0:00
Uh, 911, what's the state What's the day state of your emergency?
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Uh, hey, uh, the tech industry got flipped upside down over the weekend.
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I was staring at my phone the whole time.
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I haven't been so so, uh, invigorated by any story in like 5 years.
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Um, my wife might divorce me cuz I haven't looked up from my phone.
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I've just been on Twitter all weekend.
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Sam, how are you doing right now with this Open AI story? It's been awesome.
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I, uh, you The real winner through all this is Twitter.
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Twitter's been great for this, right?
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Twitter just thrives through all types of controversy.
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Twitter, aka the Silicon Valley group chat, has been awesome awesome all weekend. awesome.
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I thought there was a chance that you were just like out duck hunting and I would come on today and you'd be like, "What happened?" I'm a Sam Altman fan. I I've loved this guy.
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We've talked about him for years. I'm a big fan of his.
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This is and I love drama. I love gossip. I read TMZ every day.
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And so now I've got TMZ on Twitter. It's awesome.
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Of course, we're talking about Open AI and Sam Altman getting fired on We're We're recording this Monday.
1:05
He was fired like Friday, but there's like news happening in real time like constantly, right? Exactly.
1:11
Like, uh, just as of an hour ago, there's news.
1:13
So, I We don't know exactly where this is going to all land.
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We're going to try to get this out so as soon as we can.
1:19
Uh, we we had a whole other episode planned today. We canceled it.
1:20
We just said, "Let's do Let's do this right now. What's our reaction?
1:23
What is our reaction to the Open AI stuff that's going on?
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All right, Sam, where do you want to start?
1:29
I think we should take this character by character, go through all the players that were involved, and I think we should give them kind of a a grade.
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And they can get a, you know, if they get an A or an A+, that means they came out a big winner here.
1:45
You can get a a C, you can get an F.
1:45
I think we should grade all the players of how this has turned out for them in the, you know, 48 hours so far that this happened.
1:53
But, do you want to first give a little timeline summary recap?
1:57
Yeah, so I think you should do it cuz you've been paying attention to it more closely, but it all started Friday at like what? 3:00? Exactly. Friday afternoon.
2:06
There's I get a text message from Ben Levy.
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He just says, "Wow, Sam Altman.
2:09
What the [ __ ] Holy [ __ ] What?"
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And I but he doesn't say the the news yet and then I'm like, "What?"
2:15
And then he's like, "Sam Altman out."
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But he like misspells out then he like does the stars on out. "Out of what?"
2:23
"Where where is he out of?"
2:25
It was unfathomable that Sam Altman would get fired, right?
2:28
Like uh in the same way that you know, I don't expect to wake up and see that Elon Musk has been fired from Tesla.
2:33
Uh you don't think you don't wake up and think that Sam Altman's going to get fired from OpenAI, which is the hottest private company, probably the most important startup in the world that has gone from zero to 90 billion in valuation in just a couple of years here. Yeah, it was shocking.
2:48
It started because OpenAI I don't even know.
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Our guy put it this in military time. So, what's this? 2:48.
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At 2:48 OpenAI announced a leadership transition.
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They said that Sam Altman is departing as CEO because he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board and their CTO, a lady named Mira, she was become the intermittent CEO.
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A little over an hour later Sam Altman said, "I loved my time at OpenAI.
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It was transformative for me personally and that he's excited for what's next.
3:18
Well, let's pause there cuz the first phase here is wild speculation.
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So, the speculation is, "Oh my god, I shock and speculation.
3:26
So, I can't believe this happened.
3:28
Like an April Fool's joke.
3:28
It must have been something bad, dude.
3:30
You know, he must be you know, this was a fraud. Did they unleash AGI?
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Was there a huge privacy like leak that is causing him to have to step down cuz there was a security issue that he he overlooked?
3:44
Is this there's like this accusation from his sister about sexual assault when they were kids? Is it because of that?
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And everybody assumes it's got to be the worst.
3:54
Until 1 hour later when is it? 1 hour later?
3:58
Yeah, I think uh couple hours later Greg who was the the chairman and was essentially his co-founder of Open AI the the lead technical guy at the time uh in the early days sends this message to the team.
4:12
Hi everyone, super proud of what we built up starting in my apartment 8 years ago.
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We've been through tough times and great times together accomplishing so much doing what should have been impossible.
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Based on today's news, {comma} I quit.
4:25
Wishing you all the best. I lower case. A lower case I.
4:30
And um And so then now we're we enter phase two.
4:34
Phase two is Wait, Greg's on the board.
4:36
Wait, Greg is a stand-up guy.
4:39
If it was something really bad, Greg would not have just quit with him.
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There must This must not be as bad.
4:45
Is there some kind of power play, jealousy, coup that's happening here? Is Sam being wronged?
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And instantly I see the court of public opinion shift.
4:55
And the public opinion says, "Look, if Sam did something really effed up, Greg would not have just followed him out the door and quit.
5:03
Unless Greg was in on it, so still a possibility.
5:05
But more likely it seems like Greg doesn't stand for this reasoning.
5:11
So maybe we don't stand for this reasoning.
5:12
And all of a sudden you see the Sam army come forward.
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People who are startups from YC when he was the president of YC saying Look, uh I don't know what happened here, but Sam is like he went to bat for me.
5:28
Uh so many stories came out that were all the same variety.
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I don't know if you saw these.
5:31
They were all the same variety.
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It was a startup saying We had a time when we were screwed.
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I emailed Sam to be like, "Hey, here's what's going on." Blah blah blah.
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Sam quickly replied with just something like, "Hey, make sure you're you know, you're communicating."
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Or like um you know, just do your best.
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is only what you can control but behind the scenes he went to war for us we found out later that he called all of our investors threatened to dangle them over the balcony if they if they screwed us and he saved our ass and didn't even mention it that he was doing that just in the background he went through and like saved us and we found out later that this was true so I don't know what what happened here but you know I ride with with Sam.
6:11
Well an equally big deal is one time I had a customer service question and I DM'd him and he replied and he solved it for me.
6:17
Exactly and a lot of it was he replied fast he replied when he didn't have to he vouched for us when he didn't have to he Man he he did by the way that was not a joke he did reply to me like I had like a air I couldn't figure something out and I was like I'm just going to DM Sam and he replied with like the he he solved my problem but yeah the guy seems like a great guy.
6:37
And his brother comes out and says to all the people that are gleefully hating today please know you're betting against the wrong guy.
6:44
Okay so that kind of foreshadows act two.
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Act two is the weekend so Friday you get the crazy news dump.
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Now the weekend you have news that people start even inside the company start to stand with Sam cuz they say if there was something bad tell us what it is you don't have to say publicly say it internally.
7:06
What does it mean he wasn't candidly consistent or consistently candid with the board about what did he lie what did he lie about how bad was it?
7:13
Uh you're taking our leader out our two leaders out now um and wait who is the board?
7:20
Oh the board is like this combination of of of of people who have no they didn't build this they don't even own equity in this but they're deciding our future cuz the board is basically one legit technologist this guy Adam D'Angelo who who was the co-founder CTO of of Facebook back in the day and then he co-founded Quora after that.
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So, you have Adam, legitimate character in Silicon Valley.
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And then you have a bunch of other people that nobody's ever heard of.
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One of them is like that actor's wife.
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She's like a, you know, an academic somewhere, never had a job. Joseph Gordon Levitt. Yeah, exactly.
