DeepSeek Fallout, Meta Settles with Trump, and Guest Host Reid Hoffman

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Speaker 13 Let me just say, Amanda loves your whole, this whole jam, Scott. She was like, Scott's on fire.
I love it. She was vaguely attracted to you, I think.

Speaker 14 Vaguely is doing a lot of work there.

Speaker 13 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 12 And I'm Scott Galloway.

Speaker 13 Scott, we've got a very special guest today, someone I like very much in Silicon Valley, which is an unusual thing. Joining us today is Reed Hoffman.

Speaker 12 Good morning.

Speaker 13 So we're doing a new thing on Pivot. We're going to make people stay the whole show.
And Reed is our very first guest to do this.

Speaker 13 We're having a really good friend of Pivot. It's not just a friend of Pivot, it's an extremely special friend of Pivot.

Speaker 13 Reed is the co-founder of LinkedIn, obviously, the host of podcasts, Masters of Scale, and Possible. He's also the author of a new book, Super Agency, What Could Possibly Go Right With Our AI Future.

Speaker 13 I feel like he's positive about the future. Not on everything.

Speaker 13 Welcome, Reed, again.

Speaker 12 It's great to be here. I love being on this podcast with you guys.

Speaker 13 Good. So we're going to talk about a lot of stuff.
And we, last time we talked, was at your event right before the election,

Speaker 13 which you had participated in. We're going to talk a little bit about that.
Before we start, we have to acknowledge this tragic crash at Reagan Airport in D.C.

Speaker 13 on Wednesday night, the worst air disaster in over 15 years. An American Airlines regional plane with 64 people on board collided in midair with a Black Hawk helicopter with three soldiers aboard.

Speaker 13 Recording this on Thursday morning as the recovery operation is underway in the Potomac. There was a press conference a little while ago.
Authorities confirmed there are no survivors.

Speaker 13 28 bodies have been recovered so far. It was a flight coming in from Wichita and the Black Hawk.
They don't know. I'm not going to speak about it because I don't know anything about this.

Speaker 13 I don't have any extra information. It's tragic

Speaker 13 and

Speaker 13 very, very sad. But

Speaker 13 the authorities here seem to be doing their best to figure out what happened and moving on. And we're not going to politicize it.
We're not going to do everything that has already broken out online.

Speaker 13 Any reaction from either of you? You don't have to have any whatsoever, but Scott?

Speaker 12 Well, look, these things, obviously, it's a tragedy. The only thing they're such a spectacle that they attract a lot of media.
And I believe about...

Speaker 12 a thousand people a week in the U.S. or about 800 people a week die in automobile accidents, but they're not nearly as dramatic or as much as a spectacle.

Speaker 12 And, you know, what I hear that's it's a tragedy, but at the same time, when I look at the data, it's just sort of incredible that it doesn't happen more often.

Speaker 12 I mean, what you said at the very top of this, it's the worst disaster in over 15 years because it doesn't happen very often. Yeah, it's not.
So I'm not saying it doesn't warrant scrutiny.

Speaker 12 I'm not saying it's not a tragedy. I do think it's just a miracle, though,

Speaker 12 that this form of transportation is as safe as it is. So, anyways,

Speaker 12 I look at it almost as a glass half full, if you will.

Speaker 13 Yeah, except for the people who died, of course.

Speaker 12 100%. Well, and

Speaker 12 plus one, Scott's comments, you know, obviously hearts go out to the families and all the people. It's a huge tragedy and loss.
On the other hand, there's this tendency to try to blame the FAA.

Speaker 12 And you look at the fact is that it's much safer to be flying than it is to be driving.

Speaker 12 And so, you know, there's a credit to how the whole

Speaker 12 aeronautics and air transport system works. And there's going to be, I think, overly much of a witch hunt on the FAA camp where actually, in fact, I think the system should also be acknowledged.

Speaker 12 I heard the air traffic controller was a lesbian. Your thoughts, Kara?

Speaker 13 Oh,

Speaker 13 anyway, I'm sure it was DEI. If they start with that, I'm not going to have any of it.
It's ridiculous.

Speaker 13 There aren't enough air traffic controllers, and obviously there's been a lot of uncertainty around the federal workforce right now, but it has nothing to do with this particular tragedy.

Speaker 13 But that said, it's a wonderful system that we have. And at the same time, just for anyone, I live in DC, flying into DCA is terrifying.
I find it terrifying. There's so much air traffic going on.

Speaker 13 You see helicopters.

Speaker 13 There's a weird twist that you have to do because of all the federal buildings, including the Washington Monument and the White House. And so whenever you're coming in,

Speaker 13 I find it... I've always, it makes me nervous to come in because it's such a highly trafficked area with military and everyone else.

Speaker 13 But we'll see what happened here because you're right, it never happens.

Speaker 13 But let's move on. And we're so sorry for the families of all the people that were killed.
We're going to talk all about the deep sea craziness in a sec.

Speaker 13 But first, I want to, Reed, I want you to start this. Why are you so positive about our AI future? I know you've talked about things that could go wrong and stuff.

Speaker 13 Your position on AI is somewhere between doomers, gloomers, and Zoomers. You call yourself a bloomer, accelerating toward a bright future, but managing risk.

Speaker 13 Can you just explain yourself so we can put you in the, where we put you on the map here?

Speaker 12 Well, I think in both creating immense value for humanity and also navigating risks, I think our future will have a much stronger tool set.

Speaker 12 So in the positive category, thinking about the fact that you can have a medical assistant that's better than today's average GP.

Speaker 12 on every smartphone running for under $5 an hour for anyone who has access to a smartphone for doing that. A tutor on every subject for every age group.

Speaker 12 And then, of course, the fact that it's kind of the cognitive industrial revolution of increasing productivity in a lot of different vectors. And I think all of that is extremely positive.

Speaker 12 Now, that doesn't mean there aren't risks to navigate and some questions, you know, to navigate in kind of good ways, but

Speaker 12 that's why I think I'm fundamentally an optimist and fundamentally also an accelerationist in this direction.

Speaker 13 But one of the things that a lot of people are talking about is cost to zero for lots of things. I mean, Mark Andreessen, I've heard it from Vinod, this idea that everything will cost pennies.

Speaker 13 Sometimes you all go over the top. So that's why people question your, not credibility for you, but some people's credibility.

Speaker 12 Well, that's the difference between bloomers and Zoomers, right?

Speaker 12 The whole notion of everything created with technology is going to create an abundant Star Trek universe immediately. That's my favorite word.
You know, yes, you know, freely across this is

Speaker 12 a kind of exponential, you know, an exponentialism hysteria that I think actually, you know, doesn't have particularly good thinking.

Speaker 12 I think the question about saying, though, that we can create so much better of a future with technology and with AI is very important. And you just kind of drive, navigate intelligently.

Speaker 12 So, Reed, I'm genuine with this question because I think you're one of the brightest blue flame thinkers in the world of technology. I'm sort of blown away by

Speaker 12 DeepSeek. And

Speaker 12 I want to posit a hypothesis with you and think there's any, and see if there's any merit. And that is, we were just talking about

Speaker 12 the airline disaster or the air crash. And I was thinking about the airline industry.
I was thinking about PCs.

