Sam Lessin on Artificial Intelligence

Essays

From the Podcast

... that, like, you lose the fact that then there's hilarious videos of her saying absolutely batshit, just straight up lies all over the place, and the fact that she's probably mentally ill. The story's amazing. It's not about Elizabeth Holmes is my view. It's an incredible movie. Should definitely watch it.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 172

No, no, it's not the wealth tax threshold. That wouldn't work. But there's a thing which is, like, what Parker and, like, some people are really scared of, where, like, based on your voting control, you pay the wealth tax, which will bankrupt, like, the Google co-founders. I wonder if they f- came up with an interesting legal strategy to, like, maintain control while dealing with that problem.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 172

Half of the stock that I have in SpaceX is locked up. Maybe more, actually, probably 60%. It, there's an enormous cliff unlock coming in the spring, and everyone's gonna say, "You know, it's just supply and demand." If there's an enormous... You gotta, you gotta absorb that somewhere, right? If the enormous cliff, instead of being, like, 80% of the value or 50% of the value of all of SpaceX, is instead 30% of the value of SpaceX plus Tesla, right, because of how the shares go out, that is gonna be a easier pill to swallow, effectively, from a supply and demand perspective. You have all the retail Tesla investors and the denominator is just different. So that's my hot-off-the-press theory that I have not heard anyone say yet for why this merger makes sense right now. Pretty good.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 172

Unbelievable. I got a text notification, and it's like, "Hey, Sam. Here's a video walkthrough of our inspection," and it has the whole video transcribed of the whole car and all its parts. Then I get another text being like, "Hey, Sam. We noticed this car is in. Would you be interested in selling it to the dealership? Here's an offer." I was like, these guys are teched out in terms of, like, AI uses to, like, tech out a service station. These guys are living in the future of Mazda. I was very impressed.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 172

It was wild. Like, I get home, and, like, I'm waiting for them-

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 172

So you guys might like this in terms of cybersecurity. This is kind of a fun one. About a year ago, I tweeted, which then became a seed company when someone decided to go do it, a fun AI era everything gets hacked idea, which is basically you can now pay a service to take your most important documents and photos and stick them in hard copy in a mine in like the North Pole. So that's your cybersecurity. You take your most important memories, documents, et cetera, and with this-

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 172

It's kind of on the internet. What would happen, hypothetically, if you could secure a proof of work blockchain as the byproduct of matrix multiplication? Meaning you run your AI workloads, but you get a secure blockchain on top of that as more and more compute resources shift into that space. That's all I'll say for now. But number go up.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 172

For what it's worth, though, I think this is partially why there's been so many product issues building in the AI world. You remember, like, Dave, when we worked at Meta, which was called Facebook, and, like, we'd have all these features and things that didn't exist yet?

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 172

Here's the funny thing about these leaks. It's the same thing where, like, there was rumors around town forever that OpenAI had, like, done all this, like, math research and was withholding it after the first paper announcement went so badly. The funny thing for me is, like, what is the backlog that's being held in private? It's basically zero days that now private companies are holding, and they're like, "Ooh, we shouldn't tell anyone about these." But the fact they have them and internally people know about them is kinda wild too, right?

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 172

Well, I think, again, this comes down... It'll be an interesting question 'cause you'll see it, Jess, and you'll feel the art and the importance and decide whether it's the rare thing that is worth people just seeing.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 171

It's an everything app. To me, I'm kind of on the fence about it. Like, I, I really think that Jess is right. Historically, in a lot of categories, it's way easier to go de novo, especially when you have, like, humans and, like, all these p- like... But in certain things, like, there are just, like, dating... I actually backed this very small dating, agenticy dating startup, like, a year ago with a tiny angel check just to... It was a cool idea, and the... Getting traction's so difficult, right? And the reality is that, like-

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 171

I've been pitched a few dating app mechanics I think are pretty innovative, and AI does help in certain interesting ways. I think it's a hard category.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 171

But Penelope's not interested in any of them. That's her whole thing. She's just waiting for Odysseus.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 171

No, I think it's, there's some debt in it. They gave some details on it. It, it's at least, I think, half debt.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 171

But that does matter for business. I just don't think you can dismiss it too much. Like, I think there is a cultural shift that will define a lot of how the world works going forward that's happening here. There'll be a reaction to it. Jess, for your sake and business readers, like, plenty of people will still believe in, like, a return of rationality and sanity and normalcy, and there'll always be a counterrevolution that'll be plenty big to support truth-seeking businesses. We kinda went from, like, oh wait, COVID. Now this AI super cycle of "it's gonna kill us all," like, I think it's all just, like, this sweep, right, of nothing matters, this is all wild, let's all gamble, and where are we going? And, like, by the way, maybe China loves this because they're like America is getting so culturally unhinged at the youth, that we're just gonna dominate it all. I think it's, like, really hard to miss the hallmarks here.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 171

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