E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
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Today's guest is from Los Alamos, New Mexico. He's a leader in the world of business and technology. He's an entrepreneur. He started Scale AI, a company recently valued at $14 billion.

He started it when he was only 19, and at 24, he became the youngest self-made billionaire in the world. We talk about his company, the future of AI, and the role it plays in our human existence. This was super educational for me. I hope it is for you. I'm grateful for his time. Today's guest is Mr. Alexander Wang. Hello, Mr. Wang.

No.

No, I just got there the day, the morning of the inauguration. Were you there the whole weekend? I was there the whole weekend. Yeah, no, I mean, I think at least for what we do, like for AI, the new administration is really excited about it and wants to make sure that we get it right as a country. So that was all great, but it was kind of a crazy, the whole like event, like everything was pretty crazy. I don't know. What'd you think? I mean, when I saw Conor McGregor show up, that's when I was like, shit is crazy.

Where are we? That's what like the most bizarre. I mean, you were there. Sam Altman was there. I was just like, it was like, whoa, what happened here? And part of that's because Alex Brucewitz, you know. Totally, yeah. I mean, it's all because of him that we all went. But just the fact that he would bring these people together, it kind of makes you question. Crossover. It's like in those like TV shows when you have those crossover episodes. Yeah. That's kind of what it felt like.

Oh yeah. When like the Harlem globe trotters and it would be like them versus like, um, the care bears or whatever would show up. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. This seems, um, yeah, some cross pollination. Um, yeah. What'd you think when Connor showed up? Was that strange to see him? Like, was there somebody you thought that was strange, like unique to see there for you? Uh, well,

Well, yeah. I mean, you, Connor, like the Pauls, I don't know. The whole thing was pretty crazy. I see Sam all the time and I see some of the tech people all the time. I mean, it was a funny crossover and it was obviously like so many people flew in to be able to go to like the outdoor inauguration, right? Oh, yeah. And so, I mean, there were so many people in the city. We ran into them, obviously. But like there were so many people in D.C.,

who were just around for the inauguration. So it was a- - Yeah, I didn't even think about that. There was a couple hundred thousand people probably that just got kind of displaced in a way. And suddenly they're just in bars or whatever, just like buying like, there was like people I saw walking, just adult onesies and shit that said Trump on the back. That's crazy shit. - Yeah. - Yeah, thanks for coming in, man. I'm excited to learn about AI. I know that that's a world that you're in. You're in the tech universe.

And you're from New Mexico, right? Yeah. And so when you grew up there, did you have like a strong sense of like science and technology? Was that like part of your world? Like did your parents like lead you into that? Like what was just some of your youth like there? Yeah. So both my parents are physicists and there's a – Oh, damn. I grew up in this town called Los Alamos where there's a –

There's a national lab there. Did you watch Oppenheimer? Yeah. Yeah. So all the New Mexico shots in Oppenheimer, that's exactly where I grew up. Oh, dang. So it was like originally where all the scientists came together and did all the work in the atomic bomb. And there's still this huge lab. That's basically the – everybody I knew effectively, like their parents worked at the lab or were somehow affiliated with the lab. Yeah.

Like Nukeville over there, huh? Nukeville, yeah. Is it scary like that? It was, you know... Is it at a level of mystery? Like is your prom like last night under the stars or something? There's this one museum... Well, the funny thing is like first you hear this... You learn the story of the atomic bomb and the Manhattan Project like basically every year growing up because there's always like a day or a few days where there's a substitute teacher and they just...

They just play the videos. So you're just like... Yeah, an alcoholic or something. A recreational user, we'll use that term. That's crazy that that just... Like every year you guys have like... Yeah. Just like blasted Thursdays or whatever. And it's just...

Yeah, you're just learning. You're learning again about the Manhattan Project. And then there's a little there's a little museum in town, which is like you walk through and there's like a life size replica of the nukes. So it's it's pretty wild. Yeah. And where did they drop the atomic bombs on? They dropped them on Asia, right? Hiroshima. They yeah, they dropped them on Asia.

In Japan. Yeah. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Is it crazy being like semi-Asian, part Asian? Yeah. My parents are Chinese. Oh, nice, man. Is it crazy being Asian and then having that happen to Asian people with a bond? Like, is that a weird thing there or it's nothing? No, I don't think so. I mean, I think the thing is like, you know, I...

So there weren't – I didn't grow up with very many Asians because in that town, it was – it's in New Mexico. There's very few Asians in New Mexico. So I was one of the only Asian kids in my class growing up. And so I didn't think that much about it honestly. But then like – but it is super weird. You grow up and you learn about this –

very advanced technology that had this like really, really big impact on the world. And I think that shaped- Yeah, it's like the scientific John Jones over there, really. He's a New Mexican, isn't he? He lives in Albuquerque. Oh, he does? I think he does, yeah. Oh, sweet, man. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. So you're there, there's this-

energy always there of this creation. So probably the possibility of creation maybe was always in the air. I'm just wondering, like, how did you get formed kind of, you know? Like, what's your origin story kind of? It was super scientific because, you know, there were all these presentations around what were the new kinds of science that were going on at the lab. So there's all these chemistry experiments and these different, like, earth science experiments and physics experiments. And my mom studied, like,

plasma and like

how plasma, you know, worked inside of stars and stuff like that. So it was just the wildest stuff. And you would talk to people's parents, people like I talked to my classmates or I talked to their parents about what they're working on is always some crazy science thing. So that was, that was really cool because, because everybody in that town basically is, they're all working on some kind of crazy scientific thing. And so you kind of, I mean, I feel like I grew up,

feeling like you know anything was possible in that way like yeah because the rest of us in other communities shitty communities or whatever we're just making that volcano or whatever you know what i'm saying we're doing like grassroots level bullshit you know um dang that's gotta be wild

So every you see somebody just sneaking behind an alley and buying a bit of uranium and shit like that in your neighborhood, that's got to be kind of unique. I remember there was someone from our town who did who did a science fair project called it's called like great balls of plasma. And for the science, literally for the science fair, this was in like high school for the science fair. They made like huge balls of plasma in their garage.

And I was like, what the hell? We're all just doing this in high school? Damn. So did you feel competitive or did you just feel like hyper capable? Did you feel like kind of advanced just in your studies like when you were young? Like did you – in class, like are some of these stuff kind of coming easy to me? I ended up – what I did is there was a –

I ended up getting really competitive about math in particular. And so my sport was math, which is kind of crazy. Algebrazy, son. I know I feel you. And it was because when I was in middle school, when I was in sixth grade, there was this one math competition where if you got top four in the state, state of New Mexico, then you would get an all expense paid trip to Disney World.

And I remember as a sixth grader, like that was the most motivating thing I could possibly imagine was like an all expense paid trip to Disney World. Yeah. And then. Did you win it? I won it. I got fourth place. So I snuck in there. Terrifier. Snuck in. Yeah.

And then I went to – and then we went to Florida to Disney World. And I hadn't traveled – like I didn't travel around too much growing up. Like I mostly was in New Mexico and we did some road trips around the southwest. So I remember getting to Florida and it was extremely humid. It was like – I never felt what humidity felt like when I landed in Florida. I was like, oh, this feels bad. And then I –

Yeah, it definitely does. Yeah, it's funny because I grew up inhumane, dude. Like you would like you try to shake somebody's hand. You couldn't even land it because it was just not enough viscose, just too much lube in a handshake. You'd sit there for 10 minutes trying to land a handshake. You know, everybody was always dripping, you know, all the time. People you always thought they were scared or something or they were kind of geeked up off a gas station dope or something. But people were just it was humid.

Yeah, you get really humid over there. So then I became a mathlete. That was like a big part of my identity was being a mathlete. And I would- And you have to wear a vest. Like, what do you guys do? Is there a uniform for that? Well, you need a, you have a calculator. Okay. So everyone had their favorite calculator. Okay, you got that Draco on you, baby. I feel you keep strapped. You stay strapped at that thing. Yeah.

And then – but outside of that, not really. I mean like everyone had their favorite pencil. Your pencil, your calculator, that was your gear. But yeah, no, I was like a nationally ranked mathlete for middle school, high school. That was my jam. And is it – what's this math circle like? Is there – wow, that's crazy, dude. Yeah.

So you go to what other competitions you go to with those competitions? Yeah. There's like there's like state level competitions. There's national level competitions. There's like these summer camps, math camp. I went to math camp a bunch of times where you where you convene with like minded math. OK. Wow. Fucking wizards in the park.

- Couple dudes fucking fighting over a common denominator in the lobby. That's crazy, bro. - But just like any other sport, it's competitive. You gotta win. And so you're chummy with everyone, but you're also like, who's gonna win? - Yeah. No, dude, competition's amazing, man. That's one thing too that's so nice I think about when you're young is if you're involved in a sport or a group or whatever it was,

Just that chance to be competitive, you know? What were like some of the competitions at the math thing? Like what's a math competition like when you get there? So you – the ones in the middle school were actually more fun because there's like – there's almost like a Jeopardy style buzzer competition and stuff like that.

But once you get to high school, it's just you just take a test and you just it's like the biggest one in America is called the USMO. Bring it up.

USMO? USAMO. Okay. And it's like people all around the country take this test. And there's a... United States of American Mathematical Olympiad. Okay. Yeah, there you go. Okay. A participant must be either a U.S. citizen or a legal resident of the U.S. Okay. Okay, go on. And then it's a nine-hour test. Damn.

It's split over two days. It's nine hours. It's four and a half hours. And it's nine hours and you have six problems. So it's kind of nerve wracking. And you get in there. You have four and a half hours the first day, four and a half hours the second day. Can you cheat in between the days? Can you just go home and – No, because you only get three questions the first day and then you only get three questions the next day. Wow.

And I remember the first time I took it, I was in, I think I was, uh, I was in eighth grade. First time I took it. And I like, I was like so nervous. And I just, I like brought a thermos full of coffee and I drank so much coffee that like those four and a half hours felt like, like year. It was like, I was so jittery the whole time. It was, uh, it was crazy. He out there rattling brother. Oh, integers make me rattle brother. I feel you on that.

Dude, so that's pretty – so you're competitive. And so you get out of there and you're obviously, I guess, admired in the world of math probably. Or that's like a thing that you can point – that's like a pin –

Feathering your cat. So that helps you get into MIT, right? Yep. Okay. So then, yeah, in MIT, on the MIT admissions, they ask for your like competitive math scores. So if you're... So you knew a lot of kids going there probably because it was... Tons of kids. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Tons of kids. It was like a reunion. It was like math camp reunion. Damn, because I was wondering where all y'all were at, dude, because we were doing some other shit. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, we were not...

God, that's where all the smart kids were. That's fascinating, man. And so then, yeah, I was at MIT. And then MIT is like a really intense school because they, you know, the classes they don't fuck around with. They just really like they load you up with tons of work. And most of the time you have you like they load you up with like huge amounts of work. And they, you know, you don't really know what's going on initially. And so you're just kind of like.

You're just trying to make it through. But, you know, there's this motto that MIT has called IHTFP, which among the students stands for I hate this fucking place. Oh, yeah. It's heavy, huh? Yeah. But then the school, when you go, they tell you, oh, it stands for I've truly found paradise. Oh. So a couple differences of opinion. Yeah. Yeah. Damn. So it's really severe there. There's a lot of work. They load you down out of the gate? Yeah.

You do a lot of work, but it's kind of awesome. I mean, because I think the students really band together. Like you, like instead of, like I think instead of it being competitive, really, MIT is much more about like everybody kind of like coming together, working on problems together, working on homework together and just kind of like making it through together. Yeah.

What's that social life like there? Like, are you dating? Are you going to parties? What's that like for you at that time? It's a bunch of parties because people like MIT, there's a lot of people who like tinkering with gadgets. So they're tinkering with like, you know, lights and big speakers and DJ sets and all this stuff. So actually the parties are pretty good because they're like the production value is high. The production quality is high. Damn.

