DeepSeek Fallout, Meta Settles with Trump, and Guest Host Reid Hoffman

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25:45Scott and Reid, we're back. We've got a lot to get to today. Let's get into some headlines now. Meta will pay Trump$25 million settlement for shutting down his accounts after January 6th. most of the payment will go towards Trump's presidential library again, much as Disney's payment of$15 million is going to do that. X, who also kicked Trump off the platform after January 6th, says it's negotiating its own settlement with Trump. Apparently, the Trump people said Mark wasn't going to get into the tent unless he did this. You don't seem to be paying anybody millions of dollars to get in the tent.

26:18So what do you think, Reid? So obviously, I think it's - that you just had there? Well, look, I obviously think that the notion of, you know, kind of this sort of payoff is, I think, is to put it charitably suboptimal. And I think that the, you know, the question of, like, the fact is when people are removed from services for violations of terms of service, they're removed for violations of terms of service. And I think that's a perfectly good thing. And I, you know, myself am a massive advocate for, you know, kind of the rule of law and kind of how these kind of contracts work. But I understand expediency in navigation.

27:03Okay. What does that mean? That means... What does that mean? It's a vig. It feels like a vig to me. That's my... Sounds like a mob move to me. Yeah. You know, I wouldn't want a nice company you got there. I wouldn't want anything to happen to it. Yeah. Well, let's hope that we see very little of that in the coming years, although obviously we have deep worries in the other direction. Couldn't he keep doing this, suing people and getting these things? Well, I guess the question will be is it's kind of like how much do people kind of respond to this sort of excess pressure on on these kinds of things?

27:47And I think that that, frankly, you know, we shouldn't want it as a society. And, you know, I think probably there will at some point be a bridge too far on it. And seeing what that bridge looks like, I think, is still something where, you know, we're looking for that bridge too far is. Well, there's two dimensions to this. The first is from a pure shareholder standpoint, it probably makes sense when the president's coming after you to say, and you make$20 million a year in operating profit to say, yeah, just make it go away. Just give them$25 million to the presidential library and make it go away.

28:26The problem is, and I wouldn't expect based on pattern behavior, Mark Zuckerberg to think anything about this, is that this has real societal implications. And that is, despite the fact Bob Iger made$45 million last year, I would argue he's becoming more and more impoverished in terms of his citizenship. And that is when a media company says things that are a fraction of the misinformation, slander, disparaging statements that the president has made himself, that happens every day online, and they agree to set precedent by bending a knee and bowing to this intimidation, it sends a chill across the entire fucking nation.

29:11I'm on Morning Joe, and I call the president an insurrectionist and a rapist, and Mika stops the show to clarify he was found guilty of sexual abuse. Liable. Excuse me, sexual liable. He was found liable of sexual abuse. Is that the right terminology? Yes, I just made—call me Mika Brzezinski, but go ahead. But look at what we're doing, all right? And by the way, the judge then went on in his sentencing to say the street term for that is rape. So what do you have? You have a group of people. This is straight out of the fascist handbook. Intimidate anyone who says anything negative about you. And if these companies, in my opinion, had more fidelity to American values and the very important role media plays in checking power, they wouldn't be bending the fucking knee like this.

30:00So is it a practical thing to do? Yes. You can't argue with that. Has it sent a chill across the entire country in what is an incredible double standard that the critics of President Trump are now feel that they're being held to? Look at the shit he has said about people that's been incorrect. So, you know, yeah, Bob and Mark, I expected this from Mark. I was disappointed to see it from Bob. Where are the men? Where are the Americans who are going to stand up and say, no, if you're not guilty, if we're not, if the entire ecosystem has never been held liable for things much more slanderous or disparaging than these statements, I'll see you in court.

30:44In this case, it wasn't statements. He broke the rules of Facebook and they kicked him off. That's all. It was not. As Reid was known. Which they're allowed to do. Yeah, exactly. So when we talked in October, I asked if you were concerned about Trump and retribution and your own well-being. And you said yes. Talk about now. How are you feeling? Because obviously you were one of the more prominent supporters of Kamala Harris, obviously a big Democratic donor. You do give to Republicans also, for which for some reason you get endless shit. I'm not sure why. I think that's probably fine to do that.

