Understanding AI Revolution, Uncharted Special

21:28I participated in through Apple. I invested in the first cell phone company, which was through an auction of Spectrum by the U.S. government. I was in the storage area. I was in the Internet area. I didn't participate, but I certainly lived through the chip revolution. And probably as exciting as AI is the biotech revolution, which is still going on, because that also has infinite amounts of upside. Just in the last few weeks, it's really exciting.

22:06Carol Massar:A bunch of deals and things happening. Stuff in pancreas, solving pancreatic cancer and prostate possibly. And there are now 153 trials going on for dementia and some form of cognitive problem. Well, let's talk about, because you have been an investor in longevity for a while. What is, you think, the most interesting companies, opportunities, and ideas that have been coming across when it comes to longevity? Well, we don't really have any public companies as yet. And I don't think we can put it in the same classes as AI, if I'm honest. I don't see that kind of extraordinary upside. But valuations are very high relative.

22:54There are very few exits. And the valuations for these exits are not extraordinary. So I can't put it in the same area as competing with people who are investing in AI. But I personally have invested in a company that's in a biotech area working on solving the problem of radiation therapy. in solving all kinds of cancer. That's a company called AlphaTor, which has got using alpha rays instead of gamma rays, not yet fully on the market. But most of the things we're involved in are caregiving, telemedicine. We have a chain of, I'd say, longevity clinics, about 25 and call Cynogenics which is that's a very hot area today everybody wants to find some way where they can do something whether it's taking hormones or taking vitamins or whatever and living the right kind of life that they can live longer.

24:03Well we've asked you the easy questions so now let's get to the hard questions and solving the political problems of our time. Long time I thought you were talking about my book I mean political Political. Yeah. Long time active in the Democratic Party. Yeah. We just went through some primaries in New York. A lot of questions about what happens in the midterms, who Democrats will put up for 2028. In your view, what should the future of the Democratic Party be? I think the Democratic Party, it's starting to evolve. I mean, I haven't been specifically, particularly a supporter of anyone in particular, including the mayor.

24:46And I'm very much aware of the sweep. He had an influence. I think the Democratic Party is, in my opinion, a more open party than the Republicans, which right now is just, I mean, it's a one mind. I think that the influence of the Social Democrats is, if the Democrats are smart, will be open to their influence along with other elements, and that perhaps the party will be not a unidimensional party, but will have more open arms and bring in people of different, you know, some who are focused on diversity and some who are concerned with income disparity, which is an area, by the way, I know it may be surprising, but I am very, very concerned about income disparity.

25:45And what's going on right now is going to create more billionaires, trillionaires, in the working class, you know, most people in this country still have to have W-2s and earn a living, and it's hard to equate that, and I think that has to be very much addressed in the upcoming election. I think the Democrats have a lot of, I think, I personally believe we're going to sweep the elections in November, and that's because of how I feel the other party has behaved and based on its leadership. And I think it's created a very toxic environment. I think Democrats will come out in force wherever they are for any segment of the Democrats.

26:28And I think that there are a lot of good people in 28 who are sitting around and not sitting around there. They're making themselves known. And I think you're going to see, I mean, you could see another TV interview of 10 people again. but 10 really good candidates. I'm looking forward to them. I hope I can get emotionally involved that I want to go out and support more of them. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Or watch us live on YouTube.

27:10We are all trying to figure out how to work, how to live, how to thrive in an AI world. Nobody really knows what it's going to be like, how it will change productivity, and how it will become part of our lives, except for our next two guests.

27:23Carol Massar:They have all the answers. Fortunately, they wrote a book about it. The book is coming out in October, and they're going to share some of their secrets with us today. They are indeed. Lach Ananth is global managing partner of the venture capital firm Next 47. Kevin Maney is a New York Times bestselling author. He's written many books, including The Transformation Principles, also New York Times bestseller, The Two Second Advantage. He's also wrote The Maverick and His Machine, Thomas Watson, Senior and the Making of IBM. We've been talking about that he likes to write and writes about a lot of stuff.

27:54Carol Massar:They do both join us at Uncharted here in Southampton. They've got a new book coming out, the two of them, The Human Machine Company. It's the name of the book and it comes out in October. Welcome, welcome. I do feel like this idea of AI and what it means for all of us as workers, as individuals, and how it impacts our life. Tell us a little bit about the book. Either of you can start. Okay. You get a first shot. Yeah. I think we were very deliberate in calling the book the Human Machine Company. Yeah. Because we wanted to, instead of saying AI throughout the book, we used the word machine intelligence.

