Don't Listen to the Skeptics, Ai Will Change Your Life for the Better | Joe Lonsdale

21:28That's by far the most money in government. So, of course, they started hooking up some of Medicare and Medicaid to the NGOs. And then I think we have to watch all the data at the NGOs really carefully with using Treasury. See the data at CMS for what they said they were supposed to be doing. You're going to find tons of fraud there. Okay, so let's back up for a second. So let's say we get a more peaceful world and we get some of the fraud out. And via AI, the mundane tasks that people don't want to do so often are taken care of. And they can still find some dignity in work. There's still something they're doing.

21:59But we've taken care of most of those things and we're basically feeling safe and we have a more functional government. What do you think that actually looks like as a society? It's almost hard to envision if things really were better. We just build so many cool things. And by the way, most of Palantir's revenue is commercial now. It's helping companies build things, helping the supply chains. I'll give you an example I love separately in Palantir. So Joby Aviation, you're probably following a little bit. It's the electric vertical takeoff and landing. Yeah, it's great. The Trump administration approved 12 states for this year.

22:27We're going to be flying people around testing. It's what's real. It's happening. It's great. It's going forward. These are some of the best airplane designers in the world because this company is so exciting. And, you know, Joe Benner runs. It's just a whiz. So people there used to do things with aerospace. space that took three months to redo an airplane design. Now with AI, you're doing it in an afternoon. So I think what a lot of people don't realize, so this company, for example, already has flown and tested hydrogen fuel cell powered flight, which is like six times more efficient per weight overall, if you look at the conversion and the lightness, which is perfectly safe.

22:59And so this is just a much better version of fuel we're going to use for airplanes. And then they've already started testing way more efficient planes. so stepping back just all this stuff that would have been like the 2030s 2040s 2050s it's all being accelerated into the next few years so what do you think that does to us as humans like if and on top of longevity stuff and the AI the medical reasons that we're going to live longer and all yeah things are just going to be it's like things are just going to start growing again like for since 1970s our planes haven't gotten that much better it's been annoying we've kind of been we've kind of been stuck in this like lawyer dominated like kind of like just sclerotic kind of civilization that's like slowly crumbling and we can't build things.

23:39We're going to start building things again. It's going to be great. I mean, I think it just breaks the woke right. It breaks the law of the left because people are just going to be part of a civilization that's working and they're going to be positive because it's just going to be growing. Do you think that cyclical thing, I mean, you sort of referenced this, but that the cyclical thing is just, it's baked into human society sort of that it gets good and it gets bad and it gets good and it gets bad. Do you think there's like any way around that? Can you really run one that goes for a longer period of time?

24:03There's always going to be some cycles. I think we had a lot of self-owns. I think the fiat currency thing in the early 70s is bad. There's something about how we empowered lawyers that's not necessarily great. There's just all this stuff that seemed to happen in the early 70s that really made the returns go to capital instead of to labor, which is not what you want. I mean, I have a lot of capital. I like the capital that gets returns. I think it screws up our culture and our society when labor is like, I think when you print too much money, right, it's not fair to labor in terms of that. So I think there's all these things we did that were just kind of broke and made it more bureaucratic starting in the 70s.

24:33And I think this new AI wave should allow us to break out of that if we fight really hard and don't let the left take over. How is this also going to affect education? Because I know you care an awful lot about education. You're doing the thing with your wife, but also you've been integrally involved in University of Austin. I'm the founding chairman there, yeah. Yeah, and I spoke there, and it was only a few months after speaking at Oxford, doing an Oxford debate, which is thought of as the world's best debate. And I'm not blowing smoke up your butt. I was so much more impressed with the students that you guys had there than Oxford.

