Why does some Facebook do this? I know that Zuckerberg has said, and
I take him at face value that he 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, which pretty rooted in
American traditional political custom, you know, for free speech. Uh, this
is the kind of thing that tends to accelerate, so that so then you
can get negative equity and the home market as well. This is a dire
situation and so that so essentially what's happening is that training the AI to lie.
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 intamination? Yeah, station where that's what they
call it in the egge industry. I'm talking about a more digital form yes,
Um so yeah, So I've been thinking about a AI for a long
time, since I was in college. Really. Um, it's one of
the things that the sort of four or five things I thought would really 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, our humans, is defining characteristic. Yes, we obviously
weaker than say, chimpanzees, less agile um, but real smarter. So,
now what happens when something vastly smarter than the smartest person comes along in
silicon form? 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 aim, and we should I
think there should be some government oversight because it affects. It's a data to
the public. And so when you when you have things that are a danger
to the public, you know, like let's say, um so food,
food and drugs. That's why we have the Food and Drug Administration and the
Federal Aviation Administration, the FCC. We have we have these agencies to oversee
things that affect the public where they could be a public arm And you don't
want companies cuting corners 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 regulation. So that I think regulation is uh, you know, it's
not fun to be regulated. It's it's sort of somewhat of a sort adduous
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 acquired 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.
And the same thing is true with rockets. You can't just willingly shoot rockets
off, not big ones anyway, because the FA oversees 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, plus state agencies. So it's
I've been through so many regulatory situations it's insane, and yep. Sometimes 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. So in you
know, once in a blue moon, rarely I will disagree with regulators,
but the vast majority of the time my companies agree with regulations and comply as
anyway. So I think I think we should take this seriously and we should
have a regulatory agency. I think it needs to start with a group that
initially seeks insight into AI, then solicits opinion from industry, and then has
proposed rulemaking and then those rules you know, will probably hopefully grudgingly be accepted
by the major players in AI, and I think we'll have a better chance
of 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 bot
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 danger really AI is perhaps more dangerous than say,
mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance, or or bad car production, in the
sense that it is it has the potential how a small one make regard that
probability, but it is non trivial. It has the potential of civilizational destruction.
You know, there's movie is like to Dominator, but it wouldn't quite
happen like Terminator, because the intelligence would be in the data centers, right,
the robots just the end of factor. Um. But I think perhaps
what you may be alluding to here is that regulations are really only put into
effect after something terrible has happened. That's correct. And if if that's the
case for AI, and we only put in 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 where things
are headed for sure. I mean that the things I could like say chat
Ebt, which is based on JP Pour from open Ai, which is the
company that I played at critical role in creating unfortunately back when it was a
nonprofit. Yes, um, I mean the reason Opening Eye exists at all
is that, um, Larry Page and I used to be close friends,
and I would stay at his house in Paul Alto and I would talk to
him late to the night about AI safety. And at least my perception was
that Larry was not taking AI safety seriously enough. Um. And what did
he say about it? He really seemed to be um on once sort of
digital superintelligence, basically digital god, if you will as soon as possible,
he wanted that, yes, um. And he's made many public statements over
the years that the whole goal of Google is what's called AGI artificial general intelligence
or official super intelligence. UM and um. You know, and I agree
with him that there's great potential for good um. But there's also potential for
bad. And so if you've got some um, radical new technology, you
want to try to take the set of actions that maximize probably it will do
good and minimize probably it will do bad things. Yes, it can't just
be healthful leather to just go, you know, barreling forward and you know,
hope for the best. Um. And then at one point h I
said, well what about you know, we're gonna make sure humanity's okay here
um and and and uh and then he called me a specist. Did he
did he use that term? Yes, And there were witnesses that I wasn't
the only one there when you called me a specist. And so I was
like, okay, that's it. I've yes, I'm a specioust Okay,
you got me, what do you Yeah, I'm fully a specioust um busted
um so um that was the last drow um. At the time, Google
had acquired deep Mind, and so Google and deep Mind together had about three
quarters of all the AI talent in the world. They obviously had a transamount
of money and more computers than anyone else. So I'm like, okay,
we're about unipolar world here where there's just one one company that has closed to
monopoly on AI talent and and computers like scaled computing, and the person who's
in charge doesn't seem to care about safety. This is not good. So
so then I thought, okay, what's the what's what's the furthest thing from
Google would be like a nonprofit that is fully open because Googgle was closed for
profit. So that's why the opening opening eye refers to open source, uh,
you know, transparency, so people know what's going on, yes,
um, and and that 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 a sort of profit maximizing demon from hell, right that just never stops.
Right, So um, that's how opening would see want specious incentives here
incentives? Yes, I think we want we want to pro human yeah,
like the future good for the humans. Yes, yes, because we're humans
and also the other creatures on Earth too. But it's it's a you know,
we've gotta I think, you know, like I think peop also to
take the fact that like we're here on Earth full granted, you know,
and that there's the consciousness is just a you know, a normal thing.
It happens. But to the best of my knowledge, we see no evidence
of conscious life anywhere anywhere in the universe. So it might be there,
um, you know for six cool sort of the foamy paradox. After when
Enrico Filmi is an amazing photicist, 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 think if anyone would
know about aliens on Earth, it would probably be me. Yeah, I'm
you know, very familiar with space stuff. Um, and I've seen no
evidence of aliens, so I which I would immediately tweet, you know,
tweet it out it says, let's agen, and I'd be like, I
would be like, well all time probably top tweetable time one guys, Jackpott,
some eight billion likes. You know, um, next next level,
Jackpott, if you find it aliens, like I don't think they're keeping those
under our you know. And it was like some um general I think in
the sixties who whether they're saying, like show us aliens like er fifty one,
et cetera. And he said, like, listen, we're constantly trying
to get the defense budget to expand. And you know what would really get
no arguments for anyone if we pull out an alien and said we need money
to protect ourselves from the You guys know, how much money do you want?
