Latest / General Magic & The Soul of Tech / Ep. 9 | Unintended Consequences: Taking Responsibility for What We Build | Tony Fadell

Transcript

Ep. 9 | Unintended Consequences: Taking Responsibility for What We Build | Tony Fadell · General Magic & The Soul of Tech

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_0: This is Mike Stern.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_0: And I'm Tom "Hersh" Hershenson.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_0: Welcome to General Magic & The Soul of Tech.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_1: We believed we were building something that would change the world, and in some ways we did.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_1: In others, we didn't understand what we were setting in motion.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_1: The story of General Magic isn't over.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_1: We're still living inside what it started.
• 0:30
  We have a special guest today,
• 0:32
  Tony Fadell,
• 0:33
  who was both a heart and soul of General Magic in the early days when he was
• 0:38
  a young engineer,
• 0:39
  and who has remained on the scene as one of the most important enablers
• 0:44
  of innovative and human-centered innovation today.
• 0:47
  I'm not sure what the right term is for someone who was a prodigy
• 0:52
  and decades later maintains that same brilliance and in Tony's case,
• 0:57
  not just intelligence and a wizard at engineering,
• 1:01
  but really a far-sighted human being,
• 1:03
  someone who cares about the human side of things.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_2: So a delight to see you, Tony.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_2: And with that, Mike, fire away.
• 1:10
  Tony, one of the unusual things about you is that as one of the architects of
• 1:15
  the present state of our technology immersion,
• 1:18
  you've expressed some remorse,
• 1:20
  I think is the appropriate word,
• 1:22
  for what became of the things that you helped to invent that were intended to change
• 1:28
  the world for the better,
• 1:29
  and have both done that, but also changed it for the worse.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_0: Is that still where you are now?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_0: And is it something you draw on when you invest and foster innovation in general?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_3: Well, first thanks guys.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_3: It's great to see you.
• 1:46
  You know,
• 1:46
  after all these years,
• 1:48
  it's great to be able to speak like we are going to
• 1:52
  about these really important topics,
• 1:54
  especially given from where we all started 35 years ago which is crazy to think
• 1:59
  and how far we've come and how incredible technology has become,
• 2:04
  but also the downsides have become even more real.
• 2:08
  To your question specifically,
• 2:10
  I understand and clear that we make lots of technologies for the most part
• 2:16
  with unintended consequences.
• 2:19
  Some people with questionable morality and ethics,
• 2:22
  they may be creating technology to exploit the human race for profit.
• 2:27
  But for the most part,
• 2:29
  the people that I've worked with and the things that I've worked on,
• 2:32
  you had no idea the things that you're building would be used for that.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_3: We could talk about the nuclear bomb from back in the day it was "Oh, it's splitting the atom."
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_3: Okay great, "We're gonna make energy, we're gonna do these great things, and it's also a bomb."
• 2:45
  With the smartphone,
• 2:46
  iPhone in particular,
• 2:47
  there was really no mobile social media,
• 2:50
  there wasn't the Instagram, the TikTok that we know today.
• 2:55
  These things all were created upon a platform that,
• 2:59
  I was lucky enough to be involved in bringing to life.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_3: People have created these things and taken advantage of the incredible power these devices have.
• 3:08
  And us as the originators of the platform have no real control over
• 3:13
  where those things are going.
• 3:14
  And so I have had to understand that we do create things
• 3:18
  with unintended consequences and we have to do our best to try to you know,
• 3:23
  go back and even if we're not part of that same project any longer,
• 3:28
  go back and actually be the voice of reason,
• 3:31
  and kind of bring truth to the situation and try to see if we can bring change
• 3:36
  at least indirectly, I if we can, directly is the obviously the best way.
• 3:40
  And so I do things myself,
• 3:43
  whether it's speaking on newscasts and other podcasts and writing about it as well
• 3:48
  to show the downsides and what leaders need to be doing
• 3:52
  to make sure they're not harming people.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_3: You know, I look at things such as the app stores and the platforms there.
• 3:58
  And I know they keep saying they can't do age gating of what apps are used for
• 4:03
  which individuals.
• 4:04
  I think there's a lot more responsibility that these platforms need to bring to bear
• 4:08
  because of the fact that if you have healthy users,
• 4:11
  that means you have healthy customers.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_3: And healthy customers means long-term value for the companies.
• 4:18
  And if you exploit those customers,
• 4:20
  or they're too cautious about buying the technology that they use
• 4:24
  for their children it's not it's not in the best interest of the company.
• 4:29
  So you have to wake up and understand there's there's a holistic way and
• 4:32
  a long term way of looking at these things.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_2: I'm wondering whether you think of ways to incentivize that.
• 4:38
  I mean we live in such a quarter to quarter culture of hitting earnings and the idea
• 4:44
  of the IPO exit and in some cases even before an IPO you know tremendous amounts
• 4:49
  of money
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_3: Or before profits.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_2: Yeah right exactly.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_2: So How do you operationalize that long term view?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_3: We know companies like Apple are saying privacy, and that's absolutely the case.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_3: People want to keep their data private, they don't want to be the product.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_3: So that's great.
• 5:08
  Well, why don't you do the same thing with these other apps saying,
• 5:11
  "We are here and we're going to give you the information and the tools
• 5:13
  to make really good choices for you and your family
• 5:17
  because we know these are issues," as opposed to brushing them under the rug
• 5:21
  and going, what are you talking about?
• 5:23
  It's like, no,
• 5:23
  you can still give them the tools and make the tools very easy to use and intuitive,
• 5:28
  to be able to give people control of these very powerful devices in the hands
• 5:33
  of themselves as well as their families.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_3: I think it just plays all day long in marketing.
• 5:37
  At the end of the day,
• 5:38
  we're finding out that, this everybody-should-be-anonymous-on-the-web doesn't play.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_3: It doesn't play long term.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_3: It's not like we can run around the country and everyone's anonymous.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_3: They can't be that way.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_3: We have IDs.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_3: People know who people are.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_3: And more of our information is online than ever, as we're seeing.
• 5:57
  We need to know who's using it,
• 5:59
  where it's going,
• 6:00
  and people need to know that they're dealing with real humans,
• 6:02
  especially in the world of AI now.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_3: We don't know who's impersonating whom.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_3: And we need to get to a point where people can be identified.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_3: Businesses can be identified.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_3: They know who they're working with just like they are on the streets in the physical world.
• 6:15
  We need to do the same thing in the digital world so that we can start
• 6:18
  to create real trusted relationships especially because we're becoming more
• 6:22
  and more decentralized with who we work with.
