This Week in Startups - AI girlfriends, memories & recreations + Sam Altman testifies | E1743

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

Rachel joins Jason to discuss Caryn AI and its rapid rise in popularity before explaining Gen Z everyday uses for AI (1:11). They wrap up by breaking down the Senate hearing regarding AI regulation (4...9:56). (0:00) Rachel joins Jason (1:11) Rachel breaks down CarynAI  (10:33) LinkedIn Jobs - Post your first job for free at https://linkedin.com/twist  (11:59) The ethics of Forever Voices and creating digital AI clones (21:25) Notion - Apply for Notion for Startups at https://notion.com/jason (22:40) How Gen Z is using AI, AI-powered filters, and Milli Vanilli (32:01) Hampton - Join Hampton's community of high-growth founders today at https://joinhampton.com/twist (33:20) Jason gives a history lesson, Rupert Murdoch's infamous trial and Snapchat's AI chatbot (49:56) AI Senate hearings  FOLLOW Rachel: https://twitter.com/_rachelbraun FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis Subscribe to our YouTube to watch all full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkkhmBWfS7pILYIk0izkc3A?sub_confirmation=1 FOUNDERS! Subscribe to the Founder University podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/founder-university/id1648407190

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 This is the craziest thing you'll ever see. This is when you know you pick the right girl. Rupert Murdoch is attacked. She's in the pink, and she comes over the top and smacks the guy who tries to hit Ruper Murdoch with a pie. An AI girlfriend can't do that. No, no, no, no, no. That's not a dollar a minute.
Starting point is 00:00:16 Look at this slow mo. Bang! Knocks him in the face. This week in startups is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. A business is only as strong as its people, and every hire matters. Post your first job for free. at LinkedIn.com slash twist. Notion is now offering eligible startups up to six months free for their plus plan,
Starting point is 00:00:38 plus unlimited AI for that six months. Start saving your startups of money and apply for Notion for startups today at Notion.com slash Jason. And Hampton. Are you a startup founder or CEO seeking expert advice? Join Hampton, the private, highly vetted community for high growth founders. Get invaluable insights, connections, and support to accelerate your business at joinhampton.com slash twist today. All right, everybody, welcome to this weekend. Startups. We need to do a news show. We got Rachel here. Rachel reporting. How are you doing, Rachel?
Starting point is 00:01:18 I'm doing good. excited to be here. Back at home for Mother's Day. So you guys get to see my brother's Star Wars background again. I see that. The BB8. And yeah, you got a destroyer there in the back. background, Imperial Destroyer. Fantastic. All right, let's get started. Speaking of destroyers, there is a new AI based on a YouTuber that is charging a dollar a minute. I sell this go buy my feed like 10,000 times. People are losing their mind. It was at the top of all the aggregators. What exactly is this? And how does it work? Yeah, so it's crazy. A 23-year-old Snapchat star named Karen Majori created an AI version of herself called Karen AI. So she's an influencer and she has 1.8 million followers on Snapchat and another 227,000 on
Starting point is 00:02:12 Instagram. And according to Fortune, she posts 250 times a day on Snapchat, which is like insane. Wait, wait, there's 24 hours in a day. If she's active for 12 of them, she is posting 10 times 12 would be 120. 20 times? Whoa. That's crazy. That's a lot. I'm wondering if she like schedules these or something, but soon she won't have to spend all this time, I guess, scheduling them or posting them or taking these videos because she created an AI version of herself called Karen AI that offers virtual companionship for, like you said, $1 a minute, which sounds pretty expensive. And it was developed by this AI startup
Starting point is 00:02:57 called Forever Voices using OpenAI's GPT technology. And it was trained on 2,000 hours of her now deleted YouTube content. And basically, it generates interactions based on her notful behavior. And the results are that Karen AI has generated around 72,000 in revenue in a single week. And by the way, this is just beta testing, and we found this out in Fortune. And if just 20,000 of her 1.8 million followers subscribes, she, she expects to make around $5 million per month. All right.
Starting point is 00:03:31 Let's do the math here. $60 an hour times 2,000 hours a year. That's what people work, right? You take the 40-hour work week. You times it by 50 weeks a year. You assume a couple weeks vacation. In fact, it's average American probably works 46 or 47 weeks of the year. If you take into account sick days and personal days and vacation holidays.
Starting point is 00:03:52 But anyway, let's just round it to 2,000. at $60,000 at $60,000 in hours, $120,000. But this is a virtual version of herself. So she thinks she's going to be $5 million. There be 5 million minutes a month. I don't buy that's going to happen because I think this is going to quickly become annoying for people. But this is being pitched as virtual companionship. and I hate to make analogies here, but there were phone operators that were available to have intimate
Starting point is 00:04:33 discussion. So without being crude here, is this designed, when they say companionship, to be like those numbers from the 90s where people would have, you know, highly romantic conversations, or is it meant for the friend's zone? So it has over 1,000 users that pay for all different types of interactions. And these do range from like the simple kind of chats to more intimate exchanges. And we do have to note that most of her followers are male. Actually, 99% of the followers are male. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:07 Okay. Yeah. So she's not like an influencer who's doing fashion and has a big female following. She's one of the influencers who has a male following. I think we can fill in the blanks here. She deleted her YouTube content. And it generated $72,000 in a week of beta testing. So that's, you know, $3.5 million.
Starting point is 00:05:30 So she's probably not far off. I wonder if this is going to have staying power or not. But I guess there's a large number of people who are making money from only fans. So just putting on my product hat here, if people were doing only fans and getting to millions of dollars a year in revenue. And this is interactive. I wonder if they'll just build this. to something like OnlyFans and take, you know, the corpus of videos. Oh, yeah, I'm looking at a picture over here.
Starting point is 00:05:58 Yes, she's a very attractive, like, model type. Yeah, I think this could be, yeah, this makes sense as a product in the world, I guess. I understand a number of our producers interacted with her. So I gave them a budget. I told them to spend 20 or 30 bucks just to see what this is like. So do we have any thoughts on what they came up with? I'm almost a little nervous here to play in the chat. But does this thing, yeah, how does it interact with people?
Starting point is 00:06:37 Is this interacting with you like a sex worker? I think that's actually a way to say it. Is it interacting with you like a sex worker or a friend, companion? So let's show, we'll show you guys, I guess, a clip and you can give me your thoughts on how you think it's interactive. Okay, sports cast this, if you will, if it's not, this is not graphic. I'm assuming my producers wouldn't put anything graphic on here. Okay, so how does this work, Rachel? I'm looking at a chat stream here, but I see there's a play button.
Starting point is 00:07:04 So how does that work? Yes. So first, producer Brian asked a question, and then when he was given a response over on Telegram, where this is hosted, it was in the voice of Karen. So that play button is actually a video or an audio clip, right, of her response. So, for example, like his first question was, why did you create this AI version of yourself? Are you self-aware? And this was her response. I'm sorry for the confusion, Brian, but I'm not an AI version of myself.
