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All In Podcast Episode 111 Notes January 13 2023

January 13 2023



  • Slate did a profile on AllIn - can’t handle how big the Pod has become
    • Journalist have a class hatred of tech investors and entrepreneurs - if you genuflect to their points of view they treat you well
    • Why would you want to subject yourself to their filter if you always get a hit piece
    • Its not journalism, its activism
    • Journalists want to do what they’re doing is because they want influence
    • Fox vs NYT, Vox, CNN, MSNBC, Atlantic
    • Matt Yglesias can’t understand basics of finances - percentage vs basis point
      • He is considered mainstream
    • Journalists are subjective and biased and uninformed
    • There are zero checks and balances for these terrible journalists - it isn’t caught in proof reading, editing, etc
    • So numerically illiterate so it stood out - what else is being missed - these guys are chasing clicks
    • Gell-Mann Amnesia effect - you know journalists know only 10%
    • Now describing AllIn in terms of Elon - its Elon for clicks
    • Nitish Pahwa?
    • Another article called Sacks prophet of urban doom if he calls out how san francisco streets are messed up
    • Basic society breakdown - homeless person hosed down by frustrated store owner
      • You show the 10 second video but don’t show the 10 steps that led to it
    • 1/4 or 1/3 of SF stores are vacant
    • Lack of treatment is the problem, lack of homes is not the problem
    • See Shellenberger’s work on this - 99% of people he speaks to say its very easy to be a drug addict in San Francisco
    • We have gone too far from the opposite bad situation where there was mandated locking up of people with mental issues when it hurt some people who weren’t really mentally ill
    • Power of language - untreated persons instead of homeless
    • Because the mentally ill person is an adult you can’t force them into anything
    • Reagan defunded psychiatric hospitals and emptied them up - he repealed the Mental Health Systems Act
    • Gavin Newsom said he would end homelessness when he became Mayor of SF - and he has failed
    • This problem wasn’t so bad 10-15 years ago
    • $800 a week to homeless people in city of SF - this is politicians’ fault - the new ones
    • Massive surplus to $25B deficit overnight due to Gavin Newsom
    • They appropriated $10B out of budget for homelessness
    • Special interest - homeless industrial complex - giant special interest and lobby
  • ESG
    • This week in grift
    • $2T in debt owned by developing world - debt for nature swaps
      • Toxic emerging market debt becomes ESG debt into your 401k
    • Exxon is #7 top ranked company according to ESG but Tesla is not even ranked
    • Industry of grift
  • Microsoft putting $10B into ChatGPT
    • $29B into business losing $1B in Azure credits per year
    • Definitely next VC hype cycle - VC needs a savior - public markets are in the toilet - so VC really want something to be true
    • Mobile was real, Cloud was real, Social kinda real, Crypto/Web3 hype cycle and bust, VR probably in hype cycle
    • AI - hype real technically - unsure yet about return for VCs
    • OpenAI is Microsoft proxy
    • Google with DeepMind
    • Facebook
    • So probably this is for bigger companies?
    • Amazing machine learning services available through cloud vendors today
    • BioNTech buys UK AI startup
    • This technology is being used in many industries already so its real obviously
    • Google will become big - Microsoft will react, Facebook needs to figure out AR/VR vs AI
    • They can all compete and make it free
    • 2014 Google bought DeepMind
      • People thought it was biggest threat to humanity that Google owned DeepMind
    • So Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk etc started OpenAI to compete with this
    • Started as non profit originally
      • Sam Altman, Greg, Elon, Reid, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, AWS, Infosys, YC Research
    • $1B initially
    • But Google gave away bunch of stuff for free - while OpenAI became profit-seeking
    • Biggest opportunity here is for Facebook
    • Google and Facebook are not really making progress
    • 13yo kid knows when ChatGPT is out of resources
    • Probably iPhone was the last technology that was so mainstream so fast
    • Jason has ChatGPT ios app on his phone - looks like iMessage and threads
      • Showed demo using Yelp kinda queries
    • Jason signed up for ChatGPT premium - he filled out a survey
    • History of online search/query is information retrieval
    • AI/ML systems do synthesis or presentation - not just information retrieval
    • Maybe not a hype cycle but an opportunity in rewriting all compute tools
    • BioTech is using some such techniques - novelty in data is one way an advantage might arise
    • Every business model that is dependent on legacy of information retrieval will have to be rewritten
    • Sacks passed the bar first try
    • How accurate is the answer from ChatGPT is important - some professions it might be 6 9s of accuracy
      • Parking ticket vs murder trial is a big difference
    • Reid Hoffman having fireside chats with chatbots
    • Real advantage will come from applications that can leverage proprietary datasets and use moat of reinforcement learning - you can build a sustainable business
    • Prompt engineer will become a new title maybe - someone who is very good at talking to these instances
      • 10x-20x more valuable in the company
    • You might need much fewer people than you think you could reduce
    • Reality is new work emerges and new opportunities emerge
    • Minority Report, Ender’s Game
    • 26% of US employment in manufacturing in 1970, now 10%
  • Biden’s documents
    • Office, library, garage with corvette
    • Merrick Garland appointed special counsel to investigate Trump, and now has appointed for Biden also
    • Biden, Trump and Hilary Clinton all ensnared in this classified documents issue
    • Seems we have an over classification problem
    • Since FOIA act, government is marking everything as classified
    • Compounding problem is that we never declassify issues
    • CIA keeps filibustering JFK assassination documents
    • What incentives being created for politicians
      • Never use email
      • Never let anyone hand you a document
      • So always go to a clean room, make an appointment, no photos - this is no way to run a government
      • Don’t go into politics as a business person - they will investigate every deal you ever did
    • Who does this benefit - not elected officials - benefits insiders - the permanent government
    • This puts Trump in the news cycle
    • Merrick Garland now has to drop the prosecution against Trump for the documents
    • The washington establishment, the deep state are creating a system where they run everything and the elected officials have to listen them
    • When you take an appointment - like say Ken Griffin - you can sell without capital gains
    • Madoff series on Netflix
      • SBF is going to be much bigger - so too much for SD of NY - because SBF donated all over the place
      • Triangle of sadness
      • Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king
  • Cabinets and Ambassadorships
    • Cabinet heads are figureheads
    • London is probably best ambassadorship - $10-$15M - spend per year to run it
    • No one wanted to be ambassador under Trump
    • Ambassador is a lifetime title
    • AllIn Pod is more impactful than ambassadorship

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