AI-generated — may contain transcription errors.

Dave Morin: OpenClaw is actually growing faster than ever, and I think what this means is that the world of agents is just expanding. I mean, I always tell everyone that it's kind of like we're in 1982, 1983 in the personal computer, and the Mac hasn't been invented yet. Everyone's creating new computers, trying to make a computer that's more usable for everyone, racing towards can there be a consumer version? Because the big prize is an agent that everybody in the world uses

Jessica: When you hear someone like Altman, who now says once a day on some platform, podcast, or conference, "We need to slow down the pace," you're like, "Okay, I think that's good."

Brit Morin: And the people that were here in the Valley were here to, like, just be creative and build cool shit, and I can't say that for everyone that's here right now.

Dave Morin: Somewhat the early 2010s, like, people in tech were making things because whatever they were working on was awesome, because they sort of loved the creative endeavor of it, and that has changed. There is a lot of people making things in the Valley now to just make money.

Sam Lessin: More or less. Is it no or is it yes? We'll debate the tech that's best. Do we get more or less? Raven, Brit, plus Sam and Jess. Put it all right to the test. More or less

Jessica: Why hello, friends, specifically Morran, since you're the only one here. Welcome to More or Less. How's everyone doing this week?

Dave Morin: Hey, Jess.

Brit Morin: It's a good week. Football kicked off.

Jessica: Football. Brit, are you in any fantasy football leagues? The information-

Brit Morin: Ooh

Jessica: ... started one, and I'm-

Brit Morin: Oh

Jessica: ... not ready to participate, but I'm almost ready.

Brit Morin: I usually do, but this year I skipped it. So I would be open to joining one if you wanna invite me.

Jessica: Oh, no, I don't have the bandwidth for that. But it's, uh-

Brit Morin: I'm like-

Jessica: Maybe in the future

Brit Morin: ... are agents doing fantasy football yet? Is this a thing?

Jessica: I did create a WhatsApp group for the fourth grade cross-country team this week. That was my sports organizing.

Brit Morin: What if all of us just, like, had an, our agent join together in a fantasy football league and make their most informed choices and, like, argue each week?

Dave Morin: That would be kind of interesting.

Brit Morin: I think so.

Dave Morin: What happens when all the AIs just win all of the fantasy football leagues?

Jessica: You know what, Dave? I'm gonna assign that story, and we will find out. I like that story.

Brit Morin: There probably are real agents in these leagues right now. If any of you listeners out there are in a fantasy football league, I would not trust your tech friends that are in this league with you. Instinct, Muse, OpenClaw, they're all over this.

Jessica: Well, yeah. Speaking of agent, I just did, for all parents out there that have ever had this experience, I feel like I pulled off the triple, you know, lutz or whatever, because I managed to get the primo parent-teacher conference slots in the first 30 seconds of parent-teacher sign-up opening, and it's taken me five years to perfect my technique, and bam, bam, bam, mic drop.

Brit Morin: Something else an agent could have done for you, Jess. You're living in the manual archaic days right now.

Jessica: No, there's no way an agent could duck the number of logins in the Byzantine system.

Brit Morin: Oh, I disagree. Let's come back to this next semester and see, like six months from now.

Jessica: Okay. I can't wait to ask school support help. I'm still trying to get a Waymo stop, so... But anyway, I feel good about that, and then I also feel good I managed... Well, at the end of this episode, we'll cover what's happening in the wide world of tennis, 'cause it's very important. But in the middle of a meeting yesterday, I got an email that said that the BNP Paribas Indian Wells tickets were open.

Brit Morin: What does that mean? That was a lot of letters.

Jessica: This basically means you're gonna be 10 minutes late to your next meeting, and you refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh. And there are other ways to get tickets, but being the delicate flower that I am, and the fact that my children don't usually like 100-degree heat, I need my tickets in a very special-

Brit Morin: You need the shade. Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah, I can tell you all now because I just got them.

Dave Morin: Yeah, that does seem to be the thing on tennis things. It's like if you get stuck in the sun, it must be miserable.

Brit Morin: Same with the 49ers games. There's a specific section.

Jessica: 117 to 121, row T or higher is maximum shade. I enjoy taking a lot of people to this tennis tournament, so I buy a lot of tickets. I had two laptops and four browsers to defy the bot detection. It was all me, though, no bots. I got all the seats I wanted.

Brit Morin: I feel like that's fine, but I know. I just feel like that was a lot of wasted energy for you, Jess.

Dave Morin: Yeah, the agents can do all this for you now, Jess.

Jessica: But now I know. I don't have to check, you know? It's just, like, very satisfying, and I, I need those exact seats. So anyway, one, the internet over here is a human. But guys, it's been a busy week. We have a lot to talk about. We've got Apple, we've got agents, we've got doom, we've got gloom. I wanna start with Apple.

Brit Morin: Doom and gloom.

Jessica: Dave, you, we have... You know, here I am yesterday trying to convince the internet I'm not a bot, mildly running a news organization for those 10 minutes, and many other things, and my mother texts me, "Should I get the new iPhone?" And I'm like, "Good Lord, here she is probably just pressing by on this thing." Right. So Dave, bring us inside. Was this Turness' first Apple big hardware unveil as CEO? What was it like?

Dave Morin: Yes, it was Turness' first keynote at the helm.

Jessica: Can we call them keynotes? They just record videos and show them to people.

Dave Morin: Yeah. It's not really a keynote anymore.

Jessica: Okay. Okay.

Dave Morin: Um, it's a, it's more of a-

Jessica: Movie?

Dave Morin: Yeah. Um, which Apple's audience is, uh, many billions of people in every country in the world, so I get it. They gotta do this thing on day one in every language and, and so yeah, I mean, it was a great day at Steve Jobs Theater. People were in good spirits, and the big news is the launch of the iPhone Duo, which interestingly, I was watching the video and I was very skeptical. I've had one of these folding phones before. I had the Google Pixel because I was really interested in it, as mostly actually I carried it to read on because I liked the format for reading. And it never made it to become my primary device, and I ultimately ended up stopping using it. And so when I was watching the video, I was very skeptical, particularly of the size. In my brain, I thought that it was, you know, two of these.

Jessica: Is it like two iPhones?

Dave Morin: It's much smaller once you hold it in your hands. The best way to think about it is if you were to cut the bottom and the top off of your iPhone, it's that big.

