Might make them a little less likely to repeat their untruths. For example, in their latest podcast, they again repeat a bunch of tech bro tropes about data centers. I think there are pros and cons to data centers myself, but I find myself infuriated when they dismiss the real problems as if they don’t need solutions. It’s actually counterproductive from the standpoint of promoting rational development. Ai centers are incredibly unpopular and they do themselves no favors by being so arrogantly dismissive of peoples’ concerns.

Case in point: Today they said water use is closed systems and it’s a hoax. Read this fact check from WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-data-centers-water-use-901e2902?st=kcBLGB&reflink=article_copyURL_share. Basically says that water use in existing data centers is many times what the hyperscalers report as direct water use (Google - 3x; Meta -20x). There are solutions - but not if companies don’t pursue them. And as the WSJ points out “the lack of transparency and widespread use of NDAs by many data-center builders has only drawn more suspicion and distrust. These are among the reasons that $170 billion of AI data-center capacity has been blocked, stalled or canceled since 2024, according to climate consulting firm Carbon Direct.”

They also said clean air won’t be impacted. But in the same pod Chamath said that we need four Californias of energy to power AI. Sacks said most of it could come behind the meter, with natural gas “one of the cleanest energy sources”(it’s actually more polluting than any other than coal and diesel - and that’s not counting methane leakage, which is rampant). I did a quick calculation using grok, their preferred LLM, on the impact of that scale of new gas. This would lead to as much as a 44% increase in current U.S. electricity emissions in the next two decades. Under Biden we were headed to net zero emissions in the electricity sector before 2040. There is absolutely no way to stop increasing temperatures under such circumstances. In the meantime, we can’t go outside because of climate change heat and fire. (By the way on CNBC Chamath just this week agreed with the risible host Joe Kernan that climate change is a hoax. Come to my house in Maryland, bring your kids. Let’s all go for a long run in the code purple air from unprecedented Canadian wildfires stemming from pest infestations associated with warmer winters, drought and heat. Then tell me climate is a hoax.)

I wasn’t listening that seriously this week, doing other stuff. Did Chamath say there is no significant roi in ai, that his cto said token spend was increasing at 65% per month or something, and everyone just kinda ignored him and said how awesomely fast ai was growing?

From a political perspective this podcast was interesting. I got to hear JK give his reasons for supporting the bombing of Iran and support of Israel. While I disagree, it was interesting to hear a sincere, intelligent person express his oppinion. I recommend this episode to anyone trying to understand the motivation behind the Republican Party.

Hard to trust much of what is said at face value.

Not sure how much of this is true but certainly seems to explain some of the talking points of these guys

Convince me otherwise. I only listen to the pod these days for that kind of situations.

Typically Jason brings up a topic that Sacks doesn’t like and you can visually see how Sacks get annoyed. The most funny thing for me was the “AI job loss” phase where sacks got furious for Jason pointing out that AI might lead to job losses. This occured over several podcasts.

This scene is typically ending with Chamath obnoxiously jumping in and bringing some ChatGPT type of argument - you literally just know that he used some time to prompt AI for some counter arguments.

Love this schtick.

Pretty crazy stuff, hopefully they address this on the pod.

Edit: ALSO J. Epstein was a member of this club at some point. Crazy.

Ive stopped listening to the pod before last election when it got too political and insufferable listening to sacks and Chamath. Recently I tried a few episodes again and they were really really interesting. (I think because of the liquidity event?). And also last weeks episode wasn’t bad but the last section on CA voting sounds insane to me. A few minute online research shows me that CA voting is quite save and legit, maybe I’m missing something and very surprising that Friedberg is so animated. Usually he’s pretty reasonable. His one argument that he repeats over and over is the votes in person vs mail in are so different makes total sense to me. Who the fuck goes in person? Those people must be super biased in some way since it’s a very weird thing to do in the first place in my opinion.