7:56
You know, the guy from Inception.
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You know, like a great um the guy from Inception, not Leonardo DiCaprio.
8:07
That's the first Not even him.
8:08
He He's not the one on the board. Not even him. Exactly.
8:14
So, you got like, you know, you got her, you got a couple other characters here, um but nobody that is, again, no equity, no skin in the game, and uh no track record building or operating, you know, complex companies.
8:26
So, that seems a bit weird.
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They're getting no data, and um rumors come out, Sam's going to have a new company by Monday.
8:33
Sam and Greg are going to create an OpenAI competitor by Monday, which is just like a pretty badass threat to throw down.
8:42
And so, once the team starts to say they start to tweet out these emoji hearts saying, I basically I stand with with Sam.
8:49
I don't know all the details, but if you don't come out with any details explaining why you did this, I'm I'm going to probably leave with Sam.
8:57
And so, the board starts scrambling, and they start trying to renegotiate with Sam to maybe bring him back.
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And his conditions are like, cool. I'll come back.
9:06
Y'all all got to resign, click and clear my name.
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Uh you got to bring back Greg, and uh we're going to put a put a new board together that's like the board of my choosing.
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The board doesn't want to do all that.
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And uh so, they're kind of stalling, they're going back and forth.
9:21
He goes back to the office with a guest pass on his badge, and he says, this is the last time I'll ever enter this office with a guest pass.
9:30
And then, at the last minute, we hear the news the the news come out.
9:35
It looks like Sam's coming back.
9:35
And then Sunday night it hits.
9:39
There's a new CEO in town, Emmett Shear.
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My former boss, the former CEO of Twitch, is now suddenly these the guy from Open AI. Sam is out. He's in shock.
9:51
That That was like, you know, what I thought was the end.
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And before I went to sleep thinking, okay, we're going to record this pod.
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I thought that was the end.
9:59
Emmett releases an announcement on Twitter saying basically like, "Hey, hey, I'm here. Here's my 30-day plan."
10:07
Um I wake up this morning and there's more news.
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600 of the 700 employees of Open AI have signed a petition saying, "If you don't bring Sam and Greg back and all resign, we're all leaving." 600 of 700.
10:24
It was actually 500 as of 3:00 a. m.
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And then it got to 650 as of uh as of right before recording this.
10:30
That's basically 100 people woke up and also signed the pledge.
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Including, by the way, the guy who was supposedly behind the entire coup, Ilya, the main technologist, the scientist who was the on the board, who who was the guy who sent Sam a Google Meet link and was like, "Hey, can you join this right quick?"
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And Sam's like, "Sure, yeah, let me just pop on.
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Let me just get my microphone."
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And he pops on and then gets fired.
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The whole board is sitting there and they executed his ass.
10:58
Ilya comes out and signs the pledge and says, "I'm sorry for what I did." And even tweets out.
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He goes like, "I want to get the band back together and make it right. I'm sorry."
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Oh yeah, I I regret what I did and you know, we'll try to right the wrong.
11:10
And then on top of that, before before that that that they happened, Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, comes out and says, "Hey, um we still support Open AI. Um sure.
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Look forward to meeting the new guy, Emmett."
11:28
Which is just a really funny way way putting it.
11:30
Uh cuz apparently they were not consulted and only told 1 minute before the firing happened that a 1 minute before the press release went out that Sam was fired.
11:37
Um, so they were blindsided even though they put they've agreed to come fund $10 billion into this company and own 49% of it.
11:46
Um, and then he says, "Oh, and good news.
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Sam and Greg now work for Microsoft."
11:53
And this is just like the ultimate checkmate move.
11:54
Um, because Sam, I don't know if you know this, but Microsoft not only do they own 49%.
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Not only do they uh, provide all of the funding which OpenAI requires to [ __ ] to to exist.
12:08
If they could pull that at any minute now, uh, cuz a lot of that funding is in uh, compute credits, so basically server credits.
12:15
Um, but not only that, they also have the license to to all the technology.
12:21
They they have the model, the weights, the infer, they have everything that they need to basically hand Sam and Greg the new the like all of the code and be like, "You don't have to start from scratch. Here you go."
12:31
And so, uh, in the end, they got everything.
12:35
They got everything they wanted.
12:35
They got the team, the technology, the money, they got they got everything.
12:41
The most interesting part of all this though is the characters because this is everyone keeps saying this is succession in real life and it is.
12:47
It's the it's one of the greatest things to happen in Silicon Valley in the last, you know, 15 years.
12:53
It's a it's a beautiful storyline.
12:54
We thought Sam Bankman was uh, was a was a gift from the gods in terms of podcasting.
12:59
This is actually I think more interesting.
13:01
It's not played out yet, so the story's still going to like keep going, but let's talk about the characters.
13:06
Let's talk with about Sam Altman first.
13:08
We talked about him Well, we've talked about him a ton, but this guy basically his background is he's from St. Louis, my hometown. Give a shout out to St. Louis.
13:15
He then he moved to Silicon Valley to join Y Combinator at the age of like 19 or 20.
13:19
He started a company that had like mild success.
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I think it raised uh, a fair amount of money and sold for $50 million of which he walked away with $5 million at the age of like 21.
13:29
And using that $5 million, he parlayed that into hundreds of millions by investing in things like Airbnb, Dropbox, things like that because he worked at Y Combinator, eventually becomes president of Y Combinator at the age of 27.
13:40
Two two quotes from from Paul Graham about Sam Altman.
13:44
And remember, Paul Graham is somebody who uh invested in Dropbox, invested in Airbnb, invested you know, he's seen the founders.
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He knows everybody in Silicon Valley.
13:54
Met Mark Zuckerberg, he's met all these guys.
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And so for him to be most impressed by Sam Altman means something.
13:59
And he says, "Sam Altman has it.
14:03
You could parachute him into an island full of cannibals and come back 5 years later and he'd be the king." That's the first one.
14:13
And then he goes, the second one he goes, "Uh I met Sam Altman many years ago when he was 19 years old.
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He was a Stanford dropout."
14:21
Which by the way, Harvard or Stanford dropout is the number one resume.
14:25
Stand- That is the number one like item.
14:28
If you go to Harvard or Stanford and you don't drop out, you have intentionally chosen to not have the number one credential you can have, which is Harvard dropout or Stanford dropout.
14:36
Um so he says, "Within meeting within three minutes of meeting him, I remember thinking, 'Ah, so this is what Bill Gates must have been like when he was 19.'" In 3 minutes.
14:50
I don't know what Sam Altman did in 3 minutes, but I would love I would love to know.
14:53
I am fascinated by people who are special.
14:58
They're the kind of the the freaks.
14:58
I love it in sports, but you can see it.
15:01
You can see LeBron James at age 17 was like a freak of nature.
15:04
Yeah, he had like the equivalent of a 42-in vert.
15:08
You know, whatever he did, it was like yeah, it was like an eighth-grader dunking.
15:12
There's another story that's kind of remarkable I thought.
15:13
This is kind of tells you about this guy's character. So Sam Altman's gay.
15:16
He came out when he was like 15 or 16, I think.
15:18
You said something about he's from your hometown, St. Louis.
15:21
There's some story, which is that he came out and not only did he just come out as a teenager, which alone takes some bravery, he then like hosted like a pep rally or something like that.
15:32
He went to John Burroughs. So, in St.
15:34
Louis, where I'm from, every most all high schools are either Catholic or some type of Christian whatever.
