Pivot - TikTok Lawsuit, Reddit's Debut Earnings, and the 4-Day Work Week

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

Kara and Scott are live at the Finance Forward Conference in Hamburg, Germany! They discuss TikTok's lawsuit against the U.S. government, as well as the latest earnings from Reddit and Disney. Then, Microsoft and OpenAI launch a $2 million fund to counter election deepfakes. Will that amount of money do anything to move the needle? Plus, Germany is the latest country to test a four-day work week. Could that actually improve productivity? Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. And we are in Germany.

Perfect. We are in, in fact, Hamburg, Germany at the Finance Forward Conference. We're also part of OMR. We've had some great conversations here so far. Let me get, hold on. Okay. You get to interview Kim Kardashian.

I get to interview a guy who's injecting gorilla semen into his eyes trying to fill 14 again. Yes. Like who's in charge? How did she get Kim Kardashian? By the way, did she ask about me? No, no, no. She didn't ask about you at all.

She doesn't know who you are. She could stay at any hotel in Hamburgurg yeah but she stays in my hotel coincidence no she coincidence she doesn't know who you are i think she's a little hot for the dog i think she's never thought of you a day in her life anyways how was your conversation you were brian johnson yeah you know he's one of these tech bros who's spending he's so this guy brian johnson spending three million two million bucks a year to try and live forever good luck with that yeah um yeah so sort of interesting i just go where they tell me to go it was fine did you find anything out about living forever don't smoke okay what else? Don't drink alcohol. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

That's it? Really? And live forever. Would you want to live forever though? This is the problem. There's already too many old people. We don't need people to get any older. But if you're healthy and old and contributory to society, why is that? Yeah, but most don't.

Most are expensive and unproductive. You're not going to get shit for that. So, yeah. So ice flows is your, like... Well, look, I think we should be focusing on healthspan, not lifespan. I think the problem is people are living longer and longer lives, but they're not living more and more rewarding lives. Yeah.

And so I'm more focused on healthspan than lifespan. Ah, interesting. Interesting. You know, my next book's about this. That's what I'm writing about. Yeah, with your brother. I'm going to do all these things. Yeah, Kara's brother is a very impressive doctor. And you're writing a book on health tech, right? Well, health tech and cancer research and living on Mars and Zempik, everything, all the sort of... So living on Mars is what I would refer to as suicide. Yeah. Yes. Yes. But a lot of people want to as suicide. Yeah, yes, yes.

But a lot of people want to go there. You know, Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. Let's let him. Let's let him. Yeah, that's what I say. He should leave as soon as possible. And right back on what it's like. That'll be great.

That'll be fantastic. So again, I spoke with Kim. Do you have any interest in anything she said? What did she say, Kara? A lot of things she was um it was really interesting she'd just come from the Met Ball where she a lot of controversy over her corset um she was wearing a corset that made her yeah super skinny I wasn't I didn't even know about the corset um and then previous to that she'd been at a roast where she got kind of pilloried

weirdly enough they roasted her over Tom Brady who who I think is somewhat of a, I know you like him, but I think he's kind of a dope in real life. IRL. He behaved badly during this thing, I thought. Why do you? Because it was a roast of him, and he just kept, what he did is insulted Kim Kardashian's. She got insulted at his roast?

Yes. I didn't see that. She was like, I can't believe you're here. Did you have to leave the kids with Kanye? I think that's off limits. Yeah, but, oh, no, they said worse things about him. No, they did, but why tell it to her? I mean, she divorced him.

So anyway, I just was irritated. I'm not on her behalf. She's fine with that. He's beautiful, which I think counts for a lot. So I would go easier on him. But one thing we talked about was interesting. She has a lot, she has skims. She's an entrepreneur, which is interesting.

But one of the things, she had gone to the Met Ball and one of the things that was happening as a phenomenon, the Met Ball, for those who don't know it here in Germany, is this big event where all these celebrities dress up in outlandish outfits. They're beautiful actually. And it's kind of a marketing event. It really is a marketing event in a lot of ways for celebrities to show off themselves in some way, interesting way. And Rihanna and Katy Perry did not go, but there was AI imagery of them in these really fantastic dresses there. So much so that Katy Perry's mother was like, oh, that dress is beautiful. Did you have a good time at the Met Ball? And she's like, I didn't go. And so it was kind of interesting to think about that you may not someday need a Met Ball. It was just, it was all sort of fake, deep fakes all over the place, which is, you know, funny and fun in that

context. But right now we'll talk about in a minute where deep fakes are, but it was somewhat disturbing to see that, you know, the possibilities of what could happen. The thing that keeps, so it's a huge spectacle. The stuff I keep reading about is that these individuals showed up in dresses that were so complex and so over the top that they literally couldn't move, that it was dangerous to move. And a lot of, there's been a lot of articles saying that this is a metaphor for a larger society where we become so obsessed with our aesthetics that it's literally impairing our day-to-day lives,

that we are willing to not be able to move such that we draw attention to ourselves. That's what I've been reading a lot about. Yeah, and I think the amount of money they're spending right now, given the world, but they get that every year. It sort of feels like Hunger Games in a lot of ways, you know, the sort of outfits and stuff like that. We're going to talk about deepfakes actually in a more serious way in a minute. But first, we're going to start with TikTok. TikTok and parent company ByteDance are suing the US government to stop a potential ban of the app. Our Congress in the United States passed a bill last month saying ByteDance would have to either sell TikTok or have it banned in the country. TikTok's lawsuit, which they just waged, says it would be a violation of the First Amendment

