, which is, you know, one of those, like, water bottle things with, like, 87 bottles of water saved this year because you used the water filter machine thing?
Jessica: Mm-hmm. Yes, yes.
Sam Lessin: This is a good insight. I really want that thing to have a counter, and it would be even greater if it was connected to the internet, so you see, like, you're like a rat hitting the button. So I want, like, my... I want that data set, and then I want a physical counter of the number of espressos that have gone through, 'cause that's kind of fun, right?
Jessica: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: The amortization.
Jessica: But we're seeing AI economics in our coffee habits.
Dave Morin: Should we talk about tech?
Jessica: Yeah, no, we're going to that, but I, I think this is important.
Sam Lessin: I will say, you know, the Brevilles have also gotten cheaper. Have you noticed?
Jessica: No, I haven't
Sam Lessin: This one was only, like, $500. The one before it was, like, 800. So, like, the cost of Bre... There's something going on with the mass production of Breville.
Dave Morin: Sam, the Breville is like the Miata of coffee machines.
Sam Lessin: And I love Miatas and Boston Whalers. It's all the same category of thing.
Dave Morin: Yeah. It's perfect for you guys.
Jessica: Okay, speaking of the Miata of AI companies, the last thing our friend... That people will never visit us again if they just end up on the podcast, though we could usually, we could really use them. Can we call Meta the Miata of AI companies?
Sam Lessin: I don't know what that means.
Jessica: Is that a pivot that we can make? I don't know what that means either.
Sam Lessin: No, I mean, they're, they spend so much m- They have so much infrastructure. It's like the, it's like the, it's the opposite of a Miata. You can't spend $100 billion on a Miata. It's like a battle, it's like a aircraft carrier.
Jessica: Yeah. Fair enough. Okay. Well, mar- mark that the shift to hard tech topics. Now-
Sam Lessin: Kimi is like the Miata of AI.
Dave Morin: GLM maybe.
Jessica: Sure. We're not, I, I actually don't have open source on the agenda at the moment, and let's keep it that way. So-
Dave Morin: All right. Let's talk Meta
Jessica: ... uh, did you guys see Meta's new ad campaign?
Dave Morin: Yes.
Sam Lessin: I did, yes.
Jessica: What'd you think? Dave, reactions. Two thumbs up, two thumbs down?
Dave Morin: Are you talking about the... I mean, this is clearly, like, an integrated campaign, where we've got letters, we've got interviews in the FT, we've got, you know, videos. Are we talking about the whole thing or just the ad?
Jessica: Let's start with the ad and then go to the campaign.
Sam Lessin: I like innovation, not automation. That's, like, a good vibe. That was, like, kind of what I took away from it that I liked, right, was this whole, like, AI is not for automation, it's for innovation. I'm not sure it's true or not, but I like the vibe of it.
Jessica: Okay. Well, let me recap this first. So Meta comes out with this ad, and sharp listeners of the pod will note that I emphasize this point in the launch of their latest glasses, which was, "AI is for everyone," right? That cl- That seems to be the new tagline. It's sort of the campaign tagline. It r- is a theme that runs through interviews and op-eds Mark wrote this week or published this week. The idea being, there's a narrative out there that it's elitist, that it's all about profit ringing, that it's evil. We reject that. We think it is the latest tool that will further the democratization of technology in the hands of billions of people, fostering creativity, you know, entrepreneurial spirit, all that kind of stuff. Is that a decent summary of, of what you guys think the talking points of the campaign are?
Sam Lessin: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think AI for everyone.
Jessica: Okay.
Dave Morin: Of the ad campaign again or the blog posts?
Jessica: Well, both, right? Well, Dave, what, with that as a loose backdrop, what jumped out at you about it?
Dave Morin: I mean, I think that this... I'm trying to pull it up right now, but I could not agree more-
Jessica: But you have no internet connection, so good luck. Yeah.
Sam Lessin: We can tell you're trying to pull it up 'cause you're crushing your internet connection.
Dave Morin: I could not agree more.
Sam Lessin: Either that or you're scrolling Instagram.
Jessica: That's you, Sam. Sorry you don't have enough bandwidth to shop while you record right now.
Sam Lessin: It's true. I, I only have a second device on me 'cause my other phone's out of batteries.
Dave Morin: So my understanding of this campaign is that Mark is trying to project a, an optimistic view of the future of technology and AI, and that, I, I believe it's in the blog post that he wrote, that he just can't understand how someone who believes that AI is going to automate and take away everyone's jobs and sort of threaten the future of society would continue to work on building AI technology. Like, that to me was the strongest statement that I think that he made in his piece, and I just couldn't agree more with this perspective. Obviously, like, I'm speaking my own book here. Uh, you know, I'm spending an enormous amount of time working on OpenClaw and trying to give people a much higher agency, um, version of AI that is much more personal and much more individually empowering, and I guess that's what I'm hearing from Mark. And it's the first thing that he's written in a long time that's kind of- I think shining through and breaking through in a way that to me is very distinct and different for both Mark and Meta. And I think it's really cool and, and pretty great, and I think it's awesome that he put the, you know, the muscle of not just Hen, but the, you know, uh, creating video version of that message, and then it ap- looks like they kind of deployed it out across the entire Facebook network, across every single surface. And so I do think people, um, need to hear the optimistic side of this take. I mean, we've talked about the pessimist side and the doomer side of this across many, many episodes of this pod. So props to Mark for, uh, you know, uh, uh, sending that message is my take.
Sam Lessin: I agree with that. I mean, like, look, it's just like Star Wars. There's a dark side of the Force and the light side of the Force, right? And, you know, in some ways, the dark side is easier. Certainly easier message to sell and raise capital against and a bunch of other stuff. But ultimately, the light side of the Force, which is this is, like, how you do it for good, is a, I think, hopefully, ultimately victorious in the longer and, and the better message. Uh, it's just harder for other people to pull off. I mean, I think it's very easy to sell the negative story, especially in a place of non-incumbency. I think Mark is one of the rare leaders that actually is in a position as a founder at a trillion-dollar scale who already has all the people on his platform who can try to tell the light side of the story, is what I would say. And they're, look, they're probably both true. Like, the Force does have two sides, you know? It always does.
Jessica: So do you believe it, or you think it's part of the truth? Or do we not know, and we just need to put everything into a box right now, but no one really knows?
