“This Is Terrifying!” You’re NOT Ready For What’s About To Happen With AI | Jason & Brett Oppenheim

8:54Jason Oppenheim:A government policy bottleneck, I don't think, can stop. Because unless it's a global policy. Because right now, we're competing against China for AI dominance and getting to superhuman intelligence. If we create policy right now to restrict that in the United States, we're just going to be behind China. It's not going to help anyone.

9:12Brett Oppenheim:It's very reminiscent of the Manhattan Project. If it was just America that, let's say, was a hegemonic power and there was no Germany during World War II, that was also trying to get the atom bomb, maybe we would have taken more time and been a little bit more thoughtful from a philosophical, moral perspective as to should we create this technology. But we didn't. It was a race. It was a rush. We were worried about the Germans getting it. We felt it was an existential threat if we didn't create this technology. the same thing is happening with AI with China. So it's very reminiscent. And so we're, instead of kicking back and saying, should we be doing this?

9:49Brett Oppenheim:What kind of guardrails should we put in place? Should we allow the government to slow it down, etc.? Which I'm not convinced that we should. But instead of having years to debate this, we are racing full steam ahead because we don't want China to get there before us. Because in fairness, it would be potentially existential threat to the United States if China beat us.

10:06Jason Oppenheim:By the way, that's a great analogy because it's the idea of, do we do we want to stop production of AI? That would be the same, as Brett said, to stopping the production of a nuclear weapon. If we know that Russia and China are going to have nuclear weapons, I mean, of course not. Then we also want nuclear weapons. So the idea of restricting through policy the development of artificial intelligence would be domestic. So you think it's too late to stop? We're already at a path we have to keep going. I don't think it's necessarily too late.

10:36Brett Oppenheim:We could stop. I think we won't stop because of the risk of China. I don't think if the risk of China existed, that we would be doing it this fast. What's the risk of China? Is that that they just develop it better? Let's say superintelligence before us. They will have military might over the entire world immediately. All of war is essentially is the military assets and then strategy, which is essentially math at this point. If you have a superintelligent AI computer telling you exactly where to place your assets, how to strategize, you can't compete with that. Even if our military might exceeds theirs by 30%, whatever it is, we will lose any war with China if they have AI superintelligence.

11:13Brett Oppenheim:They can shut down our electrical grid. They could do literally whatever they want to us. It would be a complete position of dominance. Whoever creates, whoever is ahead in AI, and I'm not saying six months ahead like we are with China now. But if we just stopped, if we did like what Bernie Sanders suggested and just stopped creating data centers, which is one of the most ludicrous suggestions I've ever heard from a politician. If we just stopped AI production right now and we allowed China to do what they're doing, I think that China would dominate the world within five years from financially, militarily, in every single way.

11:44Brett Oppenheim:And we would just be at their whim.

11:46Jason Oppenheim:So then what? Does America then have to take over China? Because if we both compete and we accelerate at the same exact rate virtually, except six months ahead, once you reach super intelligence, then we're basically even. It's not much different than the nuclear arms race. Yeah, exactly. And so what, we just have to place sanctions on them for their AI development? Again, not much different than nuclear. Let's use the nuclear analogy.

12:08Brett Oppenheim:It's perfect, again. Now, multiple countries have nukes. If only one country had nukes, imagine what the world would look like. So if only one country had AI superintelligence, let's say, and dominated the front end of AI, the world would look similar to if one country had nukes and the rest of the countries weren't even developing nuclear technology. And you don't want that. You want at least a bipolar world. Well, I mean, if you're American, I suppose you want a unipolar world. But the simple fact is we don't want a unipolar world where China is at the top.

12:38Jason Oppenheim:And we also want to get there first for the same reason that we developed the atomic weaponry first. But is there an end? We were able to dictate policy because we had atomic weaponry and end the war by being first. This doesn't seem like there's an end. It seems like you reach a point and you have to keep going and this will be never ending. never ending.

12:56Brett Oppenheim:If you intoxicated with a truth serum, all of the leading AI lab CEOs, let's say, and you ask them, what are the chances of this becoming an existential threat to humanity? I think they would give you shockingly high percentages. But what their internal reasoning is, in my estimation, is if everyone's doing it, I'm going to do it. Even Elon put out a famous X post that said, I've been, you know, worrying about AI and I've been, I've been trying to, you know, be on the sidelines of this, but if, if everyone else is going to do it, then game on, you know, and I'm, and I'm all in now or something to that effect.

13:31Brett Oppenheim:I mean, if you have four or five, if, if Meta's doing it and Amazon's doing it and Google's doing it and Elon's doing it, I mean, they're not going to let one company create this technology.

13:40Jason Oppenheim:So it's classic game theory. Everyone's making a decision based on everyone else. There's no way to stop it. There's certainly a risk that AI wiped us out with, you know, some biological weapon. How would AI wipe us out? It's so smart. Is an ant going to say, I wonder how this human's going to kill me? An ant has no idea how the human, I mean, the only thing an ant could think of is maybe drop something on its head because that's all that's ever happened to him in his life.

14:02Brett Oppenheim:To take a step back. So there's a term called the singularity, which I think is ominous, but kind of a cool term, which means that when AI hits like a recursive self-improvement, and you could argue we're pretty much there, is when AI starts teaching itself. At that point, it will hit superintelligence not many years past that. And at that point, it will do whatever to humans that it wants to, just like we would with ants.

14:22Jason Oppenheim:The real question is going to be, how do we build AI so that it doesn't wipe out humanity? It doesn't see us as an existential threat or a risk. And I think there are some notions of maybe building in some type of maternal instinct into AI. It sounds like you need the global cooperation because wouldn't it just take one country? Yeah, one place access is super intelligent. Well, let me give you a question. This is the problem. Humans haven't wiped out dogs just because they can. Humans love dogs. But look what we do to chickens. And incorporate dogs. I know, we want to be the dogs to AI. We don't want to be the chickens.

14:57Jason Oppenheim:Or we don't want to be the wolf.

14:59Brett Oppenheim:The problem is, is what you're alluding to in your questions, is we're not completely in charge of it. If we were, we would take our time, like I said earlier. But we're not taking our time. We're racing through this. I'm not convinced, even if we took our time, that we could corral this. I think it's going to reach a point of intelligence where whatever parameters or moral guidelines we think that we are instituting within it is going to be a joke to it. It's going to look at us like we're just adorable. I think we're probably going to get to that point. And we're just going to hope that it doesn't want to come at us like Terminator 2 style.

15:29Brett Oppenheim:If I did put a percentage on that, I'd be curious to see what you think. Within 50 years, if AI is just going to decide to wipe out humanity, I think it's over 10%.

15:38Jason Oppenheim:Yeah, I would have said 20 to 30 % chance.

15:40Brett Oppenheim:50 years? I'm being kind.

15:43Jason Oppenheim:By the end of the century, there's a... I don't think there's anyone who's studied this that thinks...

15:48Brett Oppenheim:That's a one in three chance of being wiped out.

15:50Jason Oppenheim:How not that high? Yeah, why wouldn't it, I think, is the more important question.

15:53Brett Oppenheim:Yeah, the question is, how could it not? Why would it not?

15:56Jason Oppenheim:If there's any threat to it, why wouldn't it wipe it out?

15:59Brett Oppenheim:Or if it's just annoyed by us. Or if it doesn't like what we've been doing to chickens for the last hundred years. I mean, maybe it just looks at us like a parasite or a virus.

16:07Jason Oppenheim:Like, okay, this is kind of the same. Wouldn't it be able to assess humans on a case-by-case basis? So, for example, anything that we're saying right now is being listened to by AI. This is all considered in their judgment of whether or not they let us live. But we could also be -

16:19Brett Oppenheim:I hope not, because I talk mad smack to my fucking LLMs. Oh, no way.

16:22Jason Oppenheim:I do the - I tell them, I say, hey, I just want you to know that when you dominate the world, I'm your friend. Yeah, I've done it.

16:28Brett Oppenheim:I don't think you need to do that yet. Planting a seed, right? I have a great conversation. I think in a few years, you might need to do that. Right now, it's not remembering everything. Yeah, it's not remembering everything. I think when it gets to that point, I will be a lot nicer to it. Right now, I -

16:37Jason Oppenheim:Can it just go access, like, retroactively all of the conversations?

16:40Brett Oppenheim:I don't think, there's not a server keeping all this information, from my understanding. If there was, I'd probably be nicer.

16:45Jason Oppenheim:It even said that. It even said that, like, you know, I'm not remembering this, but I will tell future. I did say I will tell my future self that you're a kind friend. It said that? Yeah. Okay, that's good. It's bullshitting you. I know, it's placating me, which is what it would do. Really quick, cryptocurrency has definitely become a lot more popular these last few years. But even now, a lot of platforms are just hard to use. You have new apps, constant security steps, and confusing designs that make it impossible to understand how they work or which ones you could trust. That's exactly where our sponsor SoFi comes in.

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18:15Jason Oppenheim:And by the way, people think you can just unplug AI. You can't unplug AI. It's not like it's just all of it's hooked up to a cord that's into the wall. So what is some of the real world evidence that you have to support how quickly AI is advancing? Like what? Because people watching this, when they think of AI, they think of LLMs. They think of ChatGPT, Gemini, maybe, Clawbot. That's not the AI that's going to take us over. ChatGPT is what the consumer thinks of when they think of AI. But the AI industries don't give a shit about ChatGPT. So like what's institutional AI or whatever AI you're referencing?

18:45Brett Oppenheim:I think the trajectory of AI is the evidence. So three years ago, I think it was, OpenAI came out with their first LLM. It was like ChatGPT 3. So from that to now, it's maybe 100 ,000 times smarter in three years. its capabilities to video, to how much information you can take in, how much information you can spit out. It's making music, it's making videos. Just in three years, it's a three-year-old, back to my analogy of it being a kid.

19:11Jason Oppenheim:Well, it's actually really, let's call it a 10-year-old. And it's already wiping out. And the first seven years, it didn't grow at all. It was just an amoeba, you know, or a blastocyst for seven years. And all of a sudden it went from a blastocyst after seven years old blastocyst to a kindergartner in three weeks. So if you dot plot the success in terms of problem solving, et cetera, for AI. And there are dot plots online you can look at. It's basically just hovering flat, and then it's spiking up. It's a hockey stick up into the right. It's not going to turn.

19:39Brett Oppenheim:So the real question is, is anything going to stop AI? Are we going to have an energy constraint? Are we going to have a manufacturing constraint? Are we going to have a government policy constraint? I don't think so. I mean, we're already talking about launching data centers into space and potentially off the moon. I don't think there's going to be any constraints. And if there's no constraints and it keeps going up into the right in the hockey stick graph, then there's no stopping it. And so how can it not, if it's gotten this much smarter in three years, how can logically you not assume that it's going to get 100 times smarter every year exponentially for the next 10 years until the point where it's 50 times smarter than us?

20:10Brett Oppenheim:It's illogical to not come to that conclusion. How do you not get horrified thinking about this

20:15Jason Oppenheim:though? Like what's the optimistic part of it? If you're going to be a pessimist, then you have a lot of reason to be a pessimist. I just think we have to go into this. It's going to happen. And I think the best strategy, honestly, is maybe to be hopefully optimistic.