• 6:24
  And we want to be able to do the same thing with our apps and the services
• 6:27
  that we use so that we really can have a much stronger connection and stronger trust
• 6:34
  because the physical world is being challenged by the digital world and
• 6:38
  the digital world is not as safe.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_3: And we need to start to get those to sync up again.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_0: How much time have we got?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_0: It took 60 years to get safe cars.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_0: It was a multigenerational effort.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_0: How much time have we got and does it take government intervention to make that happen?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_3: Well, we know that safe cars only became safe cars because the government got involved, right?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_3: It took time to get to that point and we saw people were dying.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_3: And, you know, we're saying we're hands off on AI, I d I don't think that is the way to be.
• 7:09
  And we can ding China all we want,
• 7:11
  but the people in China are making real rules and they're making it really clear
• 7:16
  on what can be done online and not, and they crack down on it.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_3: And that's happening in Europe.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_3: And I know everyone goes, Europe and they're slow and they're not innovative.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_3: We can see that in other countries.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_3: I've gone to some incredible countries, Singapore.
• 7:28
  Like you go there and their digital infrastructure and how you can start businesses
• 7:32
  in 10 minutes,
• 7:33
  and get banking accounts and mobile accounts and all that stuff very simply
• 7:36
  And yeah,
• 7:37
  some people will say,
• 7:38
  that's a small nation state, you know, or you go to Norway and it's the same thing.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_3: But I don't believe that.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_3: If we look at China, they are able to do it as well.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_3: So I think it's just a lack of political will.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_3: It's the ability to allow so much finance skew our politics.
• 7:53
  I think it's just an inability of the political system because
• 7:57
  of structural problems that we've created over time saying corporations are people
• 8:01
  and so on.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_0: I know you're putting your money where your mouth is.
• 8:05
  Can you talk a little bit about the companies you're backing
• 8:07
  and how they're contributing to that vision of human-centered,
• 8:11
  human beneficial technology?
• 8:13
  Yeah, with Build Collective,
• 8:15
  we invest in companies that we believe are benefiting society,
• 8:20
  benefiting health of the individual, and benefiting the environment, right?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_3: And we take that really seriously.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_3: We don't go and just chase wherever the money is or what's the next great thing?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_3: We don't invest in gaming, we don't invest in media technology or sales technology.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_3: One thing that we do is we're in clean farms.
• 8:43
  We're taking plastic,
• 8:46
  literally plastic that's used on farms,
• 8:47
  and making agricultural oils,
• 8:50
  agricultural fuels,
• 8:51
  and fertilizers,
• 8:52
  using waste products that are already in the environment,
• 8:55
  and they're fully compatible with today's farms.
• 8:58
  So it's literally a one-to-one replacement in many cases that is better for
• 9:01
  the planet,
• 9:02
  better for the crops, better for the customers who are consuming those crops.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_3: And they make better crops in general.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_3: We try to make sure we have a win and there's very few downsides.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_3: We're investing in fusion energy because we think that's really important.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_3: Because we need cleaner energy sources, not just because AI needs them.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_3: We're doing other things like AI plus recycling.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_3: So we use AI technology.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_3: It doesn't need a huge data center, it just uses a server computer to help sort recycling.
• 9:32
  We do the same thing with AI plus textiles to make sure we're making good textiles
• 9:36
  because 30 to 40 percent of it is thrown on the incinerator pile
• 9:41
  because it has one fabric error and people won't buy it.
• 9:44
  So we're trying to do things that are optimizing the things we have
• 9:49
  and making sure we're eliminating waste in many places as opposed
• 9:53
  to creating more waste or going after things that don't necessarily benefit society
• 9:58
  or our health.
• 10:00
  Maybe I'm oversimplifying things,
• 10:02
  but hearing you talk and looking at your career where you are now,
• 10:06
  it's tempting to draw a straight line from General Magic,
• 10:09
  where there was this very humanistic vision,
• 10:12
  to what you're doing today,
• 10:13
  which really does put people in the environment and what benefits the collective at
• 10:18
  the forefront.
• 10:19
  Do you see your career as that straight line or is it squiggly
• 10:24
  and I'm seeing something that actually isn't there.
• 10:28
  Well, I think that there was always a human element in it because you always had
• 10:33
  to create something for people who wanted to purchase it, right?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_3: They had to want to engage.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_3: There's never been a product where the users that we created the product for were the product.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_3: Like we weren't selling the users.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_3: We've always said you have to put your money up first and you buy it and you use it.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_3: It's a very clear relationship.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_3: There's not this, nefarious thing on the background.
• 10:55
  I don't know of anything that we've ever invested in or I've been involved in,
• 10:59
  which we had any kind of business model like that.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_3: And you know what?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_3: Those business models are much harder to build.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_3: You know, the ones where people have to put their money up, right?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_3: Especially hardware products.
• 11:09
  Where the whole environment,
• 11:11
  the whole other societal things,
• 11:15
  the broader things came in, that came into play for me really when having kids.
• 11:20
  When you start to see the technology and how it affects and shapes their lives,
• 11:26
  the environment and where it was going,
• 11:27
  because this was like mid 2000s,
• 11:30
  when the climate crisis was really first really hitting,
• 11:35
  you know,
• 11:35
  with Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth,
• 11:37
  that's when I made sure that became a much deeper element,
• 11:41
  not just think about the customer what they need,
• 11:43
  but make sure that whatever you're doing is creating things around them.
• 11:46
  So it became a much fuller vision around the customer,
• 11:51
  around the user to make sure that not just the user was happy,
• 11:55
  but the environment and society and all those other things that enveloped
• 11:58
  that customer were also going to do the right thing to support that customer.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_2: I want to shift gears a little bit.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_2: You're from Detroit and I remember you
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_3: Mm-hmm.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_3: Motown.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_2: Being a huge music fan.
• 12:10
  I think we're also of the generation where you and I remember boom boxes
• 12:15
  and people carrying their stereo on their shoulder and music being very social
• 12:20
  because of that.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_2: Couldn't help but be social with a boom box.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_2: And the iPod changed that.
• 12:26
  It wasn't the first product to change that,
• 12:28
  but there was a big shift in how people experienced music,
• 12:31
  not as this social endeavor, but as a more personal, intimate endeavor.
• 12:35
  How much was that shift in your mind you know,
• 12:38
  the cultural and human experience shift... Was that at the forefront in your mind?
• 12:44
  Do you see that as an unintended consequence or simply something you're aware of,
• 12:49
  but not at the center of your thinking?
• 12:52
  Well, I think,
• 12:53
  you know,
• 12:53
  Sony started that trend long ago with the Walkman,
• 12:57
  you know,
• 12:57
  they had the FM radio one and that whole thing of keeping your music with you
• 13:02
  and having your own personal sound bubble, that started well before.
