Mar 6, 2026 · 51m · more-or-less
Fire Sam Altman, The End of Software Engineers, and Why AI Is All Narrative · More or Less Podcast
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In this episode of the More or Less podcast, hosts Dave Morin, Brit Morin, Sam Lessin, and Jessica Lessin analyze PR battles between Anthropic and OpenAI, Apple's edge compute strategy, and macro warnings of 'Peak AI.' They engage in a debate over whether AI automation will eliminate software engineering jobs while showcasing custom AI voice clones and agentic software experiments.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 99.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.7 Guest teaching 4.6 Guest disagreement 3.3 The hosts pushing back 3.1
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 24:14 Dave rejects software job cuts thesis
Dave forcefully dismisses the panel's prediction of 50 percent software engineering job cuts, accusing them of playing a semantic game and insisting software creation will expand.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 23:59 Brit stands firm on engineer displacementBrit pushes back directly against Dave's pushback, reaffirming that her and Sam's prediction of mass developer layoffs is already playing out with Block's cuts.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 46:58 Dave explains Chinese energy and compute dynamicsDave explains how cheap, rapidly built nuclear energy in China allows low-cost open models to run longer reasoning budgets, bypassing American hardware export controls.
The host holds their own ▶ 2:52 Jessica breaks Anthropic Slack memo scoopJessica leverages her reporting expertise by disclosing the 1600-word internal Slack memo written by Dario Amodei, steering the entire discussion with exclusive facts.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| More or Less Podcast Opening Sequence and Theme | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | The hosts engage in casual opening banter and housekeeping regarding the Indian Wells tennis tournament, Larry Ellison, and episode sponsors without substantive debate. | |
| Anthropic versus OpenAI, Dario's Memo, and AI PR Drama | 8 | 3 | 3 | 4 | Jessica cites her publication's breaking reporting on Dario Amodei's 1600-word internal Slack memo while Dave questions Brit's timeline regarding Anthropic revenue growth. | |
| Sam Lessin's Vibe Coding, AI Bots, and Content Value | 6 | 6 | 5 | 3 | Sam explains how he vibe-coded podcast bots and psychographic profiles, dismissing conventional Y Combinator customer discovery and software defensibility as obsolete. | |
| Apple's M5 Chip, Edge Inference, and Hardware Compute Strategy | 5 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Brit introduces Apple's M5 chip announcement and edge inference strategy, with Dave and Sam aligned on Apple's commercial advantage in making customers fund hardware. | |
| Block Staff Cuts and the Debate Over Software Engineering Jobs | 7 | 6 | 8 | 7 | Dave forcefully rejects Brit and Sam's claim that half of Bay Area software engineers will be eliminated, calling it semantic games while Sam counters using scribe and typist historical parallels. | |
| Venture Capital Macro Outlook, Peak AI, and Recession Warning | 6 | 6 | 3 | 3 | Brit prompts discussion on Josh Wolfe's peak AI memo, prompting Dave to outline four macro indicators and Sam to describe the narrative triangle between DC, tech, and capital markets. | |
| Geopolitics of AI, China's Open-Source Models, and Energy Costs | 6 | 7 | 2 | 2 | Dave explains how lower-quality Chinese models can compensate for chip constraints via extended reasoning budgets enabled by rapid nuclear power deployment. |
Statements from this episode (20)
Brit Morin: Consumer boycott and ChatGPT uninstalls will reverse long term
“I could see this reversing. I don't think this is long term.”
Jessica Lessin: Enterprises will reject seat-based AI pricing for usage models
“But eventually all these companies are going to say, I'm not going to buy, you know, however many thousand dollars seat for all of my employees. I'm going to want usage based pricing, or I'm going to want some kind of outcome thing.”
Sam Lessin: General intelligence AI is low-margin and a terrible business
“There's just general intelligence, it's low margin, it's, I mean, it's great, I'm, like, literally building stuff as we talk, I'm, like, into it, but I think it's a terrible business.”
Sam Lessin: Built six AI apps in a week using podcast transcripts
“I've done, I've built like six apps this week, like literally, I'm not even exaggerating, but like I did bought, I did first build a quick version. I basically took our, all of our transcripts. I ripped through them, had to build personality, psychographic pro…”
Sam Lessin: The AI dead internet will hold zero commercial value
“No, my belief is that this is so fun, and, like, the entire dead internet is gonna look like this, and it's super fun, and I love playing with it, and there's no value in any of it, because it's way too easy to make.”
Sam Lessin: Generative AI destroys software defensibility because creation is trivial
“No one's going to build a company doing any of this stuff because it's too easy to build, right? Like there's no software defensibility to any of it, right? Like, so you just have to be really pure on business model and like why it is that you're going to have…”
Sam Lessin: YC-style customer discovery is obsolete for building AI businesses
“That customer discovery, YC style, like blah, blah, blah, is just so wrong for the moment in terms of how to build a business. Because just because like bill in sales has some CRM shim problem, it doesn't matter. Like you can't build it and give it to him and …”
Morin: Edge inference is Apple's unique competitive advantage in AI
“It's super clear that Apple is focusing on inference at the edge. I mean, we've been saying this, I've been saying this for You know, I don't even know how many podcast episodes now, but you know, this is their unique advantage.”
Morin: Apple and Google have the only working AI business models
“They're like the only ones in AI, other than, I guess, Google, that's executing a business model in AI that actually works.”
Brit Morin: Half of Bay Area engineers face unemployment within three years
“Well, you and I said half of the software engineers that are employed right now It in the Bay area will not be employed three years from now.”
Dave Morin: The Number of People Making Software Worldwide Will Increase
“I'm telling you that the number of people making software for people in the world is going to go up. Like, it's just gonna happen.”
Sam Lessin: Software Engineers Fear Protesting AI Because It Signals Incompetence
“To admit that you are worried about software taking your job as a software builder is to effectively say that you are a bad software engineer, right?”
Brit Morin: One-person AI startup Pulsia hit $2M ARR in two weeks
“We have this company, I think we mentioned last week called Pulsia. That's just like on a tear right now as a one person company. That's gotten from, like, zero to two million ARR in two weeks, and, like, the agent is just running the company.”
Sam Lessin: AI boom is narrative collusion among Washington, tech, and finance
“For two years, I've been saying like, look, there's this like triangle trade between DC, Silicon Valley and New York, whereas huge deficit, huge debt problem. GDP has to grow massively fast in order to deal with it. It's like the only way out because we can't …”
Morin: AI players release open-source models as distribution when behind
“Partially in AI, I think you're doing open source if you're behind, right? Like it's a distribution strategy.”
Morin: China builds nuclear plants in nine months versus six US years
“They can put up a nuclear plant and like something like, what is it? Like nine months. It takes us six years.”
Morin: China will produce cheaper energy than the US across all metrics
“They're going to have access to lower cost energy. Like there there's like under no metric, whether it's number of solar panels, number of nuclear power plants, like they are going to have the cheaper energy based on how things are going right now.”
Lessin: AI will be low-margin commodity determined entirely by energy costs
“This is basically all gonna back to energy at some level. There's not gonna be that very much margin in it. And like, low cost intelligence production is going to be the key.”