28:33So I think the idea there is to say we've had a breakthrough in machines being able to do cognitive work, which is really the chat GPT moment that all of us experienced. And the book is really saying just like electricity allowed us to do physical work and lighting and other things, we think that this machine intelligence is a very important utility that will change all of our lives in very significant ways. But at the same time, it's not some undefinable magic that we have to wait for, like AGI or where AI is just replacing a human. So the way we thought about our book is how does the combination of the person and the human being and the machine intelligence working together, how does that change how we do everything and how does it change organizations?

29:23Kevin, come on in here because you, like Carol said, you've written a lot of books. And writing is one of those things that I think many people would argue could be very easily disrupted by some of the technology. Have you read some of the writing that AI does? Yeah. Nowadays. Yeah. But in the future, it could be better and better. I mean, I was shocked to see what it can do in a really short, like an early iteration of it. And look, I've talked to college professors who are literally teaching seniors going off to medical school about medical writing. And they're like, it's so clear that these kids are putting their stuff into ChatGPT and they're doing it.

30:01Are you, after working on this book, working with Locke, are you optimistic about the future? Well, yes. But let me answer, there's a couple different questions there. and what about, right? So like one of the things we get to in the book is that, so right now AI and, you know, capabilities are something new. And, you know, so, you know, one company adopts it and it seems like, you know, that's got a competitive advantage because they're doing stuff with AI and some other companies. But that's going to change completely, right? Over the next three to five years or whatever. And every company is going to have their access to, you know, to AI.

30:40So then what the AI can produce all just basically becomes the same a level playing field for everybody. So then the difference is, what can the humans do on top of that? What can the humans imagine that you couldn't possibly have done before? And the same thing is true with writing. Look, you can even look at it today. Let's say that writing is going to constantly get better and better. But all AI writing is going to be this sort of level set, the same, right? What's going to be the differentiator is what somebody like me or you guys can bring to the conversation that AI is not going to be able to come up with because AI is basically trained on everything that's happened before.

31:20It's not something that thinks about something that never existed before. That's the human being role. So, look, I mean, every iteration of new technologies that have come along have automated away some kinds of jobs. It's always created new kinds of jobs we never thought of before. but it's also given people ways to create in entirely new ways. Farmers don't have to go out and plow the field by hand anymore so they can come up with new crops to do. Think of a thousand different examples.

32:00Carol Massar:When we have these conversations about mythos or something, that you are creating something that can actually think and make decisions and enact upon it. Do we need to, come on back in, And do we need to kind of think about this differently? Like what is going to be that human interaction that we have? I hear various versions of this. Like, you know, there's AGI and the ability to think and so on. But I think we've actually done some work to really try to understand what LLMs are and what they actually do. They don't really think. What they are, at least the models as they exist today, are probabilistic machines.

32:37they're very wonderful ones because they're given a question they reconfigure themselves to give you a very very legitimate answer that makes sense to you to to us as human beings based on what they've been trained on but it is not right to think about them as actually thinking at least that's the way we understand elements as they exist today today today as they exist today exist today and there are other new model variations that people are coming up with yeah And I personally feel like this whole idea of AGI is more, the definition that I'm more comfortable with is to say we don't really have to go to AGI or anything like that.

33:15For certain activities, can the machine intelligence do human-like reasoning? And that is very possible today. So I don't want to substitute that for thinking. In fact, what Kevin and I write in the book is to say practically every human job we can conceive of can be split into things that now a cognitive machine can do and then a human being can do. And this is going to happen in job after job, whether you're in sales or product or whatever. Will the machine part of that bucket get bigger and bigger as the technology gets better? Yeah, that's the beauty of it. It will get bigger and bigger. But some people might say that's not necessarily beauty if the human part of it gets smaller and smaller.

33:58Well, but it's hard to believe this looking at, you know, like where we sit now. We're kind of like in the middle of a plot that's evolving and you can't see where it goes. But generally speaking, like if you look at, we looked at history a lot to try to understand. And we also turned to a really amazing paper that we ran across. What was the title of that paper? Which one were we talking about? The Princeton paper. AI is a normal technology. Oh, okay. So these Princeton researchers did this paper. And they were basically kind of pointing out, like you used historical examples, that AI is not all that different from other breakthrough technologies like electricity or the Internet.