• 13:06
  And so it was,
• 13:07
  you know,
• 13:07
  you could say there were kind of,
• 13:09
  you know, cell phones and then there were smartphones.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_3: And so to me, there was the Walkman and then there was the iPod.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_3: And that was kind of that same thing.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_3: It was like it's a supercharged Walkman.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_3: Like it's like, okay, it's got everything you want and more.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_3: Right.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_3: And so I think it's along that same lineage.
• 13:25
  But at the end of the day,
• 13:26
  I also saw,
• 13:27
  especially,
• 13:27
  this was early days,
• 13:29
  in the first years of the iPod,
• 13:30
  people would go up to each other and go,
• 13:32
  so saw the white headphones with the wires, and they go, that's another one of us.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_3: Hey, I wanna talk to you because you must be a music lover.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_3: Right.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_3: And so we saw communities being created around that.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_3: We also saw podcasting.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_3: Podcasting, the word pod came from iPod, right?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_3: And so there was a whole community around people listening and what we're doing right now.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_3: So you know, again, technology is a double edged sword and, it can unite and it can divide.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_3: It's just making sure you unite more than you divide.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_2: Another question I had, and I think about analog versus digital.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_2: After General Magic, I ended up at Linear Technology, which is an analog semiconductor company.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_2: And to me,
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_3: Know it very well.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_2: Analog just seems there's a warmth to it.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_2: Whereas digital is either a bright shining light or darkness.
• 14:19
  Do you have a sense that there's a feel,
• 14:21
  there's a there's a human experience that's intrinsic
• 14:25
  with analog devices versus digital devices?
• 14:29
  Is there something intrinsic to digital that makes it inherently addictive
• 14:34
  or inherently alienated or inherently anything in particular?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_3: Are you saying about audio in specifics or?
• 14:41
  No, I'm talking about,
• 14:42
  you know,
• 14:44
  using vacuum tubes as opposed to using semiconductors and the types of devices
• 14:48
  that are made with those two different types of technology,
• 14:52
  analog versus digital,
• 14:54
  and how that influences what products are out there,
• 14:57
  and then what kind of human experiences people have with those products.
• 15:00
  You know,
• 15:00
  I think there's one more dimension you have to add to it,
• 15:04
  which is there's analog,
• 15:06
  there's digital convenience, and there's digital connectivity.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_3: Okay.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_3: I think that people they loved their Sony Walkman, you know, when it was a tape player.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_3: They love their Sony Discman when it was a CD, which was digital.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_3: They loved their iPod because it was digital convenience.
• 15:25
  But as soon as the iPod turned into an iPhone and it became digitally connected,
• 15:30
  and the black hole of the iPhone sucked in every feature and functionality into it.
• 15:36
  And then it was no longer a music player,
• 15:39
  it was a notifications engine,
• 15:41
  and a distraction engine,
• 15:43
  and you can't even get through a song without five notifications coming in.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_3: That's when it happened.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_3: So I think people want the convenience of digital.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_3: They don't want the always-on connectivity of digital and what that brings.
• 15:56
  And then some people prefer analog versus that,
• 15:58
  and you can get analog, what,
• 16:01
  but I think that's a second or third order thing besides
• 16:05
  the convenience versus connectivity.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_3: And that's where the thing is.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_3: And we're seeing a lot of people bringing iPods back, right?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_3: iPods are coming back, wired headphones are coming back.
• 16:14
  We're seeing digital cameras that replicate analog cameras because people don't want
• 16:20
  a camera that notifies you all the time,
• 16:22
  or that as soon as you take a picture, you have to post it right away.
• 16:25
  I think there's something in between here that the people like the convenience and
• 16:30
  a lot of the features that come with digital to a certain point.
• 16:34
  But once it's always connected and it's always this steady stream of like,
• 16:39
  you know,
• 16:40
  you're anxious to get whatever it is you're capturing or listening to out and it's
• 16:44
  in interrupting you.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_3: They don't want that anymore.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_3: They're pushing back, going, Enough is enough.
• 16:49
  In Build,
• 16:50
  you write about the experience of transitioning from being the CEO of Nest
• 16:54
  to being part of Google.
• 16:56
  And I'm wondering what that experience taught you about the ethos
• 17:00
  of human-centered development and not building extractive platforms
• 17:05
  and integrating Nest product vision into the Google world.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_0: Was it disappointing?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_0: Was it something you ended up feeling turned out okay?
• 17:14
  And again,
• 17:14
  what did you draw from that experience in terms of
• 17:17
  the companies you're supporting now?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_3: Well, I think back then is very different than it is now.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_3: So that was 10 years ago, 11 years ago.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_3: And Google is a different company today than it was 10, 11 years ago.
• 17:31
  Google, no matter how much it did things right and how much it did things wrong,
• 17:37
  it didn't stop baking cash.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_3: It just printed cash.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_3: It continued to print cash.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_3: It continues to print cash today.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_3: But then there was no challenge.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_3: There was no threat.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_3: And so it was like, yeah, we're here.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_3: We're having a great time.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_3: You know, don't, don't sweat it.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_3: Like I was always the guy who's like, hey, we got to do better.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_3: We got to make this better.
• 17:57
  And when you're in a culture where everything was easy because
• 18:00
  the money was always coming, it was like, hey, don't rock the boat.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_0: Yeah.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_3: No big deal.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_3: Don't worry about it.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_3: Everything's going well.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_3: Well, you know, like it's like, and I'm like, no, we gotta fix things.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_3: We're here to like, you know, to do this better.
• 18:16
  And I think that culture clash was a major one,
• 18:20
  which was we were as Nest still trying to get off the ground and create a new thing.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_3: And the rest of the company was like, What do you mean?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_3: We're doing fine.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_3: You guys will get around to it.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_3: Oh yeah, we'll help you sort of, you know, those kind of things.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_3: So we it was literally like we're a startup trying to change the direction of the planet.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_3: And they're just like, hey, the planet's going just fine.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_3: They're doing what we need them to do, and they're giving us the money that we need.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_3: So I think that was really where the rub was.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_3: Now today it's a whole different Google, which is they've had an existential crisis.
• 18:51
  You know,
• 18:51
  even though they invented many of the technologies,
• 18:55
  they're not the ones benefiting from it.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_3: And that led them to like, Wow, there's something, you know, search, everything changes.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_3: And so now they've had to change that culture.
• 19:06
  They've had to,
• 19:06
  leave a lot of the googliness on the wayside,
• 19:09
  which I think is great,
• 19:11
  so that they actually are now having to really innovate again.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_3: And so it's a healthy thing.
• 19:16
  And like I always say is,
• 19:18
  nobody changes themselves,
• 19:22
  whether that's a person or a company or anything,
• 19:24
  unless they've had a near-death experience.
