Hard Fork Live, Part 2: Patrick Collison of Stripe + Kathryn Zealand of Skip + Listener Questions

Summary

Hard Fork Live, Part 2: Patrick Collison of Stripe + Kathryn Zealand of Skip + Listener Questions

Release Date: July 4, 2025

Podcast Information:

• Title: Hard Fork
• Host/Author: The New York Times
• Hosts: Kevin Roose and Casey Newton
• Description: “Hard Fork” explores the future that’s already here, delving into the latest developments in the rapidly evolving tech landscape.

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1. Introduction and Event Highlights [00:35 – 02:13]

Kevin Roos and Casey Noon kick off the episode by sharing their favorite moments from the inaugural "Hard Fork Live" event. Casey recounts a humorous incident where she was initially denied entry until she proved her identity, while Kevin reminisces about a backstage mishap involving mechanical robot exoskeleton pants and an unexpected encounter with Patrick Collison.

Notable Interaction:

• [00:47 - 01:36] Casey Noon: "I went right up to the security, I said, hi, I'm Casey. I'm here to co-host the show."
• [01:07 - 01:36] Kevin Roos: "We had this bit where we're changing out of our regular pants into some mechanical robot exoskeleton pants for a demo."

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2. Interview with Patrick Collison of Stripe [03:27 – 24:46]

Background on Patrick Collison: Casey Noon introduces Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe, highlighting his influence in tech, his collaboration with economist Tyler Cowen on a piece about the "need for a new science of progress," his co-founding of the Ark Institute focused on biomedical research, and his recent appointment to Meta's board amid its AI team restructuring.

Discussion Points:

• Abundance Agenda:

  • [04:09] Patrick Collison: "The rate of improvement of life expectancies has really diminished. We haven't cured even the common cold."
  • [07:52] Patrick Collison: "If you could spend those dollars however you want, how much would your research agenda change? 79% would change their research agenda a lot."

• Agentic Commerce and Stripe’s Role:

  • [10:09] Kevin Roos: "You are on the board of Meta, which is currently reshuffling its AI teams, building a superintelligence team and reportedly offering people $100 million to come work for them. Have you been helping with that?"
  • [11:10] Patrick Collison: "Stripe enables the transactions and the money movement beneath the surface. We're enthusiastic about reinvention here."

• Cryptocurrency and Stablecoins:

  • [12:53] Patrick Collison: "Stablecoins might enable people outside the US to access the dollar in ways they couldn’t previously."
  • [14:32] Casey Noon: "Coles cash comes to mind."
  • [14:37] Patrick Collison: Discusses the impact of stablecoins on global currencies and their potential to support the dollar’s dominance.

• Ark Institute and Biomedical Research:

  • [15:09] Patrick Collison: "Humanity has never cured a complex disease... We set up the Ark Institute to try a different strategy for tackling these diseases."
  • [17:21] Patrick Collison: Introduces the concept of a "virtual cell" to accelerate biological experiments using AI.

• Book Recommendations and Perspectives:

  • [23:37] Patrick Collison: Recommends "The Dream Machine" for understanding the history of the Internet and "The Demon Under the Microscope" for insights into antibiotic development.

• Lightning Round:

  • [21:31 - 24:46] Short, rapid-fire questions covering topics like longevity predictions, desired AI capabilities, hiring traits at Stripe, and book recommendations.

Notable Quotes:

• [04:09] Patrick Collison: "The rate of improvement of life expectancies has really diminished."
• [12:57] Patrick Collison: "The promise for these agents sounds very promising... it’s going to be better for everyone."
• [15:11] Patrick Collison: "Humanity has never cured a complex disease... We set up the Ark Institute to try a different strategy."
• [17:21] Patrick Collison: "The idea behind a virtual cell is to enable accurate computational predictions very quickly, very cheaply."

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3. Demonstration with Kathryn Zealand of Skip [26:35 – 36:15]

Introduction to Kathryn Zealand: Kathryn Zealand, founder and CEO of Skip, showcases her company's innovative exoskeleton movewear designed to assist individuals with mobility impairments.

Product Features:

• The Mogo:
  • [27:10] Kathryn Zealand: "Our first product, the Mogo, is aimed at people who want to go hiking but may be struggling with knee pain or reduced mobility."
  • [27:58] Kathryn Zealand: Explains the lightweight motors in the pants that provide up to 40% of a healthy person's muscle force, assisting with movements like standing up and climbing stairs.

Live Demonstration:

• [32:02 – 36:15] Kevin and Casey try on the robot pants, experiencing enhanced mobility. The demonstration includes climbing a StairMaster with the assistance of the exoskeleton pants, showcasing both the benefits and challenges of integrating such technology.

Notable Interaction:

• [34:03] Patrick Collison (Kathryn Zealand): "Now you can try standing up and sitting back down. It’s like having a spotter at the gym."
• [34:18] Katherine Zeland: "Have you talked to anyone who has a realistic timeline and roadmap for personal assistant robots?"

Product Availability:

• [35:27] Kathryn Zealand: "You can find us at skipwithjoy.com. The pants are available for pre-order at $5,000, with plans to reduce the price through improved supply chains."

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4. Listener Questions and Discussions [25:25 – 57:15]

After the main interviews and demonstration, the hosts engage with live audience members and address listener-submitted questions.

Key Topics Addressed:

• AI in Education:

  • Listener Question [42:07] by a 13-year-old student: "How much AI should be integrated into classrooms?"
  • [42:55] Kevin Roos: Advocates for AI literacy, emphasizing the need for schools to teach critical thinking alongside AI usage.
  • Casey Noon: "Real friends over AI friends is what I would say."

• Technological Impact on Society:

  • [39:31] Listener Question: Concerns about the rapid pace of technological change and its societal impacts.
  • [43:58] Casey Noon: Highlights the necessity for public participation in regulating AI, expressing skepticism about industry-led regulation.

• Regulation and Ethical Concerns:

  • [48:51] Kevin Roos: Discusses the ethical implications of AI in military applications and the challenges of ensuring responsible AI development.
  • Casey Noon: "We cannot trust the industry to lead this; regulation must come from public and governmental bottom-up initiatives."

• Artificial General Intelligence (AGI):

  • [54:32] Listener Question: Definition and implications of AGI.
  • [55:59] Casey Noon: Views AGI as AI that can handle routine tasks, allowing humans to focus on creative and critical thinking.

