And, This Is Why Reid Hoffman Doesn’t Fear Artificial Intelligence

my pleasure to be here the first time in the Governor's match.

look at it thus far, it's not AI's fault. Doesn't mean there won't be an impact from AI and all this stuff and entry level jobs, but the pain that's being felt right now is overhiring from covid is tariffs, you know, screwing our economy and business planning, and when and when all of that kind of stuff happens, businesses go, I'm gonna do no hiring until I figure out what's going on. Right.

Some of it's like, well, we're doing layoffs because we hired too many people during the pandemic and and and then did this whole remote work thing which is not really working out and refactoring it, and da da da, and then there is oh and uh, and now we've got trade war going on with global tariffs, which are increasing cost to consumers, cost to businesses, costa and so like like, and we got volatility central like, hey, it's July. We're starting a new war, right like you know da.

So it's like like in all those cases, what businesses do. The very first thing I do is let's not encour any new expenses. It's let's not hire any new people except the very clear people we need entry levels are usually like, oh, these are people we need five years from now. Well, we don't know we need five years now, so let's not do that. It's also let's not do a new lease. Let's not like it's like, let's let's

just chill. So that's the primary driving actual factor. Now that being said, And by the way, there are a few places which are AI related, like for example, the metal layoffs are we need to free up costs for spending on compute and so we're gonna do So it's not that there's zero, it's just that the broad brush you know kind of college grad is not actually in fact yet, Like if it's a percentage from AI, it's like five, it's not you know, it's not thirty or fifty.

hyperbole from your personspective and your guys. You know you're a fan of Dariayes. I'm a huge fan of Darios.

getting ready. So I appreciate Dario's principle, his motivation, et cetera. Now, after he said that, I called Daria and I said, look what you said is not heard the way you think it's heard, right, because what people here is, well, if that's going to create a huge blood bath and that's the outcome, why are you building AI so fast? Why are you doing all the stuff? Right? Is it

just to make yourself rich? Right? Because what they hear is they hear the Hey, everyone, I have this really great technology that's going to like ruin half of your lives and good for me and sucks to be you. Right, that's what they hear. That's not what you meant to say,

but that's what they hear. And so and so I was like, look, I think the I said, Daria, the better thing to say is we're going to have a lot of job transition, and there's a lot of uncertainty of what's going on, and it could have a really quick, massive impact and we should be figuring out what to do on it, right, right? And is that so?

people who pause and the group of people who don't pause. The group people pause and go, oh, I hear you. The humanist stuff really matters and I care, so all pause, and then the people go I don't give a shit and they keep going. So then what kind of AI is built? Right? Not good? It actually has a negative impact. Right. That's the reason why I'm vehemently opposed to like this kind of like pause and kind of things, and say, well, what if we can get everyone to pause, Like, well,

what's your plan to get everyone to pause? Including China? And everyone? Look like, is this that all realistic? So my strategy tends to be, how do we keep like you want the good guys to win? E g. The things that are pro like humanist human you know, like you know, the Pope's awesome and cyclical, like you know, kind of like like keeping human beings at the center, keeping a notion of what is a positive to society.

By the way positive societies over years. That doesn't mean that there won't be massive transformation, things that will be painful and difficult to get through, but like having a this is how society is better with this as where we're going.

interesting avatar in that space. But this notion of trust and you know, someone may be listening to go okay, yeah, read this is easy for you to say, you know, sitting on the Microsoft board and obviously investing in all these places. You got two of your own AI companies, you know, come on, man, So.

trust before you do anything. Well, that doesn't really work, and it doesn't work in any of these places, right, So the notion is to say, well, do the things that ultimately are building trust over time, and then when people really investigate, like, ah, you're doing something that's fairly trustworthy. So, like we're talking about Dario, one of the things that Dario did is it said, Okay, we're going to build

AI with a kind of a constitution. I actually don't think they should have used that word, but like you know, it could be a it could be a set of principles like you know whatever, you know.

understand where we're going, what we're trying to do. That's the kind of thing that I think you know needs to be there. Transparency. Yes, that's that's the beginning, and.

that means or what that suggests. But it also has the origin story that played out very publicly with Sam Altman, with Elon Musk. All those origin stories of which you had a front seat, sir, front.

thing to make it into a huge thing. Is one of the things that kind of flows its Now I have the you know, the fortune of knowing all of the head like every head of all these labs and so I have a pretty good sense of what their actual moral characters are and what the things are. And many of them are good human beings. That doesn't mean they're perfect, right, but they're good.

to the extent possible. But what I mean those incentives aren't necessarily even good people for good behavior.

other kinds of things. So and so I think the incentive system. What you have to do is say, how do we tune the incentive system so that the major incentives mostly align with good outcomes. Now, part of the reason why is you already noted the England versus Poland and the industrial revolution. If we are the society that kind of has called it the primary pole position, and how AI does this next industrial revolution which I think is going to be bigger than the previous industrial revolution?