• 19:26
  And something tells me they had a real existential near death experience inside
• 19:29
  the company when OpenAI,
• 19:31
  Anthropic,
• 19:32
  and what have you are just eating their lunch for the latest and the best users and
• 19:37
  the things.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_3: They're like, uh oh we gotta figure this out.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_0: You've had several near death experiences, starting with General Magic.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_0: And I guess would you put Philips in that category too?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_3: Well Philips basically died since then.
• 19:48
  So but yeah,
• 19:50
  I've had yeah,
• 19:51
  I've had a few and I've had to I'm I call myself Tony 4.0
• 19:57
  because you know General Magic was me going from 1.0 to 2.0 and
• 20:01
  then I had another one in the Apple days, going from Apple to Nest really.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_3: That was my two to three.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_3: And now three to four was just recently.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_3: So yeah, and I think that's why I've been able to, change and grow.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_3: But I think that's what happens with most people.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_3: Some people call it midlife crisis.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_3: Other people have different things.
• 20:19
  I've I've unfortunately or fortunately walked right
• 20:23
  into those near death experiences and have the scars to prove it.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_3: But I'm I hope I'm a better person now today than I was back then.
• 20:29
  You know,
• 20:30
  you're on five continents,
• 20:31
  I think you've said, in terms of the companies that you're working with.
• 20:35
  What's different about management teams or the way young engineers come to a vision
• 20:41
  of what they want to accomplish, say in India or in Thailand, compared to the US?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_0: How does it, you know, how different is it?
• 20:48
  Well, I think one is,
• 20:49
  you know,
• 20:49
  because the media travels instantly everywhere on the globe,
• 20:52
  you get a lot of the same you get a lot of the same motivations and they read all
• 20:58
  the articles and they devour everything.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_3: I wanna be like that or watch all the podcasts.
• 21:02
  And then there was this big wave of especially 20 years ago:
• 21:06
  you gotta come to Silicon Valley,
• 21:07
  you gotta be there to do your thing in Silicon Valley.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_3: That's the only place to do it.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_3: And now what you really find is they're doing it locally where they're at.
• 21:15
  And they need to embrace the technology that they have locally and
• 21:19
  the talent they have locally to be able to create what they create.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_3: But we also find there's a mismatch.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_3: Because they want to do some hard stuff.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_3: However, the environment around them doesn't have the same trained engineering or design talent.
• 21:34
  And so a lot of times a lot of the right sizing or right scaling of the company is
• 21:40
  about really understanding that in some regions,
• 21:43
  they don't need the most cutting edge tech.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_3: They just have to take the modern tech that's widely available and just deploy it.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_3: Like literally, it's very interesting just to see.
• 21:53
  Like,
• 21:54
  you just need to deploy the technology that's maybe two or three or five years old
• 21:59
  into these businesses that are still running as if they were out of the,
• 22:02
  you know, in the US, out of the 1970s or 1980s.
• 22:05
  So I think there's still the feeling of what they want to do but
• 22:09
  then sometimes there's the reality of doing that in those specific countries,
• 22:13
  in those specific cities that they have to kind of pull back
• 22:17
  and really understand what it is they're trying to solve.
• 22:19
  Like if you just say,
• 22:22
  I'm gonna modernize this in your sales chain and I'm gonna modernize CRM,
• 22:26
  customer relationship management, like that's what they need.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_3: You know, it's just it's that kind of simple stuff.
• 22:31
  So you gotta just make sure you get the impedance matching
• 22:34
  for technology needs versus what the customer can actually really adopt.
• 22:47
  What are some of the most exciting things you're seeing in terms
• 22:49
  of local talent bringing the available tools to make something different
• 22:53
  in Tanzania, say, or, someplace that's not a developed country?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_0: What do you see?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_3: The crazy thing is, you know, I lived in Indonesia, I moved to Indonesia.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_3: I never had been to Indonesia, but I moved there.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_3: I moved the family there, everything.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_3: And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go and it's gonna be a long vacation from tech.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_3: And I land, and they have more modern mobile networks and phones, and kids are using them.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_3: When I land, I was like, what is this?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_3: I like you got faster.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_3: I think they had 4 G everywhere before the US had 4G everywhere.
• 23:23
  They had smartphones all over and they were cheap and they had data plans
• 23:26
  that were like equivalent of two dollars a month.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_3: You're like, okay, Toto, we're
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_0: Haha
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_3: Not in Kansas anymore, it definitely is not backwards.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_3: A lot of them have a lot of the technology infrastructure.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_3: They just don't have a lot of the application yet, which is pretty interesting.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_2: I was gonna ask about the App Store and the genesis of that.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_2: Steve Jarrett, we interviewed and he talked about that.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_2: And that occurred at Philips.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_2: And obviously that blossomed at Apple and with Android as well.
• 23:55
  How did that idea take shape and just how did you think about it and what was
• 24:00
  the development of that?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_3: Well, you know, we knew about apps from General Magic, right?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_3: We had Streetlight, the maps thing.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_3: We had all kinds of different third party
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_0: Yeah, we had the digital airline guide.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_0: Yeah.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_3: Airline, great, right.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_3: So there was all kinds of apps, and they weren't all created by General Magic.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_3: There were our third party developers.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_3: And then what happened was we had gone and targeted the corporate market, right?
• 24:23
  At Philips with the Velo and the Nino,
• 24:25
  you know, it came with Microsoft Word and stuff like that, the mobile versions.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_3: But people wanted other apps and we're like, wait a second, this could be a business.
• 24:33
  And because we had electronic distribution,
• 24:36
  right, then, and it was electronic distribution via a phone line.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_3: It wasn't electronic distribution via Wi-Fi, because Wi-Fi didn't even exist yet.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_3: It was like, okay, we're gonna take advantage of that.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_3: So it was: we knew apps.
• 24:49
  Now let's see how we can,
• 24:50
  now that we're a connected device,
• 24:52
  let's have them download and create a store around that.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_3: And that was really all of Steve's (Jarrett) doing.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_3: He was really pushing that really hard and we went off and we did implement it.
• 25:02
  And then there was all the other problems,
• 25:04
  which was, you know, back in the day, which were how do we take credit cards?
• 25:07
  And how do we know that isn't a fake credit card and how
• 25:10
  to credit card companies even allow us to take payments because that it was so new.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_3: So we fought a lot of those things back in '96, '97.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_3: And then ultimately, then the App Store as today, came out in 2008, so 12 years later.
• 25:29
  But yeah,
• 25:29
  it was another one of those supercharged things that happened,
• 25:32
  which was now everyone can download apps very quickly
• 25:35
  so you can get these viral like effects like everybody's downloading Instagram at
• 25:39
  the same time or Twitter back in the day or whatever,
• 25:42
  and these social mobile apps just like and everybody had them
• 25:47
  because we had knocked down every single barrier that stood in the way
• 25:51
  of General Magic's vision.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_3: We had Wi-Fi and mobile connectivity, we had the internet.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_3: We had e shopping, right?
