Schmidt Out of Luck — EP 73 Ashlee Vance And Kylie Robison

Alright, Kylie. How you doing? I'm fabulous. How are you? I'm good. We're back again. What are we doing this week? This week I want to chat about our wonderful pod with Alexander Wang. Um, Eric Schmidt got booed at a commencement speech. We have some interesting stuff on our substack, Phantom Neuro, the Text and Telescope Rant. There was a verdict mere minutes before we started in the Sam and Elon trial, more drama in XAI Land and more. Alright, let's hit it. I'm Ashley Vance. I'm Kylie Robison.

This is core memory, here we go!

So Alex Pod, main takeaways, main thoughts. Yes. So we got the we got the pretty exclusive interview with Alex. He hadn't talked much in Eleven months. I think he'd he'd done one rando podcast, but he never really got into meta's strategy. Yeah. Um, hopefully people have listened to it. I thought He was well, I l actually I really enjoyed chatting with Alex. I I know him a bit outside.

Of when he's in a media situation. He's a bit different when he's in that. He's a bit freer. Um, I thought he was I thought, you know, we learned Way more about Meadow's business than we knew before, but Alex was a bit uh bit reserved on specifics and some things.

Yeah, when people were asking me about it, I would say that he seemed quite nervous. I've only met him when he was at scale. I met him at a random conference briefly. But yeah, in that in this chair I felt like he was a bit nervous to like hash out all the meta stuff. There's still this piece where I have to assume they're gonna be very strong. I mean, they really do have just tons and tons of compute and they fall into that category of Google.

Amazon, which is not exactly the AI behemoth so far. But these these players just have endless resources at their disposal. Uh it's an interesting dynamic that they have over there. Alex is twenty nine, I think he said. And you got Nat Freedman. ostensibly working under him. Nat used to be the CEO of GitHub. He's this longtime open source executive, uh you know, major player in AI land w alongside Daniel Gross, who also works there. had been investing in all the really the coolest AI companies.

Um Daniel had been with Ilya at at uh what is it, Safe Super Intelligence and and so super interesting dynamic there. Um just to have Alex as the As the boss and then I don't know, he's very dismissive of these ideas that there's already discord between Him and Zuck in one camp really wanted to push the limits of research and Boz in uh on this other side being more product focused in and Alex said the reporters were all getting this wrong.

Oh, the drama with these reporters. They're always so wrong. Let's get a deposition in there. Uh yeah, I I felt like he was very dismissive of that and of the claims, you know, Jan made of his age and him being too junior. I think like you can have all the compute in the world, but we've both seen inside these big companies it's very bureaucratic and slow and the point of this lab was to move fast and be like a frontier lab. But I mean

You liked the model, right? I I the only time I get to see this model is when it does horrifying things on Instagram. So I mean like I said in the podcast, it is weird that I I'm I'm Not like a big Facebook person, but I'm massive on WhatsApp and then play around on Instagram and I've got my meta glasses, which I am unabashedly um Happy to say that I enjoy you you got them on and

I just never use their AI stuff at all, even though I'm living inside of many of their products. So that seems like a problem to me. I thought Muspark I I I only played around with it for a couple of days. It was cool. Does this multi agent thing when it's thinking through problems and and it's a little bit different to what I've seen from some of the other labs, but I I felt like it was well, i i Alex wasn't claiming it's it's really um neck and neck. Yeah. And you could you could feel that.

It felt underwhelming. Now I'm wondering w I'm gonna test my glasses. Hey Meta. What uh famous author am I looking at right now? Thinking, thinking. I'd be shocked if it got it. It's a platter. No, it should. It's just I don't think the what is it looking at feature is all that good. The I well, I also got the other glasses now, the augmented reality ones with the wristband. Am I interfering? It told it told me to restart the app and try again. That's perfect. Exactly what I expected.

They were kind of cool. So they I don't know if people know this, but there's these other glasses you can get and you put on this wristband and it reads your motor neurons. when you're making movements and translates translates it to the glasses, all the wrist movement stuff worked way better than I thought it would the Classes part was a little underwhelming. There's just not that many things you can do, but I saw they were tweeting last week that

now they're opening it up to third parties to to make some apps. But uh my kids were blown away, which I I thought they would crap all over it, but they were really They w they were shocked by the the wrist action. No. Yeah, it was all right. Um, so yeah, I don't know. Any other big thoughts on Alex? No, I I would like to see, you know, some of these visions actually come to life. Uh I had a friend say like their their models genuinely impressed them and they work in AI so

maybe I'm just not looking close enough, but like the consumer focus of being in these apps. Like during my San Francisco shoot, I opened Instagram and there was this ad for an AI chat bot that was a homeless woman holding up a sign. And I was like, why would anyone want to use that? And I wish I'd seen this before the Alex Pod so I could ask'em about it. But

That's my interface with Meta's models and that is just kind of horrifying. But I would like to see like them, you know, reach the frontier and compete because they have all the resources to do so.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. Well, elsewhere in AI land, I saw this weekend Eric Schmidt giving a Kovetswich speech at the University of Arizona, and my God, the booze rained down upon him, which seemed to be like possibly two things going on. One was that there were protests about him giving this speech beforehand because of uh

