Body Scanners, Banned Models, and DeepMind's Space Game Obsession - EP 78 Ashlee Vance And Kylie Robison

All right, Kylie, here we go. What did we do last night?

Last night we uploaded our arms into the Matrix in downtown San Francisco.

We're gonna tell you all about it on this episode of Core Memory. This is Ashlee Vance.

And I'm Kylie Robison.

And this is Core Memory. And here we go. Kylie, here we are. We just saw each other hours ago.

It does feel like hours ago. Yes.

We were at a soiree in downtown San Francisco in the, the dodgy, dodgy part of San Francisco.

Very dodgy.

Yes. Things were hurdled and avoided.

Yes.

On our way into the door. But David Holtz, the founder and CEO of Midjourney, was holding an event. We got a semi-exclusive invite. How many people were there?

250.

250. I think we were not the only group, but we were—

there was very few, very, very few.

And wow, okay, I mean, most people listening to this probably know what Midjourney is, but if you don't, I mean, it's the— it was the place that kind of kicked off all the image generation stuff when AI started getting extra weird and You could just tell your computer to manufacture whatever you wanted. And I mean, credit to them, they were ahead of the game really on a lot of this stuff. And David self-funded this company and took no venture capital and has been printing money ever since. And last night at this event, we got a, a straight, quite like, you know, unexpected glimpse of what he plans to do with his money.

Yeah, an MRI machine, which is nuts for an AI startup. And you just wrote about, you know, a rich guy doing fancy things with his money.

Yeah, he's kind of created what— well, okay, so we were at this event. There's hors d'oeuvres. It's in some, some new club. They told me— the person at the front desk told me it opened in February. It's like a members-only kind of thing. We weren't supposed to take any pictures or photos. I, of course, had my Meta glasses on, even though they made us turn our phone off. So we're, for a while we're, we're schmoozing, we're having cocktails. Then David sits down to, yes, unveil this thing. And so it's this full body scan, um, to check on your health. It does crazy, a 3D scan of your, your body. And then he said, this is one of 8 products that Midjourney's gonna do that all seem at least a little afield of what the company has been doing. He said there would be 4 hardware products. 4 software. The first 2 were unveiled, which was the scanner plus a spa, which we're gonna tell you all about. So these were the first 2, and then he said the others are coming. It sounded like over the course of this year.

Yeah.

Yeah. And he didn't give too many hints, although we'll scoop it early. We heard from the chatter at the party that one of them is probably some kind of brain-computer interface thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Which I can't imagine Midjourney making a BCI. It requires so much attention and like really amazing scientists and engineers to pull off.

And we have a lot, quite a lot of BCIs now. So I, I was trying to, I just don't know where you take this because we have, we've got Neuralink doing the most extreme end of full-on surgery, putting electrodes right against your neurons. We've got other people sitting right on top of the brain. We have other people doing ultrasound already. So there's quite a variety of BCIs. Then Merge Labs we wrote about, they're trying to do, I just don't know how many takes There's, there's only so much you can do.

One of the founders of Merge was there.

He was there, Sumner, Core Memory subscriber. Yeah. So I just don't know how many takes there are. So anyway, we, I don't think we, we didn't learn much beyond we just heard they're working on a BCI.

Yeah. I was not familiar with what are the butterfly.

Yes. So it has a lot of those and oh, for this, for the full body scan.

Yeah. For the full body scan.

Yeah. So there's Butterfly Networks, I think it's called. It's Jonathan Rothberg, who I run across a little bit. Yeah. So they make a portable ultrasound machine. You people might have seen it. Um, it's just like a handheld ultrasound. And so it has this chip and Midjourney, well, quite clearly the CEO of Butterfly was there. They, they've taken these, just a ton of these chips and, and arranged them to create the scanner.

Yeah. And it was in the pit, this device.

Yes. I was watching the pit. It was. So strange. There was a whole episode. If anyone watches that show, I, I binged the whole thing. Yeah. There, there was this hilarious episode where they're like, uh, like, we gotta scan this person. How are we gonna do it? He's like, I've got a Butterfly handheld scanner. It felt so much like an ad.

Yeah.

And then throughout the whole episode, they would just call it out again and again. It'd be like, hey Bill, do you have the Butterfly handheld ultrasound? With you. And so I assume this was an ad. I— we ran into the CEO. I asked him, he said this was not— it was not like a product placement. I'm kind of shocked. They were just very generous. But yeah, so they— the— that company makes these chips that, that do the ultrasound scanning. And then we could see in these images that David Holtz put up, they must have dozens or 100 or so of those chips.

I think there was 40, and then they're like in one segment, and then there's just like, I don't know, 12 segments or something. There's tons of them because it goes 360 around the body.

And so people will be familiar with an MRI. You got to lay down in a big tube, you get sucked in, it's clanking, and you're in there, you can't move. What David showed in this video, I mean, it was like a 2-minute-long video, you could kind of see what was going on. I mean, so he has a person stand on a platform. I mean, it was very Matrix, Matrix-y. You get lowered down into a pool of water, and, and then this imaging is supposed to take place. He said, I don't know if they're doing this right now, but in a minute is what he was sort of claiming would be on the horizon quickly. And so that's obviously way quicker than an MRI. You're not in a hospital. He wants to put you in a spa. So you go sauna and cold plunge and then you go get scanned in a minute. And then the amount of data it was throwing off was insane. I mean, I, people can go find the numbers, but it was, it was terabytes per scan. And so they've clearly done I take it at face value that this works, what he showed us, because it seemed to on some level. And, and so they are— they've, they've clearly taken like a bunch of available technology and really done a cool job of stitching this all together. And so people had thought of doing a full-body ultrasound before, it's just nobody had really assembled all the tech you would need to do it.

Yeah, and we got to demo it where it was just our hand and you could see sort of your innards. You could see where the bone is and your veins, and that was neat. It looked really cool. I mean, uh, the, the sections it takes of your body was really interesting. I've never had an MRI actually. I'm not rich enough.

Well, yeah, so I mean, you can get MRIs when you're in need, but then yeah, the wealthy people like do these, these regular things. I mean, I guess that was the pitch. He's saying There's debate on all this stuff 'cause some people think, oh, you shouldn't do these scans all the time. Yeah. 'Cause you like flag things that aren't really a problem and now you're getting like unneeded treatments or you're, you're freaking out. But you know, there's obviously a case to be made that you want to check on, on what's going on inside you more often. So he was, I mean, he's talking about he wants to go in there every day and yeah. And so at that point it's like an Apple Watch or a Fitbit. You're just scanning your whole body every, every day. We were sitting next to Bryan Johnson and Kate Tolo, and, and Bryan's been doing the less— slightly less frequent version of this for years. I mean, this would be sort of heavenly, I guess, if you're on the Bryan program.

Totally. I can imagine it being in like a fancy upscale gym, you know, and just being able to take a dip whenever you want. Yeah. I think he said $40 billion to like really make this dream come true and scale it, which is a lot of money to do.

What is— yeah, what did he say? He wants 50,000 machines.

Yes.

So that everybody on earth can get one.

Yeah.

Conveniently. And so that would require, I, what he, he said there were like 50 per spa or something. These numbers are close.

Yeah.

And so yeah, you would just have to build thousands of spas and that's real estate and it's all very expensive.

In his one downtown, the Midjourney Spa is gonna be open by the end of next year, which is insane to me on a hardware timeline.

I'm skeptical on this. I, I don't know. I haven't been to their la— I'm, you know, maybe, maybe not the, the the video he showed, it seemed quite big. And then you'd have to— the video of the device seemed big, and then the video he showed of the spa, they were very—

4 floors.

Yeah. So they were very elegant and small and, and fitting in a little room. And so I felt like there was quite some distance to go between, between the two renderings. But, you know, maybe he knows things we don't know.

I think, you know, on these sort of timelines, I'm also skeptical. I think that he has a lot of side quests. I think he's known for, you know, getting really deep on what he he wants to build. So by the end of next year, that's something you have to be singularly focused on. And he has 8 things that they're launching and they also need to hire. That was like a big part of their pitch is that we need to hire good engineers for this. So I mean, I want to do it. I'm down. Someone asked in the audience if we're going to get uploaded to the Matrix through this, which was pretty hilarious.

That was Dylan Field from Figma.

Yeah.

So and then right after— well, we had science friends there that I've been getting texts all morning. So there was this guy named David Garrett who's a scientist, I think, who went to Caltech, and he clearly— well, so he's published, he's published papers on full-body ultrasound. And if you go to his LinkedIn page, he worked at Midjourney for a few months on this. And so I'm being told was one of the key people responsible for developing this technology, he, as of either this morning or very recently, has started his own research organization that's, wow, that I think is being backed maybe by Convergent Research. Um, so he seems to be probably going off to go pursue this same thing. I have no idea what that means that like, I don't know how essential this guy was, but that, that he's already off doing something else.