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_3: And we had downloadable tickets and all the credit card links to do all that stuff.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_3: So literally all the barriers were broken down.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_3: And it was just like anything you could do, would take off.
• 26:11
  And what's really interesting,
• 26:12
  people always say,
• 26:13
  the time to 50 million units sold, it's like, radio, it took this many years.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_3: And then it was television, took this many years, and then it was the personal computer.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_3: And then it starts getting faster and faster.
• 26:26
  It only took 18 months and it only took OpenClaw four months to get adopted by,
• 26:30
  you know, that many number of people.
• 26:33
  The thing people don't realize is all of those other things are standing on
• 26:36
  the shoulders of all the giants who broke down all of the friction along the way.
• 26:40
  So it's just literally like whoosh,
• 26:42
  the pipes are open and they're flooding and they're flowing right to your eyeballs,
• 26:47
  and your fingertips.
• 26:47
  And they just,
• 26:48
  they've all been broken because all those technological things had broken through
• 26:53
  that.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_3: And so everyone was just so astonished.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_3: And I'm like, I'm not astonished.
• 26:57
  It just means that like we've we've done our job better or for worse,
• 27:01
  a double edged sword, that there's frictionless flow of basically anything nowadays.
• 27:07
  Well, I assume you see that coming with AI too,
• 27:09
  that we'll we'll be able to run engines on our phones, right?
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_0: Fairly soon.
• 27:13
  You know,
• 27:13
  that needing all the massive compute for the Frontier LLMs now,
• 27:17
  that it's gonna get more democratized, more personalized.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_3: It's it's gonna be a hybrid and consumers are never gonna pay for this.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_3: Like the yeah,
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_0: For tokens, yeah, right, yeah.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_3: Consumers you know, they don't even know what an assistant is.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_3: Like
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_0: Mm-hmm.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_3: If you talk to people, go, hey, would you like an assistant?
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_3: They're like, sure.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_3: And then you go, how are you gonna use it?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_3: They're like, Well, I don't know, but I'd like one.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_3: It's kinda like, you know, well, my boss has an assistant, I want one.
• 27:42
  Most of the startups I know,
• 27:44
  when I first get involved with them when they're three or four or five people,
• 27:47
  like we don't need an assistant.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_3: Why do we need that?
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_3: We just do it ourselves.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_3: They never grew up with one.
• 27:51
  Like,
• 27:52
  unless you really have had an assistant and you know what it means and you know what
• 27:56
  to delegate,
• 27:56
  how to delegate,
• 27:57
  how to help to train the assistant,
• 28:00
  how the assistant knows things and says things,
• 28:02
  but doesn't do certain things and knows when to get your permission or anything,
• 28:06
  that is not easy.
• 28:07
  And to think that we're all of a sudden gonna have these AI agents being assistants
• 28:10
  and people will know how to use them.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_3: No.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_3: It's just like the first time we got personal computers.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_3: People got personal computers.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_3: So, well, that's interesting.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_3: What do I do with them?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_3: And it wasn't until we had a spreadsheet.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_3: And even then, we needed spreadsheet jockeys.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_3: So, yes, of course, it's going to get easier than that, you know, back in the day.
• 28:24
  But for people to know what an assistant is and to trust it
• 28:28
  and all these other things,
• 28:29
  there's lots of barriers, psychological barriers to that.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_3: And the thing is, people aren't going to pay for it.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_3: Consumers ain't gonna necessarily pay for it.
• 28:38
  And that's where I'm worried about where we're gonna go down the next route,
• 28:41
  which is ads and everything else,
• 28:44
  because you're gonna get a personal assistant, but it ain't gonna be free.
• 28:48
  You're gonna be the product again,
• 28:49
  and it's gonna take your data because people aren't gonna wanna pay $30 a month for
• 28:53
  an assistant, right?
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_3: It's gonna have to be rolled into some other services.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_3: Apple could do that because it has iCloud and it has its subscription and it could roll that in.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_3: But can Google do that?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_3: Can other be like...
• 29:04
  It's like at some point,
• 29:05
  and we're seeing this with OpenAI,
• 29:07
  we got to do ads and we have to do these different things.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_3: Whereas Anthropic is very clear, you're gonna have to pay.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_3: So we got this whole thing coming on.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_3: Sure, it might go down to your device but it's gonna have to get paid for somehow.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_3: And is it gonna be you or are you the product that's gonna get sold?
• 29:25
  Tony,
• 29:25
  what do you think are the most compelling uses for AI today and what do you think
• 29:29
  the most compelling uses in the future?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_2: What do you envision?
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_3: You know, there are a lot of great things that AI can be great for.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_3: Like it can help when it supercharges you.
• 29:40
  So it's when it's a super tool that you use and you're asking
• 29:44
  a big question that's never been answered.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_3: The LLM can't answer it but it can help you get closer and closer with research.
• 29:51
  Today at a company called Orionis Biosciences,
• 29:54
  we've been using,
• 29:55
  we didn't just start,
• 29:56
  over 10 years now we've been using AI to help design drugs or be at least a therapy
• 30:02
  for cancer, right?
• 30:04
  And we see definitively that these tools work incredibly well when they're in
• 30:09
  the hands of experienced people who are trying to solve a much bigger question.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_3: And so that is an incredible use of them.
• 30:17
  And we don't even have to use huge data centers because there was no such thing
• 30:21
  as huge data centers.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_3: We, you know, we use like eight servers and are able to do the work that we do that way.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_3: Because we have highly trained models on specific things.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_3: We're not trying to be a know-it-all.
• 30:32
  So I see very valuable uses of where it's a targeted specialty that you are able
• 30:39
  to get really good answers and really good results.
• 30:42
  What I see is a lot of these companies,
• 30:45
  if you look, okay,
• 30:46
  now we have this legal one and this finance one and then
• 30:49
  the all these different startups,
• 30:51
  they're all being sold on the fact that, well, we're doing really good demos.
• 30:56
  And it's kind of like when you first got the real good demo of like,
• 31:00
  you know, give me a picture that looks like this.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_3: And give me a video that looks like this or a song that looks like that.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_3: They're all really good demos and people are like, this is so exciting.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_3: We need to invest in it.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_3: And it's gotten the hype.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_3: And there's so many ways you can demo this technology in all these different fields.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_3: But if you look at the things that are really producing, it's it's domain specific.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_3: So that's why Anthropic is taking off with software coding.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_3: And people are like, my God, it's a amazing, but only if it's used correctly.
• 31:26
  And so what you find out is that if you don't use it correctly,
• 31:31
  the code it creates may work, but it is so brittle.