Some things going on with his girlfriend, apparently. Um uh and so people were not happy that he was a speaker, but this seemed very AI specific, uh definitely based on the lines of where the booze were hitting. Yeah. When we talked to Alex, I brought this up. I was like, We're the same age almost. We both know how people feel about AI. It's very loud in in my life. Like I don't know anyone

who really likes it. And I brought this up with Sam too. And when I published my Sam pod on my own Instagram, people were like, fuck that guy. Like people our age hate it. So seeing that commencement speech and all the boos, people were like, It I'm shocked that people are shocked because i if you use TikTok, you go through I I see so many things about how you shouldn't be using AI. It's amoral and just like, you know, a natural disaster on humanity. So I was not surprised to see that.

So curious how this plays out. It's not going away. So so where is this anger gonna go? We certainly seem like we've tipped over some point. When you look at the we talked about this a bit before, but the violence against Sam. I was actually shocked by the amount of booze in this crowd because My general impression is people have a distaste for AI but really aren't paying that much attention. And I think I'm wrong. Yeah. I mean I

Well, I think it's both. I think they have a distaste and they aren't paying attention. Like when I see the data center discourse on TikTok, I wanna peel my skin off because it's just so misconstrued and Like it's just pure misinformation because people only understand like there is some water usage, there's some energy usage in To be clear, there's like a lot to be explored there, but people my age on the internet, in my opinion, are not exploring it.

in good faith. So of course and then I also think that the leaders have a lot of blame to hold. Like they spent years saying

Like it's gonna take all our jobs. Up until even recently in the lap past year, Sam and Dario have said like it's going to take all our jobs and these people are entering the market the job market and not able to find jobs and if they're applying places as an AI recruiter, rejecting them or going through first round interviews, like it does seem dystopian at their level, you know. There was that this palpable feeling of these graduates

sitting in this room about to head out into the world and not believing anything that this AI preacher was was selling them. Uh I am just I mean this I wonder what we are heading into over the next year if this is if this really is bubbling up and It is a very difficult question on the data center front. It's like, what is the US as a country really supposed to do? I mean, this this is at the last.

thing we have where we're really ahead of China and the rest of the world. China's definitely not gonna have any problems building data centers. It's actually a skill that the United States is great at. We have more data centers than the rest of the world combined. We actually know how to do this thing. And and if we're gonna have this massive societal pullback on this, it's it will be um difficult for the United States, I think.

This was sort of the Doomer argument that caught me finally into taking this more seriously about two years ago at South by. Someone I was interviewing had said, like, look, here's how it could pan out in realistic terms, where it ends very, very badly, which is there's already so much. political unrest and division in this country, um, these debates will make it accelerate way, way further and break us apart and, you know, make those divisions quite deeper.

And then you get things like violence and these protests that turn violent and we saw that with Sam's house, like and that kicks up and kicks up and then it gets into like, you know, does the the police and the and our government get involved and, you know.

That to me, when I saw that play out, I thought that seems very real. And it feels like we're at the beginning of that tipping point where it's like people are very, very, very upset and I don't see it like quiet ni quieting anytime soon, especially with more data center builds. What happens when you do you've got Demis at uh DeepMind, Google

Anthropic. We wrote about this. Joe Lee Gunn did a piece for us. The AI labs are getting so deep into science, into pharma. It will be quite fascinating if somebody actually had a breakthrough where they cure some massive illness or come up with some super drug and How will we feel about these AI companies? Speech as he was getting booed. He was trying to he was trying to reel them back in and say, like, well, this will cure cancer as he was getting booed. Like you could hardly hear him.

But when I see this take on TikTok, uh I see people saying like it's not gonna be LLMs, it's not gonna be L LMs. But I still don't think I mean, maybe I'm not giving them enough credit, but I don't think these like talking heads on TikTok

and young people who consume news that way really understand how it all works. And I felt as a journalist when I was covering AI that that was a really important part of my job was to put it plainly and not like buy in either way. But in you know, even then, like the it's it polls AI polls worse than Trump and IC if I recall correctly. So it's it's in the gutter. I've never been this confused about something in tech before. I I feel like I usually have a pretty good feel for

the booms and the busts and where things are going in the long term and I make my bets. This one has played out differently. I I would have predicted we would have already had a big Wall Street collapse by now. The models. have gotten much better consistently than I thought. I don't see that stopping any time

Soon this thing has more legs than I expected it to. I I thought over the long term it would play out, but I thought we'd have a a collapse here, uh just because things had gotten so out of hand. And and now the technology actually uh it's just It's a bit frightening and exciting. It keeps impressing me more and more. So yeah. I'm I am shocked we haven't had a collapse yet. I agree. I also I mean, I don't think this is a hot take to say the valuations are just nowhere near reality and

I like I say that this is a software and people are like, well, no, it's amazing. I agree. I am amazed by what this technology can do and continues to improve on, but the valuations make no sense. Literally no sense. So I'm shocked it hasn't. What is NVIDIA right now? Five point three trillion dollars. Insane. And open AI is going for a one trillion valuation. So is anthropic apparently yeah, that makes no sense to me honestly.