And where this then we can sort out how the economics society works. Like if you say, well we have the massive economic benefit it careers to our society, and like, well it's only these seven companies, Well we're in a society. We can broaden that out. Something you say, well, any any you know company that has you know, profitability above per employee now has an extra tax that's used to pay for all the rest society. And if you own

that industry, you can do that. If you don't own that industry, It's a little bit like when people you know, say, hey, I hate these social networks. And by the way, there's some real social network issues. Although I always, to my own defense, you're LinkedIn one.

part of the reason I'm an accelerationist. It's like one of the things I was saying a couple of years ago, is we want AI to be American intelligence. Right, So it's like like it matters, right, And and that doesn't mean at any cost. Nothing is at any cost, right, Like if you said, well, like it would it would destroy an entire generation of children. That's a horrific Like can we avoid that and still be acceleration at ansorus? I think yes, But it's like, Okay, what are the

things we do in order to do that? Now? I do want to wrap back to one of the things before, because I think this is very important given you know, we've seen you know, uh, you know, American college students going, I've I hate AI, right booing, Ye have you given a did you do a commencement? You know, probably smart enough not to do it this year? It needs that, yes, well, because you're showing up to try to offer something to help them, right, Like the usual protest and commandment speech

is sleeping you asleep? But what do you mean when do you make it? But it reinforces the anxiety?

the kids to hear, you know, the college kids. Crisis is opportunity. And by the way, you can be the AI generation. You should be using it. You should be going, hey, company X, you need people to help you, like AI aify your company. I can be the person doing it. You shouldn't be trying n opt out. It's a disaster for you, right, And I'm saying it for them. Look, I don't have any steak in. Like the entire current graduating class could all say we refuse to use AI.

It makes no difference to me, but it will be terrible for their lives. Right. And so it's like, look, embrace and figure out how to make it useful to you and then have that help amplify your career and life path.

It's like no, no, no, it's the drive to the airport that's unsafe. The plane is actually so much safer, right per mile per minute. Everything else is like no, the plane is much better. So it's like making policy decisions based on data, and we should be getting the actual data, not the hysteric kind of responses and start there is

actually in fact with important. Now that being said, you know, as a rough template, we want to be thinking of, okay AI is this transformative tsunami that's coming and within a small number of years jobs there will be a large number of jobs that will be completely transformed. Some of those jobs will be they're just all done by AI. Some of them will now be clerical jobs. What kind of jobs?

service says please put the A on. It's a lot more helpful, right, because you have a human being trying to follow a robotic script by looking at the screens or yeah, it's going to do that so much better, just like there's rules for human beings, but they're like looking at what's going on with the pattern of AIS and trying to reimagine that's not the bulk customer service jobs. So like that's one. I think there's a lot of like there's a whole classes of sales jobs that I

think will be much more AI. And you begin to get to this weird sci fi story where the AI salesperson, the sales agent calls the company AI agent to listen to the AI sales agent, and there's a whole thing that kind of navigates through. It's a whole weird, weird universe that will happen. That will happen, Yeah, en years and not three, maybe ten, like not twenty, right, right, and so and so those will be like kind of

swaths of jobs. But here's the thing, and it's that new task thing that was mentioning earlier, which is basically there will no longer be there were very few human jobs that are just humans by themselves. We will all have teams of agents that are working with us and doing But actually, in fact, what you can see from the pattern of already looking at it is you actually get to some pretty incredible increases in performance where the human brings in the things that the AI don't have.

And look, one of the questions is will the ais not have those for a long time? Will they get them quickly? We don't know it's all coming right. My bet would be we're very adaptive like this whole like human beings will be replaced and we'll have our cognitive faculties. Goes all the way back to the printing press and writing. Like I actually think there's areas of where we make good judgment, Like people say, oh my god, look at look at cloud code, like there's no need for engineers anymore.

We'll actually talk to a whole bunch of people who use cloud code. And I've used it myself intensively, and I've I've used codex and open ai, and I've used Microsoft Copilot. And by the way, some of it is just amazing, like amazing, Like if you had told me, like you would asked me even like say five eight years ago, would I be seeing this? I said, no, no, no, no, that's not like yet They're like, yes, here it is.

That's amazing. On the other hand, it breaks on weird shit, right, And so part of the human thing is like orchestration. It's like, okay, like, for example, how how does coding work at open AI. Well, they have a big screen and they have multiple agents working, and they're like, oh, oh that one's stuck. We got to get that one unstuck, right, da okay this, and and it makes them hugely more productive. Now if you thought, well, it makes them huge alial productive.

They're just doing all the work. We don't need anyone else doing all the work. It's like, look, there's infinite work. It's like, now maybe there will be say, for example, tech companies may more naturally be at you know, call it fifty percent of the current engineering crew. That doesn't mean that those engineers. It's like other engineering firms start more competitors, etcetera, etcetera. It's just the producttivity of how you operate. It's like the humans aren't replaced in all

cases by AI. They're replaced by humans using AI, and so you want to be the humans using AI. And then this gets back to I think this is a central point, is like, well, what's the thing you should be thinking about? Is one is monitoring, and then the other one is how do we help AI be part of the solution. Because the thing that's driving it at scale and speed is AI. We need solutions that work on the same capability set. So, for example, okay, how do I help AI? How do I have AI helping

