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 2,831 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 26 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
Hoffman: GPT-4 already diagnoses better than majority of human GPs
“And for example, a researcher at Microsoft, again, Peter Lee, has written an excellent book about showing how GPT-IV can already do medical diagnoses better than, you know, the majority of human GPs.”
Hoffman: Framing AI primarily as an existential threat is naive
“And one of the things I think is naive about that statement and the reason I didn't sign it is because while it can be an existential risk, just like, you know, for example, you create nuclear power and nuclear weapons or an existential risk, it is also one of…”
Luan: AI companies should eliminate dedicated safety teams to improve culture
“I now think that the correct organizational structure for building an AI organization is actually to eliminate the concept of having a separate safety team. Because by creating a safety team, you're now defining this is the unsafe team, this is the safe team. …”
Lubetzky: Hamas Aims for Regional Caliphate Replacing Arab Governments
“The goal of Hamas is not to replace Israel with the Palestinian Authority. Their goal is an Islamic Caliphate all over the Middle East to replace Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Jordan and all other Arab countries with the most repressive of Islamic regimes.”
Lubetzky: Palestinian Staff Report Hamas Is Blocking Gaza Evacuation Routes
“We have staff in Gaza that are trying to escape Gaza, and we have ways to get them out, but Hamas has blocked all exits. They've bombed roads, they've blocked roads. This is from our Palestinian staff in Gaza that are telling us they're not able to get out bec…”
Lubetzky: Selective corporate silence on antisemitism is morally repugnant
“Any corporation that chose not to speak up after nine 11, not to speak up after Russia's attacks against Ukraine, not to speak up after the horrible murder of George Floyd, can be excused for saying we don't ever comment. But if you've spoken in the past about…”
Lubetzky: Extremist Israeli leaders must be isolated and removed from power
“And there are some amongst our Israeli friends, and they need to be isolated and removed from power.”
Lubetzky: Peace with Israel requires first dislodging Hamas from Gaza
“I agree, but I do not know a way that we ultimately help build a Palestinian state in peace with Israel without first dislodging Hamas from control of Gaza.”
Cohen: Hamas prevented Palestinian evacuations by confiscating IDs and car keys
“And Hamas won't let Palestinians get out of there. They took their IDs, and they took their car keys, and they won't let them flee the area.”
Hoffman: The Six-Month AI Pause Letter Is 'Laughable' and Wrong
“Most of the folks who go concerns, go everything from the relatively laughable and silly six-month pause letter, which is kind of like wrong in its theory of human nature, wrong in its theory of technological development, wrong in its theory, like, just kind o…”
Suleyman: Society Should Prioritize Near-Term AI Threats Over Sci-Fi Existential Risk
“There's many more Practical near-term threats to stability, which we should be focused on rather than talking about existential risk and AGI suddenly emerging and exploding and taking over and manipulating us and taking over armies and all of this kind of fear…”
Hoffman: Obsessing Over Robot Overlords Increases the Likelihood of Dystopia
“One of the places where the most of the existential risk people are doing a disservice and causing an increased likelihood of dystopia is that by focusing on kind of future robot overlords versus how human beings use this technology, Including, by the way, cri…”
Hoffman: Governments Attempting to Slow Big Tech AI Are Misguided
“If you listen to the press and listen to the committees of people that are like, oh, we should slow these big tech companies down. It's like, well, actually, in fact, That's a bad participation because we have line of sight to a medical assistant, a tutor, you…”
Fisher: Laws should mandate companies share 10% of profits with employees
“I actually think we should have a law that forces every company to share 10% of their profits with their employees.”
Hoffman: Proposing a six-month AI pause is like refusing word processors
“I'm hearing a whole bunch of, we should have a six month pause. And I kind of don't understand that you have to learn these tools. It's kind of like saying, I'm going to be a writer and I'm not going to use a word processor. I'm going to be a graphic designer …”
Hoffman: No member of Congress should be trusted with tech development
“I don't think there's a single member of Congress that I would trust with technological development and knowing how to navigate that.”
Schmidt: Companies must roll back 'bring your whole self to work'
“So now what has happened is there's been this view that you should bring your whole self to work. And now we're being forced to crawl that back because your whole self is maybe not what we want in work.”
Hoffman: Winner-takes-all startups must scale before fixing unit economics
“Frequently, you have to scale first and figure out your unit economics later. In fact, putting off this question is the prudent route for anyone playing in a winner-takes-all market.”
Altman: Starting a hard company is easier than an easy one
“This is why I tell people in many ways, it is easier to start a hard company than an easy company.”
Hoffman: Founders currently must move to Silicon Valley to scale tech startups
“But unless you have a truly compelling reason, such as staying close to your customers, I believe that you currently have to come to Silicon Valley to scale a tech company.”
Hoffman: Scaling startups must sacrifice customer service to maintain rapid growth
“For scale companies, the rule is provide whatever service you can as long as it doesn't slow us down. And that may mean no service.”
Meyer: Staff are judged 51% on hospitality and prioritized over customers
“It's 49 parts performance and 51 parts hospitality, and that's what you are going to be judged on, that's how you're gonna get paid, that's how you're gonna get your bonus, and guess what, guys? In this business, the customer is going to come second. And by th…”
Danny Meyer: USHG ranks investors fifth behind employees, guests, community, and suppliers
“The third stakeholder that gets hospitality is the community in which we do business. And the fourth are the suppliers with whom we do business. And fifth, we're actually going to put our investors fifth.”
