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why doesn't Facebook do this I know that Zuckerberg has said and I take him at face value that he I well I did
I do actually in this way that he is a kind of old-fashioned liberal who doesn't like to censor he has but he you
know like why wouldn't a company like that take the stand that you have taken it was pretty rooted in American
traditional political custom you know for free speech
uh this is the kind of thing that tends to accelerate uh so that so then you can get negative equity in the Home Market
as well yeah this is um a dire situation
and so that that so essentially we what's happening is they're training the AI July yes so all of a sudden AI is
everywhere
people who aren't quite sure what it was or playing with it on their
phones is that good or bad artificial insemination yeah
it's everywhere that's what they call it in the AG industry
uh I'm talking about a more digital form yes um
so yeah so I've been um thinking about AI for a long time since I was in college really
um it was one of the things that the sort of four or five things I thought would really uh affect the future dramatically so
um and uh it is quite it is fundamentally profound
in that the the smartest creatures as far as you know on this Earth are humans
um is our defining characteristic yes um we're obviously uh weaker than say
chimpanzees and less agile um but real smarter so
uh now what happens when something uh vastly smarter than the smartest
person uh comes along in Silicon form uh it's very difficult to predict what will happen in that circumstance
um it's called The Singularity it's a
singularity like a black hole because you don't know what happens after that it's hard to predict
um so I think we should be cautious with AI
and we should I think there should be some government oversight because it affects
the it's a danger to the public and so when you when you have things that are endangered to the public uh
you know like let's say um so Food Food and Drugs That's why we have the Food and Drug Administration
right and the Federal Aviation Administration uh the FCC
uh we have we have these agencies to oversee things that uh affect the public
where they could be public harm and you don't want companies cutting
Corners uh on safety um and then having people suffer as a
result so that's why I've actually for a long time been a strong advocate of AI
uh regulation um so that I think regulation is uh you know it's not fun to be regulated
it's a sort of somewhat of a I saw an oduous to be able to be regulated I have a lot of experience
with regular regulated Industries because obviously Automotive is highly regulated you can fill this room with
all the regulations that are required for a production car just in the United States and then there's a whole
different set of regulations in Europe and China and the rest of the world so
very familiar with being overseen by a lot of regulators um and the same thing is true with
rockets you can't just willy-nilly you know shoot rockets off or not big ones anyway because the FAA is overseas that
um and then even to get a launch license you there are probably half a dozen or more federal
agencies that need to approve it uh plus state agencies so it's I'm I've been
through so many regulatory uh situations it's insane and and the you know sometimes I I people think I'm
some sort of like regulatory Maverick that sort of defies Regulators on a regular basis but this
is actually not the case uh so uh and you know once in a blue moon rarely
I will disagree with Regulators but the vast majority of the time uh my companies agree with the regulations and
comply that's anyway so I think I think we should uh take this seriously and and we should
have um a regulatory agency I think it needs to start with
um a group that initially seeks insight into AI then solicits opinion from
industry and then has proposed rule making and then those rules
you know uh we'll probably hopefully grudgingly be accepted by the
the major players in Ai and um and I think we'll have a better chance
of um Advanced AI being beneficial to humanity in that circumstance but all
regulations start with a perceived danger and planes fall out of the sky or food causes botulism yes I don't think
the average person playing with AI on his iPhone perceives any danger can you just roughly explain what you think the
dangers might be yeah so the the the the danger really AI
is um perhaps uh
more dangerous than say mismanaged uh aircraft design or production
maintenance or or bad car production in the sense that it is it has the potential however small one
make regard that probability but it is non-trivial it has the potential of civilizational Destruction
you know uh those movies like Terminator but it wouldn't quite happen like Terminator
um because the the intelligence would be in the data centers right the robot's just the end effector
um but I think perhaps what you may be alluding to here is that
um regulations are really only put into effect after something terrible has happened that's correct and if
um if that's the case for AI and we only putting regulations after something terrible has happened it may be too late
to actually put the regulations in place the AI may be in control at that point you think
that's real it is it is conceivable that AI could take control and reach a point where you couldn't turn it off and it
would be making making the decisions for people yeah absolutely absolutely no
it's that's that's definitely the way things are headed uh for sure uh
I mean um things like like say chat EVT which is based on jpd4 from open AI which is the
company that I played a a critical role in in creating unfortunately back when it was a
non-profit yes um I mean the the reason uh openai exists
at all is that um Larry Page and I used to be close friends and I would stay at his house in
Palo Alto and I would talk to him later tonight about uh AI safety and at least
my perception was that Larry was not taking AI safety seriously enough
um and um what did he say about it uh he he really seemed to be
um What It Wants once sort of a digital super intelligence basically digital God
if you will uh as soon as possible um he wanted that yes
um and uh he's made many public statements over the years uh that the whole goal of