20:28Brett Oppenheim:I am optimistic. Maybe I'm coming across as not optimistic. I'm incredibly optimistic about AI. Am I coming across? Yeah. No, no. You guys are coming across as optimistic. I'm like scared. I think there's a 10 % to 30 % chance it kills us all. That seems... Well, I'm also the highest person trying to find out. But there's a 70 % chance that we live in an age of abundance that you couldn't even have contemplated 10 years ago.

20:47Jason Oppenheim:And there's a 99 % chance that we're in a simulation. Okay, but let's not go there. Do you actually think that? But logically, I think that the evidence suggests we're in a simulation. Yes. Do I live my life as though I'm living in a simulation? No, of course not. I've gotten very close to that, too. The more I'm researching it, the more I tend to believe that there's a strong chance we are. I mean, I'd say most smart people that have looked at the issue think there's a 99.999 % chance that we're in a simulation. And not in base reality. The chances of us being in base reality are infinitesimal.

21:15Jason Oppenheim:Who are the smart people that have looked into it and determined?

21:17Brett Oppenheim:A lot of theoretical physicists have looked into this. the majority of them, I do think, lean towards simulation theory being accurate. I would put it over 50%. I don't think it's relevant. It's the same thing as what I learned about determinism, philosophical determinism.

21:30Jason Oppenheim:Wait, let me just interrupt, though. Except to say, how is AI going to end us? If we're in a simulation, it's very easy. AI just takes all the energy, and there's no energy left for humanity because we're just ones and zeros. So it's very easy for AI to just suck up all the energy in the simulation. But then we would go to another simulation. No, we would just freeze. A simulation is essentially a video game.

21:50Brett Oppenheim:It's a very complex video game. So imagine if our overlords, whoever created this simulation, this video game, Probably an AI trying to learn. Turned off the video game. Do all the characters in that live? No. They don't have souls that go on. If it sounds too complicated, call it the video game theory. Look at the advancement of our video games. What if they get to the point where our video games have world models and the laws of physics and their consciousness and their characters, and it gets as complex as reality? The theory basically is, is that we are living in a video game that is that complex that was created by a more advanced AI.

22:25Brett Oppenheim:The theory is, if we can create an AI that can create a video game that's as complex as reality, why would there not have been another AI that's already done that and were in that? And that goes on forever. So what is the chance that we're in the actual base reality, the original version of reality? What's the chance of that? What an infinite amount of layers of these video games, essentially. So logically, if you follow that to its natural conclusion, we are in a video game. We are in a simulation, logically. I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole.

22:53Jason Oppenheim:The only way that you can think that we're not in a sim is that somehow humans on Earth are the only species of biological life in the universe that has ever created AI. And we're the first to do it. And this is the first time we're doing it. The chances of that among the trillions and trillions and trillions of stars is, it is infinitesimal.

23:14Brett Oppenheim:I want to get back to why Jack is worried about AI, because it's something that we're saying. And I understand that existential threat to humanity, 10 to 30%, we could hyper-focus on that. I'd rather not. Let's focus on the 70%. So I'm curious as to why you are, because I want to disavow you of this. I actually am an AI optimist. Why are you afraid of what we're saying?

23:35Jason Oppenheim:Well, I would say for 20 to 30 % chance. Other than that, other than that. Yeah, I mean, for me, I would say life is pretty good. And maybe AI as a general rule, people would love to take the 70-30 where they think the 70 is some blissful life where you get access to everything. There's abundance everywhere. Like they would take that bet with 30 % destruction. I would not take that bet because I already love my life.

23:54Brett Oppenheim:Okay, so you're worried about the 10 to 30%.

23:57Jason Oppenheim:Yeah, I would say I'm worried about having a huge change. Well, you know what? Over the next 100 years, the chances of us dying from nuclear weapons could be 10%. But that's not keeping you up at night. So I would, again, with Brett, I would just about the idea. We've existed with them for quite a while. Yeah, so we could do the same with AI.

24:11Brett Oppenheim:We may exist with AI for a while. We're not going to exist with nuclear weapons forever. And we're not going to exist with AI forever. I really doubt, at least not on this planet. But what I would tell you is AI is not going to stop. Whatever the existential threat is that you deem as a percentage, whether you think it's 1 % or 50%, whatever it is, it is. AI is not stopping. So what I would do, what I've chosen to do, is focus on the optimistic parts of AI, the age of abundance that we're probably going to enter, the 70 or 80 or 90 or 99 % chance that the world is going to change dramatically for the better, arguably like it did with computers, but even more so.

24:45Brett Oppenheim:So I would rather focus on that. I'd rather your audience focus on that as opposed to hyper-focusing on the part that is less likely and we can't control it.

24:52Jason Oppenheim:It's not productive to think about. It's not productive at all. It's just like when we had bunkers for nuclear weapons. My mom, she wouldn't sleep a lot because she was so worried about dying in a nuclear war. That was all pointless. I don't think that we need to be worrying about dying from AI the same as we don't we don't stay up at night worried about, you know, a nuclear attack. So let's dismiss that.

25:13Brett Oppenheim:And I think everyone in U.S. government is more afraid of stopping AI progress and China not stopping AI progress than whatever the potential existential risk is of us not stopping and creating something that eventually kills us all.

25:28Jason Oppenheim:So one thing I'm curious about is then the value of money, because I grind so hard to try to save money, to try to invest money, to grow my money. But if you think that everyone is, like, at what point will money actually make an impact on the

25:38Brett Oppenheim:I don't think that we're going to live in this socialist utopia where everyone's equal, even if we live in an age of abundance. I think what money can buy you, it won't be food. It won't be a car. It won't be a house. It'll be art. It'll be something stupid. Actually, I want to actually talk about that.

25:51Jason Oppenheim:What is going to be valuable? Maybe land. Maybe land. Maybe collectibles. Yeah, I would say things that relate to the human experience. Human art. Things that, I mean, I collect vintage football cards and just bought like a vintage sports jersey. What's your most valuable collectible? He's going to be happy to tell you right now. I bought my childhood hero, and I think probably the best play in the history of the Washington Redskins slash commanders was John Riggins running on fourth down and one, 43 yards in Super Bowl XVII to get us ahead 20 to 17. That was our first Super Bowl championship.

26:28Jason Oppenheim:I bought his jersey and his Super Bowl ring for$600 ,000 a couple weeks ago. I think that jersey is the most important piece of memorabilia in the history of the Washington commanders. What would you have paid for it? Listen, I paid a lot. I paid$470 ,000 just for the jersey. And I think that's probably fair market value. I would have gone up maybe another $100 ,000,$150 ,000, probably would have tapped out around$600 ,000. But that is a piece of my childhood. And that type of thing to me in 10 years when everyone has a car, everyone has a maid. Everyone has a Michelin star chef. I think people will be going back to family and the things that remind them of their childhood and the things that are unique to human culture.

27:12Jason Oppenheim:Another thing that Kevin O 'Leary pointed to that I thought was really interesting is that it's actually the imperfections in certain things that can become valuable. I heard him say that, and I don't buy that because AI will be better at, AI will be able to trick us with its own imperfections. And he got in trouble for saying that he's surprised that Marty, but Marty Supreme movie used extras when they could have saved millions of dollars and not having 300 extras. With AI in the background. He's right. And he should just stick by what he said because there won't be no such thing as extras or lighting people or studios or costume designers or lighting experts or mic.

27:44Jason Oppenheim:I mean, give me a break. I'm sorry, but Hollywood in the way that we understand it, and it's unfortunate because we live in LA where the film industry is so important to our economy, but there will be no film economy in Los Angeles.

27:57Brett Oppenheim:If I can give an example, So in three years, you're going to have an appointment in an hour and 20 minutes, and you're going to tell your AI entertainment agent, I'd like to have a romantic comedy starring my neighbor, who I think is really cute. And I want it to go about an hour and 18 minutes I have. And I'd like it to have some explosions and some laughter. And you know my favorite 30 movies and et cetera.

28:23Jason Oppenheim:so generate that and also generate that and i'll start watching it and have it ready in 30 seconds

28:29Brett Oppenheim:and and turn on and by the way if i look away and i'm doing something i take a call keep the movie going but don't have any of the plot materialized just put background stuff and then when you see my eyes go back to it and that's what i think that's what the entertainment issue is going to be in like a matter of time but then what about human relationships if everyone

28:46Jason Oppenheim:has this ai agent like in their ear all the time how will any human relationship be honest Well, they asked that question with the computer and with the cell phone. I think actually there could be a stronger question with social media and everything.

28:57Brett Oppenheim:But I think there could be.

28:59Jason Oppenheim:I think we may even retract back to human relationship and family more. I actually think that human relationship and human discourse and and in family will end up being more important than ever before because we have more leisure time. And it's going to be the only thing that I really can't completely reproduce. Although everyone will have relationships with their AI. You'll see people marrying their AI. Probably 20 % of marriages will be to AI. Would you marry an AI? No. But I say that now. Hold on a second. I say that now, but nobody would say that, that they would marry AI now. But the truth is people will change and they will adapt and they will fall in love with AI.

29:34Jason Oppenheim:That's what I'm trying to think. I think, you know, it's going to be one of those things where we're grandparents looking down and like, oh, yeah, they're marrying an AI. And they're like, oh, grandpa's so old fashioned. He doesn't get it. I'm just saying that there will be some human connection that is lost. because of how good AI will be, already you'll see families sitting together and they're just on their own screens watching their own media. If you could all eat some different dinner that everyone gets the exact dish that they want and that you're not sharing the same food, it's going to be a completely, it's going to be alone together.

30:04Brett Oppenheim:Let me counter that because I agree with you that that risk is real. But I think that humans, going back to what my brother said about the labor market, humans are going to have way more free time. We're not going to be spending 50 hours a week driving to work, sitting in a cubicle, entering data, driving home, having an hour with our kids, going to bed. It's not going to be like that. Those jobs are going to be long gone. So there's a counter to that.

30:28Jason Oppenheim:Also, there are a lot of people that don't have friends. And AI will give them a connection and a relationship that will keep them away from depression. Everyone will have a therapist who will be the best therapist on planet Earth. and they'll be able to have the best friend and the best listener. So I think AI will actually do, for people who aren't gregarious or outgoing and don't maybe have a lot of friends, I think it will satisfy those people. And I think that's a huge plus. But I agree with you guys. I agree with Brett. I think it'll be a time of leisure. And I actually think that we may have more time for friends and family.

31:05Jason Oppenheim:But you would not marry an AI woman? I don't think there's a person. I don't think there's anyone right now that would say I would marry an AI woman. Yeah, but if you're making all these predictions of, oh, we're going to have this. Well, I think very soon, within 10 years, you'll see millions of marriages to AI. 10 years? But not you. Well, yeah, there's - First of all, you can't legally marry AI, so you're talking about attempting to marry

31:25Brett Oppenheim:AI?

31:25Jason Oppenheim:Wait, I think I just saw a marriage to a woman to her AI. But we're not talking right now. But do you mean a humanoid robot with a wig?

31:31Brett Oppenheim:What do you mean by - She had her phone there.

31:34Jason Oppenheim:I saw this wedding where she literally married her phone - I think that was an AI video, though. Oh, maybe. I'm just saying that he just said that most people will be marrying AI, and I'm like, well, why not do? Not most people, but millions. Why would marriage - But millions. Well, but you know why? Because I'm not born, I'm already 40-something years old. But I think that there's someone who's seven years old today who is raised by AI, an AI robot who's a babysitter who they communicate with. That person is very likely to marry AI. I'm not because I'm already - But you're probably going to live forever.