Speaker 12 We can skirt along the surface of the atmosphere at 0.8, the speed of sound. It's added remarkable valuable to the economy and to consumers, air travel, jet air travel.

Speaker 12 PCs have revolutionized the world. Yet neither of those industries were able to capture or any specific companies were able to capture a great deal of shareholder value.

Speaker 12 It was consumers and the general public that got captured most of the value.

Speaker 12 And I'm wondering if DeepSeek is in fact a signal that in fact AI may be one of those industries where there's not a small number of companies that are worth a couple trillion dollars, but there's so much competition and the barriers are so low that it might have unbelievable winners, but those winners will be further dispersed into the general public and the economy.

Speaker 12 And we might not have a small number of winners as we did in social or search.

Speaker 12 That the big winners, similar to the airline or the PC industry, might be the public, but a lack of really big winners in tech. Your thoughts? Interesting thesis.

Speaker 12 I would tend to think it'll be more like kind of software, you know, internet dynamics,

Speaker 12 but I actually don't think that's necessarily because there's only one or two.

Speaker 12 I mean, I think one of the things that the internet brought about with it is, you know, previously when it was kind of like hardware dynamics and PCs were dominant, it was part of the thing where everyone was like, Microsoft's going to be competing with Disney and with airlines and everything else because it's the primary software OS and the internet open it up to allow, you know, kind of Google and Amazon and so forth.

Speaker 12 So I think there's going to be multiple. And I think we're more call it seven big tech companies heading to 15.

Speaker 12 But I don't think it's going, I think that the same kind of dynamics where you have like a network effect for a social network or LinkedIn or a, you know, kind of an enterprise integration or a, you know, kind of the way that they kind of add words and buying the search traffic, you know, kind of works for, you know, kind of Google.

Speaker 12 I think those dynamics probably will still be present in AI. But that doesn't mean that, you know, like I'm, you know, venture capitalist investor at Greylock.

Speaker 12 I invest in a number of different startups. And I think there will be a, like, it's just literally a field of interesting companies.

Speaker 12 But I, and I think that the public will benefit a lot from that, just kind of like the way they benefit a lot from, you know, Wikipedia, the internet, you know, free communications and a bunch of other things.

Speaker 12 But I, um, I don't think it's necessarily kind of, um, you know, kind of completely broadly dispersed.

Speaker 13 You're not going to see it. So why don't you just go into? Because one of the things some of our listeners are like, we didn't say enough about deep seek.
Well, honestly, we don't know.

Speaker 13 Scott and I don't know, like you, for example. So it caused a frenzy in tech in markets.

Speaker 13 And so we brought, we brought read in to explain listeners because we're idiots fine so deep seek causes frenzy in tech in the markets i'd love your your take on what we're seeing and what excites you about it and what worries you and i will note that open ai where you were an early investor you're no longer on the board and microsoft where you are on the board now are investigating whether open ai's data was stolen to build deep seek's model they were also relying on open source stuff like llama from meta etc so talk a little bit about give your take on this uh and make it a hot take, because that's who the person you are.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I'm happy to do it.

Speaker 12 By the way, one of the benefits of me being able to speculate is I have no internal information from either Microsoft or OpenAI, so I can speak entirely as a outside commentator just looking at this.

Speaker 12 So DeepSeek released a highly competent model from

Speaker 12 kind of China. And

Speaker 12 part of the reason I took the market by storm is the thesis was that it was created for a lot less money and a lot less compute.

Speaker 12 And what I think is there's certainly some parts of the story that are incorrect. The thing that we're trying to figure out is which parts of it are incorrect.

Speaker 12 And I would speculate with some vigor that they actually had some version of access to larger models in helping training.

Speaker 12 Because this is actually something we all knew already last year, year before, is that large models will help train small models.

Speaker 12 And so that means when you train a small model effectively, but you need a large model in order to do it, that's actually not disproving the need for these scale systems because when you have the better and better large scale models, you'll be able to train also really, really quickly.

Speaker 12 Right.

Speaker 13 So they were riding off of your rails, in other words.

Speaker 12 Exactly. Right.
And so. I would hazard strongly that there's something like that in the background.
Now, it could be that they had, you know,

Speaker 12 some kind of access to ChatGBT.

Speaker 12 Certainly some of the data and evidence suggests that in terms of the way that it answers and does certain things it could be that they actually had access to a compute cluster of of size because the so-called training run really makes sense and i've cross-checked this across multiple groups um you know like outside groups saying hey you know what is it what makes sense here and they're like yeah for the final training run on a serious compute cluster that could be the dollars that was that was spent on this in order to make it happen.

Speaker 12 It doesn't include talent. Doesn't include all these other things.
Right.

Speaker 13 The stuff that was, so as they were saying, it was five to six million. No one thinks that because again, the talent that they hired, they put in place.
It was a lot of younger people, correct?

Speaker 13 That's their story, that it wasn't highly paid anything.

Speaker 12 Yeah. Exactly.
And I think that the, I think it's nearly certain that it's dependent upon the large-scale compute, the larger models in some way.

Speaker 12 The only question is we don't know in what ways and how. And I think that's one of the things that everyone's investigating.

Speaker 12 And so I think the kind of market frenzy on, oh my God, AI can be here without large-scale compute.

Speaker 12 and of course by the way ai can be here we i invest in startups that train small models and so forth but the large models still bring certain critical elements to the table in terms of ability to train small models ability to get to performance like if you say well hey uh moving from 10 000 gpus to 100 000 gpus we only get a 20 better coder medical assistant legal assistant tutor like well in a wide variety of those areas that really matters that that actually actually, that increase in cost, when you amortize it across people accessing it across the entire internet, the billions of people that could use it, that's actually completely worth it and makes you know total economic sense.

Speaker 13 So, the cheapness of it. So, what excites you about it? And

Speaker 13 why did it have such a market impact from your perspective? You saw NVIDIA got crashed, it came back up, but this was the idea because the economic underpinnings of this,

Speaker 13 which everyone's worried about, this amount of money, $50 billion, $80 billion, et cetera. Microsoft is 80, I think Matt is 60.

Speaker 12 Yeah, by the way, I think that all of these questions are in the classic kind of like, you know,

Speaker 12 short-termism versus long-termism. Because if you're saying, hey, I'm spending, I'm doing, you know, kind of building this kind of CapEx thing of $50 to $80 billion.

Speaker 12 A, I can train much better intelligence, but B, I'm also, these are kind of data centers that I, in terms of serving intelligence through various apps, you know, to the world, you know, you could say, well, the payoff is longer than I'd like as a public market.

Speaker 12 I'd like the payoff to be three years and maybe it'll be five years or seven years.

Speaker 12 That's the kind of range you're talking about. So I find that the general discussion on the

Speaker 12 X tens of billions of dollars to be short-sighted generally, me as a private citizen, me as a venture investor, obviously making zero comment as a kind of Microsoft board member.