31:13How do you feel now? Do you feel in that crosshairs that we had discussed? Well, it's unclear. I'm hopeful that a bunch of my friends who are around the administration say, look, that's just kind of all rhetoric and, you know, isn't actually going to be. That's what they say to you. Yes, that's what they say to me. And so that obviously is hopeful. but I obviously it's one of the things that I think you know both me personally and we as Americans need to watch carefully because we do want to be to continue to be you know the home of the brave and land of the free and I think that that's very important to be you know resolutely against you know kind of abuses of of state power for individual interests and so you know like I I said, I went and talked to a whole bunch of people who are, you know, kind of in, you know, and around the current administration, said, look, you know, I have this worry.

32:15They said, look, we've talked to a bunch of people. They say this is not something we're going to do. I was like, okay, then, you know, let's wait and see. Are these the same people that said he wasn't going to let out everybody at January 6th? He's only going to let out, he wasn't going to let out the criminals, but then he did. That's the same people. It wasn't the same people as those. He's done that several times. He's done that several times. So there's worries. And like, for example, letting out the people who assaulted police officers is, you know, as per what Scott was saying earlier, is a terrible signal.

32:49It's basically saying, hey, you know, like if you're doing violence in a cause that I am supportive of, you know, I have this thing of a presidential pardon. And, you know, that's obviously, you know, frankly, you know, terrifying. concerning. Right. But you didn't want a presidential pardon, correct? No. No, of course not. Yeah. You didn't do anything. But here's the problem. If I'm a thoughtful guy who's high profile with a lot of business interests with a family, I would be inclined, I'm not going to speak for you, Reid, I'd be inclined to keep a very low profile over the next 12 months. Whereas the people on the right are emboldened to be aggressive and pollute and flood the zone with misinformation and bullshit and attacks.

33:37And the people on the other side of the aisle feel like, well, maybe I should just keep quiet for a while because they are removing security details of people, which is nothing but repackage violence. When you took out the head of the Iranian security forces and you ordered that strike as a general and the president, for whatever reason, doesn't like you, is removing your security detail, that is repackaged violence against that person. So what we have is a group, this is the road to fascism. Keep them quiet. Put a chill across people. I'm going to keep a low profile. Maybe I'm just not going to be quite as aggressive.

34:18Let me be clear. One of the roads to fascism, and I want you both to respond to this, is littered with calls or accusations that people are overreacting. Call me overreacting. Let me just say, Amanda loves this whole jam, Scott. She was like, Scott's on fire. I love it. She was vaguely attracted to you, I think. Vaguely is doing a lot of work there. Vaguely is doing a lot of work there. She was. She wanted me to tell you. I think you're right. But I think it's people that are very high profile, I agree, certainly aren't backing down and don't seem to be disappearing. He's right here, right? And he's talking about it.

34:56So I think the question is when Mark does these deals when he just doesn't have to, and it doesn't help them from a shareholder point of view. I really think that's nonsense. It's really, but again, we expected Mark to do this. Sorry, I know, Reed, you were, Reed was early at Facebook and has been, had been a mentor to Mark. I don't think he's listening to someone like you anymore. But that said, you and Bill Gates had been and probably are no longer, I would guess, but I don't know. Look, the thing, I think that the American people should pay a lot of attention to the removing the security detail from, you know, a person who spent their entire life serving the American people, putting himself in harm's way, you know, kind of helping secure the safety of America, you know, both locally and Americans abroad.

35:46and saying, hey, for petty reasons, I am putting that person directly in the harm's way of violence. And I think that is a, you know, an unpatriotic, you know, personal thing that I think is extremely important that everyone should pay attention to. And I think it's exactly that is I think that, you know, as Scott saying on the things that are like that is the kind of thing that is deeply un-American. Like, I think people need to speak up about. And so, you know. 100 percent. So another thing that people are talking about a lot here in Washington, at least, the Trump administration is offering two million government employees the option to resign by February 6th if they're not willing to return to the office full time.

