The Exchanges, every show

Q The corporations that you're fighting against, how have you seen them respond to the work that you're doing? Has there been a pushback from these companies saying, no, no, no, no, no. Like you're, you're kind of messing with the system that we've built. You're giving people information or access to things that we kind of banked on them not having access to.

A It's an arms race. So we saw this from the very beginning at Do Not Pay, where We had bots do clicking on big company websites, and they would have anti-bots to try and identify our bots and shut them down. And the way we got around that is we have the Do Not Pay app, and it actually uses the IP of the user, so it's like a, it's almost like lots of distributed nodes fighting these companies, and they haven't been able to stop that. On the AI front, the big companies are using AI now to stop consumers even outside of Do Not Pay. And that's one of the things I think is sad about, uh, new technology. It typically gets in the hands of massive corporations and governments first. So our role is give power to the people first. So one example is we have a bot that we're using internally to negotiate Comcast bills. There's Comcast have an online chat and it generates these instant responses to chat with Comcast. And it's obvious that Comcast is already using AI. And so our AI is chatting with Comcast AI. And on the negative side, it's, it's kind of sad that consumers had to chat with AI to get refunds. On the positive side, at least now the AI is doing the work on both sides and saving the humans from the bureaucracy.

AI assessment note: “they would have anti-bots to try and identify our bots and shut them down.”

Q And what specifically about that experiment was against the rules in their eyes?

A The legal industry is very protectionist. So to even become a lawyer, you have to pass the bar exam, take a test, have a government stamp of approval. Even for something as minor as a traffic ticket. And their view was that even though the laws weren't written, they could never have imagined that when the laws were written in the 1819 hundreds, that AI would be practicing law. This applied to that situation. But our view at Do Not Pay was that it didn't apply to that situation because in these laws, it says a person can't practice law without passing the bar. And AI is not a person. It's, it's a technology. And the person is just representing themselves with the help of AI.

AI assessment note: “their view was that even though the laws weren't written... This applied to that situation”

Q I'm sure there are many controversial products that you facilitate. What about this one? This one's not so controversial, but I thought it was interesting. Find my lost pet.

A Every city or most cities have these forms where if your pet is lost, um, you can fill it out. And if, if the pet is found on the street and it walks towards a flight fire station or a police officer, Um, they'll deal with it and then they will put it into the system to see if someone's reported it as lost. And this is another area where people don't have time to fill in these obscure government forms. The same is true for airport lost property forms. We've automated all of these lost property forms at major airports. So do not pay is really about saving people time with obscure consumer rights laws and also government services.

AI assessment note: “Every city or most cities have these forms where if your pet is lost”

Q about how you're thinking about evolving the different services that you offer. I mean, you already offer, as I mentioned, a hundred things on your website. So how, how did you decide, for example, next up, Is medical bills. We're addressing that. Or how do you decide whether, oh, actually we want to go into the physical courtroom. Like what are you doing to understand where your priorities should be?

A We're just trying to create value for people. So we look very carefully about the average amount that a do not pay customer saves on a yearly basis. And we're trying to 10 X that. So instead of it being a few hundred dollars, we, a single medical bill could be 10,000 dollars. And that's where I think AI comes in really raising the value of the cases that the, Robot lawyer can pursue. We've tried things that haven't worked well because it's too emotional. AI is not too good at dealing with emotions. So many years ago, actually, before I turned do not pay into a business, I tried to use do not pay for asylum, like to automate the asylum process. But with these cases, sometimes people are crying in the courtroom, and that's something that software can never really touch because you need the human touch in those sorts of cases.

AI assessment note: “we look very carefully about the average amount that a do not pay customer saves”

Q But they obviously don't seem to buy into this. I also want to understand your perspective around, you said this one person seemed very adamant, very, very emotional about this idea of bringing AI into the courtroom. What do you think that is a reflection of? Like, why was there such effort to stop this experiment?