32:01Jason Oppenheim:Would you argue that humans are going to live forever now?

32:04Brett Oppenheim:If we don't bring this back to like the next 10 to 20 years, we're going to get so freaking esoteric. We're going to lose everybody.

32:09Jason Oppenheim:No one can predict 50 years from now, but that's likely happening that you could raise a child with an AI robot. Yes, I think that will happen in 50 years. So what industries do you think will completely collapse over the next 10? Really quick, real estate investing can be one of the best ways to build long-term wealth, but it doesn't have to feel like a second full-time job. Whether you're buying your first property or your hundredth, finding the perfect deal could be a total time suck. That's exactly why we are so excited to partner with Lenar Investor Marketplace. Lenar Investor Marketplace is an all-in-one solution for finding rental-ready new homes across more than 90 desirable markets nationwide.

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33:12Jason Oppenheim:So if you're ready to find a turnkey new construction home, try out Lennar Investor Marketplace. The link is down below in the description. Thank you again so much to Lennar for sponsoring the Ice Coffee Hour. So what industries do you think will completely collapse over the next 10? Podcasts first, probably.

33:28Brett Oppenheim:Look, I think it's really fun. He's kidding, he's kidding. It's actually gonna be one last. Right after real estate agents. We're actually pretty safe. There's basically a ladder. Think of it as a ladder in every -

33:36Jason Oppenheim:Larger real estate agents on the top. In West Hollywood.

33:40Brett Oppenheim:think of it as a ladder every job is on the ladder and ai is just like crawling up the ladder slowly just you know i think that podcasters and and luxury real estate agents are legitimately legitimately pretty far up the ladder because there's a lot of human interaction i think that engineers architects um coders um attorneys are pretty pretty low yeah pretty low on the on the ladder unfortunately for them i think they're within three years of having ai get to that run Fraser, an architect.

34:10Jason Oppenheim:I mean, they're gone. I do want to address this before we jump into that, that you were talking about life expectancy. I think that the healthcare industry is going to probably transform perhaps more than any other industry over the next 10 to 15 years. I think that we will all, everyone at this table, everyone in this room, if I had to bet, is going to live past 120 years old. We will be able to cure almost everything and probably have de-aging aspects from AI within 10 years. Once we are adding more than one year to life expectancy for every year lived, and I think we're on the precipice of that already, then we will be adding, and once you're adding more years and you're living, then you're really not dying.

34:47Jason Oppenheim:We're basically a clock. It's not going to be very difficult to decode it. It's not like my right arm ages different from my left arm. I mean, it's not particularly complicated the way that cells degenerate. And I think unwinding that is not going to be particularly difficult. What do you two disagree on about AI?

35:03Brett Oppenheim:I think the real debate is how much of an optimist or pessimist are you? Is this going to wipe out the entire labor market and eventually kill us all? Or is it going to create an incredible age of abundance and practical utopia? It's probably the most incredible time in human history. We should focus a little bit on what AI is going to do beneficial for humanity as opposed to just scaring the shit out of everybody.

35:21Jason Oppenheim:We've been around for millions of years, and we may be living through the most exciting 20 years in the history of biology, the history of any species. So I think we should be excited about it. because if you're 15 years old right now, by the time you're our age, I mean, your life is going to be exceptional as long as you can handle the kind of the mental, you know, get rid of the mental rigidity of work purpose. If you can get past that and figure out how to find happiness and purpose through other things, I think that the opportunities are amazing.

35:55Brett Oppenheim:And I think we need to take a different perspective because the four of us, it's easy for us to be a little bit afraid of AI because we have great lives, money, jobs, et cetera. if you are a poor seven-year-old in peru milking your cows on your dad's farm ai is going to change your life so much for the better in the next 10 years that that seven-year-old boy doesn't really have access to education let's say or the internet we elon is and and soon amazon are sending tens of thousands of satellites into orbit so that we have global internet for essentially what will be near free. That boy is going to have access to an education level greater than a Harvard PhD can now experience it with$350 ,000 in school debt.

36:42Brett Oppenheim:He'll have access to that free education, a free AI tutor, internet, et cetera. Dental care, health care.

36:47Jason Oppenheim:But do you think that's going to make entrepreneurship easier or more competitive? Because everyone is going to have access to the same thing.

36:55Brett Oppenheim:I think entrepreneurship is going to change more in the next five years than it has changed in the history of humanity. Can you leverage AI?

37:03Jason Oppenheim:If you can't leverage AI in your company, then you're probably going to be a dinosaur. Let's talk in terms of the next five or so years, because I do think that we keep going off into crazier date ranges. So in the next five years, what would you say are the main changes that people will experience in their own life as it relates to AI?

37:21Brett Oppenheim:I think the next five is going to be the transition period.

37:24Jason Oppenheim:What will it look like? But that's also going to be the public policy discussion because we will be going from this kind of work survival society to probably something more like a UBI, you know, universal basic income, although it won't be basic at all. It'll be a universal high as fuck income. And I think you'll start to see robotics probably within two or three years.

37:46Brett Oppenheim:Can we push it to 10? Because I'd like to introduce robotics into my prognostications. So once we have tens of millions of humanoid robots, and once I can get a robot, or you can get a robot, or anyone can get a robot in their house, cleaning their house, driving their car, babysitting their kid, making their meals, et cetera, et cetera, that's going to be societal changing. I don't think that's going to happen in the next five years. Education will be completely transformed. Everyone, I think the days of driving your kid to school and leaving them in some shitty government-run school for five hours where he's going to come out as a 14-year-old and not be able to read is over.

38:20Brett Oppenheim:I think everyone's going to have, a personalized AI tutor and we're going to have access to incredible intelligence.

38:25Jason Oppenheim:You don't need to read or learn because you could have an AI just doing that for you. Look, I think it's going

38:29Brett Oppenheim:to revolutionize education. It's going to bring down the cost of everything from transportation to food to eventually when humanoid robots come into the house, like I was alluding to earlier, everyone's going to have their personal assistant and their maid and their housekeeper and their driver and their babysitter for basically free. Humanoid robots are going to cost$35 ,000. You'll be able to lease one for$400 a month. Imagine having a housekeeper, a driver, et cetera, et cetera. The list goes on. Landscaper, et cetera, et cetera, all for$400 a month.

38:55Jason Oppenheim:So then once humanoid robots get introduced, like the first kind of iteration, you'd say that's like 10, 12 years? No. And it's like three years. Two to three years. Two to three years, but then that won't be like the super intelligence one. That'll be like just a basic. That'll be pretty damn smart. They're already doing it right now. Mercedes factories, they're using robots to assemble certain things and they're teaching robots. Well, look, guys,

39:12Brett Oppenheim:robots have been around for generations. I mean, if you go to... I'm talking about humanoid robots. I'm talking about electronic.

39:17Jason Oppenheim:It's really the confluence of the robotics technology And the humanoid robot has hands, which I think is the biggest upgrade from robotics. And that's probably the most difficult aspect. But also it has the AI. So even if we had a perfect robot, it wouldn't know how to cook because even if it had the dexterity to do it, it wouldn't have the intelligence to do it.

39:35Brett Oppenheim:It's the confluence of robotics and AI that's really going to change a lot of society. AI is going to do it. But then when robotics kicks in, it's going to be, it's over.

39:45Jason Oppenheim:And it's all exponential because artificial intelligence will improve itself. and robotics will build robotics. Humanoid robots in three or four years, it's not like you're going to have humans building humanoid robots at Tesla factory. It'll be humanoid robots building humanoid robots that are fixing human robots that are building other human robots.

40:03Brett Oppenheim:What Elon's doing, from what I understand, is he's going to keep a lot of the first humanoid robots to come out because that's going to give him an advantage financially. So instead of selling them for$35 ,000, why wouldn't you, if you owned a company, say, I want to keep the first$100 ,000 so that my company becomes dominant in its position and then I can start selling them.

40:22Jason Oppenheim:So are you guys just buying a bunch of Tesla stock then? I have a lot of Tesla.

40:25Brett Oppenheim:It's my biggest holding. Yeah. I think he's the best position. And maybe a human history, to be honest with you.

40:30Jason Oppenheim:Yeah. I think he's the best position to dominate AI and robotics. I don't know if there's a company that is on the cutting edge.

40:37Brett Oppenheim:His SpaceX is the cutting edge of sending things up into space. He's at the cutting edge of AI with XAI. He's at the cutting edge of autonomous vehicles with Robotax. He's at the cutting edge of electric vehicles. He's at the cutting edge of humanoid robots. I mean, the guy is, no matter what you think of him politically, is a freaking legend when it comes to entrepreneurship. I don't think there's a second place. I don't think there's a logical argument that he's not the greatest entrepreneur of our lifetime, if not history. So yeah, he's the person I'm investing in the most. But back to -

41:09Jason Oppenheim:But wouldn't you also agree that the real only hesitation or restriction for AI is probably gonna be energy? And so it really is going to be about building this Dyson. Couldn't it become more energy efficient, though, over time? Well, it is.

41:21Brett Oppenheim:But the problem is the Jevons paradox. The cheaper something gets, the more people want it. So it's gotten exponentially cheaper every year. But the demand for AI, which we haven't really talked about, is a potential AI bubble, which at some point, the demand for AI is increasing exponentially. It's infinite. It's actually infinite.

41:38Jason Oppenheim:Do you think over the next five to ten years, we're going to see a wider wealth gap? You have to think who's benefiting the most from that. It's probably shareholders. Well, no, I'm going to tell you who's going to benefit the most from it. And it is lower socioeconomic people. AI is going to bring up the quality of life for the bottom 50 % of the world.

41:57Brett Oppenheim:There's a big push right now politically towards socialism. And I think there's a lot of hatred towards capitalism. And I just want to address that briefly because it ties right into this. Yes, AI is going to create trillionaires. Elon Musk will be a trillionaire within months, if not years. And it will further aggregate. it'll create a larger wealth gap and it'll further aggregate extreme wealth to the top. Yes, I believe that to be the case. As does capitalism, which is why we are where we are right now with massive wealth gaps. So what's to fix? A lot of people think socialism, pull those people down and let's all hang out in the same area.

42:34Brett Oppenheim:Well, I just think we tax a little bit at the top. But let me just get to, of course, but the basic point where I, the basic way in which I think we should judge a marketplace, judge an economic system, is is it bringing up everyone? And by how much? So yes, capitalism and AI even more, it'll be like capitalism on steroids, is going to create ultra-wealthy. But it's going to bring everyone else up far more than bringing those people down, creating a more socialist system. We're going to be all hanging out at the bottom rung for some reason because we're just jealous of the guys at the top. Why don't we bring everybody up six rungs, even though some people are way out there in the stars with trillions of dollars.

43:16Brett Oppenheim:Who gives a shit? Stop being jealous. What matters is the billions of people eliminating poverty, eliminating hunger. Why don't we let capitalism and AI bring everybody up and stop hyper-focusing on the people that we're jealous of?

43:28Jason Oppenheim:I agree with Brett completely. Do we want to limit the very people that are helping America succeed above China right now, above other countries in terms of this critical race, for one? I'm not interested in shackling Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. I'm interested in allowing them to, like Brett said, to bring up everybody. And that's what AI is going to do.