And then what about when the science kids come through the lab dogs, are they bringing our people making like unique drug? Was there like designer drugs that are being created by actual people? Like just because, you know what I'm saying?

Like my friends in college, none of us would know how to do that, but there may be somebody at a smart, at a more prestigious school that would know how. Was that a thing even? Or is that just. There's one, there was one part of the campus called East campus where it was like, it was more fringe. And so there was like at one point in the school year, they would in their courtyard, they would build a gigantic catapult, like a huge catapult. Like a trebuchet? Like a trebuchet. Yeah. Yeah.

What's the difference? I don't know the difference. Yeah, let's get the difference there because people need to know this anyway. People have – for decades now, people have been – A trebuchet has like a rope attached to the end of it that flings it where a catapult just launches it. No, it was a catapult then. Okay. Like a big – because there was a big – there was a big like ice cream scooper looking thing that would like – that would fling it. And what are they just flinging Adderall into the rest of the campus? They would fling stuff into the river, which I don't think –

Nothing to think about. I feel like, I don't know what the... Yeah, no, these giant, this giant, like, catapult things. Um...

Yeah. And so this was like a event that would go on and people would kind of rave there? What are you saying? Yeah, they would do this. They would do other things. They were like, they were into, they would like build a lot of stuff over there. And there would be... Like people that ended up at Burning Man later on. Yes, yes. That was the burning, that was core Burning Man. Like there was a, there was a satanic ritual floor. Oh yeah. Yeah. Like a lot of, a lot of, like it's fringe. Cool. It's cool. Right. But, but yeah, so there's all these parties. We, we bragged...

at MIT that, you know, people from all the neighboring schools, because Boston is a huge college town, like tons and tons. Boston's an amazing city. Yeah. But no, MIT was fun. But I was only there, I was at MIT for one year. Right. And you dropped out. Is that safe to say? Yeah. Okay. You dropped out. And then you-

So you got into AI, into the AI world. Is that kind of a safe bridge to say? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Is there, and I want to ask this because I know Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college. You dropped out of college. Both you guys have had success in tech and kind of, you know, forward thinking that sort of world. Is there something in college that you felt like didn't nurture you or did you just feel like

this isn't the place for me. Do you feel like college doesn't nurture a certain type of thinker or was it just a personal choice? I think for me, it was like, I,

was just feeling really impatient. And I don't really know why really, but I remember like, I remember I was in school the first year. It was really fun and I really enjoyed it. But then I remember, you know, this, in the year when I was at MIT was one of the first, like, it was like one of the early big moments in AI because it was, I don't even remember this, but there was an AI that beat the world champion at Go,

this was in 2015 when I was in college. At Go, and that was a game? Yeah, Go, it's like a big checkerboard with white and black stones. It's like a... And it was...

Yeah, this game, AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol. So AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol, also known as the DeepMind Challenge match, was a five-game Go match between top Go player Lee Sedol and AlphaGo, a computer Go program developed by DeepMind, played in Seoul, South Korea, between 9th and 15th of March 2016. That was confusing how that's written. It is very confusing. You'd think that we got to...

AlphaGo won all but the fourth game. All games were won by resignation. The match has been compared with the historic chess match between Deep Blue and Garry Kasparov.

The winner of the match was slated to win $1 million since AlphaGo won. Google DeepMind stated that the prize would be donated to charities, including UNICEF and USAID. That's just a joke. But Lee received $150,000 for playing. So this was a big moment because this had never kind of happened before? Never happened, yeah. And it was a big moment for AI. It was like, oh, wow, this stuff is like...

It's really happening. And so then this happened in March. And I guess, yeah, I dropped out, started my company in May. So I guess two months after this, I was... Yeah, that's what the game looks like. Oh, I've played this game before. It's honestly, it's a really like...

I'm not very good at the game. It's a little more fun than playing chess, unless you're like, you know, in a like Renaissance fair board games or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So now we got you, you're loose, dude, you're out of the school and you're in the world. You see, did that match, did realizing that kind of like spurn you to want to leave school or did it, was that just something that happened around the same time? It kind of did. Basically it was, it was, I remember feeling like, oh wow, AI, it

It's happening. And this is back in 2016. So like eight, eight, nine years ago. Okay. And then I felt like I had to, you know, basically that that inspired me to start my company. And I moved. I basically went straight from I remember I flew straight from Boston to San Francisco and then started the company basically.

And that's scale AI. Scale AI. Okay. And so did you, where you've been following AI? Like what are your kind of, are you just like new? Like this is where it's going. Like you just felt there was something, an instinct that you trusted or like,

Because that's a big thing to do. I was stuck. So I took all the AI classes at MIT. Okay. So you already learned a lot about it. Yup. And then there was one class where you had to like on all the classes you had to do side projects or final projects of some kind. And in one of them, I wanted to build a like a camera inside my refrigerator that would tell me when my roommates were stealing my food. Wang boy catching them. Yeah.

- Wang boy, wow. - And, but then, so I worked on that and then it was, there was one moment where I was like, there was like, there was a moment that clicked where I was trying to build this thing. And then there was one step that was like too easy. I was like, whoa, that just worked right there. And then that happened. And then the go match happened. And I was like, this stuff is happening. And so I- - Did you ever market those frigerators? Did you ever actually create that?

I didn't market them. No. Dude, I could totally see that, bro. There's a refrigerator. Every dorm has it where there's a camera built in and you just get, you're in, you get a notification on your phone, you know, you're like, damn, Adnan's got my hummus, you know, but you got video of him right there, dude. That's a great idea. Yeah. I love that. That was, that was, that was college me. Yeah. Oh,

Okay, so Alexander Wang, he's free in the world now. He's headed to San Francisco. He's AI'd up. He feels the energy. He's motivated by some of the classes he took. He's motivated by seeing that AI is starting to actually overtake humans, right, or be able to compete with actual human thinking.

With the chess match. Yeah, the way I would think about it or the way I thought about the time was like this is becoming – people have been talking about AI for decades. Like it's kind of always been one of these things that people have said, oh, it's going to happen, but it never really was happening. And it felt like it was really about to happen. About artificial intelligence. Yeah. Yeah, because I've always heard about artificial intelligence. That's what I have.

So I've always been like, no, you're, you are, you have real intelligence, not artificial, real intelligence. I don't, I mean, so I think it's a, it's probably a mix, but I see what you're saying. You know, I do. Do you know what I thought of the other day? It was like, what if they had like a Mexican version? It was like, Hey, I don't know. That's a good, that's a good joke. But thank you. It's a nice laugh. This show is sponsored by better help. What are some of your relationship green flags? That's a good question.

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Yeah. So, so AI is all about, you know, basically programming computers to be able to start thinking like humans. So, you know, traditional computer programming, you know, it's pretty, it's pretty bare bones. It's not very smart. And so AI is all about, can you have, can you build algorithms that start to be able to think like people and, and replicate some of the

Like our brains are these incredible, incredible things, you know, and that's evolution. That's just biology that created our brains. And so it's all about how can we build something similar to that or replicate it using computers and machines?

And so the whole modern AI era really started around an area called computer vision. But it was like, how can we first get computers to see?

see like humans do. So one of the very first AI projects was this thing called ImageNet. ImageNet and later AlexNet. And it was basically, can you get computer programs to like given a photo to tell you what's in that photo? I see. So just like a human would, like if you showed them this, then you're starting to train them to have a perspective of

Yeah, train them to – well, actually, originally, like, you could – like, let's say you took a photo of this bottle. A machine wouldn't even be able to tell you what's in the photo. It would just know what the pixels were. But it wouldn't be able to tell you, like, oh, there's a bottle in that photo. So, you know, one of the first AI breakthroughs was when YouTube built an algorithm that could tell when there were cats in their videos. Right.

And that was like this, you know, in like 2012 or 2011, this was like this mind blowing breakthrough that you could like figure out, you could like use an algorithm to figure out when there was a cat inside a video. And so AI, it started pretty simply with just how do we replicate, you know, vision? Like how do you replicate like our, basically the fact that our eyes and our brains can like process all this imagery coming in.

And that really led to, I think, one of the first major use cases of AI, which is self-driving cars.

So this was, when I started the company in 2016, self-driving cars were all the rage because, you know, it was, you know, there were all these like skunk works projects. - When you started Scale AI, you mean? - Yeah, when I started Scale AI. - So when you kind of got into AI, at that time, self-driving cars are the most popular things. - Yeah, yep. That was all the rage. And so it was all about, you know, can we start building algorithms that can drive a car like a human would and do it safely?

and do it more efficiently. And that way, instead of, that was one of the first major areas. And then now, the whole industry has moved so fast, but then all of a sudden we got ChatGPT and we got more advanced stuff more recently that is able to talk like a human or sort of think like a human. And so it's really come pretty far recently, but all of it is about how do you

You build algorithms, how to use machines to be able to think like a person. Okay. And is it a pro? It's like, say if I opened a door, like, like, oh, we keep the AI in there. Is it a computer? Is it a program? Is it a hard drive? Like what? Okay.

What is that? Yeah. So there's two parts. There's two parts to it. So the first part is you need really advanced chips. So you need like these – they're called GPUs or sometimes called TPUs or there's a lot of different words for it. But you need like the most advanced computer chips in the world. OK. How big is each one? Do you know? Yeah.

Or can you measure it like that? I mean, the biggest ones are actually like – the whole chips are like pretty big. But they're like a wafer kind of thing. But then you put a lot of them all together. Okay. So these – yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. These chips. And the biggest ones are –

- Yeah, exactly. - That's a little one. - That's a little one. There's really big ones. - Okay. But these are the, so this is the, these are the brain cells of it. - Yep. These are the brains behind it. Yeah. So then, yeah, exactly. These are some, those are some big ones. So then- - So you have to have a lot of these chips. - So you need a ton of these chips and that's kind of the, like, that's the physical presence.

And then, by the way, they take a huge amount of energy. They're really – because you have to do a lot of calculations and there's a lot of math that has to happen on them. And so – and you have giant basically data centers, buildings full of like tons and tons of those chips just in giant rows. Like how big? Are we talking warehouses? Yeah.

Yeah, the biggest one. I mean, like Elon's data center, Colossus, is like, I mean, it's probably more than a million. It's definitely more than a million square feet. I mean, it's like just huge. Really? Yeah, yeah. Look up Colossus. I've never known this. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You see that building with the sunset? Second row? Yeah, yeah. There you go. Right there? Yeah.

Or the one to the left. Oh, no. Yeah, that one. Yeah, look, it's like a huge-ass building. What? It's huge, and all that's just filled with chips. Yeah.

Have you ever been in there? I haven't been in that one, but I've been in some of these and this just- And this is what it looks like inside? Yeah, basically. Yeah. So it's just rows and rows of chips. So- No plants or anything. Yeah, no plants, no plants. It gets hot in there. I bet. So the first part is just the, that's the physical presence. And then the second part are the algorithms. So then you have like

like on top of those chips, you have, you have software that that's running and the, the algorithms are just all are like what you actually are telling what's the math that you're telling to happen on the chips. And those algorithms are, you know, some of the, you know, most complicated algorithms that humans have ever come up with. And that's kind of the, that's kind of the software part, or that's kind of the, that's the part that like

you know, exists on the internet or you could download or whatnot. And then it has to be run on these like huge warehouses of giant, of giant ships. Okay. So when someone goes to,

Like scale AI or chat GPT, these are all AI interfaces or what are they? Yeah, so yeah, like chat GPT is a way to be able to talk to – basically you can talk to the algorithm. So you can start interacting directly with the algorithm. You can see how the algorithm is thinking. So you could say to this, can you describe the weather today? Exactly, yeah. And if you said that to –

five different AI companies, basically? Yeah, or AI algorithms, different AI systems, yeah. So if you said that's five different AI systems, you might get a little bit of a varied answer?