So yeah, I think You know, when you have a founder like David who, you know, it's— he self-funded this. He's very singularly focused on the success of his company and what he wants to do for this world and what he wants to build. And I think that can probably be hard if you are working with him. I imagine it's like if you were, you know, I was writing a book and you were like breathing down my neck and you're like, I know how to do this. You know, that's how I imagine working for David is. So, I mean, not to, to speculate too much why that person left, but they're going to need a lot of good people to pull this off. I want to do it. I want to get scanned. I'm afraid what my body is going to tell me. But, you know, I would like to see them pull this off. Yeah.

And just to be clear, there were a lot of notes. I mean, so this is ultrasound. MRI is different. David kind of was like pitching it as an MRI replacement and then immediately X was freaking out. People were like, it's not an MRI. MRI can see things. CT scans can see things that this couldn't see. You still need to get like a colonoscopy, all which like I get. I, I actually thought David was not— I didn't feel like he was overpromising. He was just kind of like, we got this new tool. I think it's helpful for a bunch of things. You could definitely track your body in a new way. So I thought he was like okay on that part. And, um, but yeah, just to set people's expectations, I mean, you— there's— you're still going to go to the hospital for various things, but this just seems like a new way to, uh, to see inside your body. Um, I thought he— I, I wrote about this in the, in the Substack that, you know, it's, it's— I remember I was interviewing Larry Page when I was doing the Elon book, and he's like, oh, I wish I could do what Elon does. Yeah. And I always found it so strange because at that time Larry had billions and billions of dollars and Elon was but a, like barely a billionaire. Barely. And I, I was like, you can't do that. What do you mean? You have like more money than God, you know? But there was, there was like a thing he would, you know, he was CEO of Google at the time and, and that comes with like this pressure where like you run off and do some side project. It's like, are you paying attention to the business? Or, if it fails, it like looks bad for you and for Google. So I could kind of see that there were some constraints, whereas like Elon would just run off doing things. But I've always been surprised when the billionaires, you know, we've got things like the Collisons put money in the Ark Institute or, you know, billionaires will— they'll fund their passions off to the side.

Dustin Moskovitz with just sort of AI safety stuff, Open Philanthropy and all that.

They're— but I am surprised because so many of these dudes are sci-fi nerds that they, you know, and I'm— that they don't create these labs in their image and, and really dig in. I mean, Larry did end up doing things like he was trying to get flying cars going for a while, and then Sergey Brin's got his airship, and so they do dabble. Bezos has some things, um, but It's like if you wanted to create almost like a Bell Labs or a Xerox PARC of your own, these guys have the resources to do it. But then you have to be— I always felt like Larry and Sergey dip in and dip out. They're not— it's like all the projects go for a while and then they kind of fizzle, right?

That's that singular focus. You have to like really, really want to do it. And Elon is, you know, singularly focused even though he has all these things— Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter. But he seems like sort of laser-focused on how do I create this sci-fi future, whereas the other people, maybe the yachts and women in the Mediterranean, are just too tantalizing.

Tantalizing. I mean, we'll have to see where David ends up on that spectrum. My sense was like he wants to— I mean, he clearly knew all the engineering. I don't know. My sense was like this is— he's into this and this is what he wants to do with his money and Maybe. And then he's in this unusual, it is funny, like Elon, even when he, he sort of had to raise money for Tesla and SpaceX, but then he was really rich and he would still raise money for The Boring Company or Neuralink. Mm-hmm. I, I never fully understood why he doesn't just pay for it himself. Maybe it's just 'cause he could access capital so easily. It's like, whatever, just let other people pay for this. But David seems to be dead set on funding this himself. Yeah. And I don't know, I mean, if you really wanna make something that's not a compromise, that's totally true to your taste and your dreams, I guess this is the way to do it. And like, maybe we'll find out if he, if he's kind of unique in this way.

Yeah, totally, totally. It could be like a, another great founder story in the making or not. We'll see. Um, Another quick bit on Brian Johnson. So that was my first time meeting him. I was so excited because, you know, you see him— I'm extremely online. I've seen his tweets for years now, and I thought he was quite scary looking, and the whole project was nuts. So meeting him in person, nicest guy in the world. Oh my gosh, he's so sweet. The first thing I asked him was about his skincare routine because something my mom asked me before I started potting was like, Does he look like— what does his skin look like in real life? It's very, very perfect. And so I was pleased to find out we have some of the same skincare regimes. And then he was talking about Kate and how much he loves Kate, and he was just so happy to talk about how in love he is. And I was like, that's fucking awesome, man. So that was, that was the highlight of my evening, was gossiping with Bryan Johnson.

Do you have skincare top tips?

Tretinoin. So I was, I was staring at him and I was like, you use tretinoin, don't you? And he's like, I do. And he told me how he uses it. And, um, we just— I, I was talking to him about salmon sperm. That's a big thing in the beauty community, especially in Korea. Uh, PDRN, it's, it's great. He uses that. He's trying to get it in the United States because it's illegal here. Just awesome, man. I want, I want his whole breakdown.

I do not use salmon sperm or tretinoin.

Clearly.

Yes, I think I'm too far gone now.

Do you use sunscreen?

No.

Oh my God, man.

My God, I've just played tennis for thousands upon thousands of hours. This is— there's no hope. This, this all ended like 25 years ago.

There's still hope for some of us, Ashlee Vance.

Um, yeah, who else was there? Dylan Field was there, Sholto Douglas from Anthropic. Brian and Kate.

Dylan was cool to talk to. I hadn't met him before, but I talked about, uh, Mafia because he was just a Mafia person and he kind of failed miserably.

Yeah, but everyone has been telling me he's the best Mafia player.

Really?

You've been hearing that a lot? Everyone said he's the, the absolute best. And the— yeah.

Did you watch the second episode?

No, no, I haven't yet. Oh, I mean, he's not so good in there, but it's, it's, it's the big leagues in there, so And Luke Nosek was there, who was one of the first real big backers of SpaceX and has been on the board for a long time. So he was, he was very rich, richer than he already was. Um, yeah, anyway, it was an okay event. They were very restrictive.

Very restrictive.

They made us turn our phones off.

I was trying to order my Waymo by the like front door and some woman was like, you can't have your phone. I was like, I gotta get outta here.

Yeah.

She's like, you can wait in the lobby. They tried to usher me outta the lobby and I was like, man, I'm not, on these streets at this time in the evening. I'm not— I'm staying right here. They're very restrictive.

I fired up my Meta glasses nonetheless. We'll see how much trouble I get into now that I posted these videos.

I felt like an embarrassed kid. I was like, God, Ashlee, we're going to get in trouble. But he was right and he got some really good clips. I think my favorite was the interview with Brian. That was hilarious.

You just got to do it, man. People need the content.

It's true.

Committed. Okay, I think that's— is that it for the event?

Yeah. Are you going to get— are you going to get scanned?

I would do that. I mean, why not? That looked— it looks, it looks very— it looks largely pleasant. We're probably in some warm little bath for a minute. Um, yeah, I mean, why not? I mean, he's not wrong. I get kind of claustrophobic when I've had MRIs, so yeah, like, I would not do that unless it was dire circumstances. So it's definitely not in like a preventative fashion.

Have you had a CT scan?

I think I did a long time ago. I remember I fractured my pelvis playing tennis. I can't remember if it was— I can't remember like what I— I haven't had that many like big injuries, so I can't remember if it was like a CT or an MRI or CT scans.

Fine. The CT one is where they inject you with liquid that makes you feel like you peed yourself.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I may have done that back in the day, but definitely not any time recently that I remember.

I have a hard time believing it's claustrophobic, but I mean, Yeah, I do the scan, man. I was— as I was watching it, I was already thinking like, okay, what swimsuit would I wear and where would David stand?

And oh, for shooting? Yes, yes, yes. Well, absolutely. We would do a video on this if we could. Yeah, we're trying to try to talk David Holtz into some video action. All right. What do we do at Core Memory? We cover innovative, fast-moving, forward-thinking companies, which is why Core Memory is sponsored by Brex because Brex is the intelligent finance platform for many of these companies. 30,000 companies from startups to the world's largest corporations rely on Brex's technology for their finances. They've got smart corporate cards, high-yield business banking, and expense automation tools that are fantastic. I hate doing my expenses and Brex's AIs and software run right through those expenses, figure out where we're spending money, and take care of so much stuff for you so you don't have to waste your time on it yourself. Go to brex.com/corememory to learn more and just, you know, get with the program. Let's get going. Let's get out of this archaic finance software and move toward the future. CoreMemory and Brex.

