Dec 8, 2023 · 54m · more-or-less
#26: Google Gemini, Meet Crypto-Cyber-Crystals · More or Less Podcast
Sam Lessin · 17m spoken Jessica Lessin · 12m spoken Dave Morin · 11m spoken Brit Morin · 7m spoken Jingle Singer · 19s spoken
0:00 / 0:00
▶ Watch on YouTube →
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the More or Less podcast, co-hosts Sam Lessin, Brit Morin, Jessica Lessin, and Dave Morin examine key developments in technology, including Google Gemini's multimodal debut, AI materials discovery, and the shifting venture capital landscape. The panel pairs deep strategic analysis of Big Tech and crypto infrastructure with humorous discussions regarding communication etiquette, Tesla's Cybertruck, and startup culture.
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 99.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.2 Guest teaching 3.1 Guest disagreement 3.0 The hosts pushing back 2.7
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 12:44 Sam mocks Gemini's benchmark as made-up
Sam bluntly rejects Brit's citation of Google's 90 percent MMLU score, dismissing it as a fabricated statistic and mocking billions spent just to beat a human at rock-paper-scissors.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 25:49 Dave challenges Meta's GPU hoard vs open-source strategyDave directly refuses Sam's framing of Meta's product roadmap, pressing him on why Meta would buy more GPUs than anyone else in the world if its models are purely open source and commodity.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 16:57 Dave reveals DeepMind's GNoME crystal discoveryDave schools the co-hosts on the real substance of Google's AI progress, citing DeepMind's overlooked paper finding 2.2 million new crystal structures and 800 years worth of material science knowledge.
The host holds their own ▶ 42:19 Sam explains startup token warrant standardizationSam demonstrates seasoned venture expertise by breaking down how the legal capitalization structure of crypto startups standardized around equity with token warrants after early painful misses like Ripple.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome Back and Jessica's DMV Nightmare | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Light opening banter covering Jessica's DMV appointment delay, birthday text etiquette, automated messages, and asynchronous video messaging via Loom. | |
| Slow Ventures' Four-Hundred-Dollar Costco Bear Strategy | 4 | 1 | 2 | 2 | Sam jokes about Slow Ventures using a 400-dollar Costco bear as a compliance officer, while Jessica transitions into summarizing major headlines including Gemini Nano, Spotify layoffs, and OpenView's shutdown. | |
| The Information's Tenth Anniversary and a Decade of Big Tech Dominance | 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Jessica reviews a decade of reporting at The Information, providing market data showing top tech market caps rising from 1.7 trillion to 12 trillion dollars alongside the collapse of blitzscaling startups. | |
| Evaluating Google Gemini's Launch and Multimodal Capabilities | 5 | 3 | 6 | 5 | Brit highlights Google Gemini's multimodal benchmark scores, but Sam forcefully dismisses the metrics as marketing spin and rock-paper-scissors tricks while Jessica defends Google's deep tech foundation. | |
| Google DeepMind's GNoME and the Discovery of 2.2 Million Crystals | 5 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Dave introduces DeepMind's GNoME paper detailing the computational discovery of 2.2 million crystal structures and autonomous material synthesis, which the group agrees offers far more tangible value than chatbot wrappers. | |
| AI Commoditization, Meta's GPU Dominance, and Social Bots | 6 | 4 | 4 | 4 | Dave reveals supply data showing Meta and Microsoft dominating Nvidia GPU purchases, leading into a strategic debate with Sam on whether open-sourcing models conflicts with massive compute capital expenditure. | |
| Google's Search Box Dilemma and the Limits of AI Chatbots | 6 | 3 | 4 | 3 | Dave and Jessica analyze Google's strategic dilemma in replacing high-intent search ad links with generative answers, comparing chatbot web-search progress bars to fake pizza delivery timers. | |
| Crypto Market Sentiment and the GM Indicator | 5 | 2 | 5 | 3 | Sam describes using incoming 'GM' direct messages as a contrarian sell signal, while Dave argues that attaching financial speculation to tech creates an aggressive hype multiplier. | |
| Real-World Blockchain Applications and Fandom CRM | 7 | 4 | 3 | 3 | Dave and Brit explain how blockchain wallets act as unified fandom CRMs for creators, while Sam points out that crypto succeeds primarily as a neutral protocol hack where competing platforms refuse to cede data ownership. | |
| Venture Financing Models and Startup Token Issuance | 7 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Jessica questions the state of startup token issuances, prompting Sam to provide a detailed breakdown of venture term standardization around equity combined with token warrants. | |
| Cognitive Psychology, Date Night Ops, and Book Clubs | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Jessica recommends Levitin's 'The Organized Mind' regarding digital cognitive overload and decision fatigue, prompting Dave and Brit to joke about whether weekly date night functions as a family operations meeting. | |
| Tesla Cybertruck Design, Engineering, and Real-World Range | 5 | 3 | 4 | 4 | Dave defends the Tesla Cybertruck's aerodynamics and daring design, while Brit and Sam push back with reports of real-world battery range falling dramatically short of advertised specs. |
Statements from this episode (23)
Sam Lessin: Loom sold for about $1 billion
“I think they sold it for a billion dollars to someone like, but it's like, you know, you just like click a button, one button, and instead of it being a live thing, it's a link with the video, but it's useful.”