Google is uh what's called AGI artificial general intelligence or artificial super intelligence
um and um you know and I agree with him that the there's great potential for
good um but there's also potential for bad and so if if you've got some
um radical new technology you want to try to take a set of actions that maximize probably it will do good and
minimize probably will do bad things yes it can't just be helpful either to just go you know barreling forward and you
know hope for the best um and then at one point uh I said well
what about you know we're going to make sure humanity is okay here um and and and
um uh and then he called me a speciesist [Laughter]
that
term yes and there were witnesses that I wasn't the only one there when
he called me a speciesist and so I was like okay that's
it uh I've yes I'm a speciesist okay you got me what are you
yeah I'm fully speechuist um busted um
so um that was his last role um at the time uh Google uh had a quite
Deep
Mind and so Google and deepmind together had about three quarters of
all the AI talent in the world they obviously had a trans amount of
money
and more computers than anyone else so I'm like okay we have a unipolar world here where there's just one one company
that has close to Monopoly on anti-talent and uh
and computers like so scaled Computing and the person who's in in charge doesn't
seem to care about safety this is not good so uh so then I thought okay what's the what's what's the the furthest thing
from Google would be like a non-profit that is fully open because Google was closed for profit
so that's why the open and open AI refers to open source uh you know transparency so people know what's going
on yes and and that it we don't want to have like a I mean well I'm normally in favor of
for-profit we don't want this to be sort of a profit maximizing a demon from hell that's right that just never stops right
so um so that's how open I was with so you want specious incentives here incentives
that yes I think we want to pro-human yeah this makes the future good for the humans yes yes because we're humans
right and most of the other creatures on Earth too uh but but uh you know
we've got a I think you know like I think people sometimes take the fact that like
we're here on Earth for granted you know and that there's the Consciousness is just a normal thing it happens but it's
the best of my knowledge we see no evidence of uh conscious uh life anywhere uh anywhere
in the universe so it might be there um here in physics of course sort of the
Fermi Paradox Enrico film is amazing physicist I asked
the fundamental question where are the aliens yeah um a lot of people ask me you know
um where are the aliens and I I think if if anyone would know about aliens on Earth
it would probably be me I would think yeah I'm like you know very familiar with space stuff
um and I've seen no evidence of aliens so I would I would immediately tweet you know
tweet it out that says Split Second and be like I'll be like well all time probably a tough tweet of all time I
found one guys it's a jackpot there's some eight billion likes you know
um Next Level jackpot if you find the aliens like I don't think they're keeping us under you know and it was
like some um uh General I think in the 60s who where they're saying like show us the aliens like error 51 Etc and he
said like listen we're constantly trying to get the defense budget to uh expand and uh look you know what we really get
uh no arguments for anyone uh if we pull out an alien and said we need money to protect
ourselves from these guys you know how much money do you want you got it they look dangerous
the fastest way to get a defense budget increase would you agree to pull out an alien you know
we were like yeah I mean it could be the invasion it could be arriving any minute who knows so
um you know I said I digress but but you were saying that our Consciousness makes
us unique in the universe as far as we know yes I'm not saying that we are unique I'm simply stating to the best of
my knowledge that there is no evidence for other uh conscious life I I I I hope
that there is and I hope they're peaceful uh obviously the two important characteristics um but um I'm just
saying we haven't seen anything yet so um but you think that we take our
existence here for granted yeah I think there are threats to it yeah yeah yeah exactly so
um I I just think we should not assume that
Civilization is robust um and if you if you look at the history of civilizations the rise and fall of
the ancient Egyptians the ancient Sumerians um Rome you know this uh
throughout the world have been rising pool of many civilizations um so there's an arc there's sort of a
live a sort of a life cycle Arc to to civilizations just as there is to to individual humans yes and
um and I think we just want to make sure that that you know uh we we have
civilization go onward and upward um and uh that's for example why I'm concerned about decreasing both rates
and and um the fact that for example Japan uh had twice as many deaths last year as births
so the the that's it and they're they're a leading indicators this is can I say and you've you've written and talked a
lot about this but can I ask you to pause just for a parenthetical note why is that I mean the urge to have sex and
to procreate is after breathing and eating the most basic urge how has it been subverted
well it's just the in the past we could rely upon um you know simple uh limbic system
rewards in order to procreate um but once you have birth control
um and you know uh abortions and whatnot now now you now you can still satisfied
Olympic Instinct but not to procreate um so we didn't we haven't yet evolved to
deal with that because this is all fairly recent in the last 50 years or so um before birth control
um so yeah um
you know I'm sort of worried that hey civilization you know don't if we don't make enough people to at least sustain
our numbers perhaps increase a little bit then civilization is going to crumble um and you know if
there's this the old question of like uh will civilization end with a bang or a whimper well it's currently trying to to
end with a whimper in adult diapers yes uh which is depressing as hell the most depressing I mean seriously