Speaker 12 And so I think that it's an extremely important area to be investing in. And I'm actually

Speaker 12 glad that we as a industry are doing this.

Speaker 12 I mean, one of the things that I've kind of thought about over December was that I want artificial intelligence not just to be amplification intelligence, I want it to be American intelligence in terms of.

Speaker 13 China thing. They're always bringing the g or me kind of argument.

Speaker 12 Go ahead. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 12 And I think, by the way, part of the criticism I used to get last year and the year before when I was saying, hey, look, we are game on with China was like, oh, you're just trying to get the excuse that we shouldn't be interfering with you and slowing you down.

Speaker 12 And so it's like, no, no, no, I see the competition coming. And one of, I think, the huge virtues of DeepSeek is kind of like, yes, there it is, right?

Speaker 12 That is serious and real competition. And

Speaker 12 I think

Speaker 12 that's the world we're in. Yeah, who would have thought that China would engage in IP theft to create a cheaper product? We've never seen that before.

Speaker 12 I love that AI is taking the job of AI. Yeah, that's the big thing.
That's what John Stewart said.

Speaker 12 so and another another thesis most consumer markets if you think of this as not only b2b but b2c they bifurcate it becomes walmart or tiffany it becomes android which is essentially free and it's ad supported or it's ios

Speaker 12 isn't this potentially just the first sort of shot across the bow where this market is going to become similar to every other consumer market where we're going to have Walmart and Tiffany and this is kind of the first entry into the Walmart 80%

Speaker 12 kind of old Navy.

Speaker 12 Old Navy is 80% of Gap for 50% of the price. And that hits a large market, but a lot of people want Gap or Banana Republic, that there's a market for both of these, if you will,

Speaker 12 both respective positionings. I think, yes.

Speaker 12 And actually, in fact, when we kind of talk about what is our identic future, most people tend to think, you know, there's going to be like one, like, you know, be Lord of the Rings.

Speaker 12 There's one agent to rule them all. And actually, in fact, I think there's going to be, you know,

Speaker 12 in a sense, more agents than people, because every person is going to have multiple agents. Now, there may be a limited number of code bases.

Speaker 12 Call it, you know, a thousand, you know, kind of powering all the kind of different agents. Could be 10,000.
But I think we're going to actually live in a very rich agent environment.

Speaker 12 And that's going to have all, it's not just going to be the kind of the Walmart or Tiffany's. I think it's going to be.

Speaker 12 You know, this agent's actually particularly good at travel. This agent's particularly good at, you know, kind of interpersonal discussion.

Speaker 12 This agent's particularly good for, you know, people like Scott. And this other agent's particularly good for people like Kara.
Right.

Speaker 13 So an agent that writes better dick jokes. Go ahead.

Speaker 12 Go ahead.

Speaker 12 Exactly. No, no, but this is precisely the point is like, you know, this one will be sardonic and a little sarcastic.
And Scott's like, yeah, that's my agent.

Speaker 12 And this agent's going to be fiery and say, no, we got to hold you to a higher standard. And that'll be the care agent.

Speaker 12 And then, you know, then you'll have the nuanced agent of the one for Reed saying, well, on one hand, and on the other hand.

Speaker 13 Yeah, yeah, that would be your agent, wouldn't it be?

Speaker 13 So let me, speaking of that, what he was talking about, you just raised $24, $25 million in funding for AI drug discovery startup focusing on cancer research and duties.

Speaker 13 This is something that, you know, Sam did this at the White House event, for example.

Speaker 13 And your book is called Superagency. So

Speaker 13 this is drug discovery. Superagency is what you're writing about.
Of these many things, where do you think the quicker is and the more important for the economy?

Speaker 13 And explain what super superagency is what you were just saying, correct?

Speaker 12 Yes. Well, super agency is what happens, and we've seen this from everything from, you know,

Speaker 12 the fire and agriculture to the printing press to, you know, the car and electricity, is what happens when millions of people all get access to the same

Speaker 12 superpowers of increasing their agency at the same time. And we collectively,

Speaker 12 you know, get super agency. Like, for example, when I get a car, I don't just get a place to be able to, you know, get a broader geographic mobility.

Speaker 12 My friends can come visit me a doctor can come do do a home visit um you know the you know things can be delivered into kind of the local neighborhood and so that's kind of the super agency and and the thesis is just like everything else with you know kind of um you know the the internet and the mobile phone that that we will all get super agency through AI because the cognitive superpowers that you get, that I get, that Scott gets, will actually be, we will get even more superpowers because we're all getting them at the same time.

Speaker 12 And that, as I think, you know, kind of like

Speaker 12 it's, you know, one William Gibson line, the future is already here, but unevenly distributed, that's already present. There's already a whole bunch of different things you can do with,

Speaker 12 you know, AI that most people don't realize is a huge amplifier in both how they navigate their personal life and how they navigate their kind of future life. Now, Manus

Speaker 12 is kind of my, you know, kind of thinking about like, what are the things that these AI things can greatly do to massively improve the kind of human life and human condition that are kind of in a different direction that most people are heading.

Speaker 12 So MANIS, for example, is not building an agent. It's kind of saying, actually, in fact, this, the biology of our human bodies is

Speaker 12 a complex language. And part of what's going on with cancer is kind of misfires in that language.
And we can take these

Speaker 12 great amplification that you get with AI and take the best of AI and take it with the best of science. And then you can tackle a problem that, you know, five-year-olds get cancer sometimes.

Speaker 12 It's not just, you know, it's the entire, everybody in the human race at all ages. Our system is naturally trying to regulate cancer and all of us are at risk for it.

Speaker 12 And it's something that we can potentially solve with AI. Right.

Speaker 13 But that's not agency. This is the other things it's going to do, like like climate and everything else.
That's what you're focused. And so you're sort of, where is most of your money going?

Speaker 13 Agents, these agents that you just spoke of? Or is it, you know, or is it these other things? Like, or is it just like electricity? We don't know where it's going to be applied.

Speaker 13 It can be applied, you know, to everything from light bulbs to, you know, electrocuting people, right? You just don't know what the application is.

Speaker 12 Well, I think there's a broad range. And as an investor and as a kind kind of a theorist and thinker, it's anything that could make a massive difference for the human condition.

Speaker 12 So I'm both very pro-agent, agent universe, but I'm also pro all the other applications, whether it's, you know, kind of climate change, cancer.

Speaker 12 And I think that's part of the reason why this technology, like, for example, electricity does an entire range of things. It's not just powering light bulbs.

Speaker 12 It's, you know, your heating and now, you know, cars and,

Speaker 12 you know, the whole range. Like we can't live in anything like

Speaker 12 even approximately close to our modern condition without electricity so i and i think that's the the the kind of technology that we're the comparative the comparative so any amount of money spent is good money spent from your perspective well yes it doesn't mean that some of it won't be seriously wasted by a bad approach and by the way that's classic as you know for the venture industry so there will be you know hundreds of foolish investments but the overall industry will create a massively good surplus for humanity and society.

