The AI Conversation We Should Be Having

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Connecting homeowners with skilled pros for over 30 years. Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home projects at Angie.com. This week on the Andrew Yang Podcast, I recently appeared on Gavin Newsom's podcast and we decided to post the conversation here as he is the sitting governor of the state of California and one of the front runners for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028. So this is my convo. With Governor of California Gavin Newsom.

So much to talk about. Obviously, all things AI, what's going on with your new party, Forward Party, your new cell phone company, what's going on in the world. We're living 24/7 with autopsies in the Democratic Party and, you know, all kinds of, you know, press conferences being canceled, including one today on AI from Donald Trump, a new EO that he's about to promote. I want to get to all of that. But first, First, I just want to check in on what is going on with— and you've got the lapel right now— with the Forward Party.

Where to begin? Forward Party is a positive independent political movement that thinks the two-party system is going to lead us nowhere good. And unfortunately, we're doing great in the sense that people are increasingly despondent about the direction of the two-party system. So supporting positive candidates around the country of any party with a special spot in our hearts for independent candidates like Seth Bodnar, who's running for US Senate in Montana, Mike Duggan, who's running for governor of Michigan, and other candidates around the country. Being an independent is the fastest growing political affiliation in the US for good reason. And so Forward Party is growing all the time.

Well, let's talk about your primary when you ran and your primary focus that continues to this day. And I appreciate your tenacity on it and have a little bit of history myself with UBI, this notion of universal basic income. And we can get to all things AI. But in so many ways, you know, you were way ahead of the curve in terms of calling these things out. This notion of mincom, as it's been referred to and organized in other countries. It's not necessarily a new idea, but it's an idea you really brought to the fore and scaled in consciousness. But it's been a bipartisan idea over the course of quite literally decades and decades. Conservative economists, not just progressive thinkers, have been promoting this fundamental idea of monthly checks, minimum income that is universally distributed to address the anxieties, the burdens, and the stresses, particularly now in an AI-induced economy.

Yeah, and you were open to this too, man. I remember you quoting Voltaire at an event about how work staves off like the three great sins, you know.

Yeah, it solves life's three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.

Yeah, and look at this. And I was like, look at, look at Gavin quoting Voltaire. Like, I'll have to steal that, you know, since I'm, I'm, I was quoting other people. But yeah, uh, th— this is something that is now front and center because AI has arrived. And when I was running for president back in 2019 and 2020, it was still somewhat speculative or far out. Uh, but now, uh, it's here, you know, spending $700 billion on data centers around the country and The major tech firms are replacing coders and soon it's gonna be customer service. And then Waymo is gonna replace the drivers and on and on. And so the average Californian, the average American's like, okay, what the heck's my kid gonna do when they graduate from college? And in my view, and by the way, not just my view, but also Dario Amadei is saying tax us, put in a token tax. Sam Altman's like national wealth fund based on AI. Elon Musk says universal high income, which I quite enjoy. The vision. And so we need to get a move on because more and more value is going to disappear into the cloud, and more and more average families are going to be looking up being like, what the heck happened? So to me, universal basic income is the foundational step, but you have to keep on moving in that direction. And Gavin, thank you for pushing us down this road. One of the biggest misconceptions about universal basic income is that it somehow is anti-work. I have an Asian joke here, which is I'm Asian, I love to work. But the fact is, if you give people more money, they'll participate in the market economy. They'll start businesses at higher levels. They'll give to their congregation or religious community at higher levels. It's going to supercharge the things that people actually want, which will give us a lot more to do. The other major source of jobs, in my opinion, after the private sector retrenches, which it will, would be the government. Government, and I'd much prefer communities figure out what they'd want to pursue for work than have the government come in and say, hey, I've got a bunch of jobs for you. Like, I don't think that's the vision that most Americans want.

When you were promoting UBI, you were promoting about $1,000. It was $1,000, if I recall specifically.

Yeah. Oh, by the way, just for fun too, I even wrote a book recently called Hey Yang, Where's My $1,000? And the alternate title, which you'll enjoy, was 'Hey, am I racist?' or 'Are you Andrew Yang?' Um, both of which I have gotten. Um, but yeah, it's $1,000 a month, uh, a month, uh, was the Freedom Dividend.

So, and I love that you framed it as, as you suggest, a Freedom Dividend, and you were going to pay for it. I mean, it's not inexpensive. I think at the time they scored it, what, $2.83 trillion or something like that? Is that accurate?

Uh, order of magnitude, it's a little bit lower than that if you include current programs, which in my plan would be kind of like a trade-off. It's like you get one or the other and you can elect, but let's call it $2 trillion or $2.5 trillion just for, you know, the setup.

And the idea again was just to deal with the anxiety, create at least a baseline of money that allows people not, you know, makes the end of the month a little bit less stressful. And then provides the opportunity to then to stretch the mind of imagination across the spectrum of issues, including something you've been attached to for decades, and that is a very aggressive entrepreneurial construct, this notion of startups, which you invested a lot of time, energy, and resources in promoting. But what about this, as you suggest, notion that UBI is charity versus this notion of ownership that You know, interestingly, even Sam Altman came out, as you pointed to recently, suggesting maybe universal basic capital is a better approach. This notion of an ownership society, not necessarily a charitable society, that can make everybody feel a sense of not just connection, but connection to a larger cause called democracy, to one another in a broader sense.

