The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 18 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Tan: Big tech talent hoarding decelerated overall technological progress
“I guess it felt like a little bit of a prisoner's dilemma, because I think the result is that you know, tech progress itself decelerated. You have, like, the smartest people of a generation basically retired in place, working at places that, you know, the worl…”
Garry Tan: Y Combinator must be an explicitly American institution like MIT
“MIT is a an institution, and that institution is an American institution. And so being very clear about that, I thought was totally the right move for MIT. And you know, I think that YC needs to be a similar, you know, an institution of similar character.”
Tan: Current AI systems have zero agency and resemble smart toasters
“As of today, you know, these systems are, it's just matrix math, and there is no agency yet.
[3400] Garry Tan: Like, there's basically, they're equivalent to incredibly smart toasters”
Garry Tan: Modern school systems are designed to strip children of agency
“We send them to a school system that is not designed for agency. It is literally designed to take agency away from our children.”
Garry Tan: Premature AI laws will stall clean energy and medicine
“It would also potentially be worse to prematurely optimize And basically make a bunch of worthless laws that slow down the rate of progress and prevent things like better cancer vaccines, or better airfoils, or, you know, frankly, like, you know, nuclear fusio…”
Garry Tan: Sriram Krishnan as government AI czar is a positive development
“I think we're going into a very interesting moment right now with you know, the AI czar is Sri Ram Krishnan, who, you know, used to be a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and I think that that's a very, very good thing. Like, we want people who have the …”
Garry Tan: The US should issue every citizen an Artificial Superintelligence
“My argument would be, like, the most American version of it is that, like, you know, you and I have our own ASI. And, like, each, you know, each citizen should be, you know, issued an ASI and be taught how to get the most out of it.”
Garry Tan: Nvidia maintains a monopoly on the best price-performance AI compute
“I'm still pretty bull on NVIDIA, and that they more or less have the monopoly on, you know, sort of the best price performance.”
Garry Tan: Proprietary evaluations, not foundation models, are the true AI moat
“I mean, I think you know, ultimately the model itself is not the moat. Like I think that the evals themselves are the moat.”
Garry Tan: Microsoft's market cap heavily depends on OpenAI's success
“I mean, I think Microsoft has you know, just really, really deep access to OpenAI, and I think OpenAI is probably, you said public companies, right? ... So, you know, I think There's a non-zero, pretty large percentage of, like, the market cap of Microsoft tha…”
Garry Tan: Sam Bankman-Fried's quirky public persona was a pure artificial affectation
“Like you might think of an SPF that's like, that's all artifice. Like, think about that guy. Like, that guy was, like, full of shakes and, like, the guy was, like, on meth, right? Like, the guy was, you know, everything about it was an affectation. Like, he wa…”
Garry Tan: Sam Altman pulled the future forward by at least a decade
“Sam Altman probably brought forward the future by, you know, five years, 10 years, at least 10 years.”
Garry Tan: Five or six competing AI labs prevent monopoly pricing power
“Sitting here a year after a lot of those attempts I feel pretty good, because it feels like there are five, maybe six labs, all of whom are competing in a fair market, trying to deliver models that, you know, honestly, any startup, anyone, you know, any of us …”
Garry Tan: Training AI on published data ultimately feels like fair use
“The funniest thing, my main response to all of that around, like, provenance of the data itself is, at some point, like, it feels like it actually is fair use, though.”
Garry Tan: Meta open-sourcing foundational AI models is 'God's work'
“What Zuck and Ahmad and the team over there are doing is frankly God's work. I think it's great that they're doing what they're doing and I hope they continue.”
Garry Tan: Overseas call center tasks are the most vulnerable to AI
“Probably the most vulnerable things in the world today are things that you could, you know, farm out to an overseas call center. That's sort of like the low-hanging fruit today.”
Tan: Coinbase's Brian Armstrong is one of the best founders ever
“Brian Armstrong is, like, the best, one of the best founders I've ever met, and gotten, gotten the chance to work with and fund, and I think the world desperately needs more people like that, where, you know, in the background, just, like, consistent, doing th…”
Tan: Meta Is an AI Dark Horse Accelerating Progress Cheaply vs AR
“I mean, I think Meta's sort of the dark horse, because, like, they are amassing talent, and then they have crazy distribution. And I think you know, I just would never count Zuck out. I think that he, you know, that it's so crazy that it's super smart that he …”