25:05It was completely night and day. I mean, 180 opposite. Those kids were so impressive. The question during the Q &A, you remember, it was like they asked some really hard questions. They were poking and prying and sitting with them after. And it was very, very different than what I experienced at Oxford. I appreciate that. We have amazing students at the University of Austin. And the thing about it, you have to have really high scores to go there. And you have to be the sort of person that's opting in to go to a new university. most people are too afraid to do that so so so by default you're surrounded by awesome entrepreneurs who have the courage to go to something new and whenever there's something new there's going to be a few weird people there's going to be a few things that are off there's going to be a bunch of just a bunch of geniuses there though so i i and it's it's cool it's about half stem half half uh you know philosophically minded you know you know kind of literature classically minded people and you know we're actually just finishing the stem building next to the boring company in oh is that right i built this thing out for like robotics mechanical engineering and the spacex and board company guys are helping us.

26:01It's really cool. So you're doing something underground, I assume. We're going to do a tunnel that comes from next door. I'm obsessed with tunnels right now. They're way cooler than people. Yeah, what's going on with the tunnels? Vegas is opening up even more. It's already open, but a bunch more is opening the next month or two. You're going to be able to go from the airport to all your favorite hotels. They're crushing it. Is it weird that we thought that the future was going to be all the flying? You know, Peter always says they promised us flying cars. We got, you know, we got widgets on the phone or something.

26:24But we thought it was all going to be up there. But actually, so much of it is happening underground. At scale, let's just see how long it's right. Like, scale tunnels are just much more efficient for everyone. It gets rid of traffic. I'll still be flying the Joby's. Yeah. We'll do both. We're going to do both in Austin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going to have a couple of those. That's what you're going to see. You're going to fly that thing to your basketball court. It's like an Uber. It's like an Uber, though. You just press the button, and it'll come. You can have it, too. It's just— Just live in a red state.

26:46If you're in a blue state, that's going to take longer. I think we'll see. The New York did just test one. We'll see. Well, all right. So let's dive in on that. So obviously, you're in Texas. We're here in Florida now. Yeah. We're watching Cali and New York disintegrate on a million. Well, first off, do you grade either one of them better or worse than the other? Or do you think their sort of level of degradation is comparable? It's funny. You're also a hell of a tequila drinker, my friend. Oh, this is good. Yeah. All right. All right. I am mostly Irish and my father's. Yeah. Three of these. We'll find out what you really think.

27:15Okay. Thank you. Cheers.

27:21you know that's funny Dave I used to say that's funny the Irish is coming out okay it's definitely coming out I used to say about I used to say about New York I used to say about New York that at least your commies let you build yeah right which they do they have they've like built let them like there's like kind of pretty left but they let them build for a long time this new guy's pretty bad so I don't know I don't know where he's gonna go it could get really worse there and then you get the wealth tax in California it's a race to the bottom right now it's a mess if we were trying to steal man their argument or if we were just giving them every benefit which argument would kill the Jews Well, there's the kill the Jews.

27:52There's the get rid of all the rich people. I can say enough for you if you want. I am Jewish. Yeah, yeah. Bring in all the fentanyl people. But you know what I mean. Like, if we were... Well, it just... Everything that Gavin's done that has just pushed all these people out or celebrating that Elon left, he celebrated. Literally. You've got Mamdami standing outside Ken Griffin's pied -à-terre basically saying this is the place you want to burn down when the riots begin. Like, when they're doing this stuff, what do you think their end goal is? Maybe it's not the same for those two guys. I actually think it's like...

28:20I think it's different. I think Modani's an Islamist. It's a separate issue. I don't think government necessarily wants to kill the Jews. He just wants their donations and then to shame them because, you know. But I think, you know, it's funny actually. Modani had to like thank Ken Griffin a week later. Yeah. Ken gave another donation. Because he gave 10 mil to them. So classy. Ken's such a classy guy. I would not have done that. I would have wanted to get him. He's a very classy guy. You know, I think it's different in both cases. They're both running. They're politicians, right? So they're both running.

28:45They've had more power in their party and they sense that their party right now has become a third world party, which means you have to show envy. You have to show, like, you have to try to demonize success and you have to, you have to basically signal to your base to support you. So this is, this is what they're doing. They're signaling the envy and the hate to their base. I mean, if you, I'm not even sure how to steel man, the third worldism. It's just, it's quite bad. Okay. So not even, so not even steel man, unless there's two different versions here. So for the Gavin version, if you've watched well over a million people leave your state, if you've watched the billionaires now all flee, and you still want everyone's money, do you think, I just want to know if he thinks that he's doing good.