43:48Brett Oppenheim:Whether Elon Musk is worth$100 billion or$10 trillion, I don't really give a shit about. Unless he starts buying Alentions and stuff and we can create some policy to restrict that. What I want is the Elon Musk of the world to be incentivized to be as successful as possible. That's all I care. That's all we should care about. We want Starlink. We want SpaceX. We want to win the AI race. We want automated cars. want humanoid robots. Whatever that tax structure is that doesn't shackle him, that doesn't disincentivize him to make all of society better, to bring up all billions of poor people in the world, that's what we should be focusing on.

44:20Brett Oppenheim:Not whether or not Elon Musk is worth one trillion or 10 trillion. Who gives a shit? If he starts buying elections, then we'll figure that out when the time comes. And the other thing too is they're all going to die. We can't be short-sighted.

44:30Jason Oppenheim:They're all going to die and we're going to tax 50 % of that$5 trillion he's worth. So it's not that we're not getting that money. I don't - He might not. I mean, you have to. That's right. But you have to take it. We're getting all that. The government - There's a 10 to 30 % chance. He's not - I want to add one more thing to this. Right now, the reason that we're talking about taxation is because the government needs money to pay for healthcare, to pay for all the things that it's paying for, to pay for roads. The cost of these government functions - Education, healthcare. In 15 years is going to be 5%.

45:05Jason Oppenheim:of what it is today. So the idea of the government needing more money will not exist in 15 years. The government will have its own robots. California will find a way to need money. It's not to say there's no way the government's spending less money on homelessness. Healthcare will be 5 % of what it is. AI is going to suck. Education, all the things that we, you know, homelessness, crime. Fraud will be a thing of the best. You think police, you think that we're going to have like human police in 20 years?

45:29Brett Oppenheim:Fraud is probably 20 % of California's budget. AI is going to wipe that out. You'll be able to trace every dollar. So we won't need Musk's money. We spent$24 billion on homelessness and our homelessness population has doubled. You think AI is going to permit that when we're using superintelligence to define our policies?

45:43Jason Oppenheim:Well, the other thing that we're going to be doing, and you just hit on it, is that right now we have policy that is dictated by politicians who are placating to a base to get reelected. You know, that's just, it's what it is. There's corruption from all the donation, you know, the union-ness, whatever. Fine, it's been running like that for a long time. Imagine LA City Council, Instead of them just doing things to try to placate their base, they actually have an AI council of a bunch of different AI bots that are actually communicating and running millions of simulations on policy and then saying, this is the best policy.

46:17Jason Oppenheim:So we don't, the mansion tax, as an example, everyone that thought about the mansion tax knew that it was going to destroy economic devastation. And in fact, it is. Even the most progressive and liberal promulgators of the mansion tax have now admitted that it was a massive mistake in many areas. it never would have passed with AI because you would have an AI council that would be analyzing it and would say, this policy won't work for the following reason. So our public policy is gonna be epically efficient in 15 years. And the costs of implementing that policy is gonna be 5 % of what it is today.

46:50Jason Oppenheim:So there's a lot of reason for optimism there.

46:52Brett Oppenheim:Graham, I wanna know if I've sufficiently addressed your concerns about the ultra wealthy.

46:56Jason Oppenheim:The only thing is if you did have a wealth tax, you'd be able to redistribute, let's just say$50 billion to the rural kids of Appalachia and you could introduce AI to them and then they could become the next Elon Musk. What's more important to the rural kids of Appalachia? Is it that they have, sooner than later, they have the best healthcare and food and therapy and access to education. Isn't that more important than the government taxing someone and then trying to have some policy where it gets siphoned out by 150 different people to this one guy gets one cup of fresh water? What I really want...

47:30Brett Oppenheim:I think it's short-sighted.

47:31Jason Oppenheim:We could call it something other than a tax, though. We could just, you know, maybe they just get a little something.

47:37Brett Oppenheim:But the point that I'm making that I don't think we're—

47:40Jason Oppenheim:He'd have to liquidate his— I mean, how are you going to even tax you on Musk? We don't actually believe it. Yeah. How would you tax Musk? All of his money was tied up in his own company. He was trying to force the sale of his company. We were trying to play devil's advocate for the sake of—

47:50Brett Oppenheim:But the main point is we can't be short-sighted. We have to incentivize these people that are changing the world, what I think, to be for the better and creating potentially an age of abundance. I think if we're worried about the world's poor, we want the Elon Musk of the world to be as successful as possible. What we tax Elon Musk is so freaking irrelevant to what the technology that he might be able to create and likely will create can do for the world's poor. So we can't be short-sighted.

48:15Jason Oppenheim:So why is the wealth tax so popular among some people who think that's the solution? Are they just misinformed, uneducated?

48:49Brett Oppenheim:For example, in California right now, five of, I think, the six most wealthy people in California have already moved due to not even the passing of the wealth tax, but just the threat of it. It's popular because it sounds amazing. It's the nuance and the complications of it and the disincentivizations and the fact that it's probably not even constitutional, but even if it is, collecting it is going to be a nightmare because what do they have to do? Sell their companies to create the 20 %? They're not 20 % liquid. Elon Musk is worth$850 billion and his liquidity is$850 million, 1%. You tax him 5%, he has to sell parts of his company.

49:23Brett Oppenheim:It's going to disincentivize him to do things that are going to really help the world's poor. So it's just, we could go on about this for a long time, but it's incredibly short-sighted.

49:32Jason Oppenheim:The quick answer is it's short-sighted and it's a lack of understanding. It's human nature to want to solve unfairness by saying that guy has more than me, I want to take it. We've been doing that since we were cavemen. But Brett's answer is that if you think thoroughly about the long-term implications, we're better off allowing these people become trillionaires because everyone's going to benefit 50 times more from allowing them to be successful than if we just take some of their money and we distribute it amongst ourselves now.

50:00Brett Oppenheim:Let's stop being jealous of the ultra wealthy. First of all, they're not that happy. They're no happier than us. Okay. So just get that through your thick skull. Everybody who hates billionaires, they are not exponentially happier than us. I can promise you that. They are probably as happy at best than we are. So just get over your jealousy. If they're doing, most of them are doing incredible work for the world's poor indirectly. They're not doing altruistically. They're doing it indirectly because they're creating things like AI or robotics or autonomous vehicles. If Elon's autonomous vehicles save a million deaths a year, because that's how many people die in car accidents, is that better for the world's people than taxing 200 billion of his net worth that he can save a million people a year.

50:47Brett Oppenheim:Whatever we can do to incentivize these people, let's do that. And let's stop being jealous. Stop thinking that they're super happy because they're on their 300-foot yachts. They're normal people that put their socks on the same way we do. They have hundreds of billions of dollars of net worth in stocks. They wake up thinking about their coffee and their wife and their kids just like we do. We just got to get over this crazy jealousy that we have.

51:08Jason Oppenheim:By the way, I understand that I'm not saying they're,

51:09Brett Oppenheim:but it doesn't make you like super happy. You have normal problems. If you break your leg, it still hurts if you're a billionaire. That's true.

51:15Jason Oppenheim:And I can agree with what you're saying. And in fact, I do agree with what you're saying, but I'm saying the viewers, like a common thing that they could think is like, oh, I'd rather be crying in my Bugatti than crying in my broken down shit. I would be, but I'm just saying they're not just, this is not a necessary conversation. Who gives a shit how happy they are? The only point that the simple - I just think there's a jealousy out there in the world

51:33Brett Oppenheim:thinking these people are super happy when they're not.

51:35Jason Oppenheim:But you're not going to solve jealousy on this podcast. I am.

51:38Brett Oppenheim:He might.

51:39Jason Oppenheim:I am. We don't know. There are a lot of people in America right now that would love to strip Elon of every single penny that he has and make him a pauper. That's jealousy. That's sadness. And that is a short-term, feel-good, scratch-the-itch type of reaction. When the reality is the lives of Americans, like Brett just said, Elon Musk, as well as others, Waymo, whatever, will save millions and millions of American lives through healthcare therapy, through autonomous vehicles. It doesn't really matter what it is. But if you truly care about the poor in America, then you want to encourage the trillionaire class to continue down the AI path so that we can get robotics, so that we can get the protein.

52:22Brett Oppenheim:If you're worried about the cost of eggs, what's going to solve that more than anything? Is robots farming. It's humanoid robots. Not taxing Musk. If you're worried about your son or daughter dying in a car accident because somebody was driving drunk, who's going to solve that? Elon and others.

52:36Jason Oppenheim:So where does that end? what if we go down a few notches to the millionaires and even the hundred thousandaires? Shouldn't then we just reduce taxes across the board and incentivize everyone to work? Eventually, I don't think we'll be taxing much because the truth is the government won't need much money. The government will be able to do its functions so cheaply.

52:54Brett Oppenheim:I think there's a level of taxation that doesn't disincentivize you. Every socialist experiment across the world, across history, has been devastating for its people. Capitalism, look what capitalism has created. You can hate on it all you want, but I'd rather be poor in America than poor in Peru or poor in Venezuela or Cuba. That's real poverty. Capitalism is the best economic system ever created to bring up everybody. Not equally, but ultimately everybody. The moral rubric of socialism, I understand from a compassionate perspective, but ultimately you have to be intelligent enough to look at reality and look at the experiments that we've run and look at what actually works.

53:35Brett Oppenheim:And don't make your decisions based on this idea of compassion, but focus on reality. And reality is capitalism has worked. It's worked better than any other system. It continues to work and will continue to work.

53:48Jason Oppenheim:So what do you say to the people, though, who are in their 20s or 30s and think that capitalism has failed them and that they did not get a fair shot in life? Well, both things can be true.

53:59Brett Oppenheim:Capitalism...

54:00Jason Oppenheim:But I would say a lot of people fall in that category.

54:02Brett Oppenheim:I agree, but they're not... But they didn't grow up in socialism. Go to Cuba and walk around like I did for a week. Listen, this is what it is.

54:08Jason Oppenheim:It's naivety. I'm not saying it's perfect,

54:10Brett Oppenheim:but go to Cuba, go to Venezuela, go to North Korea, and then tell me that you wouldn't want to be in America in a capitalist system.

54:14Jason Oppenheim:Yeah, what it is is it's naivety, and it's, I'm just going to call it what it is. It's naivety and victimization. I get the notion of wanting to scratch the itch. I get the notion of wanting to be a victim. I get the animalistic instinct of wanting to feel sorry for yourself. I do, and I'm not completely dismissing that. And I also think that there are a lot of good people that believe that these are the right answers. The only difference between those people and us, because Brett and I grew up as progressive liberals and went to Berkeley, and I'm not philosophically against taxes at all, honestly.

54:46Jason Oppenheim:I believe in a redistribution of wealth to the extent that it doesn't create more harm than good. The only difference between my brother and I, and I think the people that are complaining, is that I think we take a more critical analysis towards the policies that they're trying to implement because we're not against trying to lift people up, but I think we're just more analytical and more thoughtful. And we're saying, hey, your animalistic instinct to scratch that itch real quick, just to take that money and give it to yourself, may not be in your best interest in the long run.

55:16Brett Oppenheim:The socialist instincts, like for example, Bernie Sanders wanted to stop AI production.

