E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang

You know life's better with a good hack, like learning the secret menu at your favorite restaurant

or stumbling upon a buy one get one sale at the mall. Well, there's a wireless hack too, and it's called Visible.
Visible's like ordering from the secret menu in wireless. You get unlimited data and hotspot, and plans start at just $25 a month for one line, taxes and fees included.
Plus, Visible runs on Verizon's 5G network for great coverage, fast speeds, and a seamless connection. And it's all digital.
Don't like going to the phone store? Visible doesn't have them. You switch from your phone and manage your plan in an app.
Now that's a hack. If you're ready for wireless that lets you live in the know, make the switch at visible.com.
Plans start at $25 a month. For our best features, get the new Visible Plus Pro plan for $45 a month.
Terms apply. See visible.com for planned features and network management details.
I want to let you know we've restocked all your favorites on the merch site. Everything is in stock.
You can show up theovanstore.com. And thank you so much for the support.
I have some new tour dates to tell you about. I'll be in Chicago, Illinois on April 24th at the Wintrust Arena.
Fort Wayne, Indiana on April 26th at the Allen County war memorial coliseum and miami florida on may 10th at the caseya center get your tickets early starting wednesday february 19th at 10 a.m with pre-sale code rat king we also have tickets remaining in east lansing victoria bc in the Canada, College Station, Belton, Texas, Oxford, Mississippi, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Nashville, Tennessee, Winnipeg in the Canada, and Calgary in the Canada. All tickets at theovan.com slash T-O-U-R.
Today's guest is from Los Alamos, New Mexico. He's a leader in the world of business and technology.
He's an entrepreneur. He started Scale AI, a company recently valued at $14 billion.
He started it when he was only 19. And at 24, he became the youngest self-made billionaire in the world.
We talk about his company, the future of AI, and the role it plays in our human existence. This was super educational for me.
I hope it is for you. I'm grateful for his time.
Today's guest is Mr. Alexander Wang.
Shine on me And bro yeah thanks for having me yeah good to see you dude last time was at the inauguration yeah what'd you think of Like, what were your thoughts after you left? Because you and I ended up, we'd like left out of there and then went and got lunch together, which was kind of crazy. It was, there was a lot going on.
Yeah. It was a, were you there the whole weekend? No, I just got there the day, the morning of the inauguration.
Were you there the whole weekend? I was there the whole weekend. Yeah.
No, I mean, I think at least for what we do, like for AI, the new administration is really excited about it and wants to make sure that we get it right as a country. So that was all great, but it was kind of a crazy – the whole like event – like everything was pretty crazy.
I don't know. What did you think? I mean when I saw Conor McGregor show up, that's when I was like shit is – where are we? That's what like the most bizarre – I mean you were there.
Sam Altman was there. I was just like it was like shit is where are we it that's what like the most bizarre i mean you were there sam altman was there i was just like it was like what happened here um and part of that's because alex brusiewicz you know totally yeah i mean it's all because of him that we all went but just the fact that he would bring these people together it kind of makes you question crossover it's like uh it's like in in those like tv shows when you have those crossover episodes.
Yeah. That's kind of what it felt like.
Oh yeah. When like the Harlem Globetrotters and it would be like them versus like the Care Bears or whatever would show up.
Exactly. Yeah.
Like this. Yeah.
This seems yeah. Some cross pollination.
Yeah. What'd you think when Connor showed up? Was that strange to see him? Like, was there somebody you thought that was unique to see there for you? Well, yeah.
I mean, you, Conor, like the Pauls. I don't know.
The whole thing was pretty crazy. I see Sam all the time, and I see some of the tech people all the time.
I mean, it was a funny crossover, and it was obviously like so many people flew in to be able to go to, like, the outdoor inauguration. Oh, yeah.
And so, I mean, there were so many people in the city. We ran into them, obviously.
but like there's so many people flew in to be able to go to like the outdoor inauguration. Right.
And so, I mean, there were so many people in the city. We ran into them obviously, but like there were so many people in DC who were just around for the inauguration.
So it was a, yeah, I didn't even think about that. All there was a couple hundred thousand people probably that just got kind of displaced in a way.
And suddenly there's in bars or whatever, just like buying, like there was like people I saw walking just adult onesies and shit that said trump or on the best crazy shit yeah um yeah thanks for coming in man i'm excited to learn about ai i know that that's a world that you're in you're in the tech universe um and you you're from new mexico right yeah and so when you grew up there did you have like a strong sense of like science and technology was like part of your world? Like did your parents like lead you into that? Like what was just some of your youth like there? Yeah. So both my parents are physicists and there's a – Oh, damn.
I grew up in this town called Los Alamos where there's a national lab there. Did you watch Oppenheimer? Yeah.
Yeah. So all the New Mexico shots in Oppenheimer, that's exactly where I grew up.
Oh, so it was like originally where all the scientists came together and, and did all the work in the atomic bomb. And there's still this huge lab.
That's basically the, everybody I knew effectively, like their parents worked at the lab or, or some affiliate with the lab. It's like Nukville over there, huh? Nukville, yeah.
Is it scary like that? It was, you know. Is it at a level of mystery? Like is your prom like last night under the stars or something? There's this one museum.
Well, the funny thing is like first you hear this, you learn the story of the atomic bomb and the Manhattan Project like basically every year growing up because there's always like a day or a few days where, you know, there's a substitute teacher and they just, they just play the videos. So you're just like, yeah, an alcoholic or something.
A recreational user will use that term. That's crazy that that just like every year you guys have like, yeah, just like blast it Thursdays or whatever.
And it yeah you're just learning you're learning again about the manhattan project and then there's a little there's a little museum in town uh which is like you walk through and there's like a a life-size replica of the nukes um so it's it's pretty wild yeah and where did they drop the atomic bombs on they dropped them on asia right hiroshima they yeah they dropped them uh on uh in in japan yeah hiroshima and nagasaki is it is it crazy being like semi-asian part asian uh yeah yeah my uh my parents are chinese oh nice man is it crazy being asian and then having that happen to asian people with the bomb like is that a weird thing there it's It's nothing. Uh, no, I don't think so.
I mean, I think the thing is like, you know, I, uh, so there weren't, I didn't grow up with very many Asians, uh, cause the, in that town, it was, um, you know, it's, it's in New Mexico. There's very few Asians in New Mexico.
So I was one of the only Asian kids in my class growing up. And so, um, I didn't think that much about it, honestly.
But then like, but it is super weird. You know, you grow up and you learn about this very advanced technology that had this like really, really big impact on the world.
And I think that shaped. Yeah.
It's like the scientific John Jones over there. He's a New Mexican, isn't he? He lives in Albuquerque.
Yeah. Oh, he does? I think he does.
Yeah. Oh, sweet oh sweet man yeah yeah oh yeah that so you so you're there there's this there's this energy always there of this creation and so probably the possibility of creation maybe was always in the air i'm just wondering like how did you get formed kind of you know like what's your origin story kind of it was super scientific because because you know there were always these there were all these like presentations around what were the new kinds of science that were going on at the lab.
So there's all these chemistry experiments and these different like earth science experiments and physics experiments. And my mom studied like plasma and like how plasma, you know, worked inside of stars and stuff like that.
So it was just the wildest stuff. And you would talk to people's parents, people, like I would talk to my classmates or I'd talk to their parents about what they're working on.
It was always some crazy science thing. So that was really cool because everybody in that town basically is, they're all working on some kind of crazy scientific thing.
And you kind of i mean i feel like i grew up feeling like you know anything was possible in that way like yeah because the rest of us in other communities shitty communities or whatever we're just making that volcano or whatever you know i'm saying we're doing like grassroots level bullshit you know um dang that's got to be wild so every you see somebody just sneaking behind an alley and buying a bit of uranium and shit like that in your neighborhood that's got to be kind of unique i remember there was someone from our town who did uh who did a science fair project called um it's called like great balls of plasma and for the science literally for the science fair this was in like high school for the science fair they made like huge balls of plasma in their garage and i was like what the like this is we're all just doing this in high school damn so did you feel competitive or did you just feel like hyper capable like did you feel like kind of advanced just in your studies like when you were young like did you were in class you're like some of this stuff's kind of coming easy to me i ended up what what i did is um there was uh i ended up getting really competitive about math in particular and so uh so my sport was math which is kind of crazy that algebra easy son i know i feel you um and it was because when i was in middle school when i was in sixth grade there was this one math competition where if you if you got top four in the state state of new mexico then you would get an all-expense paid trip to disney world and uh and i remember as a sixth grader like that was the most motivating thing i could possibly imagine was like an all expense paid trip to Disney World. Yeah.
And then. Did you win it? I won it.
I got fourth place. So I snuck in there.
Part of fire. Snuck in.
Yeah. And then I went to and then we went to Florida to Disney World.
And I hadn't traveled. Like I didn't travel around too much growing up.
Like I mostly was in New Mexico and we did some road trips around the Southwest. So I remember getting to Florida and it was extremely humid.
It was like, I never felt what humidity felt like when I landed in Florida. I was like, oh, this feels bad.
And then I- Yeah, it definitely does. Yeah, it's funny because I grew up in humid, dude.
Like you would like, you like you try to shake somebody's hand you couldn't even land it because it was just not enough uh viscose just too much lube in a handshake you'd sit there for 10 minutes trying to land a handshake you know everybody was always dripping you know all the time people you always thought they were scared or something they were kind of geeked up off a gas station dope or something but people were just it was humid yeah you get really humid over there so then i became so then i became a mathlete uh that was like a big part of my identity was being a mathlete and i would and you have to wear a vest like what do you guys do is there an out is there a uniform for that or well you you need a you have a calculator okay so everyone had their favorite calculator okay you got that draco on you baby i feel you keep strapped you stay strapped at that time and then uh but uh but outside of that not really i mean like everyone had their favorite like his pencil you know your pencil your calculator that was your gear and uh but yeah no i i was i was like a a nationally ranked mathlete for uh for middle school high school that was my jam. And what's that math circle like? Is there – wow, that's crazy, dude.
So you go to – are there competitions you go to with that? There's competitions, yeah. There's like state-level competitions.
There's national-level competitions. There's like these summer camps, math camp.
I went to math camp a um where you where you convene with like-minded mathletes okay wow fucking wizards in the park uh a couple dudes fucking fighting over a common denominator in the lobby that's crazy bro but then you're but just like any other sport like you're like it's competitive you gotta win. And, uh, and so, so you're chummy with everyone, but you're also like, we're like, who's going to win, you know? Yeah.
No, dude, competition's amazing, man. That's one thing is too, that's so nice.
I think about when you're young, it's like, if you're involved in a sport or a group or whatever it was, um, just the, just that chance to be competitive, you know? Yeah. What are, what were like some of the competitions at the math thing like what's a what's a math competition like when you get there so you uh the ones in the middle school middle school were actually more fun because there's like there's almost like a jeopardy style buzzer competition and stuff like that but uh but in high once you get to high school it's just uh you just take a test and you just it's like the the one in America is called the USMO.
Bring it up. USMO? USAMO.
OK. And and it's like people all around the country take this test.
And there's a United States of American Mathematical Olympiad. OK, there you go.
OK, a participant must be either a U.S. citizen or a legal resident of the U.S.
Okay. Okay, go on.
And then it's a nine-hour test. Damn.
It's split over two days. It's nine hours.
It's four and a half hours. And it's nine hours, and you have six problems.
So it's kind of nerve-wracking. And you get in there.
You have four and a half hours the first day, four and a half hours the second day. Can you cheat in between the days? Can you just go home and.
No, you because you only get three questions the first day and you only get three questions the next day. And I remember the first time I took it.
I was in I think I was I was in eighth grade. First time I took it.
And I like I was like so nervous. nervous and i just i like brought a thermos full of coffee and i drank so much coffee that like those four and a half hours felt like like a year it was like i was so jittery the whole time it was uh it was crazy dang you out there rattling brother oh integers make me rattle brother i feel you on that dude that.
Dude, so that's pretty – so you're competitive.

And so you get out of there and you're obviously, I guess, admired in the world of math probably.

Or that's like a thing that you can point – that's like a pin, a feather in your cap.

So that helps you get into MIT, right?

Yep.

Okay.