All right, what do we do at Core Memory? We cover innovative, fast-moving, forward-thinking companies, which is why Core Memory is sponsored by BREX, because BREX is the intelligent finance platform for many of these companies. 30,000 companies from startups to the world's largest corporations, rely on Brexit technology for their finances. They've got smart corporate cards.

high yield business banking and expense automation tools that are fantastic. I hate doing my expenses. And Brex's AIs and software, run right through those expenses, figure out where we're spending money, and take care of so much stuff for you so you don't have to waste your time on it yourself. Go to Brex.com slash core memory to learn more and just, you know, get with the program. Let's get going. Let's get out of this archaic finance software and move toward the future. Core memory and brex.

Anything from the trial that is uh Jumped out of you. So right as we record this, it will be old news by the time you hear this, but w we're recording just as open AI won the lawsuit on on the the grounds that had had passed the statute of limitations, I I I would have thought you can figure those things out before you go through all the pain of a trial, but I I don't know how these things work in detail.

Yeah, that was crazy. It was just as Ashley was walking out of the room where I was like, Oh my God, Elon lost. Uh I mean, so my take is that I the of course the lawyers knew that that was a possibility, but Elon really wanted to embarrass OpenAI. He wanted to get everyone on the stand. He wanted everyone to be like, you know their their emails and their texts and their journals to to be out in the open, including Ashley's, apparently.

Right. I made I I forgot about that now, which was insane. Uh yeah. So if people didn't see my text messages was Sam made it into to evidence. I remember this during the coup. I and the information was very close, but I'm pretty sure we broke the story first, or I'm sure I had it first that Emmett Shear

was gonna be the CEO of the of OpenAI and I remember being in the thick of this and I'm pretty sure I was learning about it in close to real time. I had I was I was well sourced on this and And I was trying to confirm the story because I'd heard Emmett. So I texted Sam, hey, did you know? Yeah. Emmett's gonna be the CEO. I remember the feeling at the time. I don't have the message in front of me and I wouldn't really reveal it anyway, but I remember Sam at least feigning

Um, like this was new information to him. And then in the trial we find out, like I think I was texting him as he was finding out from Mira, uh, that that Ebbett was coming in and my text was like on his Home screen as he's like in a zoom caller or having a text with Journalist. Yeah, yeah, so good. Yeah, from a journalist. Uh is the journalist, Sam. Um but yeah, so then um I had act

Going over my my tweet game, my scoop game, that was interesting. And I had about three hundred people text me saying, Did you see this? Yeah, that was crazy. I think that came out over the weekend or something'cause I just remember looking at my phone and being like, Holy shit. Um

And there was some discourse about it, but it is like as a journalist, it's exactly how it works. It's like I am hearing this, is it true? Like that is exactly what we do as journalists, especially during that time. It was insane. It was insane. So Yeah, that was shocking. It was in the lawsuit, uh a journalist. Was on signal, trying to be good. Think we had disappearing messages on. People be screenshotting my t my messages

I was shocked that he had it on his lock screen as like visible text. I don't even do that. And he is a CEO of a very um important company. Yeah, yeah. Um I think it was this was this was that was a fun moment. That was crazy. So that was my highlight of the trial.

Do you think okay, so Elon's you think is trying to embarrass them, get all this stuff out? I mean, we did see it was a bunch of stuff that I knew from reporting this book that I'm working on, but uh clearly I mean, Greg Brockman got dragged. through things quite a bit'cause he's he's got this diary. Um I I felt like he probably took it had the worst of it all from a PR standpoint. His diary was pretty damning. He was like how do I become a trillionaire if I recall correctly?

And and then who I mean did Elon esc did What did you did the Elon you know, was this worth it to him or did you feel like there was blowback on his side? Um, I do not think it was worth it for him because what came out from Sam was incredibly level headed and albeit funny, there was some memes about

him not being allowed to talk to them or be in the room, which was pretty hilarious. And the Emmett Sheer, like some guy at Twitch. That was all pretty funny. But no, like Sam came out looking like a s normal adult human being trying to work something out. Uh

But the the Greg stuff was pretty crazy. I don't think that changed public sentiment about open AI whatsoever. Uh For Elon, I watched his testimony the closest out of any testimony, and he mostly just like berated the lawyer and didn't really say anything super interesting other than

I'm gonna say accidentally lying on the stand. He he said that he had uh donated aka invested in open AI at a much larger number than he actually did, and then he had to recant that on the stand once it was pointed out. But yeah, I think that was, you know, it's only chump change for him. Which is funny'cause it was a non profit and these numbers have always been in these filings. So, um yeah, that's what it's it's been a strange thing to stand on. Um Ja!

And you thought I'm sorry, you thought Elon was gonna win. Well, Elon has this like um you know, he's got this Elon uh reality distortion field where he seems I remember he lost one case where it was like a Tesla worker, I think, who had had a like a racial discrimination lawsuit, but that wasn't like directly Elon. It was it was Tesla, everything that Elon's ever been involved in, even the pedo guy thing where I'm like, yeah, I'm sure he's gonna lose this because he called this dude a pedo.

