Jack Dorsey Talks AI, Bitcoin & The Future of Decentralization

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0:31Such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A new year doesn't ask us to become someone new. It invites us back home to ourselves. I'm Mike Della Rocha, host of Sacred Lessons, a space for men to pause, reflect, and heal.

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2:38PNC Bank, National Association, member FDIC. What technologies do you think people are kind of sleeping on right now that will potentially change the world in the next 5, 10 years? I don't know if they're sleeping on them, but I think people are hesitant with AI. Back to the first part of our conversation, like, I think people are hesitant because they're afraid of it replacing their work or what they're trying to build. And I think that mindset is going to end up doing that, in fact. And if, again, if you instead see it as a foundation that we can stand on, and that it's something that enables you to do even more with less and it gives you time back, then it's a tool like anything else.

3:33And I think that's the scary thing right now. And I think people are letting the fear keep them from experimenting with it and keep them from just trying it and having more of a closed mind. And so I think it's really important with any new technology to try it for yourself. Don't trust what you read from others. Don't trust other opinions on it. Form your own opinion on your experience. And you have to dive into it and trust yourself to learn from that experience. It might be challenging. It might be frustrating. But who cares? You're going to learn no matter what. And you'll build that learning into something else that will be useful for yourself, for your business.

4:18There's a mantra within the Bitcoin circles, which is don't trust verify. And what that really means is, like, let your experience be the guide of everything. Make your own decisions, form your own opinions, because you're going to get thousands of other ones from other people. But the one true one is what resonates with you after you experience it yourself. And these tools are available to you, and you'll be able to understand if they actually enable you or how they diminish you in any way, and you can overcome that. It's a decision.

4:56Jack, you've been an advocate, obviously, for Bitcoin, but you've talked around this topic of decentralization. And over the past 10 years, we've seen more institutions come into the space, more and more. I wonder, you know, a few years ago, Web3 was the big talk. What are your thoughts on decentralization now and how far away are we or how soon will we see it come to fruition from your early talks? Well, first, like with any of these technologies like Web3, AI, Bitcoin, like all these things that we're talking about, Web2, like whatever it was in the past, there's always going to be this like massive hype cycle.

5:36and it's going to be easy to get into that hype without really understanding the fundamentals. So again, this goes back to like touching ground and experiencing yourself. Does this actually bring value to you or is someone trying to sell you something that's just repackaged with the same thing? And I saw a lot of Web3 ultimately as a repackaging of the same thing. And what I mean by that is I saw a lot of VCs who were using it as a way to rebrand something that already existed or was still somewhat centralized and wasn't really solving the problem. And it was just frustrating to see. But I realize that's with every technology.

6:20Every new technology that really comes up always has a hype cycle. So it's really up to you all and to us to understand, again, does this actually give me time back? Does this actually add value to what I'm doing? Does it add value to my customers or not? And if it doesn't, it's okay to ignore it because it'll go away or it'll settle into something that does. I would say that the early Internet, for those of you who were on it, it was amazing. It was like, you know, this wild, wild west of like frontier of like everything was new and everything was decentralized. There was Usenet, there was IRC, there was Gopher, there was a web.

7:02There were no centralizing forces. And then all of that disappeared in like five years because of a few companies building something that was convenient to people, which was like, how do I find things on the internet? And you had AltaVista and you had Deja News and you had Google and you had Facebook and you had Twitter. These centralized the discovery mechanism of the internet. So you went to one place to find all this incredible content. But the problem was the content lived on those services as well. So you had the discovery and the creation and also the API all owned by one company. And that to me is wrong.

7:50It's wrong for the company because it puts a ton of pressure on them. And it's wrong for the customer because the company actually owns your data. And they own your identity. And you've all experienced this if you're trying to move your data to another thing or you have to re-sign up or whatnot. That's not how things should exist. So now we finally have technology to enable data portability and moving your identity around with it without a company owning it. But it's not accessible right now. It's not well designed, but it's just work. And it's an opportunity for some businesses as well, for those of you who are still looking for some opportunities.

8:28It's a way to, you know, it's something that needs to be figured out more. So I'd say we're still pretty early with it. But at the same time, there's never been more energy around it. And the thing that worries me the most is the most centralized of these services that we become more dependent upon is AI. We have five or six companies that are building very centralized services that you go to, you sign up to, you pay for. And the CEOs of these companies can change the intelligences. They can change the algorithms. They can literally decide based on a question you have how it's going to answer.

9:08And you've seen this play out, obviously. in the press. Thankfully, we have open source models. And thankfully, we have people who are pushing that more and more. And like we have, again, a third horse in the race, which is completely open and owned by the people. But we need to desire it, we need to want it, and we need to ultimately use it to not become dependent upon five companies or just one company for this really important technology, which is effectively intelligence. We've seen it with social media. We've seen it with intelligence. We've seen it with a number of other things on the internet discovery.

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12:05A new podcast exploring NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming. Is it a self-help miracle? A shady hypnosis scam? Or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A new year doesn't ask us to become someone new. It invites us back home to ourselves. I'm Mike Della Rocha, host of Sacred Lessons, a space for men to pause, reflect, and heal. This year, we're talking honestly about mental health, relationships, and the patterns we're ready to release. If you're looking for clarity, connection, and healthier ways to show up in your life, Sacred Lessons is here for you.

12:44Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike Delaroach on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Joel. And Matt. From HowToMoney. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right. Each week, we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

13:23Hello, hello, all my people. What's up? It's Questlove. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with the one and only A$AP Rocky. He reflects on his journey from Harlem roots to global icon status and discovering the hip-hop origin of his name. The ledge was on the TV. Rakim had the Buckethead Kangol join on. Pops is like, that's Rakim. That's who you named after. I just was like, damn the f***ing f***ed. I swear. Listen to The Questlove Show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.