• Wealth Distribution and Tech Optimism:

  • [52:15] Listener Question: Concerns about the redistribution of wealth generated by AI advancements.
  • [53:37] Kevin Roos: Criticizes the assumption that technological wealth will naturally "trickle down" without deliberate policy interventions.

Notable Quotes:

• [42:55] Kevin Roos: "AI literacy is a really important thing for schools to be teaching."
• [48:04] Casey Noon: "Facial recognition technology is already basically perfect. You combine that with AI systems, things get dark in a hurry."
• [53:33] Casey Noon: "Preach it."
• [54:02] Kevin Roos: "During the Industrial Revolution... workers did not see the benefits for 50 years."

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5. Conclusion and Final Interactions [57:15 – End]

The episode wraps up with final listener interactions and acknowledgments. Kathryn Zealand expresses her gratitude for the opportunity to present Skip's exoskeleton pants. The hosts emphasize the importance of community engagement and feedback in shaping the future of technology.

Final Remarks:

• [57:57] Acey Noon: "Hard Fork is produced by Rachel Cohn and Whitney Jones. We're edited by Jen Poyant... You can watch this whole episode on YouTube and subscribe at YouTube.com/hardfork."

Closing Quotes:

• [50:04] Katherine Zeland: "Have you thought about regulation and safety in AI?"

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Key Takeaways:

1. Abundance Agenda: Patrick Collison emphasizes the urgent need for accelerated progress in various scientific and technological domains to improve life expectancies and address complex diseases.

2. Agentic Commerce: Stripe's role in facilitating diverse transaction modalities ensures adaptability to future commerce models, including AI-driven agents.

3. Exoskeleton Technology: Kathryn Zealand showcases how wearable robotics can significantly aid individuals with mobility challenges, demonstrating both the potential and current limitations of the technology.

4. AI in Society: The discussion highlights critical concerns about AI's rapid advancement, its integration into education, ethical implications, and the necessity for robust regulatory frameworks to mitigate unintended consequences.

5. Wealth Redistribution: There is a pressing need to address how the financial benefits of technological advancements, especially AI, can be equitably distributed to prevent societal disparities.

6. Public Engagement: The episode underscores the importance of public participation and informed discourse in shaping the responsible development and deployment of emerging technologies.

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This episode of "Hard Fork" provides an insightful exploration into the intersecting realms of fintech innovation with Stripe, wearable robotics with Skip, and the broader societal implications of AI and technological progress. Through engaging interviews, live demonstrations, and thoughtful audience interactions, hosts Kevin Roos and Casey Noon facilitate a comprehensive dialogue on navigating the future of technology responsibly.

Transcript

[IBM Sponsor]

This podcast is supported by IBM.

[IBM Advertiser]

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[IBM Sponsor]

The podcast's inaugural event was sponsored by premier sponsor IBM, associate sponsor Invesco QQQ and supporting sponsor Intuit QuickBooks.

[Kevin Roos]

Well, Casey, what was your favorite part of Hard Fork Live?

[Casey Noon]

I mean, there's so many things to choose from, Kevin. I think one thing comes to mind was when I showed up at the venue and they had no idea who I was and didn't want to let me in. I went right up to the security, I said, hi, I'm Casey. I'm here to co host the show. And they said, who? I said, oh, gosh, am have to pull up a website on my phone and show you my face. And I did. And then they let me in.

[Kevin Roos]

That's good.

[Casey Noon]

What was your favorite part?

[Kevin Roos]

I told them not to let you in. That's why that happened.

[Casey Noon]

Dang it, Rus, you got me again, you scoundrel.

[Kevin Roos]

My favorite part was definitely. So we had this bit where we're changing out of our regular pants into some mechanical robot exoskeleton pants for a demo. And we had practiced this the day before during rehearsal in sort of like an empty backstage area. And I'm taking off my pants, and I look up and there's Patrick Collison just looking at my fleshy, pale thighs.

[Casey Noon]

I know. Yeah. One of, like, Silicon Valley's great thinkers and leaders. And there we are, our trousers dropped, and he's thinking, what kind of show is this? Exactly. Yeah. So suffice to say, you know, if you weren't backstage at Hard Fork Live, you didn't see the whole show.

[Kevin Roos]

I'm Kevin Roos, a tech columnist at the New York Times. I'm Casey Noon from Platformer, and this is Hard Fork.

[Casey Noon]

This week, it's part two of Hard Fork Live. We'll talk to Stripe CEO Patrick Collison and try on some robot pants with Skip's Katherine Zeland. Plus, members of the live audience ask us anything.

[Kevin Roos]

Anything.

[Casey Noon]

And they did. Well, this next guest I'm extremely excited about. I have known Patrick Collison and his brother John since the early 2010s. They were recently arrived in the city. They were starting to build a company called Stripe and in the years since, it has grown into a juggernaut. And Patrick, I think has become one of the most interesting and influential thinkers in tech and outside of his day job. He and Tyler Cowen wrote a piece in the Atlantic about the need for a new science of progress. He also is the co founder of the Ark Institute, which is doing a bunch of really important biomedical research. And just to top it off, in April he joined the board of Meta, which is currently reshuffling its AI team in ways that might be fun to talk about. So I'm extremely excited to welcome to the stage Patrick Collison.

[Kevin Roos]

Hey.

[Patrick Collison]

It'S real.

[Casey Noon]

Hi, how are you?

[Patrick Collison]

Hey, good to see you.

[Casey Noon]

All right, Patrick, thank you so much for coming.

[IBM Sponsor]

Thanks for having me.

[Casey Noon]

How are you?

[IBM Sponsor]

I'm doing well. It's wonderful to be here where I've come to so many long now talks here and now it's you guys.

[Casey Noon]

There is no longer now than a podcast is what they say.

[Kevin Roos]

So, Patrick, you are a big proponent of what they call the abundance agenda. I think I can say that without paying a royalty to Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. What is the most urgent abundance related need right now? Is it housing? Land use? Fast tracking approvals for new drugs? What is it building and why is that?