people make job transitions? I want to be seeing that, right, So you're like, one of the things you could do right here at the mansion is you could say, hey, great, you know, California is the center of the AI revolution in the world. It's part of the reason why fifty three mattered. Hey, I want you guys to all come by and tell me about how AI could be useful in helping people all ranges. I want to hear about

blue collar, white collar, multiple industries. How does that help those people you know, find the right work, do the right work, you know, have pride in their work. I just we're going to have a we're gonna have a day here in the mansion. You're going to come talk to us about it because I want to hear you thinking about it, right Because by the way, ultimately if you're not delivering on this, then I have to apply more pressure because, like, my responsibility is to the citizens

of the state. And look, I'm very happy that we have the AI revolution and the economics flowing in from that and all the rest. But I care about all my citizens, So tell me what you can do for them. Yeah.

And that was what most interested me, And so like I looked at you know, do I do anthropology or psychology? Like I was looking at the whole range. But I was like, what's the thing that in doing this I could actually make the most interesting things. I've always had a belief that we evolve ourselves through technology, like this is a you know, these glasses, these are a piece of technology, this podcast, and that's actually how we evolve our state as human beings and who we are and

so on. Right, And so I was like, Okay, this AI thing, that's interesting, right, so I'll go do that, and I did it some Olcays is a multidisciplinary major, so it included psychology, included linguistics, included philosophy, so you know, did all of that as a part of it. And he went to Oxford and got it. Philosophies, yes, because well what I concluded at Stanford was none of us understood what thinking I'm speaking was, right, So here we are trying to build AI and we have no sense

of what that is. Maybe philosophers did. Went to Oxford included philosophers didn't.

or something. There's a lazy punitrard that. But is that punitry accurate to suggest somehow in the mind's deep minds of Google that sort of the origin stories started to take shape early twenty thirteen fourteen, range, How would you describe what we are addressing or dealing with today in the context of that origin story? Where did it really begin at a scale that we're now more accustomed to.

and so like cycling through it. And that was actually part of my conclusion in Stanford was like, no, none of these technologies, none of these current technolical approaches will work. So what's the thing that got me back in AI was a three hour meeting with demsisabas Uh, the CEO and co founder of deep Mind. And what I realized that he had that he had like he is the I think the the he and his co founder is the original kickoff.

internet and mobile. The revolution, a revolution, a massive revolution is here now. Did I know when I walked out of that meeting, you know, and at you know, King's Cross that I was like, Oh, actually it won't be the self play. It will actually be these these things called transformers, these large language models that read the trillion and a half words on the Internet and use that as a learning basis to create something. No, I didn't know that well, I didn't know is this is now

a revolution? And so I was like, okay, how do I help? And you know, for me, I'm not adverse to doing stuff commercially. Obviously I've done a whole bunch of stuff commercially. But for me, I look across the whole spectrum. I go, Okay, what's the stuff that I should do as a founder, as investor, What's the stuff that I should do as a content provider and author? What's the stuff that I should do talking to you know, people who care about society like you and others? And

what to do? Like, how do I go from you know, humanity society, industry. And that's the order of which I care about them, right, Humanity first, society second industry third industry can be very useful for society and humanity. But you like part of the like when we were talking about that earlier steering and shaping, well, we want to steer and shape industry to go. It should be on

average massively positive for society over time, right. And if that's not, the director in it needs to be fixed right now over time, not this year necessarily right, right, there's always costs of transformation and all the rest now

and so I went, that's the revolution we're in. And so for me, I think that's twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen, right, And it's and that's why when like Sam called me and said, hey, I'm thinking of pulling this thing together with you know, for AI for humanity, will you help, the answer is yes. It was one of the things where I had just gotten my partners at Greylock really focused on crypto, and I was like, oh, I'm gonna stop doing this crypto thing because this AI thing is coming.

And they're like, what AI thing. I'm like, Oh, it's coming. And and actually, you know, I think you know, I think my partner is at Greylock were the first venture partnership that saw GBT four because I got Sam's permission, I was on the board of open AI to say, hey, come in and demo this and and and show this because there was there was a six month period where GBD four was not public because we're like, oh is it safe enough and all the rest, and you know, they

were doing it. I was like, okay, look, I think it's safe enough. Is it okay to show the partnership? And Sam's like, yeah, yeah, this this since you're serving on a five one C three board of open AI trying to do this, this is the least we could do. Yes, you could go show them you know what's coming.

one in terms of association with the Trump administration. Musk allegedly and Larry Page, co founder of Google, had a conversation that, as at least Musk's telling goes, Musk was concerned that Larry wasn't taking this jen Ai seriously enough in terms of its downside risks, and decided to go off on his own, made the same contacts you made with Sam Altman and others, uh, and went down this path of a five oh one c three and tried to birth open ai.

very concerned about it. Now, you know, in Elon's case in particular, it's the you know, Elon has the definition of a Messiah complex. So it's like, no, no, I have to be the one building AI, not anyone else. So yeah, there's the there's a little bit of the I'm worried about it generally, but it's also the I'm worried it's you not me. Uh.