A Lawyers love rules and they love accusing people of breaking the rules. And I think they're scared of this technology. Um, it's like the dinosaurs suing to stop the ice age. Lawyers really don't want this technology to move forward that much because they realize that a lot of their job is copying and pasting documents. Not all lawyers are like that, but some of them are. And if AI can just do that and replace them, it puts a lot of them out of work. And so it's a combination of loving rules, being worried about their profession, and also just Disliking these young kind of CS students trying to take them down. Um, I'm not part of the legal establishment and I'm trying to fight against them. So I also think there's like a cultural mismatch.

AI assessment note: “it's a combination of loving rules, being worried about their profession”

Q What's your favorite story of serendipity from San Francisco?

A I, I think, um, there's a class at Stanford, um, and it was only 20 people, and, um, as I was not, I was focused on building my business, not necessarily, um, focused on classes, and it was taught by a billionaire, um, Pat Hanrahan, who's the founder of Tableau, um, and just the fact that you can have, like, billionaire professors teaching classes of 20 people is something that wouldn't exist anywhere outside of the Bay Area, and I remember, like, Um, working through a problem set, and he was like spending like 30 minutes with me working through this very elementary problem, and I was thinking, why is he spending his time? And, and I realized it's all about human connection, and he just wants to kind of meet interesting people, and I think the same is true across the Bay Area, where everyone is just a human, and you can kind of short circuit the kind of business guards that people put on just by having a human connection with them.

AI assessment note: “Pat Hanrahan, who's the founder of Tableau, um, and just the fact that you can”

Q That's, that's a good perspective. I think another amazing thing that I've seen, the technology can be cross-border as well. So Typically, a lawyer is specialized in one very particular area, maybe in one jurisdiction. Can you tell me a little bit more about how you're thinking about the potential for this technology to support people, not just in your region, but really anywhere?

A Yeah, the benefit of AI is it can read 10,000 documents and produce an answer in seconds, and not even the best human lawyer can do that. So I think the example you're talking about is a consumer rights issue relating to a timeshare. We had a elderly consumer in Boston. They got suckered into a timeshare actually in Mexico and do not pay got them out of it because there's a five day law in Mexico to cancel timeshare contracts. And so things like that, where you can help consumers in Boston, uh, for issues in Mexico, most lawyers in Boston don't know about Mexican law, but AI does because you can just feed it all the timeshare cases and it comes out with a way out. And the same is true actually for Comcast. These generic AI models like, um, DaVinci from OpenAI, they're, they're not actually that good at the law. What we've had to do at DoNotPay is you feed it documents. So we say, we feed, fed it all of these outcomes from the templates in many years of operating. And you say, based on these thousand documents, write X. And then it becomes much better than just a generic usage of any of the models.

AI assessment note: “most lawyers in Boston don't know about Mexican law, but AI does”

Q Are you able to predict the ones that will be hot versus not?

A No, the, the opposite is true, actually. The, the crazier it is, um, the, um, the better they do. Um, so Ali Ansari is a micro one, is objectively my best performing investment in terms of multiple. The founders get upset when I reveal exact valuation numbers, but let's say over a thousand X, well over a thousand X, um, and based on the kind of the scale of the business. Um, and When I met him, he, um, I said, I'll invest only on three conditions. So as a California LLC, Uninvestable, it has to be Delaware C Corp. Um, he was based in kind of Los Angeles as a solo founder. Um, and he was running a kind of a staffing business, um, which there's a million staffing companies, even in the UK. And so I said, you have to move to the Bay Area. You can live in my spare bedroom. Um, You can, um, you have to reincorporate in Delaware or shift to Delaware. Um, and, um, you have to use, do a software style product. I don't mind what you do, but it can be anything. And we grinded and he's the hardest, one of the hardest working people I've ever seen. Um, and actually, um, he still lives in my building to this day. And I like come at 12 AM and he's like working like, um, middle of the night. And he did all those three things and it changed everything.