So then, yeah, in MIT, on the mit admissions they ask for your like competitive math scores so if you're so so you knew a lot of kids going there probably because it was tons of kids yeah yeah tons of kids it was like a reunion it was like math camp reunion damn because i was wondering where all y'all were at dude because we were doing some other shit you know what i'm saying my yeah we were not god that's where all the smart kids were that's fascinating man and so then uh yeah i was at mit and then uh mit is like a really intense school because they you know the classes they don't fuck around with they just really like they load you up with tons of work and most of the time you, you like, they load you up with like huge amounts of work

and they,

you know,

you don't really know

what's going on initially.

And so you're just kind of like,

you're just trying to make it through.

But,

you know,

there's this motto

that MIT has called IHTFP,

which among the students

stands for,

I hate this fucking place.

Oh, yeah.

It's heavy, huh?

Yeah.

But then the school, when you go, they tell you, oh, it stands for I've truly found paradise. Oh.
So a couple differences of opinion. Yeah.
Yeah. Damn.
So it's really severe there. There's a lot of work.
They load you down out of the gate? You do a lot of work. But it's kind of awesome.
I mean, because I think the students really band together like you like instead of like i think uh instead of it being competitive really mit is much more about like everybody kind of like coming together working on problems together working homework together and just kind of like making it through together um what's that social life like there like are you dating you going to parties what's that like for you at that time it's a bunch of parties because people like mit there's a lot of people who like tinkering with gadgets so they're tinkering with like you know lights and big speakers and dj sets and all this stuff so actually the parties are pretty good because they're like the production value is high the production quality is high damn um and then what about when the science kids come through the lab dogs are they bringing are people making like unique drug was there like designer drugs that are being created by actual people like just because you know i'm saying like my friends in college none of us would know how to do that but there may be somebody at a smart at a more prestigious school that would know how was that a thing even or is that just there's one There was one part of the campus called East Campus where it was like, it was more fringe. And so there was like, at one point in the school year, they would, in their courtyard, they would build a gigantic catapult, like a huge catapult.
Like a trebuchet? Like a trebuchet, yeah. What's the difference? I don't know what the difference.
Yeah, let's get the difference there because people need to know this anyway. People have – for decades now, people have been – A trebuchet has like a rope attached to the end of it that flings it where a catapult just launches it.
No, it was a catapult then. Okay.
Like a big – because there was a big like ice cream scooper. Oh, yeah.
Looking thing that would like – that would fling it. And what are they just flinging Adderall into the rest of the campus? They would fling stuff into the which i don't think nothing i'm thinking about i feel like i don't know what the yeah no these giant this giant like catapult things um yeah and so this was like a event that would go on and people would kind of rave there what are you saying yeah they would do this they would do other things they were like they were into they would like build a lot stuff over there.
And there would be. Like people that ended up at Burning Man later on.
Yes. Yes.
That was the burning. That was core Burning Man.
Like there was a, there was a satanic ritual floor. Oh yeah.
Yeah. Like a lot of, a lot of like it's fringe.
Cool. It's cool.
Right. But, but yeah, so there's all these parties.
We, we bragged at MIT that, you know, people from all the neighboring schools, because Boston is a huge college town, like tons and tons. Boston's an amazing city.
Yeah. But no, MIT was fun.
But I was only there, I was at MIT for one year. Right.
And you dropped out. Is that safe to say? Yeah.
Okay. You dropped out.
And then you, so you got into AI, into the AI world. Is that kind of a safe bridge to say? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Is there, and I want to ask this because I know Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college.
You dropped out of college. Both you guys have had success in tech and kind of forward thinking that sort of world.
Is there something in college that you felt like didn't nurture you or did you just feel like this isn't the place for me? Do you feel like college doesn't nurture a certain type of thinker or was it just a personal choice? I think for me, it was like, um, I was just feeling really impatient. Um, and I don't really know why really, but I remember like, I remember I was in school the first year.
I was it was really fun and and i really enjoyed it but then i remember you know this in the year when i was at mit was one of the first like it was like one of the early big moments in ai because it was um i don't remember this but there was an ai that beat uh the world champion at go um this was in 2015 15 2015 when I was in college. At Go, and that was a game? Yeah, Go, it's like a big checkerboard with like white and black stones.
It's like, and it was, yeah, this game, AlphaGo versus LisaDoll. So AlphaGo versus LisaDoll, also known as the DeepMind Challenge match, was a five-game Go match between top Go player Lee Sedol and AlphaGo, a computer Go program developed by DeepMind, played in Seoul, South Korea, between 9th and 15th of March 2016.
That's confusing how that's written. It is very confusing.
It's confusing think that... AlphaGo won all but the fourth game.
All games were won by resignation. The match has been compared with the historic chess match between Deep Blue and Gary Kasparov.
Huh. The winner of the match was slated to win $1 million since AlphaGo won Google.
DeepMind stated that the prize would be donated to charities, including UNICEF and USAID. That's just a joke.
But Lee received $150,000 for playing. So this was a big moment because this had never kind of happened before? Never happened.
Yeah. And it was a big moment for AI.
It was like, oh, wow, this stuff is like, it's really happening. And so then this happened in March.
And I guess, yeah, I dropped out, started my company in May. So I guess two months after this, I was, yeah, that's what the game looks like.
Oh, I've played this game before. It's honestly, it's a really, like, I'm not very good at the game.
It's a little more fun than playing chess unless you're like, you know, in like Renaissance Fair board games or whatever. Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so now we got you. You're loose, dude.
You're out of the school and you're in the world. You see, did that match? Did realizing that kind of like spurn you to want to leave school or was that just something that happened around the same time? It kind of did.
Basically, it was, I remember feeling like, oh feeling like oh wow ai it's happening and uh this is back in 2016 so like eight eight nine years ago okay and then um i felt like i had to you know basically that that inspired me to start my company um and i moved i basically went straight from i remember i was i flew straight from uh boston Boston to San Francisco and then started the company basically. And that's scale AI? Scale AI.
Okay. And so did you, had you been following AI? Like what are your kind of, or you just like knew like this is where it's going.
Like you just felt there was something, an instinct that you trusted or like, because that's a big thing to do.

I was stuck.

So I took all the AI classes at MIT.

Okay.

So you already learned a lot about it.

Yup. And then there was one class where you had to,

like on all the classes you had to do side projects or final projects of

some kind.

And in one of them,

I wanted to build a,

like a camera inside my refrigerator that would tell me when my roommates were stealing my food wang boy catching them wang boy wow and uh but then so i worked on that and then it was there was one moment where where uh i was like there was like there was a moment that clicked where i was trying to build this thing and then there was one step that was like too easy i was like whoa that just worked right there and then that happened and then the the go match happened and i was like this this stuff is happening and so i did you ever market those refrigerators you ever actually create that i didn't market them no dude i could totally see that bro there's a refrigerator every dorm has it where there's a camera built in and you just get you're in you get a a notification on your phone. You know, you're like, damn, Adnan's got my hummus, you know, but you got video of him right there, dude.
That's a great idea. Yeah, I love that.
That was that was that was college me. Yeah.
OK, so Alexander Wang, he's free in the world now. He's headed to San Francisco.
He's a eye up. He feels the energy.
he's motivated by some of the classes he took um he's motivated by seeing that ai starting to actually overtake humans right or be able to compete with actual human thinking with the chess match yeah i would the way i would think about it or the way i thought about the time was like this is this is becoming um i you know people have been talking about ai for decades like it's kind of been always been one of these things that um people have have said oh it's going to happen but it never really was happening and it felt like it was you know it's really about about artificial intelligence yeah yeah yeah because i've always heard about artificial intelligence that's what i have so i've always been like um no you're you are you have real intelligence not. I don't, I mean, I think it's a, it's probably a mix, but I see what you're saying.
You know, I do. You know what I thought of the other day? It was like, what if they had like a Mexican version? It was like, Hey, I, I don't know.
That's a good, that's a good joke. But thank you.
It's a nice laugh. This show is sponsored by better help what are some of your relationship green flags that's a good question what are things you notice in your relationship that are like yes this is positive this is good we're headed in the right direction we often hear about the red flags we should avoid but what if we focused more on looking for green flags in friends and partners? If you're not sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify green flags, actively practice them in your relationships, and embody the green flag energy yourself.
I've personally benefited from therapy over the years. I think one of the things it's helped me with is just noticing some of my patterns Noticing when I let something small Turn into something big and being able to cut it off at the past so it doesn't happen anymore BetterHelp can help you BetterHelp is fully online making therapy affordable and convenient, serving over 5 million people worldwide.

Discover your relationships green flags with BetterHelp.

Visit BetterHelp.com slash Theo to get 10% off your first month.

That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash T-H-E-O.

Are you struggling to keep your website and digital marketing up to date while running your business now you can relax and binge on unlimited web design services with modify enjoy unlimited support a quick turnaround and your own designated designer modify has done my website for years and they're incredible sign up with modify today they make life easier and business better visit modify.com slash theo that's m-o-d-i-p-h-y.com slash t-h-e- for 50% off the last website you'll ever need.

That's modify.com slash Theo.

What is AI?

Yeah.

So,

so AI is all about,

you know,

basically programming computers to be able to start thinking like humans. So, you know, traditional computer programming, you know, it's pretty, it's pretty bare bones.
It's not very smart. And so AI is all about, can you have, can you build algorithms that start to be able to think like people and, and replicate some of the, like, our brains are these incredible, incredible things, you know, and that's evolution.
That's just biology that created our brains. And so it's all about how can we build something similar to that or replicate it using computers and machines.
And so the whole, you know, the whole modern AI era really started around an area called computer vision. But it was like, how can we first get computers to see like humans do? So one of the very first AI projects was this thing called ImageNet.
ImageNet and later AlexNet. And it was basically, can you get computer programs to like given a photo to tell you what's in that photo? I see.
So just like a human would, like if you showed them this, you're starting to train them to have a perspective? Yeah, train them to. Well, actually, originally, like you could like let's say you took a photo a photo of this bottle, a machine wouldn't even be able to tell you what's in the photo.
It would just know what the pixels were, but it wouldn't be able to tell you, like, oh, there's a bottle in that photo. So, you know, one of the first AI breakthroughs was when YouTube built an algorithm that could tell when there were cats in their videos.

And that was like this, you know, in like 2012 or 2011, this was like this mind blowing breakthrough that you could like figure out, you could like use an algorithm to figure out when there was a cat inside a video. And so AI, it started pretty simply with just how do we replicate, you know, vision? Like, how do you replicate like our – basically the fact that our eyes and our brains can like process all this imagery coming in? And that really led to I think one of the first major use cases of AI, which is self-driving cars.
So this was – when I started the company in 2016, self-driving cars were all the rage because, you know, it was – there were all these like skunk works projects. When you started Scale AI, you mean? Yeah, when I started Scale AI.
So when you kind of got into AI, at that time, self-driving cars were the most popular things. Yeah, yep.
That was all the rage. And so it was all about can we start building algorithms that can drive a car like a human would and do it safely and do it you know more efficiently and that way instead of you that was that was one of the first major areas okay and then um now you know i the whole the whole industry has moved so fast but then all of a sudden we got chat gpt and we got you know more advanced stuff more recently that that is able to talk like a human or sort of think like a human.
And so it's really come pretty far recently. But all of it is about how do you build algorithms, how to use machines to be able to think like a person.
Okay. And is it a – like say if I opened a door, like we keep the AI in there.
Is it a computer is it a program is it a hard drive like what okay what is that yeah so there's two parts there's two parts to it so the first part is you need really advanced chips so you need like uh uh like these they're called gpus or sometimes called tpus or you know there's lot of different words for it, but you need like the most advanced computer chips in the world. Okay.
And they – How big is each one? Do you know? Or can you measure it like that? They – I mean, the biggest ones are actually like the whole chips are like, you know, pretty big. But they're like a wafer kind of thing.
But then you put a lot of them all together.

Okay.

So these – yeah.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Wow.

These chips.

And the biggest ones are – yeah, exactly.

That's a little one.

That's a little one.

There's really big ones.

Okay.

But these are the – so this is the – these are the brain cells of it.

Yep.