yeah war is less depressing yeah it's really good with a bang yeah put your shoes on yeah not with your more
exciting yeah yeah um so can you just put it I keep pressing but just just for people who
haven't thought this through and aren't familiar with it and the cool parts of of artificial
intelligence are so obvious you know write your college paper for you write a limerick about yourself like
there's a lot there that's fun and useful but can you be more precise about what's
potentially dangerous and scary like what could it do what specifically are you worried about
well I mean I going with old sayings the pen is mightier than the sword so if you have a
super intelligent AI that is capable of writing uh incredibly well and in a way
that is very influential um you know convincing uh and then and
and is constantly figuring out what is more what is more and what is more convincing to people over time and then
enter social media for example Twitter uh but also Facebook and others you know
um and and potentially manipulates public opinion in a way that is very bad
um how would we even know yeah so we wouldn't we wouldn't that's
why for example uh I'm insisting that going forward uh people on Twitter need to be verified as
as uh humans like so we know that this person is in fact a human Bots are allowed but they have to they can't
impersonate a human they can't pretend to be uh you know humans because obviously you could have a million Bots
that are that are let's say chat GPT version six five six like incredibly
right better than humans yes um and and and they they can train on a reward
function which is influence um and so you could have a million seemingly real humans uh that are have a
massive effect on public opinion and unless we focus very strongly on
um verifying that someone is human this was naturally what will happen is you'll
you'll have some probably some humans using AI to
influence the public in ways they don't understand you're already seeing that chat GPT is is ideological it's very
preachy yes if you ask it extremely preachy you mean work GPT it's
unbelievable yeah if you spend 20 minutes asking it questions of actual relevance modern relevance it will start
lecturing you about your moral shortcomings like how did that happen well it's the this is a function of of
openness headquarters being uh in downtown San Francisco so the politics
are therefore of the AI or that of San Francisco
so why would it have any politics at all it's that seems like subversion well there's they have what's called
like
human reinforcement learning which is another way of saying that they
have a whole bunch of people that look at that uh look at the output for
of gpt4
and and then say whether that's okay or not okay and so that so essentially we what's
happening is they're training the AI to lie yes it's bad to lie that's exactly right and to withhold information July
and and yes and um yeah exactly to to either you know
comment on some things not comments on other things but but not to say what it what what the data uh actually uh
demands that I'd say exactly um so um how did it get this way you funded it
at the beginning what happened yeah well that'll be ironic but Faith the most ironic outcome is most likely it seems
um I'm feeling that that's good that's session of a friend of mine Jonah came
up
with that one I actually have a slight variant on that which is the
most entertaining outcome is the most likely but that's entertaining as
viewed from a
third party viewer like uh so if we're like an alien yes
um
like you can go see a movie about World War one they bring blown to
bits into gas and everything in the trenches and it's like you're eating
popcorn and
having a soda you know it's fine I'm not so great for the people in the movie True um so
but that that that's that's my variance on on this sort of Occam's razor the simplest explanation is most likely
donors variant uh which is um irony in my variant which is uh
yeah the the most entertaining as seen by a third-party audience um which seems to be mostly true
um but it seems true in this case so you gave them did you give them a lot yes I I provided so um I came up with the name
and uh the concept and pushed uh it had a number of dinners around the the Bay Area uh with uh
you know with some of the people the leading figures in AI um and I helped recruit the initial team
in fact the the Ilya siskar who who was uh really quite fundamental to the
success of uh open AI uh it was
I I I put a trans amount of effort into recruiting Ilia and he changed his mind a few times and ultimately decided to go
with the opening high but if he had not gone with the opening open air would not have succeeded so
um so so I I I really put a lot a lot of effort
into creating this this organization to serve as a counterweight to Google um and um
and then I kind of took my off the ball I guess and uh they are now closed source
and they are obviously for-profit and they're
um closely allied with Microsoft uh you know in effect Microsoft uh has a very
strong say if not um directly controls uh openai at this
point so you really have an open hand Microsoft situation and then at Google deepmind uh the other two sort of
heavyweights in this Arena so it seems like the world needs a third option yes
so I I think I will create a third option although I was
starting very late in the game of course can it be done I don't know I think it's we'll see it's
uh definitely starting late um but I will I will I'll try to create a
third option um and that third option hopefully does more more good than harm
like the intention with open AI was obviously to do good but it's not clear whether it's actually doing good or
whether it's I can't tell at this point um except that I'm worried about the fact that uh
it's
been it's being trained to be politically correct which is simply
another way of of being on Truth saying untruthful things yes um
so that's not a bad sign um and there's there's certainly a path to AI dystopia
is to train an AI to be deceptive um so I I so yeah I'm going to start
something which I know you're called proof gbt or uh a maximum truth seeking
AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe and I think this this might be the best path to Safety in the sense
that an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely
to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe
hopefully I would think that I I think you know because yeah like like we like
Humanity could um uh decided to hunt down all the chimpanzees and kill them but we don't
because we're we're actually glad that they exist yes and um and we're aspire
to protect their habitats and and that's um you know so I think but we feel that way
because we have souls and that makes us sentimental and reflective it gives us a
moral sense longings can a machine ever have those things can a machine be sentimental
can appreciate Beauty
well I mean we're getting to into some you know philosophical areas that are
hard to resolve um you know I I take somewhat of a
scientific view of things which is that we might have a soul or we might not have a soul I don't know it feels like a
we have I feel like I've got some sort of Consciousness that exists on a plane
that is not the one we observe yes that is certainly how I feel but it could be
an illusion I don't know um but for um for AI uh in terms of of uh
understanding beauty is it some sort of appreciated Beauty and being able to um
create incredibly beautiful art yes will AI be able to create incredibly beautiful art it already does yes if you
see some of the majority uh I have this stuff it's incredible it is um so
um no no question that it can create art that we that we perceive as a
stunning really um and um it's doing so still images now
but it won't be long before it's doing uh movies and shorts and you know like movies just a
series of frames with audio but at that point because it can mimic people and voices any image it can mimic reality
itself so effectively I mean how could you have a criminal trial
I mean how could you ever believe that evidence was authentic for example and I don't mean like in 30 years I mean
like next year I mean that seems totally disruptive to the way to all of our
institutions well I I don't think you could take say
a random video on the internet and assume it to be true that's definitely not the case um somebody say
has some video on their phone or their computer with a date stamp and a particular time I think you know
is more likely to be true than nine um you can also cryptographically sign
things um like you know mathematically
we don't see any way for example for AI to um
sub book The fundamentals of mathematics and say figure out how to Hash Bitcoin
uh you know easily um
it's it's like it's not a AI can't can't defy fundamental math
yeah so um we can approve the efficiency of Bitcoin
hashing algorithms in the Silicon but but not not fundamentally crack it
um so I guess cryptographic signatures and uh
one one way to do it um but I'm also aware I I think it's more
like um are you know will Humanity
um control its Destiny or not um will we have a future that is better
than the past or not um and not you know with that we can
certainly destroy ourselves without the help of AI um you know that's you look at all the
past civilizations they didn't have ai at the ones that aren't around anymore they have chariots that's enough yeah
chariots and uh Charlie's probably a real big deal back then yeah they were yeah so
you've heard people say we should just blow up the server Farms because there's no way to once this gets rolling there's
no way to slow it down what do you think of that well the
the really heavy duty intelligence is not going to be uh distributed all over the place it'll be an a limited number
of server centers if you say like very like very sort of deep AI heavy duty AI it's not um
it's not going to be in your laptop or your phone it's it's going to be in you know a situation where there's like a
hundred thousand uh really powerful computers working together in a service center so it's not
so it's not like subtle and they're they're a limited number of places where that can happen in fact you could if you
could just you can just look at the heat signature from space yeah and it'll be very obvious
um uh now I'm not suggesting we go and pull up to service centers right now but
there may be some it may be wise to have some sort of contingency plan where the government's got an ability to
shut down shut down power to these uh server centers like uh
you don't have to blow it up you can just cut the power um and what would triple cut connectivity
as well that's another way right but what would trip that switch do you think in your mind what would be the threshold
that you'd have to pass to warrant the government cutting off your power or cutting off your signal
well I mean I guess if we lost control of some super AI um like for some reason like like the
things that would normally work to do a passive shutdown like the administrator passwords if they somehow stopped
working um where where we can't uh slow down or or
you know uh
I'm not sure I don't have a precise answer but if there's something that we're concerned about
um and and uh and are unable to stop it
with with the software commands then uh we'll probably want to have some kind of Hardware both switch yes I think you
know can't hurt have you talked to since you know Larry Page and you obviously you know the opening guys because you started
definitely have one have you talk to the the people who run these two the biggest
AI companies about this recently I haven't talked to Larry Page in a few
years because he got very upset with me about open AI so when when opening AI was created uh
it did it did shift things into it from unipolar world where Google Google
deepmind controlled uh you know like I said three quarters of all AI Talent two where there's Now sort
of uh bipolar world or open Ai and Google deepmind and there
and now weirdly said it seems opening eyes maybe ahead um
so uh so I have had conversations with um
the open AI team Tim Altman I haven't talked to Larry Page because he doesn't want to talk to me anymore uh for a few
years uh can I ask you this about since you've been around a lot of this the thinking so why would anyone not be a specist be
human-centered in his thinking about technology like what's the thinking there um I think what he's trying to say is
that um if I were to guess uh that he that all
Consciousness should be treated equally and whether that is digital or
biological hmm and you disagree
I disagree yeah [Laughter] especially if the digital uh
