OpenAI’s Content Deals, Why Does Scott Tell Crude Jokes? and Scott’s Morning Routine

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1:13Welcome to the Prof G Pod's Office Hours. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. Hey, Prof G. Hey, Scott and team. Hey, Scott. Hi, Prof G. Hey, Prof G. Hey, Prof G. Hi, Professor G. At last week's Office Hours, I answered your questions, or not, surrounding AI and higher education, the intersection of passion and talent and charitable giving. What this will be, I think the biggest impact this is going to have on primary education is that ChatGPT and Anthropic will be able to offer what are pretty reasonable facsimiles of$150 an hour tutor for nearly free.

1:50Look at the space you're in and think, am I learning a lot? Am I learning a lot at this company? Do I have senior level sponsorship? Is the firm doing well? Is it a good culture? Do they pay me fairly? Is there a path? Has someone taken an irrational interest or at least a real interest in my future and is coaching me? All of these things are important to ask yourself at a specific organization. How do I approach giving? I try to put it to something I'm passionate about and I think I know something about and that I want to change. Today, we'll answer your questions about OpenAI's recent content deals, Microsoft AI, why I start off the pod with crude jokes, and what the dog's morning routine looks like.

2:31So with that, first question. Hi, Scott. My name is Jack. I live in southern Delaware. Thank you for the start off there. Thank you for all the great content. I learned a lot listening to you and your team. Scott, on June 3rd, you and Ed were talking about some of the content deals that OpenAI has made with Vox and News Corp. Now, I had seen that in the headlines before. And especially with News Corp, alarm bells went off in my head. And at a simple level, I kind of understand how it works. And I know, as I'm sure you're well aware, two of the big AI issues are bias and hallucination, hallucination and bias.

3:15And here we have this technology, which is still not rock solid, might never be rock solid, hooking up with news organizations. And I'm not just picking on News Corp here that, you know, are known for bias. Am I looking at this the wrong way, Scott? I really, I literally would appreciate people's thoughts on this because when I heard about that deal, like I said, alarm bells went off in my head. Okay. Thanks again for all the great content and hope you and your family are well. Bye-bye. Thanks for the thoughtful question, Jack from Delaware. Yeah, it would make sense that if they started crawling, I think that's even what Elon Musk is trying to do with his AI offering is to make it non-woke because there is, I have noticed with Microsoft AI, some people call it chat GPT and also Anthropic is they have put on, I don't want to call it a woke filter, but a more progressive or we don't want to offend people filter.

4:11It's not as hard hitting. It feels more anodyne. It feels more safe. It doesn't feel as puncturing. I mean, occasionally people say, okay, DEI makes no sense for the following reasons. And I find that it's center left and it's PG-13 and that they have created some sort of technology or governor that attempts to kind of take it a little bit more blue. And I say that as a progressive and a little bit more PG-13. So I'm not worried that we're going to start seeing kind of weird gossipy things that are clearly the post. These LLMs crawl so much data that I think the idea is that they see the relationship between words across different sources and then a string of words and figure out what type of sequencing, if you will, is most common across the sequence of the query that you have put in.

5:03If that sounds like a bad explanation of AI, trust your instinct. So a little bit about the contract. According to the Wall Street Journal, the five-year contract with News Corp is valued at an estimated quarter of a billion dollars or$250 million. But when you break that down, that's$50 million a year. I don't know if some of it's coming, if it's all in cash or some of it's in compute or I don't know. We'll see. It's actually not that big a deal, I don't think. As part of the deal, OpenAI will be able to use news material from News Corp's publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Barron's New York Post, to answer questions from users.

5:34So keep in mind, I actually think the Wall Street Journal does call balls and strikes. And And strikingly, the Wall Street Journal and PBS, was it the Wall Street Journal and PBS or the Wall Street Journal and the BBC? I think it was the Wall Street Journal and PBS are seen as the two most unbiased news outlets, which I found very interesting. They're not crawling Fox News here. So this does feel a little bit more, I don't know, nonpartisan, if you will. And also the Wall Street Journal, I would argue that the editorial page has definitely a conservative bent. But the newspaper itself, I just think it's great, great financial reporting.

6:08Also, Barron's is very much markets focused. But my sense is these things crawl so much data that they're literally expectrating back something resembling a bit of an amalgam of all, all of the world. Now, having said that, where it'll zero in on, where it gets a bias is from the engineer. And you are the engineer here, specifically the prompt you put in. Now, what I was worried about is that I would say, OK, give me my morning news, business news. Give me the give me the business news for this morning in the voice of Reuters with a pinch of, I don't know, Anderson Cooper and with some humor from Dave Chappelle.

6:44And I would never need to go to CNN and I would never need to go to Reuters. And you'd even have more oxygen sucked out of the room of media companies because they could start mimicking their voice and not pay the money royalties. Having said that, there's been enough of these deals struck now that it does look as if the AI industrial complex has decided that they do need this content. Now, can the LLMs then start create or give birth to their own LLMs that create artificial content that these LLMs can crawl? Think about that. That'll send your mind into a bit of a ketamine rabbit hole. Not that that's a bad thing.