AI assessment note: “No, the, the opposite is true, actually.”

Q Do you worry about the susceptibility of founders when they're that young? Like, bluntly, I see a lot of very young founders now getting so caught up in the fundraising game that it's like, it's almost a game of, I raised a round and from who? And it's like, we're building a business to create a product for customers. Let's not forget why we're here. Do you worry about that?

A Yes, so I escaped the UK to go to Stanford, and there was a, um, Stanford Review article, which is a student publication, and the publication said, It's easier for a Stanford student to get into YC than it is for them to get a job now. And so we've seen a rise of, um, I would say fake founders where they don't have that connection to their problem and they're just starting something just because it's cool or because they have nothing to do for the summer. And actually being an investor, you have to be very careful about backing students over the summer because part of the signal is they've dropped out and they're going all in on this, but of course during the summer you can't actually tell if they've dropped out. So Um, I'm actually, it's scaled back a bit during the summer, not because I'm in Capri like all the other VCs, but because you have to worry about these fake founders.

AI assessment note: “you have to worry about these fake founders”

Q Do you think, you know, your father's an incredible figure, incredibly respected figure, but there was a little bit of a safety net. Do you think that your ability to have a safety net slightly enabled you to drop out?

A No, I think, um, the opposite was true. So I was sitting, um, and I've never told this story before, but I was, um, sitting at a poker game at Stanford with my friends, and this is no exaggeration, I, I got a, um, news alert, um, saying, so my father is a human rights activist, and he's like an enemy of the Russians, and it was a news alert about my father And that he'd just been arrested. They just, the Russians managed to get him. And I think it's taught, it's just made me incredibly paranoid. And so I, I think I was more paranoid, um, because of most people, um, don't have the mafia after your family. And, and so I, I was, um, always like paranoid and fearless. And so I think actually, um, it's kind of, it kind of made me More, more paranoid to like.

AI assessment note: “No, I think, um, the opposite was true.”

Q What's your favorite story of serendipity from San Francisco?

A I, I think, um, there's a class at Stanford, um, and it was only 20 people, and, um, as I was not, I was focused on building my business, not necessarily, um, focused on classes, and it was taught by a billionaire, um, Pat Hanrahan, who's the founder of Tableau, um, and just the fact that you can have, like, billionaire professors teaching classes of 20 people is something that wouldn't exist anywhere outside of the Bay Area, and I remember, like, Um, working through a problem set, and he was like spending like 30 minutes with me working through this very elementary problem, and I was thinking, why is he spending his time? And, and I realized it's all about human connection, and he just wants to kind of meet interesting people, and I think the same is true across the Bay Area, where everyone is just a human, and you can kind of short circuit the kind of business guards that people put on just by having a human connection with them.

AI assessment note: “there's a class at Stanford... taught by a billionaire, um, Pat Hanrahan”

Q Do you worry about the level of fraud that's going on with the current ecosystem, with the founders that we're seeing? Uh, do you worry about that increasing with the pressure we're putting on?

A I think that at the earliest stages, the only fraud there can be is ideological, which is not illegal. It's not illegal to say you've had childhood trauma when, when you've actually grown up middle class, and that's a huge, huge issue. It's, it's interesting because the best founders are hustlers in some ways. Um, so it's, it's a, it's a balance. Um, I actually think it's becoming easier and easier. The world is becoming much more transparent. Um, you have Twitter sleuths who Will detect anything as like several companies recently have been taken down because of like someone published an article about SOC two or something like that and the entire company is done. Um, so I think actually fraud that the illegal type of fraud is becoming harder.

AI assessment note: “I think actually fraud that the illegal type of fraud is becoming harder.”

Q And what specifically about that experiment was against the rules in their eyes?