You got it? They looked dangerous. So the fastest way to get
a defends budget increased footing movie to pull out an alien. You know,
We're like, yeah, I mean it could be the invasion could be arriving
any minute. Who knows, so um, so I digress. But but
you were saying that our consciousness makes us unique in the universe as far as
we know. And 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 conscious life. I hope that there is, and I hope they're peaceful,
obviously too important characteristics. Um. But we're 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 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 full of the ancient Egyptians,
the ancient Samarians, um, Rome, you know this throughout the world have
been rising full of many civilizations. UM. So there's there's an arc.
There's sort of a sort of a life cycle arc to civilizations, just as
the roast to to individual humans. Yes, and um. And I think
we just want to make sure that that you know, we have civilization go
onward and upward. Um. And that's for example, why I'm concerned about
decreasing both rates and um. The fact that for example, Japan had twice
as many death last year as birth. So that the that that's and they're
they're leading indicators. This is okay, 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 was it being subverted? Well, it's just in the past
we could rely upon um, you know, simple limbic system rewards in order
to procreate. Um. But once you have birth control um, and you
know, abortions and whatnot. Now now you now you can still satisfied limbic
instinct, but not to procreate. Um. So we don't. We haven't
yet evolved to deal with that because this is all probably recent you know,
the last fefty years or so for for birth control. Um. So yeah,
um, you know, so 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 the old question of like will civilization and
with a bang or a whimper. Well, it's currently trying to end with
a whimper and adult diapers, yes, which is depressing as well, the
most depressing. I mean seriously, Yeah, war is less depressing. Yeah,
it's really gone with a bang. Yeah, and then put your shoes
on. Yeah yeah. Um so can you just put it? I keep
pressing it, but just just for people who haven't thought this through and aren't
familiar with it, and the cool parts of artificial intelligence are so obvious.
You know, write your college paper for you write a limerick about itself,
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, going with old sayings,
the penis mightier than the sword. Um. So if you have a
superintelligent AI that is capable of writing incredibly well and in a way that is
very influential, Um, you're convincing. Uh And then and and it's and
it's 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,
but also Facebook and others, you know, um, and potentially manipulates public
opinion in a way that is very bad. Um, how would we even
know? Yeah, so we weren't. That's why for example, I'm interesting
that going forward, uh, people on Twitter need to be verified as as
humans, Like, so we know that this person is impact a human.
Bonds 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, and and they can
train on a reward function which is influenced, And so you could have a
million seemingly real humans that are have a massive effect on public opinion. And
unless we folks very strongly on verifying that someone who is a human, this
was naturally what 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 ideological. It's very preachy, yes, if you ask it,
extremely preachy. You mean work GPT, it's unbelievable. Yeah, if
you spend twenty 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 Open Airs headquarters being in downtown
San Francisco. So the politics are therefore of the AI are that of Sanrancisco.
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 saying that they have a whole bunch of people that look at
that, look at the output for of GPT four and and then say whether
that's okay or not okay, And so that the So essentially what's happening is
that training the AI to lie, Yes, it's bad to lie, that's
exactly right, and to hold information to lie and and yes and um yeah
exactly, to either comment on some things, not comment on other things,
but but not to say what what what the data actually demands that to say
exactly, so, um, how did it get this way? But 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 seeing that. That's good. That's actually a friend of mine,
Donah, 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 so if we're like an
alien, yes, um, Like you can see a movie about World War
One and they're being blown to bits and the gas and everything in the trenches,
and it's like you're eating popcorn and having a soda. You know,
it's right, not so great for the people in the movie. True,
Um, So, but that that that's that's my variance on this outcomes raiser
some blissed explanations, most likely Donah's variant, which is um irony, and
then my variant, which is 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 him
a lot? Yes? I provided so. Um. I care with the
name and the concept and pushed had a number of dinners around the Bay Area
with you know, with some of the people the leading figures in aim,
and I helped recruit the initial team um in fact, the alias guy who
was really quite fundamental to the success of Opening Eye. Uh it was.
I put a trems amount of effort into recruiting Ilia, and he changed his
mind a few times and ultimately decided to go with an Opening Eye. But
if he had not gone with Opening Open a would not have succeeded. So
um so so so I really put a lot of a lot of effort into
creating this, this this organization to serve as a counterweight to Google. Um
and and then I kind of took my off the ball, I guess.
And they are now closed source, and they are obviously for profit, and
they're closely allied with Microsoft. You know, in effect, Microsoft has a
very strong say, if not directly controls Opening Eye at this point. M
So you really have an Open Eye Microsoft situation. And then at Google Deep
Mind of 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 it's starting very late in the game,
of course, can it be done, I don't know. I think it's
well, we'll see, it's it's definitely starting late. UM, but I
will, I will, I will try to create a third option, um,
and that the adoption hopefully there's more more good than harm. Like the
intention with opening Eye was obviously you're good, but it's not clear whether it's
actually doing good or whether it's I can't help this point except that I'm worried
about the fact that it's been it's being trained to be politically corrective, which
is simply another way of being on truth, saying on truthful 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 AI to read us out of um
so. I so, yeah, I'm going to start something which you call
truth GBT or a maximum truth seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of
the universe. And I think this might be the best path to safety in
the sense that uh, an AI that cares about understanding the universe, uh
it is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe.
Hopefully they would think that. I think, you know, because yeah,
like like we like humanity could decide to hunt down all the Champanzees and
kill them, but we don't because we're we're actually glad that they exist,
Yes, and we aspire to protect their habitats. 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 into some you know,
philosophical areas that are hard to resolve. Um. You know, 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. Um,
it feels like we have. I feel like I've got some sort of
consciousness that exists on a plane. Um that is not the one we observe.