what this this notion of technology trends? I mean you reminded when what what what allegedly Larry said to Elon that freaked Elon out is what guys like Peter Teal couldn't even answer. You know, I think it was a seventeen second pause in an interview about you know, human beings and technology. But when you yeah, you sort of invited that in with the glasses, I mean, what what is all that?

the answers of those questions. Like the simulation theory stuff is like, sure, there's unknowns, like, for example, the classic one that you usually used to argue with this is we don't have signals that there's other intelligent universe in life, in the universe and so you know, like with radio waves and statistics and all the rest, we should have that. Well, okay, that's an interesting puzzle. That's an interesting question. Why do

we not have that? And but like and therefore we're in a simulation is like, that's a lot of cognitive theoretical infrastructure to explain this in a similar like like the hey, we have an unknown about the complexity about how human brains evolved and what the intermediate steps looked like, Well, therefore there must be a creator. Well there's a lot of it's an unknown and by the way, therefore them

must be a creator. And therefore, by the way, the creator must be my religion, not any of the other twenties. Like it's like what like it's like, no, no pause on the mystery, right, and then go, okay, we have an unknown answer, So there's a whole bunch of craziness. But I think coming back to the first part of your question, I think is very important because I think this.

I've been giving some speeches in Italy, like I gave one a Bologna and Perusia because I wanted Silicon Valley to remember some of the important humanist nature of the Renaissance, which is, what is it to really be a humanist when you're thinking about this technology? And it's not just

self declaration I am humanist? Like no, that that that's nice, it's better than I'm not right, But it's like, well, what is it to be humanist to say, Look, I have a theory about why the work I'm doing will cause a much better result for call it at least eighty percent of humanity. Then the next thing is, and I'm transparent about it, I'm talking about it. I'm giving you a chance to critique me, dialogue with me, et cetera, et cetera. And then this is a super important thing

is I'm not like a narcissist about it. I don't come to my theory of humanity because I go, well, this's good for me, right, or or I'm the most genius person in the world. Everyone else's theory of humanity is bad. Mine is the good one. But you know, engage in dialogue, get critique, understand kind of what's going on for this. That's what being a humanist for technology is right, and we have some right great. Doesn't mean that they don't make mistakes Dario sam et cetera. But

they're they're actually, in fact, they are committed. And you can tell they're committed because they do things that are not in their own economic self interest and they invest in it in order to try to make it work. Doesn't mean they're perfect, doesn't. I mean it's not worth speaking up and say, hey, do X do also more of X or less of why? Perfectly good thing to do.

It's part of the reason why we have the dialogue about it, to say, hey, the way that we try to make decisions about because because your answers, these technologies will build by small groups of people right and will have humanity level impact. And you're like, okay, you can't then say hey, we're gonna have a un global voting day.

That's not the way it's gonna work. So the dialogue and bringing up the concerns about what it is is that iteration is the way that we get to being more broadly humanist.

everything out and lock everybody out to buy politicians. Yes, I mean, so how does that play in? I mean, that certainly plays it. That is playing into people's anxiety in a profound and outsized way.

a good theory of the game. So the issue is say, and like for example, and I'll come back to AI, but this is like the mistake the dems made with crypto, which is like, there's a huge amount crypto wealth. If we just go attack it and go, hey, we're just going to try to kill all of you. The go you're trying to kill us. Okay, we're going to vote the other way with not just our votes but our dollars and all the rest. And it's like, okay, that's really painful and causes a whole bunch of bad outcomes

for society. So again you go, well, how do we shape it. It's like, look, we're not trying to like extinguish all of you. We're trying to make sure that crypto has the right positive function in society. And they say, well, I can't envision anything. It's like, well, I come call me. I can envision things. Right, there's payments, there's much cheaper banking systems, there's all kinds of things. Let's just shape it that direction. Yeah, I get it. You don't like

because who does like terrorist ransom coin? Right, like like you know, like there's a bunch of bad shit we should do bad shit about that, Or the question of well it's this random speculation. It's like, well, look, we do allow betting in various ways, let's try to contain it and make sure it's not too bad. You know, same reason why we go. You know, alcohol has a bunch of bad outcomes, but it's better for society if we go. Sure, it's okay if when you get to

age you drink, don't drive. But it's like that kind of stuff. You get to shape it right, because there's certain ways. Now you get to AI and you say, all right, an AI wealth generation, and it's like shit, this is creating a massive amount of economics that will have massive impact politically. And by the way, what shared across all this economics is a interest in not having the economics of the AI industry like trimmed, right. And by the way, some of that trimming is a terrible idea,

which is let's just reduce our own American wealth. Some of it, like taxation for helping the rest of society, can be a good idea. Right. So it's and you know, getting it right is hard, but I think it's doable. And it's like, well, then you go to, well, who are the people who would be with me on, hey, we should tax AI in some good ways, robot tax whatever else, and I'll make it happen. What are the

ways we do that? So we take off some of the AI wealth that fights on our side for helping society, and we fight against the other AI wealth that's like no, no, no, I should take my trillion dollars and be able to do whatever the hell I want. So easier said than done.

notion of equity, this notion of ownership broadly shared so that we can address some of that anxiety. We all have a mistake in the game. You tend to be on the UBC yes side of this equation. But the question I have for you is not where you are on that simple question the binary, at least in that context, which is hardly the binary. But the question I posed is how the hell you do it.

they're going to be sitting on their hands, right. And I actually think one of the things that you know you should do, and I think California should do, you know, uh it should be, is hey, you guys, uh, you know, we're only possible because of California, right, Like we provided the platform by which you guys could do this, could you guys, you know, disproportionately focused on helping our state and doing stuff we'd love to talk?