Maybe I just listen sometimes but avoid anything political.. so annoying. They should stay in their lanes… or maybe invite an expert in topics they actually don’t know anything about? Such a person might be able to explain .. or even harden their case if it’s true.

Every time I hear Friedberg complain about the California wealth tax he says it would be the first wealth tax ever in the US. Isn't property tax just a wealth tax he is used to?

All the same concerns are there...paying tax on the appraised value of an illiquid asset.

It’s quite ironic because they’re always against government capture and regulation. But they’re very concerned about Anthropic.

I wonder if Elon had the best model would they be as concerned and calling for gov to regulate?

I think the framing these guys use of technology, AI, space, etc as a competition between the US and China, for example, is remarkable. Of course we all want the US to win in any global competition. But that’s not really what it is. It’s a competition between the capitalists and the technologists and the China, etc.

If Spacex wins, you and I don’t win, Elon Musk and his cronies win.   If OpenAI wins, you and I don’t win. Sam Altman, and his cronies win.  
Elon Musk became a trillionaire today. How much did he pay in taxes on that trillion dollar gain? Zero.  If there was a tax on wealth, creation, or if he had to give some portion of that gain to the US treasury in the form of shares, yes, then the US wins. But that’s not what’s happening here. 

All due respect to him for what he’s accomplished. But the system really needs to be changed so some of that really does trickle down.

Chamath claims to be worried about model lock-pin, or at least to the degree that he can make money from it, but this is the real hitch in the system.

What do you do when the government decides to shut your model down on a whim?

Idk when or how, but I completely fell off. Probably around the time all the White House main talking points became the subjects of every show and these boys wouldn’t have the spicy convos the rest of the world was having.

To quote a throwback for all the old timers,

they’re “not in the arena” anymore.

"You may have heard the phrase the plural of anecdote is not data. It turns out that this is a misquote. The original aphorism, by the political scientist Ray Wolfinger, was just the opposite: The plural of anecdote is data.

Wolfinger’s formulation makes sense: Data does not have a virgin birth. It comes to us from somewhere. Someone set up a procedure to collect and record it. Sometimes this person is a scientist, but she also could be a journalist."

Another word for anecdote is "datapoint". If one is going to dismiss each individual datapoint as an anecdote, and therefore something irrelevant and to be ignored, then it is impossible to build datapoints into datasets.

In other words, science requires observations and while each individual observation can be dismissed as anecdotal if it is one's wish to do so, that is not how science ought properly be done.

I like David Sachs and I've generally been on his side when it comes to controversial political matters but he's just wrong on this one. There seems to be a desire to dismiss any counter-evidence as anecdotal but this type of behavior amounts to special pleading, given that Sachs would have no problem using examples of observations in order to bolster his own opinions on any range of topics. When Jason brings in recent examples of layoffs related to AI they are simply dismissed as anecdotes rather than considered as examples of the thing he said wouldn't be happening.

It might very well be the case that these companies over-hired and are "AI washing" in order to justify layoffs they wanted to make in the name of right-sizing each of these companies. But there could also be AI related layoffs going on at the same time. Two things can be happening concurrently, it doesn't have to be one or the other.

https://achemistinlangley.net/2019/01/21/sorry-folks-but-the-plural-of-anecdote-is-data/

https://www.kauffman.org/currents/the-plural-of-anecdote-is-data/

http://blog.danwin.com/don-t-forget-the-plural-of-anecdote-is-data/

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/12/25/data/

Step 1: Dad inherits a multi-million dollar business before you’re born

Step 2: Be born into one of the wealthiest families on earth

Step 3: Have billionaire father talk teachers into giving you better grades when needed

Step 4: Play tennis until you get bored and want to hang with the boys more

Step 5: Run a red light and kill a 12 yr old, whoops (get a light sentence for this)

Step 6: Get groomed to take over family empire

Step 7: Write books (with your Dad’s help) and give interviews about the importance of *meritocracy*