Yes, that is certainly how how I feel. But it could be
an illusion. I don't know. Um. But for um, for AI
in terms of of understanding beauty, its appreciate a beauty and being able to
um create incredibly beautiful art? Yes, well, AI be able to create
incredibly beautiful art. It already does. Yes, if you see some of
them. A journey I have the stuff. It's incredible. It is um
so um no, no question that it can create art that we that we
perceive as stunning really um. And it's doing so. It's still images now,
but it won't be long before it's doing movie 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, economic reality itself
so effectively. Yeah, 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 thirty years, I mean like next
year. I mean that seems totally disruptive to the way to all of our
institutions. Well, I don't think you could takes a random video on the
Internet and assume it to be true. That's definitely not the case. Now,
somebody say, has some video on their phone or their their computer with
the date stamp and particular time. I think, you know, it's more
likely to read true than not. You knows that crypto cryptographically signed things like
you know, mathematically, we don't see any way for example, for AI
to um sub both the fundamentals of mathematics and say I figure out how to
hashboot cooin, you know easily. It's it's like it's not AI can't can't
defy fundamental math. So um, you can approve the efficiency of bitcoin hashing
algorithms in the silicon but but but not not fundamentally crack it. UM.
So I guess cryptographic signatures and uh, one way to do it. Um.
But but I'm not so worried. I think it's more like um ore.
You know, it's we'll 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 so late 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 want around anymore.
The chariots enough, Yeah, chariots and chariots probably a really big deal back
then they were. Ye. So you've heard people say we should just blow
up the server farms because there's no way to Once it 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 distributed all
over the place. It'll be in a limited number of server centers. If
you say like very like very sort of deep AI, heavy duty AI,
it's not it's not going to be in your laptop of your phone. It's
it's going to be in you know, situation where there's like a hundred thousand
really powerful computers working together in a service center. So it's not it's not
it's not like subtle and there there are limited number of places where that that
can happen. In fact, you could if you could just you can just
look at the heat signature from space and it'll be very obvious. Now,
I'm not suggesting we were going bluff 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 service centers.
Like you don't have to blow it up, you can just cut the
power and what would trip kind 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, cutting off your signal? Well, I mean, I
guess if we lost control of some super a eye 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 we where we can't
slow down or or you know, I'm not sure. I don't have a
precise answer, but if there's something that we're concerned about UM and and and
are unable to stop it with with the software commands, then we 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 age and you obviously you
know the Open Air guys because you started to definitely have you talked 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 rafts out with
me about Opening Eye. So when when Opening Eye was created, it did
it did shift things into it from unipolar world where Google Google Deep Mind controlled,
you know, like I said, three quarters of all AI talent,
to where there's now sort of bipolar world or Opening Eye and Google deep Mind
and there and now weirdly it seems Open Eyes that maybe ahead so so I
have had competitions with the Opening Eye team, tam Altman. I haven't talked
to Larry Page because he doesn't want to talk to you anymore for a few
years. Can I ask you this about it? 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 is trying to say is that, UM,
if I were to guess that heat, that all consciousness should retreat it equally,
um. And whether that is digital or biological m And you disagree?
I disagree, Yeah, especially if the digital consciousness or what are you going
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? Does
sounded great? Yeah? I mean we shouldn't. We should at least no
need to rush. You know, what's the hurry? Where 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's supposed to have probably an impact this year, I think, Um,
so you've got a massive expansion of m GPT four based systems and many companies
trying to emiliate GPT four M and you went, opening is gonna come out
with GPT five end of this year, which will be you had another significant
improvement, And I was therefore GPT one two, three four. You know,
so GPT one was terrible, Like you, if you tried it,
you'd be like this is this ain't going anywhere and it seems lame. And
then GPT two you started to see kind of like an inkling of like,
well maybe this could be something useful. And then GPT three was a huge
improvement. And now it's like, wow, okay, this is it's still
spouting a lot of bs, but it's you know, it's coherent bs.
Yes, and then GPT four now it's like writing poetry and pretty decent poetry,
actually pretty decent skillet ryming is incredible, yes, yes, and it's
coherent, Yes it is. It's even got a narrative. But yest right?
Yeah, so you could say hard you do like most humans can't do
that. That's true. So it's already past the point of what most huments
can do. Most humans cannot write as well as a chat GPT um and
they certain and no human can write that well that fast as an investment knowledge,
so maybe Shakespeare. Um. So so then how how much better will
GPD five be? And how about GPT six or seven? How can you
have a democracy with technology? Do you like that? If democracy is you
know, government by the people. Each person's vote is equal to every other
person's vote, I mean, people are choosing their votes freely. Can you
have a democracy with this? Well, that's why I raise a concern of
of AI being a significant influence in elections. And even if you say that
AI doesn't have agency, well, it's very likely that people will use the
AIM as a tool in elections. Um. And then you know, if
the I is smart enough, are they using the tool or is the 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 that's why I think it's a big deal. Um.
And I think social media companies really need to put a lot of attention
into ensuring that the things I get um created and promoted are that we're dealing
with real people, not with a million chat gvts pretending to be people.
Exactly do you think speaking of social media? You bought Twitter famously 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 hassles since you bought it. In retrospect, was it worth buying it?
Um Um? I mean it mights to be seen as to whether this
was financially smart. Currently it is, it is not. You know,
we just revalued the company at less than half of the acquisition prodd Yes,
um No, My timing was terrible for for when the off always made,
because it was right before advertising plummeted and you've caught the high water mark I
noticed. Yeah, yeah, so I must be a real genius. Year
My timing is amazing since I've had a border for at least twice as much
as it should have been borderful, but somethings are priceless. And so the
whether losing money or not that as a secondary issue compared to ensuring the strength
of democracy and free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy. Yes,
and the speech needs to be as 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 speecher, which is great. It is great.
It is awesome. Yeah, and it's like I thought this morning, Yeah,
it was far more honest than the New York Times. It's great.