15:37
And he came out as being gay, but he like went to a or he I think he created like a club, some type of like gay club, and at a Catholic school they're like, "No, we're not we're not about this."
15:47
And so, I think he led like a walkout, like a school walkout.
15:51
That takes a lot of like leadership.
15:53
Yeah, he's a very courageous guy.
15:53
And then, but for like the last 15 years pre-Open AI, he was a even though he was president of Y Combinator, he was still a little bit behind the scenes.
16:01
And even though that he was running this huge incubator and he's a powerful guy, it still felt like, "Well, why would Paul Graham say this about this kid who still has yet it still has unfulfilled potential."
16:13
Couple years ago, he starts to work at Open AI, and then all of a sudden we're like, "Oh, all right, the guy was plotting and it's it's he's played the long game.
16:21
Now we understand why everyone like looks up to this guy."
16:24
And Open AI Open AI has basically taken over the tech industry and went from zero to, you know, one of the biggest companies in the world in what, 5 years or something like that? Yeah, exactly.
16:34
So, he leaves the most prestigious job in Silicon Valley, which is you know, president of of YC, he's dean of Harvard dean of our Harvard.
16:42
He quits suddenly because the nonprofit research organization he co-founded, you know, he felt like that was the right opportunity. He did that.
16:50
Suddenly, it was surprising.
16:50
I remember at the time I had the thought I think I've said this before here, which is that uh I had the thought like, "If Sam Altman just quit being the president of YC to go join Open AI, how can I justify coming into work tomorrow?
17:06
Like, why would I not also go to Open AI?
17:08
Whatever Open AI is, I knew nothing at the time."
17:10
But all I knew is that one of the smartest guys in the world went and did that, um maybe I should go do that, too.
17:15
And honestly, that would have been the greatest career move I ever made if I had done that because uh you know, Open AI quickly, you know, changed its structure from non-profit to becoming, you know, like a capped for-profit thing and uh became worth, you know, nearly a hundred billion dollars in in a short period of time creating chat GPT, the fastest growing product of all time to get to a hundred million users faster than any.
17:38
And let's go to his two partners because when he started it, there's a bunch of weird stories of that I don't know aren't entirely out in the open, but it seems like there was something where Elon Musk funded the business or helped fund the business at first.
17:51
He invested forty million dollars and he also helped to recruit and uh convinced is a few of Sam's co-founders to join. Is that right? That's right.
17:59
So basically, the when people say, "Okay, great.
18:01
Sam's just he you drop him on an island of cannibals, he comes out king. Okay, cool. But what's his skill? What does he do?"
18:08
And basically, it was like on anything about strategy or ambition.
18:12
Uh but this is what Paul Graham said.
18:12
He said, "If there's if there's ever a question on strategy or ambition, I default to what would Sam do?"
18:20
And um you know, there's Paul Graham who's like twenty years older than Sam saying that.
18:23
So that's kind of impressive. So what did he do?
18:24
He basically has a conversation with Elon Musk and the two of them shared the same belief which is that artificial intelligence was going to be a big deal that we would be able to one day realize AGI which is artificial general intelligence.
18:39
Think about it as um you know, super intelligence when when uh you know, uh AI is generally smarter than than humans in kind of everything that we you know, most of the things that we try to do.
18:51
Um So the they both said that's also kind of scary because we don't know what's going to happen on the other side of AGI.
18:57
So we should fund research in a non-profit that will uh study, you know, fund the research around this so that we could safely create AGI instead of having AGI that kills us all like the movies.
19:10
So what Sam did was he hosts this dinner in Palo Alto.
19:12
And you know, he gets Elon Musk there and he gets a few other smart key people.
19:16
One of them was this guy Greg, who was at the time the CTO of Stripe, which was before OpenAI, was the most impactful big startup in the world.
19:25
So, they get the CTO of Stripe, he gets this guy Ilya, who's um like the lead research uh scientist in AI at at Google.
19:35
Essentially, he's the kind of like one of the founding fathers of of of AI and deep learning.
19:39
Um and so they get a bunch of these people around the table and they basically uh Reid Hoffman is there and they basically are like, "We need to do this."
19:45
Elon basically just agrees to fund $40 million into the nonprofit.
19:50
So, Elon puts his money where his mouth is.
19:52
Sam uh you know, helps recruit, put the whole deal together, puts brings the people together.
19:56
On the way home, Sam's like, "Hey Greg, let me give you a ride back to San Francisco."
20:02
So, they drive back to San Francisco and what Greg says what Sam says is the first 30 minutes, it's an hour-long drive from Palo Alto to San Francisco.
20:08
He says, "The first 30 minutes, Greg just asked me rapid-fire like 150 questions."
20:14
Then the next Then as the 30-minute point, he goes, "Okay, I've decided I'm going to do this.
20:18
I'll quit Stripe and I'll join OpenAI.
20:19
Um whatever this thing is that you're creating, I will join it."
20:23
Um so the next 30 minutes, they started making their plan.
20:25
Like, "Okay, what are the first things we need to do?"
20:29
Which tells you something about Greg uh to do again a crazy career move like that, to uh you know, just have independent-mindedness and conviction in something that quickly.
20:38
Um and tells you something about Sam's persuasiveness and ability to like put this thing together.
20:41
Then uh what Elon says is that he recruited Ilya out of Google, which was very very hard to do.
20:48
And he says it's the reason that him and Larry Page, founder of Google, don't talk anymore.
20:51
Uh you know, he used to be friends with Larry.
20:53
He used to Famously, Elon didn't own a house for a period of time and he would just crash at friends' houses and so he would crash at Larry Page's house all the time.
21:00
He says that they got into arguments about AI and that he was really worried about AI and Larry was like "Tech forward."
21:06
and was like, "No, it's going to be amazing."
21:10
And um And then he says that, you know, he got pissed when Larry called him a species.
21:16
Basically like, "You are you're just all about humans."
21:18
And Elon was like, "What the [ __ ] else am I supposed to be about? Are you not?
21:21
That scares me even more.
21:23
I'm going to create OpenAI now to like defend against Google, which owned DeepMind, the the number one player at the time."
21:31
And so uh Elon basically poached as Elon and Sam poached Ilya out of Google, which took a lot of money and a lot of persuasion, I believe, to get him out.
21:41
And that he becomes when he joins OpenAI, the research community who worships this guy basically followed.
21:47
And they got all the top researchers to join.
21:49
And that is the founding story of OpenAI.
21:50
It's that's amazing, right?
21:50
I mean, I just this is like drama, movie drama [ __ ] of just that that dinner, that drive home. I mean, this is perfect.
21:59
And we're going to have to have Justin Timberlake star as one of these guys.
22:05
And so this brings us to, I think, the second character that we should talk about, this guy Greg, who I believe is the unsung hero in this whole thing.
22:12
Because Sam Altman is kind of like the hero he's the hero, right? He get he's the the CEO. He gets backstabbed. He gets wronged. He's the martyr.
22:23
He had he he had to to suffer.
22:25
People come out and they're all supporting Sam and sharing like it's like a funeral for Sam on Twitter the other day.
22:30
He's like, "Oh, I remember that once Sam responded to my customer service request."
22:33
Like, "Oh, I was on a bike once and Sam, you know, he he he moved over in the lane so I could go by, right?"
22:39
Like everybody was just sharing their favorite Sam memory.
22:41
And then nobody's really talking about Greg.