Speaker 13 In any case, we got a lot to get to today. We're going to take a quick break, then we'll talk through some of this week's big headlines with Reed.

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Speaker 13 Scott and Reid, we're back. We've got a lot to get to today.
Let's get into some headlines now.

Speaker 13 Meta will pay Trump a $25 million settlement for shutting down his accounts after January 6th.

Speaker 13 Most of the payment will go towards Trump's presidential library again, much as a Disney's payment of $15 million is going to do that.

Speaker 13 X, who also kicked Trump off the platform after January 6th, says it's negotiating its own settlement with Trump.

Speaker 13 Apparently, the Trump people said Mark wasn't going to get into the tent

Speaker 13 unless he did this.

Speaker 13 You don't seem to be paying anybody millions of dollars to get in the tent. So

Speaker 13 what do you think, Reed?

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 obviously, I think.

Speaker 13 That was a long sigh that you just had there.

Speaker 12 Well, look, I obviously think that the notion of

Speaker 12 kind of this sort of payoff is, I think,

Speaker 12 to put it charitably suboptimal.

Speaker 12 And I think that the, you know, the question of like the fact is when people are removed from services for violations of terms of service, they're removed for violations of terms of service.

Speaker 12 And I think that's a perfectly good thing. And I, you know, myself am a massive advocate for, you know, kind of the rule of law and kind of how these kind of contracts work.
But

Speaker 12 I understand expediency in navigation.

Speaker 13 Okay. What does that mean?

Speaker 12 That means. What does that mean?

Speaker 13 It's a vig. It feels like a vig to me.
That's my, sounds like a mob move to me.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 You know, I don't want, wouldn't want nice company you got there.

Speaker 13 I wouldn't want anything to happen to it kind of thing.

Speaker 12 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 12 Well, let's hope that we see very little of that in the coming years, although obviously we have deep worries in the other direction.

Speaker 13 Couldn't he keep doing this, suing people and getting these things?

Speaker 12 Well, I guess the question will be, is

Speaker 12 it's kind of like, how much do people kind of respond to

Speaker 12 this sort of excess pressure

Speaker 12 on these kinds of things? And I think that that,

Speaker 12 frankly, you know,

Speaker 12 we shouldn't want it as a society.

Speaker 12 And,

Speaker 12 you know, I think probably there will at some point be a bridge too far on it and seeing what that that that bridge looks like um i think will is is still something we're

Speaker 12 you know we're looking for that bridge too far is well there's two there's two dimensions to this the first is from a pure shareholder standpoint it probably makes sense when the president's coming after you to say and you make you know 20 million dollars a year in operating profit to say yeah just make it go away just give them 25 million dollars for the presidential library and make it go away the problem is and i wouldn't expect based on pattern behavior mark zuckerberg to think anything about this is that this has real societal implications.

Speaker 12 And that is, despite the fact Bob Iger made $45 million last year, I would argue he's becoming more and more impoverished in terms of his citizenship.

Speaker 12 And that is when a media company says things that are a fraction of the misinformation, slander, disparaging statements that the president has made himself that happens every day online, and they agree to set precedent by bending a knee and bowing to this intimidation, it sends a chill across the entire fucking nation.

Speaker 12 I'm on Morning Joe, and I call the president an insurrectionist and a rapist. And Mika stops the show to clarify he was found guilty of sexual abuse.
Liable.

Speaker 12 Excuse me, sexual liable. He was found liable of sexual abuse.
Is that the right terminology?

Speaker 13 I just made, I'm calling Mika Brzezinski, but go ahead.

Speaker 12 But look at what we're doing. All right.

Speaker 12 And by the way, the judge then went on in his sentencing to say the street term for that is rape. So what do you have? You have a group of people.
This is straight out of the fascist handbook.

Speaker 12 Intimidate anyone who says anything negative about you. And if these companies, in my opinion, had more fidelity to American values and the very important role media plays in checking power.

Speaker 12 They wouldn't be bending the fucking knee like this. So is it a practical thing to do? Yes, you can't argue argue with that.

Speaker 12 Has it sent a chill across the entire country in what is an incredible double standard that the critics of President Trump are now feel that they're being held to?

Speaker 12 Look at the shit he has said about people that's been incorrect. So I, you know, yeah, Bob and Mark, I expected this from Mark.
I was disappointed to see it from Bob. Where are the men?

Speaker 12 Where are the Americans who are going to stand up and say, no,

Speaker 12 if if you're not guilty,

Speaker 12 if the entire ecosystem has never been held liable for things much more slanderous or disparaging than these statements, I'll see you in court.

Speaker 13 In this case, it wasn't statements.

Speaker 13 He broke the rules of Facebook and they kicked him off. That's all.
It was not, as Reid was known to say. Which they're allowed to do.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 13 So, Reid, when we talked in October, I asked if you were concerned about Trump and retribution and your own well-being, and you said yes. Talk about now.
How are you feeling?

Speaker 13 Because obviously you were one of the more prominent supporters of Kamala Harris, obviously a big Democratic donor. You do give to Republicans also, for which for some reason you get endless shit.

Speaker 13 I'm not sure why. I think that's probably fine to do that.
How do you feel now? Do you feel in that crosshairs that we had discussed?

Speaker 12 Well, it's unclear. I'm hopeful that.
a bunch of my friends who are around

Speaker 12 the administration say, look, that's just kind of all rhetoric and, you know,

Speaker 12 isn't actually going to be

Speaker 12 what's yeah. Yes, that's what they say to me.
Um, and so that obviously is hopeful.

Speaker 12 Um, but I obviously it's one of the things that I think, you know, both me personally and we as Americans need to watch carefully because we do want to be, to continue to be,

Speaker 12 you know, the home of the brave and land of the free.

Speaker 12 And I think that that's very important to be, you know, resolutely against, you know, kind of abuses of state power

Speaker 12 for individual interests. And so, you know, like I said, I went and talked to a whole bunch of people who are, you know, kind of in, you know, and around the current administration.

Speaker 12 Said, look, you know, I have this worry. They said, look, we've talked to a bunch of people.
They say, this is not something we're going to do. I was like, okay, then, you know, let's wait and see.

Speaker 13 Are these the same people that said he wasn't going to let out everybody at January 6th? He's only going to let out, he wasn't going to let out the criminals, but then he did.

Speaker 10 That's it wasn't the same.

Speaker 12 It wasn't the same people as those.

Speaker 13 He's done that several times. He's done that several times.

Speaker 12 So there's worries. And like, for example, letting out the people who assaulted police officers is,

Speaker 12 you know, as per what Scott was saying earlier, is a terrible signal.

Speaker 12 It's basically saying, hey,

Speaker 12 you know, like, if you're doing violence

Speaker 12 in a cause that I am supportive of, you know, I have this thing of a presidential pardon.

Speaker 12 And, you know, that's obviously,

Speaker 12 you know, frankly, you know, terrifying, concerning.

Speaker 13 Right. But you didn't want a presidential pardon, correct?

Speaker 12 No, no, no, of course not.

