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All In Podcast Episode 174 Recap and Notes April 12 2024

April 12 2024

  • Friedberg moderating, JCal out
  • AIS 2024
    • Back to LA
    • Sep 8-10
    • Upgraded experience
  • Nvidia
    • They are strong in learning
    • They are trying to build a business in inference
    • Structural innovator’s dilemma - learning vs inference
    • There might be an opportunity for new chip startups
  • Western cities in decline
    • Chamath was in Paris, complaining about same stuff like London and San Francisco, etc
    • Decriminalization, de-carceration agenda is hurting at least the big US cities that are mainly blue
    • Lessening of prosecutions for crime
    • Hard to change a 1 party state
    • People who live in these places are complaining
  • Google Cloud Next trip for Friedberg
    • Platform is amazing - so many companies build ecosystem around that
    • Everyone is also trying to do multi-cloud
    • Cloud is a wide open competitive market
    • There is no AWS or Azure lock-in - or less of it
    • The clouds are competing for the consultants who will do the work for their customers - CapGemini, Deloitte, etc
  • Inflation higher than forecast - 3.5%
    • Reported by Bureau of Labor statistics

    • Next rate move could be upwards instead of downwards

    • Larry Summers has been right about inflation all along

    • Inflation higher than being reported - government just changed the formula

    • Bad news for Biden

    • If we get a rate hike, Biden is toast

    • Narrative of inflation under control is being refuted clearly with the data

    • Apparently someone at the Fed plagiarized?

    • One way other countries affect politics in US for example

    • Oil prices going up (chart 1), even though US producing more oil (chart 2), rest of the countries produce less (chart 3)



    • So now oil prices here go up, so inflation goes up, hurts the US, hurts the current US administration

    • So this is a vote against Biden

      • Structural disillusionment with current administration
    • Other countries making decisions in their own interest

    • So this is why persistent inflation rate might be true

    • So now to buy votes they are doing student loan forgiveness and debt forgiveness type work - this will just lead to more inflation

      • Clearly trying to buy votes
    • Govt debt service is going up like crazy - debt spiral - borrowing money to pay off all the interest

    • Govt will try to distract the population with war, etc

  • AI copyright bill
    • Introduced by Adam Schiff (known for Russia gate)
    • Special interest deal to do lobbying and for regulatory capture
    • He is an LA congressman and just currying favor with his clientele
    • OpenAI transcribed a million hours of YouTube to train GPT-4 - according to NYT - if that’s true then simple musicians won’t be able to do anything
    • How do we define what is copyrightable and what is not?
    • The infringement is on the production of the new artifact - not on how the model was trained, right?
    • Incumbents will just get fined but get their moat
    • Udio - music GenAI
    • Things are moving really fast - so shouldn’t let lawsuits slow things down
  • Drone warfare
    • New normal

    • Heavily being used in Ukraine-Russia war

      • Russia might have 7-1 drone advantage
      • Russia able to jam Ukrainian drones also
    • Houthis also able to use drones to their advantage

    • Chamath invested in Saildrone

    • Might lead to fewer human casualties on all sides over time

    • Next generation could be autonomous drones that don’t need a tele-operator sending them signals that can be jammed

    • 70% of Li-Ion battery production in China - so how will US compete in drone warfare?

    • To combat, use EMP?

      • Lot of SV startups getting funded recently
    • There is no choice but use machines for war because there is an all-time low in enlistment over time

    • Sacks invested in a company that makes something called BullFrog - that shoots down drones

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