Sam Lessin: I mean, it's almost certainly all of the above. It's almost certainly all of the above. I mean, like, look, I'm, I'm like case study zero of this because I, in a lot of ways, like, Jess knows this, like, my relationship with my bot infrastructure has only grown exponentially. You, you told me I was only allowed to tell you one more thing the bot told me last night.
Jessica: Guys, I'm worried.
Sam Lessin: You shouldn't be worried, but it's sick.
Jessica: Last night, Sam is like, no matter what he's doing, if Sam has a smile on his face, it's because his bot has told him something interesting about him. And on one hand, that's really cool.
Sam Lessin: It's so cool.
Jessica: And on one hand, that's, like, a little bit scary because, like, people and other people aren't gonna communicate that way to him slash me.
Sam Lessin: No.
Jessica: And I just wanna make sure that, like, you have space and accommodation in your brain for, for human communication.
Sam Lessin: I... Look, I- I've kind of turned the corner with the infrastructure I built around AI personally, where it's yielding just awesome stuff for me, right? Like, I'll give you an example. I, I fed it, like, four gigs scanned of my dad's journals and work logs from, like, the late '80s through current day, and the stuff it pulled out of it, like, about history and him, were, it was just, like, flooringly good.
Dave Morin: That's cool.
Sam Lessin: Right? And so I was, like, kind of go-
Dave Morin: That's really cool
Sam Lessin: ... having a conversation back and forth with, with this infrastructure I built about, like, you know, his personal life and history and business deals and career and different characters, and, like, it's just, like, a level of depth and, like, you would never... It's, like, so cool, like, when you kind of... I also, like, have gotten really nerded out pretty deeply on, like, the health s- data side of it, so I'm now feeding it Garmin and Oura and Apple Health and, like, six other devices and integrated all the data sets.
Jessica: Yeah. We talked about this, but yes.
Sam Lessin: Well, but it's like, I mean, I actually sent to someone involved in Oura, like, it basically was giving me, like, this morning, it was like, okay, like, it figured out my new thresholds for, like, zones of training, pushed it to my watch to update all the settings automatically without even, like, asking, like it knew how to do and what I wanted, and then gave me the variance against Oura, which I then sent to someone who works at Oura on, like, where Oura is making mistakes in heart rate measurement. And, like, it's just, like, getting so powerful. So the light side of the Force is, like, I feel like I'm getting all this data about the world and my life and interactions, and, like, making better decisions because of it, and, like, it's great. I think I'm, like, six clicks more aggressive and removed from how other people are using it. Like, the way I have my stuff set up I think is beyond what almost anyone off the shelf can find with respect to OpenCall. You're just not gonna build it. You have to... It takes more than is obvious, but it's great. So I'm all for the light side on a personal level. I don't think that that is gonna change the world fundamentally. I just think it's good, whereas I think the stuff... And by the way, I could go on and on about four other use cases running for me that are amazing. Like, I'm like, there's so many things that I'm, like, thrilled about what it's doing for me personally. You know, on the professional side-
Jessica: Yeah, yeah
Sam Lessin: ... you know, we know the, the narratives run faster than reality. The narratives are super scary. The narratives are super distortionary. The power dynamics are super scary. Like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and we know that side. So I think they're both true. I think the question is what story dominates, and, like, that's the unclear question. But if Mark wants to work on, like, taking the ridiculous level of infrastructure I've built out around AI and, like, trying to commercialize it and give it to the world, God bless. I mean, it is pretty cool.
Jessica: Yeah. I think it's interesting to see now the real ri- I mean, everyone's just trying to say, like, "We are not Anthropic" in some way, because Anthropic is winning, and Anthropic also has some of the biggest problems in Washington. And so you're seeing all this sort of branding and messaging that seeds-
Dave Morin: Yeah, the Rebel Alliance has formed.
Jessica: Yeah. It's not, I don't think it's a bad time to be the Empire either, Dave, but that's a different story.
Sam Lessin: I think this is a good, let's keep going Star Wars, dark side, light side, which is like, if you'd asked a year ago, "Who is the evil empire, and, like, who's the Rebel Alliance?" You probably would've said the evil empire is OpenAI and, and the Alliance is everyone else. And, like-
Dave Morin: Yep
Sam Lessin: ... actually, Nvidia is the emperor, right? Like, it's like-
Jessica: Mm-hmm
Sam Lessin: ... OpenAI is, like, the Death Star/Darth Vader, but, like, Palpatine is, like, Nvidia, right? Like, there's some version of that. But-
Jessica: But you're getting really into the... Yes, okay.
Sam Lessin: Uh, uh, but, but OpenAI would've been the evil empire, and Anthropic would've been part of the Rebel Alliance. Now, like, things change so quickly that, like, maybe Anthropic is, although they're gr- I mean, I use their stuff all the time. I love the Empire. But it is interesting, like, uh, to kinda how it's all playing out.
Jessica: Your bot is an empire bot. Your bot is a dark side bot that you are using
Sam Lessin: The core of it is. Like, the core... Fable is the core, like, decision maker. There's a bunch of other stuff it uses, but Fable is, like, the ultimate decider in my infrastructure.
Dave Morin: I mean, I think that this analogy is super interesting because the Star Wars analogy, if you go to the scene, I believe it's in Empire Strikes Back, might've been Return of the Jedi, can't remember, where Luke confronts the Emperor and Darth Vader. The scene plays out where Luke is having to decide whether or not to succumb to his anger, and the Emperor says to him, you know, "Give in, Luke. Give in to your anger."
Sam Lessin: Let the power flow within you.
Dave Morin: Let the power flow within you. And what's interesting, I think, about this analogy is that so much of what Anthropic does is guided by anger and spite towards OpenAI and the people involved in OpenAI. And because of that, I think what you end up with is a lot of the opposing energy reaction to that, right? Like, you have this reaction happening in the Valley where a lot of people are saying, like, "Why do you constantly, you know, talk to me as though you are better than me, as though you are, uh, angry towards this other entity," right? And I think that that's, like, actually one of the more interesting things to talk about and look at here, is there's a very human story playing out behind this.
Sam Lessin: Is it that or is it more Lord of the Rings where it's the ring of power? And, like-
Dave Morin: I don't know
Sam Lessin: ... the question is... And you basically, it's too tempting to use, right? Like, I, I don't know. It's an interesting-
Jessica: Or is it Mean Girls?
Dave Morin: It might just be Mean Girls.
