· David Senra, Alexandr Wang
[00:00:00] S0: No, it's been beaten out of them. Life has beaten out of them. [00:00:00] S1: I think as adults, I don't think we just appreciate the degree to which we're all zombies. We lost our agency and we lost our... I think ambition is really a good word for it. One of the promises of AI, broadly speaking, and I think through products like Muse, is to keep it going from when you're a kid. You're a kid, you have big dreams. Use AI, help make those things happen. Then dream bigger, make those things happen. Dream bigger, make those things happen. And kind of experience this escalator of agency, an increase in agency throughout your life, versus a sort of you have lots of agency and then it gets crushed. [00:00:00] S0: You know what I was thinking of when you were speaking just now? You mentioned earlier this experience that you and Nat Friedman went through where you had this disturbing psychological audit coming in waves from this AI. It's like, yeah, what if we had that, but it's the opposite of what you're saying. It actually gave you more self-confidence, gave you understanding the world is malleable, and if you push on it hard enough, you go after it with enough energy and drive, you can actually change it around you.
· David Senra, Alexandr Wang
[00:00:00] S0: You know what I was thinking of when you were speaking just now? You mentioned earlier this experience that you and Nat Friedman went through where you had this disturbing psychological audit coming in waves from this AI. It's like, yeah, what if we had that, but it's the opposite of what you're saying. It actually gave you more self-confidence, gave you understanding the world is malleable, and if you push on it hard enough, you go after it with enough energy and drive, you can actually change it around you. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, I think this is something that certainly the most impressive entrepreneurs exhibit, which is I think they dream big, they accomplish that, then they dream bigger. And then maybe they work on that for, like, a decade, but then if they accomplish that, then they dream bigger. Like, Elon is obviously a great example of this. I think Mark is a great example of this. But I think a lot of the iconic entrepreneurs, this is kind of like their lived experience, and I think there's a version of that that should be true for every person. And I think what's kind of tragic is, I think for most people, you have bigger dreams, big ideas, you enter the corporate workforce, you kind of become a zombie. Maybe at some point you want to go tackle your dreams, but then it's really, really hard because you have all these commitments. You maybe have a family, maybe have whatever it is. It's almost you become trapped in this sort of zombiehood.
· Alexandr Wang, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah, I think this is something that certainly the most impressive entrepreneurs exhibit, which is I think they dream big, they accomplish that, then they dream bigger. And then maybe they work on that for, like, a decade, but then if they accomplish that, then they dream bigger. Like, Elon is obviously a great example of this. I think Mark is a great example of this. But I think a lot of the iconic entrepreneurs, this is kind of like their lived experience, and I think there's a version of that that should be true for every person. And I think what's kind of tragic is, I think for most people, you have bigger dreams, big ideas, you enter the corporate workforce, you kind of become a zombie. Maybe at some point you want to go tackle your dreams, but then it's really, really hard because you have all these commitments. You maybe have a family, maybe have whatever it is. It's almost you become trapped in this sort of zombiehood. [00:00:00] S0: There's one more thing on Muse before I want to get to Scale AI and the partnership that you did with Meta in making that decision. But in this essay that you wrote, or this short post that you wrote, I love what you said. You said, "The world until now has been shaped by the small number of fanatics who have somehow found a way to make their wants real, but we've never seen humanity with every single person's agency fully switched on."
· David Senra, Alexandr Wang
[00:00:00] S0: There's one more thing on Muse before I want to get to Scale AI and the partnership that you did with Meta in making that decision. But in this essay that you wrote, or this short post that you wrote, I love what you said. You said, "The world until now has been shaped by the small number of fanatics who have somehow found a way to make their wants real, but we've never seen humanity with every single person's agency fully switched on." [00:00:00] S1: I think the promise of this world that I'm describing, where every single person has this agency increase throughout their lifetime and they have the ability to accomplish their wants and their dreams, I think that world looks crazy in a very good way. I think it will be very interesting. It'll be artistic and cool, and you'll go into different pockets of the world, and it will be very diverse that it'll be kind of insane to think about what exactly that looks like, where literally billions of people have all of a sudden, because of abundant intelligence, the resources to make incredible things happen. I think that's part of the promise. I think in my head, it's almost like the "Rick and Morty" interdimensional cable but just somehow manifested into reality for humans. It could just be really awesome.
· Alexandr Wang, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: I think the promise of this world that I'm describing, where every single person has this agency increase throughout their lifetime and they have the ability to accomplish their wants and their dreams, I think that world looks crazy in a very good way. I think it will be very interesting. It'll be artistic and cool, and you'll go into different pockets of the world, and it will be very diverse that it'll be kind of insane to think about what exactly that looks like, where literally billions of people have all of a sudden, because of abundant intelligence, the resources to make incredible things happen. I think that's part of the promise. I think in my head, it's almost like the "Rick and Morty" interdimensional cable but just somehow manifested into reality for humans. It could just be really awesome. [00:00:00] S0: So, I keep hearing this line from that show where it's like, "The universe eats smart people." Okay, so I want to go back. What I'm personally curious about is you founded Scale AI, you're running Scale AI, and then one day, Mark Zuckerberg reaches out and says, "Hey." I assume he says, "Hey, I want to talk." Can you tell me about this? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, I think the exact message was something like, "Hey, do you have time for a call?" [00:00:00] S0: Did you have a relationship with Mark previously? Did you spend any time with him? What's the background there?
· David Senra, Alexandr Wang
[00:00:00] S0: Did you have a relationship with Mark previously? Did you spend any time with him? What's the background there? [00:00:00] S1: I have a friend, this guy, Alex Schultz, who I've known actually for many, many years, from when Scale was maybe a year old. I met him in San Francisco. He's currently the chief data officer at Meta, but was longtime Meta executive lieutenant. And he introduced me to Mark, I want to say in about, I think it was 2021 or 2022, to talk about AI, because I think at that time, Mark was getting a lot more interested in AI. Scale, we were doing a lot of stuff in AI. My memory is that I think it took one year to schedule that first meeting. From the intro to the meeting being scheduled, I think it was a full year. [00:00:00] S0: Why?