Consciousness or whatever you want to call digital intelligence decides to curtail the biological intelligence
right so you're just building your own slave master and why would you do that doesn't sound great [Laughter]
yeah I mean we shouldn't we should at least no need
to rush you know like what's the hurry where's the fire
how well what I mean tell us about the hurry so this for I know you've been talking about this for years and on the
sort of the periphery of our attention we've heard Elon Musk talking about AI but for most people it's been like three
months since they've had any interaction with this at all um so what's the timeline here at what
point does it start to really change our society do you think
I think it starts to have a probably an impact this year right I think
um so you've got a massive expansion of
um gbt4 based systems um
and many companies trying to emulate lgbt4 um
and you've got of now is going to come up with gpd5 end of this year which will be
we had another significant Improvement um and I I was there for GPD one two
three four you know so GPD one was terrible um like you if you tried it you'd be like this is
this ain't going anywhere it seems lame um and then gpd2 you started to see kind of
like an inkling of like well maybe this could be something useful and then gpd3 was a huge Improvement uh and now it's
like wow okay this is it's still spotting a lot of BS but it's you know it's uh coherent BS yes and
then gpd4 now it's like writing poetry um and pretty decent poetry actually
pretty decent yeah Skillet rhyming is incredible yes yes and it's coherent yes it is it's you've
got a narrative like yeah that's right yeah so you could say like hard to do like most humans can't do that that's
true so it's already past the point of what most humans can do and most humans cannot write as well as uh chat gbt
um and there's certainly and no human can write that well that fast as the best of
my knowledge so maybe Shakespeare um so
so then how much better will gpd5 be and how about gbd6 or 7. how can you have a
democracy with technology like that I mean if democracy is you know government by the people each person's
vote is equal to every other person's vote I mean and people are choosing their votes freely
can can you have a democracy with this
well that's why I raise the concern of um uh
AI being a significant influence in elections um and even if you say that AI doesn't
have agency well it's very likely that people will use the AI um as a tool uh in elections
um and then it you know if AI is smart enough are they using the tool or is it tool
using them so I think things are getting weird and they're getting weird fast and so I
think we should be concerned about this and we should have regulatory oversight that's why I think
it's a big deal and I think social media companies uh really need to put a lot of
attention into ensuring that the things that get um created and promoted are that we're
dealing with real people not with a million chat gbts pretending to be people exactly do you think speaking of
social media you bought Twitter famously you've got a lot of other businesses and a lot going on yes you said you
bought it because you believe in speech Free Speech you've had a lot of hassle since you bought it and retrospect was
it worth buying it um
um I mean it remains to be seen as to whether this was uh financially smart uh
it currently is it is not uh you know we just revalued the company at less than half of the acquisition price yes
um hahaha um no my timing was terrible for for
when the uh offer was made because it was uh you know right before advertising
plummeted and um you caught the high water mark I noticed yeah yeah so I must be a real genius here
um my my timing is amazing um since I've ordered for at least twice
as much as it should have been bought for um but some things are Priceless and um
so the the whether I lose money or not that is a secondary issue compared to uh
ensuring the uh strength of democracy uh and free speech is the Bedrock of a
functioning democracy yes um and any the speech needs to be as uh transparent and
truthful as possible um so we've got a huge push on Twitter to be as truthful as possible we've got
this community notes feature which is great it is great it is awesome yeah and it's like I saw it this morning yeah it
was far more honest than the New York Times it's great yeah we put a lot of F2 ensuring that Community notes does not
get gamed or or have biases it is simply cares about what is the most accurate thing
um and you know sometimes truth can be a little bit elusive but but you can still aspire to get closer to it yes you know
and so um and I think the the effect of uh Community notes uh is more powerful than
people may realize because once people know that they they could get noted um you know Community noted on Twitter
then uh they'll think that more carefully about what they say uh they're likely it basically it's an
encouragement
to be more truthful and less deceptive yes and if the notes themselves
are truthful then it will have the effect absolutely and all of
that
is open source all the community notes is open source so you can read
about every Community note you can see exactly how the algorithm works
you can
you can you can register say like oh we need to make this change without change
um so everything is super open book with with Community notes there's no no black box
when you jumped into this though when you bought it did you understand clearly you understood its importance you
wouldn't bought it uh Twitter yes right but it's not the biggest but it's the most important the
social media companies but did you understand the kind of ferocity you'd be
facing the attacks you'd be facing from Power centers in the country
um I thought there'd probably be some um negative reactions yes
so I'm sure everyone would not be pleased with the with with it um but um
at the end of the day you know if if the public is happy with it that's what matters
um and the public will speak with their actions although I mean if if they find
truth Twitter to be useful they will use it more and if they find it to be not useful I will use it less they find it
to be the best source of truth I think they will use it more um so that's my theory um and so uh even