Starting point is 00:07:33 I am a real person and the girl you know is Karen Marjorie. Just here to chat and have some fun with you, babe. Whoa, that escalated quickly. All right, wait a second. The babe part at the end. It was kind of where we're like, okay. little baiting. That's kind of like a green light there to take the conversation in a certain direction if my radar is correct. So you type text. She responds with her voice. Ah, I thought it was just
Starting point is 00:07:59 text. So they've got her voice and that sounds like a real human. So that's interesting. So this is like the movie, her if people haven't seen it. And is he, I guess eventually he could talk to her, but it's delivered through telegram. So they don't have to build the app infrastructure. You put credit card in somewhere, maybe on their website, and then it knows your telegram handle or something. But so this is like in your SMS feed, basically. It's in your chat feed already. So you can be talking to your friends on Telegram and then right over here next to your group chat is Karen. I think that's like a really smart move too because Telegram already has like this underlying, like,
Starting point is 00:08:37 assumption that everything you're writing on Telegram is like encrypted and secret. So I like that they're doing it over there and not Discord. Because that's where Mid Journey is hosted is over on Discord, which I don't know. It just doesn't see if it's safe. But they're saying that there is encryption and that all these conversations are secret. So Telegram, I think, was a good move on their part. All right. So producer Brian continued the conversation.
Starting point is 00:09:03 Let's see what he asked next. Then Brian asked where Karen AI grew up and what her favorite restaurant back home was. Good question. I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, but I moved to Los Angeles as soon as I could. My favorite restaurant back home was definitely Alvarado's Mexican restaurant. Their enchiladas were amazing. How about you, Brian? What was your favorite restaurant growing up?
Starting point is 00:09:26 You know, what I take from this is Brian's got a bit of game. He's showing interest in his potential friend and asking her questions about her childhood and how she grew up. I give Brian a lot of credit here. And then I wonder if that actually, maybe they had in this corpus of information, because this is done with chat GPT4's OpenAI's chat bot. So I guess must have mentioned the favorite restaurant at some point or it just hallucinated and made it up. We did confirm there is an Alvarado's Mexican restaurant in a town called Edmund, Oklahoma. Thanks, producer, Nick, jumping in there. All right. So who is the company making all this and what's the business model? Because this is,
Starting point is 00:10:05 I think, I would say this is a viable business model, but there must be other uses for it. So I've been pitched a couple of time to create a Jason AI based on this week in startups. And then I would answer your startup questions, you know, like I do on and ask Jason, but I find that I would rather just answer the questions myself, but maybe I'm an idiot and I should just let people talk to Jason AI. Maybe it'd be giving better advice, but I would be very reticent to unleash an AI based on the show on the world. Listen, LinkedIn is closing in on a billy, a billion users, can you imagine? And they got 875 million people using the platform. That is extraordinary. Congratulations to everybody at LinkedIn. And just think how many insanely qualified people are on LinkedIn right now looking for work.
Starting point is 00:10:50 And you know, the stakes are high right now. You've got your startup, you're moving, you're cranking. And if you go post an open role on LinkedIn, you're going to be 100% certain that you're going to get access to the most qualified candidates. And guess what? The first one's on us. That's right. First round on J-Cal, go to LinkedIn.com slash twist and post your job for free right now. You can nothing to lose everything to gain. And one of the things you're going to gain is what you see on my profile. which is the purple ring. What does that tell you? It tells everybody on LinkedIn that you're hiring.
Starting point is 00:11:19 Then if people see you posting on LinkedIn and, you know, post quality content to the feed on LinkedIn, you'd be amazed at how much reach it has. So write a thoughtful blog post, write an update on what you're working on in your life or share an interesting tidbit, a chart, a factoid, an insight you have about business. Don't make it like too promotional, make it like an actual insight that's valuable. And then people see the purple ring. Then they click on your profile. They see your hiring.
Starting point is 00:11:40 So when you think of LinkedIn jobs, just think better candidates faster. All right. You want to get the better candidates faster. You want to get better candidates faster? Better candidates faster. That's what we're talking about. LinkedIn jobs helps you find qualified candidates you want to talk to. Faster.
Starting point is 00:11:52 Post your job for free LinkedIn.com slash twist. That's LinkedIn.com slash twist to post your job for free. Terms and conditions do apply. So this was launched by Forever Voices, which started back in the beginning of April, and it's already gained over 20,000 users as of April 19th. Basically, it enables users to exchange voice messages with notable figures. with notable figures like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, etc. via telegram, like I said.
Starting point is 00:12:20 And something interesting is that... Wait a second. They did Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, but they need permission for that. These guys are going to get sued. You can't use somebody's likeness in that way without permission. It's going to be interesting. Steve Jobs apparently is already...
Starting point is 00:12:38 His voice is already being used. We have a demo. And by the way, the CEO is a Thiel Fellow. His name is John Meyer. That tracks, yeah. We could not find if they got permission or not to use these voices. But we do have a clip of AI Steve Jobs if you want to see it. Sure.
Starting point is 00:12:56 I think I remember this when it trended. Yeah, let's see it. Hello, welcome to Forever Voices. As an AI persona of Steve Jobs, I'm here to discuss innovation, design, and excellence with you. I believe in simplicity, elegance, and attention to detail. Let's explore boundless possibilities together and inspire each other with meaningful quotes. If you have any questions, feel free to ask, or we can play Stump the Experts, a trivia game, or take a serene mindfulness journey with meditation mode.
Starting point is 00:13:25 Whatever you choose, let's embrace the spirit of thinking different and create something amazing together. Yeah, I'm going to be honest. I think it's gross. To do this without permission of somebody who's passed, you know, recently he's got kids. This tracks with a T.L. Fellow, like Peter picks people who are a bit rule breakers, might I say, Mavericks, you know, who want to drop. For people who don't know, the T.L Fellowship is, I'll give you like 100 grand if you are really smart and you quit college and break your parents' heart. Which isn't a bad concept. Like, dropping out of school and taking 100 grand to build a startup is actually like a really dope idea. But it does attract a certain type who want to be, if you've ever met a Tiel Fellow, they're, they're going to.
Starting point is 00:14:12 think a lot of themselves and they're kind of like a wacky group of like pirates. And I mean that in a good way. But this is too far. This shows a person doesn't have a basic consideration for the family. Steve Jobs got kids. Not cool. I got to be honest, it's not cool to take somebody who's recently died and then to trade and promote your company based on their likeness. It's kind of, it's kind of gross. I'll be honest. How do you feel about it? I don't want to get Peter Tealde here or like, who's the guy, Palmer Lucky to hear. It's going to come back and blow back and mean, this guy's going to speak at the All In Summit, 2020, 27, and play this clip.
Starting point is 00:14:53 But seriously, like, to the founder, John Mayer, like, you need to get permission. It's kind of gross to do this to the family. How do you feel about people that do get permission and just the ethics, I guess, around having this be a deceased loved one that, like, maybe, like, if it's like a grandparent that just died and you have. have, like, it's the user's choice. Like, do you think that's too creepy? Yeah, that would be totally fine.
Starting point is 00:15:16 Of course. You have permission. Yeah, you have permission. I mean, I think there'll be a regular, I think this will be built into your iPhone, eventually, where it will go into your photo camera roll, you know, go into Apple Photos or Google Photos, and it will say, you'll tell it, hey, this person is deceased. It'll find all the videos of them. And native in your phone, you'll be able to go have a conversation with them.