Sam Lessin: Probably not Mean Girls, but say more.
Jessica: You guys don't know that movie.
Dave Morin: If Brit was here, uh, she would say it's Mean Girls.
Jessica: But, uh, okay. To... Yeah, I think it's Mean Girls. But honestly, and, and, um, I think it is also interesting to remember, though, that Anthropic came out swinging on the brand first by basically going right for the jugular of OpenAI wh- when it was the evil empire with those, like, "We won't run ads." I mean, do you guys remember? I think it was a Super Bowl ad. Like, so th- this has been going on for a while.
Dave Morin: Yeah, I mean, Jess, that's because that's the view, right? Like, it, it was literally born out of, "We are leaving OpenAI. OpenAI is evil and is the empire, and so therefore we are going to go create, you know, an opposing force." But then-
Sam Lessin: But just to push, here's the other way to look at it, which is OpenAI is the original empire, right? And what they basically said is, "There's a power vacuum on AI. It's gonna be so powerful that even if it's dangerous, we better be the ones to control the dangerous force ourselves because otherwise bad people will have it, and at least we're good people." Like, that was, like, the original framing, right? Like-
Dave Morin: Yeah. I mean, Sam, that's the truth.
Jessica: Well, actually, if we go way back, they were worried that Google was that. Now I'm just showing off how long I've been following this. But like it was called OpenAI 'cause it wasn't Google.
Dave Morin: Yes.
Jessica: But finish your point, and then we're moving on.
Sam Lessin: Everyone thinks... And that's why it's like Lord of the Rings, like, for... We can talk about the, the ring of power, one ring to rule them all, one ring to guide them. Is everyone's like, "Okay, there's this new power in the universe," right? And it could be the Force early on, whatever, but the Force is ancient. So it's a new power, and it's so powerful and dangerous that we have to be the ones to wield the power to save everyone else, right? But then the power is ultimately-
Jessica: Yes
Sam Lessin: ... corrupting, like the ring of power, right?
Jessica: Yes.
Sam Lessin: And so-
Jessica: Always
Sam Lessin: ... and then basically you have these generations of people being like, "Oh my God," like, "we have become the thing we feared, and therefore we must leave to, like, fight back against the evil empire." But then honestly, the power is corrupting and become... So then the interesting thing about Mar, to take it back, and f- and Meta. Meta's like the rare company that's powerful enough on its own that they're gonna be like... It, it'd be very easy for them to go dark, right? And just be like, "We will, you know, engage it." But they're like, "No, we're powerful enough to, like, wield the light side of the Force," right? We can... We are like Tom Bombadil. We don't need to take the dark side of the Force, and we're gonna take it on. I think that's an interesting... I don't know. There's something in here that's interesting.
Dave Morin: I guess, though, that deserves a steelman on the other side.
Sam Lessin: Tom Bombadil is the best character in Lord of the Rings, for what it's worth, and I was really upset. I think Peter Thiel finally made a company Bombadil, which pissed me off, 'cause it is by far, he is by far the best character, even though he's missing from the movies.
Jessica: Okay. Dave, last comment on this, and then we're moving on.
Dave Morin: Yeah, I mean, I think the, there's sort of a, you have to steelman the other side a little bit, which is that you're right that Meta is o- one of the rare companies. I mean, it's one of the only companies with a founder still running it, that serves consumers directly, that has enormous scale, that can telegraph a message like this. But at the same time, Meta is still a centralized company. They run a massive centralized infrastructure that is dependent on advertising for the majority of their revenue. And, you know, whether or not they will actually put the power in the hands of the people, I think is yet to be seen. You know, one of the reasons I'm personally working so much on OpenClaw is that I really believe that we have to put the power in the hands of the people. Like, you have to take the computer out of the cloud, just like in the '70s, the computer, you know... The computer had been used to, you know, implement the Holocaust, right? IBM had used giant computers to, you know, do the Holocaust. And so a lot of what happened with the personal computer movement in the '80s was trying to get the personal computer as a tool into the hands of the people. And that's kind of the question that I have here is, like, will Meta be a force for bringing this power truly to the people, or will it continue to centralize the resource and try to grab the ring itself, like you're saying, Sam? And will it just be the next in the line? You know, will it be the next after Anthropic
Sam Lessin: But Dave, just to push you, when the- decentralization's a great political movement in a lot of ways, and like there's a few examples like Bitcoin where it's kinda worked. But like, in the Star Wars universe, the Rebel Alliance kinda sucks, right? Like, they're not capable of winning. Like, they're, they're totally losing, and it's only because you have a young Jedi come along that saves their ass, right? And so like I guess the question for me is like do we really believe that like a distributed open movement can win here against empires, or is it more that you need a Jedi?
Jessica: We know, Dave, say your answer, but we all know what you think 'cause you've been very consistent about it.
Dave Morin: I don't think that I- it's necessarily about open decentralized movement. I do think it's about... I, I think about it through the lens of the personal computer, that like we must put in the hands of the people the most powerful possible version of AI so that individuals have true agency. Whether or not that's a for-profit company that does that, like a future Apple of some kind, or whether or not it's a, you know, open source project doesn't matter to me. It's matters to me more that it, that the directionality of the movement is going in that direction.
Sam Lessin: Hilariously though, Apple's a great story 'cause like one, I mean, as a very smart friend pointed out to me recently, it was a political movement, it wasn't a technological one. Like early Apple computers sucked, right? Like it was completely a political thing of value that kinda drove it. But now, you know, years later, they're the ultimate centralized player, right? Like, so it's like one of those things where like you become the thing you're set up to fight, right? It's a political movement for decentralization that became the most centralized company in the world.
Dave Morin: I don't understand that at all. I mean, I'm talking to you on a computer that I own, that I have all of my files. I do, you know, I have a phone. Like I have truly powerful tools in my hands that I can use to do things, you know? I have-
Sam Lessin: But you can't use them however you want.
Dave Morin: Yes, I can.
Sam Lessin: You c- you can't put whatever you want in the App Store. Like it's totally locked down. Now I'm not saying like you can't like... It's just interesting, like Linux is open. I don't think Apple's an open company.
Dave Morin: I can put anything I want on a Mac.