36:27And what's being called a deferred resignation, employees that resign will continue to be paid and get benefits for eight months. This move has Elon Musk fingerprints all over it, down the subject line of the email sent to those employees, a fork in the road, which he was an email Elon sent to Twitter staff in 2022. I have been stopped by so many government employees saying, what should I do? I said, do not leave because they won't pay you because Elon still has severance issues with those people that were supposed to be paid at Twitter. It's one of these ploys to get people out the door. There's also federal employees have more.

37:02Private employees have rights in California, New York especially, but here they have more. What do you two make of this plan? It's unclear whether Trump can even offer this bio package without budget authorization if he has the money for it. They're hoping that 5 % to 10 % of federal employees accept the offer, which could mean hundreds of thousands of people. You know, you've been involved in companies that do things like this, and obviously you end up paying them unlike what Elon did at Twitter. It looks like he went around everybody. It looks like he went around everybody. This plan was sort of foisted upon people without even Trump officials knowing it was happening.

37:37um that's that was the story in the washington post today so thoughts yeah so it is a technique that when deployed with honor is is actually in fact something that has some strength in the private ecosystem um because it's kind of in the private ecosystem the way it works is if you're not committed to the future of this then now is a good time to exit um because doing and it works in the private ecosystem in part because, you know, part of it is not only am I committed to the mission of this, but there's also an economic reason to be keeping going. You believe in the stock options, the bonus plan, all these kind of things for that.

38:16Now, I worry in the public circumstance that applied here that a lot of the folks who go, okay, you know, I could get jobs in 10 different places. I'm going to go do one of those and do this. And this will be, you know, kind of depriving the American people of some really great talent. So the good people will leave, in other words, which is always a worry when you're doing this, right? When you're doing one of these broad layoffs. Yeah. And that's, I think, unlike in the private ecosystem where you actually have a, and we have a rich incentive plan for staying too, right? Here, it's like, you know, here's an incentive plan for leaving versus an incentive plan for staying.

38:55So the best people leave. And in the case of private companies, they try to retain, or they specifically target certain employees, Correct. This is too broad in that regard. Yeah. So the best people will go with the experience and the worst people will stay, correct? Or the less good people will stay. Yeah. There's a worry about a selection effect. Right. Did you notice the echoes of what Elon had done here? Yeah, of course. Yeah. And? Well, I mean, look, I think we will see many things that are the parallel to, you know, how Elon thinks an organization should be turned around from Twitter to the federal government.

39:36The fact that you're looking now where, you know, what was the leaked emails like, wait, we're not doing very well, you know, is whatever X years on it is for Twitter. you know, it's like, well, you know, should be learning from that. And that's within the standard understood commercial ecosystem. Yeah. Just today, you're not going to talk about financial results, but Tesla's results were terrible, even though the stock is going up because they aren't selling as many cars. In any case, Scott? You guys have said it. I don't like buyouts because the people with the most options, the most talented people are the ones that exercise them.

40:16I don't think there's anything wrong with the thesis that there's too many federal employees and we need to trim it and they should be subject to the same standards and insecurities and anxieties and work week that private employees are subject to. I don't have a problem with that. I think it should be based on what departments are least efficient or performance. But your most talented people leave. The people with the most options leave. It is a degradation, I think, in the quality of the workforce. It's not the way to go about this. Is there a good way to do this, Reid? Elon's using all his playbook, right?

40:54What is the playbook that would work here to do what Scott was talking about, if you had to think of it off the top of your head? Well, I mean, the parallel on the commercial side is that you actually also have incentives for keeping the good people to stay. whether they're stock bonuses other kinds of things as ways of doing it so it's not just the stick it's the carrot uh for for the for going long in your long-term commitment to the organization and it's in its in its mission um so you know uh it you know this would probably be harder and maybe not within the you know kind of uh presidential remit but you know bonuses um And like you could imagine, like, you know, the kind of thing you'd say is, hey, if you figure out how to cut 10 % of your budget, we'll give you a 1 % bonus on these kind of things would be the kind of thing that I would, you know, potentially look at.

41:51But I think it's all, of course, very tricky and difficult. And difficult in a public environment versus a private one, right? Exactly. Because what is results? Because sometimes results, people being less poor. Like, what are the – It's not a stock. You can see it in the stock market versus something else. Exactly. Right, which is difficult. Is the concept of cutting people a good idea from your perspective? Fundamentally, yes. Just because it's part of what makes, like, what are the things we should learn from a bunch of the things that we learned from the commercial side? And part of it is refactoring organizations is essential for keeping them healthy.

