The Exchanges

Q working on? Again, really foundational technologies, whether it's AI or crypto, insert other foundational technology here, that eventually doesn't work out? And I'm asking you this because actually several of us on the editorial team were trying to think of an example, and as someone who has been investing in technology for so long, I was wondering if there has been a case where so many people have been wrong.

A Well, the big probably famous example was, uh, alchemy, um, which is a term that people have, it's A-L-C-H-E-M-Y. So alchemy was the technology to transmute lead into gold. Um, and, uh, there was this concept that you'd be able to, that you'd be able to build some form of machine or discover some material that they actually, and this is like, you know, 300 years ago now, uh, they actually had this term they called the philosopher's stone, and there was, and basically all these smart people trying to figure out how to basically adventure, discover the philosopher's stone. By the way, talk about smart people. Isaac Newton spent 20 years trying to figure this out, right? So, like, maybe the smartest human being in history of the planet spent 20 years on this. Um, so at, at the time, you know, they were serious.

AI assessment note: “Well, the big probably famous example was, uh, alchemy”

Q of the GPU as part of this next platform ship. I mean, I think the biggest surprise people have had is that this is the graphical processor unit, which is something that was developed in the gaming industry for really high resolution graphics processing and is now finding, I guess, unexpected. Is it a surprise to us that it's finding uses in these new platforms like VR, AR, deep learning?

A It's actually, interestingly, it's a new application of an old idea. Back when I was getting started, 30 years ago, working in physics labs, if you wanted to run, um, just a normal program, you just, You just buy a normal computer and run the program, but if you wanted to do, uh, run a program, many physics simulations had this, had this, uh, property where you, you would want to run a very large number of calculations in parallel, right? And so you could, you could basically divide up a problem of simulating anything from a black hole or to different kinds of biological simulations. Um, you could basically write these algorithms in a way that they could run, you could basically parcel the problem into many different pieces, uh, and then run them all in parallel. And there was actually in the old days, uh, there was actually a whole industry of what were called Vector processors, which were literally these kind of sidecar computers that you would buy, and you would hook up to your main computer, and they would let you run these parallel problems much faster. And so literally, 30 years later, the GPU is a, it's basically a vector processor. It's basically a sidecar processor that sits along the CPU and runs these parallel problems much faster. And it, graphics are a natural application of that, but as it turns out, graphics aren't the only application.

AI assessment note: “It's actually, interestingly, it's a new application of an old idea.”

Q Do you have a sense for how they are, as are a theory of mind today, um, or do you have a sense where the limitations are? You, you like to talk to them a lot. Are there any particular things that are particularly surprising to you as you do?

A Yeah, I would say generally they're really good. Um, yeah, and so like one of the, one of the more, I, I find one of the more fascinating ways, you know, to, to work with language models is actually have them create personas. Um, and, uh, and then, you know, basically have, well, actually, so the way I like, I like, I like basically, I like Socratic dialogues. I like when things are argued out and like a Socratic dialogue. And so, you, you know, tell a, tell any advanced LLM today to create a Socratic dialogue and it'll either make up the personas. You can tell what it is. It does a good job. It does this very, very annoying property, which is it wants everybody to be happy. Um, and so it wants all of its personas to agree. Um, and so by default it will have a, uh, it will have a briefly interesting discussion and then it will sort of figure out, you know, basically it like you're watching, I don't know, PBS special or something. It'll, it'll kind of figure out how to bring everybody in agreement. Everybody's happy at the end of the discussion. And of course I fucking hate that. Like it drives me nuts. I don't want that. So instead I, I tell it, I'm like, make the conversation more tense. Right. And like fraught with like anger and like, you know, people, you know, they're going to get like increasingly upset. Throughout the conversation, and then it starts to get really intere…

AI assessment note: “It does this very, very annoying property, which is it wants everybody to be happy.”

Q Yeah. The, I think that seems to be a common theme in your analysis when, when people talk about the limitations of LMs, you know, can they do transfer learning or, or just learning in general? You seem to ask, can people do this?

A Yes. Can people do these things? Well, it's like lateral thinking, right? So yeah, so it's like reasoning in or out of distribution, right? And so it's like, okay, I know a lot of people who are very good at reasoning inside distribution. How many people do I actually know who are good at reasoning outside of distribution and doing transfer learning? And, and the answer is like, I know a handful. Like I, I know a few, I know a few people. Um, where whenever you ask them a question, you get an extremely original answer, and usually that answer involves bringing in some idea from some adjacent space, and basically being able to bridge domains, um, and so, you know, you'll ask them a question about, I don't know, you know, finance, and they'll, they'll bring you an answer from psychology, or you ask them a question about psychology, and they'll bring you an answer from biology, right, or whatever it is, and so I, I know, you know, I know, I don't know, sitting here today, probably three, I probably know three people who can do that reliably, out of the, you know, I've got, you know, I've got 10,000 in my address book, Um, and so three out of 10,000.