So Anthropic, Fable, need I explain for our audience? I mean, Fable was banned. It's, as far as I can understand, the first AI model that's ever been banned by the US government. And it was banned for any foreign nationals, which a lot of people at Anthropic are. Amanda Askall, for example, leads behavior there and is a foreign national. So they just took it offline for everybody. And there was a big, big kerfuffle with the government. And you had some takes on Twitter as you do.

Yes. Yeah, I kind of got in trouble. I'm gonna, I have to like, I'm gonna have to tread carefully here. I was actually at Anthropic while this was happening, but I'm under some constraints on, on what I can talk about. So I'll have to try to remember that in real time as it's going on. But yeah, I mean, usually when we do export controls, we, Amanda is Scottish, we don't usually ban the Scots.

Yeah.

From accessing. American technology. So, uh, it went, it went pretty heavy. So yeah, I, I mean, I assume people have, well, people listening to this probably are aware. So the government, Anthropic came out with a new model. The government decided it was too, the people were finding these jailbreaks where they could get in and do things the model's not supposed to do. And so the government banned it. It happened all very quickly. Yeah. So I was there on this Friday and like I walked in and Anthropic was at full alert cuz they'd like just received this notice from someone in the government. I forget who. And, and, you know, it was just like really unclear how they're supposed to deal with this in some ways. 'Cause they wanted them to like fix these holes, which the researchers in the security world quickly said like every model suffers from these holes and like they're really not very severe. And so you're essentially banning every model and definitely all the more powerful models coming after this. And so that seemed rather dramatic and they didn't give Anthropic very much time to fix this. And they were immediately leaking all of this to Axios and Politico who were, in my estimation, the government was, was leaking all this. And in my estimation, you know, those first sort of like normal when this happens on a juicy story like that that's being leaked is the first stories that come out are usually tilted to whoever's doing the leaking. And so These first ones were very pro-government, I thought. And they're talking about Dario's on some wellness retreat and was unavailable. He was, he was not on a wellness retreat. And, and so I, it struck me. Yeah. I mean, I, I had had a couple scotches when I was tweeting. It was probably a little more active than I would normally be. It did. It struck me as, as a little bit petty and retribution for Anthropic not letting the Department of War use its models the way the Department of War would like to. So there's clearly this confrontation where Dario, the CEO of Anthropic, is very, um, you know, he's very opinionated. He's, he's, he has decided he, how he thinks this technology should be rolled out and he's gonna like stick to his guns and it's not really exactly how the Feds would like it to be, and I think they would like to control this stuff. And so I thought they were making an example of Anthropic, really. Yeah.

And when you told me this take, I think before you tweeted it, I was like, nah, man, you know, Anthropic sort of asked for this. They said for so, so long, people are going to build powerful models. The government should intervene. We should have some controls. And then they said that this is our biggest and most dangerous model. And then they released a version of it and then it got banned. So I thought, well, sort of just desserts. And, you know, if there's a security vulnerability, it makes sense for the government to step in. And then I saw your tweets and someone was like, why is your boss so mean? And then you explained your position. I was like, oh, that does make sense because there's nothing I hate more than like sort of the press release spin as a scoop. Like, that's just not real journalism. Sorry, it's— you have some sort of scrutiny over your information, uh, because you're really— if you're such a big publication that everyone's reading, it's really important that you're, you're leading the narrative. And so you're leading the narrative for who? So once I saw your perspective, I was like, okay, I get it, you're right. And ever since then, seeing like the amount of fealty required from Anthropic, one of the leading AI labs, like bow to us, and if you don't, like, we're going to punish you in a major way, that's, that's just fundamentally very gross.

Yeah, I have lots of thoughts on that. I mean, that's— this is the precedent setting is bad. I mean, maybe Anthropic will be the only sort of person on, on this current administration's shit list. But if we're at some situation where the government, whenever they change their whims and there's, you know, like right now Anthropic really has clearly taken the lead, you can argue they're pushing US technology forward as a whole? Is this really who we want? Yeah. Do you want the government to just, 'cause they're cranky or don't like the way you do your business, to, uh, be able to shut that down? What does that mean for everybody else? Even someone like Elon? I mean, look, I mean, Elon's been at Trump's side and then they've been screaming at each other on, on Twitter and then they've come, but you just don't know which way the winds are gonna, gonna blow and who's gonna be the favored nation. I just think it's a horrible way to first, technology is so important and that like there will be a model where something like this is like an actual concern and you don't really want to do this play-acting, uh, I cried wolf thing on the way to that moment, I think.

But well, Anthropic kind of did that, did they not?

No, I mean, they're not— I don't think their hands are like totally clean on this first, but you know, it's because people give them a ton of grief for being doomers and maybe being— people will say, oh, you say that Mythos is so dangerous, this is like a PR tactic, just like Sam said on our pod, to make your model seem really cool. I tend, just having spent time with them, I could be naive, I tend to think they genuinely believe that you could— I think rational people could be divided on are they going about this the right way. I think they fully believe they are making a, a good faith effort to go about this in the right way, what they've determined to be the right way, you know what I mean? Like, I don't really think this is a PR thing. I think they—

I agree with you, and I think people's sort of like criticism of it is like, okay, your way is the only way. I sort of experienced this— this is dumb— but I experienced this with my first effective altruist, the first time meeting somebody who had just decided, you know, in this, uh, issue a group was facing, like, this is the only morally correct way and I will not deviate from it. And it was I disagreed greatly with it, but there was no swaying them off that track. And I was like, is this, is this the sort of rationale to approach these problems with? I don't like the, like, lack of flexibility and stubbornness. However, I do think Anthropic has really shown some flexibility in this issue. And I think it was David Sacks— I did not read that full tweet essay from him, but he— I'm not reading all that. But he said something along the lines of like, they had the chance to fix it when we asked and they didn't. But my understanding is, from your experience, they like found out that day. How are you supposed to fix a major model and fix what in just like hours?

I think it was in like 90 minutes. And then, which is my read on this as a reporter, which I think is pretty spot on because I've like gone through these things many times, you could tell the government wanted to leak this to the press and have this play out in the press, which is not really how I would think you would go about this if they have some hole in that you want to fix, you would try to keep those like under wraps for as long as possible, give all the various parties time to try to like adjust and fix things. It seemed like they leaked it immediately. And then you could tell what's going on because first they come out and they say, you know, this has jailbreaks, we're concerned. And then it was like 12 hours later, they're like, oh, also China has had access to this. And, and that was actually the inciting incident that led to this. It was like, if that's true, they would've leaked the China thing thing from the get-go because their original position was pretty weak.

It's like Dumb Dumb and Dumber in the mafia kneecapping you, like, just with like rubber chickens. Like, what is happening?

And then Pete Hegseth is issuing tweets where he's like spiking the football. He's just like, Anthropic sucks, I'm so glad we're doing this. And you're like, dude, we need the— we're all on the same team, man. I mean, you know, it's, it's at that point where you can tell this is like a This is a game. And then, and then subsequently, I didn't tell you this, but I talked to a couple people who were way more savvy on like the government than I am. I mean, their contention was that there's, there's factions within Washington now. They said that, uh, Bassett is actually kind of, he's quite sympathetic to Anthropic and was trying to handle this in a pretty, um, pragmatic way. And then there's people like Hegseth who are, who are not at all, you know, they're so upset about Anthropic's past decisions and behavior that, that this is sort of the problem is that Anthropic's kind of like caught between these two worlds. And the other whole thing was that there seemed to be this technical debate and there was nobody like actually inside the government that could understand or be explained to the technical merits in a way that you would go about solving this problem. And then there's the whole thing that like Amazon seems to be the one that ratted Anthropic out.

Maybe that's not the right way to put it, but I mean, really, they did. But that makes— that narrative has not really made a ton of sense to me. I don't know if we discussed it, but, you know, some people said that makes sense because Anthropic is gaining too much power and it's a power play. But Amazon was like the first and maybe largest investment when Anthropic first got started. So that makes like zero sense to me.

Super uncool, guys. I think there's one— there's probably one scenario where Amazon, because they run these massive data centers and has to like keep track of, of top, like, flag to the government, like, oh hey, we've seen this issue. And then this just spiraled into this, this thing, you know what I mean? They, they might not have been like, hey, you need to shut Anthropic down, just, just sort of like, hey, you should be aware of this. I had one— this is way on the conspiracy theory— and somebody was suggesting to me Amazon's trying to, uh, make it where they almost have to acquire Anthropic. Oh my God. Yeah, to— and this is, this was them sort of putting pieces in play to force this hand.

That's a crazy conspiracy theory. I think Dario would commit seppuku before letting that happen.

Can you imagine?

That's crazy.