Brit Morin: Like an inch off the top and an inch off the bottom?

Dave Morin: Yeah.

Jessica: But then two of them?

Brit Morin: Hmm.

Dave Morin: Yeah, and then it's as thin as the iPhone Air.

Brit Morin: I don't think my fingers can reach that far. Also, will this fit in a woman's jean pocket? Because I only store my phones in pockets.

Jessica: Oh, not in my jeans. Not in my jeans, Brit, no way.

Dave Morin: The answer to all of these questions is yes.

Brit Morin: Did you see this thing happening where everyone was talking about how Apple used AI on the fingers? 'Cause like there's no way the fingers could be that long holding the phone in the ad.

Jessica: Guys, we know an Apple iPhone hand model.

Brit Morin: We do, and she does not have long fingers.

Dave Morin: Shout out to Jessica Sittig.

Jessica: We are gonna ask her what she thinks of whether she could have hand modeled the Duo.

Dave Morin: I think the hand model problem is probably just the camera tricks. Like, it's, it's probably just the type of lens that was used to shoot it. But that was the first thing that I was thinking about is, "This thing's gonna be too big, and I'm gonna hate it." Once I had it in my hands, I was immediately won over. It's the perfect size for what it is.

Jessica: What is it? Is it a primary device? Yes, 'cause most people don't have two phones plugged to the...

Dave Morin: Yes, it's a primary device. The screen, when you open it, is hard to describe in pictures or even with words. Like the quality of the surface, it almost feels like paper. It's more like a Kindle, but even better, if that's possible to describe. The quality of the screen is so good that your hands are like, "I've never felt anything like this."

Jessica: The, uh, but the camera isn't there, and basically I carry my phone for the camera, right? What's the camera sitch?

Dave Morin: The camera's pretty good. They have two extremely high quality cameras. We'll have to look up the specs. I mean, I've been carrying the iPhone Air all summer. Yeah, Brit, what are the specs on it?

Brit Morin: I think it's 48 megapixels. I watched the whole video.

Dave Morin: It's a great camera. It's much better... You know, I've been carrying the iPhone Air all summer. I switched to the iPhone Air, and I'm absolutely in love with it, but the main problem with it is that it does not have the wide angle camera. I actually miss the wide angle camera more than I miss the zoom camera, and this one has, I believe, both wide angle and normal camera, and I do not think it has the zoom. The, the zoom is reserved for the Pro. You know, that kind of stuff is Pro camera work. So...

Jessica: Okay, so you're sold. You're buying.

Dave Morin: I really think that this is truly great product design. This is classic example of Apple taking something that's a known product and then doing the Apple thing to it. They really solved a lot of key problems. One, they had to make the OS. They had to redesign the navigation of the OS to fit this new form factor, and it was really well done when I held it in person. They did some really thoughtful things with how you can set it on the table in folded mode, and you can watch movies. You can use the keyboard like a little miniature laptop. You can flip it over and make it an alarm clock, and it glows when you wake up in the morning. They were really thoughtful about this form factor being foldable.

Jessica: Oh, $3,000, the glow in the morning. That's gonna convince me. It, it's $2,000, isn't it?

Brit Morin: My favorite feature is that there's a kid use, so when you're trying to get a photo of your toddler, you can play like Snoopy or, and say like, "Look at me over here," and so it gets their eyes to look at the camera.

Jessica: So more ways to manipulate our children, okay.

Dave Morin: Or you can turn that on and show it to person you're taking the photo with, and they can see the framing of the photo, uh, while you're taking the photo, which is kind of a cool idea. It's a really interesting device. I mean, I think it does exist somewhere between a phone and an iPad. I think it's kind of more computer than phone, for what it's worth. And it's... Yeah, it may not be for everybody, but I do think that a lot of people are gonna get this thing.

Jessica: Brit, what about you? Are you gonna switch? You gonna try?

Brit Morin: Well, I need... Yeah, the hand thing is real, and the jean pocket is real. I'm not a purse girl. I'm a pocket girl. It needs to fit.

Jessica: Have you heard of the fanny pack? There's a middle ground. Just saying.

Brit Morin: I don't think I can carry a fanny pack every day. It's $2,000, and if you want the, like two terabyte version, it's $3,000.

Dave Morin: The Pro's getting up there though.

Brit Morin: No, it's 1199 for the Pro. This is, like more expensive than a MacBook. It's crazy. I got a new studio display last week for like 1,500, so this is like two studio displays that can fit in my pocket. So I think that price was gonna deter a lot of people, but I do think the novelty will create a lot of buzz, especially for the early adopter types. And if you think about it, it's like an iPad and an iPhone priced together in one. That's kind of how I'm trying to think about it.

Jessica: There's no keyboard.

Brit Morin: No, you can make a keyboard when you fold it, like a mini, it's like a mini computer. But it's gonna need a bunch of new accessories. All of the, like Apple accessories products need to change.

Dave Morin: The other whisper that I heard was that the markets in Asia, this is the favorite form factor.

Jessica: The why is missing here, right? Like, because obviously these phones have existed- People use them, people have a lot of phone preferences. But for Apple to enter this category, they, they have to be, they have to see a big opportunity/pseudo be afraid of something.

Dave Morin: I think the opportunity is China. My understanding is that China, this is the favorite form factor.

Brit Morin: And it has been for a long time. Like Samsung did their folded phone like many years ago.

Dave Morin: I went in skeptical, and I'm telling you, when you get this thing in your hands, you're going to consider it.

Brit Morin: Okay, what about the Watch or the AirPods? I was less excited about AirPods, maybe a little bit more about Watch. It seems like the TLDR of the Watch, from what I gather, it's basically now competing directly with Oura, and Whoop, and all the other fitness trackers. It does your, like, readiness score, your sleep score, your, you know, HRV, all the things. It has longer battery, yada, yada, yada.

Jessica: Aren't we, like, scored up the wazoo?

Brit Morin: I know, but a lot of people are buying all the rings and wristbands still. So Apple, I think, is trying to say, "We could do it all in one."

Dave Morin: They're gonna do your longevity score now. They're gonna use all of your data from all of these different things.

Jessica: The most bullshit number.

Brit Morin: Well, can they tell me my biological age and how fast I'm aging, .85 years?