Yeah, I'm on board. And the fact is, these models were built on our data. And our data is getting sold and resold for hundreds of billions of dollars a year and no one's seeing a dime. And a dividend is what a stockholder or shareholder gets. It's one of the things I framed as like a stakeholder society where you get a dividend as a result of being a member of the richest, most advanced country in the history of the world. So there are different names you could use, but that is exactly what I was going for, which is like, look, we all have an ownership stake in the future and then we can look at our kids and say, you you have an ownership stake too. You're gonna be all right. And when the AI wizards develop more innovations, you're somehow getting like a tiny, tiny slice of that.

It's interesting. I appreciate the frame in the context of that. You know, to me, it's not even a debate. For us out here in California, at least, it's both/and. And let me give you a proof point. A few years back, inspired by a lot of the work you were doing and a lot of the commentary and the critique, I just, I love stress testing, this idea of increasing the number of tries, to be open to argument, interested in evidence. And it led to us at a state level putting out $35 million of general fund to 7 large-scale UBI projects. And by the way, those projects are fully functioning with the cohorts, class, the support, and they're multi-year pilots. And the results of all of these pilots— they targeted pregnant women, foster families, people 65 and over. In fact, We just trued it up an additional $5 million. So it's $40 million. We're going to get the results of all that in an independent analysis of what it produced and stress test literally in a matter of months. And so California will, at a scale, geographic scale and demographic scale, have the ability to, you know, to kick the tires further. But we're also going to be piloting this notion of universal basic capital at the same time we're now rolling out working with our— what we created, baby bonds years ago before the Trump accounts, 5.5 million California accounts up to $1,500 for all of our kindergartners. Everyone was eligible. We put $1.9 billion of general fund money to support this program and to use these accounts for ownership, for capital accumulation, focusing on financial literacy, that notion of compounded, you know, investments. And so I'm very appreciative of what you're doing. I'm also appreciative now we're broadening the conversation to capital, to equity, to public equity, to dividends, and something broader than just income.

I'm pumped that you've been rolling these things out in California, Gavin. I have a joke which is, um, it only counts if money changes hands, you know what I mean? And in your case, money is changing hands because like I've run companies and if you tell everyone how great a job they're doing, um, that works for a little while, but then Eventually they're like, hey, you know, is there a bonus attached? So, um, so, uh, the fact that these kids are getting baby bonds, uh, incredible. Like, I'm for it when California does it. I'm for it, uh, when the Trump crew does it. Um, you know, no matter what they name it. Like, people ask me, uh, on TV, it's like, hey, what do you think of this? And I was like, look, as far as I can tell, it's money for babies. So, you know, like, I'm, I'm like, I'm on board. You could call it something even worse. I'd probably be okay with it.

No, and I appreciate that. And I think it's important for Democrats. By the way, we had a lot of Democrats that were supporting, you know, Cory Booker was out there for years and years. Ted Cruz as well. You know, if it's a good idea, it's a good idea. And you got to celebrate it to your point, even if, you know, some of us that are a little more partisan, you know, are not happy about Trump accounts. I could call them Newsom accounts. They wouldn't be happy about it. We're going to— we'll rise above that, though.

Yeah, yeah, just call it something neutral like America Counts or, you know, it's pretty neutral.

I'm gonna need your help. We call it Cal Kids, which is a lousy brand, but it's another thing.

Cal Kids could have been improved upon, I got to say. By the way, I have enjoyed your entire social media persona, um, and one of the things I've said to folks is that Trump is a cocktail of three communication styles, uh, politics and then pro wrestling. He's kind of a pro wrestling villain and a WWE Hall of Famer. And then 3, comedy, insult comedy. And the fact is pro wrestling and comedy both have audiences of millions every week that ignore cable news channels. And so the fact that you are tapping into these other wavelengths, I think, is very, very savvy. And, you know, it serves you well. This podcast is sponsored by Helix Sleep. I've been a mattress guy since my 20s because I've always thought if you're going to spend a third of your life doing something, might as well do it right. The Helix UltraDawn firm mattress has been a game changer for me. I took the sleep quiz, I needed a mattress with more support, and this mattress delivers. I wake up revved up, ready to face the day. And the weirdest thing is that even though they did not take the sleep quiz. My kids seek this mattress out and think it's the best mattress in the house. You can tell because that's where they keep competing for space. If you won't take my word for it, Helix Sleep has a 120-day guarantee. You can return the mattress within 4 months and get it back. Yeah, I know, that's pretty crazy. It's a real, real warranty that they have because they believe in the product for a good reason. Go to helixsleep.com/yang for 20% off sitewide, 25% off Luxe mattresses, and 30% off Elite mattresses for the Fourth of July sale. That's helixsleep.com/yang for 20% off sitewide, 25% off Luxe mattresses, and 30% off Elite mattresses. Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you. helixsleep.com/yang.

I appreciate that. And again, not everyone does. So I'm grateful for the recognition as we try to battle it out for attention and just to get in that space. And I couldn't agree with you more, especially again, my party, Democratic Party, just so often a little bit humorless.

No.

No, dare I say, forgive the understatement, forgive the understatement.

It's fine. I mean, I'm just, I'm just, um, you know, giving someone a hard time. But, uh, like, it's something, um, that I personally have told people. It's like, look, I think Gavin's smart to do it. Um, I think it's working. Uh, and when I get asked, uh, about, um, your prospects, which I do get asked, I'm just like, Gavin is very, very strong in a room. Like, the dude Seems like he did just walk off a Hollywood set in a good way. I mean this as a compliment, like you're very handsome and tall and sun-kissed and the rest of it. But I was like, look, having been in these rooms, being good in the room matters very, very significantly. I think Gavin's going to travel well and people are going to gravitate towards him. As you can imagine, because I get asked about the field all the time, I also tell people I think it's gonna be a governor because I think folks are going to want that kind of background and leadership.