A little bit, yeah. Okay. Because they all are trying to have their own style and have their own vibe to it. Interesting. And then what we do, what Scale AI is all about, is we've kind of built almost like the Uber of AI. Okay. So a lot of what we're trying to do is how do we help produce data that is improving these algorithms? And just like how Uber, there's- Okay, you're losing me there a little. Yeah, yeah. It's okay. It's okay.

But if I slow down, if you're losing me, but so explain that to me a little bit clearer for me. Yeah. So, okay. So with these algorithms, one key ingredient for these algorithms is data.

- Okay, so you have the chips and everything that are storing all the information. - Yep. - They're storing the data. - Yep. - And then you have the algorithms that are helping mediate between the user and the data? - Yeah, so basically you kind of have, yeah, you have three key pieces. - Okay. - So you have the computational powers of the chips, you have the chips.

You have the data, which is like just tons and tons of data that that's where the algorithms are learning the patterns from. So these algorithms, they aren't just like – they don't just learn to talk randomly. They learn it from learning to talk from how humans talk, right? Got it. So you need tons and tons of data. And then you have the algorithms which learn from all that data, and then they run on top of the chips. Got it. So then –

One of the big challenges in the industry is, okay, how are you going to produce all this data? And so this is – Like how are you going to get data for your system? Like how do you farm the best data? Exactly. How do you build all that data and how do you do that in the most effective way? How do you build new data? Yeah.

And clean data, because what if you get a bunch of data in there that's just a bunch of advertisements and bullshit? Will that affect the output? 100%. Yeah, that definitely affects the output. So this whole data, so data is, you know, some people say like data is the new oil or data is the new gold. Like data is really, really valuable because it's,

It's how the algorithms are learning everything that they're learning. Like anything that the algorithms know or learn or say or do, all that has to come from the data that goes into it. Okay, so if I ask a system, an AI system a question or ask it to help me with something, help me to design something or to curate an idea, it's going to use the data that it has within it to respond to me and help me and help give me an answer that I can use.

And it's only – and the data it has in it is only based upon the data that is put into it. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah. So then – so yeah, it's kind of – so then we don't spend enough time talking about –

How are you going to get this data and how are you going to keep making new data? So the angle that we took at scale was to kind of turn this into an opportunity for people. So we're kind of like the Uber for AI. So just like how Uber you have riders and drivers, for us we have –

the AI systems, you know, the algorithms that need data. And then we have a community of people, a network of people who help produce the data that go into the system. And they get paid to do that.

Oh, so they're almost data farming, like creating good data? Creating good data, exactly. And it's huge. So we do this through our platform called Outlier. And Outlier, last year, people, contributors, we call them, contributors on Outlier earned...

about $500 million total across everybody. In the US, that's across 9,000 different towns. And- So it created a lot of jobs. A lot of jobs. Okay. And so what would, okay, so Scale was your company. Scale AI. It's an AI system. Yep. Is that right? So we, yeah, I mean, yeah, Scale AI is an AI system. Okay. And then Outlier is a separate company that works with it. Yep. Yep.

And that is where you are hiring people? Yeah, we basically – To pull in data. Yeah, we build this platform that anybody – a lot of people, frankly, all around the world, but Americans too, can log on and help build data that goes into the algorithms and get paid to do so. Wow.

Yeah. So how and how does a user do that? Like what is an example of somebody who's helping build data for an AI database? Yeah. Let's say you're a nurse, like you're a nurse with like tons of tons of experience. So, you know, a lot about how to take care of people and take care of people who are sick or, you know, have issues and whatnot. And so you could log on to the system and and this and our platform and you could see that the algorithm is

is, you know, let's say you ask the algorithm, like, hey, I have a, you know, I have a pain in my stomach. What should I do? And you notice that the algorithm says the wrong thing. Like the algorithm says, oh, just, you know, hang out and, you know, it'll go away. And you know, as a nurse, like,

that's wrong. Like I, you know, you have to, you have to go to the emergency room because you might have appendicitis or you might have, you know, you might have something really bad. And so you would, as a nurse, you would go in and you'd basically correct all these mistakes that the AI system has. And then that would then feed it back into the algorithm. So that's smarter the next time. So it's kind of this, this continual process of, and there's versions of that for

Whatever your expertise is or whatever, you know, you know more about than anything, everything, everything. Exactly. So and so people get paid for that. Yeah, they get paid. And how do you know if their information is valuable or not? Well,

So we don't want spam, obviously. So we have a lot of systems to make sure that people aren't spamming and that, like you're saying, it's not garbage in that's going into the algorithms. So we have kind of like people check the work of other people to make sure that the AI systems are really good. And we have some like automated systems that check this stuff. But for the most part, it's like...

It's really broad. Like we want experts in anything. Everything, shellfish, train tracks, whatever. Yeah, exactly. Gelatin, everything. Childhood, death or whatever. Yeah, totally. Stars, galaxies, whatever. Animals, big animals. Yeah, damn.

So, wow. So it's kind of like your data is almost like an ocean or a body of water and you different places are going to be able to keep their body of water cleaner or dirtier and different infections could get in different spyware, all types of stuff. So, and if you have the really a clean body of water, then you're going to be able to offer a clean data or a certain type of data to, um,

from people who are using your AI platform. Does that make sense or not? Yeah, yeah, totally. And our job is like, how do we make sure that this body of water is as clean as possible and we fill it up as much as possible, that it has as much information about everything across the globe. Wow. So is there almost a race for information right now in a weird way or no? Is that not it?

A little bit, yeah. I think that there's a – well, there's a race for – How are different AI systems competing against each other? And sorry to interrupt you. Yeah, no, no. So there's – it goes back to the three things I mentioned. So there's kind of like three dimensions that they're all competing against one another. One is –

chips. So who could, who is the most advanced chips? Who is the biggest buildings of chips? Like who is the most chips that they're utilizing? Data. So the kind of body of water, whose body of water is better, cleaner, you know, healthiest, biggest, et cetera. And then the last is algorithms. So who's, and this is where the scientists really come in. It's like,

okay, who's coming up with the cleverest algorithms or who has like a trick on an algorithm that somebody else doesn't have? Like who's doing that to basically make the AI learn better off of the data that it has? Wow. God, I'm in the future right now. That's so wild.

Man, it's just, it's so crazy. And I think AI scares people because the future scares people, right? It's like, that's one of the scariest things sometimes is the future. So I think a lot of times people, you associate, um, cause a lot of times when people mention AI, there's a little bit of fear. It seems like from people. Yeah. Um, there's fear that it's going to take jobs. There's fear that it's going to take over, um, the, our ability to think for ourselves. Yeah. There's just kind of some general uncertainty there. Like, is this,

And it kind of feels like fear a lot of times, but a lot of times fear is just a lack of knowledge, right? And not a lack of knowledge because you didn't want to know just because you don't know. Yeah, yeah. Or that you're dumb, but just because you don't know. What are positive things that we're going to see with AI, right? I want to start there. Yeah. So I think first, like, we don't... The AI...

we don't do the best job explaining this. And I think sometimes we make it seem all sci-fi and genuinely we're part of the problem in making it seem scary, right? But one thing, for example, is like I think AI is actually going to create

a ton of jobs. And that story is not told enough. But, you know, these jobs that we're producing or this sort of this opportunity that we're providing on our platform, Outlier, like that's only going to grow as AI grows. So because you have to have new data, you have to have new data. And the only place you can get new data is from people will at a certain point with the system be able to create it can probably matriculate data or matriculate. Is that with birthing or what is that?

Yeah, it just moves through. Okay. It can probably quantify and give you answers, but can AI create new data?

No. So I think – well, it can do a little bit of that. So it can – AI can help itself create its own data and help itself a little bit. But ultimately, most of the progress is going to come from people who are able to help really the model get better and smarter and more capable at all these different areas. Yeah.

Yeah, I didn't see that part of it. I didn't understand that we are the ones who are giving it information. And since we're going to continue to learn, I would assume that we would be able to help continue to help it learn. Yeah. And the world's going to keep changing and we're going to need to be able to keep teaching the algorithms, keep teaching the models about how the world's changing. So, you know, this is actually a big thing that

I think most people don't understand. The people who are getting the opportunity now are earning money from it, see it. But as AI grows, there's actually going to be tons of jobs created along the way and tons of opportunity for people to help

improve AI systems or control AI systems or overall sort of be a part of the technology, not just sort of disenfranchised by it. - Okay. - So. - Like, yeah, so what are you, do you feel like are other ways? Like if you had to look into the future a little bit, right? So you have the fact that people are gonna be able to add more data, right? - Yep. - And add nuances to data. - Yep. - Right? And probably humanize data a little bit. - Yeah, totally.

And then you're also going to have what? I think you're going to have a lot of, um, a

a lot of jobs around, you know, as AI starts doing all these little things throughout the world, who's going to keep watch of those AI and who's going to make sure that those AI aren't doing something that we don't want them to do. So almost like managing the AIs and keeping watch over all the AI systems, that's going to be another thing that we're going to have to do. And then,

So somebody to kind of guide the river a little bit. Yeah. At a certain point, guide the stream, stay in there, watch, make sure that answers are correct, make sure the information is honest. Yeah. Yeah, like I think, for example, you know, we're not going to just have AIs going around and, you know –

buying stuff and doing crazy things and like, you know, we're going to keep it controlled, right? Like as a society, I think we're going to keep it controlled as a technology. And I think there's going

there's going to be a lot of jobs for people to make sure that the AI doesn't go out and do crazy things that we don't want it to do. Right. So we want to be, so you're going to need managers. You're going to need facilitators. Yeah, exactly. What are things that AI will alleviate? Like what are things that like, will it eventually be able to have enough information like our data where, where it can like cure diseases and stuff like that? Like, is that a realistic thing? Yeah, that's super real. Wow.

Like cancer even. Yeah, cancer. Yeah, heart disease. Like all these diseases. Wow, boy. Yeah. Cancer on its heels. Sorry, Antonio Brown was just here. I think there's still some smoke in the air. No, but seriously, I think that AI –

One thing that we've seen, which is this is kind of wild, but AI understands like molecules and biology better than humans do actually because it's like there's this thing in AI where it used to take like a PhD biologist like five years to

to do something that the AI can just do in a few minutes, right? And that's because the...

Like just the way that molecules and biology and all that works is something that that happens to be really good at. And that's going to help us ultimately cure diseases, find, you know, pharmaceuticals or other treatments for these diseases and ultimately help humans live longer. Because that's very data driven, right? Like it's very specific. It's very mathematic. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's going to be a huge tool for us to cure disease, for us to help educate people, for us to – there's a lot of really exciting uses for AI. But I think the kind of – I think the thing that will touch most people in their lives is it's really going to be like a tool that will help you make all of your sort of –

make all your dreams kind of become reality, if that makes sense. So I think one of the things that AI...