Jessica: Guys, today I feel 43 and a half, you know?

Brit Morin: But it doesn't have my blood yet. I still wanna compete with Sam on this 'cause I do think I'm gonna age slower than Sam.

Jessica: It's so sad that Sam's pounding the pavement/visiting the US Open in New York right now.

Dave Morin: There's actually a really important nuance that a, a lot of people missed, and for one, some reason, the internet, at least the Twitterverse, was not paying attention to this, which is the watch has a software change which is very interesting, that they call Audio Intelligence, which is that the watch is now listening to all of your conversations all day long and transcribing them for you. It doesn't record audio, it doesn't differentiate speakers. They pitched it as a memory device, which for people like me, I have, uh, really terrible rote memory because of my brain type. And so when I was reading or watching this, I was like, "Wow, that's a really thoughtful feature." I'm worried about businesses like Granola 'cause Apple just basically put Granola into the Apple Watch running 24/7 and did it at higher level of privacy than Granola. And so that's a interesting positioning thing.

Brit Morin: Well, how can I bring up something I forgot about from yesterday if they aren't storing it?

Dave Morin: It's storing the transcripts with no names and no audio, which I believe is what follows the law, right? And so it, it transcribes it and then leaves it as text. So you still have the text for it.

Brit Morin: Can I MCP that into my agent?

Dave Morin: Yeah, I think so.

Brit Morin: Okay, great.

Jessica: We're building something for more privacy, and then we're trying to strip out all the privacy for the maximum utility. I'm just pointing out that's what's happening.

Brit Morin: Well, here's the thing. I'm gonna MCP it into my agent. My agent has my calendar info. It's gonna be like, "Oh yeah, you were meeting with blah, blah, blah when they said this thing yesterday." So then I'll be able to connect the dots. So even though Apple's not skirting the law, I'm still able to-

Jessica: I actually asked Sam to direct my bot to do something that he told me he wouldn't do out of privacy. So we found the one thing that Sam was like, "Eh-"

Brit Morin: What was it?

Jessica: "... probably wouldn't do that." It was to read my Gmail. I don't know.

Brit Morin: Oh, that's like a-

Jessica: I, I didn't-

Brit Morin: ... not a lot of people do that

Jessica: ... I, yeah. I didn't, I know. I didn't think that that would be a huge... Anyway, shows everyone's sort of mildly inconsistent. Okay, guys, let's wrap Apple. Last points on Apple.

Dave Morin: I think this is just an interesting positioning point, Jess, that this is new territory for Apple to be proposing that a device listens all day.

Jessica: What is the billboard gonna say? Like, "Don't worry, it's iPhone," with like big ears and an X through it? Like, I don't know.

Dave Morin: I think it has to do with future plans, and that the more of these devices, whether you've got other ones in the home or glasses on your face, like, to actually make sense of the world with AI, you need to have them turned on, right? I think this is sort of the beginning of Apple moving into always-on AI processing because they're in a great position to do this.

Jessica: Is this a shot across the bow from OpenAI, who has hardware ambitions for pucks that are gonna sit on our desks perhaps?

Dave Morin: Oh, I don't know. I, I actually hadn't thought of that. Maybe.

Brit Morin: I think so, but there's also all the rings and necklaces that are always listening and all of that stuff.

Dave Morin: It's more of a shot across the bow to OpenAI, to Meta with the glasses, all these kinds of things. Like, this is a really nuanced privacy thing that we're moving towards, right? And everybody in Silicon Valley uses Granola, but most of the people in the world do not. And so there's, like, this interesting territory here.

Jessica: Yeah. Well, definitely. And also, the number of times AI was mentioned too across. I mean, clearly the Apple marketing team has changed their positioning on-

Dave Morin: No question

Jessica: ... they want all of these things to be AI devices, which they are in many ways.

Dave Morin: To their credit, they've got great silicon. You know, Apple silicon is of the best, if not the best, on the inference side of the house.

Jessica: Do you think any podcast talks as much about Apple silicon as this podcast?

Dave Morin: No, but we should.

Brit Morin: Let's just rebrand ourselves to the Apple Silicon Podcast.

Jessica: Oh, we should talk about our new branding at the end. Okay, I'm gonna move us on to other AI topics, but I love that debrief, Dave, and I love it. Okay, so anyone used Muse? Meta's done a lot in AI. They've been through different models. They've been through different teams. They launched this week their next big play at a personal agent. Seems to me, Dave, they're coming a little bit for the OpenClaw world with this. It's called Muse. I've used it a bit. Anyone got any, any feedback?

Dave Morin: Yeah, it's funny. I downloaded it, and then the first question I asked it was, "What do you know about me?" And it-

Brit Morin: That's what I asked mine too. I was, like, expecting a s- a fucking book. It, it got nothing.

Dave Morin: It knew nothing.

Brit Morin: Don't you literally know me for 20 years, Muse? Look at all my Facebook and Instagram data, and WhatsApp

Jessica: Muse knows, you know, where I ate in college, but yes.

Dave Morin: Yeah, I went even further, and I said, "Read all of my Instagram posts and tell me about me." And then it's like, "I'm sorry, I can't do that." I'm like, "It's... They're my posts. Like, why can't you do that?" And then it's like, "Okay, I will try." And so it goes and tries to read all of my Instagram posts, and it comes back, and it says, "I cannot read the photos, but I can read text description of your photos."

Jessica: Oh. Oh.

Dave Morin: And I was like, "Oh," like, "Come on."

Jessica: Multimodal. Multimodal.

Dave Morin: All jokes aside, though, I do have to give Meta props. They've shipped a new product, and it's been a while since they've done this. And so I, I just think props to Meta for getting a new agent product out the door. It's a great start, and there are some nuances, like I love the actual avatar.

Jessica: Yeah, so cute.

Dave Morin: The animations that they did around how the, the agents are, uh, thinking is really thoughtful product design. I don't know. I think the product, it's not clear to me what purpose, you know, this agent versus any other agent has. We all... Or whether or not consumers are gonna really get into it. I think that's, like, actually the question of the next five years, but Meta's got a great product team, so we'll see where it goes.

Jessica: What's so interesting about it is, like, Meta's doing exactly what Meta probably, I would argue, should be doing, but is also they're picking their lane, which is can we build, like, a pretty good product, but that can be used both because we can push it to people, hello, Threads bigger than X, and also bring not just the sort of ChatGPT version of AI, but the more agentic version to more people.