Well, I appreciate all that. And again, I'm not gonna take the bait on any of it. And I wanna go back to this, to AI. I've been listening to you on a bunch of podcasts and I appreciate, you know, you've been out on this, you know, been calling us out, not just been out on the road. Talking about AI and what's going on, not just with GenAI, but now with what's going on with agentic AI as it moves and morphs into this next iteration. And talking about compute, not just talking about data centers, but talking about tokens, talking about digital privacy and this notion of a digital dividend that can look many different, you know, forms and shapes. But this notion of AI anxiety, this notion that, you know, they're coming after my jobs. We talk about white-collar workers now having so much more in common with blue-collar workers. You could be talking about a 25-year-old that's not getting, you know, any interviews that just graduated a few years ago and is having a hard time and sounding a lot like, you know, the old factory work in Ohio that, you know, blue-collar worker, white-collar rhetoric is starting to come together. And I think a new coalition in many respects. Around anxiety. And, and so I'm curious where you are on the spectrum, the, the Doomer versus the Utopia spectrum. Is it coming sooner than we think? The displacement is coming faster? Is it coming in different shades, meaning the people you don't hire is a form of that displacement? Because those are the easiest people, as you suggest, to fire, the people you don't hire. Is it coming first to entry-level jobs, clerical jobs? Is it happening in the physical AI space. You talk about Waymo, then we could talk robots. I mean, give me a sense of where you are on the spectrum of AI and the spectrum of where we should be, what we should be thinking about.

Well, first let me share a story to help set this convo up, Gavin. So I was a CNN commentator for a while, and at one point the team approached me and said, hey, we're thinking of doing a TV show called The Future Of with Andrew Yang. It'll be like the future of healthcare, the future of transportation. I said, all right, that sounds good. They come back 10 days later and said, hey, Andrew, we ran our focus group. Bad news, Americans don't like the future. And that was kind of tough to hear. And this was a few years ago. So when you talk about the hostility towards AI and grads booing the commencement speakers, Americans don't feel great about the future because they don't think it's going to include them. They don't think they're going to be among the beneficiaries. And they are stone cold correct. I have AI, you don't. Or maybe you can. You can use it. You can pay for it. But you're talking about the formation of multiple trillion-dollar companies. You're going to have our first trillionaires. And then the average family looking up in Central California or Central Missouri is like, OK, I don't think I'm going to win as a result of this. And so if you give me a chance to boo or to protest the data center, I'll take that. And so the question is, how do you make that person feel like they're winning? And I'm going to go back to what I said before, is like, it only counts if money changes hands. So if the big winners from this— and I do think some of the AI high chieftains are getting wise to this because they know that people are turning on them so completely— they've got to share the winnings as quickly and broadly as possible. Now, to your question of like, where am I in terms of— how bad it's going to get for workers and what sequence and the rest of it. No, I look at the same data that you do, maybe a better data than I do because you're a governor and you get like some internal secret stuff. But the big companies are replacing first coders, then customer service, then various white-collar functions, then slowing down entry-level hires. College kids now have an underemployment rate of, let's call it, 48% or something along those lines. And so it's getting sped up. I'm 51 years old and I tell people if I don't get dumber in a given month, it was a good month. AI probably got twice as smart in the same time frame. So then saying what we're going to do is train people and have them upskill. I mean, by the time I complete the program, AI got 8 times faster. So, you know, like what? That's not a real plan. So I like it. It probably sounds pretty pessimistic, my analysis, but I sit down with CEOs the same way you do, and the CEOs tell me, look, I'm going to fire 15% of my staff this year, another 20% 2 years from now, and another 20% 2 years later, and then after that, who knows. Now, are they going to go on CNBC and say that? Probably not. But have I heard that from now a dozen different CEOs of both public and private companies? Yes, I have. And so if you hear that over and over again, and by the way, even for me running Noble Mobile, our CTO came and said, hey, guess what? We're gonna take down the job posting for junior engineers because I think I can now get it done with AI. And so that's the, you know, the easiest people to fire are the people you haven't hired yet.

So, you know, we're having the same conversations. And by the way, the people, folks running these frontier labs are saying it out loud. I mean, as you noted, Dario's saying it out loud at Anthropic, open letter, basically an essay that was written by Sam Altman and OpenAI around the anxiety. And so they see the, you know, they may not see quote unquote the pitchforks coming, but they certainly see into the future and the trend lines here that are becoming headlines.

I mean, Sam had attacks on his house. I mean, like, that, that was a modern-day pitchfork. So I think they're feeling it. And by the way, I think the lapse here, it's like the level of federal dysfunction is actually a major impediment. Because if you had a government that had its act together, they would already be distributing an AI dividend, in my opinion. And I think a lot of the AI companies would be forking over cash to keep the pitchforks at bay, just out of enlightened self-interest. There's a sense that people— are greedy beyond, you know, like, like any other measure. And I just— I think that enlightened self-interest from a lot of these tech CEOs is like, look, they know they're going to have plenty of money. And what I joke about is like, life is better outside the bunker than in the bunker. Like, no matter how much money you have, like, that bunker is not that nice, you know, like, you know, miss the sunlight. So I think that there is a grand bargain to be had. But our government is asleep at the switch or just cheerleading for the AI firms. And even if the AI firms are raising their hands and saying, hey, like, you know, please do consider taxing me, then at the same time they have $150 million in lobbying cash that they'll use to bomb anyone who does something they don't like. And so there are a lot of legislators who are like, okay, are you sincere about this or are you just trying to make yourself look good? And then if I suggest it, all of a sudden I'm going to have 8 figures spent against me.