A The legal industry is very protectionist. So to even become a lawyer, you have to pass the bar exam, take a test, have a government stamp of approval. Even for something as minor as a traffic ticket. And their view was that even though the laws weren't written, they could never have imagined that when the laws were written in the 1819 hundreds, that AI would be practicing law. This applied to that situation. But our view at Do Not Pay was that it didn't apply to that situation because in these laws, it says a person can't practice law without passing the bar. And AI is not a person. It's, it's a technology. And the person is just representing themselves with the help of AI.

AI assessment note: “their view was that... AI would be practicing law.”

Q think there's maybe one thread in particular that's gone viral, but I think some pushback is saying these services aren't high quality, but others are just saying, you know, this isn't really using the AI that I thought it was. And do you just have any responses to maybe generally the pushback that the company has received, especially as it's gotten more and more attention in recent weeks and months?

A Do not pay as in a transition from a template company to an AI company, and you don't need AI to write an angry letter to your former landlord to request a security deposit refund. It's just a question of the amount and, uh, sticking that into an angry letter so that the small claims court can see that you at least tried to ask something. There's not much that can go wrong. What these lawyers have been doing is they've been signing up, creating fake cases, and creating these dramatic scenarios. So what they'll do is they'll say, I had a 100,000 security deposit. Why hasn't the AI supposed AI told me that, uh, the small claims limit is 10,000 dollars. And the answer is because that's not a real case. And if you create a fake case, of course, you're going to have a fake outcome. And so there's nothing that can go wrong with these consumer rights cases that they've been trying. Um, the true AI is coming and that's what we've been working on. ChatGPT is a brand new technology released in November of last year. So I would just say to them, relax. It's not all that serious. It's not the end of the world to get an in-flight Wi-Fi refund.

AI assessment note: “What these lawyers have been doing is they've been signing up, creating fake cases”

Q to happen inevitably. But what does that mean, really? Does that mean that, for example, an AI needs to pass its own version of the bar, and then it can represent people? Do you think that It'll just take another generation of people who are maybe more inclined to welcome technology into this space. Like, what, what will it take for this technology to really be maybe more so welcomed?

A Despite the legal industry being very protectionist, they have a serious problem, which is that over 80% of people who need legal help can't afford it. And so these courts will have to eventually modernize and allow people to have their AI assistants helping them in all sorts of cases. My role at Do Not Pay is starting with consumer rights, and we have literally hundreds more products to build with AI, and that's what we're focusing on at first. But I think people will have assistance in courtrooms. I think that consumer rights, they'll have AI general counsels sitting on their shoulder, making sure that these companies aren't ripping them off, and it will just create a more efficient world where companies with business models of kind of ripping off consumers Uh, won't be able to continue because the AI will just spam them with lawsuits and legal demands.

AI assessment note: “over 80% of people who need legal help can't afford it. And so these courts”

Q here with do not pay currently while the technology is in the place that it is to just focus on these consumer rights issues where getting it wrong is actually doesn't really have much downside. Or how do you think about maybe the progression you mentioned ideally you 10 X the value that Do not pay offers to consumers. How do you think about taking it to that next level?

A Yeah, so we're trying to focus on consumer rights, but consumer rights, to your point, could be a 20,000 dollar medical bill refund, and that creates real value for people. My goal is to make it so the average person doesn't need to see a lawyer. If you're being accused of burning down someone's house, you should probably still see a lawyer, but normal people don't deal with that. They just deal with Comcast, United, Their hospital, et cetera. And that's what we're trying to automate with Do Not Pay. The second thing is that we really want to test these AI products, much more so when they deal with serious issues and also when it's not deterministic technology. So going back to the speeding ticket, one member of the Do Not Pay team actually has a speeding ticket case coming up, and we're thinking that we can get around all of these unauthorized practices of law rules if they're representing themselves using technology they've created. And so we're looking to push forward, be very responsible by testing everything before releasing it. And I would say that consumer rights is not rocket science. And so far they haven't actually found someone who's actually where something's gone wrong. It's all have been, it's been these lawyers coming up with theoretical problems, but people really need help and technology can help them.