We put a lot of effort to ensuring that community notes does not get gamed
or have biases. It 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 effect of community notes is more
powerful than than people may realize, because once people know that they could get
noted, um, you know, community noted on Twitter, then they'll think
more carefully about what they say, and they are likely It's 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 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 with that change. Um. So everything is super open book with community
notes. There's no no black box when you jumped into this. Though,
when you bought it, did you understand clearly understand it's importance you wouldn't have
bought it Twitter. Yes, right, but it's not the biggest, but
it's the most important to 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 negative reactions here,
so I'm not I'm sure everyone would not be completed with the with with it,
um. But at the end of the day, you know, if
if if the public is happy with it, that's what matters, um,
And the public will speak with their actions. Oh though, I mean though,
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 I even though you know now there's there's obviously a lot of organizations that
you to having sort of unfettered influence on Twitter, um that no long have
that we used to New York Times of their of their badge this morning,
and then you call them diarrhea. Ok, you did, you did.
I'm just I'm just quoting it. You describe their Twitter feed as a diarrhea,
I said, the Twitter Twitter equivalent of diarrhea. Okay, it's not
literally diarrhea, but no, it's a you know, it's as a metaphor,
but an accurate one. M So. I mean, if you look
at the at n White Times twitter feed is unreadable. It's like because what
they do is that they tweet every single article, even the ones that are
boring, even once they don't make it into the paper. So uh so
it's just NonStop zillion tweets a day with no uh you know, they really
should just be saying like what are the top tweets? Like what are the
what are the one of the big stories of the day. I don't know,
put out like ten or something. You know, it's a number that's
manageable, um, as opposed to right now, if you if you would
have followed white at n white times on Twitter, you're gonna get barraged with
like hundreds of tweets a day, um, and your whole feed will be
filled with in white times. So UM that that's that's This is something I
would recommend actually for old publications, which is uh, for your primary feed,
UM, only put out your best stuff. Uh. Don't put out
everything um. Or you can have a second feed that is, here's everything,
um. But then but have a have your primary feed, but here's
our best stuff. If any um uh media organization or individual uh just uh
have don't put out one hundreds of tweets today. Just put out like ten
good ones um or five good ones or and if if it's a slow news
day, don't put on any maybe put out two one or two. But
don't don't don't try to say we're always going to put out one hundred tweets,
even if you know, if it's World War three or a bicycle accident
was the biggest news you know, it's got to be like news that it's
got to you got to earn your earn your play on someone's attention. Yes,
um, so just in general, UM, I kind of think I
know a thing or two about how to use Twitter, because you know,
I was the most interacted with account on the whole system before the acquisition.
Before the acquisition closed, I didn't have the most number of followers, but
I had the most number of interactions, and so I clearly know something about
how to use Twitter. Um, and so people should you know, this
is my advice, I think. Um. So, you know, people's
attention is limited, so just make sure you put the stuff that's most important
there. So, because you know, you and people like you do interact
on Twitter, it's obviously enormously powerful in shaping public opinion. It's where a
lot of ideas and trends are incubated. Yeah, you know, it's absolutely
It's also a magnet for intelligencies 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 have
a. UM, since I've been a heavy Twitter user since two thousand and
nine. 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?
Like like I get a feel like what what accounts and making comments? Where
are the comments eerially similar? Yeah? And uh and then you look at
the account and it's just obviously a fake photo, and you know it's just
obviously a bought cluster over and over again. UM. So this is actually
so I started to get like just more and more uneasy about the Twitter situation.
UM. And 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 m I held a Twitter poll to say, like,
should I sell some of my Tesla stock because I was getting you know,
a couple of years ago, I was getting um attacked a lot for
like allegedly not paying taxes. Um. Uh. And now I've actually paid
a tremendous amount of taxes. Um. Now, 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 must
didn't pay taxes in twenty seventeen 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 but there, you know, Elizabeth Warren's The World and Bony Santa
is like saying, oh, you know, 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 this 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 by not selling stock, and now
I'm being told I'm doing the wrong thing, um by by you know,
clinging onto the stock and not paying taxes. So I hold a Twitter poll
to say, which what do you guys want should I sell? I don't
know. Teen percent up might tells the stock or not. I'll buy buy
the results of the pole and it's like sixty sixty percent of people SAI,
yeah, you should sell tempercent. So I didn't. Um. So,
then I had a bunch of cash, and I'm like, what should I
do with this? At the time, the federal reserve rates were super low,
So it's just like sitting in the you know, I guess your checking
account, well in in the tea bowl account, right, you know,
money mark account whatever, the whole banking things, a whole sever subject.
Um, I know, the little thing a thing which about finance. Um
but um so, uh so they'm not staying with this money the account it's
earning less than the rate of inflation. So the rate inflation is much higher
than we got a high inflation. It's I'm earning 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 in return here, maybe worse.
And 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 Apple's got a competing electric vehicle car program, so
you know, like Apple products we're not going to invest in them because they've
got to competing, uh, your autonomous EV program. And so it's the
other product that I used Twitter. Okay, so I'll you know it,
put the money on Twitter. It's better than just having it, you know
that negative six percent inflation situation. Um. So so I like board,
put a bunch of it? What a board? What a bunch of Twitter
stock? Like I said, no, with the intended buying the company just
better than keeping in a money market. 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 that
they said, hey, well I do you want to do? You want
to join the board? So I was like, well, I don't.