[IBM Sponsor]

Well, I think, look, there are so many domains where we need more progress than we've garnered. The rate of improvement of life expectancies has really diminished. And there are still. You still get colds. That's crazy. Run a trajectory supposedly to invent nuclear fusion and AGI and so many. But we haven't cured even the common cold. So there are a lot of challenges we face in many domains. There are many pursuits in science and technology where we should be going much faster. However, I think the place where the constraints are most unnecessary, most self imposed and easiest to, at least in principle easiest to address are in any kind of physical construction. And like by the way, California and San Francisco used to stand for this, right? You know, we have the Kaiser signs around the bay and the like Marin ship was in California. Those stories of the ships that got built in a day, like they happened here. And so I think California is kind of this funny superposition where in the 40s, 50s. I mean, actually my favorite example of this is Treasure island we built to celebrate the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. We were just so, you know, drunk on the fervor of having finished the Golden Gate Bridge. We were just caught up in the momentum of it and we're like, well, let's just go build another thing. And so we built an island. And so California and San Francisco used to stand for this and now California. My favorite example of this is we passed the ballot prop for California high speed rail and they used to have on the website, you have to go there and the forecast completion date was 2033. And now I just checked recently and they've now taken it down. So it used to be a 37 year project and now who knows?

[Kevin Roos]

Yeah, it's so interesting. I was interviewing someone once about their AI forecast and how everything was going to change in the next two or three years. We were going to have super intelligence as a robot factories. And we're sitting in Berkeley and looking out over the Berkeley sort of downtown. And I said, do you think any of that will get permitted by zoning? And he was like, no. So even the people thinking about the wildest possible futures cannot imagine land use reform in the Bay Area.

[IBM Sponsor]

Yeah, well, another I think kind of funny example of this was, you know, there was the sort of announced aspirational city project in Solano county back a couple years ago. You guys covered it on the podcast. But I thought kind of the response was sort of funny where thousands of times in its history, and you know, America's history is only a couple hundred years, America decided, hey, let's build a city. And that is a thing that has in fact ensued. And you know, there is a city there today. And it's happened even reasonably recently with Irvine and so forth. But the response to that was astonishment and people aghast. And that kind of audacity was kind of offensive. But when somebody says, hey, we're going to create superintelligence, populate the cosmos, we're like, yep, seems pretty reasonable. When someone says we're going to build a new city in California, it's like, that's just ridiculous.

[Casey Noon]

I mean, I do think that there is an element separate from that, which is that with a lot of tech, I think some folks just feel like they've gotten a bad bargain, right? Maybe with social media they don't quite like the bargain that they've gotten or they worry about the environmental impact of some of these technologies. And so sometimes I do think technologists come along and they say, we want to take a crack at this. And people just think, I don't actually trust you to do that. And I imagine you have done some thinking about this. As somebody who is trying to bring your influence to bear on public issues. So how do you, how do you reckon with that?

[IBM Sponsor]

Well, I. Yeah, you have the homework, our problem, nobody wants it. Yeah. So I think that in. Are they in many domains, I think it's the case that if you go and you talk to the insiders and the people who've been plowing some lonely furrow for a long time, they are brimming with ideas for how it could be done better. And it's not a matter of somebody careering in from outside with some delusions of grandeur and some sense for how it could all be done differently. I think in many cases it's actually about unleashing the ideas inside the system that are existing and not yet manifested. One of my favorite examples, and one of the most striking examples of this is we ran a survey a couple of years ago of practicing top tier scientists and we asked them not whether you had more money, but if you could spend your current funding dollars however you like. Because today funding dollars come with all sorts of restrictions and they're allocated by committees and by consensus and with kind of tight field definitions and so forth. We asked these scientists if you could keep your current funding level, but if you could spend those dollars however you want, how much would your research agenda change? And I thought that the results might be striking. Maybe a third of scientists would actually like to be doing something else. 79% of respondents in that survey said they would change the research agenda a lot. And that just blew my mind because we go to, I mean these scientists are so self sacrificing, like they could go and make a bajillion dollars or these days, $100 bajillion dollars by doing something more lucrative. And they've decided to try to better humanity by working inside the academy. They spend decades training and then 4, 80% are telling us that they would be doing something very different again, not if they had more money, but if they had fewer strictures attached to their current money. So I think that's one striking ex that was one of the influences for ark. But I think in many of these cases, whether it's urban design and urban planning or any kind of construction or whatever, I think the insiders often know how to do it a lot better.

[Kevin Roos]

You mentioned the 100 million figure, so I have to ask, you are on the board of Meta, which is currently reshuffling its AI teams, building a super intelligence team and reportedly offering people $100 million to come work for them. Have you been helping with that. And what kind of advice are you giving to Mark Zuckerberg about that?

[IBM Sponsor]

You add the payments guy to the board and then all of a sudden, yeah, I've just had one board member, excuse me, one, so I shouldn't comment.

[Kevin Roos]

Okay, well, let me ask you about something you can't comment on then, which is this idea of agentic commerce, which I've heard a bunch of times recently, and I think it means something like robots buying stuff. This is a big idea in the tech industry right now, that you're just going to have these bots going out and buying things on your behalf, or that there's going to be agents transacting with each other. Right Now, Stripe is a platform to help people, human beings, pay for things. But I can go on operator and have it buy me a pizza or a burrito. I imagine if you have two hours.

[Casey Noon]

For it to complete that process, I.

[Kevin Roos]

Imagine you're planning for a world in which this kind of thing is happening more. What does that look like? And is Stripe still necessary in that world?

[IBM Sponsor]

Well, look, Stripe enables the transactions and the money movement beneath the surface. And so we're to some extent agnostic about and enthusiastic about all the different modalities in which that might happen. And when Stripe started, mobile wasn't nearly as big a thing as it is today, today, and stablecoins didn't exist and so forth. So we're enthusiastic about the reinvention here. And from my standpoint, the variety that one can benefit from on the Internet is tremendous. And I think it's amazing that you can have so many niche businesses that are serving these preposterously large global, you know, audiences and customer bases that couldn't exist without the Internet. Right. Because if you're only restricted to the hinterland that you locally serve, you know, you get much less as possible. But very few people say, you know, the thing I love about Internet commerce is after I like, click on the thing that I, you know, I'm brought to sort of a checkout flow. Yeah, like a 30 field form, you know, to fill out and then fax it and, you know, parts of it in Latin, like, it just, it feels very antiquated. And so I think the promise for these, I mean, I don't know, I think agents sounds very kind of highfalutin, but these critters to go and to sort of be the paperwork minions for you to sort of Dispatch 1 and say, hey, go handle that and then I will resume whatever else I was doing. I think that's very Promising. And I think it's going to be better for everyone.

[Kevin Roos]

Will the agents use dollars or crypto?