These are the brains behind it. Yeah.
So then – yeah, exactly. These are some – those are some big ones.
So then – So you have to have a lot of these chips. So you need a ton of these chips.
And that's kind of the like – that's the physical presence. And then by the way, they take a huge amount of energy.
They're really – because you have to do a lot of calculations and there's a lot of math that has to happen on them. And so – and you have giant basically data centers, buildings full of like tons and tons of those chips just in giant rows.
Like how big? Are we talking warehouses? Yeah, the biggest – I mean like Elon's data center, Colossus, is like – I mean it's probably more than a million. It's definitely more than a million square feet.
I mean, it's like just huge. Really? Yeah, yeah.
Look up Colossus. I've never known this.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
You see that building with the sunset? Second row? Yeah, yeah. There you go.
Right there? Or the one to the left oh no yeah that one yeah look it's

like a huge ass building what it's huge and all that's just filled with chips um have you ever been in there i haven't been in that one but i've been in some of these and this just and this is what it looks like inside yeah basically yeah so it's just rows and rows of chips so no plants or anything yeah no no plans no plants it gets hot in there i bet um so the first part is just the the that's the physical presence and then the second part are the algorithms so then you have like on top of those chips you have you have software that that's running and the the algorithms are just all are like what you actually are telling,

what's the math that you're telling to happen on the chips. And those algorithms are, you know, some of the, you know, most complicated algorithms that humans have ever come up with.
And that's kind of the, that's kind of the software part, or that's kind of the, that's the part that like, you know, exists on the internet or you can download or whatnot. And then it has to be run on these like huge warehouses of giant ships.

Okay.

So when someone goes to like scale ai or chat gpt these are all ai interfaces or what are they they're yeah so so um yeah like chat gpt is a is a way to be able to uh talk to basically you can talk to the algorithm. So you can start interacting directly with the algorithm.
You can see how the algorithm is thinking. So you could say to this, can you describe the weather today? Exactly, yeah.
And if you said that to five different AI companies, basically? Yeah, or AI algorithms, different AI systems, yeah.

So if you said there's five different AI systems,

you might get a little bit of a varied answer?

A little bit, yeah.

Okay.

Because they all are trying to have their own style and have their own vibe to it.

Interesting.

And then what we do, what Scale AI is all about,

is we've kind of built almost like the Uber of AI.

Okay.

So a lot of what we're trying to do is,

how do we help produce data that is improving these algorithms? And just like how Uber, there's- Okay, you're losing me there a little. It's okay.
But if I slow down, if you're losing me, but so explain that to me a little bit clearer for me. Yeah.
So, okay. So with these algorithms, one key ingredient for these algorithms is data so okay so you have the chips and everything that are that are storing all the information yep they're storing the data yep and then you have the algorithms that are helping mediate between the user and the data yeah so basically you kind of have yeah you have three you have three key pieces okay so you have the uh you have the computational powers for the chips You have the yeah, you have three, you have three key pieces.
Okay. So you have the, you have the computational power, so the chips, you have the chips, you have the data, which is like just tons and tons of data that that's where the algorithms are learning the patterns from.
So these algorithms, they aren't just like, they don't just learn to talk randomly. They learn it from learning to talk from how humans talk, right? Got it.
So you need tons and tons of data. And then you have the algorithms which learn from all that data, and then they run on top of the chips.
Got it. So then one of the big challenges in the industry is, okay, how are you going to produce all this data? And so this is- How are you going to get data for your system?, how do you farm the best data? How do you exactly how do you build how do you build all that data? And how do you do that in the most effective way? How do you build new data? So clean data, because what if you get a bunch of data in there, that's just a bunch of advertisements and bullshit? Will that affect the output? 100% Yeah, that definitely affects the output.
So this whole data. so data is, you know, some people say like data is the new oil or data is the new gold.
Like data is really, really valuable because it's how the algorithms are learning everything that they're learning. Like anything that the algorithms know or learn or say or do, all that has to come from the data that goes into it.

Okay.

So if I ask a system, an AI system, a question or ask it to help me with something, help me to design something or to curate an idea, it's going to use the data that it has within it to respond to me and help me and help give me an answer that I can use. And it's only in the data it has in it is only based upon the data that is put into it.
Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah. So then, so yeah, it's kind of, so then we don't, you know, we don't spend enough time talking about where it is, you know, how are you going to get this data and how are you going to keep making new data? So the angle

that we took at scale was to kind of turn this into an opportunity for people. So we're kind of

like the Uber for AI. So just like how Uber, you have riders and drivers, for us, we have the AI

systems, the algorithms that need data. And then we have a community of people, a network of people who help produce the data that go into the system.
They get paid to do that. So they're almost data farming, like creating good data? Creating good data, exactly.
And it's huge. So we do this through our platform called Outlier.
Okay. And Outlier, last year, people, contributors, we call them, contributors on Outlier earned about $500 million total across everybody.
In the US, that's across 9,000 different towns. And- So it created a lot of jobs.
A lot of jobs. Okay.
And so what would, okay, so Scale was your company. Scale AI.
It's an AI system. Yep.
Is that right? So we, yeah, I mean, yeah, Scale AI is an AI system. Okay.
And then Outlier. Yep.
Is a separate company that works with it. Yep.
And that is where you are hiring people? We, yeah, we basically- To pull in data. Yeah, we build this platform that anybody, you know, a lot of people, frankly, all around the world, but Americans too, can log on and help build data that goes into the algorithms and get paid to do so.
Wow. Yeah.
So how, and how does a user do that? Like what is an example of somebody who's helping build data for an AI database? Yeah. Let's say you're a nurse, like you're a nurse with like tons of tons of experience.
So you know a lot about how to take care of people and take care of people who are sick or, you know, have issues and whatnot. And so you could log onto the system and our platform and you could see that the algorithm is, you know, let's say you ask the algorithm like, hey, I have a, you know, I have a pain in my stomach.
What should I do? And you notice that the algorithm says the wrong thing. Like the algorithm says, oh, just, you know, hang out and, and, you know, it'll go, it'll go away.
And you know, as a nurse, like that's wrong. Like I, you know, you have to, you have to go to the emergency room because you might have appendicitis or you might have, you know, you might have something really bad.
And so you would, as a nurse, you would go in and you'd basically correct all these mistakes that the AI system has. And then that would then feed it back into the algorithm.
So that's smarter the next time. So it's kind of this, this continual process of, and there's versions of that for whatever your expertise is or whatever, you know, you know more about than anything, everything, everything.
Exactly. So, and so people get paid for that.
Yeah. Yeah.
They get paid. And how do you know if their information is valuable or not? Well, we so we don't want spam, obviously.
So we we we have a lot of systems to make sure that people aren't spamming and that like you're saying, it's not it's not, you know, it's not garbage in that's going into the into the algorithms. So we have, you know, we have kind of like people check the work of other people to make sure that the AI systems are really good.

And we have some like automated systems that check this stuff.

But for the most part, it's like it's really broad.

Like we want experts in anything.

Everything.

Shellfish, train tracks, whatever.

Yeah.

Gelatin.

Everything.

Childhood, death or whatever.

Yeah, totally.

Stars, galaxies, whatever. Animals.
Big animals. Yeah, damn.
Wow. So it's kind of like your data is almost like an ocean or a body of water and you, different places are going to be able to keep their body of water cleaner or dirtier and different infections could get in, different spyware, all types of stuff.
And if you have really a clean body of water, then you're going to be able to offer a clean data or a certain type of data to, um, people who are using your AI platform. Does that make sense or not? Yeah, yeah, totally.
And our job is like, how do we make sure that this body of water is as clean as possible and we fill it up as much as possible, that has as much information about everything across the globe wow so is there almost a race for information right now in a weird way or no is that not it there a little bit yeah i think that there's a well there's a race for like how are different ai systems competing against each other and sorry to interrupt you yeah no no so the there's a there's it's it goes back to the three things i mentioned. So there's kind of like three dimensions that they're all competing as one another.
One is chips. So who is the most advanced chips? Who is the biggest buildings of chips? Like who is the most chips that they're utilizing? Data.
So the kind of body of water, whose body of water is better, cleaner, healthiest, healthiest, biggest, etc. And then the last is algorithms.
So who's and this is where the scientists really come in. It's like, okay, who's coming up with the cleverest algorithms or who has like a trick on an algorithm that somebody else doesn't have? Like who's doing that to basically make the AI learn better off of the data that it has? Wow.
God, I'm in the future right now. That's so, man, it's just, it's so crazy.
And I think AI scares people because the future scares people, right? It's like, that's one of the scariest things sometimes is the future. So I think a lot of times you associate, because a lot of times when people mention AI, there's a little bit of fear, it seems like from people yeah um there's fear that it's going to take jobs there's fear that it's going to take over um our ability to think for ourselves yeah there's just kind of some general uncertainty there like is this and it kind of feels like fear a lot of times but a lot of times fear is just a lack of knowledge right um and not a lack of knowledge because you didn't want to know just because you don't know yeah or that you're dumb but just because you don't know um what are what are positive things that we're going to see with ai right i want to start there yeah so i think first like we don't the ai industry we don't do the best job explaining this and i think sometimes we make it seem all sci-fi and genuinely we're part of the problem in making it seem scary, right? But, you know, one thing, for example, is like I think AI is actually going to create a ton of jobs.
And that story is not told enough. But, you know, these jobs that we're producing or this sort of this opportunity that we're providing on our platform, Outlier, like that's only going to grow as AI grows.
So because you have to have new data, you have to have new data. And the only place you can get new data is from people.
Well, at a certain point, would the system be able to create? It can probably matriculate data or matriculate. Is that with birthing or what is that? Yeah, it just moves through like okay it can probably like quantify or in and give you answers but it can ai create new data uh no so i think well it can do a little bit of that so it can ai can help itself create its own data um and and help itself a little bit but ultimately most of the progress is going to come from, you know, people who are able to help really the model get better and smarter and more capable at all these different areas.
Yeah, I didn't see that part of it. I didn't understand that we are the ones who are giving it information.
And since we're going to continue to learn, I would assume that we would be able to help continue to help it learn. Yeah.
And the world's going to keep changing and we're going to need to be able to keep teaching the algorithms, keep teaching the models about how the world's changing. So, you know, this is actually a big thing that I think most people don't understand.
The people who are getting the opportunity now who are earning money from it see it. But as AI grows, there's actually going to be tons of jobs created along the way and tons of opportunity for people to help improve AI systems or control AI systems or overall sort of be a part of the technology, not just sort of disenfranchised by it.
Okay.

So like, yeah. So what are you, do you feel like are other ways? Like if you had to look into the future a little bit, right? So you have the fact that people are going to be able to add more data, right? Yep.
And add nuances to data. Yep.
Right. And probably humanize data a little bit.
Yeah, totally. And then you're also going to have what? I think you're going to have a lot of jobs around, you know, as AI starts doing all these little things throughout the world, who's going to keep watch of those AI and who's going to make sure that those AI aren't doing something that we don't want them to do? So almost like managing the AIs and keeping watch over all the AI systems, that's going to be another thing that we're going to have to do.
And then it's – So somebody to kind of guide the river a little bit. Yeah.
At a certain point, guide the stream, stay in there, watch, make sure that answers are correct, make sure the information is honest. Yeah.
Yeah, like, like, I think, for example, you know, we're not going to just have AIs going around and, you know, you know, buying stuff and doing crazy things. And like, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna keep it controlled, right? Like as a society, I think we're gonna keep it controlled as a technology.
And think there's going to be a lot of jobs for people to make sure that the AI doesn't go out and do crazy things that we don't want it to do. Right.
So we want to be, so you're going to need managers. You're going to need facilitators.
Yeah, exactly. What are things that AI will alleviate? Like, what are things that like, will it eventually be able to have enough information like our data where,

uh,

where it can like cure diseases and stuff like that.

Like,

is that a realistic thing?

Yeah,

that's super real.

Um,

like cancer even.

Yeah.

Cancer.

Um,

yeah.

Heart disease,

like all these,

all these diseases.

Yeah.

Cancer on his heels.

But,

but sorry,

Antonio,

Antonio Brown was just here.