Tesla exists without the regulations.

was pathetic and courts agreed. Yes, well, and it's pathetic written out large for everyone to see. Yeah, that too, right now, It's like it's a court of law with with truth in like documents, depositions, et cetera. It's just pathetic. It's like the no, no, no, Like I'm trying to do anything possible to argue that you guys are wrong and I was right, and it's like, no, they were right and you were wrong.

been reporting on this et cetera. And that's because it's more important that I have this AI thing than this damage that we're doing to children and all the rest of stuff. It's like, it's crazy.

more dubious and questionable. There are folks out there, deeply more cynical than I am that just call it a dam Ponzi scheme period full stop.

a codex. I think Microsoft Copilot. I think we'll have a good entry here are all, you know, I think the fundamental way has changed the entire world in terms of how we operate. So and dropics willing to buy the revenue, but like that is your primary revenue thing in the thing that you're going public on, like this is in the government. Yes, well, and then you're like, oh, the dj is saying they've got to drop the lawsuit because this is part of our national scurity defense, Like well,

that's none of that's in their perspectives. And by the way, the entire XAI thing, Elon himself said it's a complete train wreck. We're rebuilding it. I was like, well, you know, if you had like honor integrity, you'd say, well, we'll hand back those government contracts because we just said our product was a complete train wreck. Right. It's like, you know, so just it's all corruption, I.

on that stay tuned for those that are tuning in on that, because.

the dots. And there's been a few studies DC Maryland that's sixty percent of the growth of those retail or rather residential utility bills have been attached to the issue of data or growth.

And by the way, who should benefit from that, Well, the local residents who should have a choice whether they want that or not. Their powerbells go down right as part of that.

it the right way, et cetera. Look, if you said you have to have like your cost structural increase because you have to have a one hundred and thirty percent contribution for the power stuff. They would sign that deal in a heartbeat if you gave the like if you you said hey, and and by the way, they do more. It's like, well, what are you going to do for local community in terms of jobs? Right, we want we want to see something serious here. Look, it's a simple kind of like like simple set of asks.

grid analysis and power running. And so then as you say, hey, if all of a sudden, all of the h facts and laundry machines and all the rest were intelligent devices that ran when it was cheap on the grid and all the rest and was doing power management net very positive benefit. And we've already seen Google do that with

their own data centers and all the rest. Like, it's a whole bunch of stuff there, And I think the same thing in terms of ultimately that doesn't mean that there won't be some things that are Ponzi schemes and some things that are major economic losses. But a bubble is oh, this isn't sustainable. It all just kind of falls down and it has domino effects other things. The short answer is, like nthropics revenue is limited by its compute.

It has more demand that it can provide right now, and so that like this isn't like oh, no one wants this. It's no, no, This intelligence at the scale and cost of electricity is massively useful, massively wanted. So doesn't mean you say well, maybe we built that data center for fifty billion and action ends up being worth forty billion, and we've got some operating losses, but by the way in operating it, it operates profitably and all the rest, and we just have to take a charge down.

That's not a bubble, that's volatility in a market.

know open Ai and Thropic and Google. Google's by far and away the cheapest, but the heat and usage is still an open eye and and and Anthropic and by the way, within the enterprise context Microsoft, right and so, so yes, that's a worry, but it's not really playing out that way now. Some of it is you know, for example, you know Google missed the curve on the code agent thing, right.

What happened with mythos what did it mean to you? It?

public sphere and also private shere banking, et cetera. Let's make sure that all of that is hardened early before this stuff is and we're doing a very responsible role out for all that. And that's the real And then the overhyped is you know, like you know it would be the end of the you know, it would just be catastrophe if it came out. And you're like, yeah,

I don't think it's quite that. I just think it's like more train wrecks, right, Like, there would be some real costs, but I don't think it would be the you know, end of civilization or anything else. Now, what I think that happened is because you know, in thropics trying to be responsible, uh we as far as I understand from the outside looking at the administration, there's a lot of different people jockeying for control and the AI sphere, there's there's there's people who are like, oh, we hate

all tech, we hate big tech. Let's just close all this AI stuff down. That's like banning, et cetera. There's people who are like, oh, this is a commercial thing, I should own it. It's like best end, et cetera. There's you know, sacks going there should be no controls here. The only way that AI becomes American intelligence is there's

zero control, you know. And so like there's a melee within the UH, within the White House to which tends to really only the factions that tend to ultimately win is you know, is there a big payoff for someone in the clyptocracy, right, so, I think. And they don't like anthropic because they also like to be that we are the big you know, swinging you know, things right in and we don't like that they're not rolling over and going, you know, yes, sir, you're my master. And

they're like, they're principled. And by the way, we live in a country by which uh, you know kind of uh, individuals are citizens, organizations, companies must follow the law. But the law is not I do whatever the fuck you tell me to do, right, it's we follow the law, yes, right, both and yes yes, and so.

of Americans. Of things that we do and so worth and it's like to say, no, no, you must be following hair leader's commands. Whoever hair leader is, whether it's a you know, uh, you know, uh, left wing version, right wing version, whatever it is, Yes, it's like no, no, no, it's like we follow a rule of law together. There you go.