Speaker 13 Yeah, you didn't do anything.

Speaker 12 But here's, but here's the problem. If I'm a thoughtful guy who's high profile with a lot of business interests with a family,

Speaker 12 I would be inclined. I'm not going to speak for you, Reed.
I'd be inclined to keep a very low profile over the next 12 months.

Speaker 12 Whereas the people on the right are emboldened to be aggressive and pollute and flood the zone with misinformation and bullshit and attacks.

Speaker 12 And the people on the other side of the aisle feel like, well, maybe I should just keep quiet for a while because they are removing security details of people, which is nothing but repackaged violence.

Speaker 12 When you took out the head of the Iranian security forces and you ordered that strike as a general, and the president, for whatever reason, doesn't like you, is removing your security detail.

Speaker 12 That is repackaged violence against that person. So what we have is a group.
This is the road to fascism. Keep them quiet.
Put a chill across people. I'm going to keep a low profile.

Speaker 12 Maybe I'm just not going to be quite as aggressive. That is,

Speaker 12 that is,

Speaker 12 let me be clear.

Speaker 12 One of the roads to fascism, and I want you both to respond to this, is littered with calls or accusations that people are overreacting. Call me overreacting.

Speaker 13 Let me just say, Amanda loves this whole jam, Scott. She was like, Scott's on fire.
I love it. She was vaguely attracted to you, I think.

Speaker 14 Vaguely is doing a lot of work there. Vaguely.

Speaker 12 Vaguely is doing a lot of work.

Speaker 13 She was. She wanted me to tell you.

Speaker 13 I think you're right. But that's, I think it's, you know, people that are very high profile like Reed certainly aren't backing down.
Don't seem to be disappearing. He's right here, right?

Speaker 12 And he's talking about it.

Speaker 13 So I think the question is when Mark does these deals, when he just doesn't have to, and it doesn't help him from a shareholder point of view, I really think that's nonsense.

Speaker 13 It's really but i again we expected mark to do this sorry i know reed you were reed was early at at facebook for and has been had been a mentor to to mark i don't think he's listening to someone like you anymore but that said you you and bill gates had been um and probably are no longer i would guess but i don't know look the thing um i think that the american people should pay a lot of attention to the removing the security detail from

Speaker 12 you know a person who spent their entire life serving the American people, putting himself in harm's way,

Speaker 12 kind of helping secure the safety of America,

Speaker 12 both locally and Americans abroad, and saying,

Speaker 12 hey, for petty reasons, I am putting that person directly in the harm's way of violence. And I think that is

Speaker 12 an unpatriotic,

Speaker 12 personal thing that I think is extremely important that everyone should pay attention to.

Speaker 12 And I think it's exactly that is I think that, you know, as Scott's saying, on the things that are like, that is the kind of thing that is deeply un-American, like, I think people need to speak up about.

Speaker 13 And so, you know, 100%.

Speaker 13 So, another thing that people are talking about a lot here in Washington, at least, the Trump administration is offering 2 million government employees the option to resign by February 6th if they're not willing to return to the office full time.

Speaker 13 And what's being called a deferred resignation, employees that resign will continue to be paid and get benefits for eight months.

Speaker 13 This move has Elon Musk's fingerprints all over it, down the subject line of the email sent to those employees, a fork in the road, which he was an email Elon sent to Twitter staff in 2022.

Speaker 13 I have been stopped by so many government employees saying, What should I do?

Speaker 13 I said, Hold, do not leave because they won't pay you, because Elon still has severance issues with those people that were supposed to be paid at Twitter.

Speaker 13 It's one of these ploys to get people out the door. There's also federal employees have more,

Speaker 13 private employees have rights in California and New York, especially, but here they have more.

Speaker 13 What do you make of this plan? It's unclear whether Trump can even offer this buyout package without budget authorization, if he has the money for it.

Speaker 13 They're hoping that 5% to 10% of federal employees accept the offer, which could mean to hundreds of thousands of people.

Speaker 13 You know, Reed, you've been involved in companies that do things like this, and obviously you end up paying them unlike. what Elon did at Twitter.
It looks like he went around everybody.

Speaker 13 It looks like he went around everybody. This plan was sort of foisted upon people without even Trump officials knowing it was happening.

Speaker 13 That was the story in the Washington Post today. So thoughts?

Speaker 12 Yeah, so it is a technique that when deployed with honor is actually, in fact, something that has some strength in the private ecosystem.

Speaker 12 Because it's kind of in the private ecosystem, the way it works is if you're not committed to the future of this, then now is a good time to exit.

Speaker 12 Because

Speaker 12 doing, and it works in the private ecosystem in part because, you know, part of it is not only am I committed to the mission of this, but there's also an economic reason to be keeping going.

Speaker 12 You believe in the stock options, the bonus plan, all these kind of things for that. Now, I worry in the public circumstance that

Speaker 12 applied here, that a lot of the folks who go, okay, you know, I could get jobs in 10 different places. I'm going to go do one of those and do this.
And this will be

Speaker 12 kind of depriving the American people of some really great talent. So good people will leave, in other words, which is always a worry when you're doing this, right?

Speaker 13 When you're doing one of these broad layoffs.

Speaker 12 Yeah. And that's, I think, unlike the in the private ecosystem where you actually have a, and we have a rich incentive plan for staying too, right?

Speaker 12 Here, it's like, you know, here's an incentive plan for leaving versus an incentive plan for staying.

Speaker 13 So the best people leave. And in the case of private companies, they try to retain the, or they, or they specifically target certain employees, correct?

Speaker 13 This is too broad in that regard yeah so you the best people will go with the experience and the worst people will stay correct or the less good people will stay yeah there's a worry about a selection effect right uh did you notice the echoes of what elon had done here

Speaker 12 yeah yeah of course yeah and well i mean look i think uh

Speaker 12 i think we will see many things uh that are the parallel to

Speaker 12 um you know how elon thinks an organization should be be turned around from Twitter to the federal government. The fact that you're looking now where

Speaker 12 what was the leaked emails like, wait, we're not doing very well

Speaker 12 is

Speaker 12 whatever X years on it is for Twitter.

Speaker 12 It's like, well, should be learning from that. And that's within the standard understood commercial ecosystem.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Just so you know, today, you're not going to talk about the financial results, but Tesla's results were terrible,

Speaker 13 even though the stock is going up because

Speaker 13 they aren't selling as many cars. In any case,

Speaker 13 Scott?

Speaker 12 You guys have said it. I don't like buyouts because the people with the most options, the most talented people, are the ones that exercise them.

Speaker 12 I'm much more, I don't think there's anything wrong with the thesis that there's too many federal employees and we need to trim it and they should be subject to the same standards and insecurities and anxieties and

Speaker 12 work week that private employees are subject to. I don't have a problem with that.
I think it should be based on what departments are least efficient or performance. But these,

Speaker 12 your most talented people leave. The people with the most options leave.

Speaker 12 It is a degradation, I think, in the quality of the workforce.

Speaker 12 It's not the way to go about this.

Speaker 13 Is there a good way to do this, Reed, from Tech?

