00:16:09 · Max Read, Erin Griffith
[00:16:09] S1: Yeah. I wanna return to the philosophy, the sort of question of the philosophy, because one of the questions I have about Anthropic is, you know, beyond this governance structure here, to what extent is there... Are there philosophical commitments around AI safety? Like, how do they inform the company itself or inform the business decisions, or do they? [00:16:28] S3: Well, I I think in the beginning, it was a huge piece of the company because it was the only place where they could get money. Mhmm. Regular Silicon Valley investors were... Kind of viewed the company as a science project for the first couple years, and the only place that they could find money was from people like Sam Bankman Fried, Jaan Tallinn, people who were, like, deeply enmeshed in the in the EA kind of philosophy in that world. And then their first product was very specifically and purposefully, like, an enterprise business product. They weren't building something for consumers. They weren't trying to build an AI companion necessarily. And that has proven to be an incredible business. And then when when the VCs got word of that, they were like, oh, great. Like, let's dump all the money in. And most of those VCs that came in later are looking at this as an enterprise, you know, software SaaS business, and they're not really that hung up on the philosophy. They're like, yeah, we like that we're backing the good guys, the good guys. Right. But they they don't really, like, buy into this, like, sort of the stuff that's a little bit more weird about... The woo [00:17:26] S1: woo stuff,
00:17:26 · Max Read, Erin Griffith
[00:17:26] S1: woo stuff, [00:17:27] S3: if They can don't... Mean, is there a word for like AI woo woo? [00:17:31] S1: No. I don't think there is. [00:17:32] S3: Which is romp with one. [00:17:33] S1: Can... Can think of a [00:17:34] S3: Hard fork signatures. [00:17:35] S1: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, it's very interesting because you could look at all the decisions that they've made from the governance structure on down to, like, the specific things that they're doing, and you could tell a story where it's all about their philosophy. It's all about their fear of AI or their belief in AI. But you can also tell a story that this is just a very straightforward, smart Silicon Valley company that wants... Founders wanna retain control. It wants to be very efficient. It wants a clear path to profitability through, you know, enterprise sales and not trying to become the next Facebook or whatever. And it seems like investors [00:18:03] S3: And they that's certainly what the investors that I talked to say. Like, I I remember, like, when when Jacob Cox quit and there... Everyone was kinda freaking out about, like, AI is gonna kill us all. I'm mentioning this to some of their investors and then sort of being like, oh, yeah. You know, hacking, that's a big risk. We're definitely worried about cybersecurity, but, like, I don't really know what you're talking about on the other stuff. Like, we're not worried about that.
00:18:03 · Erin Griffith, Max Read
[00:18:03] S3: And they that's certainly what the investors that I talked to say. Like, I I remember, like, when when Jacob Cox quit and there... Everyone was kinda freaking out about, like, AI is gonna kill us all. I'm mentioning this to some of their investors and then sort of being like, oh, yeah. You know, hacking, that's a big risk. We're definitely worried about cybersecurity, but, like, I don't really know what you're talking about on the other stuff. Like, we're not worried about that. [00:18:23] S1: Let's zoom out a little bit. So, you know, this feels, as we were saying before, like an inflection point. Like, we've spent the last half decade in this in this big time hype moment. VCs, executives, researchers are selling this crazy story of a technology that's gonna change everything. Now we have a big document with a lot of real numbers in it, and pretty soon, we're gonna know what the stock price of Anthropic is. So how would you characterize this? What is happening right now with the IPO? What questions are being asked and what questions are being answered?
00:18:51 · Erin Griffith, Max Read
[00:18:51] S3: I mean, it is sort of like a demystifying moment because we have, you know, seen these companies in the private market get these trillion dollar valuations in such a short time. And it's kind of being set by, like, a handful of VCs. Right? And so, like, yes, VCs believe in the in this company, but they also believed in the metaverse and like a lot of crypto stuff. And that that has not worked out. And so this will be the first time that we have like Wall Street and public market investors and, you know, pension fund investors, all all the professional money managers, like, modeling out the financials of this company and deciding whether it's worth investing at a true $2,000,000,000,000 valuation or maybe 1,500,000,000,000. And so that's part of it is like we're actually going to see, like, some some real evaluation of of the company. Although, I guess you could also argue that Wall Street sometimes invests on hype and momentum too as we've seen many stocks. So like, who knows? But in general, this is like a time when we're finally getting, like, to look inside the business that's underlying the AI boom and decide whether or not it is, you know, a valuable contributor to our economy because there are a lot of people out there that that think it's not. [00:19:54] S1: Yeah. So what are you looking for in the weeks after the IPO?
00:19:54 · Max Read, Erin Griffith, Mike Isaac, S0
[00:19:54] S1: Yeah. So what are you looking for in the weeks after the IPO? [00:19:59] S3: Whether or not AI kills us all. Big question still on everyone's mind. You know? I I doubt that that's gonna be talked about too much on the roadshow. I mean, I... I'm sure that there are some advisers at Goldman and Morgan Stanley who are... Who have been telling Dario, like, let's let's let's reel it back on the on the old extinction talk. [00:20:19] S1: Mean, should I invest in a company that has a 10% chance of killing everybody? [00:20:24] S3: I mean, it's in the risk factor, so you can't say they didn't warn you. [00:20:27] S1: There was a Wall Street Journal headline arguing... The headline is the bull case for AI Armageddon for investors mulling [00:20:34] S4: Bull case. Exactly. Bull case. [00:20:36] S1: For investors mulling the Anthropic share offering a 10% chance of extinction, maybe a 90% win for your portfolio. I... How can you argue with that, really? If you're gonna die, you're gonna die. But if you can Die right bitch. Yeah. Exactly. Erin, thank you for coming into the studio and talking to me at Anthropic. We're gonna take a break, and then we'll be back with Mike Isaac and Jasmine Sun to talk about the rest of the week's news in tech. [00:21:26] S0: More AI tools don't necessarily mean better results, not when the context behind your work is disconnected. Here's Jose Ramirez, Executive Director of Enterprise Agility at Kaplan, the educational services company.
00:21:26 · S0, Mike Isaac, S5
[00:21:26] S0: More AI tools don't necessarily mean better results, not when the context behind your work is disconnected. Here's Jose Ramirez, Executive Director of Enterprise Agility at Kaplan, the educational services company. [00:21:38] S4: A plunge and implementation of AI is definitely the best. It's really embedded in the tool, and the friction is really, really low. [00:21:47] S0: Atlassian brings your team's knowledge and work together, giving AI the context it needs to help you get more done. For more, go to atlassian.com/teamworkgraph. That's atlassian.com/teamworkgraph. [00:22:00] S5: AI spend is growing fast, but most businesses still can't see exactly where that money is going. Ramp gives businesses visibility and control across AI providers with real time guardrails by team and model, helping ensure spend goes to the highest ROI areas. Stop guessing where your AI spend is going. Get started with Ramp. And if you're new to Ramp, you can get $250 off at ramp.com/hardfork. Go to ramp.com/hardfork.ramp.com/hardfork.