34:40And it actually takes a long time. The technology may change really quickly, but humans don't. And organizations, which are organizations of humans, take time to truly absorb these technologies and make a new way of working. But each time that that does that, it also creates entirely new things. Because human nature is you want to work. You want to create. You want to get ahead. You want to make money. I can't imagine this world where suddenly everybody just goes, ah, the machines can do everything. I'm just going to sit around and play golf.

35:15Carol Massar:Well, I don't think that people. Well, I don't think people want that. Steve Cohen's betting on that world. He is. Yeah, he is. He is. But I don't think people want that. But it's like, you know, when you're a publicly held company, you have fiduciary responsibilities to make yourself as profitable as possible. Completely. And so if you think, I can do this equipment. I mean, we've seen it before. Like, you pull in different systems, technology, that makes you more efficient and you don't need as many workers. So, like, I just wonder. Well, competition would also do the same. So the way we at least we are more optimistic about the adoption of AI, as you can see, and not very dystopian.

35:49I'm playing devil's advocate a little bit. We're not very dystopian about it. What we're saying is like it is going to be available as a utility and maybe the cost of it is going to come down. And maybe people wouldn't consume one model, but they consume many models to do many different things.

36:01Carol Massar:We actually had a guest who said that the cost of tokens were coming down. The tokens have come down massively, but again, many, many different things have happened. But what we are saying is that the secret of a business lies in its people, its methods, and its data generally. And AI, the adoption of AI by all the competitors in the industry still basically levels the playing field on that front. Right. And some people can get a momentary advantage and fire a small number of people, but then fundamentally competitors are going to catch up. And then what's different about you? And we talk about this example if you are writing a customer success AI for, let's say, Nordstrom or Walmart.

36:43You can't necessarily, like, what's different? The AI intelligence is the same, but the methods, their decision-making, the data that Nordstrom has is different from what Walmart has. And what they're trying to achieve is different. So, Kevin, one thing that I'm interested in is the way that schools need to change or the way education needs to change, higher education needs to change to prepare students to enter a world that is a human machine world. What do you think is the answer to that? Well, you know, so one of the things we get to in the book is that the what you might call the last mile intellectual things that people do, which is like coding is a perfect example, right?

37:24Yeah. somebody dreams up an application that the world needs and how it should work or whatever. But then before AI, a team of people had to do the last mile work, which was basically using a tool to create something. Things like just writing press releases in a marketing. I mean, that's last mile work. Those things are going to go away. And if those things go away, then what you need to teach people is not anymore like how to do that rote work with tools. What people need to learn is how to think creatively. And this goes back to like you've probably read and heard a lot of this is that like liberal arts is the new master.

38:12We're finally here.

38:13Carol Massar:We just had a conversation. I mean, Daniel Amadei talks about this. Because it's about how to think, how to solve problems. How to ask the right questions when you think about. How to put a bunch of things together, dots together that no machine is ever going to do. Those are the things that are going to be of great value going forward. And that's the way education has to work. I just hope the kids who are staying up late working on those papers are actually working on those papers in the liberal arts colleges. And they're not putting them into chat GPT. I hope so too. I agree with you. I hope so too.

38:43We talked to this guy, a really interesting book called The Skill Coverage.

38:46Carol Massar:I just have about 20 seconds left. But this is a problem that is being addressed and that others are aware of right now is that if you don't train this younger generation to have this kind of thinking, we're going to start to lose that. And if we lose that, that's going to be an enormous problem for society. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

39:36We'll see you next time.

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42:03Carol Massar:Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Or watch us live on YouTube. And we've got two voices that are key to making this all happen, to be quite honest. We're talking about Michael Loeb. He is the founder and CEO of Loeb.nyc. Noah Friedman, CEO of Uncharted, co-founder of Top Shelf Ventures. And again, sitting right here to wrap up the day. They are our hosts. They are our hosts. So we should say thank you, thank you. Thank you. Like this. Like that, like that. It's been an interesting day. We've had some amazing conversations. I'm sure you guys have been out and about talking to folks.

42:38Carol Massar:Michael, what are you hearing? What's standing after you? Well, first of all, I'm hearing that the food is great. Have you had any of the food? Do you know what? I am starving. Are you really? And all I keep doing is smelling all this amazing food. So as soon as I'm out of this chair. You know what? I'm going to bring you some. What a tease. Don't worry. I'm going to hold you to it. I had the tacos earlier. They were fantastic. Yeah, they were fantastic. I've been working hard. And one of the things about this is everybody gets a steak, apparently. Oh, yeah. Yeah, later today. It's not just a steak.