Dave Morin: Yeah, totally.

Jessica: Does it have to be as fully featured as everything else that a power user's gonna do? No. Is it gonna have to be great? Yes. It's free. I mean, like, so I'm like, okay, eventually the investors are gonna wonder.

Dave Morin: Is it free? It actually, I thought it had a subscription.

Brit Morin: No, it's gonna be paid.

Dave Morin: Yeah.

Brit Morin: It'll probably be freemium. I mean, obviously the ads are gonna roll through 'cause Meta runs that.

Jessica: I think all the details haven't been hammered out, but I'm 1000% confident that the strategy is to get free as far as possible, and then ultimately have ways to get paid.

Dave Morin: Yeah, I mean, their business model supports that, right? Like, they're actually in the best position of all. They've got a great advertising network.

Brit Morin: I think Google is actually.

Jessica: Well, let's come back to Google. What's Google got for me here?

Brit Morin: Here's... Let me give you my quick take on Muse. Fine. Yes, agree with Dave. I think for the normies out there, it's nice that there's this thing on the sidebar called Ideas and Goals and, like, ways to get started. I think a lot of people ha- that have never used AI are just like, "What is this? Help me with a task." So that's great. The UI's good. I don't think the content it's giving back to me is great yet, but fine. Good start. Second point, this is, like, the total agentic harness war. I mean, in the last two weeks it's been, like, Instinct and Grokbot and Muse and, like, everything else. So I'm just like, how many is too many, guys, and, like, where is this all gonna net out?

Jessica: But I think they're going after different parts of the bit. I am not as fami- I don't, I'm not trialing Instinct, and I've-

Brit Morin: You haven't trialed Instinct? That's what everyone's talking about.

Jessica: No, because I'm not a VC. I mean, this feels like superhuman, although 10 years ago. But, like-

Dave Morin: Yeah, there's no way I'm giving Instinct my email.

Jessica: But also, I'm not anti-Instinct. I just haven't used it.

Brit Morin: But, like, have you used Grokbot?

Jessica: Uh, kind of. Guys, I also built my own Claude codes, right?

Brit Morin: Okay. Well, I use all of these.

Jessica: No, but my point is, Brit, I wanna pick up on your point, which we are seeing this war, but we're in the phase of the war where not everyone's gonna go after the same market with the same feature set. So I actually think Muse has, like, a different intended audience than, like, Instinct, at least at this phase.

Dave Morin: I don't know, Jess. I actually disagree with that.

Brit Morin: I don't know. I think they're all going after, like, the masses, and then there's Town, and there's OpenCall, and there's Hermes.

Jessica: What is Instinct's business model?

Dave Morin: So Jess, this is why Meta has such an advantage.

Brit Morin: You don't know about Hermes?

Jessica: No, guys. I don't know about Hermes.

Dave Morin: The Information writes about it, Jess.

Brit Morin: It raised at, like, $1.5 billion, just like all the others. They're all valued somewhere between 1 and 5 billion, and then you've got Muse from Meta on top. I'm waiting. And then you've got Grokbot from xAI/Cursor/SpaceX, whatever. Then I'm waiting for Google's to drop because I think once Google's drop, it's game over for me at least. I'm moving everything to Google.

Jessica: But okay, so Brit, why... And I'm interviewing Corey in, I don't know, two weeks or something. But why hasn't Google gone fully agentic here? Because I'm spending a lot of time getting my agents to talk to Google.

Brit Morin: Here's why. Let me tell you why Google hasn't played here. First of all, Google has done a bunch of stuff agentically in all the products themselves.

Jessica: Yeah, some steps. Some steps, yeah.

Brit Morin: I think Google is building a harness. I don't know this. This is what I would imagine. They have to be building a harness that spans-

Jessica: I think at I/O they showed something that I'm still waiting.

Brit Morin: But something in the form factor of, like, a Muse or a Grokbot or OpenCall, like, in its own application that connects all these things together. But, and this is key for Google, does it securely, safely, like, figures out what the limitations are, uh, for data breaches. Like, it's a huge company and has to make sure it's protecting its users. That's why, by the way, I will trust it. It already has my email. It already has all my stuff. So I'm excited to move over to it.

Jessica: We'll just trust it 'cause we've already trusted it, so any vulnerabilities we're already exposed to. No, yeah, of course. I follow this.

Brit Morin: Exactly, and it already has billions of people using it, so it's like the adoption curve is gonna just blow these, like, Instincts and Towns of the world away as soon as it launches.

Dave Morin: This is right. There's these variables that really matter, right? Like, Meta does not have trust, but does have business model, right? Google has trust and business model, right?

Jessica: I said this in passing, but it's worth recognizing, right? Like, Meta is claiming, and they don't usually lie on this stuff. Um, I don't, maybe, people might disagree with that, but, like, they're claiming Threads has surpassed X, which is true, and a statement of the fact that distribution In certain products, that wouldn't be the true for every product, is really, really meaningful. So I, I think that is significant.

Dave Morin: Oh, yeah. 100%. There's no one better in the world at distribution than Meta, period. They are the best in the world at distribution, so this product will get big. That's just true. And they also have amazing business model. And so I think those two things are massive advantages. They have much lower trust, and so when it comes to giving all of your personal information to a company-

Jessica: That's true, but OpenAI has low trust. Like, everyone has low trust. So it's sort of like the industry has come down to Meta's level.

Dave Morin: I don't know. I think you guys were talking about Google. Like, Google does not have low trust.

Jessica: I guess that's true. Yeah.

Dave Morin: I mean, I'm willing to give Google everything.

Brit Morin: And Apple. If Apple ever made a harness, I would also give it to Apple.

Dave Morin: I mean, it did, Brit. It's called Siri, right? And it's not as good yet, but like-

Jessica: A functional harness

Brit Morin: I mean-

Dave Morin: They're working on it

Brit Morin: ... yeah.

Jessica: Guys, Siri's still, like I, I, I j- it's a source of infinite fun for me to see how little it can do. Okay, so we've got Mu... So the harness wars continue. Dave, what does this mean for OpenClaw?