W he wins. He always wins and he's relentless and and y this one, if you're right that this was like this was the intention, I suspect he won't try to appeal and bring this back. But normally he drags these you know, he just keeps going'til he wins. I mean he can just hire the best lawyers in the

world. I don't doubt that he'll appeal and try again because like I I really believe it's Trump change to him to just keep going and dragging this out and distracting open AI because while Sam was on the stand, he was in China with Jensen and Trump. And I I don't know if Sam would have been there if he could have, but he he wasn't and Elon was in China doing this like sort of important press tour with the president. So if he keeps dragging it out, then he keeps distracting OpenAI and Sam.

How do you feel about the heart of what was being discussed? I would you can view open AI take doing the deal with Microsoft. making the shift towards being a for-profit company as its original sin in many ways. Clearly no matter what anyone argues, this was set up as a open source non profit and and that was the goal. However, as you get into it, we y years pass and then it turns out, well, you are

the thing that's working for us is incredible amounts of computing. This is gonna cost an insane amount of money. Elon was not willing to just give them limitless billions of dollars to buy computing. I don't see how they really had a choice. They they're gonna need money from somewhere. So I've always cut them a little bit of slack on this. I guess the question is like what did they believe?

In their soul. But I'm not even sure if this this matters because you get into the technology that it it's apparent that it's just gonna cost ridiculous amounts of money if you really want to do this. I think they would agree with the take that they were incredibly deeply naive at the start to set it up that way. And then, you know, it was Dario and the scaling laws. So we need more compute, we need more data that costs a lot of money and time and we need the best researchers.

And then Elon wanting to control the company and then them saying no, which meant they're like where they get all their money from is gone. So If getting Microsoft in on the deal only worked if they converted, yeah, it seems like they they had no choice. But I think, you know, something I think a lot about as a an adult reporter now is when you're a kid you think the adults have it all figured out and they know everything and then you become an adult and you're like, no one knows shit at all.

So that's what this feels like. It's like, why didn't you guys think of this at the start? They didn't know, I get that, but it was very altruistic and wishy washy and burning man or whatever. And the reality is they they had to be capitalists. Greg's journal did not make them look good, I will say. That was pretty shocking.'Cause that was like what, twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen that journal?

That wasn't very good, but you know, I think it was very naive and dumb to start it like that. And now they're they are hooked on that. And I do think the nonprofit open source approach is the right way to go. I I actually do. I think that would have been like

you know, if you're gonna if you're gonna like sort of destroy humanity in so many ways, you should be giving back to humanity. That was the main mission. So I think they should still uphold that, but it should have started with that like nonprofit, for profit structure. I remember when OpenAI started, I thought it was pointless. I thought Google was so far ahead, but I appreciated the the thinking behind it. I love open source software. I I could see this counterweight.

The more you know about the company in those early years, it was just a series of experiments. They really had very little idea what they were doing. It was it was a re they always harp on this. It was a research lab. It was really like an academic offshoot from universities and just a gathering place for people with interesting ideas. So I I can see how this evolved and spun out f of control a little bit and then

There's no way you're gonna raise that much money unless you have someone like Elon who has incredible capital who's just willing. You couldn't do it as a non profit unless you have someone incredibly rich who's just like fine. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. my philanthropic effort. Um,'cause otherwise y you have to structure it in a way that people will give you money. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah. Um I thought the It's funny the way this played out and that the statute of limitations thing is what got Elon in the end because he he after he pulled out of open AI, he really He wasn't that angry and he he just put them to the side. It wasn't until Chat GPT came out and it was clicking.

And he could see that this thing had really worked and then clearly once he had his own AI aspirations after that that all this this comes up. I mean, he went through like multiple years of of not really Um seeming to pay that much attention to open AI at all. Yeah, all the discovery doesn't show. Like Elon was super mad about it. I mean he uh when he wanted the company it seemed very Elon straightforward of like do this or else sort of vibe.

But generally, you know, in my reporting and my understanding of it, i he didn't seem to hold resentment until exactly Chat G BT and then he launched XAI and that was the point of the lawsuit that open AI's lawyers said. was like he only is doing this now because of XAI. And when they first started this lawsuit, I thought the same thing. I thought it was quite petty, but, you know, he lost. One day we'll find out how close they ever got to resolving this. Um I've got a couple ideas.

Speaking of XAI? Per Bloomberg, Musk's XAI fails to pay staff four hundred and twenty dollars for giving their tax returns to Gross. Um this reminds me of when I was covering XAI and there was all sorts of uh rumors that they were asking for training data from their staff because they needed the training data so bad. And Elon Musk put out this.

Google form that was like, hey, do you want to be part of like training Grok to his followers and ask them to provide information? Uh so the training data thing has been like a a long issue for Grok is my understanding. But The four hundred and twenty dollars bet he'll never give that up. So they were gonna pay the employees to feed their own tax returns into the model. Yep. I no, I haven't, but I have Ha ha. How how'd that go?