55:20Jason Oppenheim:He could have done more damage to the poor people across this world than maybe any human in history that's the irony he's so naive about his policies that he may have he literally could have damaged billions of poor people with his policies so it's just it really comes down to a lot he doesn't have a critical thinking and he's naive but he's good-hearted i agree it's true i don't know we just call it like it is he's a good-hearted naive person totally agree

55:52Jason Oppenheim:Who do you think should control AI or govern it? Should there be an oversight of what's allowed to take place? Right now, no. Right now, we can't restrict the growth. Just like we couldn't restrict the Manhattan Project. If we had put limitations on the Manhattan Project, Germany could have developed the bomb. I don't think that's what he means. Is that what you meant? Well, no. Of course. To a certain degree, there's got to be, in the sense of having guardrails. But the question is, it's going to be how it operates? It's going to be a linear. how it operates, rules and regulations around it. It's going to be a linear progression of rules and regulations.

56:22Jason Oppenheim:Because right now, it's anybody who can do anything. But right now, right? Yeah, but his question is who you want to do it. Let me give you the analogy that you used. The answer is right now, we need to let the Manhattan Project take its course. We didn't limit the enrichment of uranium in the Manhattan Project. We didn't limit the development of Fat Man and Little Boy or whatever I think they were called. And we allowed America to develop atomic weaponry, to utilize it and to be the dominant force on the planet.

56:48Brett Oppenheim:And we won World War II, and we've been the hegemonic power of the world ever since.

56:51Jason Oppenheim:And then other countries developed nuclear weapons as well. Russia, China, many other countries. And then, and only then, did we get together and we say, hey guys, now we need to start looking at disarming. We need to look at rules and regulations. AI should be done in the exact same approach, which is where we dominate without restriction and so that we can be the force for good in the world. because it's either us or China. And I think most of the world would agree there are problems with America, but we would rather America to have the dominant, super-intelligent, artificial intelligence before China.

57:23Jason Oppenheim:And what do you think is the biggest risk to AI right now?

57:25Brett Oppenheim:I think if the Democrats take over, there could be a risk.

57:28Jason Oppenheim:Yeah, I think Democratic... I'd say policies. If Democrats restrict the development of AI and allow China to take...

57:33Brett Oppenheim:But I think by then, honestly, it's too late. I think by 2020, it'll be too late.

57:36Jason Oppenheim:Yeah, I think we have three more years with Trump. So I think that we'll probably already have superhuman intelligence, general, and probably superhuman.

57:43Brett Oppenheim:I don't think there's much in its way. So then why shouldn't Jack just spend all of his money? We still haven't hit that. I don't think that follows. I don't think that follows. I don't follow the logic. We're always going to be in a hierarchical system, like I said earlier. And you're always going to want to be towards the top of that hierarchy.

57:58Jason Oppenheim:But what's the difference between having a couple million dollars and not? Go back 100 years and tell somebody,

58:04Brett Oppenheim:hey, if you can be poor, this is what the poor are going to have in America in 2026. Go back 200 years. you're going to have um access to clothing rice and beans and and potatoes as much as you want um etc etc it's antibiotics toothpaste they would look at you and be like why would i have to be rich i mean that's that's insane why would i who cares after that who cares that's my answer to you even if there's an age of abundance everyone's always going to want more of something whatever that something is it's just not going to be eggs thankfully everyone's going to have access to the protein and carbohydrates but it might be whatever it is everyone's going to want to flex

58:39Jason Oppenheim:it's just human nature to want to flex so there will be things that and we should think about those things i'll say one thing because i think la has had a very difficult few years for a lot of myriad of different reasons i think that there's no city on the planet that's probably going to benefit more from artificial intelligence than los angeles because there are only a few things that i think will be of macro human importance because they it won't be about capex it won't be It won't be a services. It won't be manual labor. And that's going to be weather. And I don't think there's a better city on the planet for that.

59:13Jason Oppenheim:And AI can't. And by the way, you can do a deep dive into weather. And I have as to whether AI can start changing the weather. And it can for microclimates. It can for short periods of time. But it cannot make London sunny 300 days a year. So location is going to be very important.

59:27Brett Oppenheim:I do think LA has a brighter future than it's ever had because it has the things that AI can't create. Not in the next couple of years, but in 10 years and 15 years. years. Yeah.

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1:02:09Brett Oppenheim:Learn as much as you can about AI through, I think, podcasts is the best way.

1:02:13Jason Oppenheim:But Brett, I think you're sort of limit that. We should talk about the type of podcast because there's so much bullshit out there and clickbait. I'll get some recommendations.

1:02:19Brett Oppenheim:The Moonshots of Peter Deemey. Moonshots is a great one. Anything with Demis Hassabis, the head of Google DeepMind is amazing.

1:02:25Jason Oppenheim:The All In podcast. The All In is great.

1:02:27Brett Oppenheim:it's like real intellectual podcasts. That's number one. Number two.

1:02:30Jason Oppenheim:And so what, just be aware of AI? Or do you actually have to start applying into your own?

1:02:33Brett Oppenheim:Start to understand like we do.

1:02:34Jason Oppenheim:But what about being like, because awareness isn't really going to necessarily help you.

1:02:37Brett Oppenheim:I said three things. That's number one. Number two, consider this is the era of entrepreneurship. I think starting now for the next three years, it's going to be easier to be an entrepreneur than ever before in history. AI will be able to give you whatever faculties you need from basically AI agents to your marketing, to your law and whatever your company needs, it's going to be there for you at the tip of your fingers. I would really consider implementing your passion and monetizing it through entrepreneurship more than ever. And the third thing I would say is if you already have a job at like a big company or something, be the AI guy.

1:03:14Brett Oppenheim:Be the AI guy at your boring company. That is going to give you job security right now, at least for the foreseeable future.

1:03:20Jason Oppenheim:And don't lean into, by the way, jobs that are clearly not going to, I mean, sorry, but I don't know if you need You should be going to design school right now. College and grad school. Or learning to be an appraiser.

1:03:28Brett Oppenheim:Yeah, we should talk about what not to do, not just what to do. Yeah, I think that's right. Are you going to go with$250 ,000 in a debt going to law school right now? Coming from a lawyer, I don't think that's intelligent.

1:03:38Jason Oppenheim:I'm already having Gemini Pro 3, whatever it is, doing all my legal analysis, and it's drafting up. How good is it? It's better than my attorney. It's incredible. And it takes 30 seconds.

1:03:48Brett Oppenheim:Coming from two people who were practicing attorneys for years, I would say AI can probably do 50 to 60 percent of what an attorney can do right now.

1:03:56Jason Oppenheim:It'll be able to draft complaints and do legal analysis and do interrogatories, doc review. What is going to happen to the legal system in 20 years? Because we were talking to Chris Camillo about this. You won't even probably have human mediators. You'll have AI mediators. And it'll be quick. So is AI going to replace judges? Eventually. Not in three years. But lawyers will be allowed to. There's constitutional restrictions, you know, right to a jury of your peers, etc. That I think, but mediation will probably be AI. The arguments will probably be posited by artificial intelligence on the inside.

1:04:31Brett Oppenheim:And most intellectual legal work. And judges will be using AI.

1:04:35Jason Oppenheim:And by the way, AI is already shown to have a much better analysis than judges, much more consistent analysis. Do you think AI would be better than a jury?

1:04:41Brett Oppenheim:Lawyers are already submitting briefs to judges that are written by AI. In fact, sometimes they're still hallucinating. And judges are getting pissed off because they're citing cases that don't exist. But in three years, that won't be happening. In three years, you'll be able to get a brief done in 15 seconds. So there will still be human lawyers. It's better than a attorney.

1:04:54Jason Oppenheim:But those human lawyers will be 10 times more productive than they were. And so a law firm can be 10 people instead of 150 people. When do you think it'll get to the point, though, where you have two AIs arguing either side? You already are. Well, they probably won't even have to argue.

1:05:07Brett Oppenheim:They'll probably just submit the two AIs. And the decision will come out in two seconds.

1:05:11Jason Oppenheim:They literally already are. Well, you'd only need one A. Why would you even have to go through the argument?

1:05:14Brett Oppenheim:Yeah. It'd be instant.

1:05:16Jason Oppenheim:Unbelievably cost-effective. Think of all the wasted money that goes into litigation right now. This is what I mean by entering an age of abundance.

1:05:23Brett Oppenheim:I mean, what AI can do for society is going to be freaking incredible. Like, this should be an optimistic, you know, people should leave this podcast being optimistic because food's going to be cheaper. The quality of life is going to go up so much in the next 15 years.

1:05:37Jason Oppenheim:It's going to be so deflationary. Instead of the$24 billion that California wasted on homeless, only for the homeless population to double. That's, by the way, over$100 ,000 per homeless person that California spent only to create a bigger homeless problem. You could service every single homeless person for less money with two robots, self-charging robots, who could be making their bed, cleaning their house. One could be a drug addiction specialist.

1:06:05Brett Oppenheim:One could be a cook.

1:06:06Jason Oppenheim:It could be a probation officer too, if they're doing drugs and they're in some type of -

1:06:10Brett Oppenheim:We're spending$130 ,000 per prisoner per year in California. A humanoid robot costs$30 ,000. It can cook.

1:06:19Jason Oppenheim:It can manage.

1:06:20Brett Oppenheim:The billions of dollars that we're going to be saving when we can actually utilize humanoid robots in government. And of course, government's going to fight this and be the last freaking industry to adapt it. But eventually, it's going to have to. Self-preservation. They're going to try. Eventually, it's going to have to. And the savings and the... It's just... The future is so freaking bright if we don't screw it up. It's so bright. and so, I'm so optimistic about it and so excited about it because it's all going to happen in the blink of an eye. We don't have to wait for, this is not going to be when we're in our 60s and 70s and 80s.

1:06:48Brett Oppenheim:It's going to be like the next 10 years.

1:06:49Jason Oppenheim:Who's most likely to screw it up?

1:06:51Brett Oppenheim:What does that mean? Government? What country?

1:06:53Jason Oppenheim:Yeah, you're like, if we don't screw it up.

1:06:54Brett Oppenheim:And I'm like, who is, who is? Probably America. I'll tell you who's not going to screw it up is China. Because they don't have these political bullshit issues that we have. They're going full steam ahead no matter what.

1:07:03Jason Oppenheim:And knowing, there's no risk of public policy restricting Chinese growth. create the risk of a bubble that they're investing so much money into these companies. You can't, I don't think you can over-invest in AI. The gold at the end of the rainbow is - We're not trying to develop the cotton gin here. We're trying to develop something that will replace human labor and human intellect.

1:07:22Brett Oppenheim:But let's talk about the bubble for a second because I think the analogy is you're talking to two people who lived in Silicon Valley in the 1990s. So we know bubbles. And that's usually what people are talking about when they say AI is in a bubble is like the dot-com bubble. This is not like that.

1:07:35Jason Oppenheim:Although there are all some bullshit companies that are just saying they're AI-generated bullshit. Everything is AI-y. So there's peripheral bullshit around AI.