And I mean, that's played out obviously. And I think, what is it out in your neck of the woods? Is it the 12th Congressional District?

Alex Boris. Yeah. Like who I find to be totally reasonable, passed a sensible AI safety bill as a New York state legislator.

And which, by the way, full disclosure, Andrew, was modeled after the bill that we passed. Passed here in California, SB 53. That's right. So, so I couldn't agree with you more. The sensibility of the bill, it was a large language model, LLM, frontier safety and transparency bill, and just the second in the country. And one, by the way, broadly embraced by tech. But he hasn't necessarily been.

Yeah. And by the way, the irony of the attacks on Alex Boris, Gavin, are, are where you have these ads of him looking very mean and scary and then say, he worked for Palantir, you can't trust him. And meanwhile, the folks who are funding that ad are the AI companies themselves that are just trying, you know, and Alex Goris is like, I did work for them and then I became a state legislator and I'm trying to do good things. And so this goes back to the conversation around incentives is that legislators know, it's like, look, if I take on the AI industry in a way that they don't like, it's going to reduce my job security. And so if I kind of hand wave or walk around the block a little bit, I mean, and I do think Republicans are more guilty of this right now because, again, they have just been reduced to cheerleaders for the industry, even as their voters are turning on AI. There's a fascinating disconnect. AI has a 26% approval rating right now. And I think that's lower than ICE. So it gives you a sense how bad it is. And I think it's trending negatively, not positively, even though it's already quite low.

What do you make of— I mean, you know, obviously with David Sachs, he's no longer, quote unquote, formally there as the crypto and AIs are. I mean, Trump came in very enthusiastically, sort of ripped off the Band-Aid, rolled back some of the executive order, at least directionally rolled back some of the policies of the prior administration, the Biden administration. There was efforts to undermine our safety and frontier model legislation led by not just members of the Trump administration and Sachs, but people like Ted Cruz that didn't want to see any regulation. There was an effort to preempt states from taking that role and responsibility. And we're highlighting Alex and how he's the burden and beneficiary because there are tech people that are behind him as well. He's an interesting case study. There's nuance. And who's going after him. And then interestingly, who's supporting him. A lot of folks out here in Silicon Valley are actually supporting Alex. I think he's getting more of his money from California than he even is from Manhattan, in an interesting twist in the saga of his election. But what do you, what do you make of, you know, where Trump is now, particularly today, where he allegedly was going to come out with a new executive order and was going to have a press conference. He pulled back the executive order press conference at the last minute. People are speculating as to why, but it was a sense that now they've woken up in a Methos world. Anthropic put out Methos. They quickly pulled it back. Cybersecurity red flags everywhere. And that may have woken these guys up a little bit. No? Trump and Bessant and others to— we got to pay a little more attention to here, the safety sides of things.

Yeah, there was apparently a freakout, uh, that Mythos could be used to hack through a lot of systems and infrastructure, uh, and so that they did have a, um, like a wake-up call. I don't know what's going on with this delay, but what's interesting is that I think Trump and some of his team have realized that a lot of their people, their voters, are very, very dubious of AI, and that if left unchecked, AI could rip through federal systems in a way that would be disastrous. And so they're trying to be responsive. And I think they will end up announcing some measures around having to look at frontier models before they're released. One of the jokes I have been telling is that there are more regulations to open a hot dog stand than launch a new model that's going to impact millions of people. It's like I could just use, use people as guinea pigs, whereas I couldn't use them as guinea pigs on my hot dogs without someone making sure that, uh, you know, they're kosher, so to speak.

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, nothing funny about that joke. I mean, it's, it's fact, isn't it? I mean, it's a remarkable fact.

Yeah, man, these are, these are Strange times, but the public is heading a certain way. I think there's a big political void, and I do think people in both parties are going to move to fill it, which I applaud because to me it's crazy that we don't have more sensible guidelines. We missed the boat on social media. Our kids paid the price. We're missing the boat on AI, and young people and workers, in my opinion, are about to pay the price. And so there's going to be a political backlash as a result.

So as we focus on safety, and we focus on the intended and unintended consequences of AI in that prism, we talk about jobs and job loss and the anxiety and how it's beginning to manifest. Certainly, a lot of headlines suggest it's already taking place and shape. It's geographically dispersed. So it's a more challenging thing. It's not reflected necessarily on the factory floor. It has been automation generally, certainly, but not reflected necessarily with clerical workers that, you know, it's harder to see what's happening in terms of those job losses. But WARN Act, the WARN Act itself, it seems to me it's worn out its usefulness. It was designed like our labor laws, 1930s, these things were designed for a world that no longer exists. Unemployment insurance, seems to me to have worn out its benefit. What about employment insurance? What about the opportunity to really scale portable benefits? What about modernizing the WARN Act and having early warning systems? What about— I mean, what are the conversations we need to be having now at scale to reform our systems, to prepare in real time for what's happening in real time on our watch?

Yeah, tying health insurance to jobs is super dumb. I think most people realize that. And by the way, it's an impediment to entrepreneurship. There are a lot of people that would start businesses if they didn't need health insurance for their families. And health insurance now is very expensive. And so, you know, like if I start a company, I'm like kind of running a massive risk. So portable benefits would be to me like a massive step in the right direction. But like, I'm still for universal basic income. Or the equivalent, because I think it's going to become increasingly necessary. And one of the topics I think you and I both are passionate about is what's happening to men and young men where labor force participation just continues to decline. They have lower rates of both high school and college graduation, lower rates of family formation and dating. You know, they're going home. They don't think that anyone has a use for them. And on the far end, they do get radicalized by the internet. They start blaming someone for their problems. And so to me, there are supports to try and help people who are in jobs. But I just think we need to be doing much more to stimulate activity and paths so that folks feel like I bring something to the table, even if what I bring to the table is just my magical AI dividend so I can come out and, you know, buy a beer. I mean, people aren't drinking either, so I mean, I should use a different example. Buy a burger with my friends. Some of the fundamental issues are, to me, only addressable with very, very big dramatic actions. One of the things I like about you, Gavin, is you hear this stuff and you're like, "Yeah, Voltaire, let's do it." I mean, not like you'd actually say that, but But, you know, but you've got— part of it might be because you're the governor of California, which I dare say is the most abundant state in the country in terms of a growth mindset.