of the Constitution and that national security concerns aren't a big enough reason to violate free speech. We expected this to happen, this lawsuit, but it's expected to go all the way to our Supreme Court, and it probably must in many ways. It's sort of that kind of case. How do you think it'll go? What are your thoughts on that? Well, right away, it goes to the D.C. Circuit. This is really a battle of two really powerful concepts legally in the United States. On the one hand, you have First Amendment, and on the other, you have defense threat. And the First Amendment, basically, if you're going to shut down First Amendment, and this is the argument that TikTok will make, you have to show that you have tried

everything else. You've tried to find a bunch of alternative remedies. But we do have a lot of restrictions around media ownership by foreigners. Rupert Murdoch became a U.S. citizen in 1995 to get around this percent limit on ownership of a broadcast company. So we do have these limits. So it'll be a battle between First Amendment and defense threats. Typically, though, the reason why I believe that the government will prevail

is that if you look at court history or decisions, they're usually somewhat remiss to weigh in against the side of a law that was passed in a bipartisan majority way. So the thing that probably seals the deal here. It was also written slightly differently than the previous. Around defense and trade asymmetry as opposed to when Trump tried to do it, he didn't have the power of a bipartisan passage by Congress. And it was full of errors. Right.

Always with him. So this feels, the way they're handicapping it, you can now bet on anything in the U.S. The way they're betting on it right now, the line, if you will, is 72% believe it'll pass, 28% believe it'll not be ratified. Right. But it will go to the Supreme Court. They will appeal. You think it'll be appealed and go to the Supreme Court?

I do. Because I think it's one of those issues we have to make a point on. I think the bigger issue, as we've discussed, is that, and I think they're going to use this in their argument, is that it doesn't apply across social media. It just applies just to them.

And so they're singled out. And then the issue is once, I think they are going to lose, is what happens to it. And what happens to the algorithm, which China will not allow to be transferred into ownership. And what China does, so far, China's been relatively, you know, just beating up the Apple store a little bit. But what is China going to do? Take the money and run, which is going to be a lot of money. They're certainly

not, as we've said, give us their algorithm because it'll prove what they were up to, if they were up to anything. And I'm certain they probably were. And so it'll be interesting to see who buys it and whether it's worth anything at all. You know, it could be the decline of TikTok after this. But here's the thing. The government or Bidenance, neither are going to win or lose. Yeah. You know why?

Everyone's going to get rich. This will be settled a few days before the first opening arguments. Right. Because I believe through the course between now and the nine and 12 months, you're going to have a series of legal opinions that convince ByteDance that they're probably going to lose. And if they test it and lose, it's going to be very ugly because they'll be forced or rushed to do something.

Instead, between now and then, and this is what people don't get, there's a lot of light between the forced divestiture and a ban. And that is, the Chinese are very smart. The Biden administration has a lot of very smart people, and they can negotiate bilaterally with each other instead of negotiating through the courts. So they will come to some sort of accommodation that gives the White House comfort and gives ByteDance something they feel comfortable with. Because as we get closer to the court date, the same thing is going to happen here that happened with Elon Musk in the Chancery Court. As they get closer to the date, the CCP is Musk in this case, they're going to realize they're likely going to lose. And the day before, they'll settle. So give me just very quick, we'll move on from this. Who

would be the buyer for this? It cannot be Steve Mnuchin. For those who don't know, he was the Treasury Secretary under Trump, and he's a persistent chode. But you can look it up. What do you think the owner is going to be? It has to be a technical owner, correct? With lots of computing power. It's going to have to have such massive compute. But at the same time, everyone that has the compute probably immediately raises FTC or DOJ concerns, antitrust concerns. So if you think about AI, they're making investments in different companies

so they can pretend it's not them, right? Open AI might as well be called Microsoft AI. They are making investments in different companies so they can pretend it's not them. Open AI might as well be called Microsoft AI. If you look at the biggest AI companies, whether it's Anthropic, whether it's Perplex, all of these things are either being funded or controlled by the same juggernauts. And the reason they're making corporate VC investments, so the amount of money that Microsoft has invested in AI is greater than all VC investment in AI globally and the reason why they're doing these investments is so they can pretend that they're

not as big and as powerful as they are so this is the dangerous thing here is the concentration of wealth and power is aggregating to a small group of players but what they try to pretend oh it's not me it's open AI, it's OpenAI. Oh, I don't have a seat on the board. Oh, Sam's been fired by that board. You know, even though I don't have even a seat on the board, I'd like him back.

What do you know? He's back. Make no mistake about it. It's the same concentration of power we've recognized over the last 20 years. The same players control AI as have controlled big tech. And it's all U.S. owners, just to be aware without any regulatory things. So it's going to be a big issue for Europe going forward, I suspect.

I suspect it's going to be Microsoft. You think it's going to be Microsoft? Microsoft. Wow. I know. Most valuable company in the world then gets the most ascendant platform. Right now, TikTok. But this thing, they own all those gaming companies. company in the world then gets the most ascendant platform. Right now, TikTok.

But this thing, they own all those gaming companies. They've owned, they just have a lot of stuff that it fits with really well. I don't think of it in terms of fit. I think of it as one company being that powerful. TikTok's the most ascendant platform in the world. Most companies will try and dress up their optics and they will try and inflate and present their best foot.

ByteDance, in my opinion, is sandbagging their numbers. I think their numbers are actually stronger than they want to release. They would have gone public. No company would be this big without going public unless it had different objectives. The objective of the CCP here is fine. If you want to get rich, we'll let you do some secondaries. But we have the

ultimate propaganda tool that has never, never been implemented before. This is the Mossad, the CIA, the NSA, the GRU coming together and seeing their wildest dreams come to fruition in terms of a surveillance and a propaganda tool, mostly a propaganda tool. And the thought that they would have to go public and then start disclosing just how powerful they are, it's the only reason I can see that they're not public. Yeah, and it's a global company.

I think Microsoft is a global company. They're going to get it, and they're going to, that's what I would do, and then they will dominate the next era. And you think that clears FTC and DOJ? Why not? It doesn't own it. They don't know. They own LinkedIn.