Dave Morin: Well, I mean, I think that OpenClaw is actually growing faster than ever. We had our biggest week last week, and I think what this means is that the world of agents is just expanding. I mean, I always tell everyone that it's kind of like we're in 1982, 1983 in the personal computer, and the Mac hasn't been invented yet. Everyone's creating new computers, trying to make a computer that's more usable for everyone, and racing towards can there be a consumer version, right? And can there be a consumer business model? Because the big prize is an agent that everybody in the world uses. And coding agents aren't gonna go to everybody. Even ChatGPT is only at a billion scale when six billion people use mobile phone software, and so we haven't seen a breakthrough yet. I still think there's a ways to go. I think all these advantages that we're talking about are interesting. There's a lot of OpenClaw out there too, right? And there's a lot of people using it. I heard last week that OpenClaw's being used to do the film editing for one of the top films at the Telluride Film Festival, and the whole film editing pipeline is being run by OpenClaw. So there's a lot of interesting stuff going on with agents, and we'll see. I think that the entire thing is exactly the two things that we're talking about. Number one, cost, right? Like, the price of these things to run has to come down. And number two, user experience. Like, there's immense work to do still with user experience.

Brit Morin: And number three, whether it's in the cloud or it's local. I still know a ton of people who are like, "I am not giving my email to anything that's putting it in the cloud. I'm putting, not putting my financials into anything that could be hacked." And like, you're seeing the Hugging Face hacks and everything else going on, and the, I know we're gonna get to AI doomsday soon.

Dave Morin: Which is our entire world at OpenClaw. That's our entire world is people that wanna run it locally or enterprises. That's the other thing, Jess, is that I hear this every single day at OpenClaw, which is that I want open source models and our data on-prem, and we're, to do that, we're gonna use OpenClaw. And so there's a big wide world, a lot of agents, a lot of different reasons to use them.

Jessica: Yep. Fun time. Speaking of film industry, sidebar information scoop this week that Mr. Jeffrey Katzenberg is, uh, launching a new AI venture with the engineer who was behind Sora, but obviously left.

Dave Morin: Smart. I didn't hear that. That's, like, such a Katzenberg move.

Jessica: Dave, I texted it to you, but that's okay.

Brit Morin: I heard about it.

Jessica: But it-- well, but it's not completely two point. It is in that it's a big, ambitious Katzenberg-CJ venture.

Dave Morin: That's what I mean. Like, he's, like, super ambitious. Like, of course, somebody should do this.

Brit Morin: I like a good Katzenberg swing for the fence. I'm good with it.

Jessica: Let me tell you, and all I know is what I read in the information. You know, the vision is that Hollywood should control its own models and build models and control models that push the film industry forward, but on its own terms. And obviously, there's a lot that can be-- It was Bill Peebles, who is a, oh, Sora researcher, not engineer. And I, I just like, I, anytime a media company or industry or sector is trying to control its own destiny with technology instead of bowing to the tech overlords, I'm in favor of it. So I wish them well. Apparently, they're in talks with Andreessen Horowitz for a big check.

Brit Morin: Andreessen has no money. Come on.

Dave Morin: It does seem important for what it's worth. Like, this is a, an really important question, and I think that we're gonna see a lot more of this, that you're gonna see the proliferation of companies that do the fine-tuning and training in particular verticals that are important. And, like, Hollywood needs probably, like, many of these companies. They need the ILMs of this era that can go and make the AI tools, uh, particularly in video, really, really work. And so-

Jessica: Well, isn't Sean trying to do this at Stability? Am I gonna get-

Dave Morin: Yeah, I think so

Jessica: ... my AI companies mixed up-

Dave Morin: I believe so

Jessica: ... with Sean Parker?

Dave Morin: Yeah. He's very involved in the Hollywood conversation too.

Brit Morin: Also, isn't Eleven Labs, didn't they mention they want to IPO now? And then, I mean, it's like in two years.

Jessica: I did read that in the information. Did read that. Caught that.

Brit Morin: I thought they were, like, running amok with lawsuits with all the music artists. It, it's like Suno, El- Eleven Labs.

Jessica: The Trump administration said ignoring copyright is in our national interest. I don't know if you saw that, so yeah.

Brit Morin: Oh, and so that's when they pushed the pedal on the IPO.

Jessica: Okay. Perhaps. I, I don't know. Not, not me saying that. But speaking of IPOs, guys, we are weeks away from Anthropic. The hum, I don't know if you VCs feel it, but newsrooms are a hum, a buzz. Not because anyone's gonna make a cent, but it's just such an exciting time because readers are thirsty for any story about these companies in this big moment.

Brit Morin: Really?

Jessica: Yeah.

Brit Morin: I thought they were tired of it by now.

Jessica: No. Investors are like-

Brit Morin: Well, investors and LPs, of course, are waiting.

Jessica: Yeah. They're a third of our readership, so we love investors or, or finance is a third of our readership. But amid this walk up We have one Anthropic researcher who has decided, what, Jacob... What's his last name?

Dave Morin: Coxon?

Jessica: Yes. Media outlet of the last 48 hours saying, "Guys, you have to watch the Anderson Cooper."

Brit Morin: Like all over the place, even the Today Show.

Jessica: First of all, Jacob, are you doing your own booking or did you hire someone? Because I'm very impressed. You also spoke to The Information. Thank you very much. But guys, he thinks there's a 10% chance AI's gonna kill us all.

Brit Morin: More than 10% chance.

Dave Morin: No, no, no. Someone that worked with him thinks that. He just said there's a chance, and this is scary. Somebody responded from Anthropic that said 10%.

Jessica: And he's gone on a media tour that even Taylor Swift would be envious of. What is going on here? Lawrence, give us your take.

Brit Morin: If it bleeds, it leads. Jess, everyone likes to hate on AI. They want to know AI sucks. They understand why AI adoption was 0.4% in the month of August.

Jessica: What does that even mean?

Brit Morin: It means it's like plateaued. Like people aren't really adopting it right now outside of the folks who already have.

Jessica: Of what, though? I mean, don't tell Sam. Guys, my recursive Sam loops continue. Thanks for checking in on it. Still suffering.