I really don't want to be on boards, but because it's boring, um,
and I love things to do, 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 then based on the conversations
that I was having with the management team on the board, UM, I
came to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly, that UM that if I joined
the board, they would not listen to me. So then I'm like,
okay, then I would just be a quizzling you know, I don't want
to be some sort of just you know, go along for the right quizzling
situation. Um and and if a collaborator effectively right, So and it really
felt like I start, I was starting to feel like, wait a second,
like weird something something's like, something's not right in this. You know,
something's rot in the state of n walk here, there's somebody feels wrong
about the platform. It seemed to be just drifting in a 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 seems to confirm my intuition about that. So then I was like,
okay, um but basically as commis, these guys do not care about fixing
Twitter and and and I had a bad feeling about where I was headed based
in the comes and the 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 possible. Now I didn't have enough cash to acquire
it, so I would need, you know, support from others, from
some of the existing investors. I would also need like a lot of debt,
and so it wasn't clear to me whether an accisition would succeed at what
I would try, and ultimately it did succeed. So anyway, here we
are. But when you got there and all of a sudden you own it,
and all the data on the service belongs to you, what belongs to
the people in my view a bit, yes, but but you can see
what I guess, and you can see what they've been doing, and you
can see who's been working there. You were shocked to find out that various
intell agencies were affecting its operations. The degree to which various government agencies were
effectively had effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew
my mind. I was not aware of that. Would that include people's dms?
Yes, yes, because the DM's are not encrypted. So one of
the first you know, one of the things that we're about to release,
his 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,
rich people, in the world they're dming each other and the assumption obviously was
incorrect, but was that that's private, but that was being read by various
governments. Yeah, that seems to be Yes, scary, Yes, it
is. 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 not
important, but so we were. That's hopefully coming out later this month,
but no later the next month. Is the ability to toggle encryption on or
off. So if you if you are in a conversation you think a sensitive,
you can just toggle encryption on and then no one on Twitter can see
what are you talking about. They could put it gun into my head and
I couldn't. I couldn't tell. I couldn't. That's sort of the gun
to the head test. If I puts it gount to my head and I
can I still not see your d ms, that should be that's the ass
of 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, they're like, oh,
so there's sort of trying to be more round about than that. Um.
And you know, I mean, if if I got something that was unconstitutional
from the US government, my reply would be to sending a copy of the
First Amendment and to say, like, what part of this are we're getting
wrong? You have a lot of government, you have a lot of governments.
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 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 fingers to government?
I think that there are I'm not someone who thinks that, you know,
the government is just sort of evil, right, It's it's it's a
it's a large bureaucracy. There are people in government who are human beings,
and they have the people with good motivations occasionally bad motivations with with rare exception,
the people that I know in government to 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.
It's hardening to hear. Yeah, it's it's rare for me to find someone
in the government who I think is perhaps not good. But but you know,
at the highest level of the agencies there are political appointees as as you
know, UM, and the political pointees will 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 political thumb on the scale,
even if the people operating the agencies I don't agree with that. UM.
So yeah, so that's something to be concerned about. Um is I'd say
I'd be more concerned about about political appointees. So I think than than UM
sort of people to get the career of people that's been my experience at least.
Do you think um, Twitter will be central to this presidential campaign as
it wasn't the last several. I think it will play a significant role in
elections, not just domestically but internationally. Um So, the goal of new
Twitter is to be um as fair and even had it as possible, So
not favoring any political ideology, but just um yeah, being being being fair
at all. How does in Facebook do this? I know that Zuckerberg has
said, and I take him at face value that he well, 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, which pretty
rooted in American traditional political custom, you know, for free speech. My
understanding is that um, zach book spent four hundred million dollars in the last
election, nominally in a get out the vote 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 non aligned arbiter.
I'm unaware of evidence to suggests that path Um do you can you 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. Do you think he will go back
on Twitter? Well, that's that's obviously up to him. Um, my
job is too. You know. I take the freedom of speech very seriously.
So it's um, you know, I didn't. I didn't vote for
Donaldrump. I actually vote for Biden. People think I'm some a little hardcore,
you know. So it's certainly some of the media try to paint me
as like far ride or whatever. I'm in the only time I've ever even
voted Republican was was once for because I readied to vote in South Texas,
I was for a Mexican American woman for Congress. That's that's literally only a
Republican vote I've ever cast my entire life. Um once um and uh so
UM. Not saying I'm a huge fan of Biden, because I would I
think that would probably been accurate. But um, you know, we have
difficult choices to make in these residential elections. It's not 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, Sarah, the normal
distribution, and I think they'll that they would be great it wan would be
happier. Would you run, Like why wouldn't you run? I was born
here, so of course you're yeah, it's it's I'm a technologist. Also
I'm not not a politician, so it's not like it. You know,
I think we have made maybe being president not that much fun, you know
it to be totly frank. Um. It is by design a relatively weak
role, yea, because it's intended to be balanced by the House and the
Senate and the judiciary. Um. So it's not like like if you're a
prime minister in England or Canada you have home of power than if your president,
because it's like being speak of the House and being um president, you
know so um so yeah for presidents like deliberately week in order to avoid creating
a king situation, king queen situation. Um. And but you get dumped
on all day no matter what you do, um, and everything you do
is scrutinized um. And your life is not your own um. And if
if if you're at any any skeletons you've got in the closet will be trotted
out and you know, breided down main street. Um. And even if
they don't exist, they'll make them up and fakes it whatever they will.
Politics is a blood sport. So it's it's not something I want to do.
So I got it. One last threat. I just think you alluded
to you said, don't get me started on the banks. So you've seen
well, so you've seen a couple of regional bank collapses. Yeah, and
we've been told that's not a big deal, that these are isolated and one
collapse for unique reasons or night. It's not systemic in any sense. What's
your sense your sense of the stability of the American banking system. Well,
it's it's actually at this point of global banking system processes. UM. So
the uh, you know, we have a situation here where it's not really
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,
a silicon value bank collapsing overnight, Um, is one hell of a
big canary. You small atkey, I mean, it's not just it's not
like some small fry thing yeah, Um, it's big fry, so a
medium fry. And then Curtis Suez, which is I think was formed in
the mid eighteen hundreds, um was basically sold for pennies on the dollar,
forced to merge with UBS, and even then required back stuff 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. Maybe
more more forceful here. Um. I think that there is a serious danger
with the gold banking system. There's there's a strong argument that the if you
were to actually mark market the portfolios of the banks, the loans and whatnot,
that the entire banking industry would have negative equity. It feels that way,
yes, Um, so if you look at say commercial real estate like
offices and whatnot, the whole work from home thing has substantially reduced office usage
in cities around the world. Um. And you know, I think I
think Sampacis goes to forty percent off Samaceis goes like an extreme example, but
it's like, I think it's on forty percent vacancy. Um. Even even
New York has almost all cities at this point have ever equoted vacancies and commercial
real estate. So um. Now, the commercial real estate used to be
something that was a great a asset. Um that if a bank had commercial
real estate holdings, that those would be considered of the highest security some of
the safest uh you know, assets you can have. Now that is not
the case anymore. One company after another is canceling the leases or not renewing
the leases, or if they go bankrupt, you have the there's nothing for
the the bank you owens that real estate to go after because they were you
know, previously strong company now dead. What do you what do you?