22:44
Now, Greg, in my opinion shifted this whole [ __ ] thing.
22:49
Because at first it was like, "Damn, I don't know what Sam did.
22:52
Must have been horrible, blah blah blah."
22:56
As soon as Greg came out and was like, "Yo, on this, I quit."
22:57
And they're like, "Greg's the number two. He's on the board.
23:01
He was the chairman of the board, I think.
23:03
Uh they're like, "If Greg doesn't think this was right, I don't think it's right."
23:07
And so, Greg single-handedly like shifted the perception of the narrative around this whole thing.
23:13
Uh and the board didn't counteract that.
23:15
And so, I think Greg was the the real hero of this.
23:17
And then what I did was there's some amazing blog posts that anybody who's a real nerd about this stuff, if you just really love kind of like the the lore, the canon of of Silicon Valley, you got to go read this.
23:30
Greg has blog posts up on his blog about um about the early days of OpenAI.
23:37
And um I think he blogged about days of OpenAI last week.
23:42
No, it was eight years ago.
23:42
This thing started a long time ago.
23:44
And he talks about like they didn't have an office.
23:48
He's like, "All right, just come to my apartment."
23:49
He's like, "Here's the four of us in our apartment."
23:50
He's like, "I didn't know anything about machine learning. So, I did two things.
23:54
Number one, I asked Ilya, "What is the number one tech book about machine learning?"
23:59
I bought it, and I studied it religiously.
24:03
He's like, "I read everything there was to know about deep learning and machine learning."
24:07
He goes, "And this is the former CTO of Stripe.
24:09
He's not like a non-technical dude.
24:11
He's known as like this incredible one of these 10x or 100x engineers.
24:16
And um he says, "I didn't know anything about deep learning, so I just dedicated myself to go read, you know, page one, chapter one of the book, and I'm going to take notes, and I'm going to ask a ton of questions."
24:25
He goes, "Two, while these guys were setting up their research stuff, I did everything else.
24:31
Like, oh, but your back looks a little uncomfortable. You need a pillow? Oh, you guys thirsty?
24:34
I'll go get get smoothies."
24:36
And he's doing literally all the like intern grunt work those first few months to get them set up.
24:42
He's like, "And it basically was an alternating between research would do something, then research would get blocked, and I would say, 'Oh, what's blocking you?'
24:47
And they're like, 'Ah, it's taking forever to run this training set, or I have to like organize this data.'"
24:52
And then Greg would stay up all night and basically like do the engineering, because people don't realize engineering and coding is very different than AI research.
24:59
And so he's he would do the coding that would make the researchers go faster.
25:05
He built basically all of the infrastructure so that researchers could do great work.
25:09
And um and even with GPT like there was a story of like uh you know they ran the model and the output was kind of like uh like it was so-so.
25:19
And then Greg like locked himself in a room for 2 weeks and he came out and suddenly GPT worked.
25:23
And people were like what the hell just happened?
25:25
And he's like yo I blacked out and you know I did that.
25:28
And so he has these great blog posts and photos of those early days that I thought was kind of amazing.
25:34
So Greg was born in '89 which puts him around 34 years old now.
25:37
He joined Stripe in 2010, he became CTO in 2013.
25:43
So he was CTO of Stripe when he was about 24 25 years old.
25:46
And then he go he left Stripe to co-found OpenAI.
25:49
So he was only 26 27 when he started working on OpenAI. It's pretty amazing.
25:54
These guys are are freaks. Unreal. It's unreal.
25:59
And by the way, what did you give we you forgot to give a grade.
26:02
So Sam Altman, he's going to win no matter what in all of this.
26:04
I so I think he was going to get like let's say a B plus, right?
26:09
He was going to get a B plus. Why?
26:12
Because you got fired, you got backstabbed by your own your own people.
26:16
That not not great not a great thing to happen.
26:17
Two, they haven't said what you did but you did something, right?
26:22
They weren't just going to fire you for nothing.
26:23
So like uh you did something we don't know what it is unknown.
26:26
Okay, can't give you an A for that.
26:28
Uh it looked like he was going to get the job back which would have been great but then he didn't.
26:34
So uh didn't come it didn't it didn't happen in the end.
26:36
So even though you got some some support from your team didn't happen.
26:41
Until the Microsoft thing happened.
26:43
Which was literally like imagine playing a game of chess and you're like oh I think I got this guy.
26:49
Uh you know I have a five piece to three advantage here. His queen is out.
26:55
And then you look up from the board and he's holding, you know, a Glock to your head.
26:59
And that's what happened to Ilya here.
27:01
And then but basically it's like he's Now he's at Microsoft, they have the license to all of the technology, they have all the training data in the world cuz guess what?
27:09
90% of computers are PCs that run Microsoft that run, you know, Windows.
27:15
Uh, he has all the funding in the world. He got paid, I'm sure.
27:17
There's, you know, like Satya had to bring uh Sam and Greg in before the stock market opened on Monday just to kind of like not have this be an issue for Microsoft uh that they got screwed here or they put a bunch of money into the into a into a lame duck.
27:33
And so he got everything.
27:33
He got the tech, 600 of 700 people follow are saying they're going to follow him there. So he got the team. He got the money. He got the funding.
27:43
And he got it all in 48 hours.
27:43
And they and they were basically like, yeah, they're going to lead a new subsidiary of Microsoft that's going to do Open uh that's going to do research on AI.
27:50
It's like, oh, you mean Open AI part two?
27:52
So so that now he has to walk away with an A plus, right?
27:56
Like you can't you can't knock that.
27:59
And and he's he's got the good guy label unless they come out with some new information that's that shows that he did something effed up, which something has to come out.
28:08
There's only three options in my opinion of how the story for Sam ends.
28:09
Option A is it's a it's an unforgivable sin.
28:12
I think that that is not likely, but it is possible that what he did is just, well, you're done.
28:20
Option B is he goes back to Open AI, becomes CEO.
28:23
I think that was more likely than not going to happen. I I think.
28:27
But option C is he stays at Microsoft and I think in a decade or five years, he becomes the CEO of Microsoft.
28:34
Which is now worth five trillion dollars or something at that point.
28:37
Yeah, right now it's two trillion today.
28:40
Yeah, so he's he's going to turn out okay.
28:42
So now this other guy, Ilya, he looks like a schmuck here.
28:45
So he's he's a loser here.
28:48
He looks He looks like an F. He gets an F.
28:50
There is a little bit of likeability with him where it's like, "Oh, you're just a brilliant scientist artist turn who was who was uh you were you were manipulated in here because you're just a a scientist and you don't understand human interaction."
29:05
So, if he plays So, we should explain one thing, which is what are the possibilities of what Sam did that might put Sam in the wrong or Ilya in the right.
29:11
So, there is what you're calling the unforgivable sin, which I would say, by the way, not a great track record of anything being unforgivable.
29:18
But, let's say the really bad personal stuff could be the could be one reason why, in which case I would say that's a completely fair reason to remove him.
29:29
If they did an investigation found out that that was true, that they're in the right for removing him.
29:34
Um that's defensible, but they just haven't said anything.
29:38
Um num- reason number two is uh safety concern.
29:42
So, Ilya is famously like the reason he's doing this is literally he's worried about AGI and doesn't want the world to end.
29:50
And uh what initially people thought was Sam says all the right things about safety, but also Sam is like a, you know, capitalist, he's a entrepreneur, he's he's he he's a he's a hard-charging guy, and he's running forward here, and maybe they're saying slow down, and he's saying, "No, we don't need to slow down."