AI assessment note: “we're trying to focus on consumer rights, but consumer rights... creates real value”

Q Co-founder dispute is one that really kills companies, I find. How do you measure, analyze, co-founder relationships when they're staying with you? And any lessons learned?

A So the good news is that with all sort of red flags, young founders are very bad at lying. So, um, if they say we're kind of best friends, and then they start interrupting each other, you kind of know that that's not true. Um, so I look for kind of a long history. The best co-founder dynamic that I've seen among young founders is friends from high school. So I was the first, and they lived with me as well. I was the first investor in a company called Halladier very recently. And They were, uh, friends from high school, went to different colleges, dropped out and rejoined. So that's the, that's the kind of perfect, uh, dynamic. Um, one thing I'll say is I, I've noticed a really worrying trend of people reverse engineering what I say on podcasts and in articles to pitch me exactly what I'm looking for. So sometimes, so just now I said, um, friends from high school, I can guarantee you in three weeks, Someone is going to say we were best friends in high school, and so this is a worrying trend where they're using Claude and ChatGPT deep research, and so I have to worry about that.

AI assessment note: “I look for kind of a long history. The best co-founder dynamic”

Q were online. And that was a totally new dynamic. More police officers are showing up. More people are showing up to fight their cases. And so the change in the system required people to, to rethink, like, are we doing this properly? And so have you seen that at all? Or are you expecting that where companies are going to have to rethink The way that they're engaging with customers.

A Yeah, I think this is one of the biggest risks to do not pay. What if all the problems in America get solved? Fortunately, um, America, I mean, it sounds hypocritical with my accent, but America has a lot of work to be done, and I think it will take a long time before everything is perfect. And if it is, we'll all be living such a good life. On the courtroom front, it's really interesting because I think COVID has accelerated the legal industry by 20 years. A lot of the things stopping a company like Do Not Pay were these bottlenecks that were introduced Sometimes over a hundred years ago, like you have to show up to fill in this form. You have to have a wet signature for this document. So one product we have is we automate the filing of AT-III elections, which is an obscure tax form for startup employees. And up until COVID, the IRS required a wet signature on that document. But during COVID, they relaxed and said, you can have a digital signature allowing us to build the product. And the same is true with these Zoom court hearings and sometimes filing of documents online. And that's actually moved us forward. And what's exciting is we continue to be forward in 2023 with all these relaxed regulations, but traffic tickets now are going back into court. So we're having all the benefits with few of the disadvantages.

AI assessment note: “I think COVID has accelerated the legal industry by 20 years.”

Q Do you worry about the level of fraud that's going on with the current ecosystem, with the founders that we're seeing? Uh, do you worry about that increasing with the pressure we're putting on?

A I think that at the earliest stages, the only fraud there can be is ideological, which is not illegal. It's not illegal to say you've had childhood trauma when, when you've actually grown up middle class, and that's a huge, huge issue. It's, it's interesting because the best founders are hustlers in some ways. Um, so it's, it's a, it's a balance. Um, I actually think it's becoming easier and easier. The world is becoming much more transparent. Um, you have Twitter sleuths who Will detect anything as like several companies recently have been taken down because of like someone published an article about SOC two or something like that and the entire company is done. Um, so I think actually fraud that the illegal type of fraud is becoming harder.

AI assessment note: “fraud that the illegal type of fraud is becoming harder”

Q And I think it's very much aligned here to the constraints of your, I would love to partner with you, Josh, and say, hey, this is the content marketer within me. Hey, could we get like a house, and do founder house, and do five or six, and turn it also into a content business?