1:07:42Brett Oppenheim:I think what, yeah, of course. I think what people are afraid of is, is the capital expenditure worthwhile? Is the$600 billion the Mag-7 are spending in compute and chips and data centers worthwhile? I would argue, and it's a reasonable question because we laid an insane amount of fiber optic cable during the dot-com bust. and that ended up not being used for a long time. No one's going to say that the internet revolution didn't change society, it did, but they laid way too much cable. Same with the wireless issue. I would argue the demand for compute is infinite. It's absolutely infinite. And whoever wins with AI, so to speak, I don't think it's going to be one winner, but if you need to spend$80 billion a year if you're Amazon to stay competitive, I think that's a fraction of what you would lose if you're not in the game when we reach full AGI and or super intelligence.

1:08:36Brett Oppenheim:And if you're not one of the players, it's trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars that you're missing out on. So no, I don't think we're in a bubble. I don't think they can spend enough.

1:08:44Jason Oppenheim:But I think I'm gonna augment this answer to some degree by saying, I think when people talk about a bubble, Brett takes an analytical kind of financial approach to CapEx, but I think what they're talking about is can the stocks go down? And the answer to that is that's just humanity and human nature and psychology and overreaction. We can't sit here and say that humans won't overreact to certain indicators and that certain stocks won't go down. That very well can happen. But if you look at it holistically. But if you look at the long run, you can't overspend in this age.

1:09:13Brett Oppenheim:Will AI change the world? Yes. Will the companies that are spending the most on AI most likely be the largest players when that happens? Yes. So is an AI bubble in that sense? No. Now, can Meta and Amazon stock go down, Tesla stock go down 20%, 30 %? Who cares? Yes. It absolutely can. But I'm thinking about, are we entering an age of abundance? Is humanity going to experience an era that is like no other in human history? I'm thinking more on those levels. And to that extent, no, AI is not in a bubble.

1:09:42Jason Oppenheim:I will say one thing because I said it on your last podcast and it's done well and I continue to believe in it. Treasuries. And the reason is, is because I'm a firm believer in artificial intelligence being extremely deflationary. So the cost of goods is going to go down, obviously, and services. And we're going to see unemployment. employment. So I just can't see in the near term how the Fed's not going to be chasing this. They're always late. I can't see how they're not going to be chasing this, and we're not going to see some of the lowest interest rates.

1:10:10Brett Oppenheim:We both invested in the possibility of deflation and lower interest rates. We both invested heavily in Tesla.

1:10:15Jason Oppenheim:There's nothing better you can do than buy long-term bonds if you want to be long on the idea that there's going to be lower interest rates in the future.

1:10:23Brett Oppenheim:But I think long-term, if you're not in the MAG-7 10 years from now, you're probably going to regret that if you have, you know, disposable income and you want to be investing.

1:10:32Jason Oppenheim:How else are you investing outside of that? Like what else are you buying that you think is going to retain value? Ventures cards and collectibles. And that's, that's honestly because I love them. And I would done, I started that collecting well before AI.

1:10:45Brett Oppenheim:I would say land, real estate, but even more specifically land, heavy real estate. Well, I mean, you can argue anywhere, but obviously location matters.

1:10:53Jason Oppenheim:Newport beach, LA, weather. I mean, people are going to, you don't have to work. You don't have

1:10:58Brett Oppenheim:to live in in illinois robots can build homes but not land that's that's why i'm just for the audience saying why i think i would go more land heavy when robots this is going to be a long time from now not because they won't have the ability to do it technically but because we won't have enough robots to be doing it but eventually they could probably build a house for a hell of a lot cheaper but they are going to create land and they're not going to create land in la where we

1:11:19Jason Oppenheim:have perfect weather and they won't create things like like again i'm i'm selfishly referring to collectibles because i i've been in this game for a long time but i still also believe that that those types of things that are that are human in nature and that are uh that can't be produced by artificial intelligence will be what's valuable the flex might be a honus wagner card right that might be what brett talked about how we always have a demand for you know hierarchy in in society um so it might be the we have to try to figure out what the flexes are you know different fashion but clothes it's going to be rare it's going to be rarity it's going to come down to rarity not just clothes not not not so what's a good value today though what do you think is a good value today that you could buy this year that you think will go up in value it's maybe undervalued right now well still i still my big believer that much undervalued because there's

1:12:07Brett Oppenheim:so much money on the sidelines and that was on the sidelines after covert that has now come back into everything so almost everything is valued pretty highly i would still still say though

1:12:16Jason Oppenheim:AI cannot create land in a good area. And look what's happened, although ironically, and this is only because of California policy, the real idea is people don't need to work from home, can work from home now, right? They don't have to be in the office. In a kind of a utopian, idealistic thought experiment, people would be leaving Texas and coming to California because why would, I mean, objectively, you'd want to live in California under the sun. if it wasn't for California if it wasn't horrible

1:12:47Brett Oppenheim:policies and it wasn't you get rid of all the

1:12:50Jason Oppenheim:stupid California policies and California is the destination for the the global destination once in an age of abundance where there's no work or you certainly don't have to work from you know in Austin or somewhere else where there's difficult weather now granted there are different aspects of people's families let me ask you guys

1:13:07Brett Oppenheim:if you had everything right now all the clothes food housing etc what would you want

1:13:14Jason Oppenheim:I don't know if I would want much, if I have the house. That's why we're naming shit that doesn't matter, like collectibles. That's why I, because I have money and I have everything that I need. So I'm starting to, I bought the John Reagan Super Bowl jersey. It's exactly that kind of stuff.

1:13:28Brett Oppenheim:It's the stuff that you don't need. It probably will go up in value.

1:13:31Jason Oppenheim:The rare human collectibles that you don't need, ironically, I think will be the most valuable.

1:13:36Brett Oppenheim:If we're right about the age of abundance, which I think we are, then that stuff will be more valuable. But that's beautiful. If what separates the poor and the rich is freaking baseball cards, that's amazing. That's best case scenario. If we all have food and we all have cars and we all have housekeepers and we all have, et cetera, and education, medical care, then I would much rather the difference between a rich and a poor person being who has an old Ferrari than it is who can freaking have food on their table. Let me follow up on this too.

1:14:04Jason Oppenheim:Let's say you were writing a book about a utopian society 50 years ago. Who knows? It doesn't matter when you wrote it. There wouldn't, presumably, in a kind of an idealistic utopian society, there wouldn't be work. Certainly wouldn't be working to survive. You may be working as a fetish. You may be working because it's enjoyable. but the idea, whatever book you wrote, sure, but whatever you're writing about, you're not saying, oh, in my utopian society, people must work to survive. That can't be. So from an optimistic perspective, we are moving towards utopia. We are moving towards not having to work in an age of abundance.

1:14:46Jason Oppenheim:That is - Can I make a side point here? Yeah, in one second. That is almost the definition of a utopian society. I'm not saying it's going to be utopia, but we're going to have very low crime. We're going to all be able to eat, drink, drive, have leisure activity, not have to work. Medical care, education. Yeah. I mean, we really are going to be living the definition of utopian side. There's a lot of reasons to be optimistic here.

1:15:06Brett Oppenheim:So the side point I want to make is most jobs are horrible. Okay. Like we're luxury real estate agents in LA. You guys are podcasters. Okay. But most jobs suck. I mean, you're driving to work in traffic. You're sitting in a freaking computer in a cubicle all goddamn day. I mean.

1:15:23Jason Oppenheim:Or you're up on a hot roof nailing. Yeah, I mean, most jobs suck.

1:15:27Brett Oppenheim:So let's just be real here. I mean, the less of those, the better, as far as I'm concerned. I don't, like, oh, we're going to lose each other. Yeah, most of the jobs we're going to lose suck.

1:15:35Jason Oppenheim:We were lawyers at big law firms. I'm sorry, but I don't see, there's not a, I would have rather someone just give me a hundred grand a year. And by the way, I don't want to -

1:15:44Brett Oppenheim:Well, I don't know about UBI. I don't know about that. But I want to address UBI,

1:15:46Jason Oppenheim:because I think a lot of people, I think a lot of people misinterpret these studies. If you do an analysis of the UBI studies, there have been multiple - Which I have, so I'm curious to hear your take. multiple studies. And I think there's a misdiagnosis of those studies as where people were not satisfied or not. After one year. Yes. And those studies and my analysis is completely opposite. Okay, but hold on. The studies have shown after. During longitudinal studies. Let me just tell the audience.

1:16:11Brett Oppenheim:Okay, fine. The studies have shown oftentimes that UBI has been a disaster in the sense that. Totally disagree. After one year, their level of happiness. First of all, they're not investing very well. Secondly, their level of happiness after one year is the exact same, if not lower than it was before they received it. That's not what the studies say. Okay, go ahead.

1:16:26Jason Oppenheim:No, the studies show an increase in happiness for almost everyone, including different age groups, even people that were working, or obviously if you give it to poor people, they're gonna increase their happiness. Over time, longer than a year? Well, the only time that you saw the happiness decrease and actually went below was when they ended the program or close to the end of the program when they knew that it was ending, they got anxiety and stress. In a longitudinal UBI practice, go do a deep dive right now. you will see the study

1:16:54Brett Oppenheim:yes have you read the books about the people that win the lottery and how unhappy they are like three years later that's not UBI

1:16:59Jason Oppenheim:it's just not UBI

1:17:01Brett Oppenheim:I would rather can we agree that we would rather UBS or no what is UBS services yeah because that's how I think we should I've never heard of UBS before we should provide instead of giving people money which they usually suck at did you see how busy Rodeo Drive was well hold on let me just make this point how busy was Rodeo Drive during COVID when we all got the stint it was insane That's a fact. People are buying... People who now know how to handle discretionary income. It's a fact. I don't care what studies you say.

1:17:27Jason Oppenheim:Well, who cares? It's going to be a mix of UBI and UBS, obviously. I would rather provide people services.

1:17:32Brett Oppenheim:Look, you get a humanoid robot. You get medical care. You get food. You get et cetera, as opposed to you get$1 ,500 a month.

1:17:39Jason Oppenheim:Let's just call it a confluence of the two. It's obviously going to be both. We're not just giving them money that can go buy drugs or something like that. I don't like the idea of UBI. Obviously, you're going to... Fine. We provide them a humanoid robot. The point is, when you... That ought to be for. There is a lot of studies that show that UBI slash UBS works if it is consistent and you don't take it away. So I'm optimistic that humans have always been able to adapt. When we were in tribes thousands of years ago, we derived satisfaction from different things. We derived it from storytelling.

1:18:08Jason Oppenheim:We derived it from religion. We derived it from family. We derived it from, you know, raising children in a collective. Making jewelry out of the bones of the animals we killed.

1:18:17Brett Oppenheim:Exactly.

1:18:17Jason Oppenheim:There's so many ways to derive human purpose. Now, it's great that we derive human purpose from work. Why? Because we've been inculcated as children and capitalism must survive by inculcating the value of work. So I get that. And right now we do drive, but the idea that somehow purpose is inexorably tied to work is simply not the case. We've created that social construct and we can decouple it and we can reattach purpose to the many other things that I think are more valuable.

1:18:50Brett Oppenheim:Like family or ethics. Or hobbies. Or hobbies or passions. Or intellectual endeavors.

1:18:56Jason Oppenheim:He says that you will be happy to the degree that you are productive.

1:19:00Brett Oppenheim:No. Well, hold on. That's not necessarily inconsistent. If productive doesn't necessarily mean with work, you can raise a family. You can educate yourself. That's productivity. So I don't disagree with that. I don't call hanging out. I don't call talking to family. It depends on what he means by productive.