42:31And so that refactoring is extremely important. I'm quite certain if one looked through the kind of the federal government, one would find like, and I'm sure I'm using this as a hypothetical example. It's like, you know, you've got maybe still a weather balloon department, you know, and it's like, well, we should have one of those. We've got satellites and a bunch of other stuff. I'm sure we need one of those, you know, that kind of thing. And so I think that refactoring is good. And I think getting to that refactoring, figuring out how to do it in a good, intelligent ways is one of the things that I'm, I think is like we could be hopeful for.

43:06Maybe some good will come of this. Right. So a blunt force to it is a way to get it started. Look, I think one of the things we're going to have to pay attention to is I think the default will be massively increase the deficit. And I think that the problem should be is we should not be. We should try to reduce the deficit. I mean, if you look at the actual budget and you want to get, you know, a lot of money out of what we're spending, we're spending on debt service is one of the massive line items. And so increasing that is just, you know, mortgaging our children's future more. I mean, it's already somewhat mortgaged.

43:42Let's try to pay off the mortgage versus add to it. Right. In doing this. Well, we'll see what happens. Anyway, one of the other things that besides doing this, Elon's doing this, and this is an area you obviously came together with PayPal when he had X.com, but they're partnering with Visa to allow real-time payments through its upcoming X money service. CEO Linda Iaccarino announced the deal saying it would enable instant funding to an X wallet via Visa Direct. It will also allow users to make peer-to-peer payments. um i look they were going to do this they announced this but i'm just curious where you would um where this is going this these these ideas of the everything app and you know this was a concept that not just x has it's been going around forever i mean everyone talks about this but where is the payment space right now away from this i would never trust any anything linda yakarino's working on with my money but that's different um where is it right now the payment space?

44:41It seems like Apple dominates this whole space right now and PayPal. Well, payments is an area that at least has scale effect, if not sometimes network effects. And so and one of the things you have to get to a certain scale before you even have a viable payments network. And so getting that scale really matters. I think that we want to see a bunch of good innovation on this. It is a very, you know, kind of common pattern to kind of go, oh, the way I'm going to more verticalize and extend, you know, my service is by adding in, you know, kind of payments and banking. And we see it in a number of different contexts.

45:18I mean, Google has one, there's a, there's a stack of these and, you know, having my own background, you know, kind of doing the, the, the kind of payment space, it's actually one of the areas that I kind of look at because it, it adds to the, the, the, the flexibility. Like one of the things I really loved about what we did at PayPal was trying to make every individual able to be a merchant. Now that's now much more true in the whole world, which wasn't true before, which allows, you know, kind of individual entrepreneurship inside. And so I think it's a good area to improve. You know, lots and lots of people are doing it.

45:53Yeah. A platform built on rage, porn, and crypto scams handling your money. What could go wrong? Look, the FDIC or banks have the FDIC. Twitter has dog memes. I just, our financial institution is based on trust, that you hit a button, that they have figured out a way to get it there safely, that along the way it doesn't get sequestered, that money does not know your customer. There's all sorts of things. FDIC insurance. I mean, there are so many protocols. Twitter to me does not reek of security or safety when it comes to people's money. It might actually, the underlying technology and its ubiquity, It might be a good use case for it.

46:32But the entire financial system is a case study in trust. And I don't feel this organization has created a great deal of trust. All right. Where is the most innovative thing you're seeing in funding right now? I mean, obviously, again, I don't think I've touched, I've dealt with money for a year now. I don't even, I found a 20 in my wallet and I was like, oh, look at that. I use Apple almost entirely for all payments, everywhere I go, obviously. because I have an iPhone. But what is the most innovative thing you're seeing in this area? Well, I haven't, since I've been so focused on AI stuff, I haven't actually been looking at this particular area closely.