It's not like there's anything else they own. And there's powerful interests allied against them, Facebook and Instagram. So there's plenty of competitors and whatever Elon's doing at Twitter. What about an investor group that comes up with tens or hundreds of billions of dollars? They need the compute power.

It's just they have to do with something. See, Microsoft is also moving into search. And for those who don't know, Bill Gates is quite involved at Microsoft. He's back advising such and a dollar. When you say search, you don't mean Bing. You mean... They are trying to do AI search around Google.

And then they'll get Apple's AI contract, maybe. If Google doesn't, that'll be the next big competition between Microsoft and Google, and then we'll see. Microsoft, I don't think it's going to be an investor group, unless Elon decides to do something. Anyway, let's talk about Reddit. Speaking of another company, smaller, much smaller, it beat revenue expectations in its first quarter, just went public, reporting over $200 million in ad revenue. Pretty impressive. Shares propped on the news. That was one of the most successful IPOs of the year back in March. You said there were a lot of opportunity here, as long as they sorted out their terrible monetization and got their advertising in line.

CEO Steve Huffman is saying Reddit is, quote, commercial by nature. Ad revenue is not enough. They've been trying other things. Obviously, they have data. They're trying a range of things. Any additional thoughts on that? So just disclosure, I'm a small shareholder, but I'm a shareholder on Reddit. This was a great earnings report. It exceeded every estimate. Revenue was up 48%. User growth beat expectations. Their monetization, their ARPU, average revenue per user, surpassed that of Snap. So it's doing, and there's this kind of this unknown that's playing to their advantage, and that is,

remember a year or two years ago, Twitter supposedly had this unrecognized or unlockable source of revenue, and that is everyone thought their data would be great for an LLM, and they'd be able to monetize that. They haven't been able to do it. Reddit has shown some signals that they might be able to monetize what looks like fantastic risk for the LLM. And they've been making deals. So this was a dream earnings report for Reddit. It beat on everything. It was. They're a very important company. One of the things that's interesting about it is that

it has decentralized content moderation. They had content issues very early under Huffman. He dealt with them. He didn't pretend they weren't there. And their decentralized content moderation is a lot less expensive and a lot less toxic. very strong in video and everything else. It's a really interesting small company. Again, one I thought would get bought before anything. It might at some point. The consolidation will continue in tech in those areas. But it's one of those unsung companies with a very good CEO who was one of the founders who doesn't do a lot of jazz hands around himself and his building stuff. And they've got a number, they are dependent on advertising. It's almost 80s or whatever. It's an enormous part of their business. And that's where they're very much like media companies. That's where their weakness is if they don't come up with other revenue streams. And they've been trying, but up until now they haven't. He

had a number of other things he was talking about, but most of them have no uplift yet. We'll see if the data thing works. He's been making deals, but it's small. I think he's another unsung CEO who is, again, the disease we have in Silicon Valley is all these CEOs who have personal trauma that they take out on everybody else loudly. This week's candidate is Jack Dorsey,

who has quit Blue Sky's board and gone off Blue Sky, and now he's back on Twitter as a factotum for Elon and is suddenly retweeting a lot of conspiracy theories and everything else around NPR or everything else. In Jack's case, it's sad. Most people around him, including old friends and everything, call me all the time and are sad about his, I would call it a decline. And he's sort of isolating himself. And today, he's continuing to do it. He's been retweeting what are essentially conspiracy theories. It's sad. He was an

interesting person. And so you see either there's a bifurcation between people, leaders of Silicon Valley, some of whom are excelling like Steve Huffman, Sachin Adela, Tim Cook, and then some who are just losing their ever-loving minds, as far as I can tell. Apparently, I'm not a doctor. their ever-loving minds, as far as I can tell. Apparently, I'm not a doctor. But they definitely have, there's something happening in the water there that's causing them to seem insane. But I don't know.

Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Speaking of someone who isn't insane, another very good executive, although he had some issues with the earnings, Disney earnings, CEO Bob Iger saw the streaming part of his business is on track to profitability.

It's not quite there yet, but they only lost $18 million on streaming this quarter compared to over, this number is incredible, $600 million in the same quarter last year. That's a good thing, actually, because it looks like it's just like Netflix. It's moving to profitability. Investors weren't sold on that news. Shares sunk 10% based on some jitters around the parks business. Growth is expected to be flat there in Q3. The CFO is blaming higher operating costs,

inflation and quote, global moderation from peak COVID travel for that. People went to the parks, jam them and now are back to normal behavior. Scott, let's focus on the streaming. This business is leaning into password crackdowns and sequels. Password crackdowns have worked really well for Netflix. They've been taking away passwords. My kids are depressed now because they can't use my Netflix thing.

And now I have to pay for more of them. That helped Netflix a lot. So Password and making sequels. They've got a Moana sequel, one for Inside Out and our favorite Deadpool. There's two Frozens coming up soon. They've sort of leaned out of the Marvel universe because it's gotten the MCU because it's a little tired. So talk a little bit first about streaming and then where every, I think the parks will be fine. They'll be fine. They'll figure it out. This was really unusual because if I just read the earnings report, I wouldn't have

guessed. It's usually not a very volatile stock and it lost 10% of its, I think it was even 11% of its value at one point in one trading day. And what's interesting is I don't think they saw this coming because the market's been focused on their streaming losses. And effectively, they're now break even. is I don't think they saw this coming because the market's been focused on their streaming losses and effectively they're now break even the streaming market is just an amazing case study in economics because overspending built a huge market but there was people were spending too

much capital now it's being massively rationalized in an incredible clip what they weren't expecting was that the analysts would get so jittery about the gift that was sort of the consistent gift they kept on giving, and that was the parks. And when they gave forward guidance saying, look, the sugar high of COVID or people wanting to get out post-COVID is wearing off, and the parks might not produce the massive EBITDA, and it took the stock way down. This might create some unnatural acts at the company because the bottom line is that if this stock goes sub 100 and underperforms i don't think nelson's going away the activist this was an activist investor who was trying to get a seat on the board typically what happens with activists

is that the first board meeting they lose and then management has a year to get the stock back up. And if they get the stock back up, everyone's happy. If they don't get the stock back up, the activist gets a couple seats at the second board meeting. That's where we are now. And so I would imagine this was a really ugly earnings call for Bob, because if the stock does decline over the next two quarters, Nelson's back. Third time. Nelson's back. And I think the board is going to get very serious about a succession plan and trying to present a new strategy.