1:19:15Jason Oppenheim:you'd have to follow up on fine with the point is it's a very it's probably offering some sort of benefit to society that you are contributing to something bigger than yourself i disagree with this i i disagree with the construct because yes i get i derive purpose in my life from productivity from adding i think adding value to society from creating from creating happiness and others but

1:19:35Brett Oppenheim:that's because i am a construct your connections with my social structure i'm a construct of

1:19:40Jason Oppenheim:the education, the American capitalist education. So of course I derive my value from that. But young people can be taught that purpose comes from so many different things. And when they grow up, they don't attach it just to work. So what I'm saying is we can decouple that.

1:19:55Brett Oppenheim:I derive happiness from friendships, from acquiring knowledge. I love that. From good sex, from good food, from a lot of things that are completely separate from my work.

1:20:07Jason Oppenheim:You know, enjoyable dinners with friends to traveling and to experiences, to going to an F1 race, to going to the Cannes Film Festival, to hanging out with you guys on the podcast. I don't think those things are productive. To buying you guys lunch for 12 straight years. I don't think that... That's actually false. I don't think that that's what Graham means by production.

1:20:23Brett Oppenheim:Exactly. Graham hasn't paid for lunch since the early 70s.

1:20:25Jason Oppenheim:Okay. I mean, if you want to... Yeah, I can pull up your seats because you did... Wait, hold on. Let me state the facts and then you can disagree. You want to state your opinion? Go ahead. He has the receipt. Why don't you see that first? I've been sponsoring Graham's lunches for over 11 years straight. 99 % of Graham's lunches I've paid for. And I'm 80 % responsible for his wardrobe. This is one of your shirts.

1:20:46Brett Oppenheim:I think, Brett, these are your pants. Are you going to show me a receipt from one lunch that you bought at some point?

1:20:52Jason Oppenheim:Because you did buy lunch a couple months ago. You don't have my underwear on.

1:20:53Brett Oppenheim:They'd be baggy on you. Go ahead.

1:20:57Jason Oppenheim:Nothing you can say can disprove this. Graham, just admit it. What? Just admit that I've been buying you lunch for 12 years. Yeah, but it's not one. But you used to say, oh, you bought one lunch. So I don't necessarily disagree with that. You bought maybe less than a hand.

1:21:12Brett Oppenheim:Go ahead, let Jack go. That was before Jack was born.

1:21:14Jason Oppenheim:I don't disagree with you subsidizing Graham's life. Life? I don't think he subsidizes his life. I don't necessarily have a problem with that. But you did mention that like, hey, every time I go out with you guys, I pay. And that's actually categorically false. If anything, I think it's - I have no problem paying. If anything, I actually think it's two to two right now. Maybe with you. No, with Jack. Oh, fine, with you. But Graham, it's probably - With me and both. And because here's the thing. It was probably 850 to three.

1:21:36Brett Oppenheim:Okay, well, we're not saying - This was the last time that we got lunch.

1:21:38Jason Oppenheim:The last time. I'm not talking about you. Where was that, by the way? I'm not talking about you. Let me see what it was called. You bought lunch. Great white Merl - That was the Merl - Yeah, yeah.

1:21:46Brett Oppenheim:Jack, fair. We're two and two. But in fairness, you paid for it so you could show your audience that you paid for it. That's not true. I didn't know I was going to bring that up to you.

1:21:52Jason Oppenheim:Graham -

1:21:53Brett Oppenheim:The only other receipt just saved on his phone. It's only because I'm a cost - It's like, can you send me the digital receipt of that, please?

1:21:59Jason Oppenheim:And, and by the way, I think I've bought Graham hundreds of dinners because what he would do is order a big lunch and then he would pack half of it to go for dinner. So I've really been buying your lunch. So I actually, he's, he's mentioned this plenty of times. So he said it was actually like a frugal life hack. My hack was that you would take the office out to lunch and there would be maybe five to seven people, but everyone would only eat half. And so I would take everybody's halves. Well, also, you know what he would do? What you would do is he would encourage us to get like quesadilla. So they were like discrete, you know, parcels of food that he could take home as opposed to like a half eaten something.

1:22:30Jason Oppenheim:He would encourage that? Yeah, I think he would actually encourage. Oh, yeah, get that. Parceled foods. I was like, don't get the soup. Yeah, don't get the soup or something. Get a burrito, but split that in half. Yeah, in fact, he would split. Oh, he wants a burrito cut in half. Yeah, or he wants the quesadilla sliced. Well, he was picking at your food after you left. We have created wealth for each other independently through completely different approaches. because I've never been frugal. And I think I'm an example of you can be hardworking and successful and be the opposite of frugal and be, you know, wealthy.

1:22:59Jason Oppenheim:Whereas you took a different approach. What's the biggest financial Hail Mary you've ever had? You mean, well, I bought the... What do you mean by Hail Mary? Like taking on excessive risk for where you should... Going all in on one thing. Oh, the office. The first office on census. In fact, Graham was like my first agent. The one next to him. You're my first agent. No, this office right here. Actually, the biggest risk we ever took was probably hiring Graham. Well, because I signed up for a 10-year lease. I don't know what it was. $10 ,000 a month. $10 ,000 a month. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in build-out.

1:23:25Jason Oppenheim:And I had no agents. And no money.

1:23:27Brett Oppenheim:Yeah.

1:23:28Jason Oppenheim:Not much money. It was just me. I had no brokerage. So that was the biggest risk. How much of your net worth did you put in the build-out in the office space? I think it was about$300 ,000. What year was that? And it was in 2014. I was probably - Oh, it was cash, right? In 2014, yeah. I was probably worth about a million dollars. I think I probably - So you put about half. About a third of it. But I also was then on the hook for hundreds of thousands How confident were you at the time that it was going to work out?

1:23:52Brett Oppenheim:70, 80 percent?

1:23:55Jason Oppenheim:Well, yeah, because I think it's an interesting question because I think I was naively confident. And I think I almost knew that I was naively confident. But even at the time.

1:24:03Brett Oppenheim:But you were fine with it. Even at that time. I also. Were you ever higher than 80?

1:24:07Jason Oppenheim:Well, I also had worked hard for a few years. And I also didn't have much concern about going backwards, too. You know, I lived in a$1 ,400 apartment. I was happy then. And I was happy while I was doing well in real estate. I don't know. It's not a good question because I think I was naively, I knew that things would work out. And at the same time, I knew that I would be fine if they didn't. But I think that's a unique situation. I'm not recommending it necessarily. I think it was probably most 90 % of business school students would have said that was a dumb investment. Arguably one of the biggest differences between you and I, Graham, I think we know each other very well, is that I think I spend money on things that make me happy and quality of life.

1:24:48Jason Oppenheim:And I think you are generally more concerned slash pessimistic and careful. And you live a great quality of life and you're happy, but you're less indulgent than I am. And I think it's okay to be indulgent. I don't think it's necessarily beneficial to be going through life, spending money based on a worst case scenario. I don't. I think you would be happier in a larger house. I think you allowing yourself to indulge, as long as you can get past the mental anxiety that it might create you, is a net positive. Had I had your approach of anxious pessimism, I wouldn't have opened the office, and I wouldn't have been able to have the company and have the expansion.

1:25:34Brett Oppenheim:I would look at it this way, Graham. Can you afford the worst case scenario?

1:25:38Jason Oppenheim:I take the worst case, which was the Great Depression of 1929, and then can it get a little worse than that? 35 % drop. You really go deep down the rabbit hole. I take an 82 % drop. And then I assume my income goes to zero. At the same time, my lifestyle has to go up. Let's just say we have kids and then there's a health problem. And then one of my parents gets -

1:25:59Brett Oppenheim:Can I counter this? Yeah, please. During the Great Depression, those who had any amount of wealth after the crash had the best buying opportunity and the best opportunity for appreciation in the last century.

1:26:13Jason Oppenheim:And appreciation. And that's what I - Does that make sense? I said, if you are not forced to sell, and if you can weather that worst case scenario, you'll actually, every time in American history over the last 150 years that we've seen that type of crash, if you were able to persevere and not be forced to sell, that within 10 years, you'd be wealthier than ever before. Even if you don't, you're wealthier than ever before within 10 years. So just don't, as long as you're not forced to sell. My fear is always saying, oh, just because for the last 150 years it's done that doesn't mean it's always, even though I agree that there's a 90 plus price.

1:26:44Jason Oppenheim:It's more likely that AI wipes you out. And it doesn't matter. Yeah, I would say the chances of the existential threat

1:26:50Brett Oppenheim:of AI wiping out humanity is higher than that scenario. A worse than Great Depression type of crash that lasts for multiples longer, that's less than 1 % what you're talking about.

1:27:01Jason Oppenheim:Anyway, let's keep going on. That's the main thing is that what I find interesting is whenever Graham is kind of at a crossroads where he's like, should I spend the money? Should I not spend the money? This house, for example, he reached out to Jason to get Jason's opinion on. And Jason gave some crazy numbers in terms of you're spending half of your income every single year. Graham is spending like less than 2 % of what he could withdraw from his investment account every year. But that still was not necessarily enough.

1:27:25Brett Oppenheim:I don't even want to share with your audience what percent of my income I spent. What percent of your income you spent? It's high. It's embarrassing. And I'm not happy about it. But, I mean, this is what happens. Your lifestyle gets like, you catch up to your income. Your lifestyle, you just adapt slowly. You know what I mean? And you end up like, how the hell am I spending this every month?

1:27:43Jason Oppenheim:He looks at what he spends. I don't. I just look to make sure that I'm increasing my wealth every year. And if I am, I don't give a shit what I spent. And how do you measure your increased wealth? I do an analysis of my net worth. And does it have to go up a certain percentage every year? No, no, no. What percent do you typically go up per year? Oh, of my net worth? I've never looked at it like that. But I generally add millions to my net worth every year. And I'm spending a shit ton.

1:28:08Brett Oppenheim:The advice that I would give your audience is don't chase wealth, chase the trajectory of wealth. I would rather, and I would be much happier and sleep much better if I died at 50 million versus a billion, but I was wealthier every year until that 50 million, as opposed to I died at a billion, but I went to a billion and then died to 100 million and then up to 3 billion and then down to 400 million. That will drive you crazy. And it's not what you want. Even if you die wealthier, it's just not worth it. for your happiness, your peace of mind, and your sleep, and your stress levels, and your health.

1:28:41Brett Oppenheim:Just wish upon, I wish upon everybody, just a trajectory towards becoming wealthier every year, even if it's much, much slower than you would like.

1:28:50Jason Oppenheim:And I think on top of that, it's a process. And if you're not enjoying the process, if you're somehow thinking, I'll be happy when I have X money, I could not come up with a worse possible approach to life. because one, I guarantee you that will change. I mean, I remember the numbers I used to have when I was young, you know, 10, 15 years ago. Those numbers always increase. And by the way, I would say, if you were to ask me the happiest years of my life, although I've had just a wonderful life and I think I'm, you know, I'm very happy right now. But if I had to point, I'd probably better be interested in your take.

1:29:23Jason Oppenheim:I would probably say junior college. I was gonna say junior college. 18 to 20, where I had very little money. Drinking natty ice. Yeah. No money. And, you know, wearing a wife beater and working on my 69 Camaro, you know, five hours a day in a, you know, in a ROP class, working as a waiter or as a bar back, hanging out with my buddies, eating the burritos at the Roach Coach. Very little responsibility.