AI assessment note: “Yes. Can people do these things? Well, it's like lateral thinking”

Q working on? Again, really foundational technologies, whether it's AI or crypto, insert other foundational technology here, that eventually doesn't work out? And I'm asking you this because actually several of us on the editorial team were trying to think of an example, and as someone who has been investing in technology for so long, I was wondering if there has been a case where so many people have been wrong.

A Well, the big probably famous example was, uh, alchemy, um, which is a term that people have, it's A-L-C-H-E-M-Y. So alchemy was the technology to transmute lead into gold. Um, and, uh, there was this concept that you'd be able to, that you'd be able to build some form of machine or discover some material that they actually, and this is like, you know, 300 years ago now, uh, they actually had this term they called the philosopher's stone, and there was, and basically all these smart people trying to figure out how to basically adventure, discover the philosopher's stone. By the way, talk about smart people. Isaac Newton spent 20 years trying to figure this out, right? So, like, maybe the smartest human being in history of the planet spent 20 years on this. Um, so at, at the time, you know, they were serious.

AI assessment note: “Well, the big probably famous example was, uh, alchemy”

Q of the GPU as part of this next platform ship. I mean, I think the biggest surprise people have had is that this is the graphical processor unit, which is something that was developed in the gaming industry for really high resolution graphics processing and is now finding, I guess, unexpected. Is it a surprise to us that it's finding uses in these new platforms like VR, AR, deep learning?

A It's actually, interestingly, it's a new application of an old idea. Back when I was getting started, 30 years ago, working in physics labs, if you wanted to run, um, just a normal program, you just, You just buy a normal computer and run the program, but if you wanted to do, uh, run a program, many physics simulations had this, had this, uh, property where you, you would want to run a very large number of calculations in parallel, right? And so you could, you could basically divide up a problem of simulating anything from a black hole or to different kinds of biological simulations. Um, you could basically write these algorithms in a way that they could run, you could basically parcel the problem into many different pieces, uh, and then run them all in parallel. And there was actually in the old days, uh, there was actually a whole industry of what were called Vector processors, which were literally these kind of sidecar computers that you would buy, and you would hook up to your main computer, and they would let you run these parallel problems much faster. And so literally, 30 years later, the GPU is a, it's basically a vector processor. It's basically a sidecar processor that sits along the CPU and runs these parallel problems much faster. And it, graphics are a natural application of that, but as it turns out, graphics aren't the only application.

AI assessment note: “it's actually, interestingly, it's a new application of an old idea.”

Q you know, people talk about the educational divide, but there's also generational divide in terms of boomers being just much more, um, sort of confident in their sort of truth, and younger people being more, uh, sort of post-truth, relativistic, more pluralist. Um, and I, I thought that was a really interesting sort of epistemological divide. What did you find interesting about, or how do you see that play out?

A Yeah, so there's really two parts to it, which is very interesting. So part number one is, um, a lot of boomers, um, ah, somebody once said the definition of a baby boomer is somebody who believes what's on the TV set. Like, they believe what the talking on the TV says. Um, and like anybody who's 20 knows that you obviously don't do that, right? That, that would be stupid. Um, but every, you know, six-year-old or eighty-year-old has been watching TV their entire lives, and when they grew up, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's the old story. We've all heard it, you know, a million times. Walker Cronkite used to tell us what the truth was. Um, right, and, you know, of course, that was always BS, but nevertheless, that, that was what the boomers believed. They believed what the TV said. They believed what the New York Times wrote. Right, and so, you know, they believed these things. Um, you know, any, anybody below the age of 40, like just at this point has example after example after example of how like obviously that's just not true, and then anybody who's like 20 who's been through the last, you know, 15 years in school, like just obviously knows that, you know, these people are fake, and you know, this is not real, and you just can't take this stuff seriously. Um, and so, um, so, so, so part of it is that divide, and so the, the, the boomers had, um, uh, by the way, …

AI assessment note: “the definition of a baby boomer is somebody who believes what's on the TV”

Q Do you have a sense for how they are, as are a theory of mind today, um, or do you have a sense where the limitations are? You, you like to talk to them a lot. Are there any particular things that are particularly surprising to you as you do?

A Yeah, I would say generally they're really good. Um, yeah, and so like one of the, one of the more, I, I find one of the more fascinating ways, you know, to, to work with language models is actually have them create personas. Um, and, uh, and then, you know, basically have, well, actually, so the way I like, I like, I like basically, I like Socratic dialogues. I like when things are argued out and like a Socratic dialogue. And so, you, you know, tell a, tell any advanced LLM today to create a Socratic dialogue and it'll either make up the personas. You can tell what it is. It does a good job. It does this very, very annoying property, which is it wants everybody to be happy. Um, and so it wants all of its personas to agree. Um, and so by default it will have a, uh, it will have a briefly interesting discussion and then it will sort of figure out, you know, basically it like you're watching, I don't know, PBS special or something. It'll, it'll kind of figure out how to bring everybody in agreement. Everybody's happy at the end of the discussion. And of course I fucking hate that. Like it drives me nuts. I don't want that. So instead I, I tell it, I'm like, make the conversation more tense. Right. And like fraught with like anger and like, you know, people, you know, they're going to get like increasingly upset. Throughout the conversation, and then it starts to get really intere…

AI assessment note: “It does this very, very annoying property, which is it wants everybody to be happy.”