Which he's got to be interested in. But this is, there's just no getting around it. The market's reaction to this was surprising and ugly for Bob because the only thing that keeps Nelson off the board, unless Nelson's already sold, which I doubt, is if the strategy they put in place seems to be getting traction.

Yeah, and they've got a lot of allies. It's Nelson, Peltz, Ike Perlmutter, Elon's involved with them. There's a whole bunch, there's a whole pass of people that are going to start agitating at Disney. That said, the streaming business is going to decline

in losses and then become very profitable, I suspect. As the others, you know, we have a company called Paramount that's in play right now, may or may not sell. It's been a big mess. There's a whole bunch of streaming consolidation about to happen, and the people that are going to be standing are Netflix, Disney.

Time Warner. And Time Warner. HBO. And even they have some problems going forward. We'll see. What would you do if you were him? What would be the move you would make besides Moana and Deadpool? I would probably shed the cable business and let someone roll up all the bad assets.

The TV business. The TV business, excuse me, the TV business, the broadcast, the TV business, ABC, et cetera. And I would focus on streaming in the parks. Parks are your cash cow, streaming is your- The problem there, CBS will also be on the market. But I think what the opportunity there is for a private equity firm to come and take all of them and cut costs and go bad bank and consolidate all of them and just try and cut costs faster than the business declines. So sell those off, all the, and ESPN, everything. Yeah, because right now those businesses, what they do is they create a lower multiple on the entire business. Because typically when you're having a conglomerate,

when you have a bunch of businesses, the CEOs love it because it creates a lack of volatility. And the bigger the business, the higher your compensation. But investors don't like it because I don't need Bob Iger to put me in the parks business. I can go buy stock in a park business or I can go buy stock

in a pure play streaming company called Netflix. So investors don't like it. And typically the way investors punish CEOs for being in a bunch of businesses that may or may not be unrelated. And some people would argue Disney has a flywheel, but typically in a conglomerate, investors will find the worst business with the lowest multiple and they will assign that business. They will assign that multiple to the entire business. So oftentimes- Dragging them down. So I would imagine if the stock goes down to say 70 or 80, Nelson will switch his complexion to this company needs to be broken up.

Right. And they'll have to sell a part. He's got to sell that. It's going to be hard to sell a broadcast network right now because there's so many and the money's declining so fast. But you could make a lot of money, as you've noted, on the decline. Linear networks, you can soak them till the very end and keep them in business. A business like Yahoo, I recently interviewed its CEO, is doing rather well now, if you can believe it. They're great businesses. They're just in decline. They still hemorrhage cash. They're just in decline. Yeah, yeah. Or you can do something, bring the costs in line, and then it's not even in decline. It just is maintaining in a lot of ways.

That's what's happening at Yahoo. We'll see what's happening. Pick me one CEO for that company. Anybody you could pick. Disney? Disney. Not the ones that are necessarily in contention within. It's Dan Walden, who's had some problems at ABC. Jimmy

Patero, who's had some problems at ESPN. Patero, who's had some problems at ESPN, the Parks guy who now has some problems. Pick anyone outside the company. Evan Spiegel or the guy who runs Fubo, Fubo TV. He seemed pretty bright to me. Okay, someone like that. Well, Evan is incredibly talented, incredibly creative. I think he's pretty good with shareholders.

Snap is actually doing pretty well. I think they need, quote unquote, some youth at the senior management level. All right, I'm going to give you one that you're going to love. Sheryl Sandberg. Sheryl Sandberg to run Disney? She was on the board.

Well, I, well, look, I think- Things have calmed down enough around her, except for with you. I think anyone who does that kind of damage to the mental health of young teen girls should have that type of opportunity. Okay, all right. I'm just telling you, she's a good operator. She knows all those businesses. Okay. Yeah. You let all the men return. She's going to return just like the rest of them.

Anyway, let's get on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about AI and election fears and a four-day work week experiment we've heard about here in Germany. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter. These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists.

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Anyway, it's a big year for elections around the globe. Oh, by the way, Kim Kardashian didn't ask about you at all. Just a reminder. It's a big year for elections. I'm just saying. I expose myself to you and you jab. I jab because she doesn't even... I mean, if literally she walked past, she wouldn't know who you are.

Yes, she would. She would know me, right? She knows you. She would know me, right? No. She knows me. Right? Yeah, okay.

All right. It's a big year for elections around the globe. Roughly 2 billion people are heading to the polls in over 60 countries, including in the United States. You might have heard of our election. It's deja vu of a 20, whatever, 2020. The land of the dead.