A So I was thinking of buying the Facebook house. It's actually not that expensive house, the actual house where Facebook started. And when I was starting Do Not Pay, um, I, I didn't know it was a Facebook house. The first I found out it was a Facebook house is there's a bus of, um, tourists from Asia who would show up at the house, and it would be, like, Avenue of the Stars. Like, I guess, growing up, I would visit LA, and you'd, like, go on a bus with all the stars, and, and this was, like, on the tour route, and this bus showed up of these tourists, And I said, what are you here for? And they said, we're here to see Mark Zuckerberg's house. And I immediately thought, I guess this is the content marketer in me. Um, you can come in, but you have to subscribe to do not pay. So we had a do not pay employee outside with a clipboard and, um, to enter the house, you actually had to become a do not pay user.

AI assessment note: “I immediately thought, I guess this is the content marketer in me.”

Q Co-founder dispute is one that really kills companies, I find. How do you measure, analyze, co-founder relationships when they're staying with you? And any lessons learned?

A So the good news is that with all sort of red flags, young founders are very bad at lying. So, um, if they say we're kind of best friends, and then they start interrupting each other, you kind of know that that's not true. Um, so I look for kind of a long history. The best co-founder dynamic that I've seen among young founders is friends from high school. So I was the first, and they lived with me as well. I was the first investor in a company called Halladier very recently. And They were, uh, friends from high school, went to different colleges, dropped out and rejoined. So that's the, that's the kind of perfect, uh, dynamic. Um, one thing I'll say is I, I've noticed a really worrying trend of people reverse engineering what I say on podcasts and in articles to pitch me exactly what I'm looking for. So sometimes, so just now I said, um, friends from high school, I can guarantee you in three weeks, Someone is going to say we were best friends in high school, and so this is a worrying trend where they're using Claude and ChatGPT deep research, and so I have to worry about that.

AI assessment note: “I look for kind of a long history. The best co-founder dynamic... is friends from high school.”

Q What do you find is the biggest problem with the framing that founders often come in with?

A I tell every founder I invest in, um, don't have too high of expectations. Um, you should, I mean, this is classic VC advice. Pitching VCs is like a game of poker. You should never reveal too much information about what you're seeking. So every founder I invest in, I say, don't reveal the price that you want. Um, the price is a function of how hot the deal is, which ironically is less hot if you go in swinging for the fences with something too high. Secondly, I try and relive my story, and I say, you have to do a demo. Um, and I, um, actually, there's a famous story of, I gave this founder advice to do a demo. He's a biotech founder, and he even, like, did a demo, like, a very personal demo, and that, that got a top tier. Everyone was passing on him, and then he did this demo, and then a top tier person came in. So I definitely do the demo. Make it all about them. Also, I think the, I mean, there's a million things, like the CEO should be doing it, not like five founders speaking over each other. There's like a whole list. I, I send it to any founder I invest in.

AI assessment note: “don't have too high of expectations... don't reveal the price that you want.”

Q to happen inevitably. But what does that mean, really? Does that mean that, for example, an AI needs to pass its own version of the bar, and then it can represent people? Do you think that It'll just take another generation of people who are maybe more inclined to welcome technology into this space. Like, what, what will it take for this technology to really be maybe more so welcomed?

A Despite the legal industry being very protectionist, they have a serious problem, which is that over 80% of people who need legal help can't afford it. And so these courts will have to eventually modernize and allow people to have their AI assistants helping them in all sorts of cases. My role at Do Not Pay is starting with consumer rights, and we have literally hundreds more products to build with AI, and that's what we're focusing on at first. But I think people will have assistance in courtrooms. I think that consumer rights, they'll have AI general counsels sitting on their shoulder, making sure that these companies aren't ripping them off, and it will just create a more efficient world where companies with business models of kind of ripping off consumers Uh, won't be able to continue because the AI will just spam them with lawsuits and legal demands.

AI assessment note: “over 80% of people who need legal help can't afford it. And so these courts”

Q Technology companies that will like help you write a will or like help manage your estate planning, things like that. But it doesn't really feel like there's been a company that has tackled this with the scope also that Do Not Pay is addressing. And so has there been a fundamental technology shift or what is enabling Do Not Pay to really tackle this in the way that it is?