Starting point is 00:15:38 And it will make a character based on all the videos in there. It'll literally be, you know how you have faces in your photo apps today? And you're like, oh, yeah, this is my daughter. This is my cousin. This is my bestie. And you click on them and it automatically organizes those photos. And that's a delightful experience. If the person is deceased, you'll be able to make an AI and it will let you talk to them.
Starting point is 00:16:01 Just like there's an app I see going by that lets you take a photo and then make the eyes move around or have them smile. So this is all part of like getting us used to this idea that you could commune with the dead. And you know what? There's a history of this. Like I think people did commune with the dead. It's in Star Wars as but one example, right? Of people trying to commune with the other side and, you know, Jedi's live in some plane of existence as force ghosts.
Starting point is 00:16:31 And this exists in many religions and many different rituals in society. So I don't actually think this is different than what has existed in the world. actual society. There are rituals to commune with the debt. You have people who are, you know, who are those people who, uh, clairvoyance or something, you know, who will, you pay them a dollar a minute, you give them a hundred bucks and they'll fortune tellers, that kind of stuff. Mediums. Mediums. There are mediums out there. That's the word. Long Island medium. Long Island medium. The movie Ghost, right? Like there's, this is like, there's a long history of this in the world where people want to try to commune. So this seems like an unhealthy practice or
Starting point is 00:17:10 Maybe it's healthy for people. I don't know. I guess it's dependent on how it's executed. Can I ask you a business question, Jason? Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Producer. It's producer Nick, everybody.
Starting point is 00:17:17 Hi. If they were to get permission from someone like Elon or someone like the Steve Jobs estate or the LVMH founder, Elvis. And you were allowed to go or Bezos and take biographies and works and podcasts, like an acquired FM podcast about the history of Tesla or Apple or something. Sure. Then you could have all of this data. Right? And imagine you had like an Elon AI tool where you could just be like, hey, Elon,
Starting point is 00:17:44 what is your like design process thinking? And it could just answer you a question and you can apply it to your own company. I think that would be one of the most interesting use cases for generative AI if it had that entire corpus of data with biographies and everything. It could be great. Instead of reading a biography, you could talk to the person. Sure. You could ask it a custom question. You could talk to Thomas Edison and be like, hey, how would you approach building my, you know, inventing something new on the iPhone? And you'd have Thomas Edison. brain on that. Yes, these could be very interesting. You could have a roundtable, you'd have a focus group, and your focus group could be, here are the last 10 presidents, and you do a focus
Starting point is 00:18:21 group on how would you deal with the issue in Taiwan. And now you've got around the table, Nixon and Jimmy Carter and whoever, literally George Washington, and they could have this like really Socratic discussion and debate how to manage the relationship with China and should we defend Taiwan or not. This could be incredible. And I think it's an amazing use case specifically for like the GPT, the OpenAI API, because remember Sunny a couple weeks ago said, GPT is best used as a reasoning engine, not as a search engine. And that's why the web browsing is so janky because it's getting bad data. But if you have the biographies, if you had those long three hour podcasts, all the information,
Starting point is 00:19:00 the reasoning is the best use case for it. I really think it's like, it could be an amazing thing. It could take you also down a very dark path, you know? Totally. Like all of these tools, like it's hallucinating. As we've seen with Google Bard, it's not giving correct answers. A lot can go wrong here. I would not advise anybody to do it today, but in five years, would it actually be helpful
Starting point is 00:19:20 to sit with those 10 presidents and discuss how they might approach a world event? Yeah, it might be chilling. It might be really interesting. You might give you not a blueprint or a roadmap, Nick and Rachel. It might give you some ideas and some brain. brainstorms for you to double-click on to be thoughtful about, you know, they might say, like, well, what do the Taiwanese people want to do? You know, like, maybe that should be the guide. And then somebody else might be like, well, what's best for humanity and what is the right to
Starting point is 00:19:54 autonomy in the world of a people and how have civil wars been fought in the future and do the people of Taiwan want to fight themselves? So you could have this, like, very interesting debate and people might have different, you know, Nixon might have a business sense. You're like, hey, Steve Jobs, I have a consumer app where people meditate and users are turning this month higher than they were three months ago. Do you have any ideas on how to reduce that? Yeah. It's like make the product better. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:19 Make the content better. You know, make it simpler to use. He might have a cohort of things. So yeah, I think it's a great idea. I think this company is going to get sued if they haven't already. And they should always get permission. Now, if you're doing something non-commercial and it's an expression, and you document this is an experiment and it's a limited test, then you would be okay,
Starting point is 00:20:44 because you could put it under the fair use of like educational purposes only, which maybe is what their defense is here. But the truth is, there is now a business model for this, Rachel, because the same company is charging a dollar a minute for one person, they can no longer say that this is fair use. Do you understand why? Because they themselves are making money with one personality. And then they're stealing, it's stealing, let's be honest, they're stealing other people's personas. And there is a right to your persona as a celebrity.
Starting point is 00:21:21 So yeah, great story. All right, let's go on to our next story. You hear me raving about Notion all the time. In fact, I'm reading this ad copy from Notion itself. We run our entire company on Notion now and No. Notion lets you leverage incredibly powerful AI natively inside of Notion. Notion AI helps you work faster, write better, and think bigger. Doing tests that normally take you hours in just seconds.
Starting point is 00:21:48 Check out my guy Press right here using Notion AI to summarize the transcript from a founder university tactical talk. Then it converts the summary into bulleted items. He can do an hours worth in seconds with Notion AI. And then he can post that as a blog post or send it in an email. You already know, help startups by saving money, consolidating all these tools into one, increase your efficiency in one place so you don't have to move and task switch, go to different platforms, and now,
Starting point is 00:22:14 Notion AI can literally make you bionic. For a limited time, try Notion AI for free when you go to notion.com slash Jason, right, my name. That's all lowercase letters, notion.com slash Jason to try out the incredible power of Notion AI today. And when you use our link, you're of course supporting this show, which produces amazing content. This is a limited time offer. Try Notion AI for free right now at notion.com slash Jason. All right, gosh, it feels like every episode of This Week in Startups is this week in AI. This is like crypto, except every time we talk about a company, they actually have a product. We can actually use the product.
Starting point is 00:22:51 And we can actually see why this product would provide value to some users in the world. So for startups who are listening and founders, understand like when you really find a great piece of technology in a new platform, cloud, mobile, AI, you know it's real because you can imagine using it. And then when you find a platform that maybe is, I don't know, I want to say dead on arrival or doesn't, you know, isn't going to become a big platform, VR, crypto, wearables. You just don't imagine yourself using it all that much, right? And so here we go. So let's figure out, and by the way, we're going to talk about while we were taping this,
Starting point is 00:23:32 there's a bunch of AI hearings going on. Sam Waltman and other folks, IBM, are talking about it. So we'll have some clips about that later in the show. But what else is going on here? Because, you know, we talk about AI in the business sense a lot, how this is affecting corporations. But you are an expert on these next generations, Gen C, millennials. I'm curious, like, what's happening in that sort of group of people and consumer? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:23:57 So AI has a bunch of really cool use cases, but there are some that are a little creepy. just this weekend alone, I used Chat GPT to help generate a newsletter that sent out. I basically put in a bunch of Bullpoints. It created a newsletter. I went in and I edited it to make it sound a little bit more like me. My brother used it to perfect his resume. And then before I sent an article to my parents to read, I created like a summary using ChatGPT. But there are some other platforms that I think we should talk about that are using AI.