Yeah, no, I will appreciate that. And I, again, you just got to— I mean, an entrepreneur, remember, I started right out of college, opened my first business, grew it to about 21 small restaurants and hotels and wineries. Not to impress you to say that, but to press upon you that entrepreneurial mindset a willingness to try to take risks, not be reckless, recognition that you have agency, you can shape the future. We're not victims. It's decisions, not conditions that determine our fate and future. Recognizing that businesses can't thrive in a world that's failing. So I want a customer base that is successful and thriving and recognizing Andrew in the spirit, I think, that defines you and I, that you can't be pro-job and anti-business as well. That we should be supporting business formation and entrepreneurialism.

Dude, one of the most consistent things that happened to me when I was running for president in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, is I'd run into a business owner and they'd say, hey, you're running as a what? I'd say Democrat. And they really thought Democrats did not like them as small business owners. And it made me so sad because it was like, I came up as a small business owner and like, you guys are the backbone and lifeblood of this town, of our workforce. So that was something that really stuck with me. I mean, I'm sure, you know, you get versions of it anyway. I mean, but like, just like you, I came up as a small business owner and it's still what makes me tick.

Why are we, Andrew, then, as supporters and champions of small business, why do we have a tax system, particularly when productivity and wealth are now being rewarded— robots, technology, automation— why are we taxing then human labor? Why do we have payroll taxes and yet have tax code that actually rewards automation in terms of write-offs?

Exactly. And I'm so glad you raised this. John Arnold, Vinod Khosla, me— sounds like maybe you too. Heck, even Jeff Bezos the other day, if I like heard him right. Where you tend to tax things you want less of. So taxing jobs via payroll taxes and other costs discourages hiring. Meanwhile, if I do automate hundreds of thousands of jobs away via AI, I get to keep virtually all that money because it's going to be going through some megacorp and I'm not paying a lot of taxes on that. Maybe I make it so I have no profits. We're emphasizing the vortex that is AI and capital and data as it sucks up more and more energy and jobs. And then the small business owner is just trying to employ people in their community, has to pay up and out the nose for, you know, their Social Security taxes and payroll taxes and healthcare in many cases. I mean, we should be going line by line to what that small business owner is paying and be like, let's see if we can get rid of that.

Where are you? And we talked briefly about physical AI. You know, we're seeing it. You brought up Waymo. Anyone who's been to San Francisco, you could be 7 deep at a stop sign with 7 driverless cars in front of you.

You must have been in them already, right, Gavin?

I mean, I remember, Andrew, I'm old enough I got enough gray hairs to prove it when I was sitting there with Larry and Sergey in the parking lot at Google in basically a golf cart that was driving itself and just never forget that experience. The first iteration of that decade or so ago. I mean, now it's gonna be Joby Aviation and Archer and others competing for the version of the flying taxis.

Yeah, the first time I rode in a Waymo just commercially was in California last summer, whatnot. I took a little social media video really enjoyed it. And then after I got out and thanked the driver that wasn't there, I just like, I just thought like, yeah, we're fucked, which I said out loud. And it kind of, um, but it was a great experience in the sense of I felt perfectly safe after the first 30 seconds. Uh, you, you don't have a driver. In your case, I'll speak for myself, like I'm kind of a public figure too, so sometimes not having a driver is kind of preferable to having a driver. You know, you can like play the music you want if you feel like it. You can have a private The conversation you want. So I got out and was like, yo, this thing is coming fast and furious. And I'm someone who, by the way, is more dubious of like robots performing certain types of tasks. But I have very smart friends who are like, look, the factories in China don't even have light switches anymore because like it's all just robots doing stuff in the dark and they can run 24/7, 7 days a week. So the robots are real and coming. And America, unfortunately, has ceded a lot of the robotics industry and manufacturing. And so we don't see it in the same way. We don't feel it. And I will say, I think that there'll be human plumbers, human HVAC repair for the foreseeable. But apparently the robots are coming. So it's like AI and the cognitive work and the white-collar work, of which there are about 70 million jobs. And then the robots are up next. Good times, Andrew Yang. People sometimes joke, Gavin, about am I a doomer, am I optimistic? I'm like you, I'm an entrepreneur, so I'm optimistic by nature, but I fear. I wrote an article, I called this process the fucking. It's like the fucking of white-collar workers, and then the robots will be the next wave.

And a proof point of that, not to be modeling or, you know, too negative in this subject, but the proof point of that certainly manifesting now at scale here in California, in Fremont, the old factory for Tesla, where he was doing about half of the global production. I mean, remember, Tesla happened here first. Future happens here first. And I appreciate the future is a 4-letter word in the context of the anxiety out there. And I appreciate you Thank you reminding me of that, because the future always has its, you know, California, man, you guys love it. It's, uh, but, but Elon converting that factory as the future first EV factory has now pulled the Y and X model off that line, is turning it over to humanoid robotics, uh, and the idea is to generate half a million to a million units of humanoid robots off that same assembly line. That's happening. And starting to convert in real time.