29:22I guess he really does. I mean, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I really don't think he does. So you think he's just sort of a slave to the party and it doesn't matter? He's a power-hungry guy. He might say that I'm playing these power games in order to get power to do good. He might actually say it that way. But he's playing these really crazy power games. And the thing about Gavin and Kamala and these other kind of people who've succeeded in California, they've never stood up to the special interests. They've never stood up to the most powerful groups on their side, which is the government unions and the trial lawyers.

29:52These people are just completely in control. And then the government unions include the teachers unions, right? So they just, I mean, the prison guards union in California has had like 11 raises or something in the last decade. It's just the best paid prison guards in the world because they're a really powerful union. It's ridiculous. And, you know, the data, a black kid in Oakland is like 2.5 times less likely to breed than a black kid in Louisiana in a fourth grade. and it's not because Louisiana is a more sophisticated place necessarily than California right basically if you ask the average person they would say it was the reverse they would guess that California is more sophisticated taking care of the black kids better because that's what we've all been told but it's actually the opposite because these people are actually you know they don't care about results the outcomes is not the goal of the Democratic Party in California the goal of the Democratic Party in California is to reward the special interests they're going to get you elected because they're completely in control of the state these guys there's two million people who work for the government in California if you if each of these people have to basically give money to the union, which then gives money to the far left.

30:46So in California, there's three parties. There's the right, which is anemic. I love Steve Hilton, but it's just like you'll see. And then there's the moderate Democrats and there's the far left. And the far left, which is about at least a third, gets by default like several hundred million dollars a year from the government workers required. So it's a mess. So that's a very specific California has created these conditions. The New York version of it, which if you just look at it from the financial standpoint, that Wall Street is there and that It should have remained the epicenter of the world.

31:14And now everyone's coming down here to Florida, literally within miles of where we are. I think we might get Apollo. We'll see. We'll see. Yeah, all right. Well, no, but you guys are doing okay, too. I'm not saying anything bad about Texas. But most of the money seems to be—is it fair to say that most of the big money is coming to Florida right now? I think that's like the obvious network is Miami, Palm Beach from a lot of the hedge fund guys. Okay, so if that's roughly true, or even if it's second, it doesn't matter. But let's just say, I like how you fight for your state. That's good. I know the feeling.

31:42I'm not wearing the boots. Maybe I should have. I get it. What challenges do you think that presents to a place like Florida, where obviously we have no state income tax, we're building, it's safe, blah, blah, blah, but we're getting this massive influx. What challenges do you think it presents to this state? And to Texas. You've got to work on your infrastructure, right? I think the right is always very uncomfortable with infrastructure because it's government, like tight government, and you have to do it efficiently and build it out. This is why I love Boring Company. we should be building lots more tunnels to get rid of traffic.

32:11But there's going to be infrastructure challenges, there's going to be school challenges, there's going to be things you've got to build. And the biggest difference between Texas and Florida on this stuff is that Texas has a lot more of a build engineer culture. There's a lot more engineers per capita. There's engineering schools, there's companies that have existed there for 80 years in the chip industry and the software industry in a lot more depth. And so I think people, if you're a great investor for lifestyle, it's like Miami's great. If you're a builder like I am where I'm creating all these companies and you kind of have to go to Austin.

32:40But in both cases, we're going to need to fix the infrastructure and scale it up. But this is great for both states. So both states are crushing it. Do you think it matters ultimately if Cali and New York just become dystopian, dysfunctional? Yeah, I really don't like it. I'll tell you what matters, Dave, is we need, and this is something red states need to fix too, by the way, is we need our cities to be functional centers of our civilization. Like we need actually to prove that in the 21st century with the politics we have that we can make cities great. And this is something Republicans are very afraid of.