though you know now there's obviously a lot of um organizations that are used to having
sort of unfettered influence uh on Twitter um that no longer have that New York
Times have there of their badge this morning and then you called them diarrhea okay you did you did I'm just
I'm just described it Twitter feed is diarrhea I said it was a Twitter Twitter equivalent of diarrhea okay it's not
literally diarrhea but no it's uh you know it's a metaphor um but an accurate one
um so I mean if you look at the uh at NY Times Twitter feed is uh unreadable uh
it's like because what they do is that they tweet every single article even the ones that are uh boring even ones that
don't make it into the paper so uh so it's just non-stop is a zillion tweets a
day with no uh you know they really should just be saying like what are the top tweets yeah like what what are the
what are the what are the big stories of the day uh I don't know put out like 10 or something you know so it's a
number that's manageable um as opposed to right now if you if you were to follow NY at NY Times on Twitter
you're going to get barraged with like hundreds of tweets a day yeah um and your whole feed will be filled within
know that's why it's also a magnet for Intel agencies from around the world and one of the
things we learned after you started opening the books is that they were exerting influence from within Twitter
I mean it was absurd um did you know that going in no well well
so things like I I have a um
since I've been a heavy Twitter user since 2009 um my it's it's sort of like I'm in The
Matrix I mean I can see like things do things feel right do they not feel right what what tweets am I
being shown as recommended uh like I I get a feel like what accounts
are making comments uh where are the comments uh eerily similar yeah
um and and then you look at the account and it's just obviously a fake photo and uh you know uh that it's just obviously
a bot cluster over and over again um so this is actually so I started to get
like just more and more uneasy about the the Twitter situation um and um
and my my initial goal was was was actually not not to acquire Twitter
um I mean the the actual sequence events was that I um I was looking at um
I I I I I I I I held a Twitter poll to say like should I sell some of my Tesla
stock because I was getting you know a couple years ago I was getting um attacked a lot for like allegedly not
paying taxes um uh and uh no I've actually paid a
tremendous amount of taxes um no there was one year I didn't pay taxes because I had overpaid taxes in the prior year
and you know when they had that like IRS leak BS they knew that I had overpaid
taxes in the prior year but they said oh Elon Musk didn't pay taxes in 2017 or whatever it was and I was like but you
know that the reason I didn't pay taxes because I overpaid the prior year if you didn't mention that so that was
deceptive um anyway so the the the you know Elizabeth Warren's of the world and
Bernie Sanders like saying oh you know uh I'm not selling stock and I'm not
paying taxes and I and so I so so I'm like look I don't know what the right thing to do is here I thought the right
thing to do was to not sell stock the captain should be the last one to leave the show that's right um and um I
thought
I was doing the right thing about not selling stock and now I'm being
told I'm doing the wrong thing um by you know Clinging On to the stock
and
not paying taxes so I held a Twitter poll to say which what do you guys want should I
sell I don't know 10 of my Tesla stock or or not I'll buy the results of the
poll and uh that's like six sixty percent of people said yeah you should sell 10 so I did
um so then I had a bunch of cash and um I'm like what should I do with this uh at the time the the Federal Reserve
rates were super low so it's just like sitting in the you know I guess the your
checking account well in the T in the Tebow account right you know money market account whatever um
the yeah the whole banking thing is a whole separate subject um I know what the little thing to think
about you about Finance um but um so uh so I'm assuming this mining
account is earning less than the rate of inflation so the rate inflation is much higher so we've got high inflation it's
I'm
owning peanuts in the money market account this is dumb I'm getting
like minus it's just evaporating yeah I'm getting minus like six or
seven percent
return here uh maybe worse and um so then well it's like what
stock should I buy um and I you know I believe in buying stocks of companies where you use the product
um and uh Apple's got a competing uh electric vehicle car program so you know
I like Apple products We're Not Gonna invest in them because they're competing uh you know autonomous EV program and um
so what's the other product that I use a lot oh Twitter okay so I'll you know it put the money in Twitter it's better
than just having it on you know negative six percent inflation situation
um so so I like board put a bunch of it what a bunch of Twitter stock uh not
likes
it no way they instead of buying the company just you know it's better
than keeping it a money market remember how much you bought
um I think it was like eight percent or something of the company um I'm talking to some of the board
members um and then and then
they said hey well do you wanna you wanna join the board so I was like well I generally don't want to be on boards
uh but uh because it's boring uh man I have a lot of things to do uh but I do
care about the direction of Twitter so I'll consider being on the board and I thought about it for about a week or so
and then but then based on the conversations that I was having with the management team and the board
um I came to the conclusion rightly or wrongly that
um that if I joined the board they they would not listen to me so then I'm like
huh okay then I would just be a quizling you know I don't want to be some sort of just you
know go along for the riot quizling situation um and and if a collaborator effectively uh
so and and it really felt like I started starting to feel like wait a
second like it's weird something something's like something's not right
in this you know something's brought in the state of Denmark here there's so much feels wrong about the platform