[IBM Sponsor]

Well, I know I'm here with well known crypto booster but I think they will use amount denominated in the local currency. So I think in the US things will be in dollars and euros in Ireland and so forth. And I think there's kind of an irony where with the invention of cryp, I mean it is an amazing kind of computer science invention and technology and so forth. Obviously the sort of initial conception of Bitcoin was, you know, we're going to throw off the shackles of our, you know, of the monetary tyranny and oppression that we're sort of subjected to and liberate ourselves with this new currency. And you look at Bitcoin has obviously garnered a lot of traction, but a majority of cryptocurrency transactions today are in stablecoins are dollar denominated. And I think it might be the case with stablecoins. What actually happens is rather than kind of overthrowing the dollar, it actually enables people outside the US to access the dollar in ways they couldn't previously. I think this is the biggest thing that's actually underappreciated by people here in America, which is for outsiders, lots of currencies are not a great thing to hold savings at or not a great thing to transact in. Like for no, I don't want to name names and single any poor currency out. But like, you know, there are many currencies where when you go to give them to your counterparty, they look at you funny and asking what is that?

[Casey Noon]

Coles cash comes to mind.

[IBM Sponsor]

And there's a lot of currencies that have lost 75% of their value in the last five years. And so providing the ability for people outside the US to hold dollars is I think could be a big deal. I think there's kind of an irony in crypto where one of the most important and consequential things it may end up enabling is the dollar's greater success.

[Casey Noon]

You are co founder of the Ark Institute. You mentioned it a moment ago. You also mentioned the persistent problem of the common cold. Do you think there is something that can be done about the common cold? And are you going to work on it?

[IBM Sponsor]

We have a big announcement tonight. No.

[Kevin Roos]

So that would be so dope.

[Casey Noon]

That.

[IBM Sponsor]

Mist on the way in was actually a vaccine. So humanity has. This was only a penny that dropped for me a couple of years ago. Humanity has never cured a complex disease. And what I mean by that is, there are some genes that are, excuse me, there are some diseases, infectious diseases, the cold, Covid, what have you. Then we have monogenic diseases, Huntington's, things that are the product of some specific genetic abnormality. But then you have all these diseases that are some combination of the environment and what you do with your life and genetic risk factors you might have. So this is most cancers, most cardiovascular disease, most neurodegenerative disease, most autoimmune disease and so forth. Anyway, we've never cured one of these. It's too complicated because figuring out how the genes in the environment and the durations that elapse and so forth, it's just kind of, it's incorrigible. So we set up arkinstitute to try to. I mean, again, no time will tell whether actually able to make any progress here. But the idea was, hey, can we try a different strategy for going after these complex diseases? And one of the things that has been a real boost for us over the last two years is actually AI, where I think the LLMs as we interact with them, they're obviously wonderful and enable all sorts of productivity enhancements and so forth. But there's another language, DNA, the language of life. And kind of. Hitherto we haven't really. It's billions of base pairs and we can't at a human level understand what's going on there. It's kind of beyond what any individual can comprehend. And what we've seen with some early work. We published our first virtual cell model yesterday, actually by coincidence.

[Kevin Roos]

Yeah, tell us about that. What is a virtual cell?

[IBM Sponsor]

So why haven't we cured cancer or any again, complex disease? I mean, on some level, the problem is that experiments in biology are slow and expensive. Like you're dealing with actual physical cells and you have to wait for them to grow. And so if you have some hypothesis or some idea, you do things to the cells and then you wait three months, you wait six months, you have to purchase the reagents, the ingredients, they're expensive. The supply chains span multiple countries, so it's laborious. So in software and engineering, you have an idea, you write a quick command to the command line and 10 milliseconds later you have your response. In biology, that repl. Takes months to elapse. And so the idea behind a virtual cell, and this is not, you know, others have had this idea, this is not arc's idea. The kind of core idea is if you actually had a useful, accurate way to perform kind of computational experiments where you try the thing that in accordance with your hypothesis in silico, as the biologists say, because they always like to make things complicated and fancy. But really, if you just like, computationally do your thing, then again, if that was actually accurate, it would be an enormous accelerant. So anyway, that's the kind of idea we haven't until recently. Is this too much biology?

[Casey Noon]

No, we like it.

[IBM Sponsor]

Okay, all right, you guys like biology? In the last. One more thing. I'll stop. But in the last couple of years, we've got sort of technologies in three different domains that are really important. So with, you know, a computer is composed of the ability to, you know, to read, to, to think, to compute, whatever, and then to write. That's the core three operations in biology in the last just couple years. We've got the ability to sequence individual cells to figure out what's going on in just like one cell, which is a big deal. We've gotten deep neural networks and transformers and all that stuff, so we can think over data of very significant complexity. And then we've had huge advances in functional genomics and CRISPR and the ability to make individual edits to individual cells. And so those are all big breakthroughs in their own right. But when you put them together, there's kind of this shimmering potential promise that, hey, maybe you could, for the first time, enable these accurate computational predictions very quickly, very cheaply. And again, if that worked, it'd be a huge deal on biology. You guys don't type if it works.

[Casey Noon]

You are a voracious reader. What is your case for reading the whole book instead of an AI summary? Or is that not a case you would make?

[IBM Sponsor]

Gosh, I.

[Casey Noon]

Well.

[IBM Sponsor]

I think reading the AI summary, I think it can be useful. I think it has a powerfully inoculating effect. I think TV is a waste. Like long form tv, lots of episodes. TV is a waste of time.

[Casey Noon]

We told you there would be hot.

[IBM Sponsor]

Takes tonight, but it's very tempting, right? Like you watch an episode and like, oh, geez, I really want to know what happens here. And so I discovered a couple years ago, obviously the solution is you immediately go to Wikipedia and read the entire summary of the season and you're cured of the desire to watch any more episodes. So there is a. I think there is a therapeutic benefit to AI summaries.

[Kevin Roos]

That is the most San Francisco thing I've ever heard.

[IBM Sponsor]

But I love it. But one does not derive any deep pleasure or betterment from it. So I've never written an AI book summary.

[Casey Noon]

Yeah.

[Kevin Roos]

All right, Patrick, can we do some lightning round questions.

[IBM Sponsor]

Okay.

[Kevin Roos]

What age?

[IBM Sponsor]

When do I get to ask for the stripe feedback?

[Casey Noon]

Oh, well, you're a stripe customer. I am a stripe customer, actually. Very quickly. You're doing automated disputes now.

[IBM Sponsor]

Yes.

[Casey Noon]

Very excited to try this.

[IBM Sponsor]

Okay, good.

[Casey Noon]

All right.

[IBM Sponsor]

And everything else is working well.

[Casey Noon]

Everything's also working great.

[Kevin Roos]

All right, lightning round questions. What age will the median child born in 2025 in the US live to be.