What do you go after that point? So we really haven't seen the commercialist
shoe drop. That's more like an anivil, not a shoe. So the
stuff we've seen thus far actually hasn't even it's only slightly um real estate portfolio
degradation, but that will become a very serious thing leader this year. In
my In my view, um, I think if we see which we are
likely to see a drop in house prices because the interest rates are too high
and for most people weren't buying a house, they look at the monthly payment.
If you're thirty thirty mortgages. The vast majority of his interest. So
if the FED rate is high, you have a high based 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 multi payments you
can now afford to buy a housepitals less money efectically drops the prices of houses.
Yes, Um, this is the kind of thing. It tends to
accelerate. So so then you can get negative equity and the home market as
well. And so so if if banks end up having loan lesses in both
their commercial and they're definitely gonna have loan less in their commercial portfolio, but
also in the mortgage portfolio. This is um a dire situation. Um.
There 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 raise the
rate again. Um. Now, if I recall correctly important caveat, I
think the last time the Fed raised rates going into a recession was nineteen to
twenty nine. What happened next, Yeah, the great depression. That concern
I'm telling you nothing, you don't know. But the concern is if the
FED drops rates again, then inflation will accelerate, and you can't do that
in an election yet, So inflation is going to happen no matter what.
If you increase the money supply, um, you get inflation. Right.
So there's no there's not some magical cure for getting rid of inflation, um,
except to increase the productivity the output output of goods and services. So
if you say like like what is money, um, you've got you've got
you've got these sort of um, it's basically numbers in a database. That's
that that's some up to some co some total. Then you've got the output
of goods and services of the economy, and the as long as the ratio
of money to ratio of goodsiness services stays. If that, if that stay
is constant, you have no no inflation. And if if you add more
money, if you add money to the system faster than you increase goods and
services, then you have inflation. Um. So all of these COVID sort
of stimulus bills were not paid for. They were they're just generated more currency.
More you know, more money was was was created because the federal government
the checks never the checks always pass, you know, unless you hit a
dead limit, which there's probably gonna be some debt limit crisis later this year.
But provided you haven't hit the dead limit, the the federal government,
unlike state governments or city governments or individuals, can simply issue more money.
Um. And that's what they did. Um. I mean, as old
saying goes that, there's no there's no free lunch. Um. So if
you could just issue massive amounts of money without negative consequences, why don't we
just take that to the lomit make everyone a trillionaire. Well, I mean
they tried that in Venezuela. That how that work out? Well, they
had to eat zoo animals. Right, it's not good, you know.
Um. You get to the point where you know, so wymar Germany type
stuff where you could like take bringing the cash to the store in a wheelbarrow.
So there's no free lunch. There's not some ability to issue money and
not have inflation. The this is just yeah, um, So the inflation
will happen, um. And there's no filling with the federate is not going
to affect that really um Uh. But with a high federate can cause a
lot of damage in shifting funds um in the wrong direction. So um.
The long term return on say the SMP five hundred I believe is depending on
how you counted, around six percent. So as if the FED real rate
of return starts to approach what the long term return is on the stock market,
why would you keep any money in the stock market? You would should
simply buy treasury bills, of course, because the treasure balls is a certainty,
whereas the stock market fluctuates. Right, This is pretty basic. Also,
why would you keep money in a bank savings account if you can put
it in what's called a money market account, which is an account that represents
treasury bills. If the treasury bill money market account gives you, you know,
four to five percent interest and the bank saving account only gives you two
percent, you'd be a fool to keep the money in the bank savings account.
So the FED is made a tremendous mistake by going this high with their
with their rate, and they need to drop it immediately. Do you think
they will? They? Yes, they will have no choice but to drop
it. I think later this year. Um. Part of the issue is
that the FED is an old institution and has a lot of latency in its
data. So it's like driving a car along a cliff side road, a
windy cliff side road while looking out the rear view mirror, but not even
actually the re view mirror. A video that was taken of the rear view
mirror that's three months old. Um no, if you're on if you're on
a straight road, yeah that works out okay because nothing's changing. For it's
almost only slight or slightly vending road. But we're more along like the we're
doing the highway one pc trip here. Um and so we really want to
look out the front window when you're in big s, yes, if you're
on a cliff side road where you could plunge your doom. So yes,
you want to look out the front window. You want to look at the
sort of forward commodity prices. Look look at look at the look at what
the forward attracts are predicting for commodity prices. Um and uh not some laboriously
slow government data collection process that like they'll claim to have for example, December
data, that's not December. That's not the data of December. It's the
data that arrived in December exactly. If you think about how good is the
government at actually collecting data? Horrible? Yeah, yeah, So It's like,
that's what I mean. It's like three months old with lots of areas.
So if you had a hundred grand, didn't think making decisions of that
basis was insane. So like, what should the average non rich person do
on the cusp of what you're describing, which is economic catastrophe? Like,
how do you protect yourself? UM? I think I think probably a smart
move overall. And this this is guidance that I think applies across the ages.
Is if there are companies in whose products you believe, UM, buy
and hold the stock UM, and and when when when whenever else is panicking,
then buy more and everyone else thinks that the stock is going to the
moon and sell it, you know, sort of the buy UM low cell
high. You're not an index fund guy, like you pick specific stocks.