Well, I think I was getting it to look for a discrep yeah, my accountant had been like, Hey, it was very minor. There's like eight hundred dollars or twelve hundred is something that's not accounted for and rather than me spending hours look looking through These spreadsheets, yeah, I just put it in. So I was like, whatever. I'm g I'm giving in. This is kind of a right term, but did you see that ChatGPT now has like a finance agent code?

Um, I haven't used it because I I actually don't feel comfortable hooking up all my financial apps to Chat GPT, though I have given like a year of statements to Chat GPT and ask for like, you know, what am I spending the most on, blah blah blah. But um I s I only saw a tweet that was like, This is really bad and it's really wrong quite frequently. Um So maybe that's what Grok wants to work on. I don't know how valuable tax returns would be as a data set. That doesn't make a ton of sense to me.

I'm... I think accountants. Who are gonna have a tough time. From the the models have gotten much better at math very quickly. Yep, that was in the Bloomberg piece. The whole effort was a rush job to catch up with Claude and ChatGPT before April fifteenth, alongside the parallel push to hire accountants and data an annotators, while Musk himself encouraged users to chase bigger refunds through GRO. And then you had the massive deal with X AI giving compute to or SpaceX, I guess it is now.

SpaceX AI. Exactly. Yeah. Giving compute to anthropic for what I presume. Must have been many billions of dollars because Elon had been uh very antianthropic. Very Very anti anthropic. So that was hilarious. Um, yeah, what do you think the game plan there is? I think it w I think Spa SpaceX is heading towards his IPO. I think having a few extra billion dollars uh on the balance sheet will look very good. I think

Anthropic, underestimated how much compute it would need. And we're having all kind of strange bedfellows being made. It's funny, it you know, SpaceX the cloud company. It all comes down to clouds. Everything. Uh yeah. All right. Let's move away from AI. Okay. People have had enough. They're booing. Booing. Go ahead. All right, pod friends, I am here to tell you about send cut send. They are a manufacturing phenomenon, whether you're working

On your own car or you're a giant automotive company, a rocket maker, if you need metal cut, machine, or bent, you're going to send cut send. They'll do it for you right and they will do it for you fast. Go to sendkutsen.com slash core memory for a 15% discount on whatever you try to make. We love Sencut Sen. Go visit them today.

Phantom Neuro Yeah, so we put up a video on the Substack this Monday. It will be probably hitting our YouTube page as you are listening. to this. So the subscribers get the videos first, along with many of our stories, to our sub stack. But Phantom Neuro is a pretty interesting company. They're based in Austin, Texas. They make this this hu this like body computer interface. It's a it's an implant that has electrodes. Um

And instead of being a brain implant like Neuralink and most other startups, this implant goes where for the moment where somebody's had an amputation of of a limb. And so if you lost your arm near your elbow, say, you put this this device you get surgically implanted underneath the skin and then you hook up a robotic prosthetic to it and then you You think what you want to do with the prosthetic and it and it happens. We did this video, it's amazing. There's this guy, Alex Smith, and he

um could take his hand off and like put it on the ground and still have it moving when it's not attached to his body. That was blowing my mind while this was happening. And then it turns out there's this I've been writing about these these robotic prosthetics for a long time. Um they've been getting better and better and better. They're hard for people to control because they're just really limited. You have to kinda

There's like little buttons to click and you want to just be able to just think that you want to grab the cocaine or point at something. And so that's what Phantom's technology lets you do. It is just this year going to try to The device that we were playing with d Alex had not had it surgically implanted yet. He would he would kinda like wrap it around his arm and I Phantom is just gonna start

doing its trials this year, I think in Australia, where they get surgically implanted. I got to play with uh Technology I get to fly a drone using using my mind and um and just kinda like thinking about the well, making these gestures with my hand and and it was translating to the the drone movement and it was very cool. As for where all this is heading, we did a podcast with Connor Glass, the the founder and CEO of of Phantom Neuro earlier.

We are I mean, you can make an argument we might be heading to a world of of elective amputations where where these prosthetics are getting so good. Um that people might choose to Luke Skywalker and and replace replace their hand. Don't piss me off. What? Why on earth? Don't you want a carbon fiber hand that can spin three sixty? I have my own. That's crazy.

Uh that's the case that Connor makes. He also talks about this very sci-fi future where um I mean part of this at the moment is helping these amputees. They're no doubt gonna gain all this data from people using this. And then you could see a world where the military would want stuff like this. You might have a person just in a control room. controlling some robotic arm out in the field. And maybe more than one at a time and just, you know, doing this like dock ock um kind of situation. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. You know, and maybe maybe you're trying to it could be cool. I mean, if you're trying to like diffuse a bomb or something like that, I mean things would have to improve a lot, but it'd be way better to have a robotic hand in there than a Actual human sit going hurt locker. The the coolest part of watching that video was like as I was watching, I was like this must be a BCI'cause how does it register that movement so quickly? And it's not and he said, uh w h what's his name again?