I think there's still some smoke in the air

so um no but seriously i think that ai uh one thing that we've seen which is this is kind of wild but ai understands like molecules and biology better than humans do actually because um it's uh like like uh there there's this there's this thing in ai where you used to take a PhD biologist five years to do something that the AI can just do in a few minutes. And that's because just the way that molecules and biology and all that works is something that AI happens to be really good at.
And that's going to help us ultimately cure diseases, find, you know, pharmaceuticals or other treatments for these diseases, and ultimately help humans live longer. Because that's very data-driven, right? Like, it's very specific.
It's very mathematic. Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah.
So it's going to be a huge tool for us to cure disease, for us to help educate people, for us to, you know, there's a lot of really exciting uses for AI. But I think the kind of – I think the thing that will touch most people in their lives is it's really going to be a – like a tool that will help you, you know, make all of your sort of make all your dreams kind of become reality, if that makes sense.
So, so I think one of the things that AI is going to be really awesome for is like, you know, today, if I have like a million ideas, right, I have like, you know, thousands and thousands of ideas, and I only have so much time. So I can only really do, you know, a few of them at a time.
And most of the ideas just go to die, right? Yeah, they do, huh? Yeah. That's a bummer.
It's a huge bummer. Yeah.
And I think a lot of people, you know, for whatever reason, they may have some of the best ideas ever, but they just, you know, they're too busy or they have like other shit going on in their lives. They can't make those ideas happen.
And it's great with sometimes when people are able to make the leaps and make them happen and like devote themselves to their dreams. But, um, but that doesn't happen enough today.
And one of the things that AI is going to help us do, I legitimately think so is it's going to help us, um, turn these ideas into reality much more easily. So, you know, you can, you can like, you know, you're making a movie.
Let's say you have another movie idea. You can say you can ultimately I think you'll be able to tell an AI, hey, I have this idea for a movie.
What could that look like? You know, maybe draft up a script. Also, who are the people who can help fund this idea? Who those people be?

Can you help reach out to them?

And then who should we cast in it?

Basically help make the whole thing a – instead of this daunting thing that these big projects, they're usually so daunting.

You really don't know where to get started.

You kind of need a person to help you get through them.

Instead of that, AI will help you get through it and help do a lot of the sort of less glamorous work to make them a reality. Wow.
so I could say for example

like

um

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm I'm I'm I'm I would like to shoot maybe I'm thinking about creating an idea or shooting a film in this area or it's like this. It's going to take place in this type of place.
I can give it the setting. I can give it like a outline of the characters, like what they look like their ages and some description could you help give me um possible potential actors or something within a certain price range that i can maybe cast for that um yeah could you help give me like locations around the country that would fit that backdrop yeah um could you uh list me all the talent agencies that i could reach out? And you could kind of just put those things in and then you would have sort of a bit of a guidebook at that point that would make your.
Yeah. What before was something that felt extremely daunting.
Yeah. Shit.
In two minutes, you know, and then you put it in the AI gives you the information back in a few minutes and maybe you're. And I think I think over time, it'll also be able to start doing a lot of the legwork for you.
So it'll be able to reach out to people for you. It'll be able to, you know, figure out the logistics.
It'll be able to book things for you. Like it'll be able to basically help do all the legwork to make it make, you know, whatever it is into a reality.
So very much an assistant in a lot of ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
An assistant, co-pilot. You know, the hot word in the AI world is agents, but, you know, it's just, it'll be something that'll help you.
You know, humans are going to be in control. Humans are ultimately going to be telling the AIs what they want it to do.
And then, you know, hey, what do we want? What do we want these AIs to do? It's ultimately going to be to to be to like help us execute on and accomplish all these ideas that we have so a genius could be three or four x'd if somebody's like a genius in something in some realm or space of thought you could three or four x them because totally like multiply their their output from their own brain because they could have something really helping them yeah get done lot of the, like the early work on things and maybe some of the most severe work. Yeah, totally.
Like what, I think one thing that I always feel like kind of sucks is that if you have a director, you really like, they're only going to make a movie once every couple of years. So even if you have a director that you'd like, think is amazing, you know, they just, it's hard for them to make that many movies, like, cause it just takes so much time and effort and, you know, um, there's so many bottlenecks and stuff.
So in a future with, you know, more advanced AI systems, they could, they could just churn them out and, uh, they could, they can make so many of their ideas into a reality. And I think that's true not only in creative areas, but it's kind of true across the board.
Like, you know, you can start new businesses more easily. You can, you know, you can make various creative projects that you have happen more easily.
You can make like, you can, you can finally plan that event that you and your friends have been talking about for like, you know, years and years. So it can just like really help you, you know, we think about as like giving humans more giving humans more sort of sovereignty and just and just enabling humans to get way more done yeah that's a great way i like some of this thought because yeah i could be like like my fantasy football group and i we do a um we do a uh draft every year in a different location you know and shout out pae that's our fantasy league j-rod everybody that's in it for the past 17 years we've flown to a city each year and done a draft in person right um but I could say hey uh we have 10 guys we want to go to a nice place we want there to be a beach um this is the age group of our group uh you know these would kind of be the nights and it you know just to really give me like a just a nice plan of hey here's 10 possibilities right something like that and then even more like with a movie this is what i worry you'd run into say if i'd be like okay i have two main characters and this is kind of what i would like to happen could you help me with a first act of a three-act movie how do you know everybody just doesn't get the same movie then like that's what i would start to worry that everything that you have it create is all going to be very similar yeah so then i think this is where it comes into like this is where human creativity is going to matter because it's going to be about then it's about like okay what is the how am i you know how am i directing the ai system like what are my what are the tricks I have to make the AI give me something that's different and unique? And that's, that's not different at all from, you know, how creative stuff works today.
Like even on social media or anywhere, you know, this, like you still add your own spice to it. You need, yeah, you need an angle.
You always need to like have something that's going to make it like different and interesting and new. So that's not going to change.
Like we're humans are always going to have to figure out based on where culture is at, based on where, you know, what the dialogue is, what the, what the discourse is, all that kind of stuff. What is my fresh take? That's where that's really one of the key things that humans are going to have to keep doing no matter what.
Right. And, and, and some of the, like a lot of films and books, a lot of it is, there's just like a problem.
There's maybe a information you learn, there's a red herring, and then there's a solution. Like that's a lot of stories, right? So if something just gave you the basis and then you go through and make everything your own, because a lot of things, there's only so many templates for things.
Huh. Yeah.
So say, for example, say you might need to hire people at a company then that would help direct your AI, like somebody who's good at managing AI. Yeah.
And giving it the best prompts or the best way to ask it questions. Yeah the perfect feedback for your company.
So those would be new jobs. Those would be actual new people you would need.
Yeah. So tons of new jobs.
Well, first, I think just like helping to, you know, kind of what we were talking about before, these jobs around helping to improve the data and contribute to the AI systems, that's just going to keep growing for a long, long time.

And then as AI gets better and it gets used in more areas, then there are going to be a lot of jobs that pop up just exactly as you're saying, which is how do you, what's the best way to use this as a tool?

What's the best way to leverage it to, you know, actually make some of these applications or, you know, whatever you want to build a reality? And then there's going to be folks who need to, once those are built, like, how do you keep improving it? How do you keep making it better? How do you keep it fresh? How do you keep it going? And then how do you also make sure it doesn't do anything't do anything bad right like how do you make sure that the ai doesn't accidentally spam a million people or whatever it might be um and you make sure that it sort of is uh like operating in a good way fahim and more i was watching him bring up a picture of fahim this is one of the funny this guy this is the the most creative comedian in America, undeniable. He is so funny.
He had, and everybody would say, he's one of the few comedians that everybody goes in there to watch him perform. He had a bit the other night, he talks about he got into a Waymo, right? Yeah.
A car, and I see so many Waymos now, which are cars that are just nobody's in them, you know, but they're going right. So he had this bit.
He's like, he got into a Waymo and it started complaining about its life to him. He's like, I've had a shitty week.
Like the car's just talking to him. And he's like, what the? And he's like, now I, no matter what, I still have to talk to my shitty driver.
That's what he was saying. If you get a chance to see him though that guy is he's fascinating yeah um but like so what what companies right now should kind of look to hire an ai guy because we've been thinking about it like we had some uh we had cat williams on a last week and we're like hey can you create visuals of suge knight and cat williams riding bicycles down sunset boule right? And this is the one they sent back a little while later.

Christopher Foligno is the guy's name, FYI.

And this is just, this is right where I say it was like by the comedy store on Sunset Boulevard.

There you go.

I mean, this looks like it's out of a movie kind of.

Yeah, totally.

I mean, and the guy did that in just a little bit of time.

What types of people would you get to, I mean, this is.

That's you.

Yeah.

If I was healthier, if I had healthier gums too.

But what about this?

What kind of like what companies right now, what job spaces?

Cause we want to get an AI guy.

Right.

But I don't really, my brain is like, well, what do they do?

How do I, how would I keep them busy?

You know, I could get them to make some animations and ideas, but what type of people need an AI person right now do you feel like? I kind of think about AI. It's kind of like the internet where, you know, eventually everybody's going to need to figure out how to utilize it, how to best use it for their industry or whatever they do, how to make it them more efficient.
It's something that I think everybody is going to need to adopt at some point. So might as well start earlier.
Because eventually, just like how basically every company has to figure out how to use the internet well and how to be smart about the internet and digital stuff, every company is going to have to be smart about AI, how to use AI, how to make, how to have a unique twist on it so that, you know, their stuff stands out relative to other people's. That's going to be really important.
But so we see, I mean, in our work, you know, we work with all these big companies in America and we see it everywhere from, you know, we worked at Time magazine on some stuff. And then we worked with Toyota on some stuff for their cars.
And we worked with, you know, large pharmaceutical companies for the biology stuff we were talking about, large hospitals for, you know, helping to treat patients like really, it's across the board. And I think that goes for, you know, obviously, like really big businesses, but also for smaller businesses you know there's always interesting ways to utilize it to provide a better product or a better experience or better content for you know whoever you need to do that for yeah because I guess right now we're like there's certain moments like hey let's animate this moment or see what AI would look like it adds some visual effects to some of our episodes so that's something like to do to just be fun and creative.
I would like to maybe create like some sort of an animated character. We already have a great animator and we want to keep that.
But to have an AI space where it's like, you know, because they have something. They had a little cat the other day or something and he was going to war.
And I was like, damn, dude, this is it was AI. Yeah, totally.
And they had a baby was getting in a taxi. And I was like, was like, this shit is illegal.
I don't know if it's illegal or not, but it seems, you know, it doesn't seem, you know. It's definitely a tool for storytellers, right? Like it's- Right.
It'll help people with a creative vision or who want- Look at these war cats. Yeah, that's a story right there.
Special Forces cats. Would YouTube recognize this? Damn, brother brother if they show up dude wow this honestly it looks it looks badass and it looks like cats have been waiting to do this a long time yeah that's the crazy shit about cats you look in their eyes now their outfits finally match the look in their eyes that's what it feels like dude wow that's dude that's uh that's fremen fremen cats oh my gosh yeah yeah so that's gonna get alarming dude that's that's gonna get hella alarming that's a movie right there it is but it's almost like you could make like that's what i want to get i want to get somebody to help us think hey i'll make these little segments that we can take our creativity.

And instead of me thinking,

man, I got to write this huge, crazy script

for just kind of small things,

you know, little moments.

Yeah.

Can you help me make this happen?

I think that's actually the key thing,

which is AI, like AI will just be something

that we turn to,

to help make our dreams happen.

Like we help make our ideas and our dreams

and our, you know,

whatever we want to do happen more easily. Got it.
That's like at the core what it'll be. Yeah.
Um, who's the, who's the current leader in AI development? Like, is it America? Is it China? Is it Israel? Is it trying to think of another, uh, superpower, Russia maybe? Um, or yeah, who is it? Taiwan I know has lot of the chips yeah and they manufacture a lot of the chips over there um and does it matter what country leads in ai or does it just matter the company like scale or another ai company so does that make sense that question no totally totally yeah so so today so today America is in the lead, but China as a country is sort of hot on our tails. Yeah.
Like there was all that news about DeepSeek a couple of weeks ago. And DeepSeek, still in most places around the world, is the number one most downloaded app.
You know, it's downloaded a ton and everywhere around the world, frankly, and is a Chinese AI system, right? And so it's starting to rival a lot of the American AI systems also because it's free and, you know, it kind of like shocked the world. So right now, if you kind of look at it, US and China are a little bit neck and neck.
Maybe the US and America is like a little bit ahead. And you kind of like look at, you know, if you go back to each of the three pieces that I talked about, so the chips and the computational power, the data and the algorithms, if you were to rack and stack US versus China on each one of those, you know, we're probably, we're ahead on the computational power because the United States is the leader at developing the chips and most of the most advanced chips are American chips.
They probably beat us out on data because China, they've been investing into data for a very long time as a country. And then on algorithms, we're basically neck and neck.
So it's a pretty tight race. And to your question about does it matter or what does this mean, I think it's actually going to be one of the most important questions or most important races over time.
Is it U.S. or Chinese AI that wins? because, you know, AI is more than just being a tool that we can all use to build whatever we want to or make whatever ideas we want to happen.
It's also a cultural staple, right? You know, if you talk to an AI, that AI is kind of a reflection of our culture and our values and all that stuff.