Q someone who has built the future and invested in the future many times over, especially when it wasn't the easy thing to do? So Mark, why don't we start there? And why don't we start by attacking this question with the lens of history? So how maybe do people view the importance of technology today? And how has that changed maybe relative to how they viewed it in the past?

A Yeah, so thanks. So that, that's a, that's a great way to start. And, you know, so many of the discussions about today's technologies kind of take place in this, you know, kind of ahistorical frame where it's as if there had never been any new technologies in the past, or that there were new technologies in the past, but those were all the good ones, and today we just have the bad ones. Something like that. And so the, the, the, the key question to kind of start out asking on all these topics is basically, um, is basically like, why is there something and not just nothing? Um, by, by which I mean basically like, what was life like before technology, right? Like what was life like in like its natural state before we had all these wonderful technologies, before we had steam power, before we had, you know, tractors, before we had telephones and so forth. And, you know, there's, you know, a lot of historians have talked about this, but, you know, the answer is life was what was known at the time, you know, Thomas Hobbes famously said it was nasty, brutish, and short, right? And so you'll, you'll read these fantasies from time to time about how people kind of in, you know, older periods, uh, you know, more historical periods, like somehow they were living in this state of grace with nature, and kind of everything was wonderful, and they were just kind of hanging out and having a goo…

AI assessment note: “so many of the discussions about today's technologies kind of take place in this, you know, kind of ahistorical frame”

Q your general, uh, how have you kind of perceived, um, this topic when there's been news out about it over the, over the years? Um, I remember during, during COVID, you know, Mike Solana, our friend was, was coming out and really sort of getting excited about the news that was being reported then. What's been your vantage point and what do you, what do you think about it now?

A Yeah, so I should start by saying, I don't, so I don't know anything, so I'll start by saying that. I know nothing, um, that everybody else doesn't know. Um, so I'll start by saying, like, number one, I want to believe. Um, like, I, my, my usual thing on this is, I, I want to live in the world in which this is a real possibility. Um, and by the way, I was, I was actually, I, I, okay, AI psychosis. I was in AI psychosis the other night, um, and I was like, I was talking to one of the, one of the bots, and I was like, all right, How many, uh, galaxies are there in the universe again? And, and I don't know if you've, like, looked that up recently, but, like, the number keeps growing, and I forget what the number is, but it's, like, a giant number, and then I'm, like, how many stars in, in, in each galaxy, and then how many planets, and then how many Earth-like planets, and, and the number, I don't have the top of my head, but if you, if you get, do address it, like, how many Earth-like planets are there in the world in which a human being could, like, step out of a spaceship and breathe and be fine? It's a staggering, it's a very, very, very large number. I mean, it's, it's, it's almost an accountable number of Earth-like planets just in, in the statistics. And so it's like, all right, like, you know, it must be the case, um, you know, that there's, there's, there's, there's other…

AI assessment note: “number one, I want to believe. Um, like, I, my, my usual thing on this is”

Q Shall we close with, uh, with Fight Club?

A Fight Club. Well, we could spend an entire, we could spend hours on just Fight Club, and we probably should at some point. I, I would just say about Fight Club, Fight Club's an amazing, I, it's like, I think it's, I, I think it's, it's a hundred percent true arc with capital A. I think it's amazing. I think it's, you know, definitely gonna stand the test of time, you know, already is. Um, you know, it's one of those movies, and it's, it's one of those movies that has that characteristic we talked about last time, where like, if you watched it the week it came out, versus a year later, versus five years later, versus 10 years later, versus 20 years, versus 30 years later, like it, it has new meanings. Uh, as, as, as our society evolves, and it's got, and you can kind of, you can, at any, at any kind of point in time, you can kind of use it as a prism, uh, on our society. Um, it's, it's, it's, it's amazing in retrospect. I guess my, my sort of social political kind of, kind of analysis of it would be, like, it was clearly intended as a left-wing movie, um, at the time, because it was sort of, it was sort of, um, you know, and the novel that, you know, the famous novel that it's based on, you know, and it's sort of this, you know, almost like, what was it? Remember the original, like, It was the sort of left-wing anti-capitalism of that era, like left-wing anarchism, um, you know,…

AI assessment note: “I would just say about Fight Club, Fight Club's an amazing”

Q you know, people talk about the educational divide, but there's also generational divide in terms of boomers being just much more, um, sort of confident in their sort of truth, and younger people being more, uh, sort of post-truth, relativistic, more pluralist. Um, and I, I thought that was a really interesting sort of epistemological divide. What did you find interesting about, or how do you see that play out?