• 31:34
  It is so not like no humans can read it if you use it in the way that people are say
• 31:40
  that they're using it.
• 31:42
  So you still need humans in the loop and a way that's maintainable and secure,
• 31:46
  not just code that works,
• 31:47
  but maintainable, secure,
• 31:49
  that's understood,
• 31:50
  and that produces results that you can put your brand in front of,
• 31:55
  and that a customer can sign up and wants to pay for it,
• 31:58
  that is not something that any of these tools can create today.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_3: And we're in the drug discovery one, but we're also in an AI physician's assistant.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_3: But we don't replace the physician.
• 32:09
  The physician still has to read all the notes,
• 32:12
  has to read and sign off on all the prescriptions that we pre-write for them,
• 32:15
  and all that other stuff.
• 32:17
  So there are ways of doing it,
• 32:19
  but I don't know of any of the companies that we invested in take the human out of
• 32:22
  the loop.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_3: They supercharge the human.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_2: What are your biggest concerns about AI?
• 32:27
  I mean, I know you've talked about garbage in,
• 32:29
  garbage out, and the critical importance of a sound data foundation.
• 32:34
  You've also talked about how people will not just abdicate responsibility to the AI,
• 32:39
  but stop thinking.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_2: Stop having an inquiring Yeah.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_3: Cognitive surrender.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_0: Yeah.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_0: Yeah.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_2: Yeah.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_2: Is that your biggest concern?
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_2: Does that scare you?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_3: Absolutely.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_3: You know, I watch kids doing this now.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_3: They're like, I'm gonna just fudge it.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_3: we've all been there, right?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_3: Where you really have to put in the effort to get to that next level of real understanding.
• 33:02
  Like, I know what it's like to try to learn a second language and a third language,
• 33:06
  and you're like, okay,
• 33:07
  you really have to put the work into it to really try to get your brain
• 33:12
  to rewire properly, to see clearly and to understand.
• 33:19
  And, when you use AI and you just like turn it over to it,
• 33:22
  you're gonna just continue to delegate your executive function to them.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_3: And then you just kind of become at some point a victim to it.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_3: So I worry about the cognitive surrender.
• 33:33
  And the reason being is that what's happening is,
• 33:35
  especially with these new agent technologies,
• 33:38
  is that people are like,
• 33:39
  I'm managing 100 agents,
• 33:41
  you know, these software agents, and they're doing all kinds of things for me.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_3: And their job is just to be the quality control person.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_3: Or they're shoveling this output from this agent into the input into this agent.
• 33:53
  And they literally are turning into like Amazon distribution workers,
• 33:57
  where bins show up,
• 33:58
  they book some things,
• 33:59
  they look at the thing and they go to the next one,
• 34:01
  and they just get so shocked that they're like,
• 34:04
  I guess I gotta just trust it because I'm about numbers and I gotta use more tokens
• 34:08
  and I gotta get more lines done and I gotta get more features done.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_3: And then what happens is these people are just, they kind of give up and they go, I'm burnt out.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_3: Because I can't, it's not a craft anymore.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_3: It's literally just input-output.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_3: And how fast can I do it?
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_3: And everybody is subject to the speed at which the system runs.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_3: It's no longer the speed at which humans can run, but the speed at which the system runs.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_3: And that speed is getting faster and faster.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_3: And humans are like, okay, I guess this is all I can do.
• 34:36
  And they build another tool to help them,
• 34:39
  you know,
• 34:39
  to kind of monitor what's going on and then that tool gets layered with another tool
• 34:43
  and then before you know it, nobody knows what's going on underneath it.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_3: Right.
• 34:48
  And that's very worrisome because we're setting up systems
• 34:52
  where humans just can no longer function.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_0: Yeah, I have two questions.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_0: One's adjacent to that.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_0: Are any of your portfolio companies working in education?
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_0: Because, as an ex-professor, that's where we're seeing a lot of cognitive abdication.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_0: Especially at the college level.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_0: And it's really scary.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_0: You know, my friends who are still teaching, it's a real headache.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_0: It's a real problem.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_0: Are you doing anything in that space?
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_3: I have been looking.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_3: I have not yet found anything that I wanted to invest in around education.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_3: You know, I read that New York Times article the Stanford grad and what
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_0: Yeah.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_3: It was like to and that was like very, very telling.
• 35:30
  And he of course he could have been embellishing a little bit here and there
• 35:32
  for dramatic effect, but still there's a fundamental change going on.
• 35:37
  You know,
• 35:38
  I'm a Designer in Residence at MIT and teaching there,
• 35:41
  and I hear the different schools of thought and how kids,
• 35:45
  students today, approach that.
• 35:47
  And it's very interesting and sometimes concerning,
• 35:51
  but otherwise it's also uplifting about how people are using it in different ways
• 35:55
  to create new things.
• 35:55
  So again,
• 35:56
  it's a double-edged sword,
• 35:57
  but I worry about the social changes,
• 36:01
  the structural changes that are happening,
• 36:03
  both interpersonal as well as between the work and the students themselves.
• 36:08
  Um, shifting gears a little bit:
• 36:10
  You know,
• 36:11
  the working title of the book that Tom and I were working on with Tamara is
• 36:14
  "From Jobs to Musk," and we're using them as avatars for the way the valley was
• 36:18
  when we started out, right?
• 36:21
  A place where people weren't productized and we had a vision
• 36:24
  of creating empowering tools that would liberate creativity and connect people
• 36:29
  and all the rest.
• 36:30
  And you know that Musk is a malignant narcissist,
• 36:33
  and again,
• 36:34
  you may or may not agree with this,
• 36:35
  you know,
• 36:35
  I think Musk is a malignant narcissist,
• 36:37
  whose quest for wealth and power,
• 36:39
  along with the rest of the tech broliarchy has been really destructive
• 36:43
  to American society and to democracy.
• 36:45
  Do you feel a little bit alone as a humanistic technologist in the current valley
• 36:51
  and larger tech industry context?
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_3: Yes, I do.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_3: There's not enough voices talking about these things.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_3: I talk to old grizzled reporters, you know, about this stuff.
• 37:01
  I talk to other people who are in the business and it might sound a lot like,
• 37:05
  the old guys are all whining about the new generation, you know, the whole thing.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_3: And yeah.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_3: But
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_0: Yeah.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_0: What's the matter with kids today, right?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_3: To me that's that's not that's I think that's very different.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_3: I'm not saying we I'm not advocating against AI or any of these things.
• 37:21
  What I'm advocating is how a lot of the centi- billionaires or whatever you want
• 37:27
  to call them,
• 37:28
  a lot of them have very questionable ethics and morality around this and a lack
• 37:34
  of empathy for society that is well below them, right?
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_3: And myself included for that matter.