Brit Morin: Sam is not one of the people who obviously hasn't adopted it. But, um, yeah, I think it's just more of what we've been talking about. The sentiment of AI is worse than ice and all the terrible-- Jeffrey Epstein, everything else. Now it's gonna kill us all. It says that we have until the end of the decade to survive according to this Jacob guy. So people everywhere are just wanna sound the alarm. They wanna get freaked out. This is like the human experience. It's like why everyone follows true crime and the Lindsay Clancy trial and everything else going on. It's bad news, crazy things.

Jessica: Yeah. It has this true crime... Yeah, you're right.

Brit Morin: Yeah. That's what it's all about. That's what the world loves right now, and it's kind of sad.

Dave Morin: Well, there's two ways to look at this. One, this guy came out of nowhere. He's got like no Twitter followers, and he quits Anthropic and goes on this, to your point, Jess, this media tour of all media tours. One could look at this as incredibly coordinated.

Jessica: Oh, thank you, David Sacks. Yes, say more.

Dave Morin: You could look at it this way. If you go with the more conspiracy sort of framing, which I'll then do this, the second framing. But the first framing is that this was a psyop that has been planned for a long time to create regulatory capture. Anthropic's messaging has been incredibly consistent on this. They've been saying this exact same thing for a long, long time.

Jessica: They have, exactly.

Dave Morin: And they're going and they're trying to convince the government, and I've been hearing this for months and months and months, behind closed doors, they've been trying to convince the White House and everybody under the sun to make open source illegal, to stop, stop, stop everything. And so what do you need to really make this happen? Three, four weeks ago, there was like this open letter, and every researcher under the sun signed it. And I remember on this pod saying, "If you really believe this, then quit. Stop working on it."

Jessica: Yeah, we did say that. Yeah, you said that.

Dave Morin: You could look at this as a part of the sort of plan that to get everyone's attention and to really cause lawmakers to activate. And so that's what this kind of looks like, 'cause the scale of the media tour is crazy.

Jessica: Okay, I will write that screenplay for whoever wants to make that movie. If you wanna make that movie, I, I'll write the screenplay for you.

Dave Morin: Okay, that's take one . Uh, take two is slightly different, which is I was playing with Astra last week and over the weekend. It was the first time where my experience of using one of these models, maybe for a year, maybe two years, felt marginally scary.

Jessica: Oh, no. Give us examples of what scared you.

Dave Morin: Well, it's really good. I don't think it's actually improved much in its ability to speak English language, all that kind of stuff, but it's extremely good at using computers. It's extremely good at 3D modeling. Our son took it and made a 3D model in an hour that was then printing on his 3D printer that was, like, scary fast. Like, I was like, wow, like this thing is operating in three-dimensional space at a speed and with a 12-year-old, that if you were a really bad person, you could figure out ways to use this that are legitimately scary. And it was the first time where I was-- had the experience, I guess, of using one of these things where I was like, "Okay, I understand what those people were saying in that letter four weeks ago." Because if you're working in one of the labs and you're using something like Astra or the next several models, it's teetering on the point now where these things are actually getting to a level of power. If you can run thousands of them or hundreds of thousands of them or millions of them at once, I get it. And so I do think the society level conversation is getting to a point where we have to ask some pretty serious questions about where we go. Now, is it the right thing to scare everyone by saying like, "AI's gonna kill us all"? I kinda think that's like not really a effective way to have this conversation, but I don't know any other way, right? Like, how do you get everybody's attention? How do you have a conversation about what we should be doing, how we should be approaching this? I'm not working in the labs. I'm working pretty close. This year I've been as close to the frontier as I've ever been.

Jessica: How does it feel? Nauseating. I'm joking. It's just a funny thought.

Dave Morin: I just don't know how to think about this. You know, we've talked about this on this pod for a lot of years, right? It does seem to be like a moment for serious conversation, but how do you coordinate all of society on something like this? Like, I, I have no idea. I kind of wanna give props to this guy, like without my conspiracy hat on for a second. I respect this guy for like leaving and stopping working on it rather than just like signing a letter or whatever and like still collecting his Anthropic stock. This guy was like- I'm out. Like, this conversation really matters, and I'm leaving my stock on the table.

Brit Morin: I don't know. My take on that was he, uh, in the last three years, he's been at OpenAI and Anthropic. He's cashed in a couple lottery tickets at each place, and he's kinda like, "I think I'm good."

Dave Morin: No, Brit, he did not take his Anthropic stock.

Brit Morin: Oh, he didn't take the stock?

Dave Morin: No.

Jessica: It's not clear. He's left some on the table. I don't know if he's said all. I don't know. I, again, there have been-

Dave Morin: No, he left two months before his cliff. Apparently, he left the Anthropic on the table.

Jessica: But kept the OpenAI. Hmm. No, just kidding.

Dave Morin: Yeah. Well, he, yeah, is already gone. Yeah.

Jessica: Everything you say makes a lot of sense, Dave. And on one hand, when you hear someone like Altman, who now says once a day on some platform, podcast, or conference, "We need to slow down the pace," you're like, "Okay, I think that's good." But there's no follow-up. We're gonna let Sam Altman slow down the pace? Like, what does that mean? Like, it's just a very confusing moment.

Dave Morin: Well, they're asking for help, right? Like, they have to compete in capitalism, right? Like, and think about it. Anthropic ha- I don't even know what the number is, but the sheer amount of capital that went into Anthropic in the last 12 months is, like-

Jessica: 17 gazillion dollars, yes

Dave Morin: ... it's so far beyond, it's an unbelievable amount of capital, and that capital wants to grow. One of my great mentors always told me, "Dave, capital wants to get a return." That capital wants to grow. It's going to continue trying to grow. By the way, if Anthropic's ability to grow goes down at all, like, all of that capital that came in in the last 12 months is gonna be underwater. And so people are, like, have bet their careers. There's, like, so many people riding on this, right? And so the forces at work of the capital machine are so powerful, and this is, like, massively amplified version of it. So these guys are kinda like, "Hey, we're using this thing internally, and it's pretty crazy. We can't slow down because we have to keep creating the returns for the investors."

Jessica: Well, they also want to, like, we're not gonna go deep into the Millennium Prize one-upmanship in this pod, but they're also, they wanna be the one to claim AGI, which OpenAI claimed. Here is a fun fact, speak of conspiracy theories. OpenAI, which has had many different charters and has many different corporate structures, had a provision that has been in place, and as far as I understand, remains in place, that says, "If someone else develops AGI first, we have to merge with them to support their effort." So this has existed.