I get it. It's a challenge issue. It's not straightforward, okay, but this would be a would have been a very good chance to say no, no, all of us principled companies should stand together and we should sort this of it all together, right, And so we're like, we're not going to jump in. We also think these principles. And what happened is he quickly deluded himself as like, oh, this is solvable technically. It's like, no, the Anthropic people are good technically too. There's from Open AI, and he

was oh, shit, that doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah, that's the reason why Anthropic was going, We're not going to do it this way, right, And so it's like and you know, the part of what happens is the competition gets so ferocious that it's like the ah, I'm just communien. It's like, no, no, there are some places you put the competition aside, and when it's humanity and society, you put the competition aside.

an Apple esque, you know, Steve Jobs, Johnny sort of. This is, you know, imagining the future without the constraints of what you already know a race or mania, forget what you already know, design a project, a product for the for the AI agent. It's not constrained by the thinking of the past.

you know, and there's what's happening. That's an amazing transformation. There will be within a small number of years some amazing AI bringing into the work into a workplace. Will it be the kind of Johnny you know, reimagination of the phone, et cetera kind of thing. Will it be the rebirth of manufacturing in America through robotics and all the rest. Will it be autonomous vehicles which you know we'll call will bring enormous like health savings, you know, deaths,

other kinds of things enormous. And by the way, there's obviously job transitions. Although by the way, like we're short a lot of truck drivers.

you care about environment? Well, if you can actually in fact have the grid manage all the more efficiently massive environmental impact, right, so you want all that And it's like yes, And by the way, you say, well, what happens the truck driver jobs? Like, well, one, not a lot of people doing them. They hate the fucking jobs.

And then two, yes, the central thing we should be doing and this age of AI revolution is how do we help figure out large swath of people, like get new kinds of jobs, whether it's entrepreneurial new starts, whether it's things that we're doing with society, whether it's like all of that stuff. We need to lean in heavily too, because the jobs will be changing. And most people say, legitimately,

I like my job. I don't want it to change, and you're like, yeah, it happens, right, and we'll help, right. But that's that's I think how it so much of the focus.

and energy. I was talking to Ezra Klein about this and back east a week or two ago, and he said, be good to mix in I'm paraphrasing him, and I want to talk out of school some of the good stuff along the lines of what you now are sprinkling in and you're you're investing very directly just in the area that we you know, you talked about twenty thirty years ago. People were focused on the issue of breakthroughs in medicine. Yes, breakthroughs. I mean I can live longer,

healthier life. So I mean, where are we Let's talk. Let's now paint a more positive picture of what AI can do for good for society, not just for Elon.

goes a child's simplicity tool relative biology. But now that we've got scale compute, it's like, Okay, what's the thing that is going wrong with leukemia? Can we something that allows us to monitor stuff early, allows us to figure out what might be going wrong and something that might be an easy therapeutic that might be as simple as

an injection or a pill. Because you create a small molecule, an antibody, a protein, et cetera, that combined with the you know, kind of the thing that's going wrong and disable the bad thing and not have serious toxic side effects. That's a difficult charch problem. And right now what we have is we have And by the way, I think we'll continue to have genius clinician PhDs researchers doing stuff.

I don't think it takes away their job, but we have them like it's like they're doing all the computation by hand and they're trying to be brilliant and figure out something. So like figuring this out takes them a decade to have a maybe I've got I started a decade and I got one maybe right, Well, I can now go all right, here are like I did today's compute,

I generated one hundred maybees. Let's sort through which of these things might be worth looking at more, Which are I should earn it more, et cetera, And and and and how do we run that through the entire process by which we do, of course we want to do safety checking and so forth, and is our theory that it is is non toxic. Okay, we've we've included in our in our search and how the air works. But

let's test it, right, and let's run through it. Like we should have that because that's part of what makes our medicine system. Like we have the envy of the world in the pre RFK junior FDA, you know, kind of like of of like gold plated medicine. Right, So when the reasons like if you're if if it's accepted here, it's accepted everywhere, right, and and let's let's let's keep our rigorous standards. Maybe we could figure out how to make it more efficient in various ways. I think that's

a good thing to do. But and then deliver more medicines. And by the way, this is part of like the AI for humanity. Is if you said, like and you know, I don't know, like what I will categorically assert is AI has the best shot in human history of curing all cancer. Right, Like if we if we can deliver even our percentage of that, right, that's huge.

large so so it's not about modernization. It's not just about the commercialization in the context of an ROI that is in numeric and I know there's the sort of free enterprise case that that is. You know, we don't even get it at the larger philosophical point.

not exist. Because what you need is you need to be able to apply scale teams with scale resources, and like scale teams I mean thousands of people, tens of thousands of people, scale resources billions, two hundreds of billions in risk environment where a lot of this will fail as you're going, no other sector other than the commercial

sector can do it. And that's because people go, well, sure, I'll build a billion dollars here that I might lose, right, because I'm not going to then be castigated for it or else because it's like, look it's my billion dollars, I'm trying to do it, etc. And that's part of what gets to the scale compute, scale data centers and all the rest now, So we when we think about this is we say, well, how do we shape it?