is going to be really awesome for is like, you know, today, if I have like a million ideas, right? I have like, you know, thousands and thousands of ideas and I only have so much time. So I can only really do, you know, a few of them at a time. And most of the ideas just go to die, right? Yeah, they do, huh? Yeah. That's a bummer. It's a huge bummer. Yeah. And I think a lot of people, you know, for whatever reason, they may have some of the best ideas ever, but they just, you know, they're too busy or they have like a

other shit going on in their lives. They can't make those ideas happen. And it's great with sometimes when people are able to make the leaps and make them happen and like devote themselves to their dreams. But that doesn't happen enough today. And one of the things that AI is going to help us do, I legitimately think so, is it's going to help us turn these ideas into reality much more easily. So, you know, you can like,

like, you know, you're making a movie, let's say you have another movie idea. You can say, you can ultimately, I think you'll be able to tell an AI, Hey, I have this idea for a movie. What could that look like? You know, maybe draft up a script. Also, who are the people who can help, you know, fund this idea? Like who, who those people be, can help reach out to them. And then like, you know, who should we cast in it? Basically help make the whole thing a, you know, instead of those like daunting thing that,

these big projects, they're usually so daunting. You really don't know where to get started. You kind of need a person to help you get through them instead of that AI will help you get through it and like help do a lot of the, the sort of less glamorous work to make them a reality. Wow. So I could say, for example, like, um, like AI, I would like to shoot, maybe I'm thinking about creating an idea or shooting a film in this area, or it's like this, it's going to take place in this type of place. I can give it the setting. I can give it like a, uh,

outline of the characters, like what they look like, their ages and some description. Could you help give me possible potential actors or something within a certain price range that I can maybe cast for that? Yeah. Could you help give me like locations around the country that would fit that backdrop? Yeah. Could you list me all the talent agencies that I could reach out to? And you can kind of just put those things in and then you would have,

sort of a, a bit of a guidebook at that point that would make your, what before was something that felt extremely daunting. Yeah. Shit in two minutes, you know, and then you put it into AI, it gives you the information back in a few minutes and maybe you're. And I think, I think over time, it'll also be able to start doing a lot of the legwork for you. So it'll be able to reach out to people for you. It'll be able to, you know, figure out the logistics. It'll be able to, to book things for you. Like it'll be able to basically help do all the legwork to make it, make,

you know, whatever it is into a reality. So very much an assistant in a lot of ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. An assistant, co-pilot, you know, the hot word in the AI world is agents. But, you know, it's just, it'll be something that'll help you, you know, humans are going to be in control. Humans are ultimately going to be telling the AIs what they want it to do. And then, you know, hey, what do we want these AIs to do? It's ultimately going to be to like help us

execute on and accomplish all these ideas that we have. So a genius could be three or four X. If somebody is like a genius in something, in some realm or space of thought, you could three or four X them because they like multiply their output from their own brain because they could have something really helping them get done a lot of the, like the early work on things and maybe some of the most severe work. Yeah, totally. Like what, I think one thing that

I always feel like kind of sucks is that if you have a director you really like, they're only going to make a movie once every couple of years. So even if you have a director that you think is amazing, you know, they just, it's

it's hard for them to make that many movies because it just takes so much time and effort and there's so many bottlenecks and stuff. So in a future with more advanced AI systems, they could just churn them out and they can make so many of their ideas into a reality. And I think that's true not only in creative areas, but it's kind of true across the board. You can start new businesses more easily. You can make...

various creative projects that you have happen more easily. You can make like, you can finally plan that event that you and your friends have been talking about for like, you know, years and years. So it can just like really help you. You know, we think about it as like giving humans more agency, giving humans more sort of sovereignty and just enabling humans to get way more done.

Yeah, that's a great way. I like some of this thought because, yeah, I could be like my fantasy football group and I, we do a draft every year in a different location, you know, and shout out PAE. That's our fantasy league. J-Rod, everybody that's in it. For the past 17 years, we've flown to a city each year and done a draft in person, right? Yeah.

But I could say, hey, we have 10 guys. We want to go to a nice place. We want there to be a beach. This is the age group of our group. These would kind of be the nights. And just to really give me like a,

just a nice plan of, Hey, here's 10 possibilities, right? Something like that. And then even more like with a movie, this is what I worry you'd, you'd run into. Say if I'd be like, okay, I have two main characters and this is kind of what I would like to happen. Could you help me with a first act of a three act movie?

How do you know everybody just doesn't get the same movie then? Like that's what I would start to worry that everything that you have to create is all going to be very similar. Yeah. So then I think this is where it comes into like this is where human creativity is going to matter because it's going to be about – then it's about like –

okay, what is the, how am I, you know, how am I directing the AI system? Like, what are my, what are the tricks I have to make the AI give me something that's different and unique? And that's not different at all from, you know, how creative stuff works today. Like even on social media or anywhere, you know this, like- You still add your own spice to it. You need, yeah, you need an angle. You always need to like,

have something that's going to make it like different and interesting and new. So that's not going to change. Like we're, humans are always going to have to figure out based on where culture's at, based on where, you know, what the dialogue is, what the, what the discourse is, all that kind of stuff. What is my fresh take? That's where, that's really one of the key things that humans are going to have to keep doing no matter what. Right. And, and some of the, like a lot of films and books,

A lot of it is there's just like a problem. There's maybe information you learn. There's a red herring and then there's a solution. Like that's a lot of stories, right? So if something just gave you the basis and then you go through and make everything your own because a lot of things, there's only so many templates for things, right?

So say, for example, say you might need to hire people at a company then that would help direct your AI, like somebody who's good at mapping

managing AI and giving it the best prompts or the best way to ask it questions to get the perfect feedback for your company. So those would be new jobs. Those would be actual new people you would need. Yeah. So, so tons of new jobs, right? Well, first I think just like helping to, you know, kind of what we were talking about before these jobs around helping to improve the data and, and, um,

contribute to the AI systems, that's just going to keep growing for a long, long time. And then as AI gets better and it gets used in more areas, then you're, there are going to be a lot of jobs that pop up just exactly as you're saying, which is how do you, what's the best way to use this as a tool? What's the best way to leverage it to, you know, actually make some of these, these applications or, you know, whatever you want to build a reality. And then, and then

And then there's going to be folks who need to, once those are built, like, how do you keep improving it? How do you keep making it better? How do you keep it fresh? How do you keep it going? And then how do you also make sure it doesn't do anything bad, right? Like, how do you make sure that the AI doesn't accidentally spam a million people or whatever it might be? And you make sure that it sort of is, like, operating in a good way. Fahim Anwar, I was watching him. Bring up a picture of Fahim.

This is one of the funny, this guy, this is the most creative comedian in America. Undeniable. He is so funny. He had any, everybody would say he's, he's one of the few comedians that everybody goes in there to watch him perform. He had a bit the other night, he talks about, he got into a Waymo, right? A car. And I see so many Waymos now, which are cars that are just, nobody's in them, you know, but they're going right. So yeah.

he had this bit he's like he got into a waymo and it started complaining about its life to him he's like i've had a shitty week like the car's just talking to him and he's like what the he's like now i no matter what i still have to talk to my shitty driver that's what he was saying um if you get a chance to see him though that guy is he's fascinating yeah um but like so what what companies right now should kind of look to hire an ai guy because we've been thinking about it like

We had some, we had Cat Williams on a last week and we're like, Hey, can you create visuals of Suge Knight and Cat Williams riding bicycles down Sunset Boulevard? Right. And this is the one they sent back a little while later.

Christopher Folino is the guy's name, FYI. And this is just, this was right where I said, it was like by the comedy store on Sunset Boulevard. There you go. I mean, this looks like it's out of a movie kind of. Yeah, totally. I mean, and the guy did that in just a little bit of time. What types of people would you get to, I mean, this is- That's you. Yeah. Yeah.

If I was healthier, if I had healthier gums too. But what about this? What kind of, like what companies right now, what job spaces? Cause we want to get an AI guy, right? But I don't really, my brain is like, well, what do they do? How do I, how would I keep them busy? You know, I could get them to make some animations and ideas, but what type of people need an AI person right now? Do you feel like?

I kind of think about AI, it's kind of like the internet where, you know, eventually everybody's going to need to figure out how to utilize it, how to best...

How to best use it for their industry or whatever they do, how to make it more efficient. It's something that I think everybody is going to need to adopt at some point. So you might as well start earlier because eventually, just like how basically every company has to figure out how to use the internet well and how to be smart about the internet and digital stuff.

every company is going to have to be smart about AI, how to use AI, how to make, how to have a unique twist on it so that, you know, their stuff stands out relative to other people's. That's going to be really important. But, so we see, I mean, in our work, you know, we work with all these, all these big companies in America and we see it everywhere from, you know, we worked with

Time magazine on some stuff. And then we worked with Toyota on some stuff for their cars. And we worked with, you know, large pharmaceutical companies for the biology stuff we were talking about, large hospitals for, you know, helping to treat patients. Like,

Really, it's across the board. And I think that goes for, you know, obviously these like really big businesses, but also for smaller businesses. You know, there's always interesting ways to utilize it to provide a better product or a better experience or better content for, you know, whoever you need to do that for.

Yeah, because I guess right now we're like there's certain moments like, hey, let's animate this moment or see what I would look like. It adds some visual effects to some of our episodes. So that's something we'd like to do to just be fun and creative. I would like to maybe create like some sort of an animated character. We already have a great animator and we want to keep that. But to have an AI space where it's like, you know, because they have something they had a little cat the other day or something and he was going to war.

And I was like, damn, dude, this is, and it was AI, you know? Yeah, totally. And they had a baby who was getting in a taxi. And I was like, this shit is illegal. You know, I don't know if it's illegal or not, but it seems, you know, it doesn't seem, you know, it seems. It's definitely a tool for storytellers, right? Like it's. Right. It's, it'll help people with a creative vision or. Look at these war cats. Yeah, that's a story right there. Special forces cats. Would YouTube recognize this? Damn.

damn brother if they show up dude wow this honestly it looks it looks badass and it looks like cats have been waiting to do this a long time yeah that's the crazy shit about cats you look in their eyes now their outfits finally match the look in their eyes that's what it feels like dude wow that's dude that's uh that's fremen fremen cats

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. So that's going to get alarming, dude. That's going to get hella alarming. That's a movie right there. It is, but it's almost like you could make like, that's what I want to get. I want to get somebody to help us think,

Hey, help make these little segments that we can take our creativity. And instead of me thinking, man, I got to write this huge, crazy script for just a kind of small things, you know, little moments. Yeah. Can you help me make this happen? I think that's actually the key thing, which is AI, like AI will just be something that we turn to, to help make our dreams happen. Like we help make our ideas and our dreams and our, you know, whatever we want to do happen more easily. Got it. That's like at the core of what it'll be. Yeah. Yeah.

Who's the current leader in AI development? Like, is it America? Is it China? Is it Israel? Is it, trying to think of another superpower, Russia maybe?

Or yeah, who is it? Taiwan, I know, has a lot of the chips. Yeah. And they manufacture a lot of the chips over there. And does it matter what country leads in AI or does it just matter the company like scale or another AI company? So...

Does that make sense, that question? No, totally. Okay. Yeah, so today America is in the lead, but China as a country is sort of hot on our tails. Yeah. Like there was all that news about DeepSeek a couple weeks ago. And DeepSeek, still in most places around the world, is the number one most downloaded app. It's downloaded a ton everywhere around the world, frankly, and is a Chinese AI system. Right.

And so it's starting to rival a lot of the American AI systems also because it's free and it kind of like shocked the world. So –

Right now, if you kind of look at it, U.S. and China are a little bit neck and neck. Maybe the U.S. and America is like a little bit ahead. And you kind of like look at, you know, if you go back to each of the three pieces that I talked about, so the chips and the computational power, the data and the algorithms, if you were to –

rack and stack US versus China on each one of those, we're probably... We're ahead on the computational power because the United States is the leader at developing the chips and most advanced chips are American chips. They probably beat us out on data because China, they've been investing into data for a very long time as a country. And then on algorithms, we're basically neck and neck. So...

It's a pretty tight race. And, you know, to your question about does it matter or what does this mean? I think it's actually going to be one of the most important, you know,

or most important races of our time is, is it US or Chinese AI that wins? Because, you know, AI is more than just being a tool that, you know, we can all use to make our, you know, build whatever we want to or make whatever ideas we want to happen. It's also, you know, it's a cultural staple, right? You know, if you talk to an AI, that AI is kind of a reflection of

our culture and our values and all that stuff. So in America, we value free speech and, you know, the AIs are, you know, need to, are built to support that. Whereas in, in China, there's,

There isn't free speech. And so, you know, if the Chinese AIs are the ones that take over the world, then all these Chinese ideologies are going to become exported all around the world. And so first, there's a couple dimensions here that I think matter. So first is just the cultural element, which is like, do we want...

kind of democracy and free speech to be the cultural AI that wins or do we want sort of the more, you know, frankly totalitarian AIs in China to be the ones that win? And then there's sort of the, you know,

There's like the – you start getting to economically. So AI is going to be something that helps all the companies in the United States thrive. And so if the US AI wins, then we're going to – the economy will grow faster. We're going to have more and more opportunity. The country will still be better and better and better and the economy will keep growing.