And then in the big picture, this is something that I always harp on. I mean, you know, the government has found itself in this position because companies now do things that the government used to do. And that the government cannot do itself. You know, there's a world where obviously, like, the Manhattan Project was government-run, and, and we could control— the government could control what happened to these weapons, what happened to this type of technology. In this particular case, the government cannot match what these venture-backed and, and public companies can do in terms of the size of their data centers, the, the abilities of their AI technology. And so they are in this position where, um, it's probably uncomfortable. It reminds me of like SpaceX when all the Ukraine— there was this moment where Elon was gonna turn off Starlink in Ukraine and, and so the government was really upset about that. But you were totally beholden to Elon's whims on this issue because the government didn't have their own space internet.

Yeah.

Which like they could have built if they— part of this is, is like, it's this interesting moment where the companies have more money and I also think we reached this point where the government is so ineffective. Like, I, like, I don't think it, it could actually build some of the stuff even if it put billions of dollars and energy behind it. And so it's kind of like by being pathetic that you're now at the mercy of how this plays out. Yeah. I don't know. It's gonna be weird.

It's gonna be weird. I don't think, you know, uh, the government should have such control over models in a petty debate. Like, that's, that's crazy. We have had so much time, it feels like, to, to set guardrails and like actual productive laws and regulations for AI companies. And it feels like 2023 people were saying we're running out of time to do this. And now it's 2026 and our answer is to just, you know, like flat out ban somebody who's not bending the knee. And then all the AI people went to a summit with Trump. I'm not super caught up in what they discussed, But, uh, oh, and then also, uh, an executive for Anthropic, I don't know if you saw this in Korea, they were doing some sort of, uh, panel or talk and they said that they're optimistic that in the coming days Fable will come back. So maybe by the time we publish this, Fable will be back, but I, I sort of doubt it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's all, it's very strange. And, and I'm sure China, there's just times when like they don't have to do anything. We can, we just, uh, We just do it to ourselves.

I know.

Um, but so if we are— people seem pretty convinced. I mean, if, if mythos and fable weren't already there, that the next turn of these models, yeah, I mean, it's only going to get more dramatic. And then you have people, Bernie Sanders and others, calling to like nationalize these labs. I don't know how this is all going to play out. This is wild.

It's wild. When I first saw the news, I, I don't know, like maybe it's just an overreaction to like having covered AI for so long and watching this play out for so long, but like my heart sank. I was like, oh my gosh, they're actually doing it. They're banning their first AI model and it's this one. I don't know. Yeah.

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Please, I would love that.

We didn't cover this last time we chatted, but, okay, people bear with me for one second. So, please. So DeepMind and a company formerly known as CCP Games and now known as Fenris have created this partnership. Fenris, aka CCP Games, makes EVE Online, which if you are a nerd, have you played that? I've, I've played it a bit. It's very, it's a very hard game. The, the barrier to entry is extremely high. So it's set in space. You're, Um, okay, this game's been around for about 20 years. It's fascinating for so many reasons. So I, I've, I've been interested in it more as like a reporter than, than a player. Um, but you're set in space. It's, it's like just barren emptiness and you have to kind of like find a way to survive in this wasteland. It was, it came out of Iceland. It's, it's, it's makes a lot of sense. Iceland itself is quite like the game is this wasteland where you have to eke out a living and. And the game has always been— is fascinating to me because, so unlike many of these multiplayer type games that are split among lots of servers, so you're not always playing with the same people, you're in different worlds, you're— you get cordoned off wherever you happen to log on. EVE has always been one universe. So everybody since the dawn of time of playing this game has inhabited the same universe. And there's only about, I think there's like 300,000 or 400,000 people that play this, like, like super often. And so it's been going on for like 20 years and there's this incredible, um, society that's emerged in there. So you've got like, part of this is you can, you can survive in EVE in all sorts of different ways. You could choose to be like a general commanding armies and you could build a spaceship and outfit it. There's some people who just never battle. They never do the whole fighting spaceship thing. They are like traders on a planet and they mine goods and they do like arbitrage and sell these goods and there's this crazy economy within the game. And, and then there's these, because it's been in the same universe for 20 years, people write like all the myths up in like actual physical books of the great battles that took place. And so yeah, it's this really unique, um, sort of phenomenon. I've been to Iceland for this like EVE Fest. People come from all over the world and, and the game, it does, it's it sort of has, it doesn't really have like rules. It's like sort of set in motion. And then the players have some influence on how that world is pushed in different directions. So like at EVE Fest, the, these, they elect these like space politicians and they meet with CCP Games, now Fenris, to like sort of discuss what they would like to see happen. And anyway, so the point of this is like, it is in some ways the closest thing we have to a like simulated world.

Yeah.

And like a very rich one with, with like, they have an economist that has to deal with inflation and all these things happening in the simulated world. And so DeepMind, DeepMind put this huge investment into EVE Online and has created this like partnership around them to study this world as like a way to inform their future AI models. And what I find fascinating about this is this was like always Demis's, this was like his goal was like, he's always dreamed. Of creating the super rich AI and, and really building it off of video games. I mean, the, the Go stuff, all of that, it really started as like, we're gonna go game by game until we get to the most sophisticated games. And if we can model those with AI, then we've kind of like done it. And then Transformers and LLMs came along and they were way more brute force. It was just buy a ton of computers, you just buy more computers and more data and, and it was very crude compared to like what Demis's vision of what this technology should be. So I feel like this is like a, he's kind of going back to his roots and I can't tell how big of a deal to make of all this, but I feel like they've created this partnership and have almost this like magical petri dish now to experiment on. And, and so this happened a couple weeks ago. People in gaming world were like, paying a lot of attention to this, but I think other people, they're like, what the fuck is this weird—

No, I just read about it. I just read about it before podcasting because you said you wanted to nerd out on it. Uh, world models are one of the things that make my eyes sparkle. I just love hearing about it. I love the idea behind, you know, it just makes perfect sense to me. I'm a broken record on this pod, and generally it just makes sense that If you want to teach new intelligence, it needs a world to learn from rather than just being in a black box. We don't grow up in a black box and learn everything we know just by people telling us. So the way that you laid out this world is sick, and it seems like the perfect mechanism to test this theory.

It's crazy. And in your notes you're saying, so it's going to be on an offline version of the game where they're going to run these experiments so it doesn't impact the regular players. And Demis personally, was putting out tweets about this. He was in the press release. Like, I know this is, I think this is a thing. I think this is, I think this is like an undercover deep, deep thing that he's, he's into. Yeah. And, um, so funny, like the, you, these guys, there's, I was in a van in Iceland with the like elected body of space politicians. When was this? This was like 2017, maybe.

Nice.

Um, something like that. And and I was hanging out with them. So there's, I think there was like 8 of them maybe. And I'm in this van with this dude. He was, I think he was Russian, but he lived in New York and he installed windows on skyscrapers in New York. That was like his day job. So sick. That's what he does like for 8 hours a day. But then he would spend, he would spend probably even more time each evening and he commanded an army of 50,000 people. I mean like, like, so like his day job, he's like window installer guy. And then at night he's like CEO of a huge company managing all these people. There was another guy, he was a car mechanic in England and he was kind of doing the same thing with like a smaller army. And this world is, is fascinating. And they've had, they have had, they were the first video game company that I'm aware of that did hire an economist because you can, you sort of sell Um, would amount to, obviously you can use real world, real world money to buy credits in the game, but then these credits end up taking on like their own economic value within the game. Yeah. And so you will get things like inflation and certain things will become valuable and they have to like control all this stuff. And then people would hire, they would like hire people to play their characters.

Yeah.

And it was like affecting the, anyway, it's, it's fascinating.

No, it, you know, uh, Does a pod go by without mentioning my grandpa? So when growing up, my favorite experience was going into my grandpa's office and he'd be playing games like this. I was just trying to remember what it was. He put me on Aion. A-I-O-N. Did you ever hear about that game? Oh my God, I was obsessed with it. And then Elder Scrolls Online, I used to play with him. What is the one with like Hell's Angels people? Diablo. Diablo. So anyways, these games I would watch him play with his headset and have his little team, and he still plays these games to this day. I have to ask him. StarCraft, I think, is something, uh, he plays. I think that was mentioned in the announcement. But anyways, um, I think it's sick, and it's, it's funny that they're doing it in a way that's not going to disturb the players, as they should. But I was just imagining the mutiny that would incur from that.

No, that— yeah, they would freak out. This stuff is religion.

Precious. Yeah. Yes. So no, that's fucking sick.

That's pretty cool. Last, last thought on this, just to dish out all my EVE knowledge in one go. I think it was, I think the, the game started, okay, these guys wanted to make a video game. I think there were 3 of them, these 3 Icelanders, and, but they needed to raise money and so they created a board game. I think it was called Hetta Spiel and it's something like family game or something like that. And and it worked. It was like 80% of the Icelandic population bought this game. It was like everybody played it in their house and that's how they raised money to then go develop EVE Online. Wow. And then the company was called CCP Games all these years until this deal with Google and they changed the name of the company to Fenris, like because they were tired of the CCP going to China.