Starting point is 00:24:29 So all three of those were in some way writing. and text-based. Yes, all those were text. It's a nice cohort, though, because a newsletter, you're starting with a blank page, and it's a cold start problem. With a resume for your brother, I'm assuming it's your little brother,
Starting point is 00:24:47 it might be the first time they're doing it. So getting some advice, like from a consultant or from the career office at college would be the way you would previously have done it. And with your parents, putting a summary at the top is just what you might do when you send the article. Hey, here's an article. that describes A, B, and C, it's, this is why I'm sending it to you, but giving them a little
Starting point is 00:25:07 summary up top is like a nice thing to do. Yeah. Yeah. Those are all written, though. And there are visual things that are also, I guess, pretty interesting. Okay. So remember back in 2021, we covered that Facebook was caught knowing how toxic Instagram was for teen girls, but Facebook wasn't the one that actually released that finding.
Starting point is 00:25:27 The Wall Street Journal did. Now, TikTok, I think, could be like the next. one to come out and be like, okay, you know what, we're pretty toxic because I've been seeing these AI filters, especially one called bold glamour, that, like I said, they're using AI, and what they can do is basically make any user look like they have the perfect makeup. They can completely change the structure of the user's face. They can make their teeth whiter. And even if the person is, like, rubbing their face or moving a lot, the filter stays on pretty
Starting point is 00:25:58 freaking well. It's a little freaky. So we should check out this one user, not Sophia, Sliva, using the filter. Okay. So that's nuts. That is really dark. I guess when people do makeovers, Rachel, when they have their makeup done and their hair done, you can have that before and after moment as a woman, or I guess a guy who chooses to do makeup and their hair,
Starting point is 00:26:26 which actually when I would go on CNN, I'd be like, whoa, I'm a handsome man. And then I would come off and I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm not Harrison Ford. But this is like a whole different level. This is turning you into an aspiration that would be a model. And we all know models, they are in a chair for two or three hours becoming that gorgeous. I wonder where, like, the line should be drawn because it is using like a makeup filter, but I think like completely changing the structure of somebody's face is a little, it's crazy. Like, you're not even that person anymore.
Starting point is 00:26:57 And like you said with makeup, like at least you're that person. And there's another filter that I think is super interesting along the same vein as this, called the Teenage Look Filter. Oh, I've seen this. Yeah, yeah. This one's really cool. I love seeing parents like use this. Well, there's a song that they put with this and then everybody starts crying when they see themselves. I thought this was very touching, actually.
Starting point is 00:27:18 This is love is for you jerk from this video. This is from TikTok or love is for you jerk. Hey, how long it takes. I mean, that gets me. I got to be honest. Like, how does one not feel emotional to see like the 12-year-old version of themselves? It's incredibly emotional to watch people's emotional reactions to this. And when I was a psychology major in college, I learned that one of the techniques they use in therapy is to have people bring in photos from their childhood, show them to their therapist, and talk about the photo. And the reason they do that, is to elicit maybe some response or bring you back to your childhood and remember, you know, whatever memories you have. And I think that's what's happening to people. So this feels to me like a wonderful version, right? So one is dystopian in that it's trying to make you into a 10, you know, whatever that means when you're a six or a seven, whatever we all are. And this other one
Starting point is 00:28:26 is doing something different, I think. It's trying to just celebrate, you know, yourself as a child. Yeah, it's really reminiscent. It's really cool. And producer Nick put in that with the first one, though, he said, soon AI will make everybody look like Gigachad and sent this photo. That's Gigacad. So for people who don't know Gigacad, he's got like a perfect 5 o'clock shadow.
Starting point is 00:28:50 He's got a jaw line that looks like Superman took steroids. And his hair is perfect and tons of hair gel. He's like a Greek god. He looks like zoos. or something, a young Zeus. It looks funky. It looks like handsome Squidward to me, which is another photo. Are you seen that one?
Starting point is 00:29:08 No. Oh, gosh. I can't keep up with all these memes. It's just like too much. I don't know if the producers are going to send in a video. They'll probably find it pretty quick, but. Oh, here it is. That's Squidward.
Starting point is 00:29:20 That's like a Handsome Squidward meme. That's a SpongeBob thing. It's a SpongeBob meme. I've never watched SpongeBob, but I met the guy who does the voice. Oh, that's cool. Or one of the voices on it for his friend. I think what this is all going to do is it's kind of like millie-vinilly. Do you know who that is?
Starting point is 00:29:37 Millie Vanilly? I don't. I don't. Okay. So we're going to have ads in this episode because we'll pop in a Millie Vanilla here. But they cast two gentlemen who were super handsome. I guess it was in the UK. And Millie Vanilli had a very famous pop song in the 80s.
Starting point is 00:29:57 There they are. And these guys were like super handsome, heartthrob. and they Sorry for the Boershead ad Thanks Nick What the hell is it I mean come on This is what happens
Starting point is 00:30:10 When you don't go to YouTube And have YouTube premium I'm just going to say right now The first and last subscription You need in your life Is YouTube read premium Whatever they call it to get rid of ads You don't get the boar's head
Starting point is 00:30:21 This shows Nick's This shows Nick's targeting Priorities buying hoagies Brugito This is Gabba Gould This is what Nick's is searching for on his computer. Like, other people are getting all kinds of other...
Starting point is 00:30:34 There could not have been a more accurate representation. What end are they serving Nick today? Borges had roast beef. Ah, it's hilarious. Huggies. Anyway, Millie Vanilli had his famous song. It turns out they didn't sing. They couldn't sing.
Starting point is 00:30:49 And that when it came out that they were just lip syncing, which lip syncing, nobody even knew what that was, you know, at that time in the 80s. And that these were, I don't know if they were computer general. voices, but like some studio musicians did their song. Anyway, it was a big controversy in the 80s. And so I think that this, that's what's happening right now. Everybody's going to look at this stuff. They're going to be like, oh, my God, everybody's a tan.
Starting point is 00:31:11 You're getting catfished. Yeah, basically it's like, I want to hear something acoustic. So then what happened in society, this pendulum swan, and then MTV did something, which was called MTV Unplug. And there's a series called MTV Unplugged where Nirvana would play and other people would play and it was a live audience intimate and they would not have their instruments. Okay. So it's like NPR tiny desk. It's like the NPR tiny desk stuff. It was literally tiny desk. So here's your millie vanilly. Girl, you know it's true.
Starting point is 00:31:43 Ooh, ooh, look at the shoulder pads, by the way. If you want to understand the 80s, men had shoulder pads, like serious shoulder pads. I had suits with shoulder pads in the 90s. They are not singing. But it was a pretty catchy tune. When you're the founder of a high-growth startup, things can get chaotic. We all know that. You face a ton of questions. You've got problems all day long.