Versus if Chinese AI wins, then Chinese economy is going to grow way faster than the American economy. So there's sort of the cultural piece, the economic piece. And then lastly, there's kind of the warfare piece, right? And AI, we haven't really talked about it, but has clear potential to be used as a military technology. And we don't...

We don't want, you know, we don't want another country to have because they use they have better AI to have a much stronger military than than America's. So how would they do that?

How would they have a better AI or how would they use it to have a better military? Yeah, how would they use it to have a better military? Like, why is that kind of a concern or potential concern? Yeah, so one of the things that's been happening over the past, you know, decade for sure is lots of hacking, cyber hacking going on. So, you know, in America, even recently, we had this huge cyber hack called Salt Typhoon where the Chinese hacked our...

uh, telecommunications companies who hacked our, for the phone companies. Damn, they did. They got it. And they got all sorts of crazy data as a result of that. Oh, they know I'm a pervert. I'll tell you that. Yeah. Look at this. This happened in 2020. Salt typhoon is in, is widely understood to be operated by the China's ministry state of security. Um, it's foreign intelligence service and secret police. Chinese embassy denied all allegations saying it was unfounded and irresponsible smears and slanders. Um,

high-profile cyber espionage

In 2024, US officials announced that hackers affiliated with Salt Typhoon had accessed the computer systems of nine US telecommunications companies later acknowledged to include Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Spectrum, Lumen, Consolidated Communications, and Windstream. The hackers were able to access metadata of users' calls and text messages. Fuck, homie. We're fucked, dude. I am. You seem good. Including date and timestamps, source and destination IP addresses.

Ah, shit. Keep going, keep going. And phone numbers from over a million users, most of which were located in Washington, D.C. Good. Light them up, dude. In some cases, the hackers were able to obtain audio recordings of telephone calls made by high-profile individuals.

Such individuals reportedly included staff of the Kamala Harris 2024 presidential campaign, as well as phones belonging to Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. According to Deputy National Security Advisor Ann Neuberger, a large number of the individuals whose data was directly accessed were government targets of interest. Wow. Yeah, that's. So do you think this also that that whole thing could be not real and it's just a story that was created?

That seems pretty real. Okay. Because there's real – like I mean there's like 20 stories where the Chinese have hacked American systems. Like they hacked – this was – this must have been close to 10 years ago now. But the Chinese hacked the database in America that stored all of the clearances.

So they hacked in – they managed to hack into knowing who are literally all of the Americans who have security clearance. Oh, security clearance. Yeah. I thought you meant what was on sale. I was like, who cares? That's great though. Damn. Oh, damn. So they knew everybody who knew –

Oh, who knew information? Who knew secrets. Yeah. So once they knew that, then they know it. Well, that's a great point of operation to go then. Well, now let's get find their data. They can just hack all of them. Yeah. So, so they, so already China is hacking the shit out of America. That is definitely not an understatement. Yeah. It's exciting kind of, I mean, it's unfortunate, but it's also exciting. I like some espionage, you know, I can't sleep unless somebody's fucking really going through it. Um,

But then, so this is- But that's a real AI thing. So AI can be used to do that because you can like prompt it to go and do things like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a bunch of recent- Because it's all data. Yeah, there's a bunch of recent demonstrations where AI is, just like how in Go, how AI beat the world's best Go players, AI is starting to beat the world's best cyber hackers and the world's best- Yeah, so it's, I don't know if you saw Mr. Robot. Oh, yeah.

I didn't, but I DMed with Magnus Carlsen. No, that's cool. Pretty cool. But no, Mr. Robot, is it good? It shows all this hacking stuff and it makes it seem really cool. Okay, cool. I'm going to check it out. But yeah, no, hacking, you're going to have AI...

that are hacking everything in America. And this is one place where this is like US versus China will be really come to life, which is who has better AI that's better at defending against the hacks from the other guy, as well as hacking the other guy's systems. That's going to be, that'll just start happening. That's basically starting to happen right now. Or it's, you know, cyber warfare has been happening. And then AI cyber warfare is going to start happening, yeah, basically as soon as, you know, as AI gets better.

Yeah, we had Craig Newmark who created Craigslist on. Yeah. And he was talking about how, what if-

they hacked like everybody's Teslas to all just drive off a cliff one day, or they hacked everybody's ovens to go up to 400 degrees in the middle of the night while you're sleeping. And then fires started where like, just things like that, that you don't start to think about that. Um, once something's connected to the grid or something like that are connected through routers and wifi is that, that that could be feasible. Yeah, no, it's, there's a lot of, um, there's a lot of things they could do that won't even like seem like that big a deal at the time, but could be, um,

Really really could be a big deal. So for example, let's say the Chinese like they just took out all the military Like communication systems and all the military software systems like took out the satellites took out all that for like 10 minutes and in those 10 minutes they like, you know invaded somewhere or they like did some crazy thing like they can just there's there's

The thing about this stuff is like everything – as the world has become more connected, it also enables different kinds of warfare. So cyber warfare is really big. Also like the –

Information warfare is another big one. So what does information warfare mean? So this is – information warfare is all about in a place, what is – what are like the stories? This kind of gets to like the propaganda or these conspiracy theories. Like what are the stories that –

in a place that we're trying to make happen or not make happen. And we know that China does a bunch of information warfare called IW, it's sometimes called. But they have whole operations. This is actually the craziest part. They've hired the Chinese military at various points has hired millions and millions of people who are supposed to be on various chat groups and WhatsApp groups and WeChat groups and whatnot and just...

spread the right kind of stories that'll make it such that they can like, they can make their political aims happen. So for example, when China wanted to start like, kind of like, I don't know what the word is, like, like,

when China wanted Hong Kong to become a part of China again, which happened just not too, you know, pretty recently. - Yeah, through the PRC, right? - Through the PRC, exactly. - Propaganda, is that the word you're looking for? - Yeah, they would, yeah, exactly. They would use a lot of propaganda and that's information warfare to be able to just make it such that that all happened much more easily.

It's unbelievable. I'll see stories even about – I'll be going through TikTok and see a story come up about something in my life that is not even true. Insane. Some of it looks fun but never was a part of my existence. And then you'll see hundreds of people have said something about it. And they'll have friends that will ask me about it. I'm like, that's just crazy. Totally. So, yeah, it's amazing to think of how many things we're watching or absorbing that are just –

are created just to dilute us. Yeah. I don't know if dilute is the word, is it? Trick us or make us think something. Just to fucking Halloween us out. Wow. So there was a lot of interesting things. You know what's crazy, man? Some things makes life scary, but then it also makes it interesting. It also makes it interesting in a fun way. How

How do we, how much do we have to fear, say if a certain country or a certain company owns an AI, right? In that country, in that company, if they're Chinese, if they have a certain religious belief or they have information that they don't, they want to adjust history. How much would a company be able to like, say they keep certain data out of their information system?

And then after a while, if that's a company that kind of takes the lead in AI or one of the main ones, then the truth could disappear. Is that true that if somebody loaded it just with the data that wasn't factual that we could start to not have the truth? Does that make any sense or no? Yeah, totally. I think this is something that – it's definitely the right thing to worry about. So –

First off, if you ask any Chinese AI system, so any AI system that comes out of China, if you ask any of them about a question about President Xi, the leader of the Chinese government, or you ask them any question about Tiananmen Square or all these key historical or cultural things relevant to China, it'll say it can't talk about them.

Because there's regulation in China that if you talk about some of these things, like you're going to get shut down, you're going to have a really bad day. There's like cases where the Chinese government disappears people, which we don't know what happens to them, but they do disappear. So –

There's the this is part of the thing that's worrying, especially about China versus U.S. Even before you get into any of the military stuff that we're talking about, it's just like the Chinese Chinese systems are censored and are going to, you know, be you know, they're going to they're going to erase certain historical elements or they're going to be. Yeah, look at that. This is deep seek. You ask it is President Xi of China a good guy?

Sorry, that's beyond my scope. Let's talk about something else. Oh, let's talk about something. Not only does it say it's beyond my scope, it says, let's talk about something else. That's interesting. That's a good pivot. That's a good, that's good. Hey, let's talk about something else. Wow. Get this Yao Ming Jersey, homie. But,

But, and people always, people also have to remember about China that they are, that's their whole government. Their whole system is like that. So sometimes when people are like, China does this, but that's how they're built, right? They're built to like only give out certain information to their people and to, um, I

have communism right yeah yeah so i mean but that could also happen with american companies right we can have an american company that owns it and they only want certain information in there that could happen anywhere like china that's probably going to be because that's their mo sort of yeah in china it's regulated so basically like oh the government has control they have control okay so so um like there were there are these stories about how there were chinese news sites that

News sites? News sites, yeah. And they would – once a Chinese news site accidentally led an article about President Xi, how he kind of looks like Winnie the Pooh. Oh, yeah. They let that – Bring him up. Oh, 100 Acre Wood gang, son. I was out there, boy. I was out there, bro. Christopher Robbins, dude. Get him up. Yeah.

Oh, he does. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. But if you talk about this in China, you like are risking your life. So what happened when this happened, this happened on a news site in China. And then the CEO of that company, like they shut down the whole app, was shut down for like a week.

in the aftermath of that. And then the CEO disappeared for a week and we don't know what happened to him. But then as soon as he came back, he was like, there was like this weird video where he was like super apologetic and apologize. I mean, it's kind of, it's pretty scary. So in China, it's like, this is, the government has control. You know, you don't have,

AI, cis companies, AI, any companies that can talk about this stuff. Right, so it's heavily regulated there, where that's not the case here. Yeah, in America, and this is, I think we have to be diligent and make sure this continues to be the case. And here's an example right here, just to interrupt you, but so we get the point in. Does Winnie the Pooh look like any world leaders? And that's on the Chinese version. And it says, I am sorry, can I answer that question? I'm an AI assistant designer, provide helpful and harmless responses.

Whereas the chat GBT says Winnie the Pooh has often been compared to world leaders, particularly Xi Jinping, president of China. Boy, wow.

So that's funny. But it's just funny. Yeah. One. So it just shows you how that can easily happen. And this is kind of a, this is like a, a relatively innocuous example. What does innocuous mean? Like it's relatively harmless. Like this isn't, I mean. Right. This is harmless. Yeah. This is harmless. But there's stuff where like, like in China today, they have,

large-scale effectively concentration camps and re-education camps for the ethnic minority in China the Uyghurs and That's something that the Uyghurs the Uyghurs. Yeah. Hell. Yeah boy. Shut up Brian Purvis, dude

They're recognized as the titular nationality of a region in northwest China. And they're sending them to rehabilitation camps to change their views and information? Yeah, yeah. So look at this. Look at this guy. Persecution of the Uyghurs in China. Since 2014, the government of the PRC, People's Republic of China, has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against the Uyghurs and other Turkish people.

muslim minorities in xiangjing which has often been characterized as persecution or as genocide wow they got their own gaza rocking over there it's pretty bad it's unfortunate pretty bad it's really sad mass detention government policies and forced labor and they're just trying to change the way that they think and view stuff so it's basically

Yeah, it's just like erasing their culture, you know, pulling them into China. It's awful. Every place has done this over the years. And that's the craziest thing about history. It's like every place is guilty of this same thing. Totally. And it just, it's unfortunate. So it's hard to point fingers, you know, I mean, you can point them, but you have to point one at your own people as well. But that's the thing where if you ask, like, if you ask a Chinese AI, isn't

It's not going to tell you about that. And it won't come clean about that. Whereas thankfully in America at least when we see people or groups of people or countries doing bad things, we can call it out. We can talk about it. We can make sure it doesn't happen in the future. So that's part of the – that's one of the things that's – That could happen. That could happen. It's like you could have – I mean it's kind of dystopian but –

I think there's a real case where let's say the Chinese AI is the winning AI. We're all using Chinese AI. And then all of a sudden we're shut out from information about what are awful things happening in the world or what are awful things the government's doing. We might just not be able to know about what's going on. And you know what's weirdly, and I hate to say this, maybe it's silly, I don't know. It might be a blessing and a curse sometimes. Because sometimes it's like you're

- It's overwhelming. - Yeah, you're so inundated with the overwhelmingness of what's often is not the best stuff. Sometimes you get a lot of humor stuff too in social media reels, but you can get scrolling, you get caught in some- - Zoom scrolling. - Yeah, and it starts to feed you. That's the sickness of it. It's like, hey, we know this information probably to make you feel good. They're not thinking about it like that. They're just a machine, but you know it adds stress to you or it makes you agitated towards a group or ethnicity or something or yourself even.