I know. I was like, that's an, like a really unfortunate acronym. I was wondering when we were gonna address that.

Yes. Yeah. I ran into a, a satellite integration company one time that was called ISIS, like before, before ISIS happened. Oh my God. Yeah, I think they actually still exist.

Okay.

All right. That's all I have to say. I need a moment.

So, well, a nice segue is Noam Shazir has gone to OpenAI. The reason I wanted to move this up is because he was a key author on the Transformers paper. Uh, he went to Character AI, went on to found Character AI, um, uh, porn bots for children, sorry. Um, and then Google bought it and, well, sort of acqui-hired him and executives.

For like a billion or multiple billions of dollars.

Yeah, it was, it was a ton of money. Um, and then he's been tinkering there. From what I recall, he left to found Character AI because Google, he wanted to do that at Google and they wouldn't let him do it, or he was getting, you know, blocked from this big dream. So then he went back to Google, and now he's going to OpenAI to work on new model architectures, which is interesting because we're just laying out like Demis's grand plan that we think with world models and this game. And Noam has left to do whole new architectures for OpenAI.

Yeah, and it's not like Noam hasn't got attention, but there's gonna be a ton of people listening to this who probably haven't heard his name. And he's like the transformer He's like the dude who sort of kicked off what we've seen for the last 6 years.

Yeah.

In many ways. And, and it was OpenAI that really took some of his thoughts and innovations and applied all this compute to them that gave rise to ChatGPT in a lot of ways. Mm-hmm. Like Google kind of missed their own, yep. Their own thing. And then, yeah, like you said, he left and then they paid so much money to get him back to kind of like revive their own AI hopes and dreams. And so it's fascinating that he would, he would go to their arch rival and like not hurting for money. So Musk, you would think, would be going there for love of the work or something. I mean, I mean, it's not, yeah, I mean, I'm sure Google could pay him, they already gave him a ton of money. You could pay him whatever he wants.

Yeah. You're, you're just making me realize, I don't think I've ever seen him on stage at Google I/O just like flagging like AI products that he's working on. He's not been like a figure at Google in the way that they just sort of parade around their experts on stage. So I don't know what OpenAI offered him. I think it's definitely for the love of the game. I would love to see what new architectures he's thinking of. Like, will they go the world model route? I, you know, I don't know how that plays out.

And we had Jerry Torok on who was trying to do stuff like that, and he left because he couldn't do it within OpenAI. And and is now at Core Automation. So he's a fellow core, core buddy. He's a core buddy. But yeah, this is fascinating. I, when I first read the, the announcement of Noam's thing on X, for some reason I saw him going to Anthropic in my head, which made a lot of, made more sense in my head than OpenAI is really going to the, the rival. I mean, I guess they're all rivals in some ways, but yeah, I don't know. Sometimes Anthropic seems to pick up these these people in a sort of different way. And then OpenAI has had a pretty big exodus of talent over the last couple of years, like very, very key people. And so, so yeah, big hire, big hire.

I sense more OpenAI models are coming soon. Breaking: they're going to release more models probably this year. And I'm interested to see like how Gnome would play a role in that. And I think, you know, it was— was it 2024 around December when we were hearing like scaling has hit a wall? Every headline, scaling has hit a wall and 5.5, people had some— oh, sorry, excuse me, 5. When 5 came out, people were concerned that it wasn't, you know, as good as they thought it would be. Maybe 0.3 should have been 5, and people were griping about that. So I think they do really need some juice, and GNOME would be the one to bring that.

I forgot about the scaling has hit a wall thing that lasted for what, like 5 weeks?

It was, it was— I just, I can't forget it. So long that people were making this claim. It was huge. And yeah, I mean, in some ways I could, I could see, I could see the argument, but it was just so like sensationalized and drawn out and incorrect.

Honestly, really incorrect. I remember I was, I was like in an OpenAI all-hands when I think it was the Information dropped some scaling-is-it-a-wall story. And I'm sitting in there and Sam's I'm giving a talk at Mira's, they're like all barging forward doing this.

Yeah.

That I'm like, where is reality? I mean, somebody's, somebody's wrong. It's either, and, and I'm like kind of flagging the reporters on that one, but there are people in the AI world who are like scaling is it a wall? I mean, that was really where it was coming from. Um, sometimes this stuff is so funny cuz it's like nobody actually knows anything. I think it was like you keep hearing We're about to hit the moment when the models are just improving themselves and humans are about to be out of the loop. And I like fully buy into that some days. And then some days I'm like, wait, we seem to like kind of get everything wrong on— this is such a strange moment to be in.

It is.

Yeah. Like the, it feels like the fate of the world is hanging on these things that nobody actually really knows how it will play out.

Yeah, I think we've sort of lost that narrative in the media. Like, I think people just believe now that AI is going to keep progressing, and so we don't see that like, it's, it's so over, it's not going to get better. Now we see more of the narrative of like, what do we do now that it's getting better all the time?

That is funny. I mean, yeah, I mean, as we're— I'm just playing this through in my head as we're— it is hilarious. Like, we were fully ChatGPT had taken off, everything had changed, then it had totally stopped, and like now we're just in it.

Yeah, it never, it never stopped. I, like, a common thing in the AI world is like, do you believe in a straight line on a graph? Like, and at a point, I, I think around '03, I was like, you're right, I'm gonna stop being as skeptical. Yeah, but this is all gonna fail because it's clearly just blowing my mind every update.

There's definitely been a change. I can't remember if we talked about this or not, but yeah, all the, my, I don't do much politics, but I listen to a couple political podcasts and all these folks I like in DC were just so anti-AI. It's all like, uh, it's just a bubble. And then they've all come around, you know, obviously even if it stopped today, the world would be changed in some very fundamental ways, and I, I don't think it's gonna stop.

Well, it just stopped with the government. It's so over again.

We'll turn it back on. Um, do we have thoughts on the Snapchat glasses? I only looked at them briefly.

Well, you would be able to nerd out about this more than anyone, but I mean, my big hot take is that they're so unattractive.

Let's look. Let's look.

They're so— I'll riff on this— they're so unattractive. I like wearing them. Huge. The sides, they're like, it has so much computing. I'm like, obviously, obviously, dude. And then it's priced at, uh, $2,200. And, uh, let me see this on the screen.

Uh, oh gosh, I mean, is that real?

That's real. There's some fake ones.

This is a, this is a video of Evan Spiegel. I— yeah, because I saw some fake ones where they were mocking up. Yeah, they actually look like— is that real?

Is that—

if that's real, I think that's the real one. Somebody I saw arguing like, uh, yes, they're big, but you're kind of making a design statement. That— if that is real, that is—

no, they're—

this thing going on in the back is totally—

talk about a product overhang.

And they're like $2,200. Yeah, who's supposed to buy these?

So, okay, uh, from TechCrunch, uh, the company's stock has just— it took a big hit from this. They think because of the price, you know, the big concern surrounding Snap's new smart glasses is the cost. And it's worthy of note.

This is real for sure. He's on CNBC. Oh my God. Okay. Sorry. Go, go, go.

This is where he— so this interview is where he talks about like the cost and he says, you know, they're priced like a high-end computer because that's what they are. But I mean, that is a high-end computer on your face for sure. Yeah.

And so they're AR. I mean, I love my Meta glasses, but I usually use the non-AR ones and then we did, I got my hands on the AR ones, which are, which are bigger than the regular Matter Glass and not that fucking big. And, and, um, I don't like the AR ones as much as I like the regular Matter. The, the, the, when I was using it, they had not, I don't think they had opened up the API. And so there really wasn't that much you could do with it, although they subsequently have, wait, okay. So sorry. Who's like Snapchat? People who use Snapchat are still like children, right?

So that's the thing is that But so their demographic is children and children don't often have $2,200 to drop on big glasses that they'll get made fun of for at school. Yeah, I mean, I saw the Meta AR glasses at I/O and I remember thinking those are big and I could not imagine wearing those. But these are like the Snap ones are comical, like they're, they're a gag.

This— Snap unveils new spec— new specs smart glasses after previous disasters. That's, that's the headline for the BBC. That's what you want. Yeah.

Yep.

He's— so Evan's clearly been— this is his quest. I mean, he's been at this for years. He wants these glasses bad, stop at nothing.

So, you know, I'm not an expert, so here's just my hot take, is that Mark Zuckerberg stole the stories thing, and now Evan Spiegel is on a lifelong hunt to destroy Mark Zuckerberg. And it's, uh, it's— this version is a little sad.