33:11Republicans prefer just to point at the city and laugh at it. But guess what? These are the centers of our civilization. And so the fact that Austin is dysfunctional in the core of the city council and that we have a DA who's not arresting criminals, that's a problem. And the fact that murder has not gone down there nearly as much after spiking because this guy is acting incorrectly. And you know what? The state could be fixing these things. So I think it's going to be very hard to fix it in blue cities first. But I think we have to show, sorry, blue states, we're going to be really hard to fix these things.

33:40But I think we have to show in red states we can fix our cities. We have to create the precedent. And then we have to take that and bring it to these cities on the coast because it is important for our civilization, for San Francisco and New York, not to be destroyed. There are key parts of our civilization. So what do you think in a red state like Texas, you have to do in a blue epicenter like Austin? Because when I was there seeing you guys, I spent a couple of days, and I saw more homeless people in Austin in 24 hours than I've seen in Florida in all of my years here. But then as everyone pointed out, it's, you know, everyone said the same thing.

34:05It's very controlled and very centralized in this like kind of four block radius. And then of course, there's amazing areas of wealth and safety and all the other stuff. We're very safe right outside the city. Even the core city is not. But your point is that can't. So I'll tell you what happened. So I moved there and a bunch of people, you have to realize it's a virus, right? San Francisco spends a billion dollars order magnitude per year on its homeless NGOs. And these people went and they moved to all the other cities around the country and they taught them, here's what you have to do. When they moved to Austin, you know what they told the mayor who was progressive to do?

34:35He said, you have to bring the homeless camps downtown. So he got rid of the law saying no camping and he brought the camps downtown. And I was very offended by this. So when I moved there, I said, no, we're not doing this again. And my friends and I sponsored something. We won, Austin's a very left city, but we won 59 % of the vote in Austin saying the homeless camps are illegal because you know what? They were causing more murder. They were causing more rape, more sex trafficking, more dry, everything was like that. So people voted against them. The state voted against them, but you went there and they're still there.

35:01So this is an important lesson for me because I'm learning policy here. I'm trying to do this work over the last decade and learning how it works. And it turns out laws are not like these magical things that everyone follows. It turns out they have to, you can't just like pass a law. People just ignore the law. And you could sue them, but that takes a long time. So here's the next version of what we're going to try to get the red states to do. If there is an illegal encampment, which by definition is illegal because it's illegal, a person who lives in the city should be able to take a picture, put it on a portal.

35:27If it's not fixed, let's say within two days, then they should get discounts on their property taxes. So you have to have some incentives. See what I'm saying? Isn't that cool? So guess what? You're going to do a legal encampment? Then I'm not going to pay my full property tax. So you have to like, the state has this power. Right. You're empowering the people. You're telling the people, oh, have a little skin in the game. Give the people the power. Isn't that great? You know, I've told this story a million times, so I'll do it real quick. But about a year ago, there was a little, we have very few homeless people here.

35:52There was a little encampment by my Target Whole Foods area over there. Texted the police chief. I said, chief, you may want to take a look at this. He said, actually, that's across the street from my jurisdiction, but I'll text the other guy. I went back an hour later. It was gone. Now, I didn't get rebate on my taxes or anything. But my point in that is that there are places where it works. But there's functional. And in some cases, it just works. In some cases, you need the incentives in order to force it. And by the way, we're all about helping the homeless people. The way you help them is you make the outcomes accountable.

36:23So there's some spend where if you just don't make it accountable, they're just going to keep spending more and more money to bring them there. They're going to give them free stuff to bring them. They're going to give them free drugs. They're going to give them free tents. They're going to literally free tents, free drugs, free all sorts of things. And they come there and they abuse people. Or you could do it where you're actually paying the drug treatment people. You're paying the people based on recidivism, based on getting them back. What do you think we need to do to then get better politicians too?

36:51Because it's not just the idea people. One thing that I was thinking about a lot in the last two weeks is that we had the third assassination attempt on Trump. had they got him, the world, you would certainly not be sitting here right now. We have no idea what the world would be like right now. We have literally, it could have sparked World War III. Like we have no idea how crazy everything could get. And we just don't, yes, there are, yes, there is a next layer between Rubio and Hegseth and whoever, like there's great people there. There's some good people in the world. But we need that on steroids across the board.