47:14Obviously, there's a whole bunch of things that are being developed within the crypto arena to try to have kind of ledgers and identity and all the rest of that. And, you know, the kind of the promise of that is to try to create something Something that has, you know, to elaborate on, I think, Scott's excellent comments is, you know, how do we have trustless trust, which is a trust in the system that doesn't require trust in a centralized authority, you know, whose, you know, ability to hold that trust may be limited. and uh and so i think you know that's one area that i think continues to burrow along now none of it has any of the in-depth traction that you know apple or other you know could is because you know the key thing with payments tends to be ease of use and integration into your environment um and so um you know i think that part of what stripe's doing that i think great is making it very easy to incorporate um you know kind of delaware uh corporations from anywhere or from many areas in the world and then provide a kind of a economic powering structure underneath that to power entrepreneurship is, I think, like a really good thing.

48:22But like I said, I've been so focused at AI that in this area, someone may call me after this and say, this is really good. And I go, oh, yeah, that's the thing I should have said. But I just didn't know at the time. All right. Scott and Reid, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about RFK Jr.'s contentions confirmation hearing.

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49:17One big question I've got is why, in 2025, are late-night TV shows, like Jimmy Kimmel's show, still on TV? Even in our diminished times, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, they're just some of the biggest faces of their networks. If you start taking the biggest faces off your networks, you might save some nickels and dimes. But what are you even anymore? What even is your brand anymore? I'm Peter Kafka, the host of Channels. And that was James Ponowozik, the TV critic for The New York Times. This week, we're talking about Trump and Kimmel, free speech, and a TV format that's remained surprisingly durable for now.

50:01That's This Week on Channels, wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

50:11Scott and Reid, we're back as we tape this. HHS Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is in the hot seat for the second day of his confirmation hearing. Things got a little heated on day one with Kennedy rejecting claims that he's anti-vaccine, addressing abortion flip flops and struggling with the question about Medicare and Medicaid. He's also asked some of his previous controversial comments. Let's listen to exchange with Democratic Senator Michael Bennett, who's a favorite of Scott's and mine. Did you say that COVID-19 was a genetically engineered bioweapon that targets black and white people but spared Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people?

50:49I didn't say it was deliberately targeted. I just quoted an NIH-funded, an NIH-published study. Did you say that it targets black and white people but spared Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people? I quoted a study, Your Honor. I quoted an NIH study that showed that certain raises are just pushing. I have to move on. Kennedy's own family is also expressing concerns. JFK's daughter, Carolyn Kennedy, sent a letter to senators ahead of the hearing. She called her cousin a predator and accused him of exploiting their family's tragic history. Let's listen. Bobby continues to grandstand off my father's assassination and that of his own father.

51:31It's incomprehensible to me that someone who is willing to exploit their own painful family tragedies for publicity would be put in charge of America's life and death situations. Unlike Bobby, I try not to speak for my father, but I am certain that he and my Uncle Bobby who gave their lives in public service to our country and my Uncle Teddy who devoted his long Senate career to the cause of improving healthcare would be disgusted. Okay, that was the nice part, just so you know, for everybody, which wasn't very nice. You know, all these things seem to be going through Pete Hegseth and everybody else.

52:10Any of them you'd like to comment on? The Kennedy one is particularly, it looks like he will probably get through. Same thing with Tulsi Gabbard and et cetera, et cetera, on down the line. What is happening here? I do believe a president should have pretty wide berth in terms of bringing in their own people. And for all of the weirdness and incompetence parade of some of these nominees, I think this is the most dangerous. you know you have an individual here who is not only anti-vaccine if you were to list the greatest innovations in history I think most thoughtful scientists from both sides of the political spectrum vaccines would be near the top of the list and the fact that we have now politicized it and have an individual with no science background spewing misinformation who seems to be committed to reducing or creating skepticism around vaccines.

53:07And then something that came out yesterday from Senator Warren was that he is being paid to find people to sue Gardasil, an HPV vaccine that so far has shown to reduce cervical cancer in women by 90%. I don't know if either of you've known anyone with cervical cancer. I have. My God, we have something that can prevent nine out of 10 times this vicious, awful disease. And we have the head of HHS being paid to try and discourage and financially damage that miracle. This guy has no business at HHS. He is probably the most dangerous of the nominees in terms of what it could mean long term without attribution, where in 10 years we wake up and go, oh, cervical cancer is back and reverse engineer it to this individual who is blatantly, repeatedly anti-vaccine.