7:16anyways, or are they going to constantly need to continue to get the grist or the coal or the inputs from new content from these media companies? I hope it's the latter. And that's what I'm banking on because you're going to end up with a new high margin source of revenue. So for example, I was thinking about buying Gannett stock. Why? Gannett is being priced as if it's going out of business. I think its stock is at two or three bucks. And it has a ton of content, specifically local and regional content. They own a bunch of local and regional newspapers. And I thought, well, that actually, that content is probably very attractive to an LLM that's focused or trying to put out a, you know, be more informed in terms of news, if you will.

7:55Anyway, that's neither here nor there. So I'm excited about these deals. I'd like to see the prices go up. I just did a call with, or I just did an interview with Matt Bellany of Puck News who covers media. And he was saying, what does Hollywood get wrong? And I'm like, the writer's strike just didn't get it. They're going after the studios. They should be partnering with the studios to go after the LLMs and AI. that you can't squeeze blood from a rock. I mean, Disney doesn't have that much money to give up, but you want to squeeze blood from a giant freaking blue whale carcass, which is AI right now.

8:24Anyways, but supposedly there's all this dissent and agita in the newsroom. Why? What creates more dissent and agita in a marriage? Financial problems. And when companies are shrinking and have financial strain, what do you know? Mom and dad start arguing. And that's what's happening at the Washington Post and what's happening in media companies all over America is that they are having arguments over money. Thanks for the question, Jack, from Delaware. Question number two. Hi, Scott. This is Scott calling from Silicon. Thanks for your podcast. I listen to all four each week, and I have a question regarding your brand strategy.

9:00You make two types of jokes at the beginning of the podcast on Mondays and Thursdays, corny or crude. The crude jokes are sometimes funny to the mind of a 12-year-old boy. If you think I have the mind of a 12-year-old boy, trust your instincts. Even with a 12-year-old boy mindset, however, the crude jokes are often not well-received by me and may not be well-received by your core group of young males. By way of background, I'm a 57-year-old partner in an accounting firm with 55 employees. I would like to send out links to your podcast to our firm, but do not for two reasons. First, I lead numerous employees and am embarrassed by the inappropriate content of the crude jokes.

9:34Second, our practice is in Washington State where employment laws are stringent and enforced by the legal community. If I were to send out the podcast link to our employees, it is possible that someone would be offended by the joke and since it was received by his or her employer, I could be accused of creating a hostile work environment. My question is, why would you continue with the crude jokes when you can stick with the corny jokes for the same amount of work you and your team are putting in to create the podcast? And by doing so, you would create the opportunity to expand your audience across genders and generations and give the expanded audience the opportunity to expand their knowledge, viewpoints, and improve their lives.

10:09Thank you for creating content that is insightful, meaningful, and impactful. I look forward to your answer, but I'm not looking forward to the next crude joke. That is a really thoughtful question, Scott from Spokane. It is a gift when someone gives you what I'll call constructive criticism or constructive feedback, and this is exactly that. It's civil, it's thoughtful, and I want to be clear. You may be right. I don't know. I mean, there's a reason why people aren't crude in media, because is it worth the risk of offending people? If the kind of the core or the white meat of what you do is excellence or insight or being funny generally about stuff, then why do you need to go NC-17?

10:57I do have for a few reasons, and I don't know if it's the right way, but it's my way. One, it's authentic. I am crude and profane. That is really me. That is how I think. The corny jokes I like. I like dad jokes. I find crude jokes really funny. And I think that there's more people out there that think like me than not. They're just been told in an overly sensitive environment that they're not supposed to say these things. And I get it. A lot of this is NSFW. And I want to be clear. young men should not, anyone should not feel comfortable repeating these things in a workplace. Even just saying this makes me think I should stop.

11:32The way I justify it is that, or at least I rationalize it to myself, is that one of the things I don't like about the Democratic Party and progressives is that we are seen as humorless and that we are so worried about offending people that people are turned off of us, that we've become so ridiculous with our preferred pronouns or rather than taking gestures as they're intended, but looking instead, trying to find something wrong with someone's comments, take them out of context and then press on the soft tissue and shame them hoping you'll get a bunch of likes and score a Guardians of Gacha pin.

12:15I wanna create cloud cover for vulgarity and profanity, not in the workplace, but in media. And one of the reasons I thought about seriously stopping doing it is that I've had actually parents come up to me with their kids, and I think, Jesus, the kid is listening to this. Maybe I shouldn't. But anyways, kids probably have more profanity than I would acknowledge. But I want to take back profanity and vulgarity from the right. I think that it's okay to be inappropriate and joke. You never want to diminish anybody. You never want to make someone feel bad. But look, if you don't want to listen, If you have that sort of sensibility where you're easily offended by vulgarity or crude jokes, I get it.

