The Exchanges

Q a prince should always appear, appear but not be religious, compassionate, trustworthy, humane, and honest. Uh, do you think this particular projection of, I've heard you, I've watched a lot of your interviews of late and I've heard you say repeatedly that you're not formidable and use words like that. Uh, this projection of humility, is it apt for the world we live in or the world you're walking into?

A I'm not sure it's apt for either one, but, uh, When I, when I was 19, to go back to what you said, I, I assumed that the people running these big tech companies really had it all figured out, and there were, you know, adults in the room, and somebody had a plan, and there were these people that were, like, way different than me that understood how to do things, and, you know, had this, like, the companies were, like, running very well, and there was, like, not much drama, and everything was, like, you know, just everything was, everything was being handled by the adults. Um, And now that I'm supposed to be the adult in the room, I will tell you, I think no one has a plan. No one really has it all working smoothly. Everyone, or at least I am figuring out as they go. And, you know, you have things you want to build, and then things go wrong, and you bet on the wrong people, or the right people, and you know, you get a technological breakthrough here, or you don't there, and You just keep putting one foot in front of another and you put your head down and work and you, you know, you have these like tactics that some of them become great strategies. Some of them don't, uh, you try something in the market, reacts in some way, or your competitors react in some way and you do something else. And, and the. And now my conception is everybody is kind of figuring it out as they go. Everyb…

AI assessment note: “I'm not sure it's apt for either one, but”

Q Do you think the world retains, largely the world retains the current model of capitalism and democracy in a way? Let me give you a scenario. What happens if a company X, let's say OpenAI, gets to the point where it is 50% of world GDP? Does society allow for that or?

A I would bet not. I don't think that will happen. I think this will be a much more distributed thing, but if for some reason that did happen, I think society would say, we don't think so. Like, let's figure out, let's figure out something to do here. Um, my, my, the analogy I like most for AI is the transistor, which was this really important scientific discovery that for a while looked like it was going to capture a ton of the value. And then turned out to be something that just gets built into like tons of products and services. And you don't really think about, you know, the fact that you're using transistors all day long. It's just kind of in everything and all these companies make incredible products and profits from it in this very distributed way. Um, so I, I would guess that's what happens and it's not like one company is ever half of global GDP. I, at one point I did worry that that might happen, but I think that was a naive take. Right.

AI assessment note: “I would bet not. I don't think that will happen. I think this will be”

Q Do you think there's a use case for the rappers that are getting built on these large models right now? Like I was in the US recently and I met Harvey, for example. What happens to a rapper like that? Does it get innovated out by the model itself at some point of time?

A Some of them yes, and some of them no. Um, and it's, you know, it's like, sometimes you can obviously predict when one is going to go one way or the other, and sometimes it really depends on the choices the, the company makes down, uh, down the line. The, the, the main thing I would say is, Using AI itself does not create a defensible business. You see this with every technology boom where people are like, well, I'm a startup doing X, and because I'm using the latest technology trend, the normal rules of business don't apply to me. And that's never true. You've always, you've always got to You've always got to, like, parlay that advantage that comes from using the new technology into a durable business with real value that gets created, and it's kind of a race against the clock to do that. So, you know, ah, you can definitely build an amazing thing with AI, but then you have to go build a real defensible layer around it.

AI assessment note: “Some of them yes, and some of them no.”

Q Sam, what happens to the form factor? I've been using the cell phone for a long time. I know you will not likely speak about what you're doing with Johnny Ive and what happens there, or maybe you will, but what happens to form factor overall?

A One of the things that I think we'll be defining about the difference of AI versus the sort of previous Way we've been using computers and technology is you really want AI to be, have as much context as possible, do stuff for you and be proactive. So a computer or a phone, you know, it's kind of either on or off. It's in your pocket or it's in your hand and you're using it, but you might want AI to just be proactive. You know, like a companion with you throughout your day and alerting you in different ways when it can do something to help you or when it's, you know, there's something really important you need to know or reminding you of something that you said you needed to do earlier in the day. And the current form factors of computers are, I think, not quite right for that. They do have this either on or off binary, uh, That I think isn't quite what we want for like a, the sort of sci-fi dream of the AI companion. So the form factor that enables that, you could imagine a lot of things. Um, there's people talking about, you know, glasses and wearables and little, you know, things that sit on your table and, uh, I think the world will experiment with a lot of those, but this idea of sort of ambiently aware physical hardware, that feels like it's going to be important.

AI assessment note: “this idea of sort of ambiently aware physical hardware, that feels like it's going”

Q might have had when I was growing up. But what do I do now? A, what do I study? If I'm starting a company, what kind of company do I start? Or if I were to even find a job, what industry do you think has some kind of tailwind? I'm not talking 10 years down the line, but even as close as three to five years down the line.

A First of all, I think this is probably the most exciting time to be starting out one's career, uh, maybe ever. I, I think like that 25 year old in Mumbai can probably do more than any previous 25 year old in history could. It's really amazing what you can do with a tool like this. I felt the same way when I was 25 and, you know, the tools then were not as amazing as tools we have now, but we had the computer revolution and we could do things, you know, a 25 year old then could do things that no 25 year old in history before would have been able to. And now that's happening in a huge way. So whether you want to start a company or be a programmer Or go work in kind of any other industry, you know, create new media, whatever it is. Um, the ability for one person to use these tools and have great ideas and implement them with what would have taken, you know, decades of experience or teams of people is really quite remarkable. Um, in terms of particular industries, I am very excited about what AI is going to mean for science. And the amount of science that one person will be able to discover and the rate at which they can do that. Clearly it's transforming what it means to program computers in a huge way, and people will be able to create completely new kinds of software and a huge new, new scale. Uh, definitely for startups, you know, if you have that idea for a new business, the a…

AI assessment note: “In terms of particular industries, I am very excited about what AI is going to mean for science.”

Q If I could push you to be, like, A bit more specific and say, I get science, but, uh, what do I study? Say I've been studying engineering or commerce or arts or something like that. Is there any specific thing I study in order to use AI to develop something in science?

A I think the most important Specific thing to study is just getting really good at using the new AI tools. Um, I think learning is valuable for its own sake and learning to learn is this like meta skill that will, will serve you throughout life. And whether you're learning, you know, engineering, like computer engineering or biology or any other field like that, if you get good at learning things, you can learn new things quickly. But fluency with the tools, um, is You know, it's really important. When I was in college or in high school, it seemed to me that the And I didn't know exactly what I was going to use that for, but there was this new frontier that seemed very high leverage and important to get good at. And right now, learning how to use AI tools is probably the most important specific hard skill to learn. And the difference between people who are really good at really AI native and think of everything in terms of those tools and don't is huge. There's other general skills, um, Learning kind of like to be adaptable and resilient, which I think is something really learnable. Uh, that, that's like quite valuable in a world that's changing so fast. Learning how to figure out what people want, um, is, is really quite important. The, the, before this, I used to be a startup investor and people would ask me what the most important thing for startup founders to figure out was.…

AI assessment note: “the most important Specific thing to study is just getting really good at using”