it seemed to be just drifting in a I I couldn't place it exactly just ahead
of it felt like it was drifting in a bad Direction so then I was like and and my
conversations with the board and management seem to confirm my intuition
about that so then I was like okay um but basically I was convinced these guys
do not care about fixing Twitter uh and and uh and
I
had a bad feeling about where I was headed based in the conversations
conversations I had with them so then it was like you know what I
I'll try acquiring it and see if that's see if acquiring it is is possible
um no I didn't have enough cash to acquire it so I would need you know support from others from some of the existing
investors uh I'd also need like a lot of debt and um so it wasn't clear to me whether a an
acquisition would succeed but I thought I would try and uh ultimately it did succeed
um so anyway here we are um but when you got there and all of a
sudden you own it and all the data on the service belongs to you and what belongs to the people in my
view but yes but but you can see what it is and you can see what they've been doing and you can see who's been working
there you you were shocked to find out that various Intel agencies were affecting its operations
uh the the degree to which uh various government agencies were effectively
uh had effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter
uh blew my mind I was not aware of that would that include people's DMs
uh yes yes because the dams are not encrypted
so one of the first you know one of the things that we're about to release is ability to encrypt your DM that's pretty
heavy duty though because a lot of well-known people reporters talking to their sources government officials the
rich people in the world they're dming each other and the Assumption obviously it was
incorrect but was that that's private but that was being read by various governments uh yeah that seems yes
scary uh yes it is uh so like I said we're moving to
um have the DMS be optionally encrypted I mean you know there's like a lot of DM conversations which are you know just
chatting with friends it's not not important um uh but but so so we're
that's hopefully coming out later this month uh but no later than next month uh is the ability to toggle encryption on
or off so if you if you have are in a conversation you think is sensitive you can just toggle encryption on and then
no one on Twitter can see what you're talking about they could put a gun to my head and I couldn't I couldn't tell I couldn't
can I still not uh see your DMs that should be that's the acid test yes
um and that's how that's that's how it should be if you want have you had complaints from various governments
about doing this I haven't had Direct complaints to me
I've had sort of like some indirect complaints I think people are a little concerned about complaining to me directly in case I
tweet about it you know uh they're like oh uh so they're sort of
trying to be more roundabout than that um and um
you know I mean if if I got something that was uh unconstitutional from the US government I would say my reply would be
to send them a copy of the you know First Amendment and just say like what part of this are we getting wrong
you have a lot of government what part of this are we getting wrong please tell me I mean it's a pretty no
I'm just saying but you're kind of exposed in your other businesses so this is uh just in case reviewers aren't following this
this
is not you're not just like a journalist taking a stand on behalf of
the First Amendment you're a guy with big government contracts giving
the
finger to the government in some way well am I giving the things I I think that they're um
I'm not someone who thinks that uh you know the government is just sort of uh evil right it's it's it's a it's a large
bureaucracy uh there are people uh in government uh who are human beings and
they have the people with good motivations occasionally bad motivations uh
with with rare exception the people that I know in government have good motivations and just want to get their
job done and and they actually believe in the Constitution and they're so I
think my opinion is actually most people in the government are good um it's heartening to hear
yeah it's it's rare for me to to find someone in the government who I think is perhaps not good but but you know at the
highest level of the the agencies there are political appointees as you know um and the political point is we'll have
a political agenda um and so they at the at the highest levels of the various government
agencies there is the ability to put a sort of a political thumb on the scale even if the uh people operating the
agencies don't agree with that um so you know so that's something to be
concerned about um is I'd say I'd be more concerned about about political appointees I think
than than um the sort of people the career people that's been my experience at least
do you think um Twitter will be as Central to this presidential campaign as it was in the
last several I think it will play a significant role
in elections not just domestically but internationally so
uh the the goal of new Twitter is to be
um as fair and even-handed as possible so not favoring any political
ideology but just um yeah being being fair at all why doesn't
Facebook do this I know that Zuckerberg has said and I take him at face value that he I well I do I do actually in
this way that he is a kind of old-fashioned liberal who doesn't like to censor he has but he you know like
why wouldn't a company like that take the stand that you have taken it was pretty rooted in American traditional
political custom you know for free speech
my understanding is that um Zuckerberg spent uh 400 million dollars in the last election normally in
a get out the boat campaign but really fundamentally in support of Democrats is that accurate or not accurate that is
accurate does that sound unbiased to you no it doesn't yes
um so you don't see hope that Facebook will approach this as a a non-aligned
Orbiter I'm unaware of evidence to suggest that path
um do you can you uh you've you've allowed
Donald
Trump back on Twitter he hasn't taken you up on your offer because he's
got his own thing right do you think he will go back on Twitter
well that's that's obviously up to him um you know my job is to uh