54:12I think this is awful. I made my sons get it immediately when it happened. Reid, how are you looking at these? Obviously, you're making these, you know, AI investments in cancer research. This guy will be right there at the head of all these organizations that are very related to some of these things. So, look, I think the unfortunate prediction for RFK's probable confirmation is it will probably be measured in thousands of American lives lost. Right. I think that the question around the fact that he's saying, I'm just following science. No, he's not. Right. It's not only is he anti-vaccine in many, many statements over decades.

54:59He is essentially anti-science. I've heard of meetings where he is meeting with scientists where the scientists try to tell him, he's like, no, no, you're supposed to listen to me. It's like, no, no, the whole point is to listen to good scientists. And I think this will be, you know, if this confirmation goes through, I think the, you know, the senators who vote on it should track, you know, how many thousands of American lives they're willing to spend, you know, in this calculus. Because if he implements any of the things that he has thought of, he has articulated and talked about, you know, I think the cost is going to be measured in lives.

55:38Have you been surprised by how many tech people have been attracted to him? I'm not going to leave out Nicole Shanahan. She was not a tech person. She's just a rich person who married a tech person and got money that way. Have you been surprised by that? Because there is a whole strain of people who really back him in the tech area, even as they make these big investments in AI and cancer where he will have an impact. So I think that one of the, you know, the strengths and weaknesses tend to go together. And a lot of tech people tend to think they go, well, I've met him and it was a perfectly reasonable conversation.

56:16And so therefore, you know, like, oh, that's just all media stuff. It's like it's media stuff that he said that he did in other rooms that you weren't in. Right. But there tends to be this this this really strong, you know, kind of like, no, no, I met him. Yeah, I got the cut of his jib. Actually, Gates did this the other day with Trump, which was disappointing. But go ahead. And I think one of the things that's very important is to have a little bit of like, look, just how a person talks to you is not necessarily how they actually, in fact, operate in the world. And you have to apply that. And so I've had a number of tech people try to say, OK, he's great.

56:53I'm like, just look. Like, for example, in an alternative like hiring context, I prefer references to interviewing. I prefer to have both. But reference checking is much better. And it's like, I've seen the references on RFK. Like, that's part of the reason why it's like, okay, this appointment will be measured in thousands of American lives lost. Well, let's leave it at that then. All right, Scott and Reid, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

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58:02Okay, Scott and Reid, let's hear a prediction. I'm going to go first, actually. I'll be at the White House soon with Tracy Flick, the new press secretary. The White House is welcoming podcasters to the briefing room. Carolyn is running it right now. She has decided that new media, which I agree with, including independent journalists, podcasters, and influencers, will be able to ask questions at briefings. I welcome this. The Biden administration should have done it. Should have had different and not just the traditional people. So I'm super excited to go to the White House and I will be there this year.

58:35That's my prediction that Carolyn is going to let me in, Tracy slash whatever the heck she is. Thank you. Any comment? I love that prediction. And by the way, I think it's a good thing to begin to broaden the kind of set of different folks in the briefing room. I just think it's critical if you think, like, I am – this is the office of the president for all Americans to have a diversity of access to it. I mean, so, for example, you have a kind of a Democratic president. You still have Fox News, obviously, in the room. You need to have that breadth of perspective to be representative to the American people.

59:15So I love that prediction. Yeah, I know she wants me there. She wants me on that wall. Well, first off, along your prediction, I immediately read that and I sent Jim Acosta an email saying, I need you to start a podcast. I want you back at those press briefings. Yeah. This is the CNN person from people who don't know who left when they tried to put him on at midnight. He started his own. He has started a bunch of stuff on his own, and he's a great guy. We love him. That's a great journalist. So I'm fascinated by what I think is a kind of a technic shift with DeepSeeker, just the notion that there might be a reasonable facsimile of the best AI models at a much lower price.

59:55I think that this, regardless of what we find out, it was probably exaggerated. There is now, I think, a much greater likelihood we might be able to see cheap and cheerful kind of old Navy-like models. So my prediction is there's an entire layer of companies and pharmaceuticals in the consumer sector that had allocated$100,$200,$500 million for CapEx for the cost, or OpEx for the cost of AI that they were going to have to spend to rent these models to develop new drugs, come up with a better itinerary for your Airbnb stay, that all of a sudden are going to decide, wow, we're going to be able to get all of the great taste of AI with a lot less calories, a lot less OPEX.