Dave Morin: What? Really?

Brit Morin: I heard about this.

Jessica: But Greg Brockman claimed they were first to AGI, so now it's been rendered...

Brit Morin: What is the qualification to be at AGI?

Dave Morin: I mean, it's a meaningless term anyway.

Jessica: It's just totally meaningless. But if you have that provision because, like, Sam Altman nine years ago, when it was a nonprofit with Elon or whatever, I'm getting my timelines off, like, "H- oh yeah, this will be good. If someone else gets there, we'll help them." You don't wanna get rid of it 'cause it makes you look like an evildoer. What would you do? Oh, you would self-declare that you won the race.

Dave Morin: Of course you would.

Jessica: Rendering such provision obsolete.

Dave Morin: Of course you would.

Jessica: That's what you would do, so I'm glad that this is working out.

Dave Morin: But to be fair, Jess, Astra is, like, an insane leap forward. It's so far in front of Fable and everything. Like, I actually think that's kind of an interesting story of the week, which is that I think this probably shocked people a little bit. It's, like, way ahead.

Jessica: You guys are saying that. Everyone else who's played with it, who I've spoken to, is saying that. Like, that seems like a clear consensus. People are impressed.

Brit Morin: This feels like the ultimate tennis match where I'm watching it go back from one side to the other side. One side to the other side.

Jessica: That's why you have to sit in section 117, Brit. Then you just don't do that. You d- you gotta go with me. You gotta go with you. What else is happening, guys? What else? Oh, can, should we give some plugs to the new Venmo documentary you guys were at? I'd love to let people know about this.

Brit Morin: Yeah, I got to see Dave and Sam on stage together.

Jessica: My husband didn't tell me about this, so that's why I wasn't there. Like, that just-

Brit Morin: It was very sweet. They were very cute together, these two boys. They were recalling stories of the late 2000s, early 2010s, of how the idea of Venmo came to be. Obviously, our dear friends Ikram and Andrew Kortina were the co-founders of that. And it started with just, like, "We're at dinner."

Dave Morin: We were at dinner at the Ace Hotel at the Breslin.

Brit Morin: And someone was like, "Ugh, it's annoying how I have to pay the bill, but then I have to, like, now ask all of you guys to pay me back. And then you have to, like, go find a way to PayPal me or something, and that takes forever. I wish you could just text me a payment."

Jessica: Those Breslin burgers were expensive. I'm thinking back. It was Ace Hotel, the-

Brit Morin: I love those burgers.

Jessica: I have a New York trip coming up, and I haven't stayed at the Ace in a while, but New York hotel prices are, like, astronomical for, like, 150 square feet. So I'm like, "Why don't I go a little more spacious and stay at the Ace and get a nice discount?" Well, who knows?

Dave Morin: I did the math on this, Jess, and New York hotel prices have outpaced inflation by 2X over the last 10 years.

Jessica: Sam's staying with our friend. I should probably not reveal his location 'cause he didn't book until he left. He's staying with a mutual friend of ours.

Dave Morin: Sam was tweeting about it, and so I, I had my agent do the math, and I, 'cause I was curious, you know, 'cause I always stay at the same place.

Jessica: What do you stay? Unless it's a state secret.

Dave Morin: The Greenwich is my absolute favorite.

Jessica: Oh, too far downtown. D- what are you-- My office is in Flatiron.

Brit Morin: No, Tribeca's amazing.

Dave Morin: Jess, The Greenwich is amazing.

Jessica: I've stayed at The Greenwich many times, but I need to be near the office.

Dave Morin: Greenwich is the best hotel in the world.

Jessica: Absolutely not. Oh my God, Dave.

Dave Morin: It's the best hotel in the world.

Jessica: Dave.

Brit Morin: I disagree, but, uh, it is nice.

Dave Morin: Yeah. The Greenwich is amazing.

Jessica: Oh my God. I, I think I'm going back to the Ace, guys. I'm gonna relive our 20s we spent so... I'm gonna go, and I'm gonna get, like, a king bed this time. You know, I'm really gonna splurge.

Brit Morin: You guys had, like, a wedding party at the Ace.

Dave Morin: This is a hill I'll die on.

Jessica: We had an engagement party at the Ace Hotel. Yeah, we, we spent a lot of time there. We, we had a friend who got married at the Ace.

Dave Morin: The Ace was, like, the place in the 2000s. Like, it's like Malcolm Gladwell was writing books. John Mayer was there. Like, it was, like, this weird, you know, millennial creative ... hang out. And if you remember, Koreatown was pretty shady back then.

Jessica: But then Milk Bar opened, and I was just like, it's like, it was cool again.

Brit Morin: Okay, back to Venmo, you guys.

Jessica: Okay, yeah. So you guys are on a panel, and there is a movie coming out. Is that correct?

Brit Morin: Yeah, there's a documentary about the founding story.

Dave Morin: Colin Luce from Basis Theory, which is a fintech startup that we're involved with, has decided to start doing a documentary series on sort of important moments in fintech, and he asked me if I knew the founders, and Sam, and you know, everybody. And so Colin did an am- an immense amount of work and put together an entire documentary on the Venmo story.

Jessica: Amazing.

Dave Morin: It's still being worked on, but I mean, this is like a professional, amazing documentary that will come out sometime probably in the next year, and pretty cool. Like, a lot of us sat down for it. They went around and interviewed everybody, people from Braintree, people from PayPal, people from the early days. And so we did a conversation at the SFJAZZ Center this week on stage with Sam and Iqram, and-

Jessica: I wish I'd been invited. Sounds delightful.

Dave Morin: It was a cool vibe. There'll be another one, Jess, when the, when the film's ready to come out.

Brit Morin: It made me nostalgic for the simpler times in tech that happened 20 years ago.

Jessica: I know. It was so similar. No harnesses, right? We just did meetups and, like, hung out at the Ace.

Brit Morin: And the people that were here in the Valley were here to, like, just be creative and build cool shit, and I can't say that for everyone, uh, that's here right now.

Jessica: It's a fun time to be here, too.

Dave Morin: I think Sam made some great points about this, just that in the 2000s and somewhat the early 2010s, like, people in tech were making things because whatever they were working on was awesome. They were doing it for fun because they sort of loved the creative endeavor of it, and that has changed. Like, there's a lot of people making things in the Valley now to just make money.