Back to some of your earlier questions about like, well, what should you know, folks in your chair be doing? Like what we want in your conversation with ISRA, what we want in short order is at minimum three assistants given to every citizen, state, country, et cetera. One medical,

one legal, one educational. And we want them to be very competent, and we want them to be essentially equivalently free, no matter if it's like a low cost does a matter, if it's like ad subsidized, a matter of like whatever, And it can be done without the state paying anything. Because if you go to say Google, Microsoft, Open AI and thropic and you say, look, if you're willing to build this on what you're doing, what would you want from us that would make it worth your while to

do it? Because, by the way, the money you'd get from us, you don't care about relatively all the omeerning you're getting like just being paid. We don't have to spend public money on this. What do you want from us?

They might say, well, you know, we got like we've got some permitting problems and these three data centers and say, well, as long as you clear with the local community jobs electricity sort will help you with your permitting problems if you do this right, like or oh well, look, we would love to be in the healthcare business, but like,

the medical liability stuff is so intense. Could you give us a channel of safe harbor that could be by an independent review committee that you set up from the amazing hospital system in California and say, hey, give us a parameters of safe harbor to operate. And if you give that, then we'll be learning and we'll be building an industry off this great and then we will provide a medical assistant that's twenty four to seven available to

every citizen of California. May I prefer the US, but we're just sitting here in californ Are you fine anything of that, because then, by the way, I have access to this kind of medical thing of twenty four to seven, I can call a doctor and get an answer for something I need. Very few people have that, right right, I would love it if every single person had it for their kids, for their partners, for their grandparents, for

their family members, for their friends, et cetera. And by the way, these things can give really good medical advice. No medical advice is perfect, but they can give really good medical advice. So there's medical advice. And so it's like take them the kind of medical thing that only the ultra wealthy have access to and make it democratically

available like every citizen. Legal assistant, right, Okay, currently, like like law law is expensive, right, and so currently like when a guy, when a person's kind of going into like signing a rental contract or an employment contractor anything else, most people can't afford lawyers, right, and I'm like, I

trust that it probably works out. It's okay, et cetera. Right, Well, legal assistant, like it will help you with your rights, with what goes on with with how to interface this, Like that's why we have these laws to help protect you. Now we have an agent that can help navigate that and say we want to make sure that's provided to every citizen. Nice, right. And then education, same thing, and

they say they're with the education.

oldest daughter graduation, but certainly my youngest son. That we'll see that you already have ten percent of people on two thirds of wealth. You have a thirty year old's not doing better than his or her parents for the first time in American history. There's just growing anxiety between the imbalance between the rich and the poor. You've got twenty states, it's still seven dollars twenty five cent minimum wage,

people working full times at ending up on welfare. I talk about corporate subsidies, so those corporations are getting benefit of that. You talked in terms you use the word coletocracy that a lot of people are using right now. And I talked about regulatory capture, and I talked about that concentration of wealth ultimately becomes concentration of political power, et cetera. What do you make of the world we're

living in today? What do you make of the state of our union in relationship to all of this.

tariffs lead to better economics for your average citizen. Well, yeah, maybe he doesn't buy eggs and gasoline, you know, and so uh, you know, no one who understands how economics and economies work, yes, right, and so, and it just it just goes down the list, and then you get to the like like the absurdity of like maybe that like the iconic one is uh, you know, when Trump's being given the plane, even Laura or leaves the leaves the plane, leaves the boat. No, no, don't accept that.

haven't been going for you know, months. We're not like I appreciate the fact that the market's like, oh, really hopeful it's back and we're gonna lower lower the price of oil futures. This will work through.

it was a mistake. Okay, these things can happen. Someone gets you a billion dollars in crypto, Yeah, yes, you're bought period. Yeah.

guy success. Maybe he's different this time. Maybe he learned his lesson after all, you know, being on the receiving end of you know, so much stress during the Biden years. You must have gotten calls from friends of yours that did go is like, read, brother, I'm just doing this because it's the right thing to do for my company. I'm a fiduciary. What I mean, what how did you You chose not to do any of that? You're paying a price for that. I want to talk about that briefing.

But you chose not to. Most folks chose too.

of the reason I don't like. You know, I got these funny phone calls from people saying, hey, you know, for twenty million dollar is the right thing I can make your your your Trump problems go away.

what's the basis of your Department of Justice investigation? Like, do you have any evidence? Do you have anything?

