AI Safety Timeline Takeover, Bending Spoons Acquires Miro, iPhone Duo Reactions | Diet TBPN

0:02105 days.

0:03John Coogan:105 days till Christmas. Get ready. Should we do a little bit of a news roundup? We have Y Combinator Demi Day going on today. We got Gary Tan coming on the show, 1125. Then we're going back to back with five different startups that are in this YC batch doing everything from humanoid robots to satellites to AI agents and credit cards, fintech. We're going all over the place giving you a tour of what's going on in the start of the show. up world which I personally enjoy because it's a good way to sort of ground yourself in what's happening in the in the at the early stage there's so much discussion about what's going on among the big labs and Apple obviously in the news yesterday it can be all-encompassing but the big the big story time to talk what do you want to the future talk to the future the next no that's really what it gives you a little bit of insight into what things are gonna look like in a decade some people don't think we're gonna be here in a decade.

1:00They don't. But that's okay. Coxon's one of them. Never black pill. I saw a good post this morning. Josha Vox said, if you think AI will lead to human extinction by 2030, I will take that bet. If we are still alive by December 31st, 2030, you pay me$1 million USD. If not, I will pay you$10 million USD.

1:20John Coogan:That's a good joke. Take it. There's a lot of people out there that should take the bet, I think. Why? I mean, that's the whole joke. No, I know. Yeah, I mean, with a lot of these, the arguments break down, a lot of things break down. It's also just so difficult to put a PDOOM over time because you have to time-bound it. Because, you know, general scientists will say humanity will go extinct eventually. The default number is 10 to the 100 years. That's a Google years from now. It's heat death of the universe. The stars collapse. Even in a billion years, we're going to be in trouble because the sun will be larger than the Earth.

2:03John Coogan:It will have expanded to become encompassing the Earth. So you've got to get off Earth in the next billion years. We're working on that with SpaceX. Elon occasionally delayed. I think he's going to make it before the next billion years. The AI thing, obviously, much more pressing. All sorts of hacks and agentic capabilities. Lots of debate going on. and a wall-to-wall press tour from a lot of the safety community. Daniel from AI 2027 was on Joe Rogan. It was an interesting listen. He makes a lot of good points. He breaks things down for a broader audience, and then Rogan will take him in these very funny directions, just being like, yeah, these AI agents are crazy.

2:42John Coogan:Let's talk about UFOs. It's actually like the meme. They're like, oh, yeah, like, have you heard about remote viewing? And he breaks down remote viewing for him, And Daniel has to be like, I'm a little more skeptical of that, but I'm a real believer in X-Risk. And so I think the net effect is going to be more awareness about the topic, more discussion about the topic. It might just wind up muddling it because people now put X-Risk in the aliens, UFOs, remote viewing camp. It's like, oh, it's like a fun thing that Joe Rogan talks about. It's like becomes more abstract as opposed to being more concrete.

3:15John Coogan:But I don't really know. We'll see. What did AI 2027 predict for September of 2026? He said this is the stage where AI becomes economically disruptive and starts accelerating AI research itself. We got the second part. The labs are all saying we have an automated AI research intern. Just an intern. Intern? Just an intern. Yeah, but that's accelerating and the models seem to be getting better at a faster clip. The economically disruptive is the capability. Jobs. Junior software engineering faces major disruption. People managing and checking AI teams prosper. So junior software engineering, major disruption.

3:53John Coogan:We'll see. We'll see if that plays out this month. The job market has been pretty strong. We map that there's something like 17 ,000 monthly AI-related job losses, but that's less than 1 % of the 1.7 million jobs that are lost every month. But then, of course, there are more than 1.7 million new jobs and new hires because people change jobs a lot. And so that's often what's going on. Markets and politics. The scenario forecasts a 30 % stock market rise during 2026 and a 10 ,000-person anti-AI protest and growing defense contracts. That seems unshrad. Yeah, it feels notable that we haven't had a protest.

4:33There's been a protest.

4:34John Coogan:There was a protest in San Francisco, a safety-led protest. It was not nearly 10 ,000 people. I think it was like more like under a hundred, but dozens. But yeah, I mean, it seems like the Joe Rogan experience, the national news tour, if you're going to get 10 ,000 people in the streets, like this is a key step in the chain. Well, Sheryl Crow was over on Instagram highlighting AI risk. And someone was saying, Sherry Oteri, is that a celebrity or something? says take to the streets like they did in Albania, all of us, so we can't be ignored. So there's, I guess, calls for protests. Yeah, and there was another risk incident reported by the New York Times today.