Jessica Lessin: Google is delayed on Gemini cloud and enterprise rollout
“We've got the next folly in the AI wars coming as Google is delayed on many other aspects of the Gemini rollout, including the cloud and enterprise stuff, which is quite important.”
The Information Reports Boston VC Firm OpenView Is Shutting Down
“Information reported this week that OpenView, a Boston-based firm, is essentially shutting its doors for a variety of issues.”
Lessin: Top 10 tech market caps grew from $1.7T to $12T in 10 years
“Top 10 tech company market cap. 10 years ago, I think it was like 1.7 trillion and now it's about 12 trillion.”
Morin: Google Gemini Achieved 90% on MMLU, Beating Human Experts
“The essence of Gemini is, is this idea of multi-modality AI and the idea that it's now finally 90% Of sort of capability, and it outperforms humans. So the human percentage was, 86.4% as far as the human expert scale. Gemini is now 90%, and they call it”
Jessica Lessin: Counting Google Out in AI Race Was Always Ridiculous
“I mean, it was always ridiculous to count Google out in this. Like, of course, they're gonna build really interesting stuff.”
Jessica Lessin: Merger of DeepMind and Google Brain Has Worked
“But, you know, they've got amazing technologists over there, the kind of union of the DeepMind group in Google brain, you know, seems all things considered to Kind of have worked.”
Dave Morin: DeepMind's GNoME Discovered 2.2M Crystals and 380k Stable Materials
“DeepMind put out a blog post, I think it was about seven days ago, it was the 29th, and they said that their AI tool, which is called Gnome, found 2.2 million new crystals. Including 380,000 stable materials that have never been discovered before. And they mad…”
Sam Lessin: Marginal Value of AI for Routine Text Tasks Will Drop to Zero
“Yes to crystals, yes to all the fun stuff you can do there, and then, like, you're gonna have these wars over who makes better show notes for podcasts and like, the marginal value that goes to zero, because they'll all be kind of fine.”
Dave Morin: Lawrence Berkeley Lab Created Autonomous Robotic Lab for GNoME Materials
“In partnership with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, we also published this other paper, which, if you click in and go look at it, the Lawrence Laboratory has created, they've taken a, you know, a six-axis gimbal arm, and they've created this autonom…”
Dave Morin: Useful AI query boxes pose an existential crisis for Google
“Their entire advertising model is based on that people are telling them their exact intent. And so if you're, if that is being threatened by another box somewhere that is, you know, becoming more useful for answering the same questions, then it's a, it's like …”
Jessica Lessin: Google is the top-performing paid ad channel for The Information
“They perform really well for us, by the way, the best part of our small paid advertising budget is Google by a long shot.”
Jessica Lessin: Replacing blue links with AI answers kills 75% of news
“I'm just saying that kills the news business right there. So, or it kills 75% of the news business, right?”
Jessica Lessin: Amazon disrupted Google search by capturing commerce queries
“I mean, the thing that's disrupted the Google search box and the experience has really been Amazon because people stop searching or they search less for commerce queries on Google because they search on Amazon, right? And that hits Amazon, that hits Google's c…”
Sam Lessin: Slow Ventures is a major crypto investor and remains bullish
“I'm like a huge crypto fan, huge bull, big investor, very proud of the work we've done in this space, really believe in it.”
Dave Morin: Crypto multiplies hype beyond Web 2.0 by financializing everything
“I would argue, Sam, that it has a cult multiplier. Because maybe, you know, web two and social were hype generating technologies where people got really, really excited, and then the technology itself made even more information spread, so people got even more …”
Sam Lessin: The NFT market was 'fucking stupid' and cult bullshit
“Like, the NFT thing was obviously, I'm happy to say we stayed out of it. It's obviously fucking stupid, right? And that was, like, all cult bullshit.”
Sam Lessin: Elon Musk runs an entirely cult-based stupid cryptocurrency
“I mean, Elon runs an entire cult-based stupid coin.”
Dave Morin: NFTs will become a major, invisible part of CRM systems
“In the future, what an NFT was last year will, you know, be some big part of a CRM system. And you know, that's like going to be great. Nobody's going to know the better.”
Sam Lessin: Crypto is a business development hack against platform lock-in
“Part of the real answer for crypto for those types of use cases is I think pretty simple, which is everyone wants to be the CRM of record for that, but no one wants that person to be the CRM of record for that, right? So it's basically just like a standoff whe…”
Sam Lessin: Personally very long Ethereum, Solana is now technically viable
“I'll talk my own book on this for a second as a seed investor is like, it actually works, right? Like Solana as an ecosystem can actually do this now, which even two years ago, it couldn't like no one really could, you know, I'm very sure the Ethereum world. I…”
Dave Morin: EPA Regulations and Wind Tunnels Made Car Design Mediocre
“Wind tunnels and modern, you know, EPA regulations have basically reduced car design to a big bunch of mid design. Like everything looks the same on the road. And so I kind of respect them for putting out just a completely different vision.”
Brit Morin: Early owner reports Cybertruck real-world range near 150 miles
“Here's what I heard about the Cybertruck from someone who has it already, which is that the first Liz did this too. It states it has 300 miles, but then it's like going, it really like has one 50 and apparently the Cybertruck is, is Non-performant in the same …”