A When I started Do Not Pay, Andreessen Horowitz was, was my first pre-seed investor. And I made a deal with them, which is I don't have to drop out of school. I can stay at Stanford and they would invest. And I had other offers, but I decided to go with them because they gave me that deal. And that allowed me to really take time to develop the right strategy. And with any idea, it seems obvious that something like do not pay should exist. Why haven't people done it before? And why aren't people doing it now? And the reason that I developed by taking it slightly slower at the beginning was that do not pay is only successful because it's a horizontal company that Average person, unless you're a bad driver like me, only gets a parking ticket once a year. And so you can't be able to build a real company around that. And so because we've gone horizontal and done all of these use cases over time, it's allowed us to build a retentive customer base, which makes it a successful company. But that's taken seven years and I see Do Not Pay as my life's work. So I think it was this unique insight about being horizontal, plus the effort of seven years to actually kind of build it out that has allowed us to be unique. And there are companies like even offered by lawyers that allow you to get out of your tickets, but there's no one trying to tackle all of consumer rights with the tools necessary…

AI assessment note: “it was this unique insight about being horizontal, plus the effort of seven years”

Q I heard from some of the founders that you will house them in a Four Seasons residence. Can you talk to me about this and how you structure that environment that you put them in?

A I noticed over the years, so I've, I've tried all sorts of investments over the years, and things have done very well, but the best sort of investments are the day one investments for me, and I think everyone is playing different games. Um, some people are playing the games where they're getting into the hottest companies, a hundred million valuation, and then they become worth 25,000,000,001 day. Um, the game I'm playing is, um, I'm getting into founders who, when they're just starting, they're not polished at all, and they can really use my advice and my Reliving my founder journey to polish them. And, um, I try and get in sub five million valuation. And the question I'm sure you have is, how do you account for the adverse selection of getting in at those low valuations? And I noticed that over the years, the best founders that I invested in, I actually lived with them at some point. Um, I was roommates, uh, with, uh, the founder of a company called Assured, um, where we both rented the house where Facebook was started over the summer at Stanford. Um, I was roommates with the founder of a company called Yuzu where, um, he worked at Do Not Pay, so he lived at the Do Not Pay house. The founder of Micro One lived in my spare bedroom when I was his first investor.

AI assessment note: “the best founders that I invested in, I actually lived with them at some point.”

Q And I think it's very much aligned here to the constraints of your, I would love to partner with you, Josh, and say, hey, this is the content marketer within me. Hey, could we get like a house, and do founder house, and do five or six, and turn it also into a content business?

A So I was thinking of buying the Facebook house. It's actually not that expensive house, the actual house where Facebook started. And when I was starting Do Not Pay, um, I, I didn't know it was a Facebook house. The first I found out it was a Facebook house is there's a bus of, um, tourists from Asia who would show up at the house, and it would be, like, Avenue of the Stars. Like, I guess, growing up, I would visit LA, and you'd, like, go on a bus with all the stars, and, and this was, like, on the tour route, and this bus showed up of these tourists, And I said, what are you here for? And they said, we're here to see Mark Zuckerberg's house. And I immediately thought, I guess this is the content marketer in me. Um, you can come in, but you have to subscribe to do not pay. So we had a do not pay employee outside with a clipboard and, um, to enter the house, you actually had to become a do not pay user.

AI assessment note: “So I was thinking of buying the Facebook house.”

Q Something that OpenAI has also done, though, is had humans as part of the training process to really hone it in. Are you also doing that? Are you bringing in lawyers who are specialized in these areas to take a look at the output from your models to hone them in or improve them?