5:18John Coogan:Anthropic says it blocked possible efforts to build biological weapons. In a new report, the AI startup added that it could not determine if the research was legitimate or nefarious, leaving the company to shut down the work. So some scientists were using an anthropic model to work on biological research, and the Anthropic team flagged it as, hey, this could be in the line of a bioweapon. We don't know that that's what this person was trying to do, but we're going to shut it down because, of course, a lot of the research that goes into building a nuclear power plant is the same that goes into a nuclear bomb.

5:49John Coogan:And same thing, these are a lot of dual-use technologies. Anyway, anything else to say about Jacob Coxon, who I think will have much more news? He went on Fox and Anderson Cooper, CNN. And I'm sure there will be a much deeper dive at some point. It feels like there's going to be a – it is interesting that with the launch of the Post and the Wall Street Journal article, there was not a one-hour, three-hour podcast. Like we didn't get our situational awareness. Like I want the five-hour sit-down with somebody. Based on the interviews, it doesn't really feel like he's got an hour of content. OK. Maybe he does.

6:26John Coogan:But it's the best because you can just tell the story of the Terminator for an hour and take someone on that journey. And that can actually be in service of updating people about X-Risk. You can tell the full story of how you think things might play out. There's so many different scenarios that are the bad ending worth avoiding. You can illustrate that. I don't know. Yeah, I thought it was. I think it's coming. I think it's coming. Refresh your podcast player in a week. Let's pull up this clip. This is from Fox News last night. Their industry needs to be regulated as soon as possible. Do you work with any third parties as far as this whistleblowing and coming out?

7:06Not at all. This is entirely my own personal concerns about safety and things that I've seen personally in conversations I've had. Be serious that they think their industry...

7:15John Coogan:See, a lot of people are keying on to the background here. They're like, wait, this guy just... He quit yesterday. And he already has a podcast studio. People are like, is that someone else's podcast studio? And so I looked at the image, tried to figure out whose podcast studio is in. It's Call Her Daddy. Boom. Yeah. This goes way deeper. Welcome to Call Her Daddy. I have been so excited to meet. I can't believe we've never really met. Surprise. There's a chance we could all die. Like that is coming soon. Thank you for spending the time with me. I do expect it at some point as they dig in here based on how much.

7:49John Coogan:Yeah. Sort of, it seems like there's very much a significant push from the overarching AI safety community to make this week all about this situation. He clarified this a little bit on Anderson Cooper saying that he worked with a bunch of friends. And where's the line between friends and professional? We're all a big family here. We're all friends. So the answer could be muddled. I don't know. I'm sure we'll find out more soon. Anyway, you think he's going to launch a Neolab? I think he's going to drop a coin? Book? Movie? There's going to be something. The story is not over. Story is not over.

8:28John Coogan:There's going to be something. Maybe he launches a software as a service company. It's crazy. And then his spoon gets back. Trying to transition here. No, it's somebody just said, Sebastian says he's a decel with a crazy P-doom. That's a quote from Mountainhead. Oh, yeah. Remember? Which is now out maybe a year ago. Yeah. I remember you watched it. Which is, yeah. Yeah. But that was sort of a niche film. It didn't go as big as... Yeah, I didn't think it was a good film, but it had some funny moments. And it was about like an AI apocalypse, right? They go to like a... Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was around all about deepfakes.

9:02They go to a bunkie. Yeah. Is there a bunkie? There's a bunkie. Okay. Yeah.

9:05John Coogan:Maybe I got a lot of mountain head now. It's all about the Doom scenario was around deepfakes. Oh, yeah. And humanity thinking that there was like wars and conflicts happening, which would create actual wars. I don't know that I'm super worried about that particular scenario, but you could take me on that journey for 20 minutes in a long-winded answer on a podcast, and I would be entertained. I think that there is material there. And I did see genuinely a lot of sort of AI safety skeptics just asking for more storytelling around how things go bad. It's so easy to condense a PDOOM down to a single number, but I think people like stories.

9:43John Coogan:They want something that actually illustrates the chain of events that lead to the bad scenario, as opposed to these vague things where it's like, I have a lot of authority. I have a lot of insight and 5 % or 20%. That obviously, I mean, it does go viral, but clearly there were people that had demand for more of a story that they could track and they could falsify individual. Keith Raboy yesterday was struggling with this, where it was like, it's hard to falsify someone saying 10 % in the next 10 years. But it's easier to falsify about like, well, the nuclear weapons will be fired at this time.

10:20John Coogan:And this is what's going to happen. And this is also the job loss stuff. Totally. Totally. Anyway, we'll do a quick roundup of the rest of the news. Should we talk about Nvidia? Should we talk about Bending Spoons? What's interesting to you, Let's start with Bending Spoons. Bending Spoons acquires Miro for$1.79 billion. Yes. Paul Bonnet, a GP over 20 BC, says, but who gets the money? My usual breakdown. This is 89 % below the last round and at less than three times revenue. Whoa, Miro was valued at$17.5 billion? Yeah. That's really high. Wow. Yeah. So anyways, we actually don't need to dive through all this stuff.