[IBM Sponsor]

25 today?

[Casey Noon]

Yeah.

[IBM Sponsor]

Yeah. Gosh, 95.

[Casey Noon]

Great. What is one thing you wish an agent could do, an AI agent could do for you reliably that it can't quite yet?

[IBM Sponsor]

Reason over the scientific literature. It gets tripped up in the paywalls.

[Kevin Roos]

Ooh.

[Casey Noon]

Well, we know how.

[IBM Sponsor]

And I think like, why hasn't anyone in that space done anything about it?

[Kevin Roos]

We love paywalls in this house. Patrick, what trait do you hire for?

[IBM Sponsor]

Imagine if you'd critters paying at them on behalf of unsuspecting people.

[Kevin Roos]

Yeah, I love that. That's a business model for the media. I'm excited to present the critter strategy at the next meeting. What trait do you hire for that? Most companies undervalue.

[IBM Sponsor]

For stripe. We really care about long term thinking like infrastructure with a lightning round. But infrastructure can't happen overnight. We've been working on it for 15 years. We still feel like we're just starting. And so if somebody. Our products don't have TikTok trajectories and the super successful ones still take a decade to fully play out. And so I like the analogy that those kind of technology companies building cars and roads and we need cars and cars are super cool and beautiful and all the things, but someone's got to build the roads. And stripe looks for the kind of people who are predisposed to work on roads.

[Casey Noon]

Is there a book you read recently that made you say everyone I know needs to read this or even not that recently?

[IBM Sponsor]

I'll give you two. So the Dream Machine is like hands up here. Who feels like they really have a good understanding of the history of the international.

[Casey Noon]

Shame on you.

[IBM Sponsor]

It's funny, Alan Kay once commented that computer science of pop culture, he thought that we were kind of recapitulating the same ideas in blissful ignorance or history. And I think there is something kind of funny where we as technologists, we're not as into and fascinated by, I think our own history as people are in other domains. And so the Dream machine is the best history of the Internet and the kind of thinking around it and the motivations around it and it's also. Yeah, it's Polish rice, dry press. And then one I read reasonably recently that kind of blew my mind was the demon under the microscope, which was, you know, you all know that penicillin was the first antibiotic. Except it wasn't. There was one before us. It changed the world. The story behind its invention is very interesting. So those are my two and.

[Kevin Roos]

Great. Patrick Collinson, thank you so much for joining us.

[Casey Noon]

Thank you so much. Thank you.

[Kevin Roos]

Thank you.

[Casey Noon]

When we come back, even more of Hard Fork Live.

[IBM Sponsor]

This podcast is supported by IBM.

[IBM Advertiser]

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[Kevin Roos]

Well, Casey, we are wearing what I would call robot pants.

[Casey Noon]

Yeah, I think that's fair.

[Kevin Roos]

Yeah. And why are we wearing these robot pants?

[Casey Noon]

We are wearing these robot pants because it gives us a great excuse to talk to Katherine Zeland.

[Kevin Roos]

Yeah. So Katherine Zeland is the founder and CEO of Skip. They're the company that makes these pants. The company spun out of X, the Google experimental research division, not the social media network owned by elon Musk in 2023. And since then, she's been working on this exoskeleton movewear, like these pants, which have been called E bikes for walking. Let's bring on Katherine Zealand from Skip.

[Casey Noon]

Thank you, Kathryn.

[Patrick Collison]

Of course. Thank you. Good to see you.

[Kevin Roos]

You guys didn't see, but backstage, we just did the best quick change in. In theater history.

[Casey Noon]

I just took my pants off in front of Patrick Hollison. So, Kathryn, in a few words, tell us who your products are for and what problem you're hoping to solve.

[Patrick Collison]

So I'm sure I'm not the only one here who's got a loved one that struggled with movement, or maybe you've got knee pain or had an injury. And so at Skip, what we want to do long term is help anyone achieve whatever they want to do, regardless of any kind of mobility impairment. This is our first product. This is the Mogo, and this is actually aimed at people who want to go hiking, but often they may be struggling a little bit, either with knee pain or with reduced mobility. So an E bike is a really great analogy, just kind of particularly helps with the inclines, steep hills and stairs, things like that. But then eventually we'll help, hopefully everyone.

[Casey Noon]

So tell us what is in these pants? Folks who may be sitting a little further back may not be able to see. But in addition to these pants, which I believe you partnered with Arcturix to make these pants, there's also some pretty heavy machinery on here. So what is this stuff doing?

[Patrick Collison]

Yeah, so the real magic is kind of these lightweight motors. Here's one I prepared earlier. And really it's only in the last decade or so that robotics has gotten efficient enough, affordable enough, light enough, you can have something this small that can do up to maybe 40% of like a healthy person's muscle forces. And so there's a motor that's kind of providing physical, automatic. And then built into the pant, those near the front can maybe see this sort of a little bit of a cuff situation to help transfer that force to the body.

[Casey Noon]

And I know that one of the things that these pants can do is help you stand up, which you were sort of explaining to me, is so helpful for folks who are older and need some help with that. And I thought, I need that help now. So I think your market may actually be larger than you first suspected.

[Patrick Collison]

Yeah, and I'm actually having a similar problem because I don't know if you noticed, but I'm quite pregnant and I.

[Kevin Roos]

Wasn'T going to say anything.

[Casey Noon]

Thank you. It's eight months. Katherine joined us at eight months pregnant, so please do give her a round of applause.

[Patrick Collison]

And all of a sudden, yes, I also need help walking upstairs and standing up out of chairs.

[Kevin Roos]

Now, do you envision a world where lots of people are wearing kind of exoskeleton type movewear or do you think this will primarily be for people who have mobility issues?

[Patrick Collison]

I think a bit of both. So I think if you're truly able bodied, a product like this is probably just not worth your time necessarily. But there's a huge range of people who might be recovering from an injury, they might be pregnant, they might have a joint pain, they might have had a surgery. And so I think probably most people at some point in their life will use one of these products. And we also do R and D and things like Parkinson's disease and people who have more severe issues as well. But for sure, it's much broader than the first set of products that you're.

[Casey Noon]

Seeing coming on now as this technology develops and you're able to shrink it down. Do you see a world where more able bodied people might just choose to wear it because they like feeling a little bionic when they Walk around town.

[Patrick Collison]

I was gonna say, are you trying to dunk a basketball? Is that.

[Casey Noon]

I've been trying since 1992.

