Uncapped with Jack Altman
· Harj Taggar, Garry Tan, Jack Altman
[00:00:00] S2: It’s interesting though. It feels different this time because clearly in our little bubble here, everyone is all pro-AI. On the other extreme, I have immigrant parents who don’t speak great English. My mom is totally into ChatGPT because now she can do all this stuff. She can send letters and reply to people in a way that’s super empowering for her. It’s the middle, the people who are threatened by it. Is AI going to take my job? Has it really been a threat to knowledge work or white-collar people? I feel like the people who aren’t early adopters — who usually tend to get on the train immediately after the San Francisco train takes off — are now resistant to it. It’s sort of bypassed them and gone to the other end. [00:00:00] S3: I sympathize with that. As labor that became management and capital, I totally feel that. I think it is actually about, in the Marxist sense, where you fit in there. My argument would be that it has been way more important to become a founder — which is management that becomes capital — now than ever. It’s way more possible. That fear that workers have about what is going to happen is something that management and capital has to take responsibility for. [00:00:00] S0: It’s serious. I think so too. It’s very easy to be like, “In the arc of history, there’s always new technology and people find new jobs.” Well yeah, but there’s a lot of structural unemployment that happens in the middle of that, and that’s real.
· Jack Altman, Garry Tan
[00:00:00] S0: It’s serious. I think so too. It’s very easy to be like, “In the arc of history, there’s always new technology and people find new jobs.” Well yeah, but there’s a lot of structural unemployment that happens in the middle of that, and that’s real. [00:00:00] S3: But that unemployment only happens in zero-sum games. It happens in a case where my company does X, makes widgets that will never change, never get better. Some of it exists in the context of no competition. One of the things we learned from hard tech companies, for instance, is that it’s impossible to get a certain block of metal. You have to get it fabricated or smelted in China. America’s lost the ability to do it. When you have a market so broken that you can’t get it inside America, how did this happen? I would go back to capital and management and say, “this is a lack of fucking imagination. We’re not here to just shave off one or two percent every single year and increase net profit and that’s it.” We need to think way more about how to use this technology to radically change how businesses work, what products are. How much better they could be?
· Garry Tan, Jack Altman
[00:00:00] S3: But that unemployment only happens in zero-sum games. It happens in a case where my company does X, makes widgets that will never change, never get better. Some of it exists in the context of no competition. One of the things we learned from hard tech companies, for instance, is that it’s impossible to get a certain block of metal. You have to get it fabricated or smelted in China. America’s lost the ability to do it. When you have a market so broken that you can’t get it inside America, how did this happen? I would go back to capital and management and say, “this is a lack of fucking imagination. We’re not here to just shave off one or two percent every single year and increase net profit and that’s it.” We need to think way more about how to use this technology to radically change how businesses work, what products are. How much better they could be? [00:00:00] S0: I completely agree. I think if capital and management don’t take some responsibility there, it’s not just unemployment, there’s reduced employment. There’s the whole world getting more expensive. Home prices are going up while there might be pressure on wages because you can do more cheaply with AI. So you have inflation happening alongside wage pressure at the same time. I do think it’s a more real thing than our echo chamber wants to… Again, I’m totally for it too, but I think it’s an important thing.
· Jack Altman, Garry Tan
[00:00:00] S0: I completely agree. I think if capital and management don’t take some responsibility there, it’s not just unemployment, there’s reduced employment. There’s the whole world getting more expensive. Home prices are going up while there might be pressure on wages because you can do more cheaply with AI. So you have inflation happening alongside wage pressure at the same time. I do think it’s a more real thing than our echo chamber wants to… Again, I’m totally for it too, but I think it’s an important thing. [00:00:00] S3: That’s why we’ve been vocal about this idea of little tech. We have Luther Lowe, who used to work at Yelp, and he’s in DC full-time fighting for startups to be able to actually train AI models and enter markets. Frankly, I know we have lots of friends at Apple and Alphabet, and we have huge respect for those companies… Once in a while you’ll see in the press, “Oh yeah, we submitted an amicus about Apple and Alphabet”. It’s not because we hate those guys, but because we need tech to allow new startups and new entrants to come in. So to me it’s all very consistent. We need to be way more aggressive about what our products and services should be and can do, and we need markets that allow those people to actually exist, thrive, hire lots of people, and create new jobs. A lot of people are like, “Oh, I work in tech, I don’t know how to do this.” But look, it’s actually abundance. We actually have to build again. We’ve become a litigious culture. I’m sure you’ve read this book Breakneck about China versus the US.
· Garry Tan, Jack Altman, Jared Friedman
[00:00:00] S3: That’s why we’ve been vocal about this idea of little tech. We have Luther Lowe, who used to work at Yelp, and he’s in DC full-time fighting for startups to be able to actually train AI models and enter markets. Frankly, I know we have lots of friends at Apple and Alphabet, and we have huge respect for those companies… Once in a while you’ll see in the press, “Oh yeah, we submitted an amicus about Apple and Alphabet”. It’s not because we hate those guys, but because we need tech to allow new startups and new entrants to come in. So to me it’s all very consistent. We need to be way more aggressive about what our products and services should be and can do, and we need markets that allow those people to actually exist, thrive, hire lots of people, and create new jobs. A lot of people are like, “Oh, I work in tech, I don’t know how to do this.” But look, it’s actually abundance. We actually have to build again. We’ve become a litigious culture. I’m sure you’ve read this book Breakneck about China versus the US. [00:00:00] S0: No but I want to. It’s Dan Wang’s book. It’s incredible. [00:00:00] S1: It’s really good. [00:00:00] S3: We built a lot in the forties and fifties, and then sometime around the sixties and seventies, they literally stopped building. We can’t build high-speed rail. It’s insane. Why? Because we’re a totally litigious culture that cannot get out of its own way.
· Garry Tan, Jack Altman, Harj Taggar, Jared Friedman
[00:00:00] S3: We built a lot in the forties and fifties, and then sometime around the sixties and seventies, they literally stopped building. We can’t build high-speed rail. It’s insane. Why? Because we’re a totally litigious culture that cannot get out of its own way. [00:00:00] S0: I saw some Peter Thiel talk about how we built all this stuff through the seventies and then for 50 years nothing happened except computers. Even right now most of the revolution is in computers, which is great. It’s better than nothing. Obviously other stuff is happening too. But you look at what China does, standing up a city in no time. They’re really good at robotics. What are we doing? On this societal topic, obviously you guys are very engaged with the city and state. [00:00:00] S2: Some more than others. [00:00:00] S0: Some more than others. What do you think is the posture that San Francisco and California need to take? What’s the most important thing posturally that we need to be taking? [00:00:00] S1: This is Garry’s area. How do we fix California politics? Garry has a plan. I’m kidding but actually he does have.