The land of the old and the dead and the court bound. And of course, one of the biggest concerns is how artificial intelligence and deep fakes will be used to influence people. So this week, Microsoft and OpenAI say they're putting aside two million, I couldn't believe this number, I thought it was B b but it's m two million dollars to fight the threat of ai being used to quote deceive the voters and undermine democracy google and meta said they're already restricting election related content on their chat bots when i saw that number i it was laughable two million dollars to fight one of our biggest problems in the united states and And by the way, it's not

just deepfakes, it's actual presidential candidates who lie on a daily basis, including in court. And he's about to go to jail for that in court, which I thought I predicted and looks like he is soon enough. So what are your thoughts on this, the money they've spent and any thoughts on the election and deep fakes? So there's a general practice in business that it's not what you do, it's how you do it. And deciding to make a concerted effort, have a distinct group that would try and fight misinformation or deep fakes around the election is absolutely the right thing to do. Somebody did not check the how. The fact that these people who are so smart would be so stupid as to say we're allocating basically the security budget for

I bet they spend more on security for their CEO. I bet they spend more on kombucha at the headquarters. Two million is literally a VP doesn't even see that number. So this is, speaking of Sheryl Sandberg, an attempt to convince people that they care when they don't, right? This is what I call a Sandbergian move. I'm going to pretend that I care about you. I'm going to pretend that I hear you. We're proud of our progress and we need to do better. And it's clear when they create a distinct unit, put out a press release and allocate the same budget that they spend on diet Dr. Pepper across the organization, that what they were saying is try and do a head fake. Try and convince people that we care when we don't. Because we're not going to put anything behind this, but put out a press

release. And somebody didn't ask the question of, don't you think they're going to see through this? We're Microsoft. We have a $3 trillion market cap, and we're announcing that we're spending $2 million. You don't think people are going to see through the fact that we are being totally disingenuous and creating a weapon of mass distraction and trying to pretend that we care about this, you are going to see the biggest short-term threat of AI is not what I would even call deep fakes. It's shallow fakes. It'll be little videos that are AI altered just incrementally, just imperceptibly, that don't make Biden 81. It makes him look 83 or 84. That makes Vice President Harris seem just a touch more awkward.

Like you wouldn't even pick up on it because most deep fakes, you kind of figure it out that it's AI, but it's going to be these little tiny things and they are going to flood the zone. And then I love you. I'll give you, you deserve credit for this. Or three or four days before the election, find the swing states and the swing districts. This crazy thing about the American election is it's literally going to be tens of thousands of voters. 80,000 voters. 81,000 voters. In several counties in America that are going to decide this election.

What if they decide one of those swing counties or four of those swing counties are in fact leaning the way we don't want to go. So they put out a bunch of deep fake videos the day before showing shootings at those polling places. And by the time people, word gets out that this didn't actually happen, you're safe at this polling booth, people just sit and go, you know, I don't really love voting anyway. It's cold out and it suppresses turnout. You're going to see a bunch of shallow fakes leading up to it. Then you could see a bunch of very severe deep fakes. And it's just insane that these companies wouldn't get together and say, all right, for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days before the election, we are going to come to a multilateral, industry-wide, self-imposed ban. We're going to try and just get rid of anything that's AI altered.

And if your cat videos aren't as cute, we're sorry. If it gets in the way of some of your content, if it diminishes the experience, we're sorry. If it hurts our revenues, we'll deal with it. We make hundreds of billions, but they won't do that. In Europe, they stop doing stuff before an election. They do all kinds of things. They shut it down. They shut it down. It's interesting, the front page of the Washington Post today, states are taking control, at least the United States, of this, especially states that are now controlled by Democrats that didn't used to be because they're worried about the Republicans who are quite good at deepfakes, using them, be because they're worried about the Republicans who are quite good at deepfakes, using them,

especially Steve Bannon, who talks about it incessantly. But this is a story. In Arizona, election workers trained with deepfakes to prepare for 2024. And let me read from this. For years, election officials across the country have faced extraordinary pressure from rampant conspiracy theories and violent threats. But 2024 presents something more widely available and highly convincing AI-generated deep fakes. The FBI director told the National Security Conference there had been malign foreign influence campaigns in the past. This year's election cycle adversaries will move faster, enabled by new technologies such as generative AI. And local officials on the front lines of this. One of the things that's also been happening in our country

is there's an agency called CISA, I think it's CISA maybe, that helps state and local governments deal with these kind of things. And it's been under deep attack by all kinds of public officials, Republican, all GOP officials, who want to take the power away from anything to be able to, they want to call the election fake by making it problematic so that you can't fix the problem. They would like it to be confusing. And it's a real, it's so anti-democratic. It's really kind of astonishing. But the guy, the most famous person, I just

recently interviewed him, Chris Krebs was fired by President Trump for saying the U.S. election was not stolen. He's a terrific guy, and he's been trying to help. But even, I just ran into the director of CISA the other day, and they're trying to block her helping election officials all across the country. It's really, it's borderline. It is fascist. That's what it is. It's fascism, what they're trying to do, control the elections in that way. But it doesn't matter. A lot of these states are pushing back.

So it'll be on the front lines with local officials who are already under attack for violent threats against them that's been ginned up by right-wing media. I can't underscore how dangerous it is to be an election official in the United States. Feels like we're in like some country, you know, that we used to go help have better elections. In some cases, they're terrified. In any case, you know, so we'll see what happens. It's a very important thing. So we're going to move on to our last topic. I'm going to get to predictions.