Yeah, yeah, they're pioneers in using robots in various ways. Elon's a very big believer, and you're seeing it, man. You know, you can go over to Fremont. It's true. I mean, California is the vanguard of a lot of what the rest of the country, you know, gets to experience a little bit later, like your Waymo ride a decade ago, where it took, you know, 8 or 9 years for it to reach the highways. But it is true, man. A lot— for a lot of the country, the future is a scary thing. And the next president, whoever that is, has a very, very big task trying to get people actually positive about the future and not just via, you know, values and feeling good about things, but about reconstituting the future for their kids. Because, you know, like, the kids are coming home and sometimes they're just living in the basement.

And as you know well, and I appreciate your reference to everything that's going on with men and boys, and you were kind enough not even to mention the 4x higher suicide rates, deaths of despair, uh, for young men and boys, and how my party in the past at least has not focused enough attention. I think that's beginning to change. A lot of leaders now are recognizing the crisis of our men and boys.

But as it relates— I was told in the Democratic primary in 2020 not to talk about it And I was like, what are you talking about? Are these not human beings and Americans? And they were like, this is a Democratic primary, Andrew. Like, you don't want to be talking about these problems. I was told this is like a dog whistle. It's like a dog whistle? I'm just talking about— I'm not trying to signal anything. I'm just like talking about real life issues. I do want to talk a little bit about what I'm building with Noble Mobile because I think you'd like it. I think it's something you would do.

I want to talk about that because it's a good segue. And let me introduce it a little bit because I really appreciate what I'm told inspired you. And I want to stress test whether or not I got this right, that you like— look, any parent, you've got a couple of kids. I've got 4 kids. We've all experienced that we just cannot compete with the damn phone. I don't care how good you are as a parent, you know, with all due respect, you know, the phone's just going to kick your ass. It just will. It does. And social media is just, it's sucking these kids in the vortex. You and I are old enough, we used to go online to search for knowledge. Now everything online is searching for our kids. And these algorithms, and they're just wiring these guys. And that's, you know, that manosphere, that boyosphere, it's really a boyosphere, is, you know, created this, you know, a real toxic environment, particularly for young men. And I think it goes back to that question, but it connects to two things you said earlier that I want to just highlight and point out. You mentioned that we made the mistake on social media and let's not make it on AI. You mentioned the issue of men and boys and work that Scott Galloway has been doing in that space as well. And so you, as a response to this and the overwhelming evidence of what we've done to our kids with, with these devices, have come up with a really novel and interesting idea. It's called Noble Mobile. Tell us about it.

Yeah, and Scott Galloway is an investor, one of the original forces behind it. So check it out. I'm well known for trying to make people less broke, which I'm grateful for. But also, to your point, I've been concerned about our kids and us spending too much time on what Hasan Minhaj calls our rectangle of sadness, which, if you think about the last time you got really upset, it was probably off of this guy or your kids. Being on this guy. And so I thought, how can we help? And I was inspired by what Mark Cuban did with Cost Plus Drugs, where he bought generic drugs in bulk. And by the way, this is the sort of thing that I know you're going to love because it's trying to solve a large-scale consumer problem, but doing it in the marketplace. So then I went and looked at our costs and figured, what else can you maybe cost plus in American life? And so the average Californian's cost structure It goes housing, healthcare, education, food, fuel, transportation, media, and then wireless. The average American is spending $83 a month on their wireless plan. The average European is spending $35 a month on their wireless plan. That delta, Gavin, comes to $100 billion a year in extra spending on wireless. And of that $100 billion, $11 billion is going to Verizon shareholders as a dividend every year. $7 billion is going to AT&T shareholders as a dividend every year. Year. So you can see all this extra spend. And so the first trick I had to pull was, can I get a better deal from any of these carriers for Americans? So I, I went to the carriers, and T-Mobile said, we're into it, in part because it was me, Scott Galloway, and some of our friends being like, we're going to try and do this for the American people. So number one, uh, we cut your wireless bill typically in half, down to $42. But the kicker, and what you described is that if you use less data, we give you the money back at the end of the month. So it's an incentive to stop doomscrolling. When you're doomscrolling, you know you're costing yourself money, and we're kind of simple. We don't like to cost ourselves money. So the average Noble Mobile user uses 17 to 20% less screen time in month 2 because we realize we're being chumps when we're getting sucked down a rabbit hole because that extra 30 minutes actually might cost us some money. So that is Noble Mobile, and we're trying to solve those two problems, both the, the money people are spending and also how much excess time we're spending on our screens.

I love it. Well done. And look, any— again, anyone with kids— and, but, but I love you said it's not just our kids. I mean, we model the behavior, right? It's not what we say, it's what we do. And they're watching us on our phone complaining about them being on theirs and wondering You know, not even recognizing this.

It's like you're in my house at my dinner table, Gavin, because it's hard for me to lecture my boys when then I'm gonna like grab this thing, you know, 10 seconds later. Um, and so imagine a phone plan that could actually boost your kids' allowance if they spend a little bit less time on their phones. And then you can have, um, like a conversation about it every month to see like where the trends are and like what they're doing more of. And for yourself too. Like, you can turn it into a friendly competition, which, by the way, this competition I lose every month because I'm a heavy phone user and I'm very open about it.

I love it. Well, it's, it's part of that same trend that, you know, even it may not be at the scale, the direction you want to take it, but with flip phones now where people are just trying to go back to, you know, what's old is new again, man.