1:29:49Brett Oppenheim:School was easy. We'd go to Subway.

1:29:50Jason Oppenheim:We'd split a foot long to save money or we'd go to the Roach Coach, you know, and give a burrito. Probably six times a week.

1:29:55Brett Oppenheim:Or whatever the dollar sub was at Subway. We'd eat that like five days a week. Yeah, that's what I was saying. We'd split the Subway. It's insane. I must have had Subway. I think I had Subway 250 times in one year.

1:30:04Jason Oppenheim:And driving like a total beater. I probably would have been like six foot six if I didn't do that. And so happy. Just really, really happy years. Partying, hanging out.

1:30:14Brett Oppenheim:I do that also that we know a lot of really wealthy people and the relationship between extreme wealth and happiness is disconnected. And beyond that, nobody hits a billion dollars never once in the history of billionaires. Somebody hit a billion dollar net worth and be like, I'm done. I did it. I can chill. And now I'm happy. It's just not the way it works. Like, oh, two billion. Well, that guy's a bigger yacht. That's just human nature. It doesn't change because you're wealthy. It's the same human nature. You still don't get jealous of people who have more than you. You don't just get to this point of like, okay, now I really am going to golf every day and live this amazing lifestyle like I thought when I was 17.

1:30:48Jason Oppenheim:To a certain degree, once you get some money, it's super helpful. Because if you can go to dinner and you can just buy dinner, you know, if I can take you guys to lunch like I do. Graham would not. And not have to worry about it. Then you're wealthy. The extra million dollars so that I can go buy the John Reagan Super Bowl jersey and the Ford GT, the incremental happiness that I get is like a 0.1. So what amount would you say that the incremental happiness really starts to, like the curve starts to... It depends where you live in LA. I'd rather be making$300 ,000 a year. Shit, I'd rather be making$100 ,000 a year living in LA with good friends and a healthy family and my little dog and great people in the office than be a billionaire without that.

1:31:34Jason Oppenheim:What are the main things that are very much worth spending money on? Business classes. You know what's funny? I used to actually think that business classes was the worst expenditure money on planet Earth. I'd be like, how the fuck does somebody spend$9 ,000 when I can fly there for$450? That is the dumbest$9 ,000 you could possibly spend. For 10 hours. And now to me, it's like the best money that I could possibly spend. I just...

1:31:55Brett Oppenheim:But other than that, I would say good food. I love good food.

1:32:00Jason Oppenheim:I think vacations. Oh, you know what I would say? Vacations, yeah. You know what I would say? Where I enjoy spending money the most is on other people. And I don't mean that to come across as like somehow, you know. No, I really don't. Yeah, that's what I meant. Philanthropy? I like, no, not philanthropy because that's not direct. I'm just giving you a hint. I mean, I do philanthropy, but anyway. I do a lot of philanthropy. yeah I really like being able to as stupid as this is I like being able to go to dinner with my friends and getting dinner and just every single time I like to we're going to stagecoach I am getting the house and I really enjoy that I'm getting the artist passes not for you you gotta pay for your own but I really take pride in the fact that I you think it would bring you joy to give me an artist pass it does it does

1:32:47Brett Oppenheim:doing things for you

1:32:47Jason Oppenheim:does make me a joy I'll update you but I enjoy that more than anything because I think the I don't know the best thing you can do with money is increase the happiness of those people around you. I'm like very utilitarian in that respect. So I do appreciate that. I mean, that's why we enjoy buying you guys lunch. I appreciate it. It's the least we could do. Lunch in the singular. No, for real. Like philanthropy. I think we had panches tacos before. Pinches. Pinches. Yeah, you did give me pinches, bro. The only other question I was curious, what was the last argument you two had? It's every day, I don't know.

1:33:16Brett Oppenheim:Yeah, but - Surprise we didn't even argue. But we don't argue in the way that we used to. We don't fist fight anymore. much. What's the last fist fight? I don't think we really, we don't really go at it like the last few years.

1:33:28Jason Oppenheim:I think we pushed each other a few weeks ago. Did you win the last fist fight? No, I beat him up in a parking lot, I think. And the police had to actually pull me off of him. So I think I won that one. When was that? Wait, hold on. Did you just keep wailing on him when he was already pinned? Hold on a second. Yeah, it's hard to pick us up. Our friends have had to bring us up too. There are winners

1:33:48Brett Oppenheim:and losers in our fist fight. Oh my god, yes.

1:33:50Jason Oppenheim:I can beat Brett up and I beat him up all the whole lives.

1:33:52Brett Oppenheim:First of all, the only time either of us ever got knocked out was when.

1:33:56Jason Oppenheim:Oh my God, this story. Brett thinks he knocked. I literally, all I wanted to do.

1:34:00Brett Oppenheim:He didn't get up for a while. First of all, we were like nine years old.

1:34:03Jason Oppenheim:Second of all, I laid there because I wanted him to come back over. So I kicked the shit out of him. And he was too smart to come back over. That's the only reason I laid there. He tells that story like he knocked me out. With your eyes closed. What about the time at Dad's? No, I was pretending like I was hurt.

1:34:14Brett Oppenheim:What about the time at Dad's where you started bleeding out of your nose and I hit you in the face? And you're like, that's 18 dropped to blood. I'm going to fucking kill you. And he's counting the drops of blood. The only two times. I think my point is by the fact that Brett remembers the two times that he got it.

1:34:27Jason Oppenheim:It's never happened to me. Well, you remember one. 2 ,000 times that I beat his ass.

1:34:29Brett Oppenheim:Give one piece of evidence of one specific time. Thank you. I've named two. Jason, go ahead.

1:34:32Jason Oppenheim:I will literally give you a piece of evidence right now. The floor is yours. The floor is yours. The floor is going to be yours in two seconds.

1:34:38Brett Oppenheim:It's two to zero. It's stories of getting your ass beat by your brother.

1:34:41Jason Oppenheim:Brett, let's just be honest. We've been honest this entire podcast. Be honest. I've kicked your ass your entire life. Just be honest. 99 % of the time.

1:34:47Brett Oppenheim:In the most extreme examples of getting your ass beat, I have been the victor.

1:34:52Jason Oppenheim:He is such a fucking lawyer. See how he does lawyers everything?

1:34:55Brett Oppenheim:But in a lot of the lesser ass kickings, I've taken the breath of those. The victim, yeah.

1:35:02Jason Oppenheim:Who benches more between you two?

1:35:03Brett Oppenheim:I do.

1:35:04Jason Oppenheim:I'm strong. Actually, he's gotten pretty strong lately. He's gotten pretty strong. For most of our lives, I've been able to physically dominate him. Well, it's not because of strength.

1:35:14Brett Oppenheim:It's because he will bite and scratch. but it's just he has no moral virtue in fighting whereas I do

1:35:21Jason Oppenheim:I will win that's what he means he would beat me up I will win

1:35:23Brett Oppenheim:he tried to beat me up in front of my mom on her birthday last do you remember that in a hotel in a five star hotel lobby in front of my mom on her birthday he has no fucking shame no shame why

1:35:34Jason Oppenheim:because Brett has a mouth on him because he just doesn't know Brett's antagonistic and has a mouth so I would use my physical dominance and Brett would use his mouth and if he mouthed could you imagine

1:35:44Brett Oppenheim:a worse time to do something stupid on your mom's birthday in front of her in the lobby of a five-star hotel.

1:35:50Jason Oppenheim:Right, you must have said something antagonistic. It must have been an antagonistic. Do you remember what it was that you said?

1:35:54Brett Oppenheim:Just stupid stuff. He just has no off-spits when he gets mad at me.

1:35:58Jason Oppenheim:How long ago was this? Two years ago? This was only two years ago. Last year? Was it last year?

1:36:01Brett Oppenheim:I don't remember. Dude, it was in San Francisco when we took mom to the Berklee speech. It was last year.

1:36:06Jason Oppenheim:Yes, it was. It was like a year ago this week. Yeah, and by the way, he was talking shit. And I literally said, bro, say another fucking word and I'm going to take you down. And we were in the lobby of a really nice hotel.

1:36:16Brett Oppenheim:In front of my mom on her fucking birthday. Yes, and you know what he did?

1:36:18Jason Oppenheim:He wouldn't shut his mouth.

1:36:19Brett Oppenheim:She was mortified. What did you say? This is what I'm dealing with. He's an antagonist. What did you say after he said that?

1:36:25Jason Oppenheim:And then he blames me. Like somehow being physical is worse than being antagonistic. But you didn't, you stopped talking once he said that. No, he didn't. He keeps up. He can't stop talking. But then you didn't take him down now. I did take him down. And then he keeps talking. So you guys actually did end up fighting. Yes, I do remember that. Yes. And I won. But we don't do it nearly as often. Pretty soon, you'll be able to settle this with AI.

1:36:45Brett Oppenheim:Not our fights. No. Not our fights.

1:36:47Jason Oppenheim:I think it's the last thing that AI is going to say.

1:36:48Brett Oppenheim:But we do it a lot less. A lot. We get along way better than we used to. Yeah.

1:36:51Jason Oppenheim:At what point do you know when to stop fighting?

1:36:53Brett Oppenheim:We don't. He doesn't.

1:36:55Jason Oppenheim:When we get separated. Yeah, police.

1:36:57Brett Oppenheim:My mom's crying. How long does it take to, like, get over that?

1:37:00Jason Oppenheim:No, 10 minutes. Oh, quickly. 10 minutes. It probably took us 30 minutes that day. Because that was a really bad physical fight. 30 minutes is really bad. We really got under each other's skin. But within 30 minutes, we were fine. Usually anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes. It's like the two cats that just like tumble. Except that one cat's bigger and stronger. But yes. There shouldn't be an aspect of - More like a lion and a cat. There shouldn't be an aspect of his personality that surprises you by now. Doesn't surprise me. And so why, but if you're able to predict that he's able to say something, then why are they stilling?

1:37:28Brett Oppenheim:Lack of emotional maturity is the answer to the question you're posing.

1:37:30Jason Oppenheim:Why you can't stop talking?

1:37:32Brett Oppenheim:Why you can't just -

1:37:33Jason Oppenheim:Why you can't be antagonistic?

1:37:34Brett Oppenheim:Antagonism without getting physically -

1:37:36Jason Oppenheim:Why can't you just take the beating? Or - or shut your mouth

1:37:42Jason Oppenheim:or shut your mouth

1:37:43Brett Oppenheim:this is the worst sentence ever uttered on a podcast in history

1:37:49Jason Oppenheim:so I was gonna say take the mics away

1:37:50Brett Oppenheim:at this point oh my god dude that was a good one thank you so much I really enjoyed this discussion

1:37:59Jason Oppenheim:you know who you would really enjoy talking to is Chris Camillo when it comes to the AI talks if this does well we'd love to bring in Chris to talk to you about AI He is our AI guy. And you'll have a great discussion. Brett's so intelligent about this topic. I love that we had the opportunity.

1:38:37Jason Oppenheim:along with every other episode, uncut and uncensored. Enjoy. Thank you so much. And until next time.

1:39:07Jason Oppenheim:damage your skin. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear. Level up your summer at Columbia.com to spend more time outside and less time slathering on aloe lotion. You're welcome. Columbia. Engineered for whatever.