[Patrick Collison]

For sure. Yes. But I would say, like, if you just want to make your exercise harder, because this is something that some people ask are like, oh, can I get resistance mode? You could also try ankle weights. I think they're gonna make a comeback. Yeah, that's good.

[Kevin Roos]

Now, exoskeletons are a staple of science fiction. I remember watching movies as a kid that had exoskeletons and lots of other stuff in those movies has become commonplace. But not exoskeletons. And this kind of hardware. So why is this taking longer than other types of futuristic technology?

[Patrick Collison]

I think there's two reasons. One is that hardware is hard, and people are really sensitive to what's on their body. Right? So, I mean, you're wearing, like, an early version of the prototype, and it's probably not super comfortable. You know, the fit's not always perfect, and you might tolerate, like, an ugly or an imperfect robot if it's just kind of in a factory. But when you've got to wear something, it's important that it's comfortable, that it fits really well, that it looks good. So the bar is really high for anything that's worn. I think the second reason is around AI. And so, you know, historically, exoskeletons are all robotics do very repetitive tasks. Right. Like in a warehouse, doing lifting was one of the first places you saw exoskeletons actually become used, because it's the same task again and again. But when you think about maybe an older adult who wants to move about their community, they're doing lots of different movements, and they're moving in weird ways. And I'm like a fidgeter. So in one of our early prototypes, I was sitting at a very important meeting with my boss, and I was tapping my foot because I was a bit nervous, and all of a sudden it thought I was trying to stand up, and it turns on, and it, like, throws my leg up, and the whole table goes, and everyone's water spills, and there's chaos.

[Kevin Roos]

That was actually the plot of Megan 2.0 that happened there.

[Casey Noon]

Okay, well, so we've talked a bit about this product. Anything else we should know about it before we see what it can do?

[Patrick Collison]

You find the disclaimer right backstage?

[Kevin Roos]

No, no, we're just gonna wing it.

[Casey Noon]

Excellent.

[Kevin Roos]

So, Leah, let's stand up and maybe take us through.

[IBM Sponsor]

Yeah.

[Patrick Collison]

So start by turning it on even while you're sitting. If you want. There's a little button at the back here. Press and release. And the LEDs should change.

[Kevin Roos]

Mine is already blue. Does that mean it's on?

[Casey Noon]

No, that means it's.

[Patrick Collison]

Yeah.

[Casey Noon]

Now you're. Whoa.

[Kevin Roos]

Hello.

[Patrick Collison]

And so now you can try standing up and sitting back down is, like, a very common movement.

[Kevin Roos]

Okay. I feel like I'm. Yeah, this is giving Mecha. Yeah, I feel like.

[Patrick Collison]

Yeah, you can just.

[Casey Noon]

It actually is helping me stand up and take it off.

[Kevin Roos]

No, this is great. I feel. Yeah. Like, you know when you have, like, a spotter at the gym, you wouldn't know. It's like. It's like that feeling when you're just getting a little boost.

[Patrick Collison]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But the problem is you both strike me as quite fit, healthy people.

[Kevin Roos]

Oh, thank you.

[Casey Noon]

Oh, we're always hearing that.

[Patrick Collison]

Exactly. So we were trying to think, like, what's a way that we could make this a little bit more challenging for you so you really can appreciate the technology. So I don't. Have you noticed that there's a StairMaster behind Junior Master?

[Kevin Roos]

I did. Can I try?

[Patrick Collison]

Yeah.

[Kevin Roos]

With my. Okay, please clap.

[Casey Noon]

Yeah.

[Kevin Roos]

Wow, it's. Yeah, it's. Wow, we're really doing it. Okay, let's put the stairs on. Okay.

[Patrick Collison]

So, you know, like, about a level three or four.

[Kevin Roos]

Okay. I'm at five. I like to live on the edge.

[Patrick Collison]

Great. Great.

[Kevin Roos]

Okay. It's good. It's like. I feel like what I'm doing is not climbing stairs. It's like climbing stairs adjacent. It's sort of like the physical equivalent of vibe coding. I'm vibe walking.

[Patrick Collison]

That's right.

[Kevin Roos]

Okay.

[Patrick Collison]

And one problem we have is, like, your brain is amazingly good at getting used to a new feeling. And so sometimes people. They're not even sure how much it's helping. So if you want, we could turn it off, and then you might see the difference.

[Kevin Roos]

Oh, you're gonna remotely disable it?

[Casey Noon]

Yeah, please.

[Patrick Collison]

I'm not saying we can. If you want.

[Kevin Roos]

No, do it. Do it. I wanna experience this on my own two feet.

[Patrick Collison]

All right, we're gonna turn you off in three, two, one, Off.

[Kevin Roos]

Oh, yeah, that's much harder. I don't like that. Can you turn it back on?

[Patrick Collison]

You want it back on?

[Kevin Roos]

Yes. This is how you get your customers. They can't go back.

[Patrick Collison]

This is genuinely how I want.

[Kevin Roos]

I heard of the hedonic treadmill, but this is ridiculous.

[Patrick Collison]

Okay, you're back on that.

[Casey Noon]

Okay.

[Patrick Collison]

Is that a bit easier?

[Kevin Roos]

That's good. That's good. Thank you.

[Casey Noon]

I mean, I Think that was all right? You know, I don't know that it could have been done better.

[Kevin Roos]

Oh, would you like to try?

[Casey Noon]

Would it be okay if I tried? Hey, it's Casey. Just cutting in from the studio here, and you're not gonna hear it in the podcast, but I do wanna tell you what happened immediately after this, which is that I challenged Kevin to see if I could do better on the Stairmaster wearing the robot pants. And I did, while accompanied to the song Work Bitch by Britney Spears. For copyright reasons, we're not going to include that in the show, but you can just kind of hum it to yourself or maybe play it on Spotify later today. I think when I kick my legs up, the Stairmaster stopped because it was afraid for me.

[Patrick Collison]

Yeah. But it's always a good sign when the worst part of our demo that goes wrong is the Stairmaster. So that's a win.

[Casey Noon]

Absolutely.

[Kevin Roos]

That was incredible. Now, Katherine, tell people where they can find out more about these pants if they're interested.

[Patrick Collison]

Yeah, so we're skip. So skipwithjoy.com, i presume that'll be in the show notes and you can pre order them now. We'll be shipping next year and we also do rentals and experiences, especially for folk who really want to achieve a dream hike, but they're not able to at the moment. We're trying to help them do that and get feedback.

[Casey Noon]

And how much for the pants?