Um, I, I'm also throwing parties around the country called offline parties where You check your phone at the door and then it feels like a '90s college party. We even had someone give a guy their phone number on a napkin, just like used to happen back in the day, because like no one has their phone and they start talking and then they're like, yeah, give me a call, but we don't have your phone. But it's a forcing function because what do we all do at a party the moment we're awkward or alone or bored? We bust our phone out. And then that kind of like shuts the door. So at these offline parties, people have to make eye contact, have to look at each other. They kind of have to, you know, I wouldn't say have to drink. I mean, obviously we don't force anyone to drink, though we give out some drink tickets. It is funny how people— I mean, it's not funny, it's terrible— how people don't party as much as they used to. Like, you see it in the nightlife districts in I'm sure LA and San Francisco— I've actually been to the downtown districts in LA and San Francisco hosting these events. And let's just say, like, I felt like I was doing a service because people would come and say, like, wow, like, I haven't had a night like this in a while. All right, here's the situation. You are at home. You are tired. You are hungry. There's something healthy you could cook for yourself, but you don't have it in you, so you eat crap. You eat something you know you should not be putting in your body, but you're just too tired to deal with it. Does that sound like you? That sounds like me, at least part of the time. Until I found Factor. Factor will deliver healthy, chef-crafted meals right to your door, and then you can prepare them in 2 minutes. It's the best of all worlds. My favorite Favorites: honey mustard chicken with rosemary potato and beans, loaded mashed potatoes and shredded chicken with mushroom gravy, bacon, and broccoli. That's there too. Try Factor today, it's gonna be a game changer for you. It has definitely changed my health and habits. Head to factormeals.com/yang50off and use code YANG50OFF to get 50% off and free daily greens per box with new subscription only while supplies Last until 9/27/26. See website for more details.

Andrew, you're talking to, trust me, the right guy here. Remember, I'm in the wine business and the restaurant and bar business, so I'm living this.

So you are. That's actually where you and I first met. It was like, you know, I think you were already governor, but it was in San Francisco, and it was like in a bar or restaurant, and you talked about how that's how you came up. And I'm sure it pains you the same way it pains me, because we spent all these evenings out in our young adult years.

Well, and it's socializing, it's connecting, it's a sense of community. It's not just the drink, and I get that. You know, I mean, I love what Scott, your partner, has been saying on this. He actually is going further. He wants to lower the drink He's not even drinking age, but because he's that sincere about this, the desperate need of people to get off, you know, get back and connect again. I mean, young boys aren't even asking girls out on dates. They're scared to death.

My 13-year-old Gavin said to me and my wife quite recently, "I think I'm gonna have an AI girlfriend." And then we were both shocked and appalled and we asked him why. And he said, "I think it's gonna be a lot easier than getting a human girlfriend." And he's not wrong on that side because getting a human girlfriend is not easy. And so I then said, hey, Christopher, this is what making out with your AI girlfriend is going to be like. And then I pretended it was like not pleasant at all. And I was like, this is what making out with your human girlfriend's like. And I took his mom and started kissing her. I was like, which is better? Which is better? You got to go for the human, even if it's harder.

Well done.

But this is what our kids are experiencing where they're living in a friction-free digital world. And we all know that real relationships actually come with a level of friction, but that's the stuff of life. It's the stuff of humanity.

What do you make of it? You know, there was a headline this weekend that— this last weekend— that China quite literally— the headline was around China making sure people don't have online girlfriends and how they're restricting access to social media, how their version of TikTok is radically different than ours and what content you can actually access and the hours you can actually access it. You saw in China, and I'm curious your thoughts on this, where they actually find a court— find a company that fired a worker under the basis, under the auspices that that worker was replaced, quote unquote, by AI, and that worker was actually awarded tens of thousands of dollars. What'd you make of that, and what do you make of their approach to some of this.

You know, I think it's fascinating. I read that same book you did, probably, about how China's run by engineers and we're run by lawyers. And so their approach to problems is very, very different than ours. And there are advantages and disadvantages to both, you would say. I can't imagine in America, like, trying to identify who got fired due to AI and who didn't, because, you know, it's going to happen in such a a broad way. I mean, our challenge, in my view, is trying to get people excited about the innovation and progress that's going on and to feel included. And right now, I think that's a really tough bar. In terms of China's moderating its own social media and banning AI girlfriends, I mean, the fact is we all know what's going to happen in America our kids are going to date less, fall in love less, get married less, have fewer kids. Schools are going to close around the country. Colleges are going to close. You know, you're going to have increasing demographic challenges because you have an aging population. I mean, this is all written clear as day. And so China saw something similar going on. It's like, you know what, AI girlfriends at the margin are going to actually reduce the oomph inside of our kids to go out and meet each other, um, so let's get rid of them. Uh, you know, you can see the rationale very, very clearly. Um, and, and I do think we can borrow some pages from their book in terms of actually figuring out, uh, what's happening with our young people in particular, um, and trying to get in front of it. I'm trying to help in real ways.

Well, in, in, in— let's— I want to close on a beat of optimism. There's a lot of punditry obviously more broadly on— in compare and contrast, certainly in terms of the approach that China is taking in the competition that marks, I think, a lot of the conversation we're having as well with China as it relates to superintelligence and cybersecurity and national security more broadly defined, and how we have an advantage, the issues around chips and American stack, all those debates that we didn't even get into. But, but there's also a school of thought that you and I may be a little too pessimistic about where AI is taking us. That, you know, I was reading an Andreessen Associates blog the other day. It was pretty damn convincing that, you know, sure, there'll be some, you know, there'll be a moment in time. There'll certainly be categories of jobs and transitions. But we always mind those transitions and that the doomers, or at least those that are expressing so much alarm that are feeding the anxiety, that they're just boneheaded once again, they're wrong, and that we're going to come out with augmentation jobs that we couldn't even conceive of. We're already experiencing those jobs today in some respects, maybe not at the scale and consciousness most people imagine. And a lot of the judgery, what gets repeated gets replaced. That's a good thing that we move away from that and we can find some of the things that you're looking for with your UBI. Where, I mean, what do you say to that train of thought, and I imagine you may identify a little bit with it. Uh, what's a more positive picture you can paint here?