11:08Investors are getting...

11:09John Coogan:Yes, but I am interested in the Bending Spoon strategy because Airtable, Miro felt like modern collaborative slides and mood boards. And then Airtable felt like the modern Excel sheet. And it feels like they're trying to maybe piece together a bundle. But I don't know if that's actually how Bending Spoon thinks about this. It feels like in the past they've been very interested in just it's a known brand with a strong business that they can run efficiently and it stands alone. But for the first time, I'm seeing glimpses of something that could be like a portfolio or a roll-up where if you have Airtable, you get Miro for free or vice versa.

11:47John Coogan:And there's cross-selling options because if you like these more modern tools like a Miro, like an Airtable, I've seen both of these deployed in the same startup. and the startup, there's always this tension between, hey, we're paying 20 bucks a seat for this, 20 bucks a seat for that, or we could just do 15 bucks for Google and we get all of them. So you actually wind up with the portfolio and I don't know, maybe the sum is greater than its parts. What do you think? Potentially, but yeah, it was very, it's just insane to me that this was a$17 billion company just a little bit ago. And ultimately, this is why I have a lot of fear around some of these later stage rounds that are happening right now because there's certain teams that are fantastic, great categories, on the path to being great businesses, and yet many of them feel so far from being on that path to being priced at$100 or$1 trillion or whatever the number is.

12:47And we're going to see this exact same thing play out right now where there's companies that are around this valuation now that three years from now will sell at a 90 % discount.

12:56John Coogan:Yeah, I'd be interested to see if, like have the metrics at Miro changed in the age of AI? Because you could imagine that people, if they need a collaborative mood board or slide deck, they can vibe code their own tool, but it's still a little bit of a hassle to deploy that and maintain it, even if you can clone it. So the SaaS apocalypse is fully averted by the sales forces of the world. and the revenue decline never showed up in the SaaS companies. And so the SaaS apocalypse was canceled. But was there a micro SaaS apocalypse that did show up at this level and that's why we're seeing these deals?

13:35John Coogan:I don't know. Do you think this is all just like a promotion for David Senra's new episode with Luca Ferrari? Because David Senra says, perfect timing. I have an episode with Luca Ferrari coming out this Sunday. Is that great? He's just like, thank you. Thank you for lining up this deal with you coming on my podcast. Promo. Now, Jason says paying 3X ARR at$600 million of ARR, over 750 customers paying over$100 ,000 a year. Cash flow positive, man. But Jamie Quint says multiple years of 5 % ARR growth will do that. Yeah, if you're not accelerating. I mean, the entire multiple is based on growth.

14:15John Coogan:So there's not going to be a significant acceleration. You've got to be growing. Yeah, it's true. So another acquisition news. Oh, yeah. Tailwind got acquired by Shopify. That's very cool. Remember, if you remember, I think Tailwind was accelerating AI software development, but wasn't directly a beneficiary. And didn't they get like sort of a bunch of people in the industry, I think. Google, right? Wasn't Logan? I think Logan was a big part of it. I am going to provide a grant to keep these guys going. I thought that was awesome. That was such a cool community moment. And interesting that they now found a proper landing spot, which is cool.

14:59John Coogan:Yeah, very optimistic scenario. We had a little bit of iPhone Duo coverage yesterday. We didn't see the crease. We had a key question in the chat from SemiAnalysis. They asked, what do you guys think about the crease? I couldn't see it in any of those Apple renders. Apple seemed to get really good with the lighting placement to not show up the crease. True, my accurate take, I don't care about this. That is not enough of a crease to matter at all. Yeah. Especially if this is a mode where you're using two apps, you don't care about the middle at all. I have seen guys on football days off four TVs next to each other with full bezels.

15:38John Coogan:Like you can see the line going down the center and they just don't care. So like this is not a big deal. Now, the interesting thing is like, will it be an issue if you're like watching a movie on this thing on a plane? I think maybe, but I think the crease will probably completely disappear when you're actually locked in on a film. But I think the bigger thing is the aspect ratio is kind of weird for modern content because we have films which are widescreen and YouTube videos which are 16 by 9. and those will show black bars at the top and the bottom, or you could zoom in and then you're cropping the sides.

16:15John Coogan:Not a great experience. Some of the demos, some of the demo video that Apple showed was super cool because it was shot in this like 4.3. So maybe you go back and you get some 4.3 content from like the 70s and 80s, and that displays really well because you don't need to do the pan and scan thing anymore. And then the vertical content will also look like bars on the side like you're on an iPad. So I wonder if that will be annoying. It'll probably melt into the background. I think people will still like it. I'm very interested in the mix. Like what percent, like will this be as popular as the iPhone Pro has been relative to the iPhone?

