Reid riffs on AI and public service technology
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So read in our conversation with an entrepreneur that we both admire, uh, dev shi marotte, we talked about how and why who start up justice text designs A I tools that are helping public offenders with insane case loads and helping them Better serve their clients. So on this note of how A I can be used to help reshape and refrain public systems that are overburdened at best and perhaps broken at worst, what are other specific public sector spaces where you think that A I can have an immediate impact right now?

I think the answer is a huge number where you do an entire podcast or leaving series on all of the different areas, you know. And there's a number of during organizations is code america, which is doing things to try to provide a central services.

These companies like major alisa mcs, promise kind of doing a financial systems management and having a really good business model that allies a business model for elevating the cases of these under resource communities. And those are just examples within what we know. There's obviously toner stuff with an education, legal, medical, economic justice, all of these areas is one of the reasons by public service technology is really important than AI. The revolution is bringing is a natural language in your face, together with a depth of knowledge, to help bring these kind of intelligence and cognitive tools from everything from an individual community member to cases like with dog public defenders who are doing an important critical role in our society to make sure that innocent people don't get convicted and that people's rights are respected. Know, even if in the case where, for example, you know, you might have some weed in the trunk, but the way that the that we is discovered, the the importance is how the rights play because rights aren't just for wealthy people, therefore all people.

And it's interesting, you know, one of the things that did he said last week was that you don't always even need the cutting edge technology to make government work Better. Obviously, we want to know the best of the best to be working in our government. But sometimes there's actually simple technologies is that can make things a lot Better.

And i've would you say many times, like one of the things we need is more folks in government to just have technology experience to understand IT, to maybe have a stint in the private sector to be school, need to have education like that can go a long way if we just have folks who understand and appreciate what technology can do for us. And so IT was interesting hearing about her background. I mean, SHE had in turn stinted microsoft research and deep mind peaking university stanford law.

Like, I imagine your answer is probably going to be both. But do you see more sort of generational founders in the AI space coming from the private sector, academia, both? How do you see those interplay?

Well, I think we want to figure out how to enable as much you know kind of technological knowledge in government and public services we can um you know basically technology is transforming the landscape of what's possible. Technology enables what concept, scale and always scale. So whether its government officials making decisions and making intelligent decisions about how technology does, whether it's a lot of technology deployment happens within uh private sectors, it's the knowledge of like scale software systems like A I and on that kind of application, a lot of new inventions um and kind of you know looking at the word sideways or debt.

The research conditions come from universities, which also specifically trained people um to kind of have the skills for you know kind of modern work, modern universe of modern um industry um you know modern society and and so the shorts we're gna need to all of IT um and you can just to universities because for example, like with a ee a lot of the cut of the in debt A A I revolution is coming from corporations because they are our best technology in the entire world and every side in the world for how do you assemble a bunch of resources on a risky competitive adventure and so the A I development is from there more than university is not zero of universities, but more as is part of that, how it's happening right now today. But also, of course, in the cases with like dev si, you have Young people who go, I want to be dedicating my life to solve in these kinds of public problems. And SHE got have got the experience within these research organza understand what is and then immediately went and creating the product of business and sustaining institutions that are new businesses and or make can happen.

So in some sense, she's a little bit more for academia than from industry as a way of doing this. But you need that cut of useful energy as well. And we are so far behind on how IT is we we get technology into the public sphere, in part because people, you know kind of overly go the public sphere must be completely separate from the corporation.

And actually, in fact, figuring out new ways of public private partnerships. I think you're gonna really key. Obviously, there's chAllenges to navigate like you don't want to have the corruption of having public offer is go into private industry where all IT is as a is not the solving the problem but is just capturing of a sales channel versus the solving of a society and need.

And you have to worry about that kind of stuff in in these things. But because the scale technology is essentially only built within the private sphere, especially within a bunch of what's going on an ai, we need that to alive good public private missions. And of course, I think we do that as well.

So zooming out to the A, I space more broadly, i'm speaking of that, that private industry that can have the capital resources to do big things. Not too long ago, as everyone knows, OpenAI raised, but I think was the largest venture capital deal of all time, very six point billion dollars. And what do we think about this? Is this an anomaly? What does this mean for the A, I. space? And do you think we're going na see more funding rounds of this magnitude in the future?

Well, I think it's unique, uh, because it's a particular path by which OpenAI stays to an nonprofit mission, starts on profit scales, a company that a part of benefit corp for navigating these pick of things and is focused on A I for the benefit of humanity.

And so it's the first, but it's probably not a first that will never be repeated because part of what happens as we get to this kind of globally connected role um as we do see all throughout the entire venture venture gap around uh, scaling. When I started in my own career, you know kind of a couple hundred thousand dollars seed round was was like a big deal and now you know sea rounds can be even tens of millions of dollars right in some cases. And then of course, we get to, as the whole venture industry also skills out, we have more entrepreneurs like douche badra, others who are like, how do we make the business models work for the scaling of the impact.

And that IT rs as a company, but runs as a company that fits into a critical part of improving societal infrastructure that helps the kind of lower income communities navigate life Better, potentially have a Better opportunity, the american dream, for improving themselves because they have a more stable basis and are a more integrated part of society. And though she's case the rides that come with that, in page's case, the the financial management. And so I think that will see all of this happen.

But now to the A I thing, I think we're just at the beginning. The what A I will mean for society, for work, for individuals lives. And I think that these financing rounds um were not at market peak. What market .

beginning also question about that. Obviously, the folks who are building their own models, training and creating their own models like, you know, open, I are raising these, you I popping rounds twenty years ago, people, what would be like, what is going on. But I feel like a lot of other people say that because, you know, A I can enhance what a company can do.

You know, a company can do so much more with five people or ten people are not going to need as much money to scale. Do you also see in a way that maybe some companies will be raising less or or no venture capital all because they don't need IT? Like do you see in some ways it's going to be less or no? You think that it's just going to continue the trend of raising more and more dollars?

Well, I think there will be arrange, so sometimes there will be smaller round. But I don't think A I even though it's kind of provisions by you know microsoft t OpenAI, google anthropic cut up the hyper scale ers in these IT doesn't just IT will enable certain things to be cheaper.

But just like example, you know used to be you have to would buy, have to buy and many others may not even what this is, a whole bunch of very expensive sun equipment in order to do the server self. Now you can use the cloud is much cheaper and more dyna infrastructure, but that still means you need a like raise a bunch of money to realize your market opportunity, hire people. It's a competitive thing frequently between company one, twenty two, twenty three capital is part of the competition.

So I think broadly speaking, we do get to larger and larger c capital raises within a more globally connected market, a more globally competitive market, uh, extra. And as people lize that massive returns are possible, more capital flows in. And so A I translation of every industry will mean that more capital flow in, that people then depo to get to market blid scaling more quickly exit as so IT doesn't lead to smaller capital allocations.

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