Jessica: Yeah. Okay, we've gotten off track here. So have we resolved this? Obviously, there's openness at different layers, right? I mean, I think that... And, and it's interesting 'cause Mark's vision isn't really a- explicitly about open or closed. It's about putting the technology in the hands of people, which I think is aligned with your personal computer vision, Dave. But we will see. Meta reported earnings that were disappointing, but mostly 'cause they spent a lot of money in lawsuits and laying people off, severance, so.
Sam Lessin: What happened to the stock prices out of interest? Up or down?
Dave Morin: Yeah. What, I didn't, I didn't see this. What's the, what's the headline, Jess?
Jessica: I, I believe it went down.
Sam Lessin: I can't look it up 'cause I don't, I don't have a computer I can use right now.
Jessica: Oh, I'm also the, the scribe of the internet for you two chuckleheads who have shitty internet connections, 'cause this has only been on your calendar for like three months, but that's okay.
Sam Lessin: Well, you're, it's just like an AI situation.
Jessica: Let's see. How is Meta trading right now? Meta, Meta is trading down a percent on the day.
Dave Morin: That's not that bad.
Jessica: So down, down a bit.
Sam Lessin: Oh, good. We can still afford the Breville, thank God.
Dave Morin: That's not that bad.
Jessica: Um, but no, I don't, I, I don't think it's that bad.
Sam Lessin: No, a percent is that, that did what the market expected.
Jessica: And the CapEx guidance like shifted slightly, like the low end shifted slightly. But, but we're not talking about any astronomical swings here. Last week, which we didn't talk about-
Dave Morin: I mean, you have to talk about the macro, which is the entire market is down today, right? It's a-
Jessica: Yes
Dave Morin: ... down day. It's about-
Jessica: So that's a great segue-
Dave Morin: ... market-wise
Jessica: ... into not so much today, but The Information had a major story this week that we don't have to go deep into because I know you guys are all fans of lithography as much as I am. But our team out of Asia had a piece that China domestically has been making big progress in extreme ultraviolet lithography, which is how... Actually, sorry, not the extreme one, the other one. Just deep ultraviolet lithography, which is a key step in chip making, right? How you actually etch patterns on wafers. The extreme one, or enhanced or extreme, should know this, extreme is much more cutting edge, and China's still far behind on that. But this story obviously majorly moved the market for ASML, the company that currently has cornered the market on this technology. But I read a lot of analyst reports about overall sentiment in AI that cited it as well. So I think it's really interesting, not that we go deep into the tech stack or US, China AI developments, but, but this is a big deal.
Sam Lessin: We know way more about Star Wars than we do about lithography.
Jessica: Yeah. But this is a big deal. The, and I think it, it, it is also significant just more broadly to the point of the jittery nature of investors right now in terms of how this will all play out. But I think I've said this before, but I'm always surprised like, you know, in Washington, tech execs go to Washington to say, "We have to beat China in AI at all costs." Privately or even semi-privately, the exact same people say, "Obviously, the US and China are gonna both be leaders" "in AI."
Sam Lessin: Yeah, totally.
Jessica: Like, they sort of reject that the war narrative makes any sense. And, and then, you know, three weeks later, they pick up the talking point that's expedient in the moment, which I get. But I, having witnessed that, I, this has always been very top of mind for me. And, and so I think this, this story is really important in that regard. And app-
Sam Lessin: Wait. Jess, are you saying that people say things in public that they don't necessarily believe?
Jessica: Yeah, I do. I do.
Sam Lessin: Oh my God.
Jessica: I mean, I haven't sa- we, we, we, we can't say who because, you know, we'll, we'll get really in trouble. But like my- Jaw dropped hearing some of these people just sort of like, you know, a moderator tees up a question about the war and they're like, "Oh, it's a stupid question. We're both gonna win. Next question." Like, that is how dismissive they are sort of privately about this. So I mean, yes, it's true that like China has not... You know, there have been areas of manufacturing or technology where China's had like a national push and not made progress. I think jet engines is one someone was telling me. Not an expert in that either.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, that's correct.
Jessica: But it, it, it seems like completely obvious to me that like lithography they're gonna figure out, and they're figuring it out, and I think that's interesting. I'm also damn impressed with my reporters, 'cause that is not an easy story to break, let me tell you. Okay. Let's talk, let's talk a bit about compute. Dave, you said you are ferrying compute across San Francisco. Would you like to elaborate on that at all?
Dave Morin: Uh, no. But, uh-
Jessica: Okay. You can say no. I mean, but okay, when I think of compute-
Sam Lessin: That's like when you used to do the sneakernet, when it used to be f- faster to just move a, to throw a hard drive in the, in your, in your passenger seat than it was to move it over the internet. Those were the days.
Jessica: I just feel like, um-
Sam Lessin: You used to be able to ship hard drives to S3. Remember that?
Dave Morin: Yeah.
Jessica: Okay.
Sam Lessin: Do you still do that?
Jessica: When I think of compute, I think of data centers, which don't-
Dave Morin: Well, what's the question, Jess?
Jessica: Okay. Here, I'll ask a question. So my-- I also actually wanna briefly talk about X, which seems to become, um-
Sam Lessin: Love X
Jessica: ... mildly relevant again.
Sam Lessin: So funny.
Jessica: And also, guys, not, since I have a strong internet connection, I have been able to multitask throughout this podcast, and I just went to X to look something up, and Mark just followed me on X, so this is a very exciting day. Mark Zuckerberg's followed me on X. Like, um, more important is that is like, he's on X following people. But to wrap up the compute point, the like hedge fund Gavin Baker types of the internet and tech investing seem to have like very tense debates about what's gonna happen to compute in like the near term, being like next 18 months. And some people think that it's just gonna get wildly more expensive, AKA much better margins for the, the businesses powering it, and others think the opposite's gonna happen. And, you know, it's pretty ti- like people are like, some of their analysis is based on, well, these longer terms contracts are gonna come up, and then they're gonna have to renew at much higher rates. I, I kind of assume that the labs have like figured that out and aren't just-
Dave Morin: Yeah
Jessica: ... gonna have to like triple their AWS spend over, so I don't really buy that, which was sort of part of Gavin's analysis. But Dave, you're closer to this. Like, do you think there is a clear pattern on compute pricing over the next, say, 12 months, six months? What are, what are all these investors in a tizzy about?