[Patrick Collison]

A bit like an e bike. So $5,000. Bearish.

[Casey Noon]

Okay. And what would it take to bring that price maybe down a little.

[Patrick Collison]

It would either take a discount code, if you know me, which I feel like we're all now friends. Yeah. Or, you know, improved international supply chains, which is a different conversation.

[Kevin Roos]

All right, well, Katherine, thank you so much for joining us. We really had a great time. Thank you.

[Casey Noon]

This works so fun. Thank you. Thank you. Well, Kevin, as we say at the end of so many podcast segments, it's time to get out of these pants.

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This podcast is supported by IBM.

[IBM Advertiser]

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[Kevin Roos]

Casey, what's next?

[Casey Noon]

Well, I Know what you're thinking, which is, can the show possibly go on longer? And yes, it can, because here's the thing. And this. I mean, from the bottom of my heart, the very best thing about this show is hearing from you all. It's. Look, when two men decide they love the sound of their own voices enough to start a podcast, you never know if you're gonna hear anything back. But you guys email us each and every week, and we just wanted to talk to you directly. So here's what's gonna happen. We have some people with roving microphones. They're gonna be sort of scurrying around, and if you wanna ask us something, you can ask us now. And we're gonna let it go on for a little bit. So, I don't know, let's get the energy up, ask fun questions. If you have more of a comment, maybe save that for an Apple review. But we're excited to hear what's on your mind. And can I say, those of you who are wearing your Hard Fork hats, you look so beautiful, so good. What a memory you're creating for me. Okay, great. Now, does anyone have a question for the Hard Fork program? We have one right here. Sort of middle vamp a little while she's going up the stairs. Kevin, no. All right, we're good. Okay. This is a very hard question. Last week, you introduced the nickname Chapatiti. Chapatiti, yes.

[Patrick Collison]

Which I have been using frequently.

[Casey Noon]

And I would like to know what.

[IBM Sponsor]

Nickname you would use for each of the popular models.

[Patrick Collison]

Oh.

[Casey Noon]

Let'S see.

[Kevin Roos]

I'm gonna let you handle that one, Mr. Improv.

[Casey Noon]

Well, of course. I feel like Geminini is kind of right there. Bingaling a ling.

[Kevin Roos]

I think sometimes I do say Claud, just because I think it's like more of the authentic pronunciation.

[Casey Noon]

Make it two syllables. Thank you for asking that. I'm serious.

[Kevin Roos]

That was the right energy.

[Casey Noon]

Okay, what else would you like to know? Let's see. I see one back here. Oh, I see one right here.

[Kevin Roos]

Who's pointing here?

[Casey Noon]

You know what? You point this one.

[Kevin Roos]

Okay, let's go right there.

[Patrick Collison]

Hi. I love listening to you guys, so thank you. It's a highlight of my week. I feel like you have a better or a broader view of what's happening in the industry than maybe a lot of us do. So I might bring the vibe down a little bit. But what are you the most concerned about when you look at these evolving.

[Kevin Roos]

Technologies and how they'll impact our lives? I think I'm most worried about the pace of Change. I used to feel like when I left San Francisco, I was, like, going back in time about 18 months to anywhere else in the world, just in terms of the stuff we have here, the cars drive themselves, blah, blah, blah. Now I feel like that gap is opening up, and I'm really worried that that society as a whole is just not prepared either in terms of safety nets for people who may lose their jobs as a result of AI or other technologies, just in terms of it takes a lot of energy to absorb this much change all at once. And I'm not sure people fully grasp what's happening. And I also. We've been around the block. I know that even the best intended technological projects have unintended consequences. So we saw this happen with social media. All these companies said, we're going to save the world and connect the world and everything's going to be great. And we've seen what's happened with that. So I hope that the folks in Silicon Valley, including some of the folks we've had on the stage tonight, are really thinking through some of the unintended consequences beforehand.

[Casey Noon]

Yeah. To the extent that anything that happened over the past decade just made you concerned about the ability of lawmakers to regulate technology. We're now heading into an era where I do believe the technology is going to be even more powerful than, like, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. We still have not answered a lot of basic questions about, for example, how do children use this product safely, when should they start using it, when should they stop using it? Right. We ran out of time. I really want to talk to Sam and Brad about the fact that the same week that they're signing a military contract, the same week that the Times is publishing a story about people experiencing these extreme mental health challenges with ChatGPT, they're signing a deal with Mattel, and they're saying, we're going to put it into toys. Now, I talked to OpenAI about that and they said, well, we're going to build choice for families first and kids 13 and up. But there are just a lot of unanswered questions here. And if I learned anything from the past 10 years, it's that you unfortunately cannot count on lawmakers to do any meaningful pushback. So, honestly, one of the reasons why we make this show is because we just like talking to you about here is a problem that no one actually has a plan for. So we'll keep doing that.

[Kevin Roos]

You following this great question?

[Casey Noon]

I will call this person right here, sort of in the dead center. It's gonna Be challenging to get the microphone.

[Kevin Roos]

Just toss the mic, just.

[Casey Noon]

No, this'll be fun. Everybody can sort of. How does the microphone get to this person? Okay, and we're gonna pass it down. And that's community. Beautiful. Hi, I'm Hendrick. I love this show. I listen to every week with my family. I'm a 13 year old student and I've always felt that I don't see much AI in my classrooms, in my friends classrooms. And I was curious just to get your guys opinion on how much AI.

[Patrick Collison]

You think maybe we should have in.

[Casey Noon]

The classroom and how we should integrate it. Because I can see it from the teacher's perspective that it's like plagiarism, there needs to be balancing act. But from my perspective and from how I've used it, I just feel like it's actually really useful. So I'm just curious to get your view.

[IBM Sponsor]

Thanks.

[Kevin Roos]

Yeah, it's a great question. I think this is really crucial. I think a lot of schools reacted to ChatGPT and other AI chatbots by just sort of trying to stamp it out, banning it, detecting it. I think that was a mistake. And they now many of them have sort of come around to trying to say how do we teach with this technology and about this technology. I think AI literacy is a really important thing for schools to be teaching because these are tools that people are going to be using in their jobs when they graduate and go out into the economy if there still are jobs. And I think it's really naive to think that you're just going to take it out of the classroom Now. I do think that teachers and schools need to revamp the way that they teach to sort of assume that people are going to have access to this stuff and maybe use class time more for discussion and face to face interaction and maybe assign homework differently. But I don't think this stuff is going away. And so I think the sort of enlightened schools are the ones that are sort of planning around its existence for the future.