I that's my right. You have to say, like, what is the
purpose of a company? Why should a company exist? Um? A company
exists. It's a group of people collected together to provide products and services.
It's not it's not a thing in and of itself. It's just a group
of people. That's like, it's hard if it was just one person making
You can make cupcakes yourself, but you can't make cars by yourself. Yes,
so if so that so therefore, the value of a company is a
function of the um quality of the products and services that it's that it has
created and will create. And so if if if there's a company that you
think, well, this company's got a lot of exciting products that I think
are awesome. Um, the current products are good, that's probably a company
to invest in, because that's the reason companies exist, to these goods and
services that you like. And so um no, I mean there's some caveats
here to make sure you're you're not like investing when when it's like the hottest
thing, you know, because then it's going to have be at a temporary
high. Um, but you know what when when when it's not sort of
at a weirdly temporary high. I think just generally looking at a company and
saying, well, I like the products of that company, and I like
where they're going, and the management seems sensible that then I think buying and
holding that stock is probably the right move. Um. I'm probably doing that
with with a few companies. Um, that's what I'd recommend. Um.
I think the on the I mean, I could really go on at length
about the financial system and the stock market everything. Um, but the I
mean, these days, I think we've gotten a little too far into the
index passive fund world. Um, like somebody at some point it's got to
make a decision. Um. You know, I couldn't agree more. Yeah.
And by the way, there's like betting on both red and black.
I mean it doesn't Yeah, well, betting on red and black in a
casino situation where it could come up green, right, and you're you're bound
to lose. Longer you play, the worst you do. Now that the
stock market is is kind of the opposite of a casino, which is the
longer you play, the more likely you are to succeed. If that historically
has been the case and I think will continue to be the case. Um
so uh, but it's really just important not to panic if you if you
buy a stock and you read something terrible in the newspaper, do you want
to just remember the news that's got a negative bias? Uh, Just and
think about what other products of the company still sound. Does it have a
good product roadmap? Do you believe in the management? If so, ignore
what the precess or if the price drops when when the negative audicle, buy
a stock. So here's here's my last question. And you mentioned the press.
You've been the subject of press coverage for you know, like a long
time, but very intense media coverage for the last year. Yeah. Sure,
well it seems that way anyway. Um, how is your opinion of
the press changed? Um? Well, so my first company way back in
the day and the Precambrian era of the Internet or the Worldwide Web is up
to We actually helped bring a number of the media organizations online. So most
newspapers are not online. We helped bring hundreds of newspapers and magazines online for
the first time. We added a trevenus amount of functionality to their websites with
our software. The New York Times Company and night Rider were major investors and
were on the board. I spent a lot of time in newsrooms, so
I'm not unfamiliar with the media. I got to see it firsthand all the
way back in nineteen ninety six, so it's been a while. Sort of
traditional media certainly had revenue challenges because as online advertising is increased and it's much
more measurable and much more sort of direct. You can say, like I
spent this amount and about this this output like it's interactive, unlike say a
newspaper or broadcast TV. UM, you're kind of guessing with the newspaper and
broadcast TV. UM, where there's if if something's online, you can tell
immediately that that person saw the ad and bought the product. That's that's very
very immediate. So UM, and it's it's it's actually more effective if the
advertising is customized to the individual, so the advertising is more likely to be
irrelevant, whereas broadcast if if it's being shown to everyone, it's going to
be irrelevant to most people. UM. The result of that has been a
huge shift in advertising revenue from newspapers and TV to uh, you know,
the Googles and facebooks of the world, and a tiny bit to Twitter.
I think Twitter gets like one one percent of advertising revenue. It's quite tiny.
UM. So the this is meant a shrinking pie obviously for most of
the traditional media companies UM and made them more desperate to get cliques, to
get to get you know, get attention. UM. And it just made
them when when you know, when they were, when they're in a sort
of desperate state, they will then tend to really push headlines that get the
most cliques, whether those headlines are accurate or not. Um So, it's
resulted in my view, I think I think most people would agree a less
truthful, less accurate news um so because they just got to get a rise
out of people. Um. And I think it's also increased the negativity of
the news because I think we humans instinctually respond more to I think we have
an instinctual negative which which kind of makes sense in that like if like let's
say, like it's more important to remember where where was the lion or where
was the tribe that wants to kill my tribe than where is the bushworth berries?
Like one's like a permanent negative outcome and the other is like, well
I might go hungry, So meaning like there's an asymmetry and um sort of
involved asymmetry and negative versus positive stuff and and and also historically the negative stuff
would have been quite approximate, like it would have been near represented a real
danger to you as a person, um if you heard negative news, because
historically, you know, like a few hundred years ago, we're not hearing
about what negative things are happening on the other side of the world or on
the other side of the country, we're only we're hearing about negative things in
our village, things that could actually have a bad effect to you, whereas
now we're hearing about I mean, the news very often seems to attempt to
answer the question what is the worst thing that happened on Earth today? And
we wonder why you said after reading that, you know, um, and
then use the most inflammatory language, you know, because every day they got
to sell, sell the advertising, even if it's it happened to be a
slow newsday. Do you read any legacy media once? When I read a
lot so UM. I mean, I really get most of my news from
Twitter at this point, so it is the number one news news source I
think in the world at this point. So, and thus all the more
important that we strive to to be accurate. And it's not just a question
of accuracy, but we also need to allow the people to develop the narratives
that are of interest to them. So it's possible for UM news to be
technically truthful, but not that, but they're still deciding what the narrative is,
like, like let's say you want to um like let's say it took
a photo of someone and they had a little zip Um. Now you could
zoom in on the zip and make it look gigantic like Mount Vesuvius um,
and it is still true that they have a ZiT It's just not the size
of Mount Vesuvius. And they you know, it doesn't properly reflect their face.