A Yeah, so there's really two parts to it, which is very interesting. So part number one is, um, a lot of boomers, um, ah, somebody once said the definition of a baby boomer is somebody who believes what's on the TV set. Like, they believe what the talking on the TV says. Um, and like anybody who's 20 knows that you obviously don't do that, right? That, that would be stupid. Um, but every, you know, six-year-old or eighty-year-old has been watching TV their entire lives, and when they grew up, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's the old story. We've all heard it, you know, a million times. Walker Cronkite used to tell us what the truth was. Um, right, and, you know, of course, that was always BS, but nevertheless, that, that was what the boomers believed. They believed what the TV said. They believed what the New York Times wrote. Right, and so, you know, they believed these things. Um, you know, any, anybody below the age of 40, like just at this point has example after example after example of how like obviously that's just not true, and then anybody who's like 20 who's been through the last, you know, 15 years in school, like just obviously knows that, you know, these people are fake, and you know, this is not real, and you just can't take this stuff seriously. Um, and so, um, so, so, so part of it is that divide, and so the, the, the boomers had, um, uh, by the way, …

AI assessment note: “part number one is, a lot of boomers... believes what's on the TV set”

Q And, you know, Trump of course didn't wanna pick favorites. Um, anyway, I'm, I'm curious how you think about the sort of the bridge, um, either analysis of, of, of, of Trump as the bridge or, or more just How do you see legacy players and new media players, um, sort of, uh, you know, playing out or even the styles of what will work in this new, new format?

A Yeah. I mean, so I guess, I don't know, maybe start with data, right? So, um, the data shows that basically I'm just focused on American data because of what I'm most familiar with. So just in the data, you basically see a couple things. So one is, um, trust in centralized institutions of all kinds is, is collapsing, uh, in the US. Um, uh, so basically any, any kind of legacy, um, or, um, uh, uh, incumbent institution, um, you know, trust is collapsing fast. By the way, that collapse in trust didn't start with the internet. It actually started around 1970. Um, it, it, it actually, um, uh, it actually, it's, it's part of this, uh, it's part of this WTF happened in 1971. Uh, meme, um, is when, basically, uh, trust in centralized institutions in the U.S. started to fall off a cliff. Uh, that's true for many kinds of centralized institutions, and it's been true for, you know, basically, 55 years. Um, but, but media's included in that. Um, and so, trust in centralized media is collapsing, and, you know, keeps hitting new record lows. Basically, every time they run the survey, it collapses further. Um, and so, so that's certainly true. And then you, and then the, the business version of it is just very clear, which is, you know, we were talking about CNN later, like, your earlier, like, you know, ratings for all the centralized media properties are in full-scale collapse. Um, you kno…

AI assessment note: “ratings for all the centralized media properties are in full-scale collapse.”

Q Mark, what does Martin Gurie, uh, bring to this, uh, to this analysis? He's really shaped your thinking here.

A Yeah, so Martin Gurie is a, is a good friend of ours and is a brilliant writer. Um, he spent 30 years in the CIA doing, uh, basically analysis, um, of, uh, of essentially regime change. Um, and, but he was in what was called the open source division for a long time, and they, they, they were doing basically like global media monitoring. Um, and so he, he's sort of a world expert at sort of the intersection of how the media operates and then kind of how changes happen in government and happen in political regimes. And he wrote this book, I think actually pre-Trump, I think he wrote it in 20, I think he wrote it in the early twenty-tenths and published it, self-published it originally, I think in twenty-fifteen, if I recall correctly. So kind of, so the book was kind of published at the same time that Trump was winning the nomination. So it, it, you know, it, it, like, it's, it's, it, it was very, it was very, uh, it looks, in hindsight, extremely prescient. Um, you know, yeah, even he, I think, would, would say he, you know, he didn't know, obviously, that it was, that he says it was going to get proven as fast as it was. Um, by the way, the book is today available in a formal edition by, uh, from Stripe Press, uh, and you can buy it on Amazon. They have a really beautiful, um, uh, version of it with a, with a whole new section at the end on what happened since he wrote it, but,…

AI assessment note: “he's sort of a world expert at sort of the intersection of how the media operates”

Q Mark, what does Martin Gurie, uh, bring to this, uh, to this analysis? He's really shaped your thinking here.

A Yeah, so Martin Gurie is a, is a good friend of ours and is a brilliant writer. Um, he spent 30 years in the CIA doing, uh, basically analysis, um, of, uh, of essentially regime change. Um, and, but he was in what was called the open source division for a long time, and they, they, they were doing basically like global media monitoring. Um, and so he, he's sort of a world expert at sort of the intersection of how the media operates and then kind of how changes happen in government and happen in political regimes. And he wrote this book, I think actually pre-Trump, I think he wrote it in 20, I think he wrote it in the early twenty-tenths and published it, self-published it originally, I think in twenty-fifteen, if I recall correctly. So kind of, so the book was kind of published at the same time that Trump was winning the nomination. So it, it, you know, it, it, like, it's, it's, it, it was very, it was very, uh, it looks, in hindsight, extremely prescient. Um, you know, yeah, even he, I think, would, would say he, you know, he didn't know, obviously, that it was, that he says it was going to get proven as fast as it was. Um, by the way, the book is today available in a formal edition by, uh, from Stripe Press, uh, and you can buy it on Amazon. They have a really beautiful, um, uh, version of it with a, with a whole new section at the end on what happened since he wrote it, but,…

AI assessment note: “he's sort of a world expert at sort of the intersection of how the media operates”

Q When, when did you guys start to notice that, that some of the legacy media was really failing to achieve its, its ideals? And maybe Mark, we can get into Martin Gurry's sort of analysis and some of the structural forces, uh, behind how, how social media and the internet has, uh, sort of accelerated that.