37:20What do we do about that? Well, we need young, we need people who we respect to get involved in politics. And it's tough, man. And public life, like you're doing a version of public life, which is different, of course. And even you get a lot of attacks for it. No, but I get the— We both get attacked for it. You're more famous than you get attacked more. But we're really nasty to people. You want to trade? I'll trade you the attacks for the basketball court. People are really nasty today. I think we should give more— Listen, I strongly disagree with Ro Khanna on a lot of stuff. I feel very betrayed because he came as a moderate in Zilber Valley, and he went to the very far left.

37:55I don't think he deserves to be doxxed because I think there has to be some I completely agree with that I think there has to be some respect for people in public life that's a little better than what we do right now even if you hate the things they stand for and so I think it's very unhealthy what our society is doing there and listen I think we should actually be giving more honor to people on both sides who stand up and go into public life again I really disagree with a lot of the far left I think they're going to destroy our civilization I don't think they should be like violently attacked.

38:24You know, I think it's really important to have some honor in our republic for how we treat people. It's really nasty right now. I mean, sadly, that seems to be a fundamental difference we have. We don't think they should be attacked. An awful lot of them do think we should be attacked. And their leadership doesn't seem willing to say anything about that. That's definitely a problem. Okay. So let's say we get some politicians in and they're working and the AI is working and we're feeling good about the future. so then the neck is the next horizon what elon's talking about all the time like the next the next thing that you'd be excited for is now i love elon i love elon there's so many more battles is he jumping he's jumping 10 battles before no he's thinking way ahead so you're not going interplanetary next week you're doing some other things first so the most important battle for there's a lot of battles that i like to get involved in which is a problem of course but the big battle i fought previously uh in the last 10 years especially was fixing our defense industrial complex it's not fixed by any means, but it's a hell of a lot better.

39:16A ton of people who built with me, a lot of other guys from Pounder built Andrel, Ceronics building things better and cheaper, going to build thousands of these autonomous warships. Chaos is doing$5 ,000 interceptors versus millions of dollars per drone. We've made that cheaper and better and functional. There's so many things happening with Secretary Driscoll in the Army even today announcing basically we're going to let people integrate with everything and get rid of all these interests. We fought this defense battle. It's going right. It's going to work really well. The other really broken cost plus area of our society, other than defense, I'd say it's healthcare.

39:49And healthcare is probably, in some ways, like it's at least as important. Obviously, defense is important when you get conquered. But healthcare is going to make us socialists if we don't fix it. And it's a really cool time right now because it's obvious thanks to what's happening in AI, both on the new therapies to cure diseases and on how you run healthcare administration and services. We can make healthcare so much better and so much cheaper, like so much cheaper, like less than half cost where everyone does better. And this is great because this is our main debt in our country, right? The reason we're bankrupt, the reason we have$100 trillion, if you actually measure it correctly, of entitlement debt is health care.

40:18So this one to me is like the final frontier of special interests that we just – we have to have those fights. Right. And it also seems to be the one that is the lowest hanging fruit to defang some of the left, right? 100%. Because Bernie constantly helped Medicare for everyone, but they have no idea how to pay for it or how to do it. And they would destroy innovation in that area by being a socialist, which we do not want. America is – now, it's probably unfair that we're paying the most highest drug prices and that we are innovating for everyone. We are innovating for the world. We cannot break America's for-profit health care.

40:47The way we have to do it, though, is you have to make it truly a market-based system, which is not. It's crony. It's broken. So you envision a sort of medical future where it's like Elysium meets Alien, and there's going to be a pod, right? Like there will be a pod with robots, and you're going to say, what's wrong with me? And it's just going to fix it right there, right? That's kind of what gets us there. Have you seen this new peptide stuff? Have you followed that? The peptides. My whole Instagram stuff. I'm not on the peptides. Are you on the peptides? I did it when I tore my knee helloskeying.