Dave Morin: I don't really understand what the market is doing right now. My intuition is that there's something else that's causing this to happen in the markets. You know, it's, it's strange, like you've got RAM stocks that are super down, like Micron is like, I don't even, down like 15% or something like this. There's a bunch of those types of analyses that are running around. I can't comment on what's gonna happen with this contract or that contract, but here's the thing that I know from the front lines, which is that everyone is compute constrained, and everyone, you know, at every manufacturer is trying to develop, manufacture chips, RAM. The entire supply chain is operating at, you know, complete capacity to fill the demand that is... I don't see any signal that the demand for tokens is going down. Uh, I only see bottlenecks. I mean, the actual... I was mostly joking with you earlier, Jess. The reason that, you know, I'm in San Francisco is that, uh, at OpenClaw, we've been highly constrained on compute around the Mac operating system. Our ability to do multi-agent agentic engineering is constrained by the amount of RAM and the amount of Apple silicon we can deploy against running agents. And so we've actually now worked in partnership with Apple to develop a bunch of, uh, Mac Studios in custom configuration that is enabling us to unblock our engineering team's ability to be, you know, extremely productive. And so I only see, you know, engineering, uh, bottlenecks right now. And so I don't totally understand what's going on with all these analyses, because my empirical experience on the ground is that we're constantly trying to figure out how to get more tokens, get those tokens at an efficient cost, deploy the right tokens against the right, you know, tasks and workloads. And that goes across the stack from, you know, Frontier tokens to, you know, uh, directly renting V300s and V200s, to the Mac Studios that we need on the desks of engineers to manage the agents in the first place. It's, it's constrained across the board, and so I don't see where the, the dip in demand is personally, and I don't see it across my portfolio either. So again, I work at a different part of the stack, but that's what it looks like at, uh, you know, from my vantage.
Jessica: Dave, your connection's getting a little spottier, so we might wait a second because it's going in and out a bit. But what, to be clear, what are these Mac mini-- What part of the process are they being used?
Dave Morin: You know, in order to run multiple agents at once, your Mac has to manage each thread, right? So if you're running, you know, one, two, three, 10, 100 agents at the same time, whether they're running through Codex, Pi, OpenClaw, or whatever, you have to have memory, uh, and compute available locally on your machine in order to run that process. And so you're only constrained by the power of the computer sitting on your desk to manage multiple at the same time.
Sam Lessin: But why are you doing anything locally? Like, I don't understand. I mean, like, I run very powerful computers in the cloud for things I wanna do. I would never run anything locally on my machine. Like, why do I do things lo- why is anyone doing anything locally?
Dave Morin: You need both.
Sam Lessin: But, like, why?
Dave Morin: Your machine has to be talking to the ones in the cloud.
Sam Lessin: No, I have one machine in the cloud that manages the other machines in the cloud. Like, why does it have to do... It's just a terminal on my desktop. I could do it on my iPad.
Dave Morin: But you still have to talk to that machine.
Sam Lessin: I don't know. This is-- I, I kinda get it, but not really. Like, I, like, why you have to have things on your desktop. Like, I could code anything I want off my iPhone, just tunneling into one machine and then having it manage a bunch of other machines.
Dave Morin: Yeah, I mean, but you have to have that machine. Whatever machine you're talking to, whatever machine you're coordinating or orchestrating with, um, has to be very powerful, and you're right.
Sam Lessin: Sure. I just-- But why does it have to be... It doesn't have to be local. I mean, like, this is the thing, like, I don't... To me, increasingly, like, my laptops are truly dumb terminals, right? Like, I have laptops. They're actually, I have one that's an off-the-shelf, like, cheapo Air and whatever. Like, I don't feel constrained by that at all. Now, I'm not doing serious, serious engineering, but, like, I am curious what anyone's trying to do locally versus just, like, having a, you know, an instance in DigitalOcean or AWS that then manages a bunch of instances that can be as beefy as you want it to be.
Dave Morin: If you're running 50 Codex agents at once from your Mac, like, you have to use a Mac with a lot of RAM. Like, that's-
Jessica: Who needs to run 50 Codex agents?
Dave Morin: But why would you do that? In order to do engineering. It's like we're, that's, that's how we're doing engineering on OpenClaw.
Jessica: Right. But, like, what pr- how many people are running 50 agents at once?
Dave Morin: A lot. A lot.
Jessica: Okay.
Dave Morin: Our entire engineering-
Jessica: Okay. Well, the non-engineers here. The non-engineers here.
Sam Lessin: I just, I, I get it, I get it abstractly.
Jessica: I have to update, by the way, uh, Meta stock is down 10%. I need to tell you.
Sam Lessin: Oh, put return the breville. Return the breville.
Jessica: Return the breville. Okay, so we're confused about compute. We see huge demand. The compute conversation continues. Let's talk about X for a second. Do you, like-
Dave Morin: Love X.
Jessica: Sam, you said you love X. You know, journalists have always been a love-hate relationship with X, but it is really clear now that, to me, like, X is not just the town square, but it's really, like, the AI town square. Do you guys feel that too? Like-
Dave Morin: Yes, for sure.
Sam Lessin: For sure.
Jessica: And obviously we've had, well, Mark, Mark, um, reinvigorated his X presence.
Dave Morin: It's the tech town square. It's not just the AI town square.
Jessica: Jensen joined. Bernard Arnault also joined, so it's also the piss against the media town square. But yeah, I'm curious what you guys are seeing.
Sam Lessin: Look, I think, honestly, I'm very pro... I mean, as a user, I've consistently used X since 2007, although admittedly when I was at Facebook, I didn't engage that much for a few years. But it's always been great. Um, I think Nikita's been doing a great job, and I think it's better now than it was before. I think the conversation's stronger there than it ever has been. It's also really funny. I mean, I also use Threads. I use Threads out of loyalty, and I will say that it's pretty funny.
Jessica: I end up in Threads. I don't go to Threads, but I spend time in Thread. 'Cause I click on things on Instagram. Yeah.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, yeah, 'cause you click on things on Instagram, and then you end up... But here's the funniest thing. I'll, I very frequently will double post. I'll post things on Threads and X at the same time. And it's really funny because on Threads, Threads is so left wing. It's, like, wild. Like, anything I post there, like, I will have the left wing, far left communist mafia after me, which is funny because, like, Threa- because X is actually right-leaning, at least in my purview, right? So you have, like, this very funny thing where, like, you can post it, you can, you know based on what you say and who you wanna antagonize how to completely flip out Threads with anything that's even slightly right-leaning or pro-capitalism, whereas, like, X is, like, all that. And so it is a really funny thing. But overall, like, I think X has never been stronger. I think it's a great product right now.