On the glasses. Okay. Yeah. And then, I mean, obviously, yes, I do like these things, and I'm— people, some people tease me about this. I don't care. But it feels to me— so there is— I, I do think there is going to be something here. I mean, I like, I like taking my So I don't like air, I don't like earbuds. Mm-hmm. And most people I see clearly are fine with it. I just, I like hate them for some reason. I find it really weird to do phone calls. I like doing phone calls on my glasses. Yeah.

And no, that is nice.

The bone conduction, it's just like way more, it's just very comfortable and you're just kind of like walking around doing things and it's surprisingly like really good at picking you up on the other end. Really good. And it's like re— you can hear really clear. And then obviously I love it it for all like the video stuff we do, but I feel like that's a pretty niche use case for most people.

But, uh, they're usually used by perverts on the streets, which is why I, I'm afraid to wear them outside of the studio.

Great.

It's a thing. It's like 4 perverts who are going up to women are like, hey, like, you know, will you talk to me? And then they post it on TikTok. Like, that's their use case right now.

This got awkward fast. Surely you knew this. I did not.

That's crazy.

I use mine for like filming fish cutting robots and stuff.

I love like your sort of boomer love of Ray-Bans, and I don't want that to stop, but that's the reason why I can't wear them in public.

I did not know this was the class of people that I—

People in the comments are gonna be like, how did you not know that?

I'm naive. I'm just stuck in my nerdery.

I would prefer you be stuck in your nerdery.

But I feel like there is some future. There is some kind of future with this stuff, I think.

So maybe, I don't know, maybe the vision, like, you know, the capability to see your surroundings and store that data and use that data to train. And God trusting Meta with all of that is a lot. Maybe I trust Snapchat a bit more. I don't know. I think that's the queasiness most people feel. Like, if I really want something to be recording my day-to-day life, that is, it gets to a point. And neither of us are very— what's the word? So privacy clean. Like, I don't think either of us care a ton on that regard.

No.

But, you know, people in our day-to-day lives, like the— like what I'm saying with the creeps, it's— you go out now, my experience, if I wear these, um, people are like, are you recording me? Like, it gets very antagonistic very, very quickly. So I don't know, it's— the Snapchat version is like, uh, look over there but be cool about it. And then you have He's gigantic.

Gigantic, yeah. Who, like, who you, what age do people, okay, when we're thinking about our social media strategy, nobody's ever telling me like we should do stuff on Snapchat. Like, who, like, is it still a thing or, I don't even, who and why?

Do your kids use it?

No, no, this is why, so I have no, I have no frame of reference on this.

Snapchat's never gonna sponsor us. It's for drug dealers and horny teenagers. I stopped using it in college. Um, I used to be in like all these group chats with friends from college that like— I think my iPhone offloaded it because I haven't used it in so long, but it has all my Snapchat memories, which they recently pay-gated, and I don't care a ton.

You have to pay to access your own stuff?

Yeah, this is like new of the last like this year, uh, but I haven't gone back to go download them all for— what is it, like $2? I don't, I don't care enough. But yeah, I haven't used Snapchat in so long, and It's such a red flag at the ripe age of 27 if someone's like, add me on Snapchat. It's like, oh, you're—

this is what I was wondering because I, I am old now, but when I see, when I see young people doing things, they, they seem to be like, hit me up on Insta.

Yeah.

And but there, so there is some class of people that actually prefer Snapchat for that.

Yeah, just like I said, and I won't say it again, but yes, that is exactly the class that still uses it. But I don't have teenagers in my life. I mean, my, my closest is my 20-year-old sister, and she does not use Snapchat. So I don't know, if your kids don't use it, then that's the end of my rope.

They definitely don't. My son only just signed up for Instagram, one of my sons, and he's 17 and, um, barely uses it.

Yeah, you have very sweet boys.

So sweet. I hope they stay that way. I was like, please don't get on there. I felt like we did really well how far That's crazy. Oh my God. Yeah. And then, you know me, I'm always firing stuff up on X and I'm like, I want to send it to my son. And I'm like, don't, don't send it to him.

Don't, don't keep him here.

X exists. Even though I'm being incredibly witty.

Even though your dad is killing it over there.

Okay, we're almost done. What else we got? You hung out with Dan Toomey.

Let's do our little, little, um, who I love.

Dan, Dan's like, uh, Yeah, he does. Well, he's with Morning Brew, but he does some of the best, um, poking fun at the tech industry.

He's an amazing comedian and journalist, honestly. He was asking me about how to get scoops and I was like, I don't know, dude, you just sort of, you do it forever. Um, but no, he's, he's incredible. So I, I did a video with Dan Toomey. He was in San Francisco and he had messaged me like a month ago about like, do you, do you wanna do a segment with us on being a woman in San Francisco? Cause we heard there's no women.

And so like— but not all like a deep journalistic series?

No, no, no, no, just making fun of it really. And uh, they came to my apartment, him and his camera guy, we just sat on my couch and oh my gosh, I can't imagine what footage is going to come out of that. I don't know because I was trying to be funny. We talk about dating. His funniest joke— oh, I'll sell them out a little bit— was when you go on a date in San Francisco, who pays? You or the company you guys are expensing from. That was hilarious. Um, but yeah, so I recorded with Dan Toomey. Be on the lookout for that, or don't, because I don't know how ridiculous I'm gonna look. But, um, what else has been up?

Well, and he's a stand-up, right?

Yeah, you stand up in New York.

Oh yeah, yeah. Oh no, he's like touring around. His website is up to date. Um, he's fucking hilarious. I mean, I don't even think I mean, he's definitely taking the piss out of the tech industry, but I don't even, I, I, some of the thin-skinned tech people I'm sure would be annoyed by it, but it's like, it's, it's pretty good, man.

No, it's really funny. It's really funny there. It's not cheap shots. It's like genuinely funny.

That's what I'm sorry. Thank you. That's what I was trying to get to.

Yes. Yeah. Not cheap shots. Uh, no, it was hilarious. He just explored San Francisco. I think he went to Alamo Square Park and talked to women about dating. He's exploring effective altruism. Dude, he's— I can't wait to see it. But he was really nice. It was awesome to talk to him. We geeked out about, you know, tech being super online and all that jazz. Other than that, so our life updates. Got my COVID vaccine. So I am low energy, which Ashlee hates. Whenever I'm low energy, he's like, are you okay? Are you okay?

I was like, let me find one of my friends to inject you.

Yeah. I need an IV and a peptide stat, dude. That shit killed me. Um, I had forgotten what COVID felt like, and it killed me. And then I went to The Matrix and got uploaded and felt all— and had 4 Old Fashioneds and then felt a lot better.

That's why I was— I was like, we'll counteract this vaccine with an Old Fashioned. Yeah, get you to where you need to get.

4 Old Fashioneds later, I'm not even hungover. I feel great. I feel amazing. So more drinking on the horizon. We have the World Cup And, um, Ashlee's country beat my country recently, which is annoying.

Yeah, I'm a mess though, cuz I can just, I can just bandwagon wherever I want between South Africa, Australia, the United States. So I just, although not really a huge winner among any of those three, but, but seem to be doing better so far.

Yeah, I just have Turkey and the States, but a friend of the pod, Jaden Atlas, he's very Australian and It's Aussies versus US on Friday. We were supposed to record this on Friday, but Ashlee Vance was like, hey bud, I was like, I'm gonna be—

need to be drinking during that time. And, uh, yeah, the soccer ruse, which is so adorable. It's, uh, sort of pathetic, but I'm gonna be—

I'm probably gonna be drinking with Jaden because I was drinking with him during the Turkey-Aussie game. And, uh, yeah, that's what I plan to do on Friday.

All right, you gotta say Aussie.

Aussie, not Aussie.

Yeah.

Aussie.

Yeah.

Or whatever.

No, I'm gonna have to, that one's gonna have to stick.

Let me, let me call Sholto and Jaden real quick.

They're gonna back me up on this. I promise. I promise. Yeah, no, you gotta be, it's Aussie. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Oi, oi, oi.

Oh, they were cheering that in the bar. Yeah.

Yeah, the World Cup is fun. I am not a huge football person, but fully buy in every—

Does it scare you to say soccer?

No, I was just trying to be, I was trying to be a little more—

Politically correct.

No, no, no, I would never. No, it's just, you know, most of the, just leaning in, leaning in football to the moment. Yeah. And we had some games over here at Levi's Stadium right by my house. But I haven't gone.

Oh, how was that? Well, the traffic.

I haven't gone. It doesn't, I'm not that close. Of course. Yeah, um, but it's always a cool time of the year. The US team looks like they might be legit. Probably, yeah, by the time this airs, the Australians might have handed them their ass and all the, uh, hopes and dreams will be gone. Although, okay, while we're on sports, yeah, I must do this. Um, tennis time, tennis time. So I watched the full 4 episodes of the Rafa documentary It was really good. They're the sports— yes, yes.