41:11Yeah? And it was awesome. Yeah, stem cells, man. We're about the same age. Yeah, yeah. That's good. You got to do it. I will tell you, it's the one area of the country where something is growing faster revenue-wise than AI is all the peptides. It's not just GLP-1, by the way. What? Yeah. So peptides as an industry is growing faster than AI? Yeah, revenue-wise. That's insane. It's actually the only thing growing faster. And so it used to just be like GLP-1 and the related things. But if you look at all the other ones added up, it's actually now bigger interest than the GLP-1s even. And so this is a big thing in our country.

41:44So we're going to change all the tech. We're going to fundamentally change our bodies. There's going to be all sorts of new therapies that are even more advanced than peptides coming. But I think peptides is like the big thing the next five years in health care on that side of it. And I think people are going to be a lot healthier in their 80s, 90s, 100s. Like, I don't know. Maybe you live to 120, but you live healthily. There's these new treatments for these rats that they're doing because they test things out on animals. And we figured out how an aging works. And it makes the rat live like 30 % longer.

42:11but it looks like it's young until it dies, which is pretty good. Whoa. Yeah. That's freaky. You know, you tell that an old rat has gotten young again, starts having lots of sex right away. So somewhere in a lab somewhere, there's a lot of old rats having sex. Sorry, I'm drinking too much. No, no, no. You should have one more. This is like when Jordan Peterson used to talk about the rats doing cocaine and everybody would be freaking out. Okay, interesting. So somewhere, are you involved in that in any way? Not the sex. No. Should we end the show there? Do you have anything else you want to add?

42:42I feel like that seems like the proper... No, actually, so Altos Labs is Rick Klausner. That was good. That was a heck of a laugh to I'll get to something serious. No, it was good. Rick Klausner started five or six multi-billion dollar bio companies, and he started that. He's working on a bunch of cool things. But I think Altos raised a few billion dollars, and it's them. And then Blake Byers, who is also a very famous investor in Silicon Valley, has his own company with some of our friends as well that's doing great things. So there's a couple groups that are actually advancing this. It's really cool.

43:09You know what? I will ask you one final bonus question because I've mentioned before you've invested in a couple of things that I've done. I think I've done all right by you. And I've said this every time you've been on the show, but the best part is not the money that you've invested, but that you always pick up the phone and you've given us great advice on certain things over the years. so let me ask you this just for anyone that's watching this that just they want to get involved a little bit more they want to invest a little bit more they want to do some things with their money that's a little bit different they get all at least some level of what we've talked about here in terms of where the future is going and everything else how would you say to somebody who's like you know maybe in their 20s who has a little money just wants to start doing more interesting things with their money what would you say to that person yeah it's interesting i think I think I'd say mostly to that person, my first thing I'd tell you is your time's worth a hell of a lot more in your money.

43:59And so using the money that you have to be safe with the money to then free up more of your time to learn AI, to try to practice building something, to try to take risks. Like that's the most important thing, first of all, is learning and taking risks. Now, if you do really want to invest your money in some ways, first of all, you have to be an accredited investor to invest in funds. So you got to be really careful about that. But assuming you're allowed - Right, so you're not going to get there overnight. You got to have - You're not going to get there overnight. So it's the public stuff. So I actually think if you're not accredited, you should be investing to make sure you free up your time and leave your money in an ETF.

44:28It's fine. But if you do have extra money beyond that, I think you should be very careful at first. You shouldn't put too much of it in liquid. But there are platforms, Zambato, Z-A-N-B-A-T-O is something I helped friends start over a decade ago. And there's billions of dollars to go through that to access kind of interesting tech companies, for example, and people. But I think you just got to be really careful about these things if you're an outsider. Start with a much smaller amount and learn from your mistakes is what I will tell people because this is dangerous if you're just starting to get involved.

44:55And final question, what would you say to an investor like yourself who is drinking great tequila and was like, man, I should probably invest in a tequila cup? What would you say to that guy? I think we should always back Dave and learn from him. And communication. Good seeing you, my man. Good to see you. On June 11th, the Rubin Report will be live at the Fillmore Miami Beach with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Ben Shapiro, Adam Carolla, Jillian Michaels, and little old me. Seats are limited and going fast, so if you've been watching the show and want to experience it live, scan the QR code right over here and grab your ticket.

45:28I'll see you there.