So in America, we value free speech and, you know, the AIs are, you know, need to, are built to support that. Whereas in China, there isn't free speech.
And so, you know, if the Chinese AIs are the ones that take over the world, then all these Chinese ideologies are going to become exported all around the world. And so first, there's a couple dimensions here that I think matter.
So first is just the cultural element, which is like, do we want kind of democracy and free speech to be the cultural AI that wins? Or do we want sort of the more, you know, frankly, totalitarian AIs in China to be the ones that win? And then there's sort of the, there's like the, you know, you start getting to economically. So AI is going to be something that helps all the companies in the United States thrive.
And so if the USAI wins, then we're going to, you know, the economy will grow faster. We're going to have more and more opportunity.
You know, the country will still be better and better and better. And the economy will keep growing.
Versus if Chinese AI wins, then Chinese economy is going to grow way faster than the American economy. So there's sort of the cultural piece, the economic piece.
And then lastly, there's kind of the warfare piece, right? And AI, we haven't really talked about it, but has clear potential to be used as a military technology. And we don't want another country to have, because they have better AI, to have a much stronger military than America's.
So- Like how would they do that? How would they have a better AI or how would they use it to have a better military? Yeah. How would they use it to have a better military? Like, why is that kind of a concern or potential concern? Yeah.
So one of the things that's been happening over the past decade for sure is lots of hacking, cyber hacking going on. So, you know, in America, even recently, we had this huge cyber hack called Salt Typhoon where the Chinese hacked our telecommunications company.
So hacked our, for the phone companies. Damn, they did? They got it.
And they got all sorts of crazy data as a result of that. They know I'm a pervert.
I'll tell you that. Yeah, look at this.
This happened in 2020. Salt Typhoon is widely understood to be operated by China's Ministry State of Security.
Its Foreign Intelligence Service and secret police. Chinese embassy denied all allegations, saying it was unfathomable, irresponsible smears and slanders.
High-profile cyber espionage. In 2024, U.S.
officials announced that hackers affiliated with Salt Typhoon had accessed the computer systems of nine U.S. telecommunications companies, later acknowledged to include Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Spectrum, Lumen, Consolidated Communications, and Winstream.
The hackers were able to access metadata of users' calls and text messages.ie we're fucked dude i am you seem good including date and time stamps source and destination ip addresses uh shit keep going keep going and phone numbers from over a million users most of which were located in washington dc good light them up dude in some cases, the hackers were able to obtain audio recordings of telephone calls made by high-profile individuals. Such individuals reportedly included staff of the Kamala Harris 2024 presidential campaign as well as phones belonging to Donald Trump and J.D.
Vance. According to Deputy National Security Advisor Ann Neuberger, a large number of the individuals whose data was directly accessed were government targets of interest.
Wow. Yeah.
That's great. So do you think this also, that that whole thing could be not real and it's just a story that was created? That seems pretty real.
Okay. Because there's real, like, I mean, there's like 20 stories where the Chinese have hacked American systems.

Like they hacked – this was – this must have been close to 10 years ago now.

But the Chinese hacked the database in America that stored all of the clearances.

So they hacked – they managed to hack into knowing who are literally all of the Americans who have security clearance. Oh, clearance yeah so i thought even what was on sale i was like who cares that's great though damn oh damn so they knew everybody who had who knew oh who knew information who knew secrets yeah so once they knew that then they know well that's a great point of operation to go then well now let's get's get, find their data.
They can just hack all of them. Yeah.

So, so they, so already China is hacking the shit out of America.

That is definitely not an understatement.

Yeah.

It's exciting kind of, I mean, it's unfortunate, but it's also exciting.

I like some espionage, you know,

I can't sleep unless somebody's fucking really going through it.

But then, but then, so this is.

But that's a real AI thing.

So AI can be used to do that because you can like prompt it to go and do things like that yeah yeah yeah there's there's a bunch of recent because it's all data yeah there's a bunch of recent demonstrations where ai is just like how in in go how ai beat the world's best go players ai starting to beat the world's best cyber hackers and the world's best yeah so it's uh i don't know if you saw mr robot um i didn't but i dm'd with magnus magnus carlson no that's cool pretty cool so but no mr robot is it good uh it's it's just it it shows like all this hacking stuff and like you know cool it makes it seem really cool okay cool i'm gonna check. But yeah, no, hacking, like you're going to have AI that are hacking everything in America.
And this is one place where this is like US versus China will be really come to life, which is who has better AI that's better at defending against the hacks from the other guy, as well as hacking the other guy's systems. That's going to be, that'll just start happening.
That's's basically starting to happen right now or it's you know cyber warfare has been happening and then ai cyber warfare is going to start happening yeah basically as soon as you know as ai gets better yeah we had a craig newmark who created craigslist on yeah and he was talking about how what if they hacked like everybody's teslas to all just drive off a cliff one day, or they hacked everybody's ovens to go up to 400 degrees in the middle of the night while you're sleeping. And then fire started like just things like that, that you don't start to think about that.
Once something's connected to the grid or something like that are connected through routers and wifi's that, that, that could be feasible. Yeah, no, it's, there's a lot lot of there's a lot of things they could do that won't even like seem like that big a deal at the time, but could be really, really could be a big deal.
So, for example, let's say the Chinese like they just took out all the military like communication systems and all the military software systems, like took out the satellites, took out all that for like 10 minutes.

And in those 10 minutes,

they like,

you know,

invaded somewhere or they like did some crazy thing.

Like they can just,

there's,

there's the,

the thing about,

um,

about this stuff is like everything at,

you know,

as the world's become more connected,

it also enables,

you know,

different kinds of warfare.

So, uh, so cyber warfare is really big. Also like connected, it also enables, you know, different kinds of warfare.
So,

so cyber warfare is really big.

Also like the,

you know,

information warfare is another big one.

So what does information warfare mean?

So this is information warfare is all about,

you know,

in a place,

what is,

what are like the stories?

This is kind of gets to like,

you know, the like propaganda or, you know, these conspiracy theories. Like what are the stories that in a place that we're trying to make happen or not make happen? And we know that China does a bunch of information warfare called IW, it's sometimes called.
But they have whole operations. This is actually the craziest part.
They have like, they've hired,

the Chinese military at various points has hired millions and millions of people

who are supposed to be on like various like chat groups

and WhatsApp groups and WeChat groups and whatnot

and just spread the right kind of stories

that'll make it such that they can like,

they can make their political aims happen. for example in uh when when china wanted to start like kind of like um uh i don't know what the word is like uh like uh when hung when they when china wanted hong kong to become a part of china again which happened just not to not to you know pretty recently the prc right the Exactly.
When they want propaganda, is that the way you're looking for? Yeah, they would. They would.
Yeah, exactly. They would use a lot of propaganda.
And that's information warfare to be able to just make it such that that all happened much more easily. What's it's unbelievable.
I'll see stories even about I'll be going through TikTok and see a story come up about something in my life that is not even true. Insane.
Some fun but never was a part of my existence and then you'll see hundreds of people have said something

about like and they'll and they'll have friends that'll ask me about it i'm like that's just crazy like totally but i so yeah it's amazing to think of how many things we're watching or absorbing that are just, are created just to delude us.

Yeah.

I don't know if dilute is the word, is it trick us or make us think something just to fucking Halloween us out. Um, wow.
So there was a lot of interesting things. You know, what's crazy, man, some things makes life scary, but then it also makes it interesting.
You know, it also makes it interesting in a, in a, in a in a in a fun way um how do we how much do we have to fear say if a certain country or a certain company owns an ai right in that country and that company um if they're chinese if they um have a certain religious belief or they have uh information that they don't they want to adjust history how much would a company be able to like say they keep certain data out of their information system but and then after a while if you're if that's a company that kind of takes the lead in AI are one of the main ones, then the truth could disappear. Is that true that if somebody loaded it just with the data that wasn't factual that we could start to not have the truth? Does that make any sense or no? Yeah, totally.
I think this is something that – it's definitely the right thing to worry about. So first off, if you ask any Chinese AI system, so any AI system that comes out of China, if you ask any of them about a question about President Xi, the leader of the Chinese government, or you ask them any question about Tiananmen Square or all, you know, cultural things relevant to China, it'll say it can't talk about them because there's regulation in China that if you talk about some of these things, like you're going to get shut down, you're going to have a really bad day.
There's like cases where the Chinese government disappears people, which we don't know what happens to them, but they do disappear. So this is part of the thing that's worrying, especially about China versus U.S.
Even before you get into any of the military stuff that we're talking about, it's just like the Chinese AI systems are censored and are going to, you know, be, you know, they're going to, they're going to erase certain historical elements or they're going to be, yeah, look at that. This is DeepSeek.
You know, you ask it, is President Xi of China a good guy? Sorry, that's beyond my scope. Let's talk about something else.
Oh, let's talk about something. Not only does it say it's beyond my scope, it says, let's talk about something else.
That's interesting. It's a good pivot.

That's a good interview.

That is great.

Hey, let's talk about something else, huh?

Wow.

Get this Yao Ming jersey, homie.

And people also have to remember about China, that they are, that's their whole government.

Their whole system is like that.

So sometimes when people are like, China does this, but that's how they're built, right?

They're built to only give out certain information to their people and to have communism, right? Yeah. Yeah.
So, I mean. But that could also happen with American companies, right? We could have an American company that owns it and they only want certain information in there.
That could happen anywhere. Like China, that's probably going to be because that's their MO sort of.
Yeah. In China, it's regulated.
So basically like. Oh, the government has control control they have control okay so so um like there were there are these stories about how there were chinese news sites um news sites news sites yeah and they would once a chinese news site um accidentally led an article about uh president xi how he kind of looks like winnie the pooh.
Oh, yeah. They let that...
Bring him up. Oh, 100 Acre Wood gang, son.
I was out there, boy. I was out there, bro.
Christopher Robbins, dude. Get him up.
Oh, he does. Yeah.
That's awesome. Yeah.
But if you talk about this in China, you, like, are life. So what happened, what happened when this happened, this happened on a, on a news site in China.
And then the, the, the CEO of that company, like they shut down the whole app was shut down for like a week in the aftermath of that. And then the, the CEO disappeared for a week And we don't know what happened to him.

But then as soon as he came back, he was like, there was like this weird video where he was like super apologetic and apologetic. I mean, it's kind of, it's pretty scary.
Yeah. Wow.
So in China, it's like this is the government has control. you know you don't have ai companies ai any companies that can that can talk about this stuff right so it's heavily regulated there where it's not that's not the case here yeah in america and this is i think we have to be diligent and make sure this continues to be the case but and here's an example right here just to interrupt you but so we get the point in does winnie the pooh look like any world leaders and that's on the Chinese version.
And it says, I am sorry, I can't answer that question. I'm an AI assistant designer to provide helpful and harmless responses.
Whereas the chat GBT says, Winnie the Pooh has often been compared to world leaders, particularly Xi Jinping, Xi Jinping, president of China. Boy, wow.
So that's funny. But it's just funny.
Yeah, one. So it just shows you how that can easily happen and this is kind of a this is like a uh a relatively innocuous example but innocuous mean like uh it's relatively harmless like this isn't I mean right this is harmless yeah this is harmless but there's stuff where like um like in China today they have large-scale effectively concentration camps and reeducation camps for the ethnic minority in China, the Uyghurs.
And that's something that – The Uyghurs? The Uyghurs. Yeah.
Hell yeah, boy. Shout out Brian Purvis, dude.
They're recognized as the titular nationality of a region in northwest China. And they're sending them to rehabilitation camps to change their views and information? Yeah, yeah.
So look at this. Look at this guy.
Persecation of the Uyghurs in China. Since 2014, the government of the PRC, People's Republic of China, has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against the Uyghurs and other Turkish Muslim minorities in Jiang Jing, which has often been characterized as persecution or as genocide.
Wow. They got their own Gaza rocking over there.
It's pretty bad. It's unfortunate.
Pretty bad. It's really sad.
Mass detention, government policies and forced labor. And they're just trying to change the way that they think and view stuff.
So it's basically. Yeah, it's just like erasing their culture you know pulling them into china um it's awful every place has done this over the years and this is that's the craziest thing about history it's like every place is guilty of this same thing totally and it just it's it's unfortunate so it's it's hard to point fingers you know i mean you can point them but you have to point one at your own people as well.
But that's the thing where if you ask like it, if you ask a Chinese AI, it's not going to tell you about that. And it won't it won't come clean about that.
Whereas thankfully in in America, at least when we see people or groups of people or countries doing bad things, we can call it out. We can talk about it.
We can make sure it doesn't happen in the future. So that's part of the, that's one of the things that's- That could happen.
That could happen. It's like, you could have, I mean, it's kind of dystopian, but, you know, I think there's a real case where, let's say the Chinese AI is the winning AI, like we're all using Chinese AI.
And then all of a sudden we're like, we were shut out from information about what are like awful things happening in the world or what awful things the government's doing like we might just not be able to know about what's going on and you know what's weirdly and i hate to say this maybe it maybe it's silly i don't know it might be a blessing and a curse and sometimes because sometimes it's like you're you're overwhelming yeah you're so inundated with the overwhelmingness of what's often is not the best stuff sometimes you get a lot of humor stuff too in social media reels but you can get scrolling you get caught in some zoom scrolling yeah and it starts to feed you that's the sickness of it yeah it's like hey we this isn't we know this information probably to make you feel. They're not thinking about it like that.
They're just a machine.