Jessica: Are you saying there's no neutral platform? Hmm. Interesting.
Sam Lessin: No, there's no neutral platform.
Jessica: Dave, where-- I feel like even when you, uh, that was sarcasm. Even when you had your... I-- We c- you, like, sort of half quit social media, but you, you stayed with X, right? Why?
Dave Morin: Uh, because I agree with you that X is the, I mean, it's the network of technology, right? Like, it actually always has been, you know? X was born in the tech community.
Jessica: Yeah.
Dave Morin: Uh, it, you know, I remember actually in the early days of X, um... It's funny, I'm, I'm sitting here in South Park, and I remember when Twitter started in South Park, and people would call it the, the nervous system of tech. Like, you'd be able to get in there and you just kinda see the-
Jessica: Mm-hmm
Dave Morin: ... the neurons of tech firing. And it's meandered, like Sam said. It's, like, gone in and out of various different phases, and the, the feature set has changed, and the people working on it have changed. But, you know, since it launched in-
Sam Lessin: Well, the feature set really hasn't changed very much.
Dave Morin: Yeah. I mean, they've added things, taken things away.
Jessica: They launched payments. I didn't touch that with a 10-foot pole, but yeah.
Dave Morin: There's parts of it that have gone and some, you know, whatever. And I agree, Nikita's doing a great job, and Elon's doing a great job. But, you know, I think it's, uh, if you work in the tech business, if you're a technologist, it's where the conversation is. And so it's not on Threads. It's not on Reddit. Like, it's definitely not in Facebook groups. Where else would you go? It's the only place that you can go to have that conversation in the world right now.
Jessica: Are there, um... The other example of this was Demis Hassabis posted his treatise on AI regulation as an X post, and so that was also Really interesting to me. Does super technical discussion happen on X?
Dave Morin: I actually didn't understand why Mark Zuckerberg didn't post his treatise on X as a post rather than behind a subscription paywall in the Wall Street Journal.
Jessica: Well, I think he did both. I don't n- I don't like when you do your subscription paywalls, but so behind, you know, a premium community. It, the message got out. The message got out. But there's definitely, like, a vibe shift on rival executives. So if you guys were in charge of X, what would you do? Because I assume it's still a bad business, and in case you've forgotten, it's really a business nested in an AI company, nested in a rocket company that will also be nested in a car company. So it's pretty abstracted away from major revenue streams.
Sam Lessin: I don't, I think it's fine. I mean, like, look, it was quite a good vibe by, by Elon, right? And, like, I think it doesn't have to make money, right? Like, I don't, like, to me, it's, like, not a great business. It's fine for it not to be a great business. You know, paying 40, what, billion for, for, like, a power play that isn't a good business is, like, a thing very few people in the world can stomach or do, and, like, obviously, there's a lot of pain involved in, like, rationalizing it. But if the thing kind of makes money and, like, who cares? Like, let it, like, it's a great power lane. It means that when Elon wants to post something, everyone will see it, and that he ha- and he can't be deplatformed, just as Trump has Truth Social. And look, again, it's an expensive non-financial asset that way, but it's a pretty valuable one, is my view, right? I, I don't think we'll ever see it be an important business, but that doesn't mean it's not an important product.
Jessica: Yeah. Just interesting. Good job, X. Hanging on in there.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, I mean, by doing nothin'- I mean, basically, what they did is they, like, took a thing, they made some obvious fixes, they made it not lose a shitload of money with a bunch of people who weren't doing anything, all of which takes guts and, like, but makes sense, and they didn't fuck it up. So, nice.
Jessica: That's a good business strategy. Don't fuck it up.
Dave Morin: It's interesting. I mean, one of the things that they added to X over the last, uh, I think it's been in just the last two weeks, was they launched this X Money feature, which has gotten almost-
Jessica: Yeah, yeah
Dave Morin: ... no press.
Jessica: Recently.
Dave Morin: And nobody's really talking about. I don't know how successful it will be, but, you know, it's a big money-moving feature.
Sam Lessin: But it doesn't make any, you can't make any money. It's like how Venmo's an important product but never will make money and never has. Like, it's not, like, it's not an important business.
Jessica: I'd still like someone to unlock me out of, like, to put me back my Venmo account, if anyone listening knows how to do that.
Sam Lessin: Oh, yeah, this is funny. So this, for anyone listening who wants to know, this is very funny. I literally am, like, user ID on Venmo. I'm, I, I'm the third name on the IP. My handle used to be Sam, three letters, because again, like, I had handle number three, which has all sorts of funny stories. I got kicked off, like, and I can't get back on. Now Jess has been kicked off and can't get back on.
Jessica: I gave, uh, it's fucking ridiculous.
Sam Lessin: And, like, for some fuck... It's, like, wild. And so I actually messaged the founders of Venmo. I was like, "Guys," the actual founders, like, "Guys." And they were like, "We don't even know anyone, so we can't get you back anymore."
Dave Morin: I know who you should talk to.
Jessica: I've given up. It turns out Zelle works. I've given up.
Dave Morin: No, no, guys, I know who you should talk to. I actually was trying to transfer some crypto through Venmo, and it got really messed up.
Sam Lessin: Ooh. Was you-
Dave Morin: And-
Sam Lessin: Actually having-
Jessica: You should be kicked off. We all I've done is just sat here.
Dave Morin: No, they have a crypto feature. They've got crypto.
Sam Lessin: They do. They do.
Dave Morin: Um, it's a very long story. I was trying to pay somebody back for something that, some concert tickets, and they were-
Jessica: In crypto?
Dave Morin: ... more expensive. No. They were more expensive than Venmo's limits for what you can transfer, and so I was using-
Jessica: Oh.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, yeah
Dave Morin: ... crypto, and the crypto somehow got lost. And to Venmo's great credit, they actually credited me the money that they lost, and so I'm, I've got a good connection there now.
Jessica: This would be most helpful, Dave. Thank you.
Sam Lessin: The number of customer service problems I've had to solve through much bigger company CEOs recently is hilarious, but for whatever reason, Venmo I can't fix.
Jessica: No, we're, we're hopeless. Have you guys been following the saga of Lillian Wang?
Sam Lessin: I don't even know who that is.
Dave Morin: No, what's... I don't know who, I don't know who that is.