Uh, the positive opportunity is flipping from a scarcity economy to an abundance economy, where right now GDP might be $84,000 a head in America, which is significant. I mean, it's more even than it was when I was running for president in 2020, and AI is going to push that past $100,000 per head. So we're getting to a point where you could meaningfully situate people where people are actually living better and more fulfilled, happier, healthier. It's just how do you take this value that's being created and translate it to the average American family or household? And I think that's what the Andreessen blog misses. It's like, do I think they're going to be fantastic innovations? Yeah, 100%. Do I think that that kid down the street, who right now is kind of listless and directionless, is going to be dragged into all these fantastic new opportunities? I do not. You know who else doesn't think so? The kid himself, or their parents. So that's the burden I think the Andreessen School has to try and figure out how to bridge that gap. But if we're ending on an optimistic note, the top-line growth will be there. The opportunities will be there for us to really address poverty and a lot of other large-scale problems in a way that have not been possible before. A mindset of scarcity made sense in this country when our— I mean, not mine, because I, you know, I mean, actually, Gavin, I don't know if you know this. My parents met as immigrant students at UC Berkeley in the '60s. My brother was named after the Lawrence Hall of Science and was born in San Francisco. So there's a lot of California in my DNA. But when Americans first showed up, to these shores, if they didn't grow or hunt their food, they died. So there was like this mindset of scarcity that kind of made sense. It's like, if you don't work, you die. Now fast forward, AI is about to switch us to a zone where we're going to have trillion-dollar firms and trillionaires, and there's going to be more than enough to go around, especially when the robots come, come, where if we can get our acts together, we can actually solve societal problems in a way that was not possible at any other point in human history. So that's the hope. That's a very California message, I dare say, because, you know, you guys have been walking this walk before much of the rest of the country.

No, I appreciate it. I mean, the promise is not, you know, is there. It's not just peril as it relates to what could happen in the health care space in particular. And we're already, you know, seen some real progress promoted, you know, earlier screenings and detections and things as complicated as pancreatic cancer and the like. And, you know, these sort of super MRI and the opportunities in drug development. Of course, the flip side of drug development biology is the downside of that in terms of the security risks. But, but that abundance mindset is, I think, also part of this broader conversation. But your point is, I think, spot on, and I think it's a good place place to land because I think it is the bridge between the two. It's about growth and inclusion. It cannot be— and we will have, as you suggest, you said it 3 times, we're going to have the first trillionaires this year. And maybe I think it's plural. It's not just singular. I mean, certainly Elon will be on that list after SpaceX/XAI/Starlink goes public. And right behind him is, you know, what's going to happen. It will be interesting to see what happens with Sam's shop and OpenAI their IPO in just a matter of weeks, months here. All of this is going to take shape. And Anthropic. And, and that abundance is going to create more anxiety. And that concentration of wealth is going to create more, I think, insecurity for even those that are the wealth creators themselves. And so this notion of sharing that abundance and having a society where everybody sees themselves as participating and fully, you know, fully, as you suggest, considered, they see themselves in the future is foundational.

Yeah, I'm pro-innovation and pro-success. I don't begrudge anyone their wealth, like, as long as their neighbors aren't falling into the abyss, you know, at scale. And I mean, like, that's— and the thing I say to some of my very wealthy friends, and they nod and agree, is that everyone is less happy in a vastly unequal society. No one wants to have bulletproof cars and private security for their kids and all this stuff. It's miserable. So the enlightened self-interest thing to do is, look, I can be successful and let's solve some problems. So that's my school of thought. Since you probably know some of these people, you probably naturally fall someplace similar. And that, to me, is something that even many of them will get behind. The caricature of some of these people is like they need every last dollar. It's like, look, sure, they probably like their money. And they don't necessarily want to port it over to the government in various ways because they might not have the highest confidence in the government. But I think many of them can be drawn into a meaningful conversation about keeping society whole.

I agree. And that's where I think we're missing that national leadership right now. And that opportunity presents itself, particularly in light of these IPOs. The situational moment demands of that. And look, if we quoted Voltaire, let's quote Aristotle. And he said it as well or better than we ever could. You can't live a good life. You can't live a good life in an unjust society. And that kind of wealth disparity, that kind of imbalance between the rich and the poor is the oldest, as Plutarch said, and most fatal ailment of all republics. So this society is just simply going to fray. And so I think this lightened self-interest, there's a real opportunity and shot to bridge that. So I appreciate that. And thank you for giving me a shot to, you know, of adrenaline, reconnecting with you, talking in more entrepreneurial terms. About the future and how we can accelerate it, but steer it with the kind of guardrails and values that all of us deserve.

Thank you, listeners. Please make sure to like and subscribe. And if you have any questions, send them to mailbag@andreyang.com and we'll do our best to answer them. Thank you. Are you really buying a car online on AutoTrader right now? Really? At a playground? Yeah, really. Look at these listings from dealers. Wow, your search can really get that specific. Really. And you just put in your info and boom, cars in your budget. Mom needs a second, honey. You can really have it delivered? Really. Or I can pick it up at the dealership. One sec, sweetie. Mommy's buying a car.

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