30:10
And they're saying, "Sam, this is too risky."
30:12
And he's saying, "No, no, no, this is not risky. We got to move forward."
30:15
That's what it looked like the situation was.
30:18
And it was made crazier by the fact that, I don't know if you saw this, he did an interview the day before, and he said something like this.
30:24
He said, "I've been lucky to be in the room four times now.
30:28
The last one was just a couple weeks ago where I saw something that pushed the veil of ignorance forward and the frontier of technol- technology to us."
30:39
And like it pushed the veil of ignorance away and the fron- frontier of technology to us.
30:43
So, basically he's saying like there's been like three or four mind-blowing moments, you know, about AI.
30:49
I've been lucky enough to be in the room.
30:51
The last one happened a couple weeks ago.
30:54
Just wait till you see this.
30:54
It's going to stun people.
30:57
And so some people are like, "Yo, did they like create the monster super intelligent?
31:01
Like did they create AGI?
31:01
You know, has AGI been achieved internally?"
31:03
And he like randomly posted on Reddit not long ago, "AGI has been achieved internally" as like a joke, I guess.
31:08
Um So, some people said, "Maybe they've stumbled into something and this guy's going too fast and it's, you know, like the scientists are, you know, around the nuclear bomb saying, 'No, no, no, we got to like destroy this thing or we got to like slow down.
31:22
This is getting too crazy.'"
31:23
That would have been the other reason, which would have been, again, defensible, especially given that OpenAI's charter is specifically says, "We're not about increasing shareholder value.
31:34
We are about, you know, safely building AGI to benefit all of humanity."
31:38
So, that is their charter.
31:40
And if they thought this guy's moving too fast and putting that at risk, I would say they are completely in the right to do so if they believe that to be true.
31:46
The bad part is, again, they've come out with no evidence that that that is the case.
31:50
They haven't explained themselves.
31:51
So, nobody believes them that that's true. Uh the third reason.
31:55
So, you know, you have the really bad thing, you have the safety argument, and the third thing is essentially it's just a power play. They're annoyed by him.
32:03
They don't feel like he listens.
32:04
They feel like he's getting all the credit or he wants fame and fortune and power play, let's get this guy out of here and we will we get to run and own this thing.
32:13
And that's like a jealousy-driven thing.
32:15
And I don't know which of those is the most true.
32:18
I don't know what you think, but uh you know, it seems like the you know, none of those are perfect explanations.
32:26
I think I'll I'll say what I think maybe later, but I I it's number three, I think.
32:30
I think it's number three.
32:32
Um let's talk about let's let's come back to the board, but let's talk about Emmett Shear because you are one of the handful of people or you know, however many people who have had a relationship with him and understand.
32:43
And so last night at 1:00 a. m.
32:47
Uh Emmett basically said, I've been the guy that's been picked.
32:50
He put out this really good tweet where he explained what he was doing.
32:53
The funniest part I thought was he's had the job now for 12 minutes.
32:58
And he did a wonderful job of saying the word our.
33:00
He goes, our products are going to be this, our team is going to do this, we are going and it reminded me of that meme where there's a guy who go he goes, hey, I made this and he hands it to a stick figure and the stick figure goes, you made this?
33:14
And then the first guy leaves and the stick figure looks at the thing that and he goes, I made this.
33:19
And it's the whole point about on the internet where where people steal stuff.
33:23
I actually think Emmett's a great guy, so I'm I'm just I'm just messing around, but I thought it was amazing how he's like, 12 minutes later this is our company's going to do this.
33:32
What do you think about Emmett in this role?
33:35
Um he he's been getting a lot of criticism because he previously shared online that he's like, I actually think we need to slow things down and and a bunch of people are like, this is ridiculous, don't slow down, whatever, but he seems like a really thoughtful, great CEO. Am I wrong?
33:49
So Emmett, uh you're right.
33:51
I worked with Emmett for about two years, got to sit with him, you know, in hundreds of meetings and see, you know, how he thinks and you know, hang out with him, have beers and just kind of talk to him. He came on the podcast.
34:03
I talked to him for an hour there about uh AI stuff.
34:05
You always said he was really thoughtful.
34:07
He's extremely intelligent in a broad way.
34:09
So uh most people are not that intelligent that you meet.
34:15
Then you meet some people that are like, you know, oh, they're like above average.
34:17
Then you meet some people as you say, the oven burns hotter.
34:20
And it's just very clear like he's just got more horsepower in his head than most people. I think that's great.
34:25
I think, you know, uh as much as we like to say that like hard work is what matters.
34:31
Like, yeah, you know what also matters?
34:32
Like uh intelligence is also really a really strong attribute.
34:36
It's like, you know, like yeah, um you know, Steph Curry's got great skills, but like LeBron is 6'8" 250, right?
34:40
Like you know, size and speed matter.
34:45
I hate when people downplay intelligence and I'm like, guys, let's just admit some people are born smarter just like some people are 7 ft tall.
34:50
There's a reason why 20% of Americans who are 7 ft tall and below the age of 30 are in the NBA.
34:56
You you just you're you're better.
34:58
You're better at that particular thing.
35:00
Uh same with intelligence.
35:01
helps you with basketball, intelligence helps you with running companies, right?
35:05
Like that that's the thing.
35:07
Uh so Emmett is extremely intelligent.
35:07
He is amongst the most intelligent people I've ever met.
35:12
Um so that's the that's the first thing.
35:14
Uh second thing is he's got depth and breadth.
35:17
So a lot of people are really really intelligent in one specific domain.
35:21
It seems like this guy Ilya might be one of those where he's just extremely extremely technically intelligent, but it seems like in the game of, you know, uh soft power and politics and and uh you know, people and and all that, he, you know, had a pretty boneheaded way of doing this that didn't didn't work out.
35:37
To his own tweet, I deeply regret what I did.
35:41
It was handled very poorly.
35:41
So, you know, I think he, you know, some people can really really smart in one technical domain, but they're not don't have a breadth of of intelligence.
35:49
Um I would say that Emmett is wide and deep.
35:52
So he's technically very strong. He was a great engineer.
35:56
They built Twitch, one of the, you know, the best live stream products.
35:59
It was him and this guy Kyle.
36:01
Kyle went on to build self-driving cars and Emmett ran Twitch for like whatever, 18 years or some [ __ ] like that.
36:07
Um so, you know, between Justin. tv and Twitch.
36:09
And so, uh he's very good technically, which is important because it's a deeply technical product.
36:13
He, you know, he said to me the other thing one thing when I was talking about AI, he's like, he's like, yeah, like once you understand how transformers work, and I was like, well, let's stop there because I have no idea how transformers work.
36:24
So like the rest of your sentence cuz he said it like, "Yeah, it's easy.
36:28
I mean, just once you once you get how Transformers work, it's like, you know, blah blah blah blah."
36:32
Just anybody could go watch a video.
36:34
We've had a smart a couple smart people in this pod, and I'm they try to use analogies cuz I'd be like, I don't understand what you're saying, and they'd use an analogy, and I'm like, "Can you please use use an analogy for your analogy?"
36:44
Like, I think we had biology on here, and he was like referring to the Battle of the River of Thames in World War II in order to like describe crypto, and I'm like, "Guy, I don't know what the battle battle of Thames was.
36:56
Like, this doesn't make sense to me." Right. Right. Exactly.