Speaker 13 Elon's using all his playbook, right? What is the playbook that would work here to do what Scott was talking about from your perspective, if you had to think of it off the top of your head?

Speaker 12 Well, I mean, the parallel on the commercial side is that you actually also have incentives for keeping the good people to stay,

Speaker 12 whether they're stock, bonuses, other kinds of things as ways of doing it. So it's not just the stick, it's the carrot

Speaker 12 for

Speaker 12 going long in your long-term commitment to the organization and

Speaker 12 its mission.

Speaker 12 So, you know,

Speaker 12 this would probably be harder and maybe not within the, you know, kind of presidential remit, but, you know, bonuses.

Speaker 12 Like you could imagine,

Speaker 12 like, you know, the kind of thing you'd say is, hey, if, if, if you figure out how to

Speaker 12 cut 10% of your budget, we'll give you a 1% bonus on these kind of things would be the kind of thing that I would,

Speaker 12 you know, potentially look at. But I think it's, it's all, of course, very tricky and difficult.

Speaker 13 And difficult in a public environment versus a private one, right? Because

Speaker 13 what is results? Because sometimes results,

Speaker 13 people being less poor. Like, what are the, what are the acts? It's not a stock.
You can see it in the stock market versus something else. Exactly.
Right, which is difficult.

Speaker 13 Is the concept of cutting people a good idea from your perspective?

Speaker 12 Fundamentally, yes.

Speaker 12 Just because it's part of what makes,

Speaker 12 like, what are the things we should learn from a bunch of the things that we learn from the commercial side? And part of it is refactoring organizations is essential for keeping them healthy.

Speaker 12 And so that refactoring is extremely important. I'm quite certain if one looked through the kind of the federal government, one would find like, and I'm sure I'm using this as a hypothetical example.

Speaker 12 It's like, you know, you've got

Speaker 12 maybe still a weather balloon department. You know, and it's like, well, we should have one of those.
We've got satellites, a bunch of other stuff. I'm not sure we need one of those.

Speaker 12 You know, that kind of thing.

Speaker 12 And so I think that refactoring is good. And I think getting to that refactoring, figuring out how to do it in a good, intelligent ways is one of the things that I'm,

Speaker 12 I think is like we could be hopeful for maybe some good will come of this. Right.

Speaker 13 So a blunt force to it is a way to get it started.

Speaker 12 Yeah. Look, I think one of the things we're going to have to pay attention to is I think the default will be massively increase the deficit.

Speaker 12 And I think that the problem should be is we should not be, we should be trying to reduce the deficit.

Speaker 12 I mean, if you look at the actual budget and you want to get, you know, a lot of money out of what we're spending, we're spending on debt service is one of the massive line items.

Speaker 12 And so increasing that is just, you know, mortgaging our children's future more. I mean, it's already somewhat mortgaged.
Let's try to pay off the mortgage versus add to it.

Speaker 13 Right. In doing this, well, we'll see what happens.
Anyway,

Speaker 13 one of the other things that

Speaker 13 besides doing this, Elon's doing is, and this is an area you obviously came together in with PayPal when he had x.com, but they're partnering with Visa to allow real-time payments through its upcoming X money service.

Speaker 13 CEO Linda Yaccarino announced the deal saying it would enable instant funding to an X wallet via Visa Direct. It will also allow users to make peer-to-peer payments.

Speaker 13 Look, they were going to do this. They announced this, but I'm just curious where you would,

Speaker 13 where this is going,

Speaker 13 these ideas of the everything app. And

Speaker 13 this was a concept that not just X has, it's been going around forever, right? I mean, everyone talks about this, but where is the payment space right now? Away from this, I would never trust

Speaker 13 anything Lindel Yaccarino's working on with my money, but that's different.

Speaker 13 Where is it right now, the payment space? It seems like Apple dominates this whole space right now and PayPal.

Speaker 12 Well, payments is an area that at least has scale effect, if not sometimes

Speaker 12 network effects. And so, and one of the things is you have to get to a certain scale before you even have a viable payments network.
And so getting that scale really matters.

Speaker 12 I think that we want to see a bunch of good innovation on this.

Speaker 12 It is a very, you know, kind of common pattern to kind of go, oh, the way I'm going to more verticalize and extend, you know, my service is by adding in kind of payments and banking.

Speaker 12 And we see it in a number of different contexts. I mean, Google has one.

Speaker 12 There's a stack of these. And given my own background, you know, kind of doing the

Speaker 12 kind of payment space, it's actually one of the areas that I kind of look at because it adds to

Speaker 12 the flexibility. Like one of the things I really loved about what we did at PayPal was try to make every individual able to be a merchant.

Speaker 12 Now that's now much more true in the whole world, which wasn't true before, which allows, you know, kind of individual entrepreneurship inside. And so I think it's a good area to improve.

Speaker 12 You know, lots and lots of people are doing it. Yeah, a platform built on rage, porn, and crypto scams, handling your money.
What could go wrong?

Speaker 12 Look, the FDIC or banks have the FDIC. Twitter has dog memes.

Speaker 12 Our financial institution is based on trust, that you hit a button, that they have figured out a way to get it there safely, that along the way it doesn't get sequestered, that money is not know your customer.

Speaker 12 There's all sorts of things. FDIC insurance.

Speaker 12 I mean, there are so many protocols.

Speaker 12 Twitter to me does not reek of security or safety when it comes to people's money. It might actually, the underlying technology and its ubiquity, it might be a good use case for it.

Speaker 12 But the entire financial system is

Speaker 12 a case study in trust. And I don't feel this organization has created a great deal of trust.

Speaker 13 All right. So

Speaker 13 where is the most innovative thing you're seeing in funding right now? I mean, obviously, again, I don't think I've touched, I've dealt with money for a year now.

Speaker 13 I don't even, like, I found a 20 in my wallet and I was like, oh, look at that.

Speaker 13 I use Apple almost entirely for all payments everywhere I go, obviously, because I have an iPhone. But what is the most innovative thing you're seeing in this area?

Speaker 12 Well, I haven't, since I've been so focused on AI stuff, I haven't actually been looking at this particular area closely. Obviously, there's a whole bunch of things that are

Speaker 12 being developed within the crypto arena to try to have kind of ledgers and identity and all the rest of that. And, you know, the kind of the promise of that is to try to create.

Speaker 12 something that has, you know, you know, to elaborate on, I think Scott's excellent comments is, you know, how do we have trustless trust, which is a trust in the system that doesn't require trust in a centralized authority, you know, whose, you know, ability to hold that trust might be limited.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 so I think, you know, that's one area that I think continues to burrow along.

Speaker 12 Now, none of it has any of the in-depth traction that, you know, Apple or other, you know, could, because, you know, the key thing with payments tends to be ease of use and integration into your environment.