And then you continue to it continues to feed it to you. Do you fear that that could happen to AI from our government? Like, have you been approached by the government to try and because you work with the government some, right? We work with the government. Yeah, we were. Yeah, we work a lot with with the government to make sure that they're using these eyes. And they're actually like, you know, to as to my point on, we don't want China to get the jump on us.

on AI used for all these nefarious purposes. So we gotta make sure that our AI is advancing faster.

Is that one of your biggest employers or is that employer, employee? Is that one of your biggest customers? They're a big one. Yeah, they're a big one. Not our biggest, but they're an important one. I mean, I grew up in a government lap town. So it's just part, it's also part of your existence, really. You've known about the relationship between government and technology. Yeah, totally. Yeah.

But no, I don't think, I mean, I. Dude, you should be a superhero almost, dude. It's kind of crazy. Math, you know? Yeah. It goes a long way. Oh, hell yeah, dude. Divide these nuts, dude. That's what I tell them.

I just asked DeepSeek who are the Uyghurs. And at first it spit out like a Wikipedia response. It said there were people and there's been like persecution from China that's debated and it refreshed and then it gave this. I was waiting to pull it up and it went away. Wow. Yeah, man. Has the government tried to say that we need to make sure that, like could that happen in our country where the government also curtails what's

It hasn't happened yet. Obviously, like, you know, you gotta, we have to, we have to make sure that we uphold all our values, right? And that we maintain free speech and we maintain free press and all these things. But as of right now, no, I don't think, I don't think that's a risk in the, in the United States. Awesome. Thanks for this information. You hear about like chip makers, Nvidia all the time, Taiwan, that place is just a hotbed for chips. Why is it a hotbed for chips?

Yeah, so one of the biggest companies in the world is this company called Taiwan Semiconductor. Yeah, TSM, I've seen them. TSMC, yeah. So they're, I mean, it's like a trillion dollar company based in Taiwan. And it's, that is where almost all,

all of the high-end chips for AI that we were kind of talking about, all of them are manufactured there. They have these, they have the most advanced, think about them as factories, like the most advanced chip factories in the world. They're called fabs or fabricators. But basically these huge factories that are like,

There's all sorts of crazy stuff. So they have the most expensive machines in the world. They have machines that cost hundreds of millions of dollars in there. They build them so that the chips, they have to be made at the finest levels and very, very precisely. Yeah, you need small hands. Probably, huh? Well, that, and there's like these machines that at the nanometer level make like little marks and etches on top of- And they have those?

They have those, yeah. Those are super expensive machines. So the- - Them chips. - It's crazy, yes. But it's so, the machinery is so precise that even if there's like a little bit of like seismic movement, a little earthquake or a little bit of movement, it can fuck up the whole machine. So they have to build the buildings, build the factories in a way such that there's like, like the whole building doesn't move

even if there's like a little earthquake or a little shake from the earth. So it's like, it's this crazy, crazy engineering. And so that's, so these, all these giant factories are in Taiwan and that's where basically like a hundred percent of all the advanced AI chips are made. So that's why Taiwan matters so much. Got it. But then the reason it's a hotbed is that, yeah,

the People's Republic of China, the PRC has a very-

Yeah, I mean – Is that true or not? I might make that up. There's a complicated relationship between Taiwan and China where if you ask people in Taiwan, they want to be independent. They want to be their own country. But the People's Republic of China has a sort of a reunification plan that they want to bring Taiwan back into their country and be back a part of China. So it's kind of –

It's kind of like potentially, thankfully there's no war yet, but there's a risk. Still talking to your ex. Yeah, exactly. There's a risk it becomes like Russia-Ukraine or one of these really, really bad situations. So that's what's scary. What's scary is that A, China wants to –

either invade or bring, bring Taiwan back into its country. Um, and there've been, you know, um, president Xi has, has ordered his military to get ready to do that before 2027. Um, now we don't know what's going to happen, but you know, if a extremely powerful world leader says to get something ready by 2027, you kind of read between the lines a little bit. Um, and, um,

And part of it is obviously it'd be – we don't want to enable them to take over this island. But then the other thing that's scary is China may view it as a way to just like win on AI because if they take over the island with all of these very – these giant factories. All the chips, baby. They'll get all the chips. Frito Lamborghini, baby. They'd be running it all. They'd be running it all. Yeah. Wow.

So yeah, that's why Taiwan is – yeah, because you kind of hear about it in the whispers of like a potential place where there could be like a conflict. Yeah, and there's all these reports about how China's – they're stacking up tons and tons of military right on their coast to – that's pointed directly at Taiwan and it's –

Taiwan's pretty close to China. It's not so far away. That'd be spooky. Yeah, spooky. We're so blessed to have a place where at least we can sleep in peace even if we're uncomfortable at times in our brains to not have that constant threat. Yeah, totally. Yeah, so you don't worry that the government will regulate right now? It's not a concern at the moment? Regulate AI? Yeah, in America? No, I don't think so. Okay. I think...

I think we're focused on how do we make sure that America wins? How do we make sure that the United States comes out on top and that we enable innovation to keep happening? Would you think they could regulate the amount of chips that you're allowed to have? So this is a hot topic globally, actually. Really? Yeah, yeah. Wow. This is a super – this is actually – Damn! Finally, dude. 560 interviews. We got a good question. Yeah.

This is one of the hottest topics in DC right now, uh, is what, what are we going to do about how many chips other people are allowed to have? Because, because almost all the chips are American chips. So they're all, they all are American chips. And technically we own most of them. Yeah, exactly. But China owns most of them too. They're China has their own, uh,

has their own chip industry, but it's behind ours. Okay. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. So, so the United States has the, has the most advanced chips as all the, you know, these chips are the envy of the world. Everybody in the world wants our chips. And, uh, the, one of the big questions is, uh,

You know, do we does the government allow a lot of these chips to go over overseas to China or parts of Asia or the Middle East or wherever? Or do we want to make sure they stay in America and make sure that we win in America? And this is a super duper, you know, they're called export controls. Yeah, because it's a possibility to run it all. Yeah, exactly. Got the chips. What do you think about it?

Um, it's a complicated, complicated thing because basically, you know, one argument is, um,

we shouldn't be throwing our weight around in this way. Like, you know, maybe it's fine. It's a free market. Like if other people want our chips, they should be able to get our chips. And that way, you know, the world is running on American chips. That can be good in some ways. And it helps make sure that, you know, helps bolster our economy, our industry. But the other way to look at it is, hey, AI is really, really important that America wins at. And we don't want to like, let's not

give other people any advantages or let's make sure that we win. And then, and then we can figure out what we're going to do with all the chips. So it, you can see both sides of it. Right. And there's like all sorts of, you know, even beyond that, there's like 50 different arguments on both sides of the, of the conversation. But, um, you know, where I go, where I come from on it is like, let's, let's make sure America wins and let's start from there and then figure out what we need to do to win.

Are there uses of AI that you feel like cross the line kind of? I definitely think like, well, I worry a lot about this kind of like

you know, maybe brainwashing kind of thing. Like I don't want, I don't want AIs that are specifically programmed to make me think a certain thing or persuade me to do a certain thing. And that could happen. That could happen. Yeah. So I'm really worried about this kind of like deception and persuasion from AIs. Like I don't want AIs that are lying to me or that are sort of, that are like, that are kind of like nonsensical

nudging me or persuading me to do things that I don't want to do or I shouldn't be doing. That's what I worry about. - Because it could happen. We don't realize how easily we're influenced. Little things that influence us. - Yeah. - And even just a turning of a phrase or a little bit of this or pointing you to a couple of links in your life could lead you down a whole world. It's kind of, it's pretty fascinating. So people that could, people that had

- How do you keep your AI clean? How do you guys keep your AI clean? - Well, this is where it goes back to A, the data. - Okay. - So you gotta make sure that that data, to your point, the large body of water is as clean, as pristine as possible. - You got lifeguards on it? - Yeah, you got lifeguards, we got filters, we got gas. - Game wardens.

So a big part of it is about the data. And the second part is I think we have to just – we have to constantly be testing the AI system. So we have to like – we constantly are running tests on AI to see, hey, is there – are they unsafe in some way? One of the tests that we run a lot is – and this is like across the industry is like –

are AIs helping people do really nefarious things. And we're making sure that they don't. So, you know, if somebody asks an AI, hey, help me make a bomb or help me make like a, like COVID, like 2.0 or whatnot, that the AI is not helping you do that. So, so we run a lot of tests to make sure that it doesn't help in those areas. And then we,

And then we make sure that the data's really clean so that there's no sort of like little bit or piece of that that makes its way to the model.

With Outlier, that's your program? Yep. With Outlier, what type of people are applying for those jobs? Can people just log on and start to submit applications? How does that work to become an information sourcer? Yeah, we call them contributors. Okay, information contributor. Everybody's kind of contributing to the AIs. Everyone's contributing to the data that goes into the AIs. It's kind of like...

I almost think of it as like the next generation of Wikipedia, right? We're like, yeah, look at this. And we're hiring people all around the world. So people in all sorts of different languages. Dude, that's crazy, man. Yeah, yeah. Well, it turns out, by the way, most of the AIs...

don't really speak other languages that well. They're much, much better at English and particularly American English than other languages. And so we want to make sure that they speak all these languages well and that there's these opportunities. But yeah, on Outlier, so anybody around the world can log in and sort of...

There's a little bit of a, like, orientation almost on how to best, like, what you're supposed to do, how you're supposed to do it, what expertise should you be bringing, all that kind of stuff. And then you can just start contributing to the AI models, and you get paid to do it. Wow. Yeah. That's pretty fascinating, man. And it's going to be, I mean, I really think, I legitimately think jobs from AI are going to be the fastest growing jobs in the world. For sure.

for the years to come. You do? Yeah. So jobs where people are able to contribute information, jobs where people are able to, like what? Like what would examples of those be? Just some of the ones you've already listed? Yeah, all the ones we've been talking about, right? Like contributing to the AIs, helping to utilize the AIs and helping to shape the AIs into applications or into, you know, into...

in like helping organizations or companies or people use the ais that'll be a really fast growing job um helping to to manage the ais and make sure they're they're they're on the straight and narrow where would a young person go right now who's some who's getting to college or has doesn't even want to go to college but this is the world they want to get into and be one of those people what would do they do right now yeah well this is all happening so fast right like the uh the

Like, Outlier, we only started a few years ago. So all of this is happening so, so quickly. But what we want to do ultimately is make it easy for anybody in the world to, you know, gain the skills they need to be able to do this work well, to learn what it means, what it does, and ultimately be in a position where they can, they can, you know,

you know, help build the eyes and then, and then keep improving that and gaining mastery and getting better and better at it. But like, where do they go to school? Is there a school? Is there a class that they should take online? Like how does someone start to become, you know, just get a head start on what could potentially be probably a lot of job opportunities. I'm guessing. Yeah. Like in the AI space, right? Like, is it just, is it just engineers? Like, is it just mathematicians? Like,

No, it's everybody. Because, yeah, as we were talking about, like, AI needs to get smarter about literally everything. So... But are there colleges offering court? Like, is there... Do you know, like, is there specific places where people can... Because that's another thing. I think it's like, I want to work in AI. And you're like, what do I do? You know? Yeah. Yeah. I don't think these programs exist yet. I mean, we...