12:55Full refund coming your way. And I want to be clear. I don't know if I'm right here, but I am intentional about being authentic. And to the people I admire, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Dave Chappelle, I just look at these folks and I think of them as progressives that really fomented or gave cloud cover for social change by softening the beach. with humor that was, quite frankly, not PG-13, that was unstarched and crude. I enjoy Bill Maher. I think he's quite crude. But this is something where the jury is out. I don't know. I don't know if I'm right here. And your thoughtful comments give me pause to learn and maybe reconsider my view.

13:38So in sum, the lesson here, the learning here isn't whether or not I should continue or not continue to have crude jokes or be vulgar. It's that civil dialogue and civil pushback results in learning if you're open to it. And we should all be open to it. We should all approach these issues with a little bit of humility. And that is, I'm open to the idea that I might be wrong. Anyways, a long-winded way of saying I really appreciate the question. Thanks very much, Scott from Spokane. We have one quick break before our final question. Stay with us.

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14:58And so does my wife, who keeps stealing all my hoodies. Stay fit for the season and Abercrombie's newest arrivals. Shop NFL by Abercrombie in the app, online, and in store.

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15:49I'm curious what role meditation, journaling, and morning routines play in your life, if any. Thanks for all you do. So I wake up about 5 a.m., I do a cold plunge, and then I review my journaling from the evening before. And then I do a bunch of breath work. And then I work out. I do a bunch of yoga. and then I do about an hour to an hour and a half of meditation. None of that is true. The role of meditation, journaling, and morning routines in my life, they play almost no role. Why? Because I go to sleep around 2 or 3 a.m. I like to write. I like to hang out with my dogs. I like to surf the internet.

16:28I like to watch television. I like to call my friends on the East and West Coast back in the United States. And I like to hang out without anybody except my dogs and my brain. sometimes I have a drink, sometimes I take an edible. I'm not drinking as much. I'm trying to cut down my alcohol intake, but that is me time. That is me time. And what does it mean when you go to bed at 2 or 3 a.m.? It means you get up. I usually get up around 9 or 10, but I don't really get going until about 10, 30 or 11. And this fits really well, this time zone, because nobody that works with me is up until noon my time, if that.

17:01Plus, I work with all these millennials who are probably walking their dog in Prospect Park until about 11 a.m. after getting their$43 coffees. Is that wrong? Is that a stereotype? Is that a stereotype? Anyway, my morning routine is I get up, I have coffee, I read a bunch of news, I hang out with the dogs again. If I'm really motivated, I'll do some exercise. Sometimes I put it off. I try and work out about four times a week. I've worked out four times a week for about 40 years. It is my antidepressant. But for me, it's really about taking in information It's not entertainment time for me, but it's about coffee.

17:38It's about trying to have a nice breakfast. I hang out a little bit with my partner, catch up with her, and then just sort of ease into the day, if you will. But for me, it's about digesting a ton of information. And then, you know, America wakes up around 7 a.m., and I kind of start my workday. And I usually, like right now, it is 7 p.m. I'll be working until 9 p.m. tonight. And all hell breaks loose around noon, and my calendar's just kind of stacked. But when I was in college, I rode crew and I had to get up at 515 every morning and then bomb to Marina del Rey, where I would row. And I think it was called Bologna Creek for five or seven miles.

18:15By the way, hands down, the worst athlete in all of D1 sports you're listening to right now. And usually I had gotten fucked up the night before with my fraternity brothers. And so I would row for about a mile and a half and then throw up over the side. And everyone would freak out and say shit like, well, that's not going to make the boat go faster. or who threw up? Oh, it must be Galloway. And I was like, these people are so uptight. I'm like, come on, none of us are going to the Olympics. Anyway, anyway, see above worst D1 athlete in UCLA history. But I decided after I left crew that I would never get up early again in my life if I could help it.

18:50And two, I would never get my heart rate above a hundred beats per minute. I am so over cardiovascular exercise. I was like a giant fucking vein. I was six to, was I six to 185, 190? I've been basically the same weight for 40 years, although it's shifted. It's shifted. Now I have enormous ankles. Why does that make me laugh? I don't know. Anyways, I decided I wanted nothing to do with cardio. I wanted nothing to do with the mornings. I am not a morning person. I would like to figure out meditation. My friend Sam Harris is like kind of the guru around this stuff. I'm sure it's good for you. By the way, see above.

19:24I'm not sure this is the right way. It's just my way. Daddy is not a morning person. He is not a morning person. Oh, He loves the evening. I think that's why I moved to New York. Seriously. California is all about the day. New York is all about the night. And boom, as soon as I went back to New York, it was like a Wednesday. And there were great places to go at 11 p.m. I'm like, hello. Hello. Count me. Count me in. Count me. New York. Here I come. Anyways, don't love the mornings. Don't love the mornings. The good news is in Britain is that the mornings are really gray. And you feel as if you're missing absolutely nothing.

20:00by just being at home nestled around your coffee. Thanks for the question. Not a morning person. Not a morning person. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehours at propgmedia.com. Again, that's officehours at propgmedia.com.

20:24This episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer. and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice as read by George Hahn. And please follow our Prop G Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday. Please, if you can right now and you enjoyed the show, go to Prop G Markets and subscribe.