Speaker 12 And so,

Speaker 12 you know, I think that part of what Stripe's doing that is great is making it very easy to incorporate

Speaker 12 kind of Delaware corporations from anywhere or from many areas in the world and then provide a

Speaker 12 kind of

Speaker 12 economic powering structure underneath that to power entrepreneurship is, I think, like a really good thing. But like I said, I've been so focused at AI that in this area,

Speaker 12 someone may call me after this and say, this is really good. And I go, oh, yeah, that's the thing I should have said, but I just didn't know it at the time.

Speaker 13 All right. Scott and and Reed, let's go on a quick break.
When we come back, we'll talk about RFK Jr.'s contentious confirmation hearing.

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Speaker 13 Scott and Reed, we're back as we tape this. HHS Secretary nominee Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. is in the hot seat for the second day of his confirmation hearing.

Speaker 13 Things got a little heated on day one with Kennedy rejecting claims that he's anti-vaccine, addressing abortion flip-flops, and struggling with the question about Medicare and Medicaid.

Speaker 13 He has also asked some of his previous controversial comments. Let's listen to exchange with Democratic Senator Michael Bennett, who's a favorite of Scott's and mine.

Speaker 20 Did you say that COVID-19 was a genetically engineered bioweapon that targets black and white people, but spared Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people?

Speaker 12 I didn't say it was deliberately targeted.

Speaker 12 I just quoted an NIH-funded and NIH

Speaker 12 published study.

Speaker 20 Did you say that it targets black and white people but spared Ashkenazi Jews?

Speaker 12 I quoted a study, Your Honor. I quoted an NIH study that showed that as a certain race.
I have to move on, Mr.

Speaker 12 I have to move on.

Speaker 13 Kennedy's own family is also expressing concerns. JFK's daughter, Carolyn Kennedy, sent a letter to senators ahead of the hearing.

Speaker 13 She called her cousin a predator and accused him of exploiting their family's tragic history. Let's listen.

Speaker 21 Bobby continues to grandstand off my father's assassination and that of his own father.

Speaker 21 It's incomprehensible to me that someone who is willing to exploit their own painful family tragedies for publicity would be put in charge of America's life and death situations.

Speaker 21 Unlike Bobby, I try not to speak for my father, but I am certain that he and my uncle Bobby, who gave their lives in public service to our country, and my uncle Teddy, who devoted his long Senate career to the cause of improving health care, would be disgusted.

Speaker 13 Okay, that was the nice part, just so you know, for everybody, which wasn't very nice.

Speaker 13 You know, all these things seem to be going through, Pete Hegseth and everybody else.

Speaker 13 Any of them you'd like to comment on? The Kennedy one is particularly, it looks like he will probably get through. Same thing with Tulsi Gabbard and et cetera, et cetera, on down the line.

Speaker 13 What is happening here?

Speaker 12 I do believe a president should have pretty wide berth in terms of bringing in their own people.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 for all of the weirdness and incompetence parade of some of these nominees, I think this is the most dangerous.

Speaker 12 You know,

Speaker 12 you have an individual here who is not only anti-vaccine, if you were to list the greatest innovations in history, I think most thoughtful scientists from both sides of the political political spectrum

Speaker 12 vaccines would be near the top of the list.

Speaker 12 And the fact that we have now politicized it and have an individual with no science background spewing this information who seems to be committed to reducing or creating skepticism around vaccines, and then something that came out yesterday from Senator Warren was that he is being paid

Speaker 12 to find people to sue Gardasil,

Speaker 12 an HPV vaccine that so far has shown to reduce cervical cancer in women by 90%.

Speaker 12 I don't know if either of you have known anyone with cervical cancer. I have.
My God,

Speaker 12 we have something that can prevent nine out of 10 times this vicious, awful disease. And we have the head of HHS being paid.
to try and discourage and financially damage that miracle.

Speaker 12 This guy has no business at HHS.

Speaker 12 He is probably the most dangerous of the nominees in terms of what it could mean long-term without attribution, where in 10 years we wake up and go, oh, cervical cancer's back and reverse engineer it to this individual who is blatantly, repeatedly anti-vaccine.

Speaker 12 I think this is awful.

Speaker 13 I made my sons get it immediately when it happened. Reed, how are you looking at these? Obviously, you're making these AI AI investments in cancer research.
This guy will be right there

Speaker 13 at the head of all these organizations that are very related to some of these things.

Speaker 22 So look,

Speaker 22 I think the unfortunate prediction for RFK's

Speaker 22 probable confirmation is it will probably be measured in thousands of American lives lost.

Speaker 22 I think that the

Speaker 22 question around

Speaker 22 the fact that he's saying, I'm just following science. No, he's not.

Speaker 22 It's just, it's, it's not only is he anti-vaccine in you know, many, many statements over decades, like he is essentially anti-science.

Speaker 22 Like, I've heard of meetings where he is meeting with scientists, where the scientists try to tell him, he's like, no, no, you're supposed to listen to me.

Speaker 22 It's like, no, no, the whole point is to listen to

Speaker 22 good scientists. And I think this will be, you know, if this confirmation goes through, I think the, you know, the senators who vote on it should track

Speaker 22 how many thousands of American lives they're willing to spend

Speaker 22 in this calculus. Because if he implements any of the things that he has thought of, he has articulated and talked about, you know, I think

Speaker 22 the cost is going to be measured in lives.

Speaker 13 Have you been surprised by how many tech people have been attracted to him? I'm not going to leave that, Nicole Shanahan. She was not a tech person.
She's just a rich person who married a tech person

Speaker 13 and got money that way.

Speaker 13 How do you, have you been surprised by that?

Speaker 13 Because there is a whole strain of people who really back him in the tech firm, in the tech area, even as they make these big investments in AI and cancer and where he will have an impact.

Speaker 22 So I think

Speaker 22 that one of the, you know, the strengths and weaknesses tend to go together. And a lot of tech people tend to think, they go, well, I've met him and it was a perfectly reasonable conversation.

Speaker 22 And so therefore, you know, like, oh, that's just all media stuff. It's like, it's media stuff that he said, that he did in other rooms that you weren't in.

Speaker 12 Right.

Speaker 22 But there tends to be this, this, this really strong, you know, kind of like, no, no, no, I met him and I was like, yeah, I got the cut of his jib.

Speaker 13 Actually, Gates did this the other day with Trump, which was disappointing, but go ahead.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 22 And, and I think one of the things that's very important is to have a little bit of like, look, just how a person talks to you is not necessarily how they actually, in fact, operate in the world.

Speaker 22 And you have to apply that. And so I've had a number of tech people people try to say, RFK, he's great.
I'm like,

Speaker 22 just look like, for example, in an alternative, like hiring context, I prefer references to interviewing. I prefer to have both, but reference checking is much better.

Speaker 22 And it's like, I've seen the references on RFK. Like, that's part of the reason why it's like, okay,

Speaker 22 this appointment will be measured in thousands of American lives lost.

Speaker 12 Well, let's leave it at that then.

Speaker 13 All right, Scott and Reed, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

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Speaker 13 Okay, Scott and Reed, let's hear a prediction. I'm going to go first, actually.
I'll be at the White House soon with Tracy Flick, the new press secretary.

Speaker 13 The White House is welcoming podcasters to the briefing room. Carolyn is running it right now.