Um, is Rafa the one that's kind of angry as a person?

No.

Okay, who am I seeing?

Sweet gentleman. Are you thinking of Novak Djokovic?

The one that like, yeah, breaks the rack? Like, I, I watched a tennis documentary where he just loves to break that racket and just gets so mad. It's not Rafa?

No, Nick Kyrgios would be like the biggest racket breaker I could think of. Or— oh, did you watch the— you watched the, you know, that Netflix series where—

yeah, the, uh, the follow the other.

But you were watching Daniil Medvedev.

Um, that's him.

Yeah, he's Russian. He, that was like, he, he's not like notorious for that. He goes through little bouts where he gets upset.

Yeah.

And Alexander Zverev a little. That one was weird. I think it was called Breakpoint.

Yeah.

Yeah. And they made Daniil out to be like the bad guy in that series, but he's actually like incredibly loved and super fun and has a great personality. That, that was a weird choice.

No, it was Nick. It was this guy.

Nick Kyrgios. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So he's an Aussie. And oh, I see. Yeah, he, he's, he's kind of like the bad boy of tennis.

Okay. So it's not Rafa. What happened with Rafa?

No. God, Rafa is a saint. Um, Rafael Nadal. You, you don't know who Rafael Nadal is?

No, dude. I don't follow tennis whatsoever.

Like, you know who Roger Federer is? Oh my God.

Sounds familiar.

Oh God. We have a lot of work to do, dude. Okay. Rafael Nadal is Spanish. He is considered in the top 3 best tennis players of all time with Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. He is a, he's famed for his work ethic, his, um, competitive spirit. I have, I, I will now brag, I have met Rafa. Um, I interviewed him at Larry Ellison's.

Um, whoa.

Yes. So Larry, Larry Ellison owns this tournament called Indian Wells. Mm-hmm. And there used to be a club, a golf club called Porcupine Creek, and Larry Ellison Bought this entire golf club and turned it into his house. So he's got an 18-hole golf course. Jesus. He's got his own tennis courts. He's like moved into like whatever used to be the clubhouse.

Not solving the matrix. And no.

And when, when Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer would come into town for the tournament, they would live at Larry Ellison's compound. And so I did a story for Businessweek. Larry, Larry bought this tournament. It was like a really big deal because The US was about to lose it to, to a foreign country and Larry stepped in and then he subsequently put so much money into it. People say it's like the best tournament in the world and it's like basically on par with the Grand Slams and all this stuff. And anyway, so I was doing a story on all this, Larry taking over this tournament and, um, it was like one of my brilliant, uh, um, moves to, uh, use my large ass as a, a magazine writer to go hang out at a tennis tournament for a week. And, and I, and so I was interviewing Rafa for the story at Larry Ellison's house, and then he's got a, he had a tennis cabana. So he's had 3 courts, and then this like, this cabana was like bigger than my actual house, literally.

Right.

And so I go in before Rafa got there. I went to use the restroom, and, and Larry had like the fanciest Toto toilets I've ever seen in the restroom. And then I turn, and then obviously I'm a tennis nerd, and I turn and there's this cupboard full of Rafa's rackets. Like, I immediately recognize them because they're yellow and they're all very distinctive.

You're such a nerd.

And I was, I was just like, I mean, there were so many. I'm like, I can clearly take one of these and no one will notice if I just, if I just borrow Oh, what are these?

Just like a tennis racket.

Yes, yes. No one will notice. And then, and then I was kind of like hanging out for a minute and then Rafa came in and he's like, uh, had no handlers and he's like, can I make you a coffee? I was like, what do you mean? There's, there were literally two butlers. I was like, I don't need a coffee. You definitely don't need to make me a coffee. He really wanted me to drink something. He's like, how about some of my coconut water? He was so polite. He was a nice guy. We chatted for like an hour. I actually kind of controlled myself and didn't fangirl out. No. Yeah.

But is he Aussie?

No, he's Spanish. But he's like, he's— there's these people, you know, they always say, don't meet your heroes or whatever. I mean, you know, he was very nice in our interview. And then for that whole week I had this press pass, which is awesome at Indian Wells. I got to just like be where the players eat lunch and like, and I would just watch him. He would go get sushi from the thing. He like knew all the people's names. He was, he didn't have like people fawning over him. He just went wherever, you know, he was doing his thing and, um, was totally down to earth. This comes through in the documentary. The documentary is really well done. I've, a lot of these, these days with, uh, professional athletes in particular, they become the producer on the documentary and it's like you never know what story, you know, you're getting this, this sanitized version of their story.

Yeah.

'Cause they're essentially controlling it. Whereas like Agassi right now, Apple's doing a doc on him. I think he, Apple basically like paid him to do a documentary and then he goes and like finds the team to do his own film, which is weird. If you do what we do, it's a bit weird.

Yeah.

We try to keep, we, we keep the journalism standards high, you know? And like, like when we did the Brian documentary, it was like, I can, me and, and Chris Smith, the director, we controlled everything, you know what I mean? And same thing on—

I can't imagine. Doing it like Daily Mail style where they pay for— that's crazy, right?

It is weird. So my understanding is the Rafa doc was not like that. And he actually, yeah. And he had this line, I saw him being interviewed by Andy Roddick, another tennis player, about the documentary. And he was like, look, you know, at some point he's like, either you're not gonna do it or you're just gonna do it right and just deal with the consequences, whether they're good or bad. But like, you just just kind of go all in. And I recommend this to all subjects of documentaries, is if you're going to do it, just, you know, trust the process a bit. And you might not like everything about it, but I think I would obviously argue there's an authenticity and realness that comes through, and it's going to make a better film.

That's what I love watching. Like, if I don't— I don't understand the ins and outs of any of these sports, but I love love, like, or documentary or otherwise, love seeing like sort of peak authenticity and sort of greatness and craft. And, you know, that's gonna— if either of us were in a, like, a documentary subject, we're not perfect humans. There's going to be some angles you don't like. But if you're authentic, and yeah, if you do it right and you approach it open, with an open mind, it's a—

it's tricky because there are, there are arguments against everything we've just been saying, which is that whole Michael Jordan Um, the, the— what is it— The Last Dance that came out during COVID on the Chicago Bulls. Michael Jordan was the producer on that. And, you know, some people would argue it's like one of the best sports documentaries of all time. Um, the Beckhams— did you watch the David Beckham?

I did.

So he was a producer on that. It was pretty good. I mean, like, I don't think you saw— you didn't see what some people might argue is like a dark side of Dave, or like his flaw, but they They're—

I mean, that documentary is great because they're both so hot. Like, I was— I, I don't care about anything else. I'm like, oh my gosh, Posh Spice and David Beckham. Oh my gosh.

So that's where the, the journalism debate is, is like, it's a hotness. If you're hot enough, we can—

I don't know if I need real journalism about, uh, Posh Spice and David Beckham.

Uh, but okay, that is the other question. It's like, it's like, do I need to know Like, does any, you know, obviously if they were doing some horrendous shit and it's like really informing the story, but it's like, do I need to know when David Beckham like yelled at someone for like a thing? I don't know.

No.

That's not why people are watching that.

Don't care. Yeah.

So it is weird. There is, there are these like, the whole business has gotten very strange. This like used to never happen. Yeah. The, the line was always very clear. You were the subject of this thing and you had no financial anything and you had no final cut. Mm-hmm. And, and it was just getting made about you and you were agreeing to it. And then most of these celebrity athlete, singer, actor, all that stuff.

The Michael Jackson movie that came out in theaters was also like a Jackson estate production.

And we saw like the Prince one is the most famous where they spent years working on this documentary. Many people who have seen it say it's incredible, but the Prince estate has blocked it and it's like never going to see the light of day. Um, and I just find some of this stuff like tragic.

Yeah, totally, totally. So the Rafa doc was not like sort of—

it was not the same type of people. No, and I don't think he does that anyway. But it was, um, he was, uh, well, so the most tension is his uncle was the one who really trained him. And, and his uncle clearly is, um, a psychopath in a way that, like, may— some people would argue you have to be to have someone achieve this sort of success, and other people would argue is way too far.

Tends to be the case. I mean, you played tennis your whole life. Yeah, that tends to be the case for the greats of tennis. Like, they have some father figure who's breaking their kneecaps over it, like Agassi, Nadal, all these things.