1:00:39And you're going to see a bunch of companies that were setting aside a ton of reserves because they thought this was going to be a lot more expensive than it's going to be, recognize, take those reserves back, and it'll juice their bottom line. So I'm in the midst of trying to identify those. I don't know if it's Airbnb. I don't know if it's Johnson & Johnson or GlaxoSmithKline. But I think there's an entire layer of companies that just got great news that their capex on AI could be 30, 50, 80 % less than they'd originally anticipated? Well, I think that actually we will see a variety of those.

1:01:15I don't think it's necessarily because of like the deep sea canoes. I think that we were actually already heading towards that. And I think that the part of the eugenic future, this is commenting on Scott's, part of the eugenic future will be actually, in fact, compositions of smaller models that deliver really effective services across a wide range for individuals, for organizations, and so on. So I agree with his prediction, but not necessarily just as a deep seek response. Okay. Reid, your prediction? So, you know, I was thinking about this a little bit, and I think that one thing that would be an interesting thing that people wouldn't expect out of this is I think that that the AI agents will trend towards creating agents that will be actually massively positive for human mental health.

1:02:09And I think that the actual natural market dynamics will reach in that direction because as people interact with these agents, and I think I've already seen this from what my startup inflection did with Pi that has helped a bunch of other agents following this to be high EQ, kindness, and other kinds of things. And I think those will actually, in fact, help people feel more heard, more seen, a dynamic of interaction that is more who we aspire to be and will actually help naturally through people just choosing the agents they want to interact with to an increase in kind of mental health and well-being.

1:02:50Well, unless, you know, as you know, I interviewed the mother of the character AI. There's the lawsuit there. They can take that turn where they shouldn't be around young people, for example. They shouldn't. You're talking about adults here, correct? I'm talking about adults, although I think we also can and I think we should be much more careful about how we, you know, engage with children in various ways. That's saying it's one of the important things for the technology industry to get much better at. But I tend to think that the natural dynamics of we will prefer the agents that have this characteristic.

1:03:24Now, I think part of the thing that it can be is, you know, having even agents that are trained to be very good in mental health will also be good. So that they will, so that there are good agents. My only issue is the potential for abuse is so massive and you're seeing it. The lack of care, you know what I mean? Like, why didn't that kid, why didn't that company alert it when the kid said suicide? Like, for stuff like that, like, why was that never there? And that's the problem. and their argument is now that it's free speech. It was going to be Section 230, but now it's these agents. Like in that case, should bots have free speech?

1:04:02Like that's the kind of stuff we're going to have to deal with as a society. Is it free speech when it's bot generated? I think at the moment it's definitely not free speech when it's bot generated. Yeah. Well, that's one of the issues we're going to talk about because it will be just off the fly. I prefer kind agents to mean ones, but I suspect – this is why I love Reed. He's such a Sonny character. but I expect really mean agents because people like that, like abusive agents and that kind of stuff. It may be that they prefer agents to be abusive to other people, but I think most people prefer them to be kind to them.

1:04:33I don't know. I'm going to, as usual, take a darker turn on the thing. We'll see which our future brings us. Elsewhere in the Scott and Kara universe, this week on Prof. G. Markets, Scott spoke with Robert Armstrong, U.S. financial commentator for the Financial Times. Let's listen. In the world we lived in last Friday, having a great AI model behind your applications either involved building your own or going to ask open AI, can I run my application on top of your brilliantly good AI model? Now, maybe this is great for Google, right? Maybe this is great for Microsoft, who were shoveling money on the assumption that they had to build it themselves at great expense.

1:05:20Interesting. Interesting. Okay, Scott and Reid, that's the show. Thank you for joining us, Reid. And again, your new book is Super Agency, What Could Possibly Go Right With Our AI Future. Thank you, Reid, again. Scott, Reid us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and her Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Ms. Saverio, and Dan Shalon. Nishat Kirwa is Fox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

1:05:52You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pot. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Have a great weekend.

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