• 37:42
  And as far as I'm concerned,
• 37:44
  like it just you know,
• 37:46
  we went from presidents and astronauts and various people who were like,
• 37:53
  you know, those were the heroes.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_3: And then we went to sports figures and we went to, celebrities as like kind of the heroes.
• 38:01
  And those were,
• 38:01
  you know,
• 38:02
  I wouldn't say they were questionable, but they weren't really affecting things.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_3: Those were more just images of people and what you projected in them.
• 38:07
  Now what we're doing is we have people who are in charge and they can be heroes
• 38:11
  and people want to emulate them.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_3: And it is really truly damaging versus the other ones that weren't.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_3: And so I just wonder who the heroes are to kids today.
• 38:21
  The reason why I think a lot of the people are where they are,
• 38:24
  you know,
• 38:25
  these centi- billionaires,
• 38:27
  is because they grew up in a society that had a certain morality and ethical norm
• 38:33
  that they lived under and were able to create what they were able to create in
• 38:38
  that environment, I think they forgot where they came from.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_3: And that's that's what's concerning to me.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_3: Because now it just becomes a free-for-all.
• 38:46
  And we're seeing that with our political system,
• 38:48
  we're seeing that with just the foundations of things,
• 38:51
  just you know, being kneecapped.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_3: And kids don't know what they should be turning to as a model.
• 38:59
  They know in a lot of cases you they know it doesn't feel right,
• 39:02
  but they don't know what's right.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_3: Right?
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_3: Here's what's wrong and it feels wrong, but what's the model of what's right?
• 39:09
  And when you have Fortune 500 CEOs now kowtowing to the president,
• 39:17
  Trump, and they're seeing this kind of double talk, and this kind of stuff.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_3: You're just like, What the... You know.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_3: I remember when even the CEOs were held accountable by their employees, right?
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_3: It used to be that they were held accountable by the outside world.
• 39:29
  Now they're not even held accountable by their employees anymore,
• 39:32
  which is kind of interesting too.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_0: I mean in terms of hero candidates, you're certainly a model.
• 39:37
  But in the companies you're fostering,
• 39:39
  do you see any up and comers who are gonna be able to counter,
• 39:42
  the current, dominant spirit in the valley and elsewhere,
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_3: I think it's not just in the Valley.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_3: I see some people in London and Paris.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_3: I see some people in San Francisco as well.
• 39:52
  You know,
• 39:53
  I look at the Collison brothers at Stripe,
• 39:56
  and I think, those guys really, they move to their own beat.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_3: They don't play these same games as we see with some of the other ones.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_3: And they're of that generation.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_3: You know, I'm an older generation.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_3: They're the younger generation.
• 40:09
  And they seem like they can be really good heroes and they're doing the right thing,
• 40:13
  from what I can tell.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_3: And so I think there are non tech bros out there who are trying to do the right thing.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_3: I just wish there were more of them and they were getting more airplay.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_0: Do you ever think about getting involved in politics?
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_0: Yeah, you.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_3: Do I?
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_3: I've learned I'm a very bad politician.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_3: I couldn't even get involved with corporate politics and palace intrigue there.
• 40:33
  So I don't,
• 40:34
  it's to me,
• 40:36
  I remember it being at General Magic and I had to go to the special interest group
• 40:41
  and the committee to do IR infrared data protocols.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_3: And
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_0: Mm-hmm.
• 40:46
  I just sat in that room with Wendell Sander and I was like biting my tongue going,
• 40:51
  We're gonna sit here for the next four days and get nothing done.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_3: I'm like mmm, I'm just too much of a
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_0: Because I think you and Megan are at MIT Megan Smith are at MIT
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_3: Right.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_0: Together, right?
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_0: You're both fellows there now.
• 41:03
  And you know,
• 41:04
  her experience in government was how do we bring technology to the people
• 41:06
  and benefit them and all that?
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_0: I just wonder, you know, if that was something that might catch your imagination.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_3: Yes.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_3: she's much more patient than I am.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_3: She's much more patient than I am.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_3: I don't know.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_3: I just I don't ha that I wish I could, but I just don't have it in me, unfortunately.
• 41:21
  What how can you advocate at least,
• 41:23
  as a prominent and influential thinker,
• 41:26
  what kind of government intervention would work to tame and detoxify social media,
• 41:32
  for example?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_0: You know, is it a public health problem?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_0: Is that the model that you'd use?
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_0: You know, FDA like gatekeepers for social media as one example.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_0: Car safety as another.
• 41:42
  Well, I think first if we look at what the states are doing individually in the US,
• 41:46
  there's enough states doing age gating.
• 41:48
  They're saying that certain things are gonna be banned,
• 41:51
  that school policy forbids devices during the day, these kinds of things.
• 41:56
  I think the federal government has to take that up and go,
• 41:58
  wait a second,
• 41:59
  maybe it's time that we get involved with trying to set the standards
• 42:03
  because what happens is that these tech companies don't have any clear indication of
• 42:08
  where to head right?
• 42:09
  I think there has to be a little bit more of a steady hand at the federal level
• 42:14
  to say we're gonna try certain things and we may get it wrong.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_3: Invariably we will get it wrong, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't try, right?
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_3: And I see this with China.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_3: China's doing it.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_3: And people go, it's China.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_3: Well, guess what?
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_3: I think there are some things where we need to do that stuff.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_3: We still have to have pharmaceutical standards.
• 42:32
  I think we gotta keep saying we're gonna try things as opposed
• 42:34
  to we're never gonna do it and be analysis paralysis or allow the lobbyists
• 42:38
  to just overrun everything and go,
• 42:41
  okay, since we don't have a perfect solution, we're not gonna do anything.
• 42:44
  And I just think,
• 42:45
  everyone's ad abdicating their responsibility from what they were elected in office
• 42:50
  to do.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_3: That's what people want them to do.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_3: That's why they're supposedly there.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_3: Whether it's gerrymandering, which is going crazy in the thing, we have the Supreme Court.
• 42:57
  There are so many structural problems before we can even get to AI because even
• 43:03
  if you get,
• 43:04
  let's say there's a regulation,
• 43:05
  the system doesn't uphold that,
• 43:06
  because as we've seen,
• 43:08
  everything that's even been sacred for 30,
• 43:11
  40, 50 years, Roe v. Wade has now been challenged in a new way.
• 43:16
  So to say that we're gonna build anything on top of this crumbling foundation
• 43:20
  and shifting sands just seems really difficult 'til we get
• 43:24
  a new foundation put underneath, right?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_3: It's the leaning tower of Pisa is leaning very, very far.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_3: That the big solution is people have to get involved.
• 43:32
  People have to I think we're gonna see a new set of politicians,
• 43:36
  a new set of people from the youth today who are going, we cannot take this anymore.