Speaker 13 She has decided that new media, which I agree with, including independent journalists, podcasters, and influencers, will be able to question and ask questions at briefings. I welcome this.

Speaker 13 The Biden administration should have done it, should have had different and not just the traditional people. So I'm super excited to go to the White House, and I will be there this year.

Speaker 13 That's my prediction: that Carolyn is going to let me in, Tracy/slash, whatever the heck she is. Thank you.
Any comment?

Speaker 22 I love that prediction. And by the way, I think it's a good thing to begin to broaden the kind of set of different folks in the briefing room.
I just think it's critical if you think,

Speaker 22 like, I am, this is the office of the president for all Americans to have a

Speaker 22 diversity of access to it. I mean, so, for example, you have a, you know, kind of a, you know, a Democratic president.
You still have Fox News, obviously, in the room.

Speaker 22 You need to have that that, that breadth of perspective to be representative to the American people. So I love that prediction.

Speaker 13 Yeah. I know she wants me there.
She wants me on that wall.

Speaker 12 Well, first off, I long your prediction. I immediately read that and I sent Jim Acosta an email saying, I need you to start a podcast.
I want you back at those press. Yeah.
Those press briefings.

Speaker 13 Yeah. This is the CNN person for people who don't know who left when they tried to put him on at midnight.

Speaker 13 He started his own. He has started a bunch of stuff on his own, which, and he's a great guy.

Speaker 12 We love him. He's a a great journalist.

Speaker 12 So I'm fascinated by what I think is kind of a tectonic shift with DeepSeeker, just the notion that there might be a reasonable facsimile of the best AI models at a much lower price.

Speaker 12 I think that this, regardless of what we find out, it was probably exaggerated.

Speaker 12 There is now, I think, a much greater likelihood we might be able to see cheap and cheerful kind of old Navy-like models.

Speaker 12 So my prediction is there's an entire layer of companies and pharmaceuticals in the consumer sector that had allocated $100, $200, $500 million

Speaker 12 for CapEx for the cost or OpEx, for the cost of AI that they were going to have to spend to rent these models to develop new drugs, come up with a better itinerary for your Airbnb stay, that all of a sudden are going to decide, wow, we're going to be able to get all of the great taste of AI with a lot less calories, a lot less OpEx.

Speaker 12 And you're going to see a bunch of companies that were setting aside a ton of reserves because they thought this was going to be a lot more expensive than it's going to be, recognize, take those reserves back, and it'll juice their bottom line.

Speaker 12 So I'm in the midst of trying to identify those. I don't know if it's Airbnb.

Speaker 12 I don't know if it's Johnson Johnson or GlaxoSmithKline, but I think there's an entire layer of companies that just got great news that their capex on AI could be 30, 50%, 80% less than they'd originally anticipated.

Speaker 22 Well, I think that actually we will see a variety of those. I don't think it's necessarily because of like the deep-seek news.
I think that we were actually already heading towards that.

Speaker 22 And I think that the part of the egenic future, this is commenting on Scott's, part of the agenic future will be actually, in fact, compositions of smaller models that deliver really effective services across a wide range for individuals, for organizations, and so on.

Speaker 22 So I agree with his prediction,

Speaker 22 but not necessarily just as a deep-seek response.

Speaker 13 Okay, Ray, your prediction.

Speaker 22 So

Speaker 22 I was thinking about this a little bit, and I think that one thing that would be an interesting

Speaker 22 thing that people wouldn't expect out of this is I think that

Speaker 22 the AI agents will trend

Speaker 22 towards creating

Speaker 22 agents that will be actually massively positive for human mental health.

Speaker 22 And I think that the actual natural market dynamics will reach in that direction because as people interact with these agents, and I think I've already seen this from what my startup inflection did with Pi, that has helped a bunch of other agents following this to be high EQ, kindness, and other kinds of things.

Speaker 22 And I think those will actually, in fact, help people feel more heard, more seen, a dynamic of interaction that is more who we aspire to be, and will actually help naturally through people just choosing the agents they want to interact with

Speaker 22 to an increase in kind of mental health and well-being.

Speaker 13 Well, unless, you know, as you know, I interviewed the mother of the character AI. There's the lawsuit there.
They can take that turn where they shouldn't be around young people, for example.

Speaker 13 They shouldn't, you're talking about adults here, correct?

Speaker 22 I'm talking about adults, although I think we also can, and I think we should be much more careful about how we, you know, engage with children in various ways.

Speaker 22 That's saying it's one of the important things for the technology industry to get much better at.

Speaker 22 But I tend to think that the natural dynamics of we will prefer

Speaker 22 the agents that have this characteristic. Now, I think part of the thing that it can be is

Speaker 22 having even agents that are trained to be very good in mental health will also be good.

Speaker 13 So that they will, so that

Speaker 13 there are good agents.

Speaker 13 My only issue is the potential for abuse is so massive and you're seeing it. The lack of care.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 13 Like, why didn't that kid, why didn't that company alert it when the kid said suicide? Like for stuff like that. Like,

Speaker 13 why was that never there? And that's the problem. And their argument is now that it's free speech.
It was going to be Section 230, but now it's these agents.

Speaker 13 Like in that case, should bots have free speech?

Speaker 13 Like that's the kind of stuff we're going to have to deal with as a society. Is it free speech when it's bot generated?

Speaker 22 I think at the moment it's definitely not free speech when it's bot generated.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Well, that's one of the issues we're going to talk about because it will be just off the fly. I prefer kind agents to mean ones, but I suspect I, this is why I love Reed.

Speaker 13 He's such a sunny character, but I expect really mean agents because people like that, like abusive agents and that kind of thing.

Speaker 22 So it may be that he prefer agents to be abusive to other people, but I think most people prefer them to be kind to them.

Speaker 12 I don't know.

Speaker 13 I'm going to,

Speaker 13 as usual, I take a darker turn on the thing. We'll see what our future brings us.

Speaker 13 Elsewhere in the Scott and Kera universe, this week on Profit Markets, Scott spoke with Robert Armstrong, U.S. Financial Commentator for the Financial Times.
Let's listen.

Speaker 26 In the world we lived in last Friday, having a great AI model behind your applications either involved building your own or going to ask OpenAI, can I run my application on top of your brilliantly good AI model?

Speaker 26 Now, maybe this is great for Google, right? Maybe this is great for Microsoft, who were shoveling money on the assumption that they had to build it themselves at great expense.

Speaker 13 Interesting. Interesting.

Speaker 13 Okay, Scott and Reed, that's the show. Thank you for joining us, Reed.
And again, your new book is Super Agency. What could possibly go right with our AI future? Thank you, Reed, again.

Speaker 13 Scott, read us out.

Speaker 12 Today's show is produced by Lara Namin, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertod Engineered this episode.
Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Ms. Suverio, and Dan Shalon.

Speaker 12 Nishat Kurwa 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 New York Magazine and Vox Media.

Speaker 12 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.
Have a great weekend.

Speaker 16 Support for this show comes from Volkswagen. As the U.S.

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