Moving on to a major controversial topic, the four-day work week. Young people in the U.S. love the idea. The new CNBC survey found that 81% of workers, 18 to 34, think it would make them more productive. And 45 companies here in Germany are in the middle of a six-month period where they're trying it out. This experiment started in response to a labor shortage here. Other countries who've done the four-day workweek trials include Spain, Portugal, and South Africa. Also the UK, where about 90% of the companies who tried it made it permanent. Scott, yes or no on the four-day work

week? Let's talk about it a little bit. My company, so I'm trying to bring back the six-day work week. Yeah. I have a seven-day work week. The bottom line is, companies should be free to do what they want. And there's different ways to attract human capital. And right now, there's a labor shortage, I believe, in the U.S. and in Germany. There is. So giving people flexibility and maybe saying, look, we do a four-day work week, more power to you. flexibility and maybe saying, look, we do a four-day work week, more power to you. I like the idea of a different classification of worker called the care worker, who is taking care of kids,

taking care of parents, and that person gets additional compensation or flexibility such that they can work remotely, have more flexible hours, whatever it might be. But it should be up to the companies. What this really impacts is government organizations right because small i believe private businesses should be able to do whatever they want some companies say we're a good company you come here to you don't live to work you work to live that's great we'll give you a four-day work week other companies basically say you're super ambitious you want to work all the time and we're going to pay a lot of money because you're super ambitious and super hungry. Companies across that spectrum should be allowed to do whatever they want. I like the idea from a government level of instituting a four-day

work week because I would like to see government figure out new ways to increase their compensation such that we attract more talented young human capital into our government agencies, which have consistently shed great talent to private organizations. So I call colleges sort of government adjacent, but I like the idea of creating additional compensation through flexibility through government agencies. But private organizations should just assess the market and figure out what works for them. Well, though you have to sort of begin to think about the lack of workers, certain workers. I just did an interview, which I think is appearing today with the guy who founded Chipotle, your favorite eating place. And he had a problem

getting worker. I mean, he's not there anymore. He founded it and his new business is called Kernel. It's a vegan robotic, using robotic arms to cook. He's incorporating technology throughout it. It's a hub and spoke method where all the workers are in a central kitchen where prep happens. He couldn't find enough people in stores to prep the foods for Chipotle when he was running it. People didn't want to do that. So he keeps them in the hub doing that and doing really high quality prep work there. And then he uses bicycles to send them out to the stores, which have no back kitchen, really a small one. And the front is a wall and your stuff comes out behind a glass wall. Essentially, there's no workers out front. You order it on an app. And there's three workers as opposed to 20 that were there before.

And then they can focus if they want to being in the front on customer service, making sure. And they prep the things once the robot cooks them. And the robot is very exact. It's just an arm. It's not a very complex robotic device. So it puts the vegetables that were already prepped into the stove, pulls them out exactly the right time. No person gets burnt, not anything else. And then they dump them and then the people put together whatever it is, but it comes in via an app. And so it's instantly made.

So it's fresh. He's very well known for that, for fast food that's fresh and healthy. And it's doing rather well in New York. It's just started. And so it'll be interesting to see if we can create all kinds of technological solutions to the lack of employees in the U.S., at least in here, too. And so I don't know. I think it's fine if you can get your work done in a four-day workweek, if you're more efficient. I think COVID has already accelerated that significantly. I think companies are already doing the four-day workweek in a weird way, if you're more efficient. I think COVID has already accelerated that significantly. I think companies are already doing the four-day work week in a weird way, if you think about it.

There's all sorts of flexibility. I dated someone who was in their internship for surgery, and she used to go in for 36 hours straight. If you serve on an oil platform in the North Sea, you go on, I think, for two weeks and basically work around the clock, and then you get three weeks off. Firemen, there's all sorts, nuclear power, there's all sorts of jobs where you have weird, unusual flexibilities. I think it's a fantastic thing. I am not a fan of automation at Chipotle.

Escobar is my man at the Chipotle at Soho and he's one of the few people in my life that makes eye contact with me and is very nice to me every day. He's like, hey, Prof G, he knows me. He likes me. No robots. Yeah. Really? I think it's all going to be robots and food service. Why wouldn't they? They can't find the employees and keep them there. They really can't. They really can't.

I think it's going to take longer than we think. I think humans are- He's paying his employees that he has, and there's plenty at the hub. There's real people cutting. It's not robots cutting. But he can now pay his workers because he has fewer workers and fewer real estate costs. Everyone makes, even the bicyclists,

make $27 an hour with healthcare benefits and all kinds of other benefits, educational benefits and everything else. But this isn't about flexible work. You're making an argument for automation. Yes. Well, some automation and the stuff you can't get workers for. And with flexible work, I think if people can work that many days and I, you know, there is an argument and it's different here in Europe is, you know, we work too much in the United States. We really do. People, and we are starting to become, I think the young people are becoming more, less hard charging and less and more European in their orientation than you and I, for example. I think that's reductive. I think both you and I have extraordinary lives because

we work our asses off. Okay. And I think you don't get to enjoy that, but go ahead. By the way, I've been molesting the earth for the last 30 years. My reductive analysis is make your money in the US and spend it in Europe. But more specifically, more specifically, young people need to have a sober conversation with themselves, regardless of whether you find a company that has a four-day work week. You can have it all. You just can't have it all at once. And my sense is if you desire to be economically very successful or you want real influence, the marketplace will just figure out a way that the people who attain that are both talented and work extremely hard for a large portion of their working years. I think we keep looking for this notion that somehow

we're going to get to this new point where we can have it all, where we don't need to work that hard, but we make a lot, just a shit ton of money. I don't know any of those people. Beyonce works 60 hours a week. If you want to, if you want to move to a low cost neighborhood and you're one of those people that wants to work to live, God bless you. There's nothing wrong with that. But be clear, you just need to have an honest conversation when you're young. Where do you expect to be economically and from a relevant standpoint? And if you expect to be in the top 10%, and when you really talk to young people and you ask them hard numbers around where they expect to be by the time they're 40, oftentimes it's in the top 1%. The top 1% in the US per year,

I think $750,000 a year. Many of whom are inherited, but go ahead. Inheritance at the top 1%, but go ahead. There's a lot of- No, I mean top 1% income earners. Income earners. I think it's about 760 a year. A lot of people expect at some point in their life to be at that level. I don't know anyone that didn't start with rich parents who got to that level without devoting a great... I don't care what the government says or what there's a four-day work week or whatever it is.