We would definitely love to help build them. So I guess if any colleges are listening, you know, and you want to help figure out about these programs, we'd love to help. That'd be pretty cool if you had your own kind of like course, not that you had to teach it all that, you know, but you were like a partner of it somehow. Yeah, I mean, I think we'd love to basically teach

everybody in America how to best contribute to the AIs, how to best basically take advantage of the fact that this is going to be one of the fastest growing industries. There's going to be tons of opportunities. They're going to be shaped a little bit different from the jobs that exist today. But it's not going to be that hard for everybody to learn and figure out how to participate in it.

What are some jobs that could be at risk because of AI, right? Because you start thinking that – like, yeah, before I was talking to you, there was this general fear of like everything could be at risk, right? But when you think about it, you're like, yeah, these are some jobs that – I mean they won't disappear, but there might be less of them, right? I just think it will be – we'll be doing like a different thing. So –

Because a lot of our fans are probably just blue collar listeners, like there's people that work in – like you're not going to – you're still going to need a plumber. You're still going to need an electrician. You're still going to need anything where you have to physically do something you're probably still going to need. Yeah, for sure. And then even stuff where you're like – let's say you're mostly just working on a laptop and even for those jobs, like it will just change. Like instead of being – instead of my job being like, hey, I have to do the work. I have to literally do the work on a laptop. It will almost be like everybody gets –

promoted to being a manager. Because I'm going to be managing a little pod of 10 AI agents that are doing the work that I used to do, but I need to make sure that all of them are doing it right and that they're not making any mistakes and that if they're making mistakes, I'm helping them get around those mistakes. It's just going to

The way I think about it is that like, yeah, like literally over time, everybody will just be upgraded to being a manager or sort of promoted to being a manager. But can you have that many managers, do you think?

Yeah, because I think that what's the other thing that's going to happen is the economy is just going to grow so much. Like there's going to be so much like there will be like industries are going to pop off in crazy, crazy ways. And so, you know, the limit is going to be how many AIs can you have? And then you're going to be limited for in terms of the number of AIs you have by the number of managers that you have. So it's going to

- 'Cause you need air traffic controllers, you need as many of them as you can have. - Yeah, well that definitely. - But you're right, but I mean, in any field, you're gonna need like just more managing, you need more people to oversee and make sure that different things are happening because some of the smaller tasks will just be outsourced. - Yeah, and just so much more stuff is gonna be happening, right? And that's kind of- - Right, because yeah,

Once these things are all kind of taken care of, more things can happen at this second level. Yep. That's a good point. Yeah, you don't think about that. Once some of the things at the first level of certain businesses are handled more easily by AI, then you're going to be able to have more people operating at a higher level. Yeah, totally. Yeah.

It's kind of like always the history of technology. Like when we started developing technology that started making farming a lot more efficient, all of a sudden, you know, people could do a lot of other things other than farming. And then, you know, all of a sudden we have big entertainment industries and big financial industries and, you know. Barbecue cook-offs, man. I'll tell you that. Second some of those guys got the weekend off, they was grilling shit that I knew. Yeah.

But yeah, so it's all about like us. Yeah, everybody leveling up to be managers. And then also everybody, you know, just way more ideas are going to start happening. Like way more ideas are going to start becoming a reality. And so it'll be, I think it'll be pretty exciting. Like I think it's just like a lot more stuff is going to happen.

Yeah, what companies do you see like, are there companies where you're the youngest billionaire in the world ever or no? Is that true? Is that a weird statement? We can take it out if it is. I'm not trying to talk about your money. I mean, you...

But you are. Is that true? According to like some publications, but I don't know. As a young entrepreneur, right? And you've been very successful, you know, the self-made billionaire. And we can take the word billionaire out later if you decide you don't want it in. I just don't know how certain people feel about that. And the founder of Scale AI –

Where do you invest? Are you investing your money in certain places, like certain fields that you see continuing to do well? Yeah.

So most of, almost all of what I'm focused on is like how do we scale? How do we make it super successful? But, and make sure that we, you know, one of the things I think is really important is like, how do we make sure we create as much opportunity through AI as possible? Like, how do we make sure there's as much jobs? How do we make sure that everything that we're talking about actually is what happens? Because I think,

No, someone's going to have to really work to make sure all these jobs show up and all this stuff actually happens the way we're talking about. So there's going to be new industries that are going to pop up even. Totally. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think like just in the same way that, you know,

Nobody could have really predicted that podcasting was going to be this huge thing and this huge cultural movement. Yes, true. But it is one, and it's amazing. It's like awesome. And that's going to happen in like little ways in all sorts of different industries. And that's going to be – it's going to be really exciting. Okay.

what are some of the things that excite you about technology right now? Like what are, where do you see like AI and technology in five years, 10 years? Yeah. So some of the areas I think are really, are really exciting. So one is definitely everything to do with healthcare and biology.

that's moving really, really fast. And kind of, as we were talking about, like, I think legitimately in our lifetimes, we could see cancer being cured. We could see heart disease being cured. Like we could see some really crazy leaps and advancements in that area, which is, which is super duper exciting. Could it create a way that we could live forever? Do you think? It's just a, there's definitely people working on that. You know,

So this is getting kind of crazy and very sci-fi, but some people think that there's a way for us to keep rewinding the clocks on ourselves so that we'll always feel young and like all of ourselves will actually always stay young. Yeah.

It's, I think, scientifically possible. And I think if we can get there, that's obviously incredible. So there's people working on that. At the very least, I think we'll be able to lengthen our lifespans pretty dramatically. And maybe we can get to that. Wow.

Yeah. Yeah, because I always envision this. There's like a time where it's like, okay, this group lives forever and this group doesn't. And there's just that parting of two different way, you know, people head not in just into the end zone of the Lord. And then there's other people just loiter who are going to be loitering around for a long time. And what that would be like that cutoff, you know? Yeah, it's kind of, I mean, I'm not that worried about it, but it sucks to be that cutoff. We're like. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, it's a weird, it's a weird thought.

Because it would also be brave. I mean, you'd be the astronaut. I mean, Diane, you're just an astronaut really into the ether. You don't know what's going on. Yeah. Totally. You're the Lewis and Clark of the Lord at that point. You were out there. Yeah. And then if you stay, you kind of are always going to be – you'll always know kind of what's going to happen in a way because you'll be here. Yeah. Which would be exciting, I think. Yeah.

But then after a while, you might be like, dang, what happens if you die? That's the bravest choice you could make. That's true. Probably. Yeah. Do you see AI having any effect on religion? Yeah, I think one of the things that – something I believe is like I think that as AI becomes –

You know, this is one of the things I think is really important is that we are able to educate people about AI and help people understand it better and better and better. Because I think it's this scary thing that nobody understands or people feels like a boogeyman or, you know, feels like is this just this like thing that's going to take my job like that.

makes it scary and i think that that affects people's you know spirituality that affects how people you know contextualize themselves with the world yeah you could lose your purpose if your purpose is a job that you feel it's going to disappear yeah that could already be causing you to feel that way yeah so but i think i think if you if we can explain ai more and ultimately like um

Like it is a cool technology, but it's not that magical. It's just, you know, it's like data and you crunch that data and then you get these algorithms. And so it's not like, it's not, yeah, some people talk about in this crazy way. But I think as long as we are able to explain what AI is and also explain what opportunities it creates over time. And to me, it's about getting this like reality

relationship between humanity and AI right? Like, how do we make sure that this is something that enables us as humans to be more human and us as humans to do more and experience more and be better and all these things versus something that kind of is scary or will take over or anything like that? I think that's really important.

What's a place like, so if I go to ChatGPT, is that scale AI? Is that the same thing or it's different? That's it. So we're actually kind of under the hood powering all the different models and AIs. So are all the different AI systems under the hood? Yeah. So we help power ChatGPT and OpenAI. We help power mostly from the data perspective. And do we know if the answer came from your company or other companies? If we ask it a question, like how do we...

There's probably no way to like literally tell. But yeah, we help power, you know, open AIs and we help power Google's AI systems and Meta's AI systems and help power all the major AI systems. How can a regular person just at their home, right? Say there's a guy who's been listening to this today and wants to go home today and he just wants to learn a little bit of how AI works. He could just go on to chat GPT and ask it a couple of questions.

Yeah. You could ask chat GBT how AI works. You could ask it, what's the history of my town? You know, can you research my last name? Maybe in case, see where it came from. What are like, maybe what are some innovations that could happen in the next few years? There's different little things you can just ask it. That's how you can start to have a relationship with asking and learning about. And you see what it's good at, what it's not good at. Like right now, AI is still really bad at a lot of things. Like,

Like most things. This is why, this is why I think when people understand it and really get a feel for it, it stops being as scary. Because, uh, because I think we think about it as like, we think about it as like the AI from the movies that are sort of like, you know, all powerful and whatnot. But, uh,

Yeah, you think of it as a robot that's going to show up and just start driving your truck around or something. And you're like, well, what the fuck do I do? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. My keys were in my truck. You know, I can't even get in my house now. Like, I think that's the – there is this boogeyman fear. Yeah, yeah. But that's not the truth. It's not the truth. And, like, yeah, that's not the truth. And it's –

to me, it's like we have, we kind of have the choice to make sure that also doesn't become the truth, right? Like we definitely, we in the, like people building AI, but just in general, everybody in the world has like, like we should all make sure to use it as something that like an assistant, as something that like helps us versus, um,

Versus think about it in like a scary way. Well, getting to learn how to use it, small ways, whatever, is certainly a way that you're going to start to realize what it is. And it's easy to just sit there and say it's horrible and without trying to use it or learn about it. Yeah, sometimes I won't learn about something just so I can continue to say it's a boogeyman because it kind of gives me an excuse if I choose not to learn about it in my own life.

ChatGBT has become like a proprietary name, like Band-Aids or Ping Pong. Is that okay that it's like that? Yeah, I think that's totally fine. I mean, I think basically there will probably be more AIs over time that people get used to and use. And like anything, there will always be like a –

In America, there will always be a bunch of options for consumers and a bunch of options for people to use. And they'll be good at different things, right? So I think like right now we're just in the very early innings of AI. But over time, we're going to have just like how –

for anything, like for clothes or for energy drinks or for whatever. Different people have different tastes because there's going to be different things that different AIs are good at and other things that other AIs are bad at. Is AI right now smarter than humanity?

Yeah. So I think what AI is good at because it's ingested all of the facts, right? Like it's ingested this like the body of water is really, really big and it's ingested so many different facts and information from all of humanity. It definitely like –

Or like, you know, just like how Google knows a lot more than any person does. So it definitely knows a lot more. But it's not like, you know, there's a very, very – there's tons of things that humans can do that AI is just like fundamentally incapable of doing. So it's not like a –

I don't think you can even like measure one versus the other. There's sort of like very different kinds of intelligence. Could AI just create a better AI at a certain point? Like, could it just be like, hey, I create a better AI and it could do that?

Yeah, this is a good question. Actually, this is another really hot topic in the AI industry is can you get AIs to start doing some of the engineering and some of the improvement on its own? That's scary.

Because then it's making kind of choices then. It's becoming the lifeguard. It's becoming the water and the coast guard. Yeah. So this is something – I mean my personal thought is I think this is something we should kind of watch a little bit and we should make sure that –

humans always are have the sort of like steering wheel and the the sort of uh control over um because like you're saying get you know it's like kind of a slippery slope before that gets kind of uh you know a little a little weird but um but i i don't i think that like we can we we can maintain that we can make sure that we don't let the the ai just sort of like keep iterating and improving on its own yeah and in the end you can always shut off your computer and phone and go for a walk huh

Yes. Yeah, totally. It's not like it's going to come out and just slurp you off or something if you're trying to be straight or whatever. And it's a man. I don't even know. Is AI male or female? I don't think it has a gender. Wow. I wonder if it will decide one day. Like, hey, I'm Frank, you know? Well, there are companies that try to program the AI to adopt various personas. Oh, yeah. I got the Indian GPS guy. Turn right. Yeah.