A Yeah. So we'll, we'll tell the personal side of the story first and then, and then, you know, go to the theoretical, I think maybe. Um, so, um, so, you know, Ben, Ben spent a lot of time with the press over the years. You know, I, I had done basically a nation, uh, uh, East coast press tour So, so kids in the old days, um, what you used to do to deal with the press is once, once, if you were like a prominent public figure, CEO, or, you know, kind of major, you know, kind of person who's in the news a lot, and you had a, you know, you had your own, you know, kind of, you know, PR capability and resources, what you would do is once a year, you would go do a press tour, um, and you would fly to the East Coast, because they're all on the East Coast, um, which is a whole other, whole other dimension of this. Um, so you'd fly 3000 miles. Um, and then basically you go around and you meet, meet with all of the, meet with the reporters, but also the editors and publishers, um, of all the major, uh, publications. And I, I did this for, you know, I did this for many years going back to the nineties and I probably did it 20 times, um, you know, leading into, leading into, I wouldn't talk about 20 17 as the change, but leading in 2017 and like generally it had always been like, it had always been what I described as like a benign and even enjoyable experience, which is, um, you know, you ki…

AI assessment note: “I wouldn't talk about 20 17 as the change, but leading in 2017”

Q media impact, because it feels like he was a part of a, of a new playbook. You know, Trump in the nineties was very different than Trump in the mid, mid 2000, um, or two and tens. And, and that same new playbook, uh, that was sort of native to, to social media helped influence perhaps Elon, perhaps some others. Mark, when you describe what, what was this new playbook?

A So I think Trump is a bridge figure. Um, I actually think Trump, with respect to like media, um, the media, the way media works, I think Trump is a bridge figure, um, in that we're, we're gonna see new variations from here that are gonna be very interesting, but he's a bridge figure, which is he, he, you know, he's of the generation that grew up, uh, you know, with television, newspapers, you know, absolutely dominant. Um, and so he's always had a very intertwined relationship with newspapers and, and with television. Um, and obviously that culminated in having his own You know, uh, top rated television show for 15 years, but also he was, you know, he was, he was a, he's a, he, Trump was a standard story in newspapers starting in, like, 1975. Um, I think the New York Times first profiled him in 75, and then he was a fixture, as they say, in, like, New York media world, and tabloids, and major newspapers, and entertainment television, and everything else, um, you know, all the way through cable TV. He was on cable news all the time. You know, he'd go on Oprah, um, uh, you know, when, when, when that was a big deal. Um, and so he was always super intertwined and he talked to them constantly, by the way, you know, he would, he would always, many stories in those days of, of Trump calling up and talking to reporters and taking phone calls from reporters, um, you know, and, and, and…

AI assessment note: “I think Trump is a bridge figure, um, in that we're, we're gonna see”

Q someone who has built the future and invested in the future many times over, especially when it wasn't the easy thing to do? So Mark, why don't we start there? And why don't we start by attacking this question with the lens of history? So how maybe do people view the importance of technology today? And how has that changed maybe relative to how they viewed it in the past?

A Yeah, so thanks. So that, that's a, that's a great way to start. And, you know, so many of the discussions about today's technologies kind of take place in this, you know, kind of ahistorical frame where it's as if there had never been any new technologies in the past, or that there were new technologies in the past, but those were all the good ones, and today we just have the bad ones. Something like that. And so the, the, the, the key question to kind of start out asking on all these topics is basically, um, is basically like, why is there something and not just nothing? Um, by, by which I mean basically like, what was life like before technology, right? Like what was life like in like its natural state before we had all these wonderful technologies, before we had steam power, before we had, you know, tractors, before we had telephones and so forth. And, you know, there's, you know, a lot of historians have talked about this, but, you know, the answer is life was what was known at the time, you know, Thomas Hobbes famously said it was nasty, brutish, and short, right? And so you'll, you'll read these fantasies from time to time about how people kind of in, you know, older periods, uh, you know, more historical periods, like somehow they were living in this state of grace with nature, and kind of everything was wonderful, and they were just kind of hanging out and having a goo…

AI assessment note: “discussions about today's technologies kind of take place in this, you know, kind of ahistorical frame”

Q talked about, every technology has problems to fix, and those are business opportunities. But I want to hear from you from the perspective that you mentioned before of this power balance being messed with with every new technology, and as more people start to work remotely and reconsider all of this, how would you frame the pushback of remote work with this idea of a power shift or society reshuffling?