The people I know... You work all the time. Yes, I do. You work all the time. Well, I'm not for a four-day work week. And I don't... I do not for a four-day work week. And I don't, I do not work very, I only work 30 to 40 hours a week now because I work, no joke, 60 to 80 for 20 to 30 years.

And the marketplace figures out a way to reward people who are both talented and work hard. And I have found, I have found that hard work and grit trumps talent. And everyone likes to think they're more talented than their average bear, so they're going to have a better quality of life than everyone else. I think it's a pretty simple trade-off. When do you want balance in your life?

Do you want balance now? Fine, you're trading off balance when you're a little bit older. I have a shit ton of balance now because I had almost none when I was young. So it's just pick your poison. You did note I do work a lot, but I happen to like working and I don't like to vacation very much. But you work all the time. But I like it.

It's not for money. It's not for anything. I enjoy it. But the notion that you can get to some level of success, such that we can enjoy the fruits of the world. You get to enjoy, we get to enjoy such amazing things. That's true. And the thing we both have in common is that we worked our asses off for extended periods of time. And I

challenge you to find anybody that has achieved a certain level of influence and success that didn't have an extended... Let me ask you before we finish this, but there is a feeling, and I feel it. You know, I have four kids, but the two of them are older. One is going to be a hard truck, works all the time. He's very work-focused. He understands what it takes. The other does. It's not laziness because he works really hard when he works,

but he's much more committed to not, like to being a parent, to doing softer things, I would say. And it's, it's, and his, some of his friends are like that. And I, I don't detect laziness in them. I detect why are you working? Different priorities. That's right. Yeah. More power to him. And I'm not saying that person can't be happy, but I'm saying that person will probably need to live in a low cost neighborhood and we'll have a smaller selection set of potentially very hot mates you want if you want to like kill it if you want to kill it buck up folks the only thing i can promise you is a ton of hard work the only thing i can promise you in your life is a series of

victories and tragedy that's the only thing i know that's waiting for you but if you expect to be up here i'm being redundant. I think it's an individual choice, but have a sober conversation about the trade-offs. I can't get over how many people in my class will say, they'll tell me what the revenue and income expectations are. And then I'll say, what's most important about your job? They don't say management or doing something interesting. They say balance. Like, let me get this. You expect to be making this amount of money

and you think you're going to have balance? Yeah. So you mock your students. Great. So, but when you think about that, it's, but I do believe that younger people in the United States have very different attitude. I think we are going to become less productive in that regard in the United States have very different attitude I think we are going to become

less productive in that regard in the United States I just I just it's just it's just I think we're moving to a more European mentality in a lot of ways in that regard I don't and it's not lazy it's just a different way of living longer vacations more I mean agreed that's what it's just a different way of thinking about it but But there is, there is, there's a cohort. I increasingly, so Europe, I would say, adopted what I'll call work to live. This is very reductive to take this many countries, but generally speaking, you know, there is stores closed in Spain from two to four. That just doesn't happen in the U.S, right? The notion that an entire continent would take most of an entire month off, that does not happen in the US. But I do see,

I think the US and Europe are melding a bit. I see a cohort of entrepreneurs in Europe that are bringing the same intensity, the same laser-like all-in focus that is more typical of American startups. I see more of that here. And I see more younger people in the US saying, I'm going to cash out a little early. I'm going to lower my burn. I'm going to focus on my emotional and mental well-being and my relationships and my health. I feel like the two are sort of converging a little bit. Yeah. Louis wants to marry a highly successful woman who works all the time and he wants to take care of the kids. Louis is Cara's oldest son.

He's funny. He's like, I got a whole plan, mom. And I was like, oh, great. The gold digger plan. By the way, that's just a really, have him call me. That's a bad rap. Okay. I'll tell him to call you. He's going to do it though. It's going to be great. In any case, we'll see what happens. It'll be interesting. I do think one of the things that is happening in the US right now is a lot of the AI companies getting funded. There's a lot of startup activity. And so we may, one of the things U.S. people are in love with is a gold rush. And so it feels like another gold rush again. So you're going to see, I think, a lot more activity. Everyone who had moved to Austin or Miami are all coming back to San Francisco. There's an intensity happening

again around the startup. But you're such a back to San Francisco. There's an intensity happening again around the startup. But you're such a fan of San Francisco. No, they are. It's the numbers. The numbers are there? The luxury housing is going up. Numbers coming back. People leaving Austin and Miami coming back.

Are people really leaving Austin? Yes, numbers are the numbers. And coming back to San Francisco? Austin, definitely. They may go to Miami, but a lot of people are leaving Austin. But most of the AI activity is in San Francisco? Austin, definitely. They may go to Miami, but a lot of people are leaving Austin. But most of the AI activity is in San Francisco. There's study after study

and luxury housing is back up again. Tax revenues are back up again. It's just, that's where the, that's where open AI is. That's where anthropic, that's where all the companies are,

again. I would argue that California has got a little bit of an AI boom right now. We'll see how long it lasts. There's just been so much capital. Tourism is at an all-time high again. I'm just saying, it's a fantastic state.

We've all said, the wealthiest people in the world choose to live in California or New York. And it's the place that people complain about the most. So the people with the most options of anyone in the world pick two places. And that's the places that everyone complains about, California and New York. Yeah. So we'll see what happens. Anyway, we're going to finish up, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. And we're back at the Finance Forward Conference here in Hamburg with our lovely live audience. Hello, everybody. All right, we're going to do some predictions.