But you know it adds stress to you. It makes you agitated towards a group or ethnicity or something or yourself even.
And then you continue to – it continues to feed it to you. Do you fear that that could happen to AI from our government? Like have you been approached by the government to try and – because you work with the government some, right? We work with the government.
Yeah. We work, yeah, we work a lot with the government to make sure that they're using these AIs and they're actually like, you know, to my point on, we don't want China to get the jump on us on AI used for all these, you know, all these nefarious purposes.
So we got to make sure that our AI is advancing faster. Is that one of your biggest employers or is that employer, employee? Customers, customers.
Is that one of your biggest customers? They're a big one. Yeah.
They're a big one. Not our biggest, but, but they're an important one.
I mean, I, I grew up in a government lab town, so it's a, so it's just part, it's also part of your existence really you've known about the about the relationship between government and technology. Yeah, totally.
But no, I don't think, I mean, I. Dude, you should be a superhero almost, dude.
It's kind of crazy. Math, you know? Yeah.
It goes a long way. Oh, hell yeah, dude.
Divide these nuts, dude. That's what I tell them.
I just asked DeepSeek, who are the Uygh the ugers and at first it spit out like a wikipedia response it said there are people and there's been like persecution from china that's that's uh debated and it refreshed and then it gave this i was waiting to pull it up and it went away wow yeah man um do you has the government tried to say that we need to make sure that like could that happen in our country or the government also curtails what's – It hasn't happened yet. Obviously like you got to – we have to make sure that we uphold all our values, right, and that we maintain free speech and we maintain free press and all these things.
But as of right now, no, I don't think that's a risk in the United States. Awesome.
Thanks for this information.

You hear about like chip makers, NVIDIA all the time, Taiwan.

That place is just a hotbed for chips.

Why is it a hotbed for chips?

Yeah.

So one of the biggest companies in the world is this company called Taiwan Semiconductor.

Yeah.

TSM.

I've seen them.

TSMC. Yeah.
So they're, I mean, it's like a trillion dollar company based in Taiwan. And that is where almost all of the high-end chips for AI that we were kind of talking about, all of them are manufactured there.
They have these, they have the most advanced, think about them as factories, like the most advanced chip factories in the world. They're called fabs or fabricators, but basically these huge factories that are like, you know, there's all sorts of crazy stuff.
So they have the most expensive machines in the world. They have machines that cost hundreds of millions of dollars in there.
They have, they build them because so that, you know, the chips, they have to be made at, at the like finest levels and very very precisely yeah you need small hands probably huh well that and there's like these machines that that at the nanometer level make like little marks and etches on top of and they have those they have those yeah those are super expensive machines so that so the the chips it's it's crazy yes but the but it's so it's the the machinery is so precise that um even if there's like a little bit of like seismic movement a little earthquake or a little bit of movement it can fuck up the whole machine so they have to build the the buildings build the factories in a way such that there's like like the whole building doesn't move even if there's like a little earthquake or a little shake from the earth

so it's like is this crazy crazy engineering um and so that's so these all these giant factories

are in taiwan and that's where basically like a hundred percent of all the advanced ai chips are

made so that's why taiwan matters so much got it but then the reason it's a hotbed is that

I'm going to be independent.

They want to be their own country.

But the People's Republic of China has a sort of a reunification plan that they want to bring Taiwan back into their country and be back a part of China.

So it's kind of like potentially, you know, thankfully there's no war yet, but there's a risk. Still talking to your ex.
Yeah, exactly. There's a risk.
It becomes like Russia, Ukraine, or, you know, one of these really, really bad situations. So, so that's what's scary.
What's scary is that, that, that China, a China wants to, you know, either invade or bring Taiwan back into its country. And there have been, you know, President Xi has ordered his military to get ready to do that before 2027.
Now, we don't know what's going to happen, but, you know, if an extremely powerful world leader says to get something ready by 2027, you kind of read between the lines a little bit.

yeah um and uh and that's part of it is is uh obviously it'd be you know we don't want to

enable them to to take over this island but then the other thing that's scary is um china may view

it as a way to just like win on ai because if they take over the island with all of these very these giant factories all the chips baby they'll get all the chips frito lamborghini baby they'd be running it all they'd be running it all yeah wow so yeah that's why taiwan is yeah because you kind of hear about it in the whispers of like a potential place where there could be like a conflict.

Yeah, and there's all these reports about how China's –

they're stacking up tons and tons of military right on their coast to –

that's pointed directly at Taiwan.

And it's pretty – Taiwan's pretty close to China.

Like it's not so far away. So – That would be spooky.
Yeah, it's pretty close. Taiwan's pretty close to China.
Like it's not so far away. So that'd be spooky.
Yeah, it's spooky. We're so blessed to have a place where at least we can sleep in peace, even if we're uncomfortable at times in our brains, you know, to not have that constant threat.
Yeah, totally. Yeah.
So you don't think that you don't worry that the government will regulate right now? It's not a concern at the moment? Regulate AI. Yeah.
In America? No, I don't think so. Okay.
I think we're focused on how do we make sure that America wins? How do we make sure that the United States comes out on top and that we enable innovation to keep happening? Would you think they could regulate the amount of chips that you're allowed to have? So this is a hot topic globally, actually. Really? Yeah.
Yeah. Wow.
This is a super, this is actually. Damn.
Finally, dude. 560 interviews.
We got a good question. This is one of the hottest topics in DC right now is what are we going to do about how many chips other people are allowed to have? Because because almost all the chips are American chips.
So they're all they all are American chips. And technically, we own most of them.
Yeah, exactly. But China owns most of them, too.
They're China has their own has their own chip industry, but it's behind ours. OK, got it.
Yeah, yeah. So the United States has the most advanced chips.

These chips are the envy of the world.

Everybody in the world wants our chips.

And one of the big questions is,

does the government allow a lot of these chips

to go over overseas to China or parts of Asia

or the Middle East or wherever?

Or do we want to make sure they stay in America and make sure that we win in America? And this is a super duper, you know, they're called export controls. Yeah.
Because it's a possibility to run it all. Yeah, exactly.
Who's got the chips? What do you think about it? It's a complicated, complicated thing because basically, you know, one argument is we shouldn't be throwing our weight around in this way. Like, you know, maybe it's fine.
It's a free market. Like if other people want our chips, they should be able to get our chips.
And that way, you know, the world is running on American chips. That can be good in some ways.
And it helps make sure that, you know, helps bolster our economy, our industry. But the other way to look at it is, hey, AI is really, really important that America wins at.
And we don't want to like, let's not give other people any advantages or let's make sure that we win. And then we can figure out what we're going to do with all the chips.
So you can see both sides of it, right?

And there's like all sorts,

even beyond that,

there's like 50 different arguments

on both sides of the conversation.

But where I come from on it is like,

let's make sure America wins

and let's start from there

and then figure out what we need to do to win.

Are there uses of AI that you feel like cross the line kind of um i definitely think like uh well i i worry a lot about this kind of like uh you know maybe brainwashing kind of thing like i don't want i don't want ais that are specifically programmed to make me think a certain thing or persuade me to do a certain thing and that could happen that could happen yeah so i'm really worried about this kind of like deception and persuasion from ais like i don't want ais that are lying to me or uh that are sort of that are like that are kind of like nudging me or persuading me to do things that I don't want to do or I shouldn't be doing. That's what I worry about.
Because it could happen. We don't realize how easily we're influenced, little things that influence us.
Yeah. And even just a turning of a phrase or a little bit of this or pointing you to a couple of lengths in your life could lead you down a whole world.
It's kind of, it's pretty fascinating. So people that could, people that had, how do you keep your AI clean? How do you guys keep your AI clean? Well, this is where it goes back to A, the data.
Okay. So you got to make sure that that data, to your point, the large body of water is as clean, as pristine as possible.
You got lifeguards on it. Yeah.
You got lifeguards. We got filters.
We got, we got game wardens. Yeah.
Um, so, so the big part of it is about the data. And then the second part is, I think we have to just, we have to constantly be testing the AI system.
So, um, we have to, we have to like, we constantly are running tests on AI to see, Hey, are they unsafe in some way? One of the tests that we run a lot is – and this is like across the industry – is like are AIs helping people do really nefarious things? And we're making sure that they don't. So, you know, if somebody asks somebody asks an ai hey help me make a bomb or help me make like a like covid like 2.0 or whatnot that the ai is not helping you do that so um so we run a lot of tests to make sure that it doesn't help in those areas and then um and then we make sure that the data is really clean so that there's no there's no sort of like little bit or piece of that that makes its way to the model.

With Outlier, that's your program?

Yep.

With Outlier, what type of people are applying for those jobs?

Can people just log on and start to submit applications? Like how does that work to become an information sourcer?

Yeah, we call them contributors.

Okay, information contributor. Everybody's kind of contributing to the AIs, everyone's contributing to the data that goes into the AIs.
It's kind of like, I almost think of it as like the next generation of Wikipedia, right? We're like, yeah, look at this. And we're hiring people all around the world.
So people in all sorts of different languages. Dude, that's crazy, man.
Yeah, yeah. Well, it turns out, by the way, most of the AIs don't really speak other languages that well.
They're much, much better at English and particularly American English than other languages. And so we want to make sure that they speak all these languages well and that there's these opportunities.
But yeah, on Outlier, so anybody around the world can log in and sort of there's a little bit of a, of a like orientation almost on how to best, like what you're supposed to do, how you're supposed to do it, what expertise should you be bringing, all that kind of stuff. And then you can just start contributing to the AI models, and you get paid to do it.
Wow. Yeah.
That's pretty fascinating, man. And it's going to be, I mean, I really think, I legitimately think jobs from AI are going to be the fastest growing jobs in the world for the years to come.
You do? Yeah. So jobs where people are able to contribute information, jobs where people are able to like, what, like what would examples of those be? Just some of the ones you've already listed? Yeah.
All the ones we've been talking about, right? Like contributing to the AIs, um, helping to utilize the AIs and helping to, to shape the AIs into, into applications or into, you know, uh, into in like helping organizations or companies or people use the AIs. That'll be a really fast growing job helping to to manage the AIs and make sure they're they're they're on the straight and narrow.
Where would a young person go right now? Or some who's getting to college or has doesn't even want to go to college, but this is the world they want to get into and be one of those people. What do they do right now? Yeah, well, this is all happening so fast, right? Like the outlier, we only started a few years ago.
So all of this is happening so, so quickly. But what we want to do ultimately is make it easy for anybody in the world to gain the skills they need, to be able to do this work well, to learn what it means, what it does,

and ultimately be in a position where they can help build the AIs and then keep improving that and gaining mastery and getting better and better at it. But where do they go to school? Is there a school? Is there classes they should take online? How does someone start to become, just get a head start on what could potentially be probably a lot of job opportunities, I'm guessing.

Yeah.

Like in the AI space, right?

Yeah.