A Yeah, so this really comes up. Uh, I mean, there's a bunch of, there's a whole bunch of angles on this, but like the one that's, the one that I hear about all the time right now is when I talk to big company CEOs, right? So you talk to CEOs of like big banks or big software companies, right? Big, big, big, big, whatever, you know, companies. Um, you know, this basically is the conversation, right? Because, because what happened is basically, you know, if you're the CEO of a big company today, You know, you came up in an environment where everybody was in physical proximity, right? You, you came up where the whole, the whole way that you came up, the whole way that you played politics and like got yourself in position and got yourself exposed to the important people and got promoted and like all this stuff, you know, didn't work with your teams, right? You know, the way that you did deals, the way that you like, you know, had, had relationships with other people in the industry, like, you know, the way you dealt with customers, it was all based on in-person proximity, right? And which meant either in the office or by, or by the way, it meant on the road, right? Business travel. And that's true basically of like the entire management hierarchy of like every existing big company. Like they're all like that. Right. And so all of a sudden now you have this, like, you have this incre…

AI assessment note: “came up where the whole way that you played politics and like got yourself in position”

Q talked about, every technology has problems to fix, and those are business opportunities. But I want to hear from you from the perspective that you mentioned before of this power balance being messed with with every new technology, and as more people start to work remotely and reconsider all of this, how would you frame the pushback of remote work with this idea of a power shift or society reshuffling?

A Yeah, so this really comes up. Uh, I mean, there's a bunch of, there's a whole bunch of angles on this, but like the one that's, the one that I hear about all the time right now is when I talk to big company CEOs, right? So you talk to CEOs of like big banks or big software companies, right? Big, big, big, big, whatever, you know, companies. Um, you know, this basically is the conversation, right? Because, because what happened is basically, you know, if you're the CEO of a big company today, You know, you came up in an environment where everybody was in physical proximity, right? You, you came up where the whole, the whole way that you came up, the whole way that you played politics and like got yourself in position and got yourself exposed to the important people and got promoted and like all this stuff, you know, didn't work with your teams, right? You know, the way that you did deals, the way that you like, you know, had, had relationships with other people in the industry, like, you know, the way you dealt with customers, it was all based on in-person proximity, right? And which meant either in the office or by, or by the way, it meant on the road, right? Business travel. And that's true basically of like the entire management hierarchy of like every existing big company. Like they're all like that. Right. And so all of a sudden now you have this, like, you have this incre…

AI assessment note: “You know, you came up in an environment where everybody was in physical proximity”

Q society as a whole does seem to find virtue in, in certain things at certain times. So, for example, you mentioned before in history maybe entrepreneurs were valued more, so as people built things Society rewarded that type of achievement. How do you view that changing today? What, what do you think society is valuing today? And perhaps if you're willing to share, what do you wish society valued more?

A So basically there's this theory that Scott James Burnham, um, articulated this theory, uh, back in the, actually the And he called it at the time, he called it the managerial revolution. Um, and, and so basically what he, what he said was, there are basically two phases to capitalism. Um, there were, there was basically what he called the phase of bourgeois capitalism, which is sort of famously the sort of phase that, you know, the robber baron, you know, the robber barons, and then, you know, the phase that the communists hated and like all, all, all, you know, the rise to the kind of bourgeois culture. Um, you know, and, and, and, and this is, you know, the bourgeois capitalism era was the era of like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie and, You know, kind of all, you know, all these JP Morgan and, and all of these kind of, you know, kind of iconic Henry Ford, all the, all these kind of business builders, um, you know, who built the companies off, often named the companies after themselves, often ran the companies their entire lives, kind of drove the companies through kind of sheer force and personal kind of, uh, you know, kind of animal magnetism and force. Um, and then he said basically there's an evolution that takes place and it kind of started in the thirties and forties and extends into our period. And he called that the era of managerial capitalism, um, …

AI assessment note: “he called that the era of managerial capitalism, um, or just more generally”

Q is, um, is the concept of suicidal empathy. And, and, and Matt Kramer had a good quote, which is, if the empathy you have doesn't make you more forgiving, more accepting of other people's spiritual sovereignty, Or more understanding of people who don't want to think or live the same way you do. You don't have empathy. You have empathy TM. Why have you been thinking about this, this concept?

A Yeah, so there's this really brilliant, there's this really brilliant, uh, guy, Gadsad, exactly how they're pronouncing it, Gadsad, um, and, um, and, uh, you know, very brilliant guy, and it's obviously lots of YouTube videos and books and so forth, and really brilliant guy, so he's got this new book coming out on, uh, so-called, what he calls suicidal empathy, and, you know, look, it's a, you know, there's a, there's a sort of political loading to it, which, you know, we don't need to spend a lot of time on, but, um, you know, it's sort of this idea that there are kind of these social justice, you know, kind of social reform movements, You know, kind of through time that have this characteristic of, you know, they, you know, they, they, they claim to be causing positive change, you know, in some direction, and then it turns out they have, you know, sort of severe, you know, sort of negative consequences. Um, the, the, the great Thomas Sowell, um, you know, has, you know, basically spent 50 years writing books about this, um, and, and by the way, nobody, nobody listened. Um, and then in the last decade, we've been through, you know, wave after wave of this kind of social activism that kind of, you know, results in, like, I mean, it's, it's all this stuff, right? It's just, you know, All these, like, you know, crime policy reform, defund the police things, and that causes these …

AI assessment note: “in the last decade, we've been through, you know, wave after wave of this”

Q to impact my job? Is this going to impact the types of people I can interact with? Is this going to impact the power I have in society? So Mark, why don't we dive into that? How do you see technology and its implementation or really as it's starting to be implemented within society, how do people react and what, what specifically about the power within society is being upended?