Hoffman: Within 10 years society will want exclusively autonomous vehicles
“Like, I actually think that within 10 years, we will strongly want a world in which it's only autonomous vehicles on the road and not human beings.”
Tyra Banks admits a Top Model race-swapping photoshoot was unintentional blackface
“We did one shoot in Hawaii where me thinking that my skin is beautiful and different colors of brown skin is beautiful, we transformed the skin color and the races of all of our girls. Never thought that it was blackface.”
Branson: British Airways illegally accessed Virgin data to poach delayed passengers
“They had a unit that illegally accessed our computer information, and then they would ring up Virgin passengers pretending to be from Virgin, telling the passengers their flight was delayed, and then switching them to British Airways.”
Hoffman: Founders should consider shutting down before taking egotistical VC money
“I have been known to tell founders to consider shutting their business down rather than take money from this kind of investor. Better to fail now than to do so in three years in a cloud of acrimonious smoke.”
Obama: Republican filibuster obstruction in 2009 was unprecedented in US history
“At the time, there was no precedent for the kind of obstruction that we had seen from the Republican Party. There was no precedent for the use of the filibuster to literally block everything.”
Obama: Single-payer healthcare would have been economically disruptive and politically impossible
“Not only politically would it be impossible to start from scratch, but economically be wildly disruptive. A lot of people work for insurance companies and a lot of people work for hospitals under current arrangements and doctors get paid in certain ways and so…”
Anagnost: Autodesk built custom AI models using customer data
“We built our own custom AI models off of data that we have from our customers.”
Anagnost contrasts Autodesk's utility with tech firms harming teenagers or publishers
“I go home every night thinking I do something that's useful to the world. I don't go home thinking I screwed up teenagers' minds. I don't go home thinking I screwed up the whole publishing industry. I don't go home with any of those feelings. I go home feeling…”
Daunt: Centralized data kills bookstores despite working elsewhere in retail
“And then we use the data to inf to impose uniformity on the stores. And that really is the death knell for us. It works in almost every other branch of retail. It doesn't work in books.”
Daunt: Barnes & Noble has no marketing department and spends zero dollars
“Well, we have the great benefit of not having a marketing department, so we have zero marketing dollars to spend, so that makes it an easy thing. So that's never happening.
Jeff Berman: None whatsoever.
James Daunt: None whatsoever. I mean, literally zero.”
Daunt: Barnes & Noble actively filters AI-generated books from its catalog
“And definitely at the moment exclude and go to great effort to exclude both from our online catalog
Probably happens, we think, with the, with what's in our stores naturally because we're selecting and curating, but online we really need to put in lots of filt…”
Daunt: AI will displace study guides but cannot write great literature
“Is AI gonna write, write the next great books?
I very, very much doubt it, but it will take categories of books out quite clearly.
Such as?
Home study guides, you know, you, that will, that's an easy thing.”
Freston: Smuggled three tons of clothes across St. Lawrence Seaway
“I sent three tons of clothes to Montreal and we smuggled them over the St. Lawrence Seaway, which was insane.”
Raman: Software engineering and customer service jobs face AI displacement
“Some jobs that are going to get displaced, and they already are, software engineering, customer service.”
Startups should pair egoless industry veterans with gritty beginners, says Salguero
“What I found with older people is, like, there's really no ego. They're not, he's not trying to build his career. He's just, like, trying to do something meaningful and fun. And so to pair him with somebody with no experience and a lot of grit was like magical…”
ButcherBox would not have survived if it raised VC, says Mike Salguero
“And so I actually, I don't think I'd be around right now if I had raised money.”
Mark Pincus: The best product makers have the least ego and copy best
“The best product makers, the best masters of the craft,
Are the best at copying.
And they have the least ego around it.
And the most junior amateur people feel the need to change everything, and they're the worst at copying, and they fail for the wrong reasons…”
Hoffman: Consumers will rely on an AI agent as their front door
“There's a platform sense in which I think there will be, will have, people will have an agent, maybe a couple, but certainly an agent that's kind of their general front door.”
Hoffman: Consumer AI will be massive despite enterprise-heavy consensus
“With AI, people haven't realized the whole consumer revolution. That's going to come with AI. And I agree with you. And as we know, as we see in Silicon Valley, everyone's talking, well, well, okay, enterprise is where the money is. That was the same thing bac…”
Pincus: When AI automates coding, product differentiation comes down to taste
“So, so I do think that everyone kind of becomes full stack when you, when the stack's automated and it's just promptable. And so I, and then it gets down to taste.”
Pincus: Startups should replace the MVP with rapid failure testing machines
“Do not build it right. Build a culture of building it wrong. Do not, build it right, presume some level of success. I love Eric Ries. We've had great debates. I, I'm in the same spirit, but that word viable is actually hurtful because viable also means hope of…”
Pincus: The metaverse will be huge, but not inside VR goggles
“I think that the metaverse is starting to happen and I think it's going to happen and it's going to be As big as Zuck thought, and it's just not going to happen inside of an immersive game goggle that is painful and hot to wear on your head, even if the form f…”
Wilson: Generative AI will eradicate Care.com's technical debt within one year
“There's the promise of that it'll eradicate this in short period and actually believe it will. I think we're going to work our way out of it over the next year.”
Wilson: Care.com agreed with FTC on difficult cancellations and began changes
“One of the three things that the FTC asserted was our site being a subscription or membership service was hard to cancel. Guess what? I agreed with them. And before they, that, that claim was even there, we already started to change it.”