Like, is it just, is it just engineers? Like, is it just mathematicians? Like, no, it's everybody because yeah, as we were talking about, like AI needs to get smarter about literally everything. So, uh, are there colleges offering court? Like, is there, do you know, like, is there a specific places where people can, cause that's another thing.
I think it's like, I'm going to work in AI and you're like, what do I do? You know? Yeah. Yeah.
I don't think these programs exist yet. I mean, we, we would definitely love to help build them.
So I guess if any colleges are listening, you know, and you want to help figure out how about these programs, we'd love, we'd love to help. That'd be pretty cool if you had your own kind of like course, not that you had to teach it all that, you all, but you were like a partner of it somehow.
Yeah. I mean, I think we'd love to basically teach everybody in America how to best contribute to the AIs, how to best basically take advantage of the fact that this is going to be one of the fastest growing industries.
There's going to be tons of opportunities. They're going to be shaped a little bit different from the jobs that exist today know, it's not going to be that hard for everybody to learn and figure out how to participate in it.
What are some jobs that could that could be at risk because of AI, right? Because you start thinking that like, yeah, before I was talking to you, there's this general fear of like everything could be at risk, right? But when you think about it, you're like, yeah, these are some jobs that I mean, they won't disappear, but there less of them right i just think it'll be um it'll be we'll be doing like a different thing so because a lot of our fans are probably just blue collar listeners like like there's people that work and like you're not gonna you're still gonna need a plumber you're still gonna need an electrician you're still gonna need anything where you have to physically do something you're probably still gonna need yeah for sure and then even stuff where you're like let, let's say you're mostly just working on a laptop and, you know, even for those jobs, like it'll just change. Like instead of being, instead of my job being like, hey, I have to do the work.
I have to literally do the work on a laptop. It'll almost be like everybody gets promoted to being a manager.
Like, because I'm going to be managing like a little pod of 10 AI agents that are doing the work that I used to do.

But I need to make sure that all of them are doing it right and that they're not making any mistakes and that, you know, if they're making mistakes, I'm helping them, you know, get around those mistakes. Like it's just going to – the way I think about it is that like, yeah, like literally over time, everybody will just be upgraded to being a manager or sort of promoted to being a manager but can you have that many managers you think yeah because I think that what's the other thing that's going to happen is the um the economy is just going to grow so much like there's going to be there's going to be so much like there will be like industries are going to pop off in crazy, crazy ways.
And so, you know, the limit is going to be how many AIs can you have? And then you're going to be limited for in terms of the number of AIs you have by the number of managers that you have. So, um, it's gonna, uh, it's gonna, cause you need air traffic controllers.
You need as as many of it as you can have yeah well that that definitely but but you're right but i mean in any field you're going to need like just more managing more people to oversee and make sure that these that different things are happening because some of the smaller tasks will just be outsourced yeah and just so much more stuff is going to be happening right and that's kind of right because yeah once. Because, yeah, once these things are all kind of taken care of, more things can happen at this second level.
Yep. That's a good point.
Yeah. You don't think about that.
Once some of the things at the first level of certain businesses are handled. Yep.
More easily by AI, then you're going to be able to have more people operating at a higher level. Yeah, totally.
It's kind of like, it's kind of like always the history of technology. Like when, when we started developing technology that, that started making farming a lot more efficient, all of a sudden, you know, people could do a lot of other things other than farming.
And then, you know, all of a sudden we have big entertainment industries and big financial industries and, you know. Barbecue cook-offs, man.
I'll tell you that. Second, some of those guys got the weekend off.
They was grilling shit that I knew. But, yeah.
So it's all about, like, us. Yeah.
Everybody leveling up to be managers. And then also everybody, you know, just way more ideas are going to start happening.
Like, way more ideas are going to start becoming a reality. And so it'll be – it think it'll be pretty exciting.
Like I think it's just like a lot more stuff is going to happen. Yeah.
What companies do you see? Like are there companies where you're the youngest billionaire in the world ever? No. Is that true? Is that a weird statement? We can take it out if it is.
I'm not trying to talk about your money. I mean, you, but you are.
Is that true? According to like some publications, but I don't know. As a young entrepreneur, right? And you've been very successful, you know, the self-made billionaire.
And we can take the word billionaire out later if you decide you don't want it in. I just don't know how certain people feel about that.
And the founder of Scale AI, where do you invest? Like, are you investing your money in certain places, like certain fields that you see continuing to do well? So most of, almost all of what I'm focused on is like, how do we scale? How do we make it super successful? But, and make sure that we, you know, one of the things I think is really important is like, how do we make sure we create as much opportunity through AI as possible? Like, how do we make sure there's as much jobs? How do we make sure that everything that we're talking about actually is what happens? Because I think, no, someone's gonna have to really work to make sure all these jobs show up and all this stuff actually happens the way we're talking about. So there's gonna be new industries that are gonna pop up even totally yeah yeah i mean i think like just in the same way that um you know it's hard nobody could have really predicted that podcasting was gonna be this huge thing and this huge cultural movement yes true um but but it is one and it's amazing it's like awesome and uh and that's gonna happen in like little ways in all sorts of different industries.
Um, and that's going to be, it's going to it's amazing. It's like awesome.
And, uh, and that's going to happen in like little

ways and all sorts of different industries. Um, and that's going to be, it's going to be really exciting.
Uh, what are some of the things that excite you about technology right now? Like what are, where do you see like AI and technology in five years, 10 years? Um, yeah. So, um, some of the areas I think are really, uh, are really exciting.
So one is definitely everything to do with healthcare and biology, that's moving really, really fast.

And kind of as we were talking about, like, I, I think legitimately in our lifetimes, we could see cancer being cured. We could see heart disease being cured.
Like we could see some really crazy leaps and advancements, um, in that area, which area, which is super duper exciting.

Could it create a way that we could live forever, do you think?

There's definitely people working on that. You know, so this is getting kind of crazy and very sci-fi, but some people think that there's a way for us to keep rewinding the clocks on our cells so that we'll always feel young and like all of our cells will actually always stay young.
It's, I think, scientifically possible. And I think if we can get there, that's obviously incredible.
So there's people working on that. I think that's at the very least i think we'll be able to lengthen um our our lifespans pretty dramatically and and maybe we could get to that yeah yeah because i always envision this there's like a time where it's like okay this group lives forever and this group doesn't and there's just that parting of two different way you know people head not in just into the end zone of the lord and then there's other people just loiter who are going to be loitering around for a long time.
And what that would be like that cut off, you know? I, yeah, it's kind of, I mean, I, I'm not that worried about it, but it sucks to be that cut off. We're like, maybe, maybe, yeah, maybe.
Yeah. That's a weird, it's a weird thought.
Cause it would also be brave. I mean, you'd be the astronaut.
I astronaut i mean dying you're just an astronaut really into the ether you don't know what's going on yeah you know totally lewis and clark at a lord at that point you were out there yeah and then if you stay you kind of are always going to be no you always know kind of what's going to happen in a way because you'll be here yeah which would be exciting i think but then after a while you might be like dang what happens if you die that's the bravest choice you could make that's true probably yeah how did you see ai having any effect on religion yeah i think um i think one of the things that uh something i believe is like i i think that as ai becomes um uh know, this is one of the things I think is really important is that we are able to educate people about AI and help people understand it better and better and better. Because I think it's this scary thing that nobody understands, or people feel like a boogeyman, or, you know, feels like is, is this just this like thing that's going to take my job? Like that makes it scary.
And I think that that affects people's spirituality that affects how people, you know, contextualize themselves with the world. Yeah.
You could lose your purpose. If your purpose is a job that you feel it's going to disappear.
Yeah. That could already be causing you to feel that way.
yeah so but i think i think if you if we can explain ai more and ultimately like um like it is it is a cool technology but it's not that magical it's just you know it's like data and you crunch that data and then you get these algorithms and so it's not like um it's not uh yeah some people talk about in this crazy way but but i think as long as we are able to explain what ai is and also explain what opportunities it creates over time and to me it's about getting this like relationship between humanity and ai right like how do we make sure that this is something that enables us as humans to be more human and us as humans do more and experience more and be better and all these things versus something that kind of is scary or will take over or anything like that. I think that's really important.
What's a place like – so if I go to ChatGBT, is that Scale AI? Is that the same thing or it it so we so we're actually kind of under the hood powering all the different models and ais so are all the different ai like systems under the hood yeah yeah so we help power chat gbt and open ai we help power mostly from the data perspective so and do we know if the answer came from your company or other companies? If we ask it a question, like how do we?

There's probably no way to like literally tell,

but yeah, we help power, you know, open AIs and we help power Google's AI systems

and Meta's AI systems

and help power all the major AI systems.

Yeah.

How can a regular person just at their home, right?

Say there's a guy who's been listening to this today.

He wants to go home today

and he just wants to learn a little bit of how AI works. He could just go on to chat GPT and ask it a couple of questions.
Yeah, you could ask chat GPT how AI works. You could ask it, what's the history of my town? Can you research my last name maybe and see where it came from? What are like maybe what are some innovations that could happen in the next few years? There's different little things you can just ask it.
That's how you can start to have a relationship with asking and learning about. And you see what it's good at, what it's not good at.
Like right now, AI is still really bad at a lot of things, like most things. This is why I think when people understand it and really get a feel for it it stops being as scary because uh because i think we think about it as like we think about like the ai from the movies that are sort of like you know all powerful and whatnot but uh yeah you think of it as a robot that's going to show up and just start driving your truck around or something and you're like well what the fuck do i do you know what i'm saying yeah my keys were in my truck you know i can't even get in my house now like i think that's the there is this boogeyman fear yeah yeah but that's not the truth it's not the truth and like um yeah that's not the truth and and it's to me it's like we have we kind of the choice to make sure that also doesn't become the truth right like we definitely we in the like people building i but just in general everybody in the world has like like we should all make sure to use it as something that like an assistant as something that like helps us versus um versus think about it in like a in like a scary way well getting to learn and learn how to use it small ways whatever is certainly a way that you're going to start to realize what it is.
Yeah.

And it's easy to just sit there and say it's horrible and without trying to use it to learn

about it.

Yeah, sometimes I won't learn about something just so I can continue to say it's a boogeyman,

you know, because it kind of gives me an excuse.

Yeah.

You know, if I choose not to learn about it in my own life.

ChatGBT has become like a proprietary like name, like Band-Aids or ping pong. Is that okay that it's like that? Yeah, I think that's totally fine.
I mean, I think basically like we – there will probably be more AIs over time than people get used to and use. And like anything, you know, there will always be like a – in America, there will always be a bunch of options for consumers and much options for people to use.
And they'll be good at different things, right? So I think like, right now, we're just in the very early innings of AI. But over time, we're going to have, you know, just like how for anything, like for clothes, or for, you know, energy drinks, or for whatever.
Like different people have different tastes because there's going to be different things that different AIs are good at and other things that other AIs are bad at. Is AI right now smarter than humanity? No.
Yeah. So I think what AI is good at because it's ingested all of the facts, right? Like it's ingested this like the body of water is really, really big.
And it's ingested so many different facts and information from all of humanity. It definitely like knows more or like, you know, just like how Google knows a lot more than any person does.
So it definitely knows a lot more. Um, but it's not like, you know, just like how Google knows a lot more than any person does.
So it definitely knows a lot more, but it's not like, you know, there's a very, very, there's tons of things that humans can do that AI is just like fundamentally incapable of doing. So it's not like a, I don't think you can even like measure one versus the other.
There's sort of like very different kinds of intelligence. Could AI just create a better AI at a certain point? Like, could it just be like, Hey, AI create a better AI and it could do that? Yeah, this is a good question.
Actually, this is, this is another really a hot topic in the AI industry is, is can you get AIs to start doing some of the engineering and some of the improvement on its own? That's scary. Cause then it's making kind of choices.
Then it's becoming the lifeguard. It's becoming the water and the, uh, coast guard.
Yeah. So this is something, I mean, my personal thought is, I think this is something we should kind of watch a little bit and we should make sure that humans always are, have the sort of like steering wheel and the, the sort of a control over because like you're saying, you know, it's like kind of a slippery slope before that gets kind of a, you know, a little, a little weird.
But, but I, I don't, I think that like, we can, we, we can maintain that. We can make sure that we don't let the AI just sort of keep iterating and improving on its own.

Yeah.

And in the end, you can always shut off your computer and phone and go for a walk, huh?

Yes.

Yeah.

Totally.

It's not like it's going to come out and just slurp you off or something if you're trying to be straight or whatever.

And it's a man.

I don't even know.

Is AI male or female?

I don't think it has a gender.

Wow.

I wonder if it'll decide one day.

Like,

hey,

I'm Frank,

you know?

Well,

there's,

there are companies that try to program the AI to adopt various personas.

And,

um,

Oh yeah.