• 43:41
  The environment we have to live in,
• 43:42
  Whether it's a job environment,
• 43:46
  the social environment,
• 43:47
  the financial environment, the health environment, this can no longer stand.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_3: The problem that we have, and I hate to say it, is the voters over 65 control everything.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_2: Yeah, Mike.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_0: I know.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_3: The issue is they control everything.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_3: And so the youth voices don't have it.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_3: So those youth has to rise up.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_3: And the problem is we're having fewer kids than ever.
• 44:13
  And so therefore,
• 44:14
  that demographic is that piece of the puzzle is getting smaller and smaller to fight
• 44:18
  the gerrymandering that's happening over here.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_3: So like there's such an imbalance here.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_3: This is a multigenerational issue.
• 44:26
  But it seems to me, Tony,
• 44:27
  that part of what you said was that having kids was an inflection point for you
• 44:31
  in terms of your perspective on the dark side of these things.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_2: And how can that spark occur in that younger set of citizens earlier?
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_3: I look, I think that yes, I agree that when people have families, things change.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_3: Okay.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_3: And they change their viewpoint on things.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_3: I think the people who are most up in arms don't have families yet.
• 44:54
  They're postponing having family because they don't know what
• 44:56
  the financial environment's gonna be for themselves or they're living at home
• 44:59
  or what have you.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_3: So it's that next set.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_3: And that next set right now, until they're really threatened.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_3: That's when it's gonna happen.
• 45:06
  So maybe the next three,
• 45:08
  four years,
• 45:08
  when you're seeing more and more of these companies right sizing because of AI,
• 45:12
  which I just believe is called overhiring, and they just got it wrong.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_3: It's not all AI.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_3: I think that's when we're gonna start to see some real backlash.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_3: Because people are like, we can't take this anymore.
• 45:24
  It's very frustrating being me,
• 45:25
  because I'm sure just like you guys are, we can see it all happening.
• 45:29
  We see it happening around us,
• 45:30
  we see this stuff happening,
• 45:32
  and we're like, would someone please like come on, we all gotta do this.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_3: And everyone's just lulled by social media, right?
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_3: Or some other media source.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_3: It's like, we gotta wake up, we gotta, kill the machine,
• 45:43
  You know,
• 45:44
  one of the things one of the most damaging effects of the Trump era is the loss
• 45:48
  of civility and the loss of common decency and the loss of the norms
• 45:53
  of social interaction and of fairness and just common decency.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_0: Are there ways to inspire people through technology to be kinder and more open to each other?
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_3: It's a great question.
• 46:06
  I think the way you are kinder is by using the technology to find other people
• 46:11
  to have physical interactions with.
• 46:14
  We've always known,
• 46:15
  and this was the Microsoft trick back in the 90s and the 2000s,
• 46:19
  they sent all their salespeople to go one on one with all of the customers
• 46:24
  who didn't like them.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_3: And they could never, you could never hate a person once it was a person in front of you.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_3: It was really hard, unless you're really evil.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_3: It was hard.
• 46:32
  And we have to get more and more engagement between us,
• 46:35
  you know, and that's where these the connections are made.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_3: And this is where the trust is built.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_3: And this is where these things happen.
• 46:42
  The more we put the technology between us for all the communications,
• 46:46
  that's when things go awry.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_3: So I think we need more of the technologies to bring us together.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_3: I've seen some of this stuff at MIT.
• 46:53
  Deb Roy has got a really interesting project and he's been working on it
• 46:56
  for 10 years, bringing together people to get the voice of a large constituent base.
• 47:01
  You can really hear the opinions of people because they're only in groups of six,
• 47:06
  but it's six times 10,000 groups.
• 47:09
  And then they all filter up and technology is a way to get their voices amplified up
• 47:14
  but they're still meeting in small groups to create this.
• 47:18
  I've seen some technologies that could actually you know aid people
• 47:21
  who are really trying to create this sense of community and mobilization
• 47:26
  of these communities to be able to make the change that we really need.
• 47:30
  And through that you'll be nicer to each other,
• 47:32
  you'll be kinder because you're only gonna know your neighbor and see that, yeah,
• 47:35
  they might be on the left and we're on the right,
• 47:36
  but we have a lot of things in common, like our families, the environment.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_2: I'm required to use profanity contractually once per episode.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_3: Ha.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_2: So to your point, it's really much harder to be an asshole in person face to face.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_2: And I don't mean that in a cheeky way.
• 47:51
  I mean those interactions person to person with people,
• 47:55
  you know, the there is no political polarization.
• 47:58
  There's a kind of civility that in person has at its core that,
• 48:02
  you know, behind a keyboard there can be no limits.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_2: So the point is really well taken.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_3: For me, you know, people ask me what are my habits around digital devices?
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_3: For me personally, I put them down.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_3: I make sure they're never at the table, I make sure they're never there to distract me.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_3: That's the first thing is when you're with people, be with people.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_3: It tells instantly, like, you're not as important.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_3: And if you do that enough times, you're not gonna build connection.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_3: You're only gonna build distrust.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_3: So first thing is when a person's in front of you personally, you need to be engaged.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_3: Stop, put those away.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_3: Second thing is don't be on them all the time.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_3: Don't be distracted by them.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_3: Don't don't put next to your bed.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_3: Put them in another room at night.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_3: It's like do you want to put a bottle of alcohol next to your bed every night?
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_3: I go out for walks.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_3: I don't use music when I'm working out.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_3: I try to make sure I'm I'm letting my mind get a rest.
• 48:53
  And that's not just when you sleep,
• 48:55
  but you gotta give your mind a rest and you gotta be able to think and reflect.
• 48:59
  And I think we need more tools
• 49:01
  that help us understand our digital consumption pattern,
• 49:05
  like we do for our physical food consumption pattern.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_3: We need to know what's healthy.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_3: We need nutritional facts, what's healthy, what's not digitally is just like we do with food.
• 49:14
  The government can get involved,
• 49:16
  the app stores need to get involved, and that allows us to make better choices.
• 49:20
  And you need to understand,
• 49:21
  just like you can't eat out of the refrigerator 10 times a day,
• 49:25
  you got to make sure that you understand that this is a refrigerator
• 49:29
  and it can have good and bad food inside it, your smartphone.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_3: And you should only be eating healthy food a few times a day, not all the junk food.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_3: Get rid of the junk food.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_0: I know we have to let you go, but just wanted to thank
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_3: Yes.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_0: You so much for being with us and having a conversation.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_3: Well, thank you guys.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_3: It's always good to see you guys.
• 49:46
  Spellbound Productions (OUTRO) Thank you for listening to General Magic and the Soul
• 49:50
  of Tech podcast.
• 49:52
  Tune into our Substack for more interviews and articles
• 49:55
  at spellboundproductions.substack.com.