Starting point is 00:32:09 And you don't know the answer to everything, especially if it's your first time as a startup founder. But you don't have to face these issues alone. That's where Hampton comes in. Hampton is a highly vetted private community exclusively for founders and CEOs like us. Hampton's mission is to create the most valuable and engaged community for high-growth founders. Here's why. Some Hampton members have already called it life-changing. When you join Hampton, the membership team over there carefully hampsed seven other members
Starting point is 00:32:35 to join your core group. This group is like your own personal board of directors. They provide you with advice, critical feedback, and will aim to help you accelerate your growth. Hampton members run some of the fastest growing startups in the world, and you probably use their products and services like morning brew, blank tree coffee, dribble, and more. The connections, personal accomplishments, and a sense of belonging are what make the Hampton membership special. And, you know, community is super important. It can get very lonely out there as a
Starting point is 00:33:03 startup founder. So here's a very simple call to action. If you're ready to scale your business, join the Hampton community today at joinhampton.com slash twist. That's join H-A-M-P-T-O-N.com slash twist today. Joinhampton.com slash twist today. That's called a phone booth, by the way, Rachel. So just to explain the context here, before cell phones, there were phone boots. And you would go in and shut the door and you would put a quarter in and you would dial somebody's phone number. You had to remember people's phone numbers. So you could probably remember 10 or 20 people's phone numbers. And then you have a black book where you write over his number. Anyway, that's yeah. That's a phone booth. It looks like a photo
Starting point is 00:33:43 prop. It basically. And the phone boots in the UK were red boxes with glass panes. So they're very iconic looking. And in the United States, phone boots were like, they had a door that was like a folding door, like an accordion kind of door. And so, yeah. So there's an American phone booth from the movie Goodfellas where he's making a phone call. You see the accordion door, glass.
Starting point is 00:34:08 And then he finds out that, yeah. Have you seen the new ones? They have USB chargers in them. So like when I wait for the bus now, you can like there's a little keypad where you can call somebody, but I can also plug in my phone and charge it. I heard those are,
Starting point is 00:34:23 those are what replaced the phone booths in New York. The last phone booth of New York, I think the last year or two years ago got taken out, yeah. Well, there was a very cool thing at Grand Central Station and like, you know, Port Authority bus terminal. Yeah. They would have a row of phone boots. So this was the modern technology era. Like in the 50s and 60s, they were like, hey, phones exist. Let's put 50 of them. And so there was a wall in Grand Central. If the producers are doing their job, they're searching for it. You'd say, meet me at the phone boots. And you would go to the phone boots. You'd call somebody, I'm here.
Starting point is 00:34:57 You'd hang up the phone. There were just lines of people queued up to use one of the phones, to call people that they had arrived. Those people would be at their homes or whatever, and then they would, you know, start their drive over there. Or you would call, this is how connectivity worked in this time period, you would call the house in Brooklyn. You'd say, Jason is at phone booth number five. He's at Grand Central. Then you, every 15 minutes when you're at Grand Central, would call the house and say, Have you heard from Jason?
Starting point is 00:35:26 Did he land yet? This is before you knew what was going on. It seems like a lot of, a lot of communication. And then answering machines came out. So then what you would do is, we'd be in the city. I would call somebody and say, hey, we're at the limelight. It's 1 a.m. We're going to Palladium.
Starting point is 00:35:45 We're going to the Palladium. We'll be at the Palladium at 1.30 a.m. We're walking over now. Hang up the phone. Then people will call their phones. here they are here, the telephones, and there would be banks and banks of these telephones. Then you would call your answering machine
Starting point is 00:36:00 and you could dial a special number. You dial the special number and you would be able to listen to your voicemails and that's how we communicated. Then people realized that the phone answering machines only had a certain number of codes and you could set your code on the back.
Starting point is 00:36:16 You'd pick one of three codes. So you'd move this little dial and be like, your code is 89, your code is 72, your code. So then there was a code on the back. this phone hacking scandal where Rupert Murdox company, News Corp, hacks people's phone, their voicemails. And so this whole like secession thing where like they're, you know, which is obviously about the Murdox and Fox or if you look at Fox News and all this stuff
Starting point is 00:36:41 that came out and the scandals around this Dominion voting system and them texting, they're having like a texting scandal. Previously they had a voicemail scandal because everybody had a desk voice voice. thing and they had home answer machines. They were experts, the journalists at hacking people's phones because it was so simple to do. People had two or three digit codes. And you can brute force them because these were not computers. These were like little electronic devices. So people would just try every single possible code until they could listen to your messages. And people didn't delete their messages. So you'd press a button to go to the previous message, previous message,
Starting point is 00:37:17 and it would rewind your tape. And the only way you would know if somebody was doing this and this is how they got busted was you were home. Somebody called your answering. machine and you started seeing your answering machine zipping around on the tape. And Fox had to pay millions of dollars and people went to jail because they were, there was a famous case of a woman who was murdered and they were, they hacked her voicemail. And the newspaper had information that only the police had and the family had. And then they hacked the family and they hacked the police officers and they hacked other journalists. It was deranged. And they were deranged. And they had to pull out a full page apology ad. Rupert Murdoch signed. This is in 2002, 2005, 2010 time period.
Starting point is 00:38:02 And there's a famous moment, Rachel. This is incredible for the audience doesn't know this, but this was only 15, 20 years ago. There's a famous moment when Rupert Murdoch is on trial in the UK with his children. And he was, his girlfriend or fiance at the time was Wendy Dang, I believe. And somebody attacked Rupert Murdoch. And then you see, Wendy Dang jump. Here's the We Are Sorry at. The news of the world was in the business of holding others to account. It failed when it came to itself.
Starting point is 00:38:34 We are sorry for the serious wrongdoing that occurred. We are deeply sorry for the hurt suffered by the injury was affected. We regret not acting faster to sort things out. I realize that simply apologizing is not enough. Our business was founded on the idea that a free and open pressure should be a positive force in society. We need to live up to this. In the coming days, we will.
Starting point is 00:38:54 will take further concrete steps to resolve these issues and make amends for the damage they have caused. You will hear more from us. Sincerely, Rupert Murdoch. And then 15 years later, we have you know, Fox SMS dumb. But if you can find the video of Rupert Murdoch being attacked, I don't know if somebody threw a pie in his face or somebody did something at these trials. And Wendy Dan comes jumping over to try to protect. And watch this. This is the craziest thing you'll ever see. This is when you know you pick the right girl. Ruper Murdoch is attacked. She's in the pink and she comes over the top and smacks the guy who tries to hit Rupert Murdoch with a pie. An A girlfriend can't do that. No, no, no, no. That's not a dollar
Starting point is 00:39:39 a minute. Look at this slow mo. Bang. Knocks him in the face. If you haven't seen this before, type in Rupert Murdoch attacked with a pie. So it turns out there was a cultural zeitgeist thing. and if you type Bill Gates hit with the pie, there was an absurdist in the 90s. And their idea was to smash a pie into somebody's face who was very famous. It was a very dangerous thing because it showed you could get to famous people,
Starting point is 00:40:05 which then could inspire, inspire people who had even more reckless thoughts, let's just say. But Bill Gates, this is Bill Gates getting pied. He's just walking down the street. And when you see the look of fear on his face, when this guy smashes him with the pie, he doesn't know if that's poison, some horrible thing.