A Yeah. So there's this incredible book. It's, it's very short and very good. It's actually written 50 years ago by a professor at MIT at the time. Um, and, um, it's named Elting Morrison. And, and what's great about this book is it was written before the internet, even before personal computers. And so it's kind of, it's, it's got this kind of timeless You know, kind of quality to it. And it's, it's, uh, the title of the book is called Men, Machines in Modern Times. It's this topic. It's basically, okay, what, what exactly is the process by which you do technology enters society, and then how does society react? Basically, how does, how does the stat, the sort of the powers that be or the status quo of society react?

AI assessment note: “what exactly is the process by which you do technology enters society, and then how does society react?”

Q of, you know, Coming around to this idea, because a lot of people say, you know, like, strong opinions, weekly held, or something like that, but not many people actually operate that way, and so I think that it was interesting to see A-sixteen Z actually make a shift of previously being in the office to, uh, moving to the cloud. So was there something that kind of unlocked that?

A Yeah. So I was very, people who know me will confirm this. I was very anti-remote work basically before COVID. Um, I was probably pretty far on the, on the end of like the spectrum of people thinking about this and not being open-minded on it. And, and, and basically, and, and by that was true of us as a firm, right? And so we historically ran as a firm. We ran actually a single office. We had a single office, excuse me, in Menlo Park. We actually even refused to open an office in San Francisco for, for 10 years because we were just, we wanted like critical mass in the office. And by the way, people who actually worked or visited our office kind of between call it 2010 and 2020, they will tell you like it was a it was a high activity. Like it was it was a really cool place. And there was always all this all this amazing stuff happening and all these amazing people walking around. And like, you know, we we wanted that kind of hothouse environment and we got it. But but that meant everybody like had to be in the office. Um, and then the other thing I always maintained was I was like, look, like there's this theory of remote work, but like it hasn't yet worked for any company at any level of scale. Like the only companies that have made it work are very small. Um, and, and then, um, I said, look, just look at the data, right? And what the data basically says is the superstar city …

AI assessment note: “I was very anti-remote work basically before COVID.”

Q society as a whole does seem to find virtue in, in certain things at certain times. So, for example, you mentioned before in history maybe entrepreneurs were valued more, so as people built things Society rewarded that type of achievement. How do you view that changing today? What, what do you think society is valuing today? And perhaps if you're willing to share, what do you wish society valued more?

A So basically there's this theory that Scott James Burnham, um, articulated this theory, uh, back in the, actually the And he called it at the time, he called it the managerial revolution. Um, and, and so basically what he, what he said was, there are basically two phases to capitalism. Um, there were, there was basically what he called the phase of bourgeois capitalism, which is sort of famously the sort of phase that, you know, the robber baron, you know, the robber barons, and then, you know, the phase that the communists hated and like all, all, all, you know, the rise to the kind of bourgeois culture. Um, you know, and, and, and, and this is, you know, the bourgeois capitalism era was the era of like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie and, You know, kind of all, you know, all these JP Morgan and, and all of these kind of, you know, kind of iconic Henry Ford, all the, all these kind of business builders, um, you know, who built the companies off, often named the companies after themselves, often ran the companies their entire lives, kind of drove the companies through kind of sheer force and personal kind of, uh, you know, kind of animal magnetism and force. Um, and then he said basically there's an evolution that takes place and it kind of started in the thirties and forties and extends into our period. And he called that the era of managerial capitalism, um, …

AI assessment note: “extends into our period. And he called that the era of managerial capitalism”

Q So I agree with you that progress continues. And if you look at all the important markers, we are doing better. And that has been true for a very long time. Why is it then that people seem to have this view of where we are today in history in terms of things being so bad?

A Yeah. So, you know, look, obviously that's a complicated question. Um, the technology part of it, I think is very clear though. Um, which is, you know, and again, you kind of think about this historically. So So let's, let's start with the story of like one of the very original technologies that basically human beings kind of discovered and mastered, which was fire, quite literally fire. Um, you know, obviously today you take fire for granted. You just assume it's something that's always been with us, but like fire as a tool, like fire as a technology was something that at some point, you know, kind of early human beings had to figure out how to master and how to take control of. Um, and just to give you a sense of like what a big deal it was to actually master the technology of fire when that happened. You know, one of the sort of, you know, kind of core fundamental kind of myths of, of, of, of human existence is, is the myth of Prometheus, the god Prometheus. Um, and the god Prometheus famously is the, you know, in the way the myth goes, you know, Prometheus delivered fire to humanity, basically delivered fire as a tool, uh, to, to humanity. And, and, and Prometheus was not, is not, was not beloved as a consequence of, of, of delivering fire to people. Prometheus was, was condemned and specifically he was in the myth, he was chained to a rock. Um, and, uh, for, and for all et…

AI assessment note: “The technology part of it, I think is very clear though.”