A Yeah, we have some of the best lawyers in the country helping us, like at Wilson Sonsini and other firms. The AI has been very problematic for us, so there's really two problems with it. The first is that it's dishonest. So with Comcast, for example, it says things like, I've had three internet outages in the past 24 hours, and that might be a good way of getting a refund from Comcast, but it's not true, and it can cause liability issues. And in court, if you lie, that's a crime, and it could send people to jail. The second issue is that it talks too much. With Comcast, or even in a courtroom, there are some questions and human speech that don't require a response. It's like a rhetorical question. So imagine the judge says something like, um, hold on, let me take a look at the case. Uh, AI models would often say, okay, thank you. And by the way, I'm innocent for like these six reasons. The judge will just get annoyed. You have to build other AIs to decide whether to say something, let alone what to say. And so you have to really retrain it and also build these guardrails. Otherwise things get out of control.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, we have some of the best lawyers in the country helping us”

Q Do you think, you know, your father's an incredible figure, incredibly respected figure, but there was a little bit of a safety net. Do you think that your ability to have a safety net slightly enabled you to drop out?

A No, I think, um, the opposite was true. So I was sitting, um, and I've never told this story before, but I was, um, sitting at a poker game at Stanford with my friends, and this is no exaggeration, I, I got a, um, news alert, um, saying, so my father is a human rights activist, and he's like an enemy of the Russians, and it was a news alert about my father And that he'd just been arrested. They just, the Russians managed to get him. And I think it's taught, it's just made me incredibly paranoid. And so I, I think I was more paranoid, um, because of most people, um, don't have the mafia after your family. And, and so I, I was, um, always like paranoid and fearless. And so I think actually, um, it's kind of, it kind of made me More, more paranoid to like.

AI assessment note: “No, I think, um, the opposite was true.”

Q were online. And that was a totally new dynamic. More police officers are showing up. More people are showing up to fight their cases. And so the change in the system required people to, to rethink, like, are we doing this properly? And so have you seen that at all? Or are you expecting that where companies are going to have to rethink The way that they're engaging with customers.

A Yeah, I think this is one of the biggest risks to do not pay. What if all the problems in America get solved? Fortunately, um, America, I mean, it sounds hypocritical with my accent, but America has a lot of work to be done, and I think it will take a long time before everything is perfect. And if it is, we'll all be living such a good life. On the courtroom front, it's really interesting because I think COVID has accelerated the legal industry by 20 years. A lot of the things stopping a company like Do Not Pay were these bottlenecks that were introduced Sometimes over a hundred years ago, like you have to show up to fill in this form. You have to have a wet signature for this document. So one product we have is we automate the filing of AT-III elections, which is an obscure tax form for startup employees. And up until COVID, the IRS required a wet signature on that document. But during COVID, they relaxed and said, you can have a digital signature allowing us to build the product. And the same is true with these Zoom court hearings and sometimes filing of documents online. And that's actually moved us forward. And what's exciting is we continue to be forward in 2023 with all these relaxed regulations, but traffic tickets now are going back into court. So we're having all the benefits with few of the disadvantages.

AI assessment note: “COVID has accelerated the legal industry by 20 years.”

Q time, I feel like DoNotPay has done an excellent job of kind of keeping up with the times, and so something I saw you build recently is the ChatGPT extension. Which you can basically understand the terms and conditions of a website more effectively. So how are you thinking about the gaps that still exist for consumers and maybe what other opportunities there are to give consumers their rights back?

A When new technology comes out, we think, how can it help people? And terms and conditions is a great example because people can't understand the changes being made, what they're giving up. So this is actually our first public product relating to true AI. Where you can paste in any terms and conditions, upload a document, including leases, and it will go through and tell you all the things that are non-standard and also things you should watch out for. And that's really important because people don't have time to read a hundred page document, um, which is what are some of the, some of these leases are, especially in New York. And so that can be really helpful. Really, we're trying to be like David and David versus Goliath. So the AI can turn David into Goliath versus Goliath. And, and help ordinary people.

AI assessment note: “When new technology comes out, we think, how can it help people?”