There are people who haven't had that happen and they achieve success. But yeah, I do. I mean, that's the tension in the doc, like Rafael Nadal and his family, and they're all sort of like debating. But, you know, Rafa comes out, he's like, no, this is sort of what I needed. And maybe, um, because he ends up having this just tremendous amount of injuries over 20 years. And he's like, maybe all this contributed to that, but like, we'll never know. Or maybe it was just always going to happen. And, and I don't know. So anyway, so they, they're pretty open about all that dysfunction or, or whatever the tension in it. And yeah, then it was, it was good. Met my wife who is like not into sports. Um, watched the whole thing mostly to like keep practicing her Spanish, which is getting quite good. But she was in tears at the end. Wow. Yeah.

Okay. I'm gonna watch this.

Yeah.

When I'm off Friday.

It's pretty good. I got a signed shirt from Rafa in my house.

Whoa.

I love him.

Uh, any other big Ashlee updates? What have you been up to?

I went fishing with the robot from this company called Shinkei Systems just 2 days ago. We went out to Morro Bay, which is like central California coast, and it was pretty cool. So this, this robot does, um, I'm gonna look it up while we're talking.

Ashlee sent nonstop videos of whales and sharks and the like.

We saw so many. So there's this technique for killing a fish called the ikajime method. And basically you catch the fish, you try to jab it in the brain as quickly as possible, and then slit its gills to drain the blood. And so they've been doing this in Japan forever. And the theory is that it's— you're gonna end up with way— well, first of all, that it's like more humane. I, I think when you're being nice to animals, it's still humane. Um, and then And then you end up with better meat because otherwise—

shocked or what?

Well, no, the fish just, they, this is a pretty brutal bulk business. So they usually just catch tons of fish and more or less like they're like suffocating on the boat for hours until they get dealt with and put into ice. And so we all hear the same stories. Your body fills with all these stress hormones and chemicals and well, first of all, it's like un, yeah, unpleasant. And then, and then fills with all the then you become less yummy, right? Like way less yummy. So what happens is like Japan will— okay, even California restaurants will not use California fish for the highest grade sushi because they're not killed in this method. And so, so like we, we have California does most— there's tons of the fishing for the US or even up to Alaska. And in America, even American restaurants will not use that because it's, it's, it's— yeah, the quality is not supposed to be as good. And then We, um, so they created a robot that does this. I mean, you can do it by hand, but it's like a lot of fish. Yeah, it's pretty dangerous, doesn't scale. You have to like hold it in your hand and like stab it, and like you're on a boat that's rolling around. Yeah, and so they put it in this machine, it does computer vision, um, they've like trained it on tons of fish. They've put—

oh, it comes back to AI.

Yeah, and it jabs at the brain, that cuts its gills, and it bleeds out. And then I we have a video coming on this. People can see for themselves. You can see like, 'cause you can go buy, the company's called Shinkei Systems and they actually end up selling their own fish. You could go to like Whole Foods and we did this. You just go to the store and you buy it and then you compare it to the other fish and it's just, it's like looks and tastes way fresher.

Yeah.

It's interesting. So anyway, yeah. Saw lots of whales, got to do that. And it was very, I love whales.

You really do. We got so many videos of these whales.

We saw like 50 or 60. I was in heaven. I was kind of like— I had sort of checked out on the robot, right? It's just humpback time.

It was just a vacation for you and David.

People were mocking me, um, but I, I enjoyed myself, so I don't care.

Well, is that all your updates?

So I got soccer—

sorry, football.

That's all I got.

Um, my last update is that I realized that I was rewatching 30 Rock and I realized that I'm Liz Lemon and Ashlee is Jack Donaghy. It is, it's actually abysmal. The more I watch, I'm like, that is, that is exactly our relationship, is you being like, um, are you, are you poor? Or are you like this?

As I get older, I start getting like more and more conservative too.

Yeah, that's, that too.

They're always keeping me in check.

That's true.

I was like, oh man, okay, that sort of makes me want to— I, I do like the Jack character. This might backfire on you. It's making me like, yeah, embrace it more, I think.

No, you are, um, just veering more Republican. I don't think— I mean, okay, that doesn't really matter to the, to the argument, which is just like Jack, you know.

That was my favorite part about my anthropic tweets, was like people were so confused because they're like, uh, wait, he's not like a liberal, uh The— I like to confuse people. I think I'm like, I go back.

I'm not a contrarian, man. You, you like to take the other side of the argument, which— and you like to like poke fun in like a serious manner. Like, you're not— this is what I said during our Suncut Sun sponsorship and during our Samopod. I was like, what you have to understand about my boss Ashlee Vance is that he is a prankster, a jokester. He is, he is not to be trusted. Interested.

People think I'm like all super gung-ho serious on my tweets, but I'm kind of—

no, you're, you're sport fishing. No, you're being a menace to society. That is, that's your, your like political spectrum is you just like being a menace.

It's true. It is true. Uh, yeah, I enjoyed that, watching people who, uh, because sometimes I'll go on my, my military and manufacturing things and my hatred for Gavin Newsom, and people think I'm just I'm like hardcore Trump lover, but I'm not. And then, then I'm out there, keep them guessing, supporting Anthropic. They're like, what? I don't understand.

Yeah, you know, something I want to eventually sort of explore is, uh, so there's the Reindustrialized conference in Detroit recently, and I saw that there was protesters against it. And these two worlds are just like, I don't know how to square it because I grew up in a military family. I am a California liberal and I want us to like bring back manufacturing and have like a robust defense against, you know, potential war, you know, China taking Taiwan. I want us to be prepared for that. And then people are saying like, these are, you know, weapons to kill, you know, people in the Global South. And that is also true. But yeah, I remember talking to the Northrop Grumman CEO who does— who is like sort of in this world. And he was like, I'm not like an El Segundo taking Zens kind of guy. He's like, I grew up in Northern California, I just like manufacturing. And that is sort of where I'm sitting.

That's usually where I said— I, I went to Reindustrialize last year. I saw the photos of the protesters this year. It's the same group. They're like kind of, um, anti-Israel, I think, or, yeah, Palestine. And, uh, and they're kind of— Palantir is a big advertiser, yeah, sponsor at conference and seems to be the heart of their angst, which is all well and good, I guess. I mean, sorry, it's fine for them if that's how they want to express themselves. The conference itself really is about making—

I think that's what's like sort of hard to pair for me is that like, yeah, I am, I'm very liberal, but that conference, it's like we, I covered my actuator guys were there. They were. And I'm like, it's hard for me to pair that sort of reaction to like the nerds inside.

I was laughing at bit because it's like Detroit's not exactly the most booming economy, and some huge chunk of that conference is like people trying to make jobs. Yeah, I was like, isn't it nice that you have time to, uh, protest this during the day, during the workday? Maybe, you know, not everybody has that luxury and would like a job. Yeah.

Oh man, great place to end, huh?

I think I tried to dodge the Israel-Palestine stuff.

You did a great job. You did a good— we both did a great job.

Okay. That is it for this week. If you're listening to this, I think we have a big sort of like send, cut, send thing coming. Oh, people should please subscribe to our stuff. Leave us some reviews. Go to the YouTube channel. We go to our YouTube podcast channel. We put up this tour of Redwood Materials with JB Straubel, the Tesla co-founder. It's really pretty good if you're at all into— this will not be everybody's thing, but if you're into recycling, um, electric batteries, what happens to them, it's pretty cool. We like hung out with them all day and stitched together. This is like, you get to see how this very, um, complicated, fascinating process works where they take an entire battery, whether it's from your car or your toothbrush, and they break it back down into lithium and cobalt and nickel and, and And it was, I don't know, I think it's well done.

Yeah. And I think that is interesting. Like where do our electronics go to die except for like in my, my drawers? 'Cause I never throw anything away.

Yes.

So you guys should all watch that.

No, I mean, Jamie's legit 'cause he, I knew him, you know, I would say he's the most pure of heart on all of this. Like he wanted electric cars to be a thing 'cause he actually was a greenie and he wanted to make that happen and he did. And then he was inside of Tesla and he is like, what is actually gonna happen to these batteries? Yeah. As, as all the greenies were buying them and they're starting to feel like, oh, is this all just for show? And so he actually like did something about it, you know, and, and they recycle. So 70% of all the batteries in North America end up at Redwood Materials, which is like insane. Yeah.

Um, I just recycled my fucking car batteries, so I hope they have fun with that.

Yeah, like if you put anything in those bins or whatever, they, they make their way to Redwood —sick.

I'll think about that every time I throw away a battery.

There you go. All right, people, thank you for listening, and we will see you again soon.

Thank you, guys.

The Core Memory Podcast is hosted by me, Ashlee Vance, and/or Kylee Robison, or both of us together. It is produced by me and David Nicholson. Our theme song is by James Mercer and Jon Sortland. And the show is edited always by the John Sortland. Thank you so much to Brex and Send Cut Send for all your support. And thank you most of all to everybody for listening or watching. We love you. Please leave us a like, a review, a subscribe, all those tremendous things. Thank you. And we'll see you again.