Jessica: Great. I will regale you in the saga, which is currently 80% of my X feed. So Lillian Wang was a co-founder of Thinking Machines Lab, Mira Murati's startup that is slowly but undoubtedly starting to release products so we know what they're actually doing. And earlier this week, maybe the end of last week, she penned a lengthy missive, as one does in this age, about her mental health suffering by working so hard, so she was leaving Thinking Machine Labs. And this was met with, you know, Mira cheering her on for taking care of herself and, you know, a whole wave of all that good, you know, take the time you need.
Sam Lessin: That's what you do when you fire someone.
Jessica: Praise. Well, guess I read in the information today that she's started at OpenAI, started back up at OpenAI.
Dave Morin: That's funny.
Sam Lessin: Oh, the bastion of mental health.
Jessica: So we're in that phase of the cycle. Much of the commentary is exactly what you said, Sam, a strange move for your mental health. Now, if we're being generous here, I can see how being at a bigger company and having a more-
Dave Morin: Yeah
Jessica: ... defined role might be different.
Dave Morin: OpenAI is a big company.
Jessica: But guys, if you're just leaving a company to go to a rival two days later, don't pen an essay about mental health. That would be my advice. Keep it to yourself. Who cares? 'Cause now poor Lillian Wang has made herself, you know, this symbol of something, including, you know, basically this phase of the AI talent war. But anyway.
Sam Lessin: It might be pretty smart. Let me, let me, let's pl- let's game, let's game this out.
Jessica: We're talking about her. We're talking about her.
Dave Morin: My question is, what are all these people gonna do that signed this other letter?
Jessica: Which letter?
Sam Lessin: What's the other letter?
Dave Morin: There's this other, there's this other letter where, like, 1,000 people that work at Frontier Labs have signed a letter saying that they-
Jessica: Oh, the slowing down letter?
Dave Morin: We must slow it down. And-
Jessica: Yeah. Ugh, I hate these letters. I hate these-
Dave Morin: I don't understand this letter because if you want to slow it down, just quit. You don't have to work on, uh-
Jessica: Exactly
Dave Morin: ... you don't have to work on AI anymore.
Sam Lessin: No, no, they wanna g- they wanna get paid the same for doing less.
Dave Morin: If you don't wanna work on capitalist AI, you are totally welcome to come join the actual nonprofit AI company.
Jessica: Capitalist AI. Oh my God.
Dave Morin: Uh, you can come work on nonprofit AI at Openclaw. We're, we're happy to have you.
Sam Lessin: That's even more stressful. You have no resources and you have to compete. Like, you're, the, you, you could come work with me. We'll settle Mac Minis around the Bay Area. Like, what the fuck? The, um-
Jessica: Dave, I also have so many questions. Are you still p- are you in a Waymo? Are you still paying your Lyft or Uber driver? Or are, like, what is your situation right now?
Sam Lessin: Me?
Jessica: As we wrap, I, I want... Yeah, like you're just sitting in the back of a car.
Dave Morin: No, I'm in my-
Jessica: Who's driving it?
Dave Morin: I'm in my Tesla.
Jessica: Your Tesla's been driving you around?
Dave Morin: No, I'm sitting on, I'm sitting in South Park in a parking spot.
Sam Lessin: He's parked.
Jessica: Oh, I see. You're parked. I thought you were moving for the first part of... Sorry.
Sam Lessin: Ah, so, but look, in all seriousness, like this whole AI slowdown thing, it's exactly like people wringing their fists for like climate change, right? We're like, "We should use less pow-" It's like it doesn't matter what you say. It's a global world. If y- someone else will just do it. Like, it's like you, th- so there's this weird thing where like... I don't know. I think a lot of it comes down to like people's sense of their unique talents and abilities, right? Where everyone has been told that they're like these special snowflakes, that only they can do what they do, and that is like a big part of like how they justify their lives and things like that. And so then they're like, "Oh, well, we're the only special people, so if we all say we should slow down, then that's meaningful." It's not. There are plenty of people running around China who can do the same shit, right? And so I just think it's all a bunch of theater of like people trying to wrestle with the fact they're probably really overworked and really stressed out and don't know if their stock is worth anything, and like wanna be told they're doing good but maybe they're not, and like a bunch of existential stuff. So I do think this is all like emotional, existential noise from people that should be ignored.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, these letters don't sit well with me, not because... I mean, if I were to argue the other side, in developing these technologies, there are important choices to make that, you know, could broadly fall under like the responsibility of the model and that kind of thing. And I think it's important to draw attention to those. But like, if you really feel like you're not at a place that's doing that, you just shouldn't work there. You shouldn't like attach your name to a letter.
Sam Lessin: I think what it is, honestly, is like all of these people have Oppenheimer complexes and think they're working on the Manhattan Project, right? And like there's a v-
Jessica: Mm-hmm. Yep
Sam Lessin: ... this is like well documented and like it's well understood and like it's, the, the Manhattan Project was fascinating.
Dave Morin: Well documented.
Sam Lessin: The fact they all have Oppenheimer complexes, right? And like they think they've invented atomic weapons.
Dave Morin: Can you describe what that means? Like what does that mean? What is Op- what is Oppenheimer complex?
Sam Lessin: They think they're, you know, they're, they, they believe they're Oppenheimer, or at least the leaders believe they're Oppenheimers, right? And that they're on this like existential mission where they will unleash hell, right, in the form of atomic weapons. But they have to do it, because if they don't do it, someone else will do it.
Jessica: But they're the one person who can do it in the best possible way.
Sam Lessin: But they're the one person responsible enough to do it, and then they're gonna launch the atomic bomb, which is AGI, and say, "I have become Vishnu the Destroyer," and they're gonna have an emotional complex about it, but be the most powerful man in the DOE in the history of the world. So if they're not Oppenheimer, they're Van Noy- von Neumann. They're like in the game. And so then, and there was a bunch of angst about developing the nuclear bomb, as there should have been, and there was a bunch, but there, it's not the same thing, right? For a whole bunch of reasons. It's, the, the atomic weapons were much harder to create. There was a much smaller community of people, like literally dozens, that knew what they were doing, and then huge armies of people who didn't know what they were doing around. It's like, but people really desperately wanna be Oppenheimer in this age. Or they're, they wanna feel the emotional importance of their lives like that. And it just keeps playing out over and over and over, and you're just like, "Guys, you're not Oppenheimer." Like this is a very different game. This is a very different era. And AGI, while in theory, if you believe, if you really believe you're building God, is on the level of atomic weapons, you're not. There are gonna be lots of gods, right? It's more like a pantheon, and like it's gonna be super complicated.
