Sam Lessin on Artificial Intelligence

Essays

From the Podcast

That's the key. Like, th- th- that is the key. Like, that's, you just explained the entire thing.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 157

Now, here's the funny thing, guys. This is, like, my personal take on this AI stuff and Fable. Pretty sophisticated user to this stuff. They're aboard, but, like, pretty sophisticated. I don't even care. Like, I actually literally don't know what Claude I'm using. I'm sure it's fine.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 157

I mean, I think, look, I was talking to one of our founders earlier who works on, uh, our MeritFirst testing platform. And, like, it is interesting how that, like, let's just drive hard on meritocracy, and, like, the best people should have it, open competition, et cetera, went from being kind of fringy to, like, completely mainstream. As part... I think we just have this, like, separation. We have, like, Mondami, nihilism, socialism, and then we have, like, a bunch of people that are in the minority numerically, but maybe not in terms of wealth and power, who are just like, "No, like, we want freedom, and capitalism, and meritocracy." Like, that's the trifecta. And so I just think that the world's very split, um, and that's what's making it super interesting. History says we're all about to get guillotined, but we'll, we'll find out.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 157

Yeah, like, that's the question of the year is, is there a compounding advantage against... I mean, it's ir- ironic, 'cause, like, Mark was all about open source early, right? And it, he, I think, is strategically right. It just turns out maybe to not be Meta's open source.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 157

They might be, but they might be, but for now at least, it feels like OpenAI is the weaker and the more distressed of the two, and that could just be narrative.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 157

But this is the point. This is why these are actually distressed companies, Dave. This is my point about, like, OpenAI's political play. We'll see what Anthropic does. These are, like, threatened-

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 157

I mean, the easy point is, like, when it comes to technical platforms that are, like, they... I mean, are, you can kinda talk, you certainly can talk about Apple, but they also take most of the rents off of the App Store, right? At least used to, until they've been fight, fought out of it.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 157

I mean, I make tens of dollars. There are several people who have subscribed to my children's podcast that is all AI generated.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 157

Any capitalist enterprise that claims to be doing good or have a double bottom line is, like, always gonna be deeply suspect, right? Like, that's, like, the biggest trick the devil ever pulled.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 157

Here's the deal. It's super simple. It's like America loves capitalism. Why does it love capitalism? Well, we basically had this amazing immigrant punt for 200 years. We said, "Hey, come hang out over here, your most driven, most interesting people who wanna, like, make lives for themselves. And good news, we did the Louisiana Purchase. We got all this new land for you. Don't worry about the Indians. As long as you have a shovel and can work pretty hard, you can go west and make- do really well." You know, 20 acres and a mule style, right? And so that was great for a super long time. Then we got industrialized, and it worked again. Then in our generation, you wanna fast-forward, like, the internet was a huge boon for us because it was digital terra nova, right? That we could col- colonize, become important, get rich on, et cetera. And the problem is with each successive wave, the number of people, the number of humans you need to dig shit who can- and share the wealth goes down. It's like when you have- when you build a railroad, you need a fuckload of people. All those people get paid. When you build internet companies, you don't need as many people. Fewer people get paid. AI, you have even smaller teams. So the, the reality is, is like you have more wealth, but fewer humans who are dealt into it, right? And that is just, like, what is happening with technological leverage. And so there is... Like, I'm quite sympathetic to the fact, as much as I love capitalism and I'm hyper pro-capitalist, these proposals where it's like, oh, if only we change the tax code, there's, like, some massively... I don't think so. I think the only thing you can do is have a real meritocracy and say, "Look, it's not all gonna work out for everyone, but if you work really hard, you're gonna have a shot," right, is, like, the upshot. And, like, that is why I'm so obsessed with meritocracy and its combination to capitalism and, like, what, and freedom. It's like freedom, meritocracy, capitalism. Like, is- that's the trifecta, right, that we have to protect because the world is otherwise gonna get more unequal and more fucked. And the reality is when you start chipping at capitalism, you chip at freedom. And people are gonna do that if they feel like the, if the game is rigged or unfair, which is why Sam Altman trying to give 5% of the government, to the government for regulatory capture and all this politics is so bad, right? Because all of a sudden it makes the game not a fair and open game that at least you can play with rules. It becomes a game of politics where people feel gated out or gated in, and that is, like, the worst scenario for the long-term success of the country.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 157

Well, I hope that changes though. I actually like Trump accounts. I'll say it again.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 157

To inject cash to bail them out because they're important, right? And, like, this is funny because, like, there's no cash being proposed. There's no, there's no... But it is also, like, one of those things where, like, the only time we do this is for distressed situations. It's crazy for us to not do this. So they're, they're distressed. They're distressed.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 157

But they're ac- And, like, this is the thing, is, like, if you look at history, and people are really mad about this. Like, you know, go back to '08, people were like, "Let the banks fail." But, like, in history, there have been several episodes where, like, the US has taken stakes in companies, the government.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 157

Well, I do think, I do think the contrast of that versus the, you know, the, the, yet again, another uproar about Mackenzie Scott Bezos, right? And, like, people kind of being upset about how she's treated philanthropy is, like, quite interesting.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 157

Whatever it is, it's ridiculous. But the basic point is, like, I do actually have to give Sam Altman some credit, not as a business person, but as a politician, because I do think this is, if you're in his position, where one, you're trying to sell a commodity. You're, you're set up where you have to have premium prices on a commodity and you're screwed. And then two, even within the set of AI companies, let's pretend the polit- political winds shift where this becomes palpable and, like, gets done. Of course, Sam Altman's the one out promoting it because he's, he has the least to lose. He's not a real company like Google or Open- or, uh, Meta or someone where actually 5% is meaningful, and he's not even winning the pure AI race. Anthropic is. So if your competitors are gonna lose more by having to give up 5% of the government than you are, then, like, hog wild, right? So it is one of those things where, like, very cynically, I think it's a very, very smart strategery politics move, but the problem is-

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 157

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