Or Alex Smith is Good. Yeah. He um he said it only took, you know, what was it, ten minutes to set up and we've both watched BCIs get set up and it takes a lot of training to understand. And I did that and you'll see it in the video. It does it just takes a couple of minutes. So that part is legit. And I mean that's the big perk here is that

you could you don't have to have a hole drilled into your brain to be able to to get this prosthetic. It you it's a I think it's like a outpatient type procedure and and so huge difference to to the idea. of uh implant. I f I think Connor is interesting in Phantom has not raised nearly as much money as some of the BCI companies and he's quite realistic, I think, because

We're he heading to this strange moment where these companies have raised money almost as if they're consumer electronics, yeah. Type companies where the idea is You're having elective surgeries to get these brain implants. The Elon of it all, Neuralink has raised tons and tons of money, brought all this attention to this field. The other companies that want to compete then have also raised tens, hundreds of millions of dollars. It is not at all clear to me how

can justify that sort of capital on if you're just helping people who are paralyzed, who've had strokes. It's a ALS, it's a very small market. You're dependent on like these health insurance companies even paying for this type of stuff. And so I think we're gonna have this period where

A lot of these companies go away. I think Neuralake will be fine because Elon can raise infinite money for infinite things. But the others are gonna have a tough time and I found Phantom to be this middle ground of sorts where they Haven't raised as much as everybody else, they seem very practical. This is like a as practical as a as a like body cyborg implant. gets and s and I found it refreshing.

How close are we to like, you know, uh I think Sam's B CI company is trying to make so that it's not a surgric surgical thing, it's more like on top of the skin. They're not quite there yet, but how close are we to that? Because then that would be like a consumer device potentially. I think still years and years and years and nobody's sure the there's this huge problem which is

You wanna be as close to the neurons as possible. So you put these that's where the signal's the strongest. You're getting the best data. This is why Neuralink goes into the brain. You have all these other people that are like, Well, people are gonna want elective brain surgery. So as a non starter, we're gonna figure out how to do this either outside of the skull, which is extra hard, or Where you sit on top of what's called the dura, which is this layer of of protective tissue. Mm-hmm.

So you still have to do a craniotomy for that. Um, but it's less invasive. And so there's there's different layers. Nobody has figured out really how to do it. outside of the brain. Brian Johnson was trying to do this years ago with Colonel with these like helmets. Um and they they work but they're also not um They're big. You you wouldn't just wear it around all the time. And and so, you know, in the merge merge labs.

Sam Altman, the Sam Al Altman backed company you're talking about. I mean, I th th they just have incredible amounts of science they still have to figure out. Yeah. Yeah. I just as you were talking, I was imagining getting one of those straps for David and then like a Google Glass so he could fly the trown on the Sammy Nicholson, our our cinematographer extraordinaire. Yes, yeah. I mean uh we're probably heading

This motor neuron stuff is getting good. Between the the meta glasses and then what Phantom is doing, for sure we will be controlling computer devices with some kinda like little thing like that. That's interesting. I just don't see like enough reason to do it. Like I I imagine David with the drone because he does that on our shoots, but you know, your kids had fun with it. Did they play games?

built into your Apple Watch and now you're you're changing the channel on your TV. That'd be nice. You're you know, you're flicking your phone, you're just kinda like making a little teeny gesture. Not having to find my remote would be ideal. Being able to pick up calls. Uh I don't like the idea of the singularity as us scrolling through ads on TikTok, but I guess that's a thing. But I think I think this is it's

The stuff's working way better than I thought. Uh I the These little gestures to do things. I could see it even in front of your laptop just'cause you'll it'll be so second nature you'll just be zipping through some A decade ago a bunch of tech journalists were getting chips implanted in their hands to unlock their phones and look how far we've gone. I know people who do this. Yes.

So we have another cool video, Texan Telescope Ranch. We did not to just like talk our own book, but I wanted to I was gonna do the story behind the story. We did this uh pretty amazing video on Starfront observatories there in Central Texas, they have this very strange business where you I didn't even know this existed. You you sent they you send them your telescope and then they

Or they fix it into the ground and they point it the right direction and they calibrate it and then they hook it up. They've got f in the middle of nowhere Texas, they have fiber optic connections for reasons that are beyond me, besides Texas just being Great, apparently. And and so you dial into your telescope remotely and this is really for people that like to take photos of the stars. And so normally you'd have to you know, you're like

Making a weekend of it. You're driving out somewhere remote. You gotta get lucky with the weather. You gotta cart all your gear. You gotta set everything up and and it's a production. And then you only have that little window of time. Now you just like sit at your house, dial into your telescope.

Most of the time now this is like automated with software. So it's just taking pictures all night. You come back in the morning, you get to sort through the best ones. There's this dude, Bray Falls, with great name. He's one of the co-founders of this place. He's one of the world's best um I think they're called a is it astro or astral photographers? Um he takes these incredible images and He's a thing. So we we hung out there for a day. It was very very cool.

Backstory on this is there are other places like this in Chile, Australia, um, around the world. It tends to be quite expensive to send your gear there, have it managed. What these dudes in Texas have they've done it like super Is this the only one in America?

I don't think it's the only one in America, but what they've figured out is this no frills approach. I think usually they're sort of tied to like an observatory or it's like this like side business and They just found this cheap plot of land out in rural Texas that happened to have fiber there. And so I think the the and then they live in like RVs on the site. So they're you know, they're committed to doing this as low cost as possible. So that that's sort of the breakthrough.