Dave Morin: To bring it back to one of Jess's questions at the beginning of the episode, um, uh, you know, where Jess, you were asking, talking about Sam interacting with his agents. Do we think that there's a crisis of meaning going on that's even worse than the one we had during social media?
Jessica: I read Sam's X post on that.
Dave Morin: Where, where-
Jessica: I, I read Sam's X post on that.
Sam Lessin: This is the most viral thing I've written in a year, right? Was like my whole thing about AI is a crisis of meaning.
Jessica: Look, Dave doesn't read everything you have. It is pinned, though. It is pinned.
Dave Morin: It is not, that's not what I'm... I'm referring more to these folks that are working in AI in San Francisco and, you know, interacting with agents all day, isolated to Zoom. You know, they actually don't have an emotional outlet. So like maybe the emotional outlet is coming out through X and through these types of letters and, you know, I'm actually kind of curious about what the cultural societal thing is that's going on here, um, beyond just the Oppenheimer-ness.
Sam Lessin: If the question is are they all g- is everyone going crazy? I think the answer is probably yeah.
Jessica: Let's pick up these deeper questions. Let's pick 'em up. We need Brett as part of this conversation. Before we wrap, anyone got some like culture advice? I got, I have one rant. One rant. You guys are, in your many hats, you are also organizers of conferences. I am also an organizer of conferences. What do you say to the EA that reaches out to you on behalf of someone you invited to your conference last year To get the dates for next year's conference, just so it's on their calendar-
Sam Lessin: Oh, what a move
Jessica: ... far before invitations have gone out. Far before invitations have gone out.
Sam Lessin: Uh, we were on the same email about this. One, the person who did this we love and was obviously invited. Obviously invited. It's actually a brilliant move, and I kinda want my EA to start doing it to a bunch of conferences I'm not even invited to. Because if you just, like- ... I'm gonna reach out to Alan and Kyle.
Jessica: Yes, per Alan, Jessica is looking forward to Sun Valley next year. Just confirming.
Sam Lessin: It's like, that's a great way to get invited to Kyle. I was like, "Oh, fuck, we already invited them," right? Like, so I think it's a great move. Uh, very, very smart, and I'm in.
Dave Morin: Super smart. Super smart.
Jessica: So, like, both... In one case, it was the person themselves.
Sam Lessin: Dave, when is the, when is the lodge next year?
Jessica: Yeah, exactly. Um, well, I just, I la- one case it was the person themselves.
Sam Lessin: We can invent conferences we want other people to put on, and just ask for when the date is for them.
Dave Morin: Yes.
Jessica: And it's like, I'm just doing-
Sam Lessin: This is-
Jessica: ... so and so's-
Sam Lessin: You know what I mean? Like-
Jessica: ... schedule 10 months from now. 10 months from now. When is your Dabba's dinner, Jessica? Yes.
Sam Lessin: Anyone you wanna have dinner with, you're like, "Hey," your EA reaches out like, "Hey, when are, is Sam, Sam wants to know when the date is for our annual dinner, you know, blah, blah, blah-
Jessica: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: ... at Per Se."
Jessica: And you don't wanna-
Dave Morin: So good
Jessica: ... like, wring this, like, poor EA's neck.
Sam Lessin: You find, you message Benson's assistant, and you're like, "Jessica would like to know when our December dinner is."
Jessica: Yeah, sure.
Dave Morin: You guys, there's a v- there's an even better version of this.
Jessica: E-
Dave Morin: Which is that-
Jessica: Okay, tell me
Dave Morin: ... you-
Jessica: I love this
Dave Morin: ... proactively put the thing on their calendar with Google Calendar. You just put the event into their calendar.
Sam Lessin: People do this to me.
Dave Morin: Uh, we did this for our holiday party a couple of years ago. We actually just put the event on everybody's calendar, and it works like a charm.
Jessica: But no, but this is different.
Sam Lessin: I will say this-
Jessica: This is different.
Sam Lessin: No, no.
Jessica: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: The, the, but it's related, and I'm with Dave. This actually happens to me all the time, is people will put events... And the problem is, I have someone who does all the scheduling for me, and so sometimes it's unclear whether it's something I asked for or not, or something that's approved. And, like, every once in a while I'll end up in one of these and be like, "Fuck, I didn't ask for this." Li- the, the same thing with emails.
Jessica: They gotcha.
Sam Lessin: Like, the best, the best move in an email if you wanna meet with someone is start in the middle of a conversation as though you have already been talking-
Jessica: Oh
Sam Lessin: ... to the person. Because then you're like, "Oh, shit," like-
Jessica: Oh.
Sam Lessin: And then it's a lot of work. I have to like, like, figure out if we actually were talking before, like, whatever. So, like, the pick up in the middle with, like, all these assumptions is, like, a very smart BD move. I think for anyone fundraising or doing sales, imply you're already talking, right? Don't start, don't say, "Hey," like, "I'd like to pitch you on a new thing." That's immediately gonna get deleted. But if you're like, you know- ... "Love to conti- like, continue our conversation from last week." You're like, "Oh, shit, were we talking?"
Jessica: Picking this back up, yeah.
Dave Morin: So good.
Jessica: Well, let's just say-
Dave Morin: So good
Jessica: ... let's just give props where props are due. Major power move of the week is having your EA just run the dates by, you know, making sure we block it out for something you haven't yet been invited to. Yeah.
Sam Lessin: Brilliant.
Jessica: So take that tip for what you, what you will, people. We're, we're bringing you all the news, all, all the inside baseball. And I think now if you lasted this long- ... with this shitty audio, God bless you. I actually wanna know who you are.
Sam Lessin: No, it'll get fixed in post.
Jessica: Please message me, because you will be a forever fan. Um-
Sam Lessin: And Jess, I will let you know that the dinner has been put on the table. So we should probably eat.
Jessica: I- indoors or outdoors? What's the weather like? I'm gonna just, like, so confused.
Sam Lessin: You know. You're not that far from me. Indoors, and all the children are calling over, so.
Jessica: Yeah. I'm enclosed. Like, most people work inside. Okay. With that, we'll see you back here next week for another episode of More or Less. Bye.
Dave Morin: See you guys later.
Guest: If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing it on Apple Podcast, 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.