This Week in Startups
00:24:12 · Jason Calacanis
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00:25:20 · D.A. Wallach, Jason Calacanis
[00:25:20] S1: narrative. I think I I think there's the there's the digital domain, and then there's the physical real world. Right? And if I look at my monthly credit card bill or my bank statement, all the expensive stuff is basically physical stuff. It's my rent, it's healthcare, it's school, it's a babysitter, it's all that kind of stuff. It's a car. And there's this interesting moment we're at right now where it's like AI is here and it can solve a bunch of business problems for business people. But the question is, can it actually solve these problems that are material to an average person's life? And as I was just hearing you guys talk about this, what occurs to me is like, unfortunately the real problems that need to be solved in the average person's life are today largely problems that require public policy. And so I actually think the way that AI can be most helpful would be if it helps us as a society to be less partisan and more constructive in our politics. And I don't know that AI had anything to do with the election results yesterday, but just imagine that everyone going to the polling booth is, you know, gonna be using their AI assistant to help them understand what they're voting on and what would actually be good for them. I mean, fundamentally, the importance of this technology is that it should make you smarter. If you're not that smart, which, you know, I'll be the first to admit, I'm not that smart. I got it in math in high school. [00:27:03] S0: There's multiple types of intelligence as well. You have artistic, emotional, and pure IQ. Have all three.
00:27:03 · Jason Calacanis, D.A. Wallach
[00:27:03] S0: There's multiple types of intelligence as well. You have artistic, emotional, and pure IQ. Have all three. [00:27:09] S1: Well, keep it coming. Keep it coming, Jason. I like that. But here's what I would say. When I get the ballot, okay? It's impossible for me to manage this thing. Okay? It's like a 100 decisions. It's so complicated. Never heard any of these people. I get one sentence on each of them. So, of course, I went on, you know, Gemini in this case, and I just... Every single one, I typed in the candidates names. And I said, here's what I care about. Tell me who to vote for. [00:27:36] S0: Love
00:27:36 · Jason Calacanis, D.A. Wallach
[00:27:36] S0: Love [00:27:36] S1: it. So imagine that what AI does is it basically is the infrastructure for us to be smarter as a people and stop shooting ourselves in the foot on all of the issues that we need to deal with. Like we have to deal with, you know, permitting issues for construction. You've seen obviously in Texas where you are, how much they've been able to move the needle on this in cities like Austin or Houston. Like it's not as if we don't know how to solve our big problems. Lurie's doing it in San Francisco. You've got great mayors and governors who are trying things all over the place. That is the beauty of federalism. We get to try things all over the country, figure out what the best ideas are. And then if we were smart, we should just take those best practices and scale them up. And like being partisan is just a huge impediment to doing the smart stuff that we should do. So I think that's my hope. It's like AI helps us be smarter, being smarter helps us fix our actual problems, which AI can't solve on its own. It takes us to do that. [00:28:44] S0: Yeah. You need to have the meat layer between the AI that's soft. [00:28:49] S1: -The meat layer. You love this meat thing. [00:28:50] S0: -I love the meat thing. I didn't eat breakfast, so I'm kind of hungry here, but I need to [00:28:54] S1: -You're a meat boy.
00:28:54 · D.A. Wallach, Jason Calacanis
[00:28:54] S1: -You're a meat boy. [00:28:55] S0: Got to go get some brisket at the Salt Lake. But in all seriousness, I do think you're onto something with the real world. Another thing that will turn this narrative around is when people start experiencing things like this little tiny robot they attach to their garbage. Yeah. I love that. Here's an arduous task. And I saw this come across, like, a 100 pound trash bin. You gotta drag this thing out. I literally... You know, I have a ranch, so it's literally a half mile from the house to the gate. There is a service we pay to show up on Sundays, take these from our house, put them in a truck, and drive them to the front, and then come back the next day and put it back. These, like, literal, companies that do this. Here's a garbage can with a little robotic attachment that... Curbie from Revere Robotics. And then when people start experiencing this, we're investors in Zipline. And when people start experiencing, you know, their burrito, or their extra diapers, or their prescription, let's say they they got a cold and they need to get, like, a Z Pak or something. When this stuff starts getting dropped off by Zipline, no tag... No delivery fee or the delivery is a buck or it's incorporated into the price is essentially what I think will happen. There's no tip, and it comes in under fifteen minutes, under ten minutes. This is the kind of stuff that will get people excited about AI and about technology again, Elana, I believe.
00:30:20 · Elana Gold, Jason Calacanis
[00:30:20] S2: Yeah. I mean, I have a robot vacuum, and I think it's the best thing in the world. My neighbors over here have, like, a robot lawnmower. And I mean, if a robot could go and be like doing my laundry, folding my clothes, making my bed, like, I'm all here for it. But I think people are just like kind of what we talked about before, just saying, okay, data centers are being built around me. The cost as an individual is going to rise, which just isn't true because there's so many regulations around that right now saying that that isn't the case. Or people are going to say, Hey, we're going to lose all our jobs. And I just think what we're all saying here is like, there's also so many positives to this. And there's so many things that are going to come from this, the manual tasks, manual labor, maybe people get hurt in driving a car every single day, but we're not really talking about how many lives it saves because instead of texting and driving and being distracted by driving, we have a robot driving you. And I think the headlines that read is, oh, this Waymo got into an accident, or I feel like there was a video the other week that like, oh, Waymo made a left turn when it shouldn't. And like one Waymo in the whole fleet of them made that mistake. Like They [00:31:23] S0: did kill one cat. They killed a cat. Yeah. But I'm not a cat guy, [00:31:26] S2: so I'm not a cat girl either. [00:31:28] S0: So I wasn't particularly brokenhearted about them. I'm kinda not a fan of cats. I'm not... I don't like them.