They are I don't I think we mentioned it in the video, so I don't think I'm I'm doing them a disservice. They're they're going to open a new site in Australia. Oh cool! Yeah, so this is growing and they're getting like When I was there they had five hundred fifty telescopes. They're already up to like eight or nine hundred now. So people are really they're just expanding.

You should definitely watch the video for the images alone. Yeah, the images are sick. But it's it was like a it was a very interesting world to dig into. I didn't know I didn't know there were people so committed to this. I f I thought the I would have assumed that part of the joy of this is the hunt. Yeah. That's that's what I was gonna say. Finding that thing in the moment.

Yes, I think I mean I think that is probably as people do do both. And then There was something that seemed less romantic to me about you come and check your email in the morning and your images are there. It's like, you know, us having like a video uh like our videos being done remotely and we're just like that's great, you know, that's not as fun as drinking with David and Cayman. Um But okay, so how did you first find out about these guys?

So I was just on X as one does and I just saw this photo of it was just hundreds and hundreds of telescopes. And it was this arresting image and I'm like, What is this? And I assumed somebody must have covered all of this before'cause it was it was just spectacular the way this looks. I just hit'em up on uh on X and no, nobody had been out there really to shoot a video. I think maybe like some Germans had come out to do I I I think they actually came after us.

And and so it just it looked so visual to me. And then obviously I made the space stuff. And and so it really struck me right as we were going out to film, the New York Times did a big story. So I was a little bummed. I wanted to do the first in-depth piece as well. But I think it was Kenneth Chang maybe who wrote that piece. He's a very good reporter. He did he did a good job. I did not see that. I'm sorry, New York Times. I only saw our video.

It's a good piece. If people want to check it out, Starfront Observatory, please go to our YouTube channel and subscribe to everything. Also, super quick, um, we are still running this contest of the podcast with reviews. Um, we will get you so the the Shins and Weezer are going on a nationwide tour. Our podcast editor is John Sortland. He's the drummer for the Shins. He's an incredible human being.

We will get you two tickets to a show if you leave the best review. I've seen some, but I have not seen enough. They are we want creative, we want funny. We should want some stars, some reviews, and and I think we should run this for like another month'cause I need to see more. Yeah, I agree. I wanna laugh out loud with you at Weezer maybe.

Um yeah, okay. So we had a good yeah, we had a good good run through tech. Yeah, I just finished up my San Francisco shoot. That will be coming eventually. Canada also coming. Excited to show you guys. The Kylie episodes are coming. That's it's very fun. Ashley's excited for me to be stressed about writing a script. And I hate to say I feel like it's gonna be pretty fine. Oh wow, good. I mean show me the

I have I've done no work on it and I'm like, it's gonna be fine. It's gonna be fine. Cut to me having a panic attack. They're actually fun to write. We do the shoots and you go for seven to ten days and we shoot hundreds of hours and the the exciting part is that you can be very creative. The daunting part is that there's literally infinite ways you can decide to get into and out of these different episodes and it's it's uh just settling on s on something and then really committing to it. I

Yeah. So I have to do that and then you guys will get to see these cool videos. I saw my first uh engine test and Ashley was really excited to see me feel the fire and that's on video. I haven't seen it yet, but my eyebrows were up my forehead. This was a a jet engine for a plane. Yes. Yes. Yes. And could do like low orbital um rocket launches, so bring it up and then the rocket takes off, is my understanding.

I think we can talk about is Astro Astro Mechanica. Okay. So they're based in San Francisco. Yep. And what like what is their what's their claim to fame with this engine? So what they did was uh there's two pieces I always forget and you're the rocket guy, so please tell me. But there's um something that spins and and makes it go up and that is attached through a pole to the thing that spits out the exhaust. And no one has ever successfully split that into two pieces.

Um so they split that into two pieces and then the engine is connected to like an electric motor. And the idea is that From there, you can even change gears, which we haven't been able to do with planes, because there is like one gear. If you want to go like on a commercial flight to Japan, it is not gonna go supersonic.

Right. And it's just gonna hit that normal speed and get you there from San Francisco in about twelve hours. Um and if you wanna do a military flight, it's gonna go really fast, but it's not gonna go really slow. And so this uh invention, you're able to do like supersonic speeds in, you know, in international flight is the hope. It's still being tested. Like this engine is not like properly flight ready, but the idea is pretty insane. And so they've raised money to do that.

So it's for supersonic flight. Yeah, exactly. Get to, you know, New York in two hours is what I was promised. And they test them in San Francisco? Yeah. Are they quiet? No, no, not at all. Super loud. I wore earmuffs and I was afraid to take them off. It kept starting up and then not working. They had to work out some things and I thought maybe I was cursed because

engines do not like to work around me apparently. But it worked. It's super loud. It's in South San Francisco. So there's more of an industrial district where it's not as disruptive. But it is right next to like this rave venue I go to quite a bit. So I would love to see them set that off during a rave. Okay,'cause this has been a problem for Boom, which is also trying to make us supersonic. plane, commercial plane and they

had engine suppliers early on. I think they had to deal with Rolls Royce, maybe. I don't wanna misspeak. It was just something like Rolls or G E and things fell through. Then they had to design their own engine, which is always the most expensive part and the most time consuming.