I'm going to go first. I'm going to do a prediction today. I've been talking to a lot of Europeans, and they're all telling me fatalistically, well, when Trump's going to win, and I'm going to go the other direction. Today, yesterday, in Indiana, Nikki Haley, who is not running for president, in case you're interested, got 21% of the votes in the Republican primary. She broke 20%. She hasn't run for months. There is an anti-Trump backlash within the Republican Party. Paul Ryan just got up and said he wasn't going to vote for Trump explicitly. They usually say something quizzling like, well, I'll vote for the Republican candidate. That's what they usually say, which is Trump. There is a weakness in the Trump campaign that I think is

going to be really clear. Increasingly, the polls are starting to move in the other direction. Nobody's happy with Biden's age, but Trump has not acquitted himself in this court. He falls asleep and he has other issues around apparently flatulence, allegedly. But I have reporters there. They say it is actually accurate. He now cannot use the Sleepy Joe thing anymore. Cognitively, he's been losing a lot of voices. He's old. Let's just be clear. And his family has a history of cognitive decline, by the way.

I think we treat Donald Trump like he's a winner when he has lost every election since 2016. He lost the 2018 elections. He lost the 2020 elections. He lost the 2022 elections. And a series of elections in the United States around abortion and other issues, including in vitro fertilization, IVF. There's been a dozen elections in the United States that he has lost badly in deep ruby red states, Ohio, in Alabama, and now Indiana. Let me just tell you, I drive around Indiana. I don't want to go to Indiana as a gay person from the East Coast.

I just don't. This is not a state that is very welcoming to anyone. Nikki Haley got 21% of the Republican vote. To me, we treat Donald Trump like a winner when he is a stone cold loser every single time. I think women in the United States have had it. I don't think immigration is the biggest issue. New polls are showing that abortion rights continues to be a big issue. I have a lot of Trump relatives who I barely tolerate in the United States.

All the men go on, and the women sidle up to me afterward and said, I'm not voting for that person. And there's a quiet majority of people who may say they're Republicans, but will either sit it out or not go. I don't think young people are the big change agents in our country at all. I think they don't vote in the first place, although I just made my son register in Michigan where he goes to school and he's a better voter. He's not going to school next year.

and I think we're going to be surprised by the cognitive electoral and freedom decline of Donald Trump. At this point, it's impossible to tell. The two things that I don't think people are talking enough about is I believe the two things that will probably decide the election or one of the two things

are one, biology. We have one person who's 77 and obese. We have one person who's 77 and obese. We have one person who's 81 and doesn't appear to be that robust. We have seven months until or six months until the election. There's probably a one in three chance that one of them, I'm not talking about dies, but has a health incident. 77 and 81 year olds slip and fall. And the first health incident that happens to one of these people, it takes them out of the race because they're going to look really old

and they'll start lying and people around them will cover up and the news will come out, whatever it might be. So there's a non-zero probability that one of them has a health incident. The other thing that we're not talking about, and it's unfortunate,

is whoever RFK Jr. pulls the most votes from is probably going to lose. Did you see the latest story today? About the worm in his brain? He's got a worm in his brain. He had a parasite. It ate half his brains, apparently. But okay, sure.

Anyways. He's polling at 10%. Okay, so my prediction. What's wrong with us? My prediction, and this is a bit of rant, so bear with me. You've got two minutes and 40 seconds, but go ahead. My prediction is Bukayasaka. Does anyone know Bukayasaka? And I'll get there in a roundabout way. All right. I have had the best time here. It was so beautiful here today that I thought I'd walk around Hamburg. I'm super interested in World War II history. Hamburg played a big role in World War II.

It was actually the largest port for U-boats. The Allies firebombed Hamburg. 44,000 people died, 43,000 civilians. On the other side of Europe, my mom was five and her living in London, and her nine-year-old sister was killed in the Blitz. And for me to be here 80 years later is just such, I think, of us to be here is such a symbol of our progress. Democracies find each other. Think about it. I would say the U.S. Think about it.

I would say the US and Europe is arguably the strongest alliance literally in history. And I think about my mom passed 20 years ago, but if she knew that over the last 20 years, I had come to Germany 30 times. I've been to Oktoberfest three times. I've been to DLD five times. I've been to OMR four times. I was snowboarding in Stade earlier this year.

I will be in Zult this summer. And most importantly, most importantly, the love of my life and the mother of my children is German and was raised in Munich. And even more importantly than that, ask me what I'm doing this summer, Kara. What am I doing? What are you doing this summer, Scott?

I'm going to Cannes. I'm going to have a great time for the Lions Festival. That's not what I'm looking most forward to. Is it your birthday? I'm going to Greece. I'm going to do a boat thing, but that's not what I'm most looking forward to. The thing I am most looking forward to by a long shot. I cannot wait to see what this answer is.

Is in July, I'm coming to the first semi-final of the European nationals in Munich. And then I'm going to the second European finals with my two sons in Dortmund, which I'm most excited about because those people are fucking crazy. I can't wait to go to Dortmund. And then... And then... And then I am going to the finals in Berlin with my two sons. Put another way, I love Germany!

I love it here! You... You are such a suck-up. Kiss up? Yeah. All true. All true. Let me see if I can do this.

Scott ist ein suck-up. Ein suck-up. Yeah. I lived in Germany. He didn't. I lived in Berlin for six months many years ago when the wall fell. But we really appreciate it. We do love the democratic alliances that we form. He's

correct. And Scott will be here, so you'll see more of him here in Germany. And we really thank you. It's been a really fun time here, and we really appreciate the audience. We love our live events. And thank you for being part of our live pivot taping. Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Read us out. Just before I read us out, I need to close this circle. Bukaya Saka, I believe,

will be man of the match in the finals between Germany and England. I'm sorry. I believe England's going to win. As long as it's not... Oh, he's lost it. Now he's screwed. What can we agree on?

As long as it's not France. Okay. As long as it's not France. Okay. As long as it's not France. Anyways, today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Neil Saverio. Nishat Kerouac is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Say something cool in German. Thank you very much, Germany. Thank you.