16:53John Coogan:Will this be 10 % of overall phone sales from this cycle? Will it be 1 % or 30 %? It's the fact that it's different. The fact that it's a way to stand out. It's their most foldable phone ever. Yeah. This was a comment from a prolific Spotify comedian. Dave, he commented yesterday, it's their most foldable iPhone yet. It is. And it really is. So really, it's like when they introduced the iPhone Duo 2, which will... Quattro? I think they're going to have to multiply them and get the iPhone Quattro. Yeah. Then they'll say, it's our most foldable iPhone yet. It has four screens. Until it's just a full accordion, like a fan that just fans out.

17:39It screens out. Yeah, the fan, the iPhone fan. Yeah. It's just like this, you know.

17:44John Coogan:Yeah, 20 different folds. What was funny is, I'm going to put you on blast here a little bit, is you come in and you're like, yeah, this just makes me want an iPhone 18 Pro. And you were laying it out and you were like, it's their best iPhone yet. It's just a great phone. They made it thinner, lighter, faster, better battery life. And I was like, this is your joke. You fell for your own joke. But it is sort of like this, it could be for some people like an anti-Halo phone. For some people it's gonna be the Halo where they're like, I wanted something different. I want something bigger. I want the best thing.

18:15John Coogan:I got that. For other people, they're gonna be like, oh, thank God I don't have to deal with the foldable thing. Just give me the cheaper, you know, $2 ,000 iPhone Pro Max 18 plus, you know, all these crazy things. Blake Scholl jumped in and said, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPad, he went to great care to explain why such a product category should exist to begin with. Apple seems to have made a pretty great version of a foldable phone without saying why foldable phones deserve to exist. I think it would be somewhat uncomfortable for them to explain why exactly you need a bigger screen. It's like, hey, we know some of you guys are spending hours and hours and hours a day.

18:51This is such a bad idea.

18:53John Coogan:Okay, continue. Just finish your argument so I can rebut it. No, why don't you jump in, John? I just think that there's cool stuff to do on your phone that is actually less brain-rotty when you're on a bigger screen. Like games on your phone. No, Bill. I would never watch Lawrence of Arabia on this screen, but you give me a screen with twice as much real estate, I'm going Lawrence of Arabia. I'm going Citizen Kane. yeah no and and and i and i agree that that is the use case yeah but i think it's somewhat uncomfortable because of the overarching sort of discussion around phone addiction and screen time and all this stuff yeah it's bad for kids it's probably not great for adults and for apple to come out it's like you know we know that you're spending hours and hours every day you know getting mindless entertainment from our devices and so we get we get we're giving you a bigger screen.

19:44John Coogan:I don't think Apple needs to touch that. I think that like the things that they promote on their phone are good. Like you can answer your emails, you can connect with your friends, you can text them, you can watch educational videos. There's a positive flip to everything that's like a negative example. Yeah. There's some game that's brain rotty, but there's also some game that's really fun that you remember. You talk about Rust and Halo. Like these are, these are core memories for a lot of people. It's a positive thing. So being able to do more of that. Plus, it's just like you don't know when you're it's very hard to plan ahead for like oh, I'm going to get caught with an extra hour waiting at the DMV or I'm going to wait on a plane or I'm going to have some downtime and I'm going to want to actually enjoy something more thoroughly.

20:28John Coogan:If you have the Duo, it's your daily driver. It's always on you. You didn't need to think oh, I should bring an iPad because I'm going to be stuck waiting this line for 20 minutes so I want to watch something nicely on a really big screen. You got the duo in your pocket. You're good to go. I'm not sold. Get me a sales job. I'm not sold, but get this guy a job at the Apple Store. Tennis, tennis, tennis. There was a match that ended at 3.30 a.m. People are not happy about it. The Wall Street Journal's headline is, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's nothing cool about a tennis match that finishes at 3.30 a.m.

21:08John Coogan:It's ridiculous. Sorry, but tennis at 3.33 a.m. isn't cool. It's ridiculous. What happened? Bill Ackman loved it. He said, one of the greatest tennis matches ever, and very few got to see it live. This needs to be fixed now. It's unfair to the players, fans, and sponsors in the sports. What is the actual proposal? What do they want to change? Start the game earlier or cut it off entirely if it keeps going? Yeah, so I'm trying to figure out why this ever is or was a thing. Hopefully the journal article can break it down. But I watched a little bit of this game. You did? I went to bed. Yeah, I think I went to bed.