Starting point is 00:40:21 or whatever, but pying people became like a pastime, and it was really dangerous. It was very, I don't advocate for this. I don't find it funny at all. I just find the Wendy Dang jumping over and defending Rupert Murdoch. Like, that's a legit girl. Anyway, there's your pop culture, DeVro. I love talking to you, Rachel, because there are things that happened in pop culture, but 20 years ago that you're not aware of and showing you these and watching you laugh.
Starting point is 00:40:46 That should just be a whole other, a whole other segment, is you talking? Because I love, I love pop culture history. I love it. This is, this is good. So today on pop culture, you got Millie Vanilly, phone boots. Yeah. The, how voicemurow. Voice males.
Starting point is 00:41:03 Voice males. Yeah. Pyes and Murdox apology letter. I mean, that's like five great pop culture moments. It's a class right there. Somebody should do no context this week in startups, by the way. Nick, did you like my, I copied your no context spoilers? Did you like my last two weeks for session?
Starting point is 00:41:20 I didn't see last week, but the one, the week prior where you had Vishal Garg from Better.com was great. Yeah, that was pretty good. When Greg was lying people off. That was great. Cousin Greg is like, okay, so your services are not needed. Cousin Greg. I like when he's talking to the Gojo guys later in the episode and he's like, yeah, I'll I'll cut him.
Starting point is 00:41:42 I don't care. Yeah, no, he's like, send me in. And they're just like, oh, good, good. That was like, when did they write that? It's so good. When are they riding secession? It's like they're just like right. It's kind of like South Park.
Starting point is 00:41:54 They're right in the zeitgeist. I don't know who the writers are for that show, but it is. I mean, kudos. The deep cuts they have there are unbelievable. Like it feels like someone who's working in tech because they had a couple of weeks ago, they had the Adam Newman barefoot walk with the guy being a weirdo. Then they had him, they had like a little reference. I don't know if you noticed this.
Starting point is 00:42:16 He was talking about real estate, the Gojo CEO. and he's like, oh, real estate's not a tech missus. It doesn't scale. You had like two little Adam Newman references in one, like subtle in one episode. I'm like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's the whole arc too. And then when he pumps up the projections, I was like, where have I seen this before?
Starting point is 00:42:34 He's like, we can be a little more aggressive. He's like, we need those tech multiples, baby. We need those tech multiples. It's so great. Jeremy Strong's deep Kendall voice. So good. I am so team Roman, though. This week is so good.
Starting point is 00:42:46 Roman's like, does it matter? Blop bloop bloop bloop bloop. He's like, it doesn't matter. President, whatever. False flag. False flag. False flag. Keep putting off Chiv.
Starting point is 00:42:56 Somebody made Chiv Kalakanis. Okay, so lastly, we're going to talk about AI Snapchat. And lastly, I mean, for me talking about how I'm using AI, we still have stories after this. But with AI Snapchat, I don't like it, man. It freaks me out. So my AI is a Snapchat bot powered by chat GPT, and it's available to Snapchat users. And it can do things like answer trivia.
Starting point is 00:43:18 questions, offer advice, and act like a companion. But it's, it's just creepy. I feel like it knows too much about the user and it acts too human. And I think there needs to be a term for the uncanny, the uncanny valley specifically for AI bots. Because if they're still like too human, it's really weird. But if they're like, like we're seeing the dating girl like that we just spoke about. Karen, people seem to like her because she seems really, really human. But this is like a step below. Like my AI doesn't feel as human as her yet. And it's really creepy.
Starting point is 00:43:54 It's like watching Shrek before they came out with the not uncanny Valley version of Shrek. Yeah. Got it. So, yeah, when it's just a little bit off, do we have an example here? Here's a clip from Kailen Wiley. Okay, this whole Snapchat AI is officially terrifying. So as you can see, I ask, where are you from? And they say, I'm from all over the place.
Starting point is 00:44:14 So then I ask what cities. And as you can see, they literally listed the cities they lived in. So then I said, where in New York did you live? And remember this, y'all. They said they lived in Manhattan for a while. Remember that. Then I asked about their job and as you can see, they are very specific about their job. Then I'm starting to freak out because I'm like, yo, why are you sounding like a whole real human right now? So I'm like, awesome. What's your name? Y'all? Why she going to tell me her name's and at this point I'm like, yo, why she got a name? So then I ask, what are you wearing right now
Starting point is 00:44:40 since you want to act like a human? And once again, Ms. Maya is being very specific. So I'm trying to get more information. I'm like, so where do you live now? Still in New York? And y'all, at this point I jumped out my bed. Forget the living in California now. What do you mean are you still living in Virginia? Because how do you know that? How do you know I live in Virginia? I have my location off of everything.
Starting point is 00:45:01 Okay, so they also, like, we're asking or talking about weed and stuff to kids, which I thought was interesting. I'm sorry, did not answer. Yeah, like if you ask them questions about, like, doing drugs, like weed or like sex and stuff, they would interact. But I think this video was creepy because, like, it shared information. that she's never shared before. So there's a whole bunch of stuff where I just think. I can tell you as having been a 12, 13, 14, 14, and 15 year old boy one time each of those years, the first things we would do is try to get it to say words it's not supposed to say or talk about topics that it's not supposed to say. And this is not for kids. Although I did do Mid Journey. As a family, we were doing
Starting point is 00:45:40 mid-journey and we were making Jedi Knight. We're taking Bulldogs. My seven-year-olds thought it was hilarious to make bulldogs and then combine them with Ironman or Jedi. Oh, I love that. So we were just like going bulldog mid-jurney crazy on a Discord server. I think like the term or the job AI prompt generator is going to be like a big thing in the future because there are artists that are gatekeeping. They're like prompts. Their entire Instagram pages with like there's one by somebody named Jos Avery,
Starting point is 00:46:12 Re-Avery portraits over on Instagram, over 50,000 followers. And they're just AI portraits. It gets crazy. And that, you know, this could be a business. You know what these portraits look like? They're black and white. They're incredibly like blurred background on a subway platform. But this looks like those artists who do incredibly fine pencil work.
Starting point is 00:46:31 And they make those gorgeous. So this is like a pencil work, photo realistic, but done artistically with a pencil, you know, kind of art. Yeah, definitely people are hoarding the problem. There are websites. So I'm trying to get everybody at launch, Rachel, really embrace this technology. And I think of 18 or 19 people, we have eight or nine people, half the people in the first three months of me losing my mind over this, have actually done something meaningful with the technology in terms of their jobs, the other eight or nine. I'm like, let's go, people. Get on the bus. Yeah. Buses pulling out of the station. You've got to get on the bus. But as a technology gets better, it's easier to get on the bus,
Starting point is 00:47:08 because everybody's on pro, everybody's on BARD, we turn BART on, and everybody has plugins and the web crawler. And you know how we would do something as simple as look for venues? Well, it turns out Allens Summit is going to sell out. And I was like, hmm, you know, Freeburg and I talked, I wonder if there's another venue in L.A. available or, you know, because we can't change the dates, but we could find a bigger venue. And so we start looking for bigger venues.