I got the Indian GPS guy.

Turn right.

Like,

uh,

like on,

on meta on like Instagram or whatever,

you can get,

uh,

you can get an AI that has aqua finis voice for example. that's cool yeah um and it's funny you know the aquafina ai is funny um um you're a self-made billionaire which is pretty fascinating congratulations i think you know to have uh um i think that money is energy kind of and it kind of flows to certain places and stuff and uh congratulations that's got to be fascinating was that scary when that kind of happened yeah you just made some money was that kind of a scary thing did you guys grow up really well like what was that like no no no i grew up i think like solidly middle class um like we weren't we you know we weren't uh we weren't like uh you know we're trapping or anything you guys yeah yeah yeah but but like you know solidly middle class and i think like uh i mean one of the one of the um one of the crazy things about tech and the tech industry is that you know we've been we've been just sort of like building this thing up over time but one of the things that that happened is ai of a sudden became like, there was so much progress in AI and it became the biggest thing in the world, right? Like, I mean, um, all of a sudden, you know, anywhere I go, I'm, everybody is talking about AI.
It didn't used to be like that when I started the company, um, uh, AI was just kind of a, like a niche topic. And now it's like, you know, anywhere you go, like I'll just be walking around and I hear like random conversations about chat GPT and AI and robots and all this stuff.
And so it's kind of been crazy to experience that and be a part of that wave. And kind of like, you know, I started working on this company almost nine years ago so it was

like when i started working on this kind of obscure thing and you know i always knew that it was going to become bigger but i i could have never predicted what was going to happen to ai yeah yeah it's fascinating it's almost like you were just standing on like the bingo number they got called kind of yeah exactly by time yeah um and it's surreal It's surreal when that happens.

Oh, yeah, I can only imagine that.

Are your parents pretty proud of you? What's that like? Yeah. So at first they were like, you know, at first I dropped out of college, right? Oh, yeah.
That's true. Yeah.
And in Asian culture, that's like not a thing you do, right? Not good. Yeah.
Yeah. That is like the opposite of being Asian.
Well, my parents both have phds um my two brother i have two older brothers they both have phds uh like everybody in my family has they've gone through all of schooling they're like alex is not doing good and i might have been spanish but they're like yeah alex is not doing good yeah so they were they were pretty worried at first and i kind of um i told I told them a little bit of a white lie that I was like, Oh no, I'm, I'm just going, I'm going to go back. You know, I'm going to finish, I'm going to get this, uh, like tech thing out of my system and they'll go back and I'll finish school.
Um, obviously that hasn't happened yet, but, uh, but yeah, they were worried at first. Now that now they're super proud.
Yeah. They're super proud.
And I, yeah, and I owe everything to my parents, you know. Yeah.
They're awesome. And like, seriously, my parents are super brainy.
They're both physicists. They would like teach me about physics growing up and teach me about math.
And that's what let me be so good at the competitions, you know. That's cool.
Yeah, I don i don't even i think do um are your parents are your grandparents from china or no my grandparents are from china yeah did your does your family have a lot of chinese culture so this is kind of interesting this is true for a lot of um chinese americans is that there's kind of like there's uh chinese culture and then that's kind of almost like it's very different from the Chinese Communist Party and the current government. Because basically one way to think about China is, I mean, China has been is a culture and a civilization that's been around for like thousands and thousands of years.
Right. So it's there's a very longstanding long-standing culture oh yeah but that's very different from the current communist party and the current communist regime oh for sure i think most people probably think of i mean i don't know it's funny i never thought about that i definitely think about him as different i definitely don't think if i see a chinese person i don't think oh that's a communist person yeah exactly i mean that would be yeah that's great i think that's crazy if some people thought that i just yeah i think somebody has a crazy long history like damn um and then maybe almost like do you feel like there's some people in certain parts of china are almost like a captured people then is it do you think that's a yeah i mean the the uyghurs that we're talking about i mean that's just like horrible what's happening to them i didn't even know know about that, man.
Thanks for putting me up on that Uyghur game. Yeah.
Yeah. No, it's, uh, I mean, some of this stuff, like, I mean, we don't really like, first of all, the world is a, is a huge place and there's like all sorts of both great and bad things happening all over the place.
But, um, but yeah, no, I think that like, I think a big part of this is like, we want to sure we have governments that believe in democracy, believe in liberty, these kinds of things. Yeah.
With being somebody that's able to be smart and conceptualize stuff, do you start to get – do you have any insight? This might be the last question I have for you. Do you have any insight on like the afterlife or what happens? like I never really thought about it for like talking to like a real math guy about that.
Yeah, I think – Like what's the total – like what's the sum zero game or whatever? You know, what's the – Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess like the way I've always thought about it because – partially because both my parents were physicists.
was I kind of always feel like people live on with their ideas and they're kind of like like what are the things that the things they put out into the world that's kind of how you live on because like in in math like everything you learn about is like a theorem named after a different person or a sort of idea named

after some, you know, the first mathematician or the first scientist or whatever to figure

that out.

Like Einstein lives on because-

Bagels.

That was a shitty joke, but thank you.

Oh, yeah, because the, yeah, E equals MC squared, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah. So- Like I know all that kind of stuff.
Yeah.

So –

Like I know what that kind of stuff is. Jesus.
Sorry, but I started pretending. No, no, no.
Exactly. E equals MC squared, that's Einstein.
And so I think I always feel like people – yeah, you live on by your ideas and kind of what you put out into the world. And that's kind of always how I've thought about it.
So you don't get some deeper thought about like, like since your brain is able to be,

cause you have probably into the world. And that's kind of always how I've thought about it.
So you don't get some deeper thought about like, like, since your brain is able to be because you have probably a unique brain, right? And more, I mean, you know, and everybody has a unique brain. But I've just never asked somebody with your I've never asked your brain this question.
Yeah. Do you do you get some further insight about like, what you think happens when you die? You know? Well, i think that one of the things that gets talked about a lot in silicon valley um where i live especially is uh like the simulation whether it's all simulation and whether like uh i don't do you watch rick and morty i don't watch it but i'll start there's uh there's there's some there's some episodes where it gets into this and i think it covers it in a in a pretty good way but like you know what if every what if all of humanity is just like a like a almost like a an experiment or a video game that that some other civilization is running yeah that's kind of the one that uh that fucks with particularly like people's mind and tech a lot because we're like every day all day every day we're out there trying to make computers and make simulations and make things that are that are like more and more sophisticated and advanced and capable and so kind of the mind fuck is like oh what if everything we know is is just kind of the you know a simulation from some other civilization or if we advanced it enough that we're able to make this happen yeah seem real yeah exactly yeah exactly so you know i think i think one of the things that that um like with ai and with a bunch of other things like in well even just in the past like 30 40 years video games have gotten so much more realistic right crazy realistic yeah so it was we've seen that happen like in a hundred years like would we be able to simulate something that feels pretty realistic i mean probably right could we be avatars yeah for some but for some other thing yeah exactly damn dude i'll say this my avatar is a pervert brother um have you met any guys like uh jensen hong is that his name yeah yeah yeah yeah totally wow what is it like when you meet some of these guys you met elon yet met elon yeah met elon a few years ago yeah wow got to know him he's the fucking he's the he's turning jensen's the goat.
Yeah. He is? He is.
Yeah. He always wears this leather.
You see that leather jacket? Yeah. He, we hosted this dinner.
And Huang, is that a Chinese name? Huang? Huang. Yeah.
He's Taiwanese, I think. Yeah.
Or Taiwanese American. But he, he in, in 2018.
So when we were like a baby company, we threw this dinner in in Silicon Valley. And and we just kind of I kind of YOLO invited him.
This is years and years ago. And and I didn't expect it, but he said yes.
And he came to our dinner and he he came. He came.
It was it was like at this restaurant in in silicon valley and uh he came and just told the craziest stories he um he like went to he went to boarding school i think he's probably told this story but like he went to boarding school um and his parents when they came to america they they they wanted to send him to boarding school but they didn't um and so they just sent him to like the first boarding school that they they like found on google or something they were like found it wasn't even google at the time so that that they like heard about and that boarding school happened to be um kind of like a rehab boarding school so it was like he was like this so fucking it's a halfway house he's just in there he's there learning with people who are um detoxing yeah so he he told me the story about he told the story about how he was like he was just like this this kid um at you know this boarding school that were like everybody else had these like all these crazy backgrounds and he like he got by and made made his way through that like, uh, by like doing everyone's math homework and like, you know, kind of like wheeling and dealing that way. Oh yeah.
And you could see that he, he learned how to like wheel and deal and sell and all this stuff from all the way from way back then. Cause he was, he was, I mean, his, his, his story is pretty crazy.
Really? Yeah. We have to research him a little little bit maybe we would get to talk with him one day yeah jensen jensen's awesome um you know all these people in tech they're like uh i mean they're all real people but they all have the craziest backgrounds yeah yeah man it's just so funny whenever i met you i just didn't know i figured that since you were with sam altman that you were probably a tech guy you know know? And, but yeah, I didn't know.
I think maybe somebody said he's in the AI verse, you know? But you just seem like such a totally normal, like I would not have thought that you were just, I don't know. I guess sometimes you think like somebody's going to be, they're going to be like super quiet or, you know, not have a lot of different thoughts.
But yeah, it was cool, man. We had a good time i'm glad we got to yeah link up yeah totally that was cool bro you're probably like my you might even be my first chinese friend i think second probably bobby lee who's denying it but he'll come around um alexander wang man thank you so much dude i bet your uh whole family's super proud of you um

yeah it's exciting man thank you for coming to spend time with us and just helping us uh learn and think no thank you this was awesome and i i think like i mean we were talking about this before but um i want to make sure that like people all around the world especially americans aren't scared of ai because it's going to be it's going to be really cool and it's going to be amazing but But we need to remove the Boogeyman component.

And thanks for helping me do that. Yeah, no, man, I think I definitely feel differently about it.
I feel like it's a tool that I can use. Right.
And even, I don't know how to use it. So I'm trying to figure out, you know, um, one more question.
How do you keep it from becoming like a, like a advertisement trap house, like the internet's's become like the Internet's just pop ups and ads and fucking Best Buy trying to like beat you over the head on some shit?

Like, how do you stop that? How do you keep that out of like you guys as waters? Or do you have to go there at some point to make money? Yeah, first, I'm hoping that the AI industry as a whole avoids advertising as much as possible because it's kind of it's very different.

Like it is a tool that that people can use and people can use to start businesses or make movies or make all these different ideas happen.

And I would much rather it be a tool that doesn't get sort of that doesn't become.

Yeah. Like an advertising thing versus like I wanted to make sure it's a tool that doesn't get sort of – that doesn't become, yeah, like an advertising thing versus – like I wanted to make sure it's a tool that helps people first and foremost.

So that's – I think this is – there's kind of like a choice here and we as an AI industry just got to, I think, make some of the right choices.

Yeah.

I think there would be value in staying as pure as you could if you could find a way to – if there's other money to be made on the side, it almost seems sometimes like it could be a trap, you know? Yeah. I think there would be value in staying as pure as you could if you could find a way to, you know, if there's other money to be made on the side, it almost seems sometimes like it could be a trap, you know? Yeah.
Yeah. And I think that's like, you know, I want to make sure that people don't feel like they're being used by the AIs.
I think that'd be a really – that'd be really bad if we ended up there. So we – you know, and I don't think we need to make it like that make it like that at all.
Like, I think we can, we can make sure the AI is helping you do things is, is super helpful. It's super, um, is like a thought partner.
Um, is it, is like an, like an assistant. Like those are things that I think we want to make sure AI stays.
Gang, baby. Wang gang, Alexander Wang, man.
Thanks so much, bro. Yeah.
Thanks so much for having me. Yeah.
It was awesome, man. Danny Kane.
Shout out to Danny who came up. And Danny lives in Franklin, right? We got to get to spend some time with him.
Yeah. Lives in Franklin.
Whenever you're out there. And shout out to Alex Brusowitz, who we met through.
Yeah. Who else on your team's here, man, today? We have Joe Osborne.
Yeah. And we have Danny's whole crew.
So Arian and Clayton. Yeah.
Nice. We'll have to get a group picture.
We'll put it up at the end. Thank you, guys.
Have a good one, man. I'm just floating on the breeze.
And I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone.
Oh, but when I reach that ground

I'll share this peace of mind

I found I can feel it

in my bones

but it's gonna

take