The Pomp Podcast
00:35:00 · Polina Pompliano, Anthony Pompliano
[00:35:00] S1: Oh. [00:35:02] S0: AI probably had a very profound impact on our family Yes. In terms of our two children. For those that don't know a story, that we've talked about publicly, we had, twin boys. And during the pregnancy, we were told by a doctor that, there was complications that most people would, terminate the pregnancy. We, Polina, used AI to confirm the fact that the doctor was wrong. Long story short. The second, AI has made us significantly more productive. Has It probably helped us make more money in our businesses. Mhmm. It has definitely given me back an incredible amount of time that I then can spend with my family. It also has done tons of things in terms of plan events for us to do, find cool things to do [00:35:48] S1: I agree. Manage things. Are we are we enjoying all that at the expense of something scary happening because we're feeding it all this information? [00:35:56] S0: We live in 2026. If you walk outside of our office and go one block, there are probably 20 cameras that are gonna film you in New York City. And you're worried about telling the AI, I don't have enough toilet paper. Can you order me more? [00:36:17] S1: Like, what? I'm always on top of the toilet paper. [00:36:19] S0: Right. I can't think about how crazy this sounds. You you walk around with a tracker. Like like, there's GPS in your phone. [00:36:27] S1: Tell the people about the Amazon story. [00:36:29] S0: What Amazon story? [00:36:30] S1: The Amazon store. So Anthony has, like, a thing about being tracked by tech.
00:36:30 · Polina Pompliano, Anthony Pompliano
[00:36:30] S1: The Amazon store. So Anthony has, like, a thing about being tracked by tech. [00:36:35] S0: Oh, so, one of the first Amazon Go stores, you know, where they [00:36:39] S1: Amazon Go. [00:36:40] S0: Facial recognition. You walk in, you don't... And then you get your stuff and you walk out. [00:36:44] S1: And you don't pay being, like, really cool to introduce Anthony to his first Amazon Go store. [00:36:48] S0: Polina used to work out of Brookfield Place Mhmm. Down in Lower Manhattan, and that was when... Where one of the first Amazon Go stores was. And so I went to pick her up after work one day, and we were walking around. I was, on the phone, in air quotes, and she was like, hey. I gotta go get something from that store. Do you wanna come in? It's the first, you know, Amazon Go store or whatever, or one of the first ones. And I was like, no. No. I gotta do this call. And she Which was weird [00:37:14] S1: because you could have just done the call in the store. [00:37:16] S0: So she went in, and and when she came back out, she said, did you not go in there because you don't want them to scan your face? And I said, of course. I didn't have a call. I just I just wasn't going to the store. But we were still like... We we were dating for a while, but like I didn't wanna like get into the whole like, yeah, the conspiracy, the government... [00:37:34] S1: But you just said that there's 20 cameras pointed at you. [00:37:36] S0: So I [00:37:36] S1: like, I'm
00:37:36 · Polina Pompliano, Anthony Pompliano
[00:37:36] S1: like, I'm [00:37:37] S0: not going to the store. I've never gone to an Amazon Go store. Bezos, good luck. Can't see me. But... Yeah. Correct. I walk outside the office, and there's 20 cameras. But, like, hey. Do I wanna live in New York City or not? So it goes back to this idea of there are plenty of things that we should be scared of. By the way, I don't love the surveillance state. I don't love the fact that all of our data is everywhere. I don't love blah blah blah blah blah, whatever. Am I so unhappy, so worried, and so negatively affected by all that that I'm willing to go, like, homestead in Oklahoma and live off the grid? No. So guess what? I am actively making a decision to participate in that. That's on me. That is an individual choice that I am making. [00:38:15] S1: If the kung fu robots come?
00:38:15 · Polina Pompliano, Anthony Pompliano
[00:38:15] S1: If the kung fu robots come? [00:38:17] S0: If I choose to buy a kung fu robot as a bodyguard, which by the way sounds awesome, we'll talk about that later, how much it costs, and whether I should do it. But if I choose to do that and it goes rogue, I have nobody to blame but me. I'm the one who bought it and gave it keys to, you know, our place, or let it come with me to the office or ride in the car. If it turns on and just slaps me, why I let in the car? It's just like I'm a big believer that, people like to worry about things. And when they worry about things, they try to find the craziest, most cockamamie thing ever. So for example, all these people who keep running around saying AI is gonna kill us. Okay. Let's play a game. I am going to assume that you are correct that AI is gonna kill us. And I ask them, how will it happen? I swear to you, the stories that I hear are like, well, see, the AI is gonna hack into this pathogen lab, there's gonna be this [00:39:14] S1: super That's immediately what came to my mind. [00:39:16] S0: Pathogen, whatever. And then they're gonna let it escape. And when it escapes, it's gonna get into the airstream or the jet stream. And then when it does that, it's gonna go all through all the the world. It's gonna kill all humans. And I say, okay. Great. You're fucking crazy. [00:39:31] S1: Why, though? It could happen. [00:39:34] S0: Sure. And I could literally walk on the floor, and the engineer could have made a mistake, and a hole opens, and I fall into the crust of the earth. Like, all kinds of crazy shit
00:39:34 · Anthony Pompliano, Polina Pompliano
[00:39:34] S0: Sure. And I could literally walk on the floor, and the engineer could have made a mistake, and a hole opens, and I fall into the crust of the earth. Like, all kinds of crazy shit [00:39:44] S1: can happen. Maybe the AI discussion, discourse is very different for people with anxiety versus people without anxiety.
00:39:53 · Anthony Pompliano
[00:39:53] S0: Of course. By the way, I also understand that, like, I probably have a better understanding just because we work with this technology. You know, we're we're building a ton of proprietary AI when it comes to sylvia.com, all this stuff. And so, like, I am closer to it than many others. And by the way, I don't make fun of the people who, are worried about this stuff. I don't think that the people who are asking questions are wrong. I don't think that the people who don't want a data center in their backyard that they should be, like, mocked and ridiculed. I don't think that the people who have, concerns, questions that are like, hey. Let's make sure we understand this. I think all of that is very rational in the sense of, yeah. We probably wanna understand this stuff. Yeah. We probably wanna ask these questions. If the AI people are right, they should have good answers for many of these questions. If the people who are building data centers want to build them close to residential areas and the residents have questions or concerns, the data center people should have answers to those questions or concerns. If not, then move it to somewhere else. So, like, you go through all of this and you say to yourself, it's not that the people are wrong or that they shouldn't be asking these questions. It's just that I have done enough work where I'm not worried about those things anymore. But if people are worried, then it's on the companies who are building this stuff to go and educate them, to go and answer their questions. And so if you bring it all back to Anthropic, I love the product. I think the people there are incredibly smart. I think it's an incredible business that they've built. All of that stuff is true. What I don't like is the, like, moralizing. I don't like the, like, we're gonna save humanity, and I don't like the, like, we literally have a cabal of people that are smarter and have, like, deputized ourselves to now make decisions for humane. I don't like any of that stuff. And I think that it's all a big charade and mirage that is really this, like, non altruistic thing that is to accumulate power and money. And so, again, most people would be like, oh, you hate Anthropic. No. I don't at all. Actually, I use Anthropic. I think that it's a fantastic product, but I can separate out the product, the technology, the company from the bullshit.