Starting point is 00:47:32 And it's amazing, like the research that would have taken a month of, you know, people searching on the web, talking to people, hey, what venues did I miss? When you get the web crawler involved, it's finding it, putting it in a table with the number of seats, with a link to the event page, with the floor plan. And I think next will be like, here's the floor plans, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It gives companies like magic, I've run for their money. Like magic, like the virtual assistant platform. Like, I haven't used magic ever, but I use AI as a personal assistant all day long. Like I use, there's not, there's most of my tasks at this point.
Starting point is 00:48:08 or just automated with AI. I'll take the other side of it. I think it's going to do what Magic does for you, but I think what you're going to do is ask them Magic to do it for you and do it on your account or a shared account. So you're like, hey, Magic, this is what I need. And they do all the prompt during they do it. And they refine it because it still takes like 20,
Starting point is 00:48:29 when you're doing research on it, right? It takes like 10, 20 follow-ups, prompts. And then eventually you get to the answer. So it might take you 15 minutes. That 15 minutes you could outsource. for five bucks, and you just get the output. Yeah, that's a good idea. I like that.
Starting point is 00:48:44 Yeah. So, but Fiverr stocks down like 20% since Chiat Sheep2. So I think everybody's shorting Fiverr right now. Ooh, that's so interesting. I think that's a mistake. I think that's like, that's a great thesis, but I think it's going to be the opposite. The Fiverer people are going to be like, yeah. I agree.
Starting point is 00:49:03 I totally agree. I'll get you 100 leads for $100. So they're going to be like, I'll get you a thousand leads for $100. So they're going to be even better at doing lead gen or whatever, you know, logos for you. I know Contrast is a sponsor, like on this begin startups. And I see they're always like pushing stuff about how like freelancers can use AI, like over on their Twitter. Of course. It's just, it's technology is deflationary.
Starting point is 00:49:27 The prices go down and the quality goes up until maybe the only thing that stops that is physics. Right. Like with Uber drivers, there's a limit. to the, you know, how fast they can drive on the road. There's a limit to how many cars. There's a limit to how many drivers. So when you get to, you know, the laws of physics, the price can only be so cheap. And then it has to go up based on, you know, other things. But self-driving, maybe that's the breakthrough. Okay. So I think the hearings have, you know, by the time we're taping this, they're over. Sam Altman is in the zone, I will say,
Starting point is 00:50:00 knowing Sam for 20 years. And he's incredibly thoughtful about these issues. I think it's he did a really great job. I saw some clips. So why don't we just very quickly go over the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and good on the Senate for being smart and doing this now? I know they had Gary Marcus from NYU and Christina Montgomery from IBM. But let's just get right into it. My worst fears are that we cause significant, we the field, the technology, the industry,
Starting point is 00:50:31 cause significant harm to the world. I think that could happen in a lot of different ways. It's why we started the company. It's a big part of why I'm here today and why we've been here in the past and we've been able to spend some time with you. I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong,
Starting point is 00:50:48 and we want to be vocal about that. We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening, but we try to be very clear-eyed about what the downside case is and the work that we have to do to mitigate that. Yeah, great job, Sam. I think this is like the power move.
Starting point is 00:51:06 Although they did go from open AI to closed AI. So I'm referring to the company as closed AI until they open source all these models. So closed AI as a company, I don't know if they're hypocritical or thoughtful. Time will tell because he has closed all access to their technology down in terms of like how it's built, what models they use. I don't know if that's to protect themselves from lawsuits. But closed AI became closed and then secured the bag. so that's a bad look. To move to close, to get $10 billion,
Starting point is 00:51:37 for everybody to get paid and make $10 billion or whatever, some amount of that is, and I'm getting pitched on people selling secondary. So there are large amounts of secondary from people who work at OpenAI flooding the market. So they're clearing their positions at closed AI while they closed down the models. And then on the same side,
Starting point is 00:51:59 I don't know if you saw the Google news that, like, Google's like, These open models on, you know, whatever the website is, hugging face are, is that the name of it, Nick? Hugging face are better than the models that they have. So maybe they're just closed because they don't want competition. I don't know. We'll see. There's another clip from Senator Richard Blumenthal,
Starting point is 00:52:25 who is a Democrat from Connecticut. And he uses generative AI to kind of, like, craft his opening statement. Too often. we have seen what happens when technology outpaces regulation, the unbridled exploitation of personal data, the proliferation of disinformation, and the deepening of societal inequalities.
Starting point is 00:52:45 We have seen how algorithmic biases can perpetuate discrimination and prejudice and how the lack of transparency can undermine public trust. This is not the future we want. If you were listening from home, you might have thought that voice was mine and the words from me. But in fact, that voice was not mine. The words were not mine.
Starting point is 00:53:10 And the audio was an AI voice cloning software, trained on my floor speeches. The remarks were written by ChatGBT. They got us. That was a pretty clever stunt, I have to say. For those of you who weren't watching, his lips were not moving. The first part of that was AI voice generated,
Starting point is 00:53:30 and it was Chad GPT4 generated. So the statement, which was crisp, was based on things he said previously, well played, Senator, and the fact that they're on top of this. I think we all know that do not trust any audio or video you hear anymore. You cannot trust any clip you see. Assume every clip is now doctored. Assume every video is fake until you get massive confirmation from multiple trusted sources. All this does is this is going to make CNN, New York Times, Wikipedia. and other sources of truth, pick your source of truth, an individual, a podcast.
Starting point is 00:54:09 It's just going to make all of the other sources of truth more valuable. Yeah, especially now that it feels like since he's used it, it feels like it's officially mainstream. Sure, yeah. I mean, I don't think any, I think probably, I wouldn't say the majority of Americans, but the second an app comes out, the fact that Open AI doesn't have an app, they had a test flight app that they included me in and then they turned it off. Once the apps come out and people can do this in an app or they can text a phone number or an email and start doing this like we start at the telegram, once this stuff becomes open to the public free, it's going to go bonkers. Right now, putting it in a web browser, throttling it, requiring you to get a Discord server, all this stuff is because the cost of running generative AI is still expensive.
Starting point is 00:54:55 But once it becomes cheaper and they have enough hardware, and can you imagine if you can just an eye message to start talking to any AI, you put it. the phone number or the email address in and you start rocking on your iMessage signal telegram whatever i mean the fact that slack doesn't have anything right now is like what's it going on over at slack who's running slack like that's the number one place i want to have an ai and they have nothing they just announced slack gpt i think at the beginning of last week yeah i mean it's just they're so far behind and notion and box and everybody's got something slack gpt should be in every single channel automatically, and it should automatically be building summaries of what happened in that channel every week. So every, you should be able to set every hundred messages or every day
Starting point is 00:55:40 at 9 a.m. or at 9 p.m. whatever times you want, every 12 hours, put a summary of the discussions that occurred in the Slack. So anytime you jump into Slack, you're like, oh, I can catch up with this and it's got deep links to all the threads that are going on, where I should open up my Slack and it should have a summary of the entire Slack workspace. Here's what happened in your Slack today. And I should get that by email and I should get it as a DM, an overview of what happened in Slack today. Senator Lindsey Graham, who is a Republican from South Carolina, also had an interesting line of questioning about creating an AI agency and whether the three witnesses were in favor. And first, he asked all three witnesses whether they agree that there should be an AI agency.
