The Techno Optimist

Daily clips of the world’s leading techno-optimists. 🚀

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

Back then, Brad Gerstner said AI would hit a zone of disillusionment just like the internet and cloud did.

Hype fades. Skeptics get loud. “See, it was a fad.”

Fast-forward to now.

AI costs are collapsing. Models keep scaling. Adoption hasn’t slowed, it’s gone mainstream. And tools like ChatGPT aren’t stalling, they’re accelerating.

The “disillusionment” didn’t kill AI.
It filtered out the tourists.

Brad’s real prediction wasn’t the dip.
It was that AI would end up bigger than the internet.

And so far, reality is backing him up.
— @altcap — a throwback moment from @bg2pod

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

Watch the full interview:
https://t.co/lZAa4nTtUO

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

Max Marchione on the maximum human lifespan:

"Of 60 billion people to live on earth, we don't have a single documented case of someone living to 140, which is actually pretty crazy.

So we might see there's actually a cap and it's very hard to get beyond it.

Or we might see the opposite, which I think is more likely, which is we're gonna create super intelligence and super intelligence is gonna find ways to extend human lifespan to very large numbers. Like we're talking into the hundreds, maybe even towards the thousands."

— @maxmarchione on MTSLive with @schisofrenia

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

Watch the full interview:
https://t.co/N1mAeLsiKO

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

📺 Marc Andreessen on what defines a boomer vs. Gen Z:

"Somebody once said the definition of a baby boomer is somebody who believes what's on the TV set.

Anybody who's 20 knows that you obviously don't do that, right? That would be stupid...

These are the kids who came up through COVID, and these are the kids who came up through woke, and these are the kids who came up through all of the craziness of the last decade...

Simultaneously more open-minded, more critical, much more interested in ideas, much more skeptical of authority, much more skeptical of received wisdom, much more cynical about manipulation."

— @pmarca on @MTSlive with @eriktorenberg and @theojaffee

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

Watch the full interview:
https://t.co/a5OvzAL1iR

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

NASA head Jared Isaacman:

"I have the best job in the world and I have a national space policy that aligns whole of government towards what we need to achieve and the financial resources to do it. The president didn't just say return to the moon and build a moon base. He also said invest in the next giant leap capabilities. That's where nuclear power and propulsion comes in."

"And I've checked in with the president multiple times on this. I promised him America will get underway in space on nuclear power before the end of his term. That's going to be a huge breakthrough. Especially NEP technology is not going to be the fastest way to get from point A to B, but it's going to be a way that we can move a lot of mass towards Mars. And it's also going to be the same type of reactor technology we'll use for power on the surface so we can mine propellant and come back."

"So we are taking meaningful steps in that direction. We will be able to use the moon base to prove out capabilities before we undertake it. And look, I think we're going to see astronauts on Mars in our lifetime."

— @nasa Administrator, @rookisaacman on the @a16z Show

[Neil @neilhar]

Trust in established norms has eroded and the social construct is changing. This ties in closely to all the advancements you're seeing in tech too.

Have been writing up my thoughts on this over the last few months, may need to turn it into an article

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

I still believe this.

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

@RonKarlsbergMD Grew up watching this shift happen in real time. He's not wrong

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

Chamath Palihapitiya explains why the social contract is collapsing:

"We're at the tail end of a cycle that doesn't work anymore, which is all about this tension between labor, people that do the work, and capital, the people that fund it and then make all the returns."

"Over the last 40 years, we've basically gone to this completely upside-down world where capital extracts all of the upside, and labor has extracted less and less and less and less. All of this pushback manifests in AI, it manifests in politics, it manifests in social issues, it manifests in Israel. Whatever you want to talk about, all of these issues, I think, symptomologically, come from this other issue, which is we are out of balance."

"This total compact that we used to have, a liberal democracy and a free market, has totally collapsed. There are simple ways to fix that, but that never gets the attention because it's not what you want to talk about."

"The attention is here. Vote no to the data center. You know, this model is going to take out all the jobs. You know, this social issue is really important. That war should not be fought. That war should be fought. All of these things, while important, distract us from what the core issue is. The core issue is that we as a society, I think, are out of balance. The natural compact between all of us is broken, and there are some simple ways to fix that compact, get people more invested, get people more engaged in the upside, have people have a positive some view of what's happening, and that isn't happening."

— @chamath on @joerogan's Podcast E2494

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

Watch the full interview:
https://t.co/fdhTrl3exo

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

Watch the full interview:
https://t.co/FRgU1R3VbJ

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

AI regulation is one of the most prominent topics for the tech industry. Palantir Co-Founder, Joe Lonsdale actively takes a stance of opposition to regulation.

"...It should be as small and as narrow as possible. We should not have the same bureaucracy.

I'm afraid of them working together to screw all of us because that's what happens in healthcare."

— @JTLonsdale on @cnbc

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

Watch the full interview:
https://t.co/jhcZ89lvTX

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

Dmitry Shevelenko on why the blank AI prompt is this generation's writer's block:

"For a lot of folks, they look at the open prompt, and it's terrifying. They don't know. It's like a blank page for a writer... It's a new writer's block. The scariest thing you could ever look at."

— @dmitry140 on @BigTechPod with host @Kantrowitz

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

Watch the full interview:
https://t.co/vfm7q0JLuG

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

Chamath Palihapitiya: the 2 things standing between AI and its exponential growth

"Anthropic and OpenAI's revenue performance has nothing to do with demand, zero. It is entirely to do with the supply constraints that exist in data centers and specifically in power."

"If they had infinite power, I think that their revenues would probably be even more parabolic. And so all the breathlessness about either exceeding or underperforming a forecast, in my opinion, mean nothing. I think the five-year view for those two companies is quite robust. The thing that they really need is more compute and more power. That's the first thing."

"The second thing is, while they need that, we have a very big problem, which is we unfortunately have very poor leadership at the head of most of these AI firms. I think they are coming off as untrustworthy or too self-interested. The political reaction now is starting to turn negative. The community reaction is negative. You have about nine gigawatts that are supposed to come online this year. Almost 50% of it now is being protested. More than likely, if history holds, most of that will get turned off, so they will get even more supply constrained. So that's the setup."

— @chamath on @theallinpod

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

Watch the full interview:
https://t.co/KAU8MBO6Jb

[The Techno Optimist @technooptimist1]

Mikey Shulman, Founder of @suno believes that AI will be the great equalizer for musicians and everyday people that want to create music but lack the traditional background to do so.

"People are creating music for the fun and enjoyment and fulfillment that comes with being creative.

Everybody in the world is creative, being creative makes you feel a certain way, this is in our DNA, and we are basically using technology to allow everybody to feel those warm and fuzzy feelings."

— @MikeyShulman on @sequoia's Training Data Podcast

[Viet Ly @vietly_7]

Time to reverse.