By the way, totally legal to finance legal cases. By the way, it would even been financial little legal cases to say, hey I get a percentage of the proceeds. That's actually like no, no, no, I think what's important here is that a that that a VIC, a survivor of sexual assault, can have her day in court with an American jury who makes the decision. Yes, I will I that that is an important thing as being Americans. I will I will finance that, right versus financing a ballroom, yes,

versus finance and wall room. And I have no economics. It was literally like like like if economics come back from it, she is the survivor, she should get that, right, I like, I am just helping her have her you know kind of ability to speak her truth in court. Twelve jurors, probably at least three of them were Trump voters, right, you know, twice demonstrated is nope quick universal you know, like you like kind of you know, like the entire

journey went yep, this is this is bad. And now because it's like wow, you know, so now the DOJ should be investigating this. They started with will and will will investigate Egene Carroll right, and you're like, so wait you're investigating the victor, the survivor and the victim of sexual assault, which uh, an American jury has found in favor of So you, as the DJ are investigating her and now no, we're investigating the thunder right, well for what? Right?

Like you know, I was like, and by the way, would I do it again? Yes, like a h a woman who has been assaulted by a very powerful rich man, she should have her ability to speak her truth through a jury.

maybe it's not. Who knows, who knows.

for the infinite catastrophe that is Trump too. But like I'm hearing that people feel pain and feel that there needs to be a change in DC is broken. That's going to be important, yep. And it's you know, including like, hey, until we figured out what's going on for us, could we like really limits slow down what's going on with migration because like like I don't know how migration is better for me, right, so you know that kind of stuff.

But I think probably the most central thing is there's a lot of Democrats who don't understand why business is so important. They don't understand it pays for everything. It pays for the Medicare, it pays for Social Security, it pays for jobs. It's like really important. You got to be the I'm pro business, right, it just got to be you can't be pro job and anti business, yes exactly.

So it's like stop being like, stop doing anti business rhetoric because people go, wait, that's totally broken, right, then that's what part of what this like socialist means. Right, It's like, so like be pro business. Now you may say, well, I want business to contribute more. Okay, be more specific about what that is, and then go on that as part of what you're doing. It's like, look, I'm very pro business, and I think business can contribute more in

the following ways. I want business to succeed, and I think we should get business like it's a I want business succeed. Of course you do. It's what gives us jobs and everything else. And so being pro business in that regard and I think that's that's part of the thing where there is like I just don't think it works to say the real problem is in earlier elections we weren't anti power enough, where anti power means anti business, and so it's like, no, look we do. Look, all

societies have pillars of power. They have pillars of power in politics, they have pillars of power in business, they have pillars of power in celebrity. They have pillars of power. And what you really want is a distribution of power. Now, when you get to a trillionaire, you go, hey, he should be limited about how he can buy elections and do other kinds of shit, right, Like that's important because

that's a corruption on that kind of power. But by the way, part of the reason why, like I have not been worried about the scaling tech companies is because if we were this is one thing has had like eight plus years ago, If we were five to seven scale tech companies heading the three, I'd have a concern. If we're five to seven heading the fifteen, they compete with each other and they're balancing out their power and

all the rest. And by the way, I'm right right in Nvidia, Open Ai, and Thropic it's more and more and more competing with each other. And that competition is part of how we govern the system in terms of how we're doing it, so being more business intelligent and pro business generally, and the thought shouldn't be how do we limit business? The thought should be how do we shape business to help society?

were implying earlier that there was an opportunity there. Yes, and they just turned their back because of the excesses, but without looking at the sort of baseline benefits of blockchain or democratizing access to banking and not having the friction and the capture of the banking system and the fee structures and the rest.

firefighters opposed it. That's why vast majority of organized labor opposes the California Billionaire's Tax, which I think is an incredibly important point to make. It's not just you saying it to me, who's well known in my opposition that said, it's at a federal level. This notion of again you say progressive tax system, but this notion of a tax system that does but inheritance needs to be reformed. Does it stepped up basis need to be reformed.

go to, I'm now charging with seventy percent tax. The answer is, oh, I'm now going to work more on how are I not pay the seventy percent tax than you're in the next dollar? Roughly at fifty to fifty, many not all, but many people go, I'll just earn the next dollar, right, I'll find now. But the problem is the net effective rate for wealthy people is wall below.

But progressive tax is good. And of course the incentive is to try to avoid tax, right, I mean the natural deetive everyone has that incentive, right, but let's try to make it so that it's that you're like, okay, because this is the thing I like when people call me and ask me about the the California wealth tax, I say, look, here is how I would try to introduce new taxes in California. Whether it's raising the income or house, I would say, hey, we're going to tax

very much disproportionate from the wealthy. The wealthy have had a huge benefit of being in California because that's how they've made all their wealth and all the rest. So yes, we wish that they would just go along with it.

But of course everyone wants to avoid tax, but like pitch it to them in terms where you're like, I'm fixing the problem, right, Like, hey, we're creating a sovereign wealth fund for being able to fund ongoing you know, kind of prosperity of California's Like Okay, then like okay, I like, I'm I still would rather not pay more tax, right, but it makes sense to me that it opens the door.

going to continue on going. And you're telling me this is one off. I don't believe you by that. Amen. Well, I appreciate that sentiment, and obviously I.

grudging success. There's aspects of this that I think there's nuance on what you're saying that I think is important as a Democrat.