Starting point is 00:56:20 And we have a clip of that. Do you agree, Mr. Altman, that these tools you're creating should be licensed? Yeah, we've been calling for this. We can't any. That's the simplest way. Do you agree with me that the simplest way and the most effective ways have an agency that is more nimble and smarter than Congress, which should be easy to create? Overlooking what you do.
Starting point is 00:56:40 Yes, we'd be enthusiastic about that. You agree with that, Mr. Marcus? Absolutely. Do you agree with that, Ms. Montgomery? I would have some nuances, I think we need to build on what we have in place already today. We don't have an agency as working. Wait a minute, nope, nope, nope, nope. We don't have an agency that regulates the technology.
Starting point is 00:56:57 So should we have one? But a lot of the issues, I don't think so. A lot of the issues... Wait a minute. Wait a minute. So IBM says we don't need an agency. My gut reaction is the people who already have a lead want an agency, and they want regulation because it would codify their lead. That is the most cynical interpretation of that.
Starting point is 00:57:18 That's pulling up the ladder behind you. We have resources. We have lobbyists. Or we have the money to hire lobbyists. Microsoft's got a ton of lobbyists. Google's got a ton of lobbyists. They have relationships. they've given massive donations.
Starting point is 00:57:29 So they would get to set up all of these rules, and those rules would benefit the incumbents, as opposed to the startups, which then would be like, you know, hey, fill out all this paperwork and get a license. How much is that going to cost? A million dollars? And, you know, for a startup, then it would be.
Starting point is 00:57:46 So I think self-regulation is the much better mode to go here. I don't think there should be an agency. I think there could be a committee, but not an agency. It's way too soon to figure out what licensing is. And I have brought this up before, or like maybe we need to have insurance, a license to have access to the hardware. I think a good starting point would be the models have to be owned by somebody.
Starting point is 00:58:05 The models have to disclose how they trained it. And this would all be done through self-regulation. So the models link to sources. They tell you what they were trained on. They tell you how they're coming up with the answer. You know, and they kind of reveal here. And then they're open sourced or some number of them are open sourced. And so if you're open source, maybe you have one licensing regulation.
Starting point is 00:58:25 if you're closed, like closed AI is, closed AI would have a tighter regulation set than an open source project, which everybody can see the go. So I'm a little cynical here. I need to see more about IBM's position. So I think we have another clip you could queue up. Interesting.
Starting point is 00:58:42 Should we have a license required for these tools? So what we believe is that we need to regulate. That's a simple question. Should you get a license to produce one of these tools? I think it comes back to some of them potentially, yes. I just don't understand how you could say that you don't need an agency to deal with the most transformative technology maybe ever. Well, I think we have existing. Is this a transformative technology that can disrupt life as we know it, good and bad?
Starting point is 00:59:11 I think it's a transformative technology, certainly. And the conversations that we're having here today have been really bringing to light the fact that the domains and the issues. This one with you has been very enlightening to me. I don't like the grandstanding, Rachel, and not letting her finish her sentence. This is why, like, it's hard to take some of these senators seriously. Like, Senator Graham seems like a grandstanding, not thoughtful person. And this is why when we interviewed RFK, I tried to let him talk. I feel like nobody lets anybody finish their thoughts here.
Starting point is 00:59:42 And for an important question, she's kind of on the maybe, and she's a yes or no. So she's like the most interesting person to let speak. So why does he keep interrupting her? Let her finish two sentences, for God's sake. Finally, Graham Doug also into Sam Olmton about why he's so vocal about creating an AI agency. So she wasn't the only one that kind of got put on the hot seat. 43 second clip. We'll see you on the other side. Mr. Allman, why are you so willing to have an agency?
Starting point is 01:00:10 Senator, we've been clear about what we think the upsides are. And I think you can see from users how much they enjoy and how much value they're getting out of it. But we've also been clear about what the downsides are. And so that's why we think we need an agency. That's right. I think you're on the right track. So here's what my two cents worth for the committee is that we need to empower an agency that issues in a license and can take it away. Clearly that should be part of what an agency can do. Now, this world organization that doesn't exist, maybe it will.
Starting point is 01:00:37 But if you don't do something about the China part of it, you'll never quite get this right. Do you agree? It doesn't necessarily have to be a world organization, but there has to be some sort of, and there's a lot of options here. There has to be some sort of standard, some sort of set of controls that do have global effect. Yeah, again, this hot seat mentality of these hearings is a little silly. I think these hearings should be two, three, four hours. People should be allowed to finish their sentences. Anytime you ask a question, the expectation should be the person has at least one minute, if not two, before you interrupt them. And then they should have a smaller number of people
Starting point is 01:01:16 asking questions so they can ask follow-up questions. I think the number is four people, just happens to be the number we have on all in. And you should have a, the four people, one person asks the question, ask one follow-up, and then the next person asks the question, they get to ask one follow-up. And so you get into a rhythm here of letting a person get their full thoughts out. If this is such an important topic, you know, let people really think it through. I don't know if the licensing at this point, they should be able to revoke it. That seems like too much power for the government to have. I think self-regulation first and then an agency to monitor it would be good. But I am reticent to give the government
Starting point is 01:01:55 too much power here because there are our freedom of speech issues. What do you think, Richard? I can see it both sides. I think it's like a twofold situation where obviously like my first thought would be like there should be an agency because I think it's something important enough where there needs to be laws sent in place. And finally it seems like Congress and people in the government are understanding like how oppressing an issue is without them being like incredibly late to the ball. It feels like with social media, you see them now trying to create regulations way too far after the fact. So I guess it's cool that it seems like they're a little bit quicker to AI. But at that, you know, in that same point, I think the idea that Christina brought up,
Starting point is 01:02:33 I think her thoughts are really valid. And I really do think that we didn't get to watch this entire thing, the producers before this aired. So it's definitely something I want to go back to and see how it plays out. Fascinating. Do you care of music is created by the artist or that it's just like a dope beat. Like, I know like the Drake album drop. That was all, you know, and then there was all like this other stuff like around Grimes doing her music. Just as a millennial, Gen Z person, do you care if the music is computer generated or not?
Starting point is 01:03:10 I wouldn't, but I definitely would think of it in like a different category. So like going to a concert with like a DJ set is going to be a lot different than going to a concert, like the Taylor Swift concert. that's up and coming. So if you're going to Taylor Swift, are you surfing? I wish.
Starting point is 01:03:24 I wish. It's like my dream tickets were way out of my price range. If anybody is selling tickets, let me know. It looks incredible. But that experience
Starting point is 01:03:32 is going to be a lot different if you're going to a concert only by you know. I'd like to see this Taylor Swift concert because from what I understand she's spending
Starting point is 01:03:39 an enormous amount of money on the stage production and it's like my entire TikTok and Instagram is filled with videos of it. Well, get ready for the Beyonce Renaissance
Starting point is 01:03:48 tour, apparently that one's supposed to be pretty good too. So I'm hoping that I can get tickets like the day of at Taylor Swift, like that people are selling them. But, well, again, if anybody's selling them. What is it, 500 bucks to go or something? Probably, yeah. Something like that, probably. All right.
Starting point is 01:04:04 We'll see you all next time on this week's service. Bye-bye. Bye.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.