Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Palmer Luckey, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
That's what I would do when I was, for example, at Oculus, going to CES. I would go to CES, and we would give people 30-minute meetings each press outlet, and it would be 15 minutes of talking with me and then 15 minutes of getting a demo of the latest Oculus hardware and software. I would rotate through four press outlets an hour, doing this 15-minute spiel and we would start at about 9:00 a.m., and we would go till 5:00 p.m. So you'd have about 32 outlets a day, and you do that for four days, and you'd say, "Wow, I met with almost 200 people in the last few days. That was really fun." And of course, now you're reaching the millions of people that read those 150 or 200 outlets. But as fun as that was, it's not something that makes sense for Anduril. [00:00:00] S0: What do you think of AGI?
· Palmer Luckey
[00:00:00] S1: I love it. I'll be honest, I've been less focused on AGI because I think it's a very hard problem and I don't think that Anduril is in a position to be the company that figures it out. There's so many people trying so many different approaches, unlike VR headsets, where I think there's a clear tractable road map to solving the problem. It's very clear what you need to do to make it work really well. You can road map today a technical plan that gets you to a headset that is indistinguishable from reality on the visual side, at least, in some environments. It's very hard to reflect -- some things are harder, sun glaring off of snow, very, very difficult. I'd say there's a clear technical road map to a headset that provides you with an experience of sitting in a fluorescent-lit office room that is indistinguishable from the real deal. We know what we need to do. That is just not the case for AGI. There is not a clear path, and I suspect that whatever ends up working is going to be a bit different than what people are betting it is today. I'm going to let everybody else work on that, and I want to be in a position where the second someone figures it out, I can jump on it and integrate that capability into my system. So that means building systems that are optimized around autonomy in the first place, building systems that can be well controlled by a computer, building systems that are made more useful by more computational intelligence, things that can take advantage of advances in autonomy. And Anduril is in a really good place. If someone came up with a perfect AGI that was as smart as the smartest person in the world than anything, Anduril would be able to make great use of that, and I am looking forward to it. I hope John Carmack figures it out. If he does, then it means we get to work together directly again. That's the Palmer Luckey fantasy. It is that John Carmack is the one who figures out AGI with his Carmack-led crack team of geniuses. But whoever it ends up being, we're in a pretty good place to take advantage of it. The only other thing I'll say is, I am not scared of AGI the way that a lot of people are. I think that AGI is a technology where the benefits do accrue more to the defender than on the offensive side.
· Palmer Luckey
Obviously, people can pick examples here and there, "Aw, but here's this horrible thing that it could be used for." I still think the benefits actually accrue more to the defender. People will say, assuming that we get AGI, first of all, I think it's likely, especially in the near term, that it's going to require computational models that are extremely heavy that are going to be easier to run in basically just better-off nations that have strong regulatory environments and a general desire to do good than out at someone's garage. It could be someone figures out how to do it in their garage and they use it to bioengineer the next super weapon. But let's assume that AGI just exists in the more likely sense, and I think for a while it's likely to remain the domain of the people that you would want to have it. I think the better way to look at it is, "Yes, AGI could be used to engineer really terrifying bioweapons." But that's already the case today. There's already really good bioweapons you can make without AI. We struggle to defend against things like that. I think AI would be very helpful in being able to defend against. In other words, if AGI is so good that it can come up with anthrax two and it's just an incredibly powerful thing, I would hope that AGI can also come up with a thing that immunizes people against it or that builds nanobots that are in our blood stream at all times that are able to, on the fly, compute exactly what they're going to do to stop any biological threat, natural or man-made. It's a case where the defensive uses like that are actually going to outweigh the offensive uses in the long run. The thing to worry about is you have -- let's say, North Korea or Iran figures out how to do it with a relatively small number of people. They have the brilliant insight that nobody else does, and then they use it to create super weapons. But at the end of the day, I think that actually comes down less to an AI problem and more of a people problem. I'm way more scared of really evil people with existing weapons than the possibility that they get slightly better weapons. If they were to do something, the only thing stopping some of these nations is the threat of massive retaliation.
· Palmer Luckey, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
I'm not sure that a nuclear-equipped Iran is less spooky than an AI-bioweapon-equipped Iran, mostly because the way you stop them from deploying either of those capabilities isn't actually tied to the technology itself. It's tied to everything around it. [00:00:00] S0: I sincerely wish I had two more hours with you. This has been so much fun, but I'm forced to ask my traditional closing question, what is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you?
· Palmer Luckey
[00:00:00] S1: I'm going to split it into two areas. There are a lot of people who have very directly given me access to the resources I have today and where it's very clear that without them believing in me that I would not be anywhere. This is one of the reasons I like Peter so much. Founders Fund was really critical for Oculus. And if they had not been an investor, I don't know exactly how things would have gone. Is that kindness? Now, that's what I'm struggling with. Is it kindness to invest in something that seems like an unlikely thing? From their perspective, maybe it's just pure crave in capitalism. But from the perspective of me, 19-year-old kid starting his first company, meeting with people who knew they were going way out on a limb, it sure seemed quite kind. And then, I guess, the only other thing is my wife put up with me not proposing to her for over 10 years. My wife and I met when we were teenagers. We met at a debate camp in Maryland, policy debate. The first time that we met, she actually cried because it was my debate team versus her debate team. And I'll be candid, they did a very poor job. We beat them so soundly that they started crying during the debate. It's funny how that then turned into, "Now we're getting married." There was a lot of kindness in her putting up with me, not proposing and getting married because it's like, "Hey, I've got too much going on with Oculus. It's just absolutely crazy." And then I'd say, the worst part was some people, they take a break. They end one company, spend some time with their family, maybe get a marriage out of the way and then start something. But because I've been fired from Oculus, I was just in rage. I had 100 chips on my shoulder. I was waking up with my fists clenched every day. I said, "I'm going to prove to them that I'm somebody. I am not a one-hit wonder. They haven't seen the last of me." One of the kindest things that I think anyone has done has been my wife, who I had told, "Hey, when I'm done with Oculus and we get through the consumer launch of the Rift, then that's going to be the right time." Her saying, "You are clearly not in a good head space to get married. You're out on the war path," and her being willing to let me start Anduril, do that for a few years. And then finally, we started dated when she was 15. So to say, I waited 15 years, that's a pretty kind thing to do.
· Palmer Luckey, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Now that stacks up against all the other kindnesses in my life, but that's one that sure seems pretty kind to me. Beyond reasonable, I would say. Is there anything kinder than someone doing something for you and doing it very much against what they want because they know that it's what you need to do? I don't think so. [00:00:00] S0: I've asked this 400 times or something now. It's now rare that I get a unique answer. That's an amazing and unique answer. This has been so fun and interesting. [00:00:00] S1: Well, if it wasn't for that, Anduril wouldn't be where it is today. I think there was a power to Anduril being started in a fire of passion. And I feel like if I would have done what she originally wanted, which was take off a year, relax a little bit, two things would be different. First of all, Anduril would not have started with that passion. And two, Anduril today would be a year behind where we are now. And with the situation in Taiwan being so critical, with countries like Israel and Ukraine going through what they're going through, I can't imagine being a year behind where we are now. I would feel really bad about it. I wish I had started a year earlier. [00:00:00] S0: Palmer, I've loved our time together. Thank you so much for the time. [00:00:00] S1: Thank you. This is going to blast.