Funny Business
00:28:13 · Robbie Hicks, Adam Miller
I felt bad for you lads when you actually had some good news and things to celebrate that you were sort of like roped into the storm of, they're two boy... They're two men. Let's fucking kill them. You know? It was it was weird. [00:28:25] S2: Yeah. I I can't comment on the give tree example. I'm not really sure about the details of that. But I do think that there is this, like, thing nowadays where pylons, like, can happen, like, quite quickly and quite heavily. So, like, someone may have, like, a justified piece of criticism and, like, the opportunity for social media networks is great because you can actually comment freely and criticize other people, and that can become a debate of different ideas. And theoretically, that would be good because you can learn about different points of views and people can come to understandings and consensus. But often what happens is that someone will criticize, then you get hundreds of people piling on, and then, like, almost the pile on becomes worse than the original fence of whatever of whatever happened. And, yeah, I just see that as, like, a feature, not a bug of social media platforms these days. Like, I think those are quite rewarded, like, to the algorithm as well. [00:29:16] S1: Yeah. They love it, man. They just drive eyes. They drive attention. People are tuning in. It's like bad reality TV, but it doesn't...
00:29:16 · Robbie Hicks, Lachlan Bradford, Adam Miller
[00:29:16] S1: Yeah. They love it, man. They just drive eyes. They drive attention. People are tuning in. It's like bad reality TV, but it doesn't... [00:29:22] S0: I get why we like reality TV and stuff now because, like, we used to love all the movie stars and, you know, TV shows and stuff like that. Now it's like, no. We wanna see, like, real life people heartbroken. I wanna see... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wanna see [00:29:33] S1: them crying first. [00:29:34] S2: I I think a really big part of, like, what we're doing with our media stuff is that we're really, really passionate about... We we sort of call it, like, techno optimism, but just taking a really positive and optimistic lens about technology in the sense that there's so many people building world changing technologies that can help a lot of people and trying to put those messages to the surface. Like lifting people up rather than, like, sort of shouting at people and trying to put others down. Like, you can still have a point of conviction, but then be really, really positive and optimistic. So that's, like, we're always thinking about how... What's the positive angle to something rather than trying to push someone down. [00:30:07] S0: You'd be really good on a debate team, Adam, I reckon. You're just articulate, precise, and just I want you in my corner. [00:30:14] S1: Are you scared of tech, though, though? You can be optimistic, but you're [00:30:16] S0: still scared of it? You are. Are you? [00:30:18] S1: I'll say it. [00:30:19] S0: There... There's a lot
00:30:19 · Lachlan Bradford, Adam Miller
[00:30:19] S0: There... There's a lot [00:30:19] S2: to be scared of. Right? Like, we've been sort of having debates and chats about AGI recently. There's a really good pod... Podcast called the Dwarkesh podcast, which is all about emerging voices in AI and, you know, like, I... I'm... I see so much goodness coming out of AI companies and applications in education and health, like, just what... Like, how you use it in your company and software and stuff. There's a lot of scary things about, like, the development of AI and a few companies having all the control of it and what that could do to society, what that could do if, like, AI sort of runs rampant and stuff. So there's there's scary things out [00:30:54] S0: there.
00:30:54 · Lachlan Bradford, Sachin, Robbie Hicks
[00:30:54] S0: there. [00:30:55] S3: I I also think that, like, in Silicon Valley in particular, when people become really big in the business and tech world, they then go into politics, which is often dangerous in my opinion. Like, if you got famous for your building a technology company and you're a computer science person, of course, you know, you have power and you have opinions. But they again will become really engrossed in politics, and I think that can be dangerous as well. And I also just think people in tech often take themselves too seriously. Like, I saw this a lot in venture capital. People would come in saying, this business is gonna change the world, and it was literally like some, like, accounting software. And no no hate to accounting software, but, like, I think there are parts of the tech world that take themselves too seriously and other parts that need to be celebrated and have more light shone on them, which is what we're, you know, passionate about doing. [00:31:38] S0: I think it's it's gonna be fun. Like, I [00:31:40] S1: feel like doing over the next few years, we're just gonna go through such a crazy period of change. Like, AI is still up and coming. It's it's still new in the scheme of... I reckon we felt like the ripple effect of what it's gonna do [00:31:51] S0: It's like having a mobile phone. To the workforce.
00:31:51 · Lachlan Bradford, Robbie Hicks, Sachin
[00:31:51] S0: It's like having a mobile phone. To the workforce. [00:31:52] S1: I I see it more like it's it's been a tricky last say twelve, eighteen, twenty four months where some of the bigger corporates, not in the startup space, are starting to see... I I think what it is is like the realignment and then reshift, reorganization, whatever you wanna call it of of corporate workforce. And I think that that's really interesting for us is like the people who... We got a lot people in our circle who aren't really tech or start up focused and we're like trying to tell them about shit that's going on. It's like, no. No. [00:32:22] S0: It's gonna gonna fuck you [00:32:23] S1: up a little bit. So it's like, trying to take an optimistic approach to that. [00:32:26] S3: I you guys are gonna be popular at parties saying that. [00:32:28] S0: Yeah. It's gonna fuck you up. It's it's hard because you see that. I I feel like you see it all [00:32:32] S1: the time. Like, there's bunch of announcements last week, like, Telstra just dropped another bunch of staff and all sorts of things. So it's like, there are positives, but I feel like it's a weird it's a weird mix whether you're either on the winning team, so, like, you're some startups where they are making the tech or you're not really... It's gonna... That shift, I think, is gonna happen so quick that a lot of, like [00:32:51] S0: People are gonna get slapped [00:32:52] S1: in Joes. Yeah. They're get slapped up and, like, wake up and they're [00:32:55] S0: Totally. I think I
00:32:55 · Lachlan Bradford, Sachin
[00:32:55] S0: Totally. I think I [00:32:56] S3: think people worry a lot about, like, the effects of of inequality. Right? Because, like, all this AI innovation is coming from, you know, the upper echelons of San Francisco culture. And, like, a lot of these companies will capture a lot of that value. And it's like, what does that do to the everyday person? But the only, like, argument against that is that a lot of the jobs that we think can be automated now actually aren't like your your average trade or your truck driver. They're actually your knowledge worker. So, like, everyone thought that AI would automate the the more manual blue collar jobs, but it doesn't look like it.