43:04Okay, stop. It's a tomahawk. Everybody gets a tomahawk. Tom Hall. What? Oh, yeah. Tom Hall. Are you feeding him lions? What's going on here?

43:09Carol Massar:All right. Stop talking about food because I'm starving. So tell me about the conversations you've been having. All right. But before that, you should know one thing, which is Noah and I share a lot of things, including we're both half Jewish. Okay. That is true. So the food is going to be good. Food is going to be good. Is that what you were expecting? I know that's what you were expecting. You're killing me. Yeah. You're killing me. By the way, there's a secret about the half Jewish thing. Ready? Okay. Yeah. Where the Jewish part is from here to here. Okay. Computational math, business models, like no problem.

43:37Okay. Down from here to here, right? Goyim, right? And if you don't know what that word means, look it up. You know what it means. Goyim. Point to me. Yeah, you can tell. We know. I'm just a shiksa. You're a shiksa. I know. Right. So, you know, we can bench press. We can do a lot of things that, you know, I mean, Jews are great at like staying inside all day, right? But, you know, we can actually do athletic crap.

44:00Carol Massar:This was not on the note. It was not. Are you guys tired of talking about bench pressing yet? I figure it's got to be exhausting. I'm never tired of talking about bench pressing. All day talking about bench pressing. I bench press AI every day. One of the things that I want to talk about, and I actually heard you talking about this just before our broadcast, Michael. And that's the idea of the sort of the DNA of Uncharted. And that's making sure that the people here are not just enjoying good food, but they're enjoying good food and conversation with each other. Because that's what it's about.

44:28It's not about meeting one or two new people, you said. It's about meeting 10 new people. It's about meeting 20 new people. It's about that network. That's what this is about. Well, let me start by saying the original thesis and what got us going in this is that entrepreneurs are an oppressed class, right? And they work like the Dickens. You know, they're 100, 120. There are more, by the way, divorces of mental health issues. And they do that despite the fact that three companies out of four fail, right? Three out of four venture-backed companies fail. And these are the people, by the way, and once you're an entrepreneur, you're unfit to work at Bloomberg or anywhere else.

45:09Because you're just incorrigible. Constitutionally unemployable. Unemployable. So you've got to get back on the horse and start something else. So it is highly risky. The pay sucks until there's a payout. Right. If it happens. If it happens. And the second most prevalent form of funding is they raid their own 401K. So they're mortgaging their future for the present. That conviction. And you dare not tell your significant other because that would be a problem. But this is for entrepreneurs because entrepreneurs make this world, our economy, go around. And all you have to do, and you guys can trot out all these statistics, compare us to the EU.

45:57The EU has more people than the United States. Oh, my God. We've got ten times more unicorns, giant businesses. Think of what you guys have been talking about all last week, SpaceX and Anthropic and all that stuff. That's not from Germany. That's not from France.

46:14Carol Massar:What's the magic sauce here in the United States? In the United States? Yeah. Okay. I've had this conversation with many Europeans, and I believe and we believe there's many, many things. Like we have this ecosystem, this capital ecosystem, which, by the way, is framed around the possibility of failure. Right. And in Europe, you cannot fail. You just can't fail. It is something you wear with you all the time and forever. And here you get a bunch of entrepreneurs. We've all done this. We've all done things that have been disasters. And then in retrospect, it was like, what was I thinking at the time?

46:52And you get them around in a circle, you give them each a beer, and they talk about it, and they say, ha, ha, ha, I was such an idiot with that one. We're allowed to do that in this country. And we have, I'll give you one stat, which is of the 20 most valuable tech companies in the world, 20 most valuable tech companies is measured by market gap. 16 are American. Yeah. So we're 4 % of the world's population, 80 % of the great tech companies in the world. Hey, Noah, come on in here before we let you guys go and Carol can actually go get some food. I'm just curious about the ideas that you have been able to interact with here, because you are one of these founders in addition to being the CEO of Uncharted.

47:34Yeah. I mean, look, since last Uncharted, I've co-founded a new company. I think you just interviewed my co-founder moments ago. And I can tell you now, having seen this from multiple sides of the table, literally and figuratively, the journey of being a founder is one of the most difficult, getting your teeth kicked in every single day. And yet there is just no other way for people that have read this way and born this way and trained this way from people like Michael, who I'm forever grateful to have as a mentor and partner. It is incredibly lonely. It is incredibly difficult and it is incredibly noble.

48:02And it's equally rare to be in an environment like this, which is not only stunning, but so potent with conversations of people who just get it. They understand what it means to go through it and build and why it is so damn important. This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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