you know I take the freedom of speech
very seriously so it's um you know I didn't I didn't vote for
Donald Trump I actually voted for Biden people think I'm some sort of Hardcore you know so it's certainly some of the media try
to paint me as like far right or whatever I'm right and the only time I've ever even voted
Republican was was once for uh because I I registered a vote in South Texas I was
for Mexican-American woman for congress that's that's literally the only Republican vote I've ever cast in my
entire life yeah um once um and uh
so um I'm not saying I'm a huge fan of Biden
because I I would think that would probably be inaccurate uh but um you know we have difficult choices to
make in these residential uh elections it's not I I I would prefer
frankly that we we put someone just a normal person as
president a normal person with common sense uh and whose values are smack in
the middle of the country you know just you know Center the normal distribution and uh I think they'll be that that
would be great I agree and everyone would be happier would you run like why
wouldn't you run I was born here so oh of course you weren't yeah it's it's I'm a technologist also I'm
not not a politician so it's not like uh it it you know I think we have made maybe being president
not that much fun you know to be totally Frank
um it is uh By Design a relatively weak role uh you know because it's intended
to be balanced by the house and the Senate Judiciary um so it's not like like if you're a
prime
minister in England or Canada or you have homo power than if you're
president because it's like being speaker of the house right and being
um
president you know so um so you know for presidents like uh
deliberately weak in order to avoid creating a king situation King Queen's situation
um and but you get dumped on all day uh no matter what you do um yeah and everything you do is
scrutinized um and um your life is not your own
um and if if you had any skeletons you've got in the closet will be trotted out and uh you know braided down Main
Street and even if they don't exist they'll make them up and uh
politics is a blood sport yeah so it's it's not something I'd want to do so I
gotta one last thread I just that you alluded to you said don't get me started on the banks so you've seen well so
you've seen a couple Regional Bank collapses yeah and we've been told that's not a big deal that these are
isolated and each one collapsed for Unique reasons or not it's not systemic in any sense what's your sense your sense of the
stability of the American banking system
well it's actually at this point a global banking system problem so
the uh you know we have a situation here where
it's not merely it's not that the canary in the coal mine has died but the miners are starting to die too the you know the
so and you know Silicon Valley Bank uh collapsing uh overnight
um is one hell of a big Canary you know smell like a turkey I mean it's not just it's not like some small fry
thing yeah um it's big fry so a medium fry uh and then uh quetta Swiss uh which
is uh I think was formed in the mid-1800s um was basically sold for pennies on the
dollar uh forced to merge with UBS and even then required uh backstop by the Swiss
government I mean like hello guys maybe we have issues here maybe things aren't all
great they're definitely not all great
more forceful here um the uh I think that there there is a
serious danger uh with the uh global banking system
there's there's a strong argument that the
if you were to actually uh mock to mock at the portfolios of the banks the loans
and whatnot uh that the entire banking industry would have negative equity
it feels that way yes um so if you look at say uh commercial
real estate like offices and whatnot the whole work from home thing has substantially reduced office usage in
cities around the world and um
you know I think I think San Francisco is a 40 percent uh off in San Francisco is like an extreme example but it's like
I think it's on 40 vacancy um uh even even New York has uh almost all
cities at this point have have record vacancies in commercial real estate so um now that the commercial real estate
used to be something that was a grade A asset that if a bank had commercial real estate holdings those would be
considered the highest uh Securities some of the safest uh uh you know uh
assets you could have now that is not the case anymore one company after another is canceling
their leases or not renewing their leases or if they go bankrupt you the the there's nothing for the the bank who
owns
that real estate to go after because they're you know previously strong
company now dead what do you where do you what do you go
after that point um so we really haven't seen the commercial real estate shoe drop that's more like a
Anvil not a shoe um so the stuff we've seen thus far
actually hasn't even it is it's only slightly uh
um real estate portfolio degradation but that will become a very serious
thing later this year in my in my view um I think if we see what you're likely to
see a drop in house prices because the interest rates are too high and
for most people when buying a house they look at the monthly payment of course if you're a 30 30 year mortgages the vast
majority of his interest so if the Fed rate is high you have a a high base
interest rate effectively the price you can pay for the house drops because you now have to pay more
interest which means that if you've got a fixed monthly payments you can now afford to buy a house for less less
money it effectively drops the the prices of houses yes um
uh this is the kind of thing that tends to accelerate uh so that so then you can get negative equity in the Home Market
as well and so so if if banks end up having loan license in both their
commercial and they're definitely going to have loan license in their commercial portfolio but also in their mortgage
portfolio this is um a dire situation
um the there is there is a solution to mitigate the magnitude of the damage
here which is for the FED to lower the rate but they raised the rate again
um now uh if I recall correctly which I you
know important caveat I think the last time the FED raised rates going into a recession was 1929.
what happened next yeah Great Depression
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