Part of all this. And so well, I don't want to put you on the spot, but so would they be they they're looking to sell they not they don't want to make the whole plane. They're looking to like sell No, they do wanna make the whole plane. supersonic jets. Okay. Uh so they wanna h like make the plane, make the engine and then sort of rent them out. And the start is in theory a private planes and then going from there. But

I joked, I was like, Did you guys think about buying spirit?'Cause that would have been kind of funny. Uh but no, they want to rent them out rather than selling them in in full. Okay, okay, and then we've got Hermes. They look like they've built their own engine. I can't remember if they're still I think they are, yeah. So they're still trying to chase supersonic speeds as well.

Fascinating. Okay. So what did you anything else that you uh did you learn anything about San Francisco that you didn't know? that I didn't know is hard. But like everyone like towards the end, some people were afraid to say this. But I would tell them like every person before you that we've interviewed has said this.

that there's this level of delusion in San Francisco that's like we can only make what we want to make here because people don't laugh us off. They get it and they join us and they give us money. Uh people were like, oh, you know, delusional, maybe that's like sort of derogatory. I was like, every single person has said that. Uh so that was sort of the theme of the episode. Wait, people were denying that this is true?

No, what you know, one company that I won't name was like, you know, maybe that's like a little too derogatory and maybe it seems like we're delusional. And I'm like, no dude, every person has said like San Francisco is the place where people understand what we're doing and you cross the street and someone's like working on a rocket company or a biotech company and it's just like a high concentration in this little city to get that stuff done.

Yeah, this is the best and worst part of San Francisco in Silicon Valley. Is this this grand suspension of disbelief is what makes all these things possible and then you run into people who are making nothing of significance but think they're saving the world or at least claim to and so you have to you gotta balance these things out. But um there's no question in my mind where I I think yes, you you Buy the ticket, take the ride. You we're we're all in this grand delusion, I think.

I know. It was like a very heartening episode'cause it wasn't just like rocket companies and in rat neurons kind of a hint. Um it was, you know, the culture, the people who like live here for many decades and have been a part of like creating the zeitgeist here, talking about, you know, this is the last frontier. I talked to the founder of Church of Eight Wheels.

if you're in the San Francisco area, you'll know Church of Eight Wheels. And he said that, like, you know, he's m he's doing a roller skating rink, but he's like, this is the place that understands my delusions. Everyone says that. And so it was a heartening episode. It's what makes it a unique place in the world. Right, this should exist. Yeah, it's why I'm here. I need to be delusional but delusional.

I got invited to but did not attend. There's a thing called Vitalist Bay, which is I think it's a place, but they have this conference um out near Berkeley. What's that what's that light to Yeah, what is light haven't? Oh goodness, how much time. Uh Lighthaven is sort of a rationalist effective altruist compound. Uh I believe Eliezer Yudowski. Uh sorry.

No, he does not live there, but he his Light Cone Infrastructure, I believe is the LLC, owns it and that they also own Less Wrong, which is a forum for mostly nerds to argue about, you know, tech, the singularity, all that. Uh, so Lighthaven is this beautiful former bed and breakfast in Berkeley that houses a lot of conferences related to those topics. And I as I recall, some people do live there.

Okay, I think this Vitalis Bay conference took place at Lighthaven. I bring it up because it looks awesome. It's all about longevity. Longevity's new new capital and they had the this is like the I mean there's lots of longevity conferences and things like that, but this one is is at the edge. They've they've got all the people doing the the headless bodies, the the Well just happened. Yeah, I I didn't get What if we're going to have to do that? Yeah. That's okay.

Okay. Yeah, Lighthaven is beautiful. I've been there for many conferences and many parties. Uh, you know, it's just like peak Bay Area hippie tech culture. Longevity conference looks sick. It does. It does. I'm sad that I didn't attend. Um, but I will next year. They have more conferences for you to attend, so no worries.

Well People, go to all our stuff. Watch us on YouTube. Enjoy it. We're we're collecting our infinity stones. We've got Sam and Greg and Alex. We have open invites out to Mira, Ilia, Mm. Who else? Demis, I keep trying. Demis tells me he'll come on. Because PR people block me. Uh make it difficult. So yeah, we're on a little bit of a run here. I think we should just go ahead, everyone. Let's just make this infinity stone thing happen. Let us know who you want on

Absolutely. Yes. Like who are the I mean I'm trying to get John Carmen. It's very difficult. But but I that Kinda like interested in the people who don't get as much attention but have fantastic big ideas, don't say yum. I'm over your own. Right. But people who who think a bit different, um, please let us know. Thank you guys for all the support. The podcast just like doubled in size the last couple of months and um go to Send Cut Send and make something. Hell yeah.

And we'll see you probably next week or soon. Thank you guys. The Corvary Podcast. Vance and or Kylie Robinson or the first time. Yeah. Mercer. Swartland. Thank you so much to Brax and Sen Katsan for all. Please leave us alone. Subscribe. Thanks, thank you See you again.