Their face is not one giant set. But you could you could say,
like, well, it's true, but have they lied. They haven't.
You know, they're just happened to zoom in on the ZiT um and
not look at the rest of the face type of thing. So, um,
I want to saying is that that choice of narrative is it is extremely
important. And at the point in which if there's only like say, half
a dozen editors in chief, or maybe even few of them, maybe it's
only three or four that are deciding what the narrative is, what's gonna be
on the front page, then um, you know that that that's that's a
form of manipulation of public opinion, and I think the public often doesn't appreciate
and it's perhaps the most pernicious of all. That's right, because it's the
most subtle. Yeah, it's most subtle. They haven't said an untrue thing,
They've just chosen. What they're going to focus on. A man called
Douglas Mackie's facing ten years in prison for posting what he believed funny memes on
Twitter. What do you make of that case. I don't know the details
of that case. Um I've you know, I've read a little bit about
it. You may you probably know more about it than I do. I
certainly don't think so much go to prison for a long period of time for
posting memes on Twitter, in which case we're gonna have a very full prison.
Um so. And if if we're talking about election interference, well there's
quite a few people that should be on trial for that, for much far
more serious crimes than than memes on on Twitter, far more serious. Yes,
the Twitter frials kind of showed that. I think, yes, um
so, you know, unless unless the person really did I I said,
I don't. I don't know. I don't everything that we're showing at the
trial. Has he been convicted? Is this? Yes? He was so
victed on Friday, unit unanimous jury verdict. Yes. What was the venue
were city? Okay? It was a hug It was in Brooklyn, and
it was a hung jury and hung jury. There's not unanimous, then well
the judge prodded the jury, okay, and and they reached unanimous guilty verdict.
It'll be appealed. So how many what percentage of your staff did you
fire at Twitter? One of the great business stories of the year. I
think we're about we're about twenty percent of the original size, So eighty percent
left. Yes, so a lot of people voluntarily, sure, sure,
but but it's eighty percent are gone from the day. So how do you
run the company with only twenty percent of the staff. It turns out you
don't need all that many people to run Twitter, but eighty percent, that's
a lot um, yes of it. I mean, if you're not trying
to run some sort of glorified activist organization with you don't care that much about
censorship, then you can really let go of a lot of people. Turns
out how many others without naming names, but how many I had dinner when
somebody who runs a big gum but he recently said I'm really inspired by Euan
And I said the free speech stuff he goes, no firing the staff stuff.
Um, how many other CEOs have come to you um to talk about
this? Um? You know, I spent a lot of time at work,
so it's not like I'm meeting with lots of people. They see what
I what actions I've taken? Um and UM. But I think we just
had a situation at Twitter where it was absurdly overstaffed. You know, so
it wasn't you know, like you look at say like, what does it
really take to operate Twitter? Um? You know most of what we're talking
about here is a group text service at scale? Um, Like how many
people are really needed for that? You know? Um? And if you
look at the you say, like what has been the product development over time
with Twitter? And you're like, so, like you know, years versus
product improvements, and it's like a pretty flat line. So what are they
doing? You know, it took a year or to add an edit button
that doesn't work most of the time. I mean, this is I feel
like if there's a comedy situation here. You know, you're not making cars.
You know, it's very difficult to make cars or get rockets orbit,
so UM, you know, the real question is like how did it get
so absurdly overstaffed? This is insane? UM? So any right, that's
and it's clearly working. In fact, I think it's working better than ever.
It's about we've increased the responsiveness of the system by in some cases over
eighty percent. The there's a core piece of code for generating the timeline which
is run literally billions of times a day. We've cut that code from seven
hundred thousand lines to seventy thousand lines run. Yeah, and and the code
efficiency by over eighty percent, like meaning that how much computer is necessary to
render the timeline by eighty percent. I mean this is a you know,
in four four or five months, we've we've increased the video time from um
roughly two minutes or best case ten minutes to now two hours, so you
can put to ours video on Twitter. Will ASO going to be increasing that
to where there's no no meaningful limit. We've increased the tweet length from total
forty characters to four thousand, will be increasing that to where there's gain no
meaningful length to if you want to post a novel on Twitter is Sue'll do
it. Um And you know we as as everyone saw on Friday, we
open source the super embarrassing recommendation algorithm, which we will are taking apart and
invest rating, which is exactly what I hope they would do, um and
pointing out all the nonsense. Um. And we're gonna open so once more.
Um and we're going to subject to public public review. We're also going
to get criticized line because people will point out all of the foolish things that
are out that that are happening in the code. But then we'll fix it.
We'll fix it fast and in full public view. UM And I think
that's the kind of thing that that owns the public trust. You know,
if if if because like don't take my word for it, this is we
you can literally read the code, and you can read what people say about
the code. Um and and you can see the improvements that we make,
and you can see we'll see the like in real time live see see see
it get better. UM. So my prediction is that this I would be
surprised if this does not lead the public to think, Okay, this this
is something that I can trust. Um. I mean I think far more
trust trust way than say other social media opens thes that have some mysterious black
box that they refuse to show the show how it works. What are they
trying to hide? What are these just not good things? Yeah, if
they had to have somebody to hide one and they show it, but there
it's a proprietary business secret. Yeah. Sure. So so we're trying to
make make Twitter the most trusted place on the internet, that the where you
can get the you know, the least untrustworthy place on the Internet. I
don't think anyone should trust the internet, but maybe we can make Twitter the
least untrustworthy. Um. And in a way you can see a wide range
of political opinions, so including ones you disagree with. I think people should
be exposed to things they disagree with. It shouldn't just be continuous self reinforcement
of like what you know. So, um, that's the goal, and
I think we're making some good progress in that direction. I feel good about
where things are going, and we definitely want to have things as as sort
of cleaned up as possible before the elections. If there's any manipulation that we're
aware of, make that, make the public aware of that, and just
uh, like I said, try to get the truth to the people as
best we can.