36:59
You know, I'm asking for a Lunchables over here, and you're making gourmet.
37:04
You know, let's let's do this right.
37:06
What what's his soft skills like?
37:08
Well, his soft skills I I would say when I experienced him, which was like, you know, whatever he's been he'd been running the company for over a decade as CEO, uh I thought he was good, not great.
37:18
So, for example, I think he always knew what to do.
37:20
Like, if you caught him when he was calm, he would give great advice on the people side of how to handle something.
37:29
However, in the heat of the moment, he was prone to falling in falling into like debates about semantics, about words, about data that would make people feel like [ __ ] and he would like win the battle and lose the war type of thing with people.
37:41
And so, I don't think he was great with that.
37:45
But, I also think Twitch was like a bunch of very like kind of it was a community product with a bunch of very like sort of woke people at the in the company that were like very touchy feely about stuff.
37:56
Uh you know, I think Open AI is going to be his type of people.
37:58
You know, like, Emmett was better in meetings where all the people were engineers and product product people.
38:03
He was worse the more that the people were, you know, um we got legal, PR, comms, you know, marketing you know, those meetings went worse for him, I thought.
38:16
And so, I think he'll have less of that here.
38:17
Uh but, he also is like biology like he'll reference the Battle of the Bulge.
38:21
Like he'll reference, you know, uh uh "Well, the judicial system in Ireland back in the 1500s, what they did was really interesting."
38:28
It's like, "Dude, why do you know this?"
38:30
He's like, "Well, I've read about all the judicial systems.
38:33
I was very interested in how how governing has changed over time."
38:36
It's like, "That's your casual reading?"
38:37
He's like, "Yeah, like uh I just I I don't know.
38:39
Is that not Is that weird?"
38:41
And it's like, you know somebody's really good when they when they don't even realize it's weird, when the thing they do is like really [ __ ] weird.
38:47
And so, uh he's has a very, very wide set of knowledge.
38:52
Now, he's getting kind of uh labeled as a uh a decel.
38:56
I don't know if you've seen this, like a decelerationist, meaning like somebody who wants to slow things down.
39:00
Cuz as soon as he got named to the Basically, a suit.
39:03
Yes, like kind of like a suit or like a doomer, um you know, like, "Oh, this is This guy's anti-technology." Which is pretty silly.
39:10
And it's like, you know, if he could be technology, he would, you know, like he's a technologist through and through.
39:15
They're They're calling the guy who invented Twitch a a boomer, basically. Yeah, uh it's stupid.
39:20
And so, um you know, uh a friend who a mutual friend described it well.
39:25
They got cuz people dug up all his old tweets.
39:26
And he said, "If If an open it If an open AI's at a 10 right now in terms of speed, you know, it should probably be at like a one or two because uh you know, you just don't want this cat to get out of the bag."
39:37
And so, um I want to read you what he uh I have the transcript of what he said on our podcast, which when he came on about AI.
39:46
So, I asked him very simply.
39:48
I said, "Is AI going to kill us all?" And he goes, "Maybe."
39:52
I I go, "It's interesting you say maybe it's going to kill us all cuz like you're pretty like pro-technology and everything. You're an optimist."
40:00
And he goes, "Well, it's because I'm an optimist that I'm scared.
40:04
If I was a pessimist, if I was like, 'Oh, this AI thing's overhyped.
40:05
This technology's not that impressive.
40:08
It's just a nice little magic trick.
40:09
It's It's nothing real underneath it.'
40:11
If I was pessimistic, I would be less worried. I'm optimistic.
40:14
I'm extremely impressed with how these work.
40:16
And I see a pathway where this is going to get better very fast.
40:19
And at some point it's going to be able to self-improve.
40:22
That's very scary cuz we don't know what happens on the other side of that.
40:25
He's like, "It's because I'm optimistic."
40:27
Then the second thing he said was he goes, "Here's the analogy.
40:30
Uh you know in biology there's like there's now like ways that you can synthetically do things.
40:34
You can we know we can edit genes, for example.
40:36
And we can like add an extra leg to a sheep.
40:38
Or we can like modify a virus.
40:41
This was like, you know, COVID, right?
40:43
Like you can modify a virus and make it more uh spreadable.
40:47
And we all saw with COVID how dangerous that capability is that like this thing, you know, if this leaked from a lab, that's really really bad.
40:54
Like, you know, that that was a big mistake that technology made that like you know, [ __ ] up the world for a few years.
41:00
And so he's like, "You know, we have regulation."
41:03
I think everybody kind of agrees we should maybe not go super fast and make it easy for somebody to like print smallpox in their home. Right?
41:10
Like we should maybe not give that capability to everybody.
41:12
And maybe we should like slow down to make sure there's some oversight to we so that we don't do something really bad that like creates a super virus.
41:19
He's like, "People get that when it comes to biology.
41:23
They don't really get that when it comes to AI."
41:24
He's like, "With AI, uh here's the thing.
41:27
AI is really good at like the one thing you need in order to be really good at AI at developing AI." He's like, "AI can code. It can write code.
41:35
It can read everything there is to know about a subject in an afternoon, become absolute world expert at it, and then it can translate that into action.
41:44
It can it can translate it writing code.
41:45
It can do also design chips.
41:47
Yeah, it doesn't do either of those two things perfectly right now.
41:50
It's not It's not amazing at writing code.
41:53
Um and it's not amazing at designing chips. But it can do them.
41:56
It's It's within the zone of things that AI can be good at.
42:00
The type of things that AI can be good at.
42:01
Which means that over time it's going to get be able to write code that designs AI.
42:05
And write uh you know, and design chips that make AI better.
42:10
And once that thing can improve itself, it's going to get fast, it's going to get really amazing really fast, faster than anyone can expect.
42:15
And maybe that's a good thing, maybe it all works out.
42:20
But also maybe it doesn't, and that's like he's like even if I think the probability of a really bad thing happening is low, it's the consequences are so bad.
42:27
We're not just talking about like a virus that's kind of like screws up your computer or like gets like you know, even like a pandemic that gets people sick.
42:36
We're talking about this could destroy like he says like it could destroy all of the value of the light cone.
42:42
Which I don't know what the light cone is, but I don't want that.
42:45
Um right, so he's describing like even if it's low probability, we should just be really really careful about that and like make sure we don't screw the whole thing up.
42:53
Um and a friend reached out and said one thing, they go they go everyone's saying like Emmet's going to want to like slow this down and stop it.
43:01
He's like, no, no, Emmet's smart.
43:02
Emmet knows the the game theory of this, the prisoner's dilemma.
43:04
If you go too slow, somebody else will create AGI before you because you you slow down to zero, so somebody else will get there before you who may not share your moral beliefs around safety.
43:15
So you can't go too slow where other people get there first who don't share your your safety views, but you can't go so fast that you don't actually build it safely.
43:25
There's a middle ground to seek.
43:25
And so um I think that's the best description of this where people are trying to label him as one thing and knowing what I know about him, that's just not true.
43:34
Well, let's go like the rapid fire of like some other story points.
43:36
We'll We'll make that quick and then also we've been there of what we think will is going to happen.
43:43
One quick story point over you if you like draw up.
43:46
Final grades before we do stories. Final grades.
43:48
So the the board, what do you what do you grade it the board?
43:50
Oh, they're [ __ ] losers. They're the worst. They they look horrible.
43:52
They're going to get You got an like F if it stands for [ __ ] loser. Yeah. Yeah, is there an FL? They're the worst.