Q of, you know, Coming around to this idea, because a lot of people say, you know, like, strong opinions, weekly held, or something like that, but not many people actually operate that way, and so I think that it was interesting to see A-sixteen Z actually make a shift of previously being in the office to, uh, moving to the cloud. So was there something that kind of unlocked that?

A Yeah. So I was very, people who know me will confirm this. I was very anti-remote work basically before COVID. Um, I was probably pretty far on the, on the end of like the spectrum of people thinking about this and not being open-minded on it. And, and, and basically, and, and by that was true of us as a firm, right? And so we historically ran as a firm. We ran actually a single office. We had a single office, excuse me, in Menlo Park. We actually even refused to open an office in San Francisco for, for 10 years because we were just, we wanted like critical mass in the office. And by the way, people who actually worked or visited our office kind of between call it 2010 and 2020, they will tell you like it was a it was a high activity. Like it was it was a really cool place. And there was always all this all this amazing stuff happening and all these amazing people walking around. And like, you know, we we wanted that kind of hothouse environment and we got it. But but that meant everybody like had to be in the office. Um, and then the other thing I always maintained was I was like, look, like there's this theory of remote work, but like it hasn't yet worked for any company at any level of scale. Like the only companies that have made it work are very small. Um, and, and then, um, I said, look, just look at the data, right? And what the data basically says is the superstar city …

AI assessment note: “I was very anti-remote work basically before COVID.”

Q Mark, there's been a lot of talk lately about the limitations of LLMs, that they, they can't do true invention of, say, new science, that they can't do true creative genius, that it's just combining or packaging. You have thoughts here. What say you?

A Yeah, so, so for me, it's, yeah, so you get all these questions, and yeah, they usually come in either, you know, sort of, are, are, are, are language models intelligent in the sense of, like, can they actually, um, you know, can they actually process information and have, sort of, conceptual breakthroughs the way that people can, and then there's, are, are language models or video models creative? You know, can they, can they create new art? Um, actually have genuine creative breakthroughs, and of course, my, my answer to both of those is, well, can people do those things? Um, and, um, I think there's two, two, two questions there, which is like, okay, even if some people are quote unquote intelligent as in having original, uh, conceptual breakthroughs and not just, let's just say regurgitating the training set, um, uh, or following scripts, um, uh, how, you know, what percentage of people can actually do that? And I'd say, I've only met a few. Some of them are here in the room. Um, but, uh, you know, not that many. Most people never do. And then creativity. I mean, how many people are actually genuinely creative, right? And so, you know, you kind of point to a Beethoven or a, you know, Van Gogh or something like that. You're like, okay, that's creativity. And yeah, that's creativity. And then how many Beethoven's and Van Gogh's are there? Obviously not very many. So one is ju…

AI assessment note: “my answer to both of those is, well, can people do those things?”

Q like, you know, Alex Karp or Palmer or Elon or others is the ability to also, uh, not just focus on what they're doing, but also go outside in and talk about what's happening in the world and how do they situate their worldview, their, their company, their product, et cetera. Within that one, you talk a little bit about that principle and how do people get good at it?

A Yeah, so the most, uh, kind of, ah, common VC story, self-marketing story is, oh, I met this great founder, and we went on a walk, and then I called him eight times, and, like, I thought he was great, and I eventually convinced him to take money. The most common, you know, startup story is, oh, we're a brand new company, we're all fired up, we're ready to go, it's gonna be great, we have new products, you know, we hope you try it. And I mean, those stories just make you want to stab yourself in the neck, right? I mean, like, as, in the, like, it's just like, oh my god, like, that, it's just the lamest story in the world.

AI assessment note: “The most common, you know, startup story is, oh, we're a brand new company”

Q right? We had the same kind of dynamics happening with the bicycle, or actually, I think it would actually be fun for us to go into these These red flag laws that you told me about quickly, and we'll return to, to the framing that you brought up, but could you speak a little bit more to the red flag laws that were implemented when cars were coming to be?

A Yeah, and I'd like to, I'd like to come back to Balaji's thing on social, by the way, because I'll, I'll, I'll interpret it a little bit differently. I'll put it into this, the, the, the Sims framework, but, um, but yeah, so cars. So this is another great one. So like cars, it's like, okay, like we all live with cars. We all can't live without cars. Like, you know, there's still huge fights about how, you know, cars should be used in our society, but like there's cars everywhere. Like our society doesn't function without cars. We just kind of take them totally for granted. Uh, by the way, we take them so for granted that we just like repeatedly bail out the big car companies. Right? Like at this point, like the taxpayers have kept them in business for a long time. Um, and so, you know, the car, and so then you're, you're just like, you know, it's just like, okay, the car must've been this obvious thing. Like, of course you want the car, you know, who, you know, who could, who could have fought the car at least for any kind of, you know, kind of valid reason. And so again, to your point, like, it turns out actually the cars were, were actually a profound threat to the sort of social order of that time, uh, of the era. This is like going back a hundred, 120 years. Um, and, uh, and, and it was basically this exact same kind of process played out with the car. Um, and so the, the, …

AI assessment note: “the thing you mentioned, basically the thing that happened at the peak of kind of the anti-car hysteria”