Jessica: They also wanted to make money back in the day, but yes, it's a different ethos in parts of it.

Brit Morin: But back in the day, a $30 million acquisition was, like, the talk of the town. It was like, Flickr got acquired for 20 million, and everyone lost their shit.

Jessica: But it is amazing. You know, Venmo ended up not selling for a relatively large amount of money if I-

Dave Morin: No, none of us made any money.

Jessica: We- yeah. I use it twice a day to this day.

Dave Morin: It's extraordinary on its cultural impact. And one of the great stories that they were telling that I just thought was hilarious that I had forgotten about was this story of in the time period between when Braintree and PayPal were getting acquired, Venmo wanted to do a marketing campaign. And so they were asking for money to do marketing, and the CEO was like, "No, we, we can't do this right now. We're like in the middle of acquisition." And so, uh, I think it was Cortina walked into the break room one day and was like, "We should just do a marketing campaign about Lucas." And Lucas was, like, a random engineer on the Venmo engineering team. And so they put these billboards all over the subways and everywhere, and it was just like, "Lucas takes the subway." And they didn't even say Venmo on them, and they were all over the city, but it went massively viral.

Jessica: It went massively viral. That was cool.

Dave Morin: Caused Venmo to, like, grow enormously with almost no marketing budget. And so I think one of the cool underlying stories of Venmo was, like, this really creative ingenuity that they had with limited resources to convince people to use this product. And Jess, you're right. Like, Brit and I were at Stagecoach Festival last year, and it was, like, Venmo everywhere. And I was just like, man, the, the ongoing cultural impact of this, the unlikely impact of this crazy little company still to this day is pretty amazing.

Brit Morin: Well, the irony I think is also that Stripe wanting to acquire PayPal for Venmo, so that $0 value that Dave and Sam got- ... has definitely grown over time.

Jessica: Yeah. Okay, we're gonna wrap in a sec, but we should, we should... Speaking of movies, do you guys... By my count, in the next several months we are going to have an Altman movie, a Musk movie by Alex Gibney, a social reckoning movie about Facebook/Meta-

Dave Morin: Oh, really? I didn't know that

Jessica: ... and a Farhados movie, guys.

Brit Morin: Yeah.

Jessica: Before she went to jail, she did Nathan For You-

Dave Morin: Insane

Jessica: ... what- whatever his name is.

Brit Morin: Did Ben Stiller produce that or something? He's involved somehow.

Jessica: I mean, probably. So I don't know. Like, who wants to do some screenings? This is sort of what I-

Brit Morin: Oh, that's a fun idea. We should make fancy events in SF with red carpet and things like that, but, like, for tech movies.

Dave Morin: There's also apparently a movie which, you know, I asked, uh, Jesse Sittig, who's our best filmmaking friend-

Jessica: She's a spirit animal of the pod in both business to come on

Dave Morin: ... I asked her what the best film from Telluride was, and she said Wild Horse 9. And I watched the trailer, and it looks amazing. It's, like, John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi. It looks just, like, amazing, and she's like, "It's gonna win everything." And so that looks cool, too.

Jessica: Speaking of watching, guys, happy US Open finals weekend.

Dave Morin: We're here.

Jessica: We are now in the semifinals. We have four Americans who have shots.

Dave Morin: Who's gonna win, Jess?

Jessica: Who is gonna win? I really hope Ben Shelton wins after toppling my always... I, I'm an Alcaraz ride or die. For all of us West Coasters who stayed up late, uh, the East Coasters were staying up until 4:00 AM in the morning watching an epic five-setter. I really hope Shelton goes on to win it, and I'm rooting for Pegula or Coco. I'm rooting for Coco, but I don't know if they can pull it off, if she can pull it off in the end, but it's been epic. The tennis blogs are aflutter with the, "How dare tennis matches last until 3:30 in the morning?" I kinda say if they're great matches, folks, what are you gonna do? Make the sport shorter to have less drama?

Dave Morin: Why is that? I saw some of that drama, but I, I actually just made me think, like, why is that? Why do they go till... Isn't that hard on the athletes?

Jessica: It's very hard on the athletes, but there is an explanation, which is it usually happens when you have a combination of very long, tight, competitive matches that go long with tie breaks And the USTA and argues you could in theory start earlier, but it's actually hard to move 25,000 people around and have multiple sessions. So I am not an expert on this, and I think maybe some adjustments will be made. But I also think the other side of this is, like, you're watching winner after winner and tie break after tie break, and that's kinda what tennis is about, so.

Dave Morin: Is that the story? That if, like, if center court goes super long during the day, then the match starts later because of that?

Jessica: It can, but what's basically happening is that the night sessions are going quite long, and then you also can get in a rhythm because there's rules how frequently players can play. So play... I don't know exactly what it is, but, like, if someone was on until 4:00 AM, you can't put them on at 6:00 PM. And so there-

Dave Morin: That makes sense

Jessica: ... I, I am no expert in this, and my tennis friends are laughing at me right now, but it's almost got as much attention in the tennis world as, uh, Jacob did for his doomsdayer. So I'm- Every outlet has been writing an op-ed about 4:00 AM and the... I have two tennis watching threads. I have an East Coast WhatsApp group and a West Coast iMessage group, and so they were really enjoying the back and forth. But anyway, for tennis lovers, it should be a fun weekend and a very... Some great matches, I hope so. Fingers crossed. Okay, Morens, what else have we got? Did we do it? Did we give the people some smarts for the week?

Dave Morin: I think that's it.

Guest: I think we did it.

Jessica: Okay.

Guest: That's all the smarts we have.

Jessica: We covered a lot of ground. It's always a pleasure and relatively calm being here with you two. Although we'll miss Sam. Um-

Guest: We miss the frenetic Sam energy. He'll be back next week.

Jessica: I, I could use, uh, could use a little help on the home front, although I'm, I'm keeping things going. I've gotta do, uh, three back to school nights as one person. Let's see if I can pull this off. But with that, dear listeners, we wish you a very happy and weekend, and we'll see you back here next week for another episode of More or Less. Bye.

Guest: Bye.

Dave Morin: See you 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, @davemoren, @lesson, @jlesson, and as for me, I'm @britt. See you guys next time.