44:00
I mean that it doesn't matter what the truth is, it's all about perception.
44:03
And they look like the worst.
44:05
Including Adam D'Angelo, the founder of Quora.
44:09
Right now he looks horrible. Uh so F. They get an F. Do you agree? Yeah, agreed.
44:14
Uh Emmett, what do you give Emmett?
44:15
He's uh 12 minutes on the job here. TBD, C.
44:17
He He's actually actually it's actually like a D or a C at the moment. He's getting dragged.
44:22
I think uh which isn't fair, but no, he he looks like he's a loser here because of perception. Right.
44:31
Um and what about taking the hero's job.
44:32
Like it's it's hard to look good and regardless of how amazing he is, right? Right.
44:36
Uh and what about Satya, Microsoft? Um he gets a B. He looks pretty good.
44:41
I mean he he's he's the man.
44:44
I mean he's kind of made a resurgence for Satya or for Microsoft.
44:49
I think that um I think there's a real world where Bing actually catches up to Google in terms of search and uh Microsoft is going to become just an even bigger company than they they already are.
45:00
So yeah, I mean he's a he's a he him and Sam are the masterminds.
45:02
I got to give him a plus.
45:04
The dude you know, mobilized over the weekend and before the markets opened and could hit Microsoft stock, he had basically acquired Open AI for negative $100 billion.
45:21
He acqui-hired Open AI, which is incredible.
45:26
And so now he got Open AI out of the nonprofit capped profit structure.
45:29
It's just super for-profit inside Microsoft.
45:32
He got the key talent, you know, Sam, Greg, all of the key people, 600 of the of the key people.
45:40
Um and now they just own the whole thing instead of 49%. That's that's an A plus.
45:47
He crushed it on this one. Um he he's the man.
45:49
Um So let's do let's do the the storylines.
45:52
Yeah, here's one quick storyline.
45:54
Have you heard of um Fairchild Semiconductor?
45:55
Do you know what that is?
45:57
I've See, I've heard of it, but I'm not a history guy. So what's the story?
46:00
There's isn't there something like the the Traitorous Eight or something? What what is that?
46:03
Yeah, so so basically there was the there's a big company called uh I think it was called Shockley Conductors and they made conductors uh computer chips in the '60s in Silicon Valley.
46:16
People were pissed off at the the guy who owned it, William Shockley, I think his name is.
46:18
He was brilliant but just a pain in the ass.
46:20
And so these eight guys said, "Hey, you got to bail or we're bailing."
46:23
And the guy the CEO goes, "See you."
46:25
And so these eight people went and started Fairchild, which was basically um the equivalent is like Nvidia but back then in 1960.
46:34
And it basically birthed Silicon Valley, right?
46:35
That was like the That was the seed round of Silicon Valley.
46:37
Yeah, and they were famous their culture was famous because they were casual.
46:40
So, it was like where nerds could come and be casual and where like the best actually best ideas actually won.
46:47
And that was where the whole like culture of Silicon Valley arguably started there.
46:51
And then the off offshoot of Fairchild Conductors was basically uh IBM.
46:56
So, IBM was founded by one of the founders of Fairchild.
46:59
Um uh Andy Grove, the guy the famous manager of I think he was the CEO of IBM, he came from there.
47:06
Um the founders of Sequoia Capital uh Kleiner Perkins, I think might have spun out I mean like basically it was there's just all these people but uh the story of the Treacherous Eight is what they're called is very similar to this story.
47:18
And so if you're interested in this type of uh like stuff and you and you could actually go and read that book and you could see a lot of similarities between what is going on now.
47:26
So, this is like our version of that.
47:27
And so it's going to end well I think for Greg and Sam because I ended really nicely for the the Treacherous Eight.
47:34
Um so that's an interesting uh my prediction is that they they unwind this whole thing and they revert back to OpenAI, by the way.
47:42
That's my like it hasn't happened yet but I think the final step now now that Ilya signed the pledge being like I quit and I'm also going to go work there.
47:50
It's like, what is the point of even having the OpenAI entity if 600 of the people, including all of the leaders, are gone?
47:57
Um I don't think they want to be inside Microsoft necessarily. So, I think what's No. No. No.
48:04
I think this was the final straw and by the end of I bet by the end of day today uh they get a whoopsie-daisy undo on the whole thing and Sam is back as CEO of OpenAI and they just the board quits and they get a new board.
48:18
That's my my prediction by the And I think Doesn't even make sense.
48:21
I uh believe I believe that that prediction I think is the same.
48:23
I think there's long-tail predictions here, which is new startups aren't going to want to have board of directors.
48:28
Um I actually think that's the wrong takeaway.
48:32
Brian Halligan from HubSpot, he wrote he's like, "No, the takeaway shouldn't be that not have a board.
48:35
The takeaway should be have a good board."
48:39
Um and I think so, but I think that potentially like the governance structure of companies might actually change significantly because people are going to be like uh they're going to have they're going to have PTSD from just hearing this story.
48:50
And that actually is going to have downstream effects that are quite large.
48:54
And in in a weird way could even impact like the venture capital industry.
48:57
I think that is um a real possibility.
49:01
I totally agree and I think it's so stupid.
49:03
So, right now there's so many startups that are reading their their governing documents about the board and thinking through do I need to change my board?
49:14
Here's my public service announcement. Don't worry, bro. You're not OpenAI. You're not Sam Altman.
49:20
And your board is also not these schmucks either. And nobody cares.
49:24
And like you know, the for a startup like don't worry about your governance structure right now.
49:29
Like you should be doing the standard vanilla things of you know, put competent people there and then don't worry about it too much.
49:37
Like you need product market fit.
49:39
You don't have this problem.
49:39
In the same way that like when you hear what's going on with like Uber or Facebook, it's like you're not Uber and Facebook.
49:46
You don't have the same problems that they have.
49:50
Don't suddenly start spending your energy over there and take your eye off the actual main problem that you need product market fit. You need growth.
49:57
I think the the takeaway here is OpenAI's board was stupid.
49:59
I I say that was actually a strategic mistake it seems like on Sam Altman's part.
50:04
Also, I think the whole nonprofit stick that was stupid, too.
50:08
Um TBD if that if I'm going to be right on that, but as of now it's look it would have been a lot simpler maybe if this is just a board or this is just a normal board where they have equity in the company. good board.
50:19
They started with Elon Musk and Reid Hoffman and all these like legit players on the board and then one by one they all quit.
50:25
So, basically like Elon quit cuz things weren't like they weren't listening to him and he took his ball and tried to run home.
50:31
Uh Reid Hoffman quit cuz he started a competitor.
50:34
Another guy quit cuz he wants to run for president.
50:36
Another person quit and it was like they basically five of the original board members quit for different reasons, either starting competitors or conflict of interest or uh running for president or whatever.
50:47
And um this is what they got left with.
50:48
Yeah, I so hopefully that gets changed.
50:51
Um what are any other takeaways?
50:53
I think um what were you saying about this was the best and the worst of us?
50:56
Yeah, that was kind of my big picture takeaway.
50:58
Like I feel like this was the best of Silicon Valley and the worst of Silicon Valley all in the same weekend.
51:03
Um you know, the best I thought was things like, you know, what Greg did when he was like, "Yo, I'm out, too.
51:11
I quit even though they tried to they they wanted to retain him. They weren't firing him.