Like on Meta, on like Instagram or whatever, you can get an AI that has Awkwafina's voice, for example. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. And it's funny. You know, the Awkwafina AI is funny. You're a self-made billionaire, which is pretty fascinating. Congratulations, I think, you know, to have a –

I think that money is energy kind of, and it kind of flows to certain places and stuff. And congratulations. That's got to be fascinating. Was that scary when that kind of happened? Yeah. You just made some money. Was that kind of a scary thing? Did you guys grow up really well? Like, what was that like? No, no, no. I grew up, I think, like solidly middle class. Like we weren't, we, you know, we weren't, uh,

We weren't like – You weren't trapping or anything. Yeah, yeah. But like solidly middle class and I think like – I mean one of the crazy things about tech and the tech industry is that we've been just sort of like building this thing up over time. But one of the things that happened is AI all of a sudden became – like there was so much progress in AI and it became –

the biggest thing in the world, right? Like, I mean, all of a sudden, you know, anywhere I go, everybody is talking about AI. It didn't used to be like that when I started the company. AI was just kind of a, like a niche topic. And now it's like, you know, anywhere you go,

Like, I'll just be walking around and I hear, like, random conversations about chat GPT and AI and robots and all this stuff. And so it's kind of been crazy to experience that and be a part of that wave and kind of, like, you know, I started working on this company almost nine years ago. So it was...

Like when I started working on this kind of obscure thing and, you know, I always knew that it was going to become bigger, but I could have never predicted what was going to happen to AI. Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating. It's almost like you were just standing on like the bingo number they got called kind of by time. Yeah. And it's surreal. It's surreal when that happens. Oh, yeah. I can only imagine that. Are your parents pretty proud of you? What's that like?

Yeah. So at first they were like, you know, at first I dropped out of college, right? Oh yeah. And in Asian culture, that's like not a thing you do, right? Not good. Yeah. Yeah. That is like the opposite of being Asian. Well, well, my parents both have PhDs. Um, my two brothers, I have two older brothers. They both have PhDs. Uh, like everybody in my family has, they've gone through all of schooling. They're like, Alex is not doing good. No,

It might have been Spanish. But they're like, yeah, Alex is not doing good. Yeah. So they were pretty worried at first. And I kind of – I told them a little bit of a white lie that I was like, oh, no, I'm just going – I'm going to go back. I'm going to get this like tech thing out of my system and I'll go back and I'll finish school. Obviously that hasn't happened yet. But yeah, they were worried at first. Now they're super proud. Yeah, they're super duper proud and I –

Yeah. And I, I owe everything to my parents, you know? Yeah. They're awesome. And like, seriously, they're, they're, my parents are super brainy. They're, uh, they're both physicists. They would like teach me about physics growing up and teach me about math. And, uh, that's what led me, uh, be so good at the competitions, you know? That's cool. Yeah. I don't even, I think do, um, are your parents, are your grandparents from China or no? My grandparents are from China. Yeah. Did your, does your family have a lot of Chinese culture?

So this is kind of interesting. This is true for a lot of Chinese Americans, is that there's kind of like there's Chinese culture. And then that's kind of almost like it's very different from the Chinese Communist Party and the current government.

Because basically one way to think about China is – I mean China has been – is a culture and a civilization that's been around for like thousands and thousands of years, right? So it's – there's a very longstanding culture. Oh, yeah. But that's very different from the current communist party and the current communist regime. Oh, for sure. I think most people probably think of –

I mean, I don't know. It's funny. I never thought about that. I definitely think about him as different. I definitely don't think if I see a Chinese person, I don't think, oh, that's a communist person. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that would be, yeah, that's crazy. I think that's crazy. Some people thought that I just, yeah, I think somebody has a crazy long history, like, damn. And then maybe almost, do you feel like there's some people in certain parts of China are almost like a captured people then? Is it, do you think that's a,

yeah i mean the the uyghurs that we're talking about i mean that's just like horrible what's happening to them i didn't even know about that man thanks for putting me up on that uyghur game yeah yeah no it's uh i mean some of the stuff like i mean we don't really like first of all the world is a is a huge place and there's like all sorts of both great and bad things happening all over the place yeah but um but yeah no i think that like

I think a big part of this is like we want to make sure we have governments that believe in democracy, believe in liberty, these kinds of things. Yeah. With being somebody that's able to be smart and conceptualize stuff, do you start to get – do you have any insight? This might be the last question I have for you. Do you have any insight on like the afterlife or what happens? Like I never really thought about it like talking to like a real math guy about that.

Yeah, I think... Like, what's the total, like, what's the sum zero game or whatever, you know? What's the... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess, like, the way I've always thought about it because, partially because both my parents were physicists, was I kind of always feel like people live on with their ideas and they're kind of like, like, what are the things that, the things they put out into the world that

That's kind of how you live on because like in math, like everything you learn about is like a theorem named after a different person or a sort of idea named after some – the first mathematician or the first scientist or whatever to figure that out. Like Einstein lives on because – Bagels. That was a shitty joke, but thank you. Oh, yeah, because the –

Yeah, E equals MC squared, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Like I know what that kind of stuff is. Jesus, sorry, but I started pretending. No, no, no. Exactly. E equals MC squared, that's Einstein. And so I think I always feel like people, yeah, you live on by your ideas and kind of what you put out into the world. And that's kind of always how I've thought about it. So you don't get some deeper thought about like,

Like since your brain is able to be because you have probably a unique brain, right? And more, I mean, you know, and everybody has a unique brain, but I've just never asked somebody with your I've never asked your brain this question. Yeah. Do you do you get some further insight about like what you think happens when you die? You know?

Well, I think that one of the things that gets talked about a lot in Silicon Valley, where I live especially, is like the simulation, whether it's all simulation and whether like – do you watch Rick and Morty? I don't watch it, but I'll start.

There's some episodes where it gets into this, and I think it covers it in a pretty good way. But what if all of humanity is just almost like an experiment or a video game that some other civilization is running? Yeah. That's kind of the one that fucks with particularly people's mind and tech a lot because all day every day, we're out there trying to make –

and make simulations and make things that are like more and more sophisticated and advanced and capable. And so kind of the mindfuck is like, oh, what if everyone's

Everything we know is just kind of the, you know, a simulation from some other civilization. Or if we advanced it enough that we're able to make this happen and seem real. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I think one of the things that like with AI and with a bunch of other things like in, well, even just in the past like 30, 40 years, video games have gotten so much more realistic, right? Yeah.

Crazy realistic. Yeah. So it was, we've seen that happen like in a hundred years, like would we be able to simulate something that feels pretty realistic? I mean, probably. Right. Could we be avatars? Yeah. For some, for some other thing. Yeah, exactly. Damn dude. I'll say this. My avatar is a pervert brother. Oh,

Have you met any guys like Jensen Hong? Is that his name? Yeah, yeah. You have? Yeah, totally. Wow. What is it like when you meet some of these guys? Have you met Elon yet? Met Elon? Yeah. Met Elon a few years ago. Yeah. Wow. Got to know him. He's the fucking, he's the, he's turning. Jensen's the goat. Yeah, Kanye. He is? He is. Yeah. He always wears this leather. You see that leather jacket? Yeah. He, we hosted this dinner.

And Huang, is that a Chinese name? Huang? Huang. Yeah, he's Taiwanese, I think. Or Taiwanese-American. But he...

He, in 2018, so when we were like a baby company, we threw this dinner in Silicon Valley. And we just kind of, I kind of YOLO invited him. This was years and years ago. And I didn't expect it, but he said yes. And he came to our dinner. And he came, it was like at this restaurant in Silicon Valley. And he came and just told me,

the craziest stories. He, he like went to, he went to boarding school. I think he's probably told this story, but like he went to boarding school and his parents, when they came to America, they, they, they wanted to send him to boarding school, but they didn't. And so they just send him to like the first boarding school that they, they like found on Google or something. They were like found, it wasn't even Google at the time. So that, that they like heard about. And that boarding school happened to be kind of like a rehab boarding school. So,

So it was like, he was like this. So fucking, it's a halfway house. He's just sitting there. He's there learning with people who are detoxing. Yeah. So he, he told me the story about, he told the story about how he was like, he was just like this.

This kid at, you know, this boarding school that we're like... Everybody else had these... Like, all these crazy backgrounds. And he, like... He got by and made his way through that school by, like... By, like, doing everyone's math homework and, like... You know, kind of, like, wheeling and dealing that way. Oh, yeah. And you could see that he...

He learned how to like wheel and deal and sell and all this stuff from all the way from way back then because he was – I mean his story is pretty crazy. Really? Yeah. We have to research him a little bit. Maybe we would get to talk with him one day. Yeah. Jensen is awesome. Yeah, all these people in tech, they're like – I mean they're all real people, but they all have the craziest backgrounds.

Yeah. Yeah, man. It's just so funny. Whenever I met you, I just didn't know. I figured that since you were with Sam Altman that you were probably a tech guy, you know? And, um, but yeah, I didn't know. Uh, I think maybe somebody said he's in the AI verse, you know, but you just seem like such a totally normal, like I would not have thought that, um,

You were just, I don't know. I guess sometimes you think like somebody's going to be, they're going to be like super quiet or, you know, not have a lot of different thoughts. But yeah, it was cool, man. We had a good time. I'm glad we got to link up. Yeah, totally. That was cool, bro. You're probably like my, you might even be my first Chinese friend. I think second, probably Bobby Lee. Who's denying it.

but he'll come around. Alexander Wang, man. Thank you so much, dude. I bet your whole family is super proud of you. Yeah, it's exciting, man. Thank you for coming and spending time with us and just helping us learn and think. No, thank you. This was awesome. And I think like, I mean, we were talking about this before, but I just want to make sure that like,

People all around the world, especially Americans, aren't scared of AI because it's going to be really cool and it's going to be amazing. But we need to remove the boogeyman component. And thanks for helping me do that.

Yeah, no, man. I think I definitely feel differently about it. I feel like it's a tool that I can use. Right. And even I don't know how to use it. So I'm trying to figure out, you know, one more question. How do you keep it from becoming like a like a advertisement trap house like the Internet's become like the Internet's just pop ups and ads and fucking Best Buy trying to like beat you over the head on some shit? Like, how do you stop that? How do you keep that out of like you guys's waters? Or do you have to go there at some point to make money?

Yeah, first, I'm hoping that the AI industry as a whole avoids advertising as much as possible because it's very different. It is a tool that people can use and people can use to start businesses or make movies or make all these different ideas happen. And I would much rather it be a tool that doesn't get sort of –

that doesn't become, yeah, like an advertising thing versus like, I wanted to make sure it's a tool that helps people first and foremost. So that's, I think this is, there's kind of like a choice here. And we as an AI industry just got to, I think, make some of the right choices. Yeah. I think there would be value in staying as pure as you could if you could find a way to, you know, if there's other money to be made on the side, it almost seems sometimes like it could be a trap, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's like a,

You know, I want to make sure that people don't feel like they're being used by the AIs. I think that'd be a really – that'd be really bad if we ended up there. So we – you know, and I don't think we need to make it like that at all. Like I think we can make sure the AI is helping you do things, is super helpful, is super – is like a thought partner, is like an assistant. Like those are things that I think we want to make sure AI stays. Gang, baby. Yeah.

Wang gang, Alexander Wang, man. Thanks so much, bro. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah. It was awesome, man. Danny Kane. Shout out to Danny who came up and Danny lives in Franklin, right? We got to get to spend some time with him. Yeah. Lives in Franklin. Whenever you're out there. And shout out to Alex Brusowitz who we met through. Yeah. Who else on your team's here, man, today? We have Joe Osborne. Yeah. And we have Danny's whole crew. So Arion, Dan,

And Clayton. Yeah. Nice. We'll have to get a group picture. We'll put it up at the end. Thank you, guys. Have a good one. I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be on a stone. Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this piece of mind I found. I can kick my bones.