51:17
It's like, "Yo, that's a real co-founder, right?
51:18
That's that's a that's a ride or die sort of ducks fly together moment and I thought that was uh that was badass.
51:24
I thought that was the best of us.
51:28
And then I thought the worst of us was like this like stupid board that has no skin in the game, that doesn't know how to communicate, that didn't like handle this well, just fumbling and bumbling and removing a founder from their removing basically the greatest founder alive, you know, outside of Elon Musk
51:42
from their company that they created for what seems like no reason and if there is a reason, you got to like say it, and even if you say it in a way that wasn't like doesn't get you sued, like, you know, maybe that's why they're not saying anything, but you have to at least tell your team, you have to give more than what they did. They handle it
51:57
They handle it better than what they did.
52:01
Um and if it was so bad, then don't negotiate with him to come back, right?
52:03
Like if it was that bad, then he shouldn't have 24 hours later been in discussions to come back.
52:09
Um you know, so the board I thought was, you know, it's the worst of us.
52:12
I thought, you know, Twitter was alive and popping, and it really did feel like it was the Silicon Valley group chat.
52:17
That was kind of the best of us.
52:19
And the worst worst of it was like, you know, it felt like Gossip Girls all weekend.
52:22
And um it's kind of lame, and it was a bunch of, you know, like speculation and wasted energy, and you know, like I saw these Twitter Spaces going on for hours and hours of people just like discussing like, you know, it was a Real Housewives episode, and they can't believe that Jenna said that. Right?
52:39
Like it just seemed like, you know, it wasn't it seemed like gossip, and I thought that was a waste of time.
52:42
You know, I thought there was a whole bunch of things that were kind of like the best and the worst showed themselves in the same weekend.
52:48
You know, maybe um you know, the it could be that there actually is a legitimate you know, crazy safety concern, and like this guy was going too fast, and you know, this Ilya guy was maybe the hero who was pumping the brakes even though it screwed up the his own economics.
53:02
If he really was standing for something he believed in, right?
53:05
Like it could be that it was that.
53:06
Or it could be that it was a jealousy power play and take him out, right? We don't know.
53:10
But I just thought there was a whole bunch of best and worst.
53:13
Another one was like just this instant labeling, like these like tribes.
53:17
Like I don't know if you've seen this like E/ ACC thing.
53:18
Is that the E-cell D-cell?
53:22
Yeah, basically this There's a whole bunch of people in their Twitter bio that have E/ACC.
53:26
I've been seeing this for months.
53:28
I have no idea I didn't even know what the hell this was.
53:31
But it's accept you're you're an effective accelerationist. Right?
53:35
So it's basically like kind of a play on the effective um uh out altruist or whatever altruism that Sam Bankman-Fried was doing?
53:43
That's pretty stupid, I think.
53:43
The one is basically like pedal to the metal, you know, tech forward, progress forward, technology optimist.
53:51
And it's like that's the cool club to be in.
53:53
And then anybody who's like saying, "Hey, slow down."
53:55
you're a decel, which is like, you know, it's the D word, basically.
53:59
It's a it's a slur, it's an insult.
54:01
And then to me this was again, it's the worst of us.
54:05
It's the It's like people in Silicon Valley make fun of politics where it's like, "Oh, I'm not left or right. It's not that simple.
54:10
It's not Republican, Democrat.
54:12
I'm not I don't fall into these stupid party, you know, tribes that are just blindly, you know, following the herd."
54:17
And it's like we're doing the same thing.
54:19
This e-cel, d-cel [ __ ] is the same thing as Democrat, Republican, red, blue, left, right.
54:27
It's a oversimplification of a massive oversimplification of what's going on.
54:32
And so I thought that was kind of the worst of us, too. Final prediction.
54:36
My prediction is in the next 24 hours all of this is going to be undone and things will be back to normal. That's my prediction. Is that yours, too?
54:45
Maybe we'll give it 48 hours, but I think at this rate 24 hours.
54:49
When I was in second grade, my class had a field trip and they said they told the parents they said, "Hey, you need 20 bucks to come to this field trip."
54:57
So my mom gives me $20 in the morning and I go and I'm excited about the field trip.
55:00
I don't think I'd ever been on a field trip. It was my first.
55:03
And they're like, "Hey, okay, put your thing over here.
55:05
Sign your Give me your signed waiver and put your 20 bucks."
55:09
And I'm like looking around.
55:09
I'm like, "Where did my 20 bucks go?"
55:10
It was right This is my desk. It's not here.
55:13
I'm looking under the table, on the desk. I check my backpack.
55:17
I'm like, "What the hell?
55:17
Somebody took my 20 bucks."
55:20
I can't go on the field trip now.
55:20
And so I go to the teacher.
55:24
And I'm like, "Miss, like somebody stole my $20."
55:27
And she's like, "Oh my god.
55:31
Like stealing stealing money from a kid? Like that's not okay."
55:35
And she's like, "Are you sure?"
55:35
I'm like, "Yeah, it was right there."
55:36
And so, uh she turns the world upside down.
55:40
She starts She's like, "Hey." Blows the whistle.
55:44
She's like, "Everybody sit down. Who has the money?" And it's just silence.
55:48
Nobody raises their hand. And she's like, "Okay.
55:52
We'll try this a different way.
55:53
I'm going to put a jar outside and we're going to walk out one by one and I want the $20 to be in the jar by the time this is done. No harm, no foul." Everybody walks out. Everybody walks in. She comes back. Jar's empty. And she's pissed now. She's like, "Okay.
56:05
I gave you a chance to do this clean.
56:08
I gave you a chance to do this publicly.
56:12
Now we're not going on the field trip, guys. Guess what?"
56:13
And uh and I'm like, "Oh my god, this is like getting the field trip canceled. This is crazy." Not just for our class.
56:20
She tells the teacher next door.
56:22
She's like, "We don't earn We didn't earn this because there's been, you know, one of our core values has been betrayed here." And where was the $20?
56:32
And then I'm like, "I got to go to the bathroom."
56:33
And I get up I get up and I'm like, "Miss can I go to the bathroom?"
56:35
She's like, "Yeah, sure." I get up.
56:37
And I feel this like scratchy feeling in my sock. Oh.
56:39
And I'm like, I reached out and I have like, "Fuck, I put I put the 20 bucks in my sock this morning. That's right. I just remembered." But here I am. a drug dealer, dude. What are you doing? Here I am.
56:53
And now I'm like, "What do I do?
56:58
I'm like, the class is going to be so mad at me if they realize this was in my sock the whole time.
57:01
The teacher is going to be so mad at me if she realizes that I accidentally did this.
57:05
I didn't mean for all this to happen."
57:10
And so, I went to the restroom. I took the 20 bucks.
57:12
Put it in the toilet and I flushed the toilet. I went back to my seat. Did you really? Did you really do that?
57:21
Is that really how that ended?
57:21
No, it that made for a better for better story, but I did hand it to her and she laughed it off and then we went on the field trip.
57:28
But I thought it would be a better story but the other way.
57:29
But that thing did happen with the sock and wasted half of the field trip day and that's all I feel Ilya feels right now where he's like, "I did not mean for all this to happen."
57:41
Like this got way bigger than I thought this was going to get and uh Whoops, can I just like give you this 20 bucks and we pretend this never happened?
57:52
And that's what he's trying to do right now and you know, more power to him. I've been there. I feel you.
57:57
All right, well, we're going to see what happens. Um that's the pod.