[Casey Noon]

Yeah, thank you for the question. Thank you for listening. I think if I were 13 in this moment, the main thing that I would want to make sure that I took away from school was the ability to think critically. And I think the challenge is when I was in high school, I didn't know how good is good enough at critical thinking, you know what I mean? I do believe that the more you use AI as a substitute for reading, for writing, your critical thinking skills are not going to develop to where they otherwise otherwise might. And so I think that is a good reason to make sure that you are actually writing the essays that are assigned to you and reading one out of every three books that's assigned to you. And I'll say that while so much focus is on the school stuff right now, I think very soon the conversation is going to shift to AIs as companions. And I have to say, I'm so much more worried about folks your age who feel like ChatGPT is a better friend to them than anyone that they know in their real life. That is such a dark path, and nothing is preventing us from walking down that path right now. So real friends over AI friends is what I would say about. Okay, great questions. You call the next one.

[Kevin Roos]

Let's go up here, the balcony. Do we have a mic up there? No, I picked the hardest possible spot.

[Patrick Collison]

Okay. Oh, wow.

[Kevin Roos]

You need the robot pants.

[Casey Noon]

Thank you very much. Kevin and Casey, love the show. You guys are awesome. Of any of the stories that you've had in the last 18 months, I.

[Katherine Zeland]

Think about this a lot.

[Casey Noon]

Which one would make the best Black Mirror episode? The best Black Mirror episode to me, is just, you're trapped inside Italian brain rot. Like, you have an objective to accomplish, but you have to get Crocodilini Bombalini on board. Yeah, that comes to mind for me.

[Kevin Roos]

How about you? I think the AI friend stuff was. I liked when you had the conversation with Turing, my AI friend. He couldn't be here tonight, by the way, but he sends his regrets. It was a configuration error.

[Casey Noon]

Yeah.

[Kevin Roos]

So, yeah, that would be mine. Let's do a couple more. Casey, you're of kind call.

[Casey Noon]

Oh, how about right here? We didn't realize how big this venue was until we started asking people to run around with microphones, you know, like.

[Kevin Roos]

A T shirt cannon. Microphones.

[Casey Noon]

Hi. So you've had at least two different speakers tonight. Say that hardware is hard. And you showed us, you know, a partial expensive exoskeleton. And that's promising, but, you know, I really want the AI to get into a robot, a personal assistant, so that it can load my dishwasher, it can do the laundry, it'll fold the clothes, and it'll put them in the right drawer. Have you talked to anyone who has a realistic timeline and roadmap for this? It's funny. We talked to several robots. One thing we knew about this show was there was going to be a damn robot on stage. Okay. And we're so thrilled with Katherine bringing her rig, but there are a number of other companies in San Francisco who are working on Stuff like this. One of them is called physical intelligence. They've raised billions of dollars over the past several years. And the reason is that you can actually take a large language model, sort of similar to a ChatGPT, put it inside a robot, and it's much more useful than it was before. So that's kind of the reason that people think we're about to see this step change in function. But to your point, hardware is hard. I would say that in 20, 20, 28, you will probably still be folding your own laundry. But I could be wrong.

[IBM Sponsor]

I could be wrong.

[Kevin Roos]

All right, let's go right here.

[IBM Sponsor]

Less of a light question, but twice you mentioned that OpenAI has these new defense contracts, which to me is very concerning, especially when Homeland Security is, like, grabbing people off the street. So I'm curious if you know more.

[Kevin Roos]

Of the details of that and then.

[IBM Sponsor]

Just what your guys take. Our take is the way that these.

[Casey Noon]

Contracts tend to start is, like, there should be an AI assistant inside the Pentagon. And you could ask, like, what missile do I put on this jet? And it's like, you know, that's like, that's real. That's like. That's sort of what they are. And that's like the foot in the door. But to your point, like, yes, this goes, like, so many dark places so quickly. Facial recognition technology is already basically perfect. You combine that with AI systems, things get dark in a hurry. So, you know, I don't know what to tell you other than, like, yeah, I'm super worried about it. And I actually think that a role of journalism in this moment is just to point out what tech companies are doing with the military and, you know, writing about what I imagine are gonna inevitably. Some dark things.

[Kevin Roos]

Yeah, I don't love it either. I have some real qualms about it. And it's interesting, like, some of the people who are building this technology from the beginning were so concerned about the use of this technology for military applications that they actually started requiring clauses in their contracts and acquisition deals. DeepMind had a sort of famous clause in its Google acquisition deal that they couldn't use their technology for the military. Now, they've since sort of adapted that. But I think the tension here is that there's so much money to be made. The Defense Department has a huge budget. They're willing to spend lots of money to. To sort of catch up in AI. And, yeah, I don't love it. And I'm glad that there are people inside these companies who are sort of resisting that pull.

[Casey Noon]

All right, I see Somebody right here.

[Katherine Zeland]

Thank you so much. Longtime listener. And I just have to say I hope you guys do this again here in San Francisco.

[Casey Noon]

And shall we do it again?

[Katherine Zeland]

And I definitely feel like I'm listening to you right in my headphones. So whatever you're doing on stage is, you know, it's definitely trying to.

[Kevin Roos]

But you can't pause and you can't make us faster, which is great.

[Katherine Zeland]

I was really hoping Sam Altman would be here tonight. I'm so glad you guys got them. One of the questions I have for you guys and maybe in your vast experience of covering AI and everything that's has come about, one of the important things to me is regulation and how that is that going to be someone you feel that comes forward from industry who kind of makes a bundle and then sort of sees the greater good and then really sort of goes from sort of poacher to gamekeeper? That's going to be a real quantum leap to my mind to get Congress and people really educated into how things need to move forward for our safety. And whether it's military or kids or anything else, it impacts so many different people in so many different ways. I just thought, do you guys have someone in your mind who would be like, top of mind that you would nominate for that role today, or do you see someone like Sam doing that in 10 years, 20 years?

[Casey Noon]

I think we cannot look to the industry to lead this, right? I mean, Kevin asked about this during the chat. Where a lot of these folks start is, oh, no, the people building AI aren't safe enough. I'm going to do my own thing and I'm going to do it differently and safer and we're going to pass a lot of regulations and then they get really successful and they're like, I'm going to amend my comments about what I said, right? And so I think we just cannot sort of trust them to do that. There are a number of nonprofits who are working in this space, like the Future of Life Institute, that have really mobilized around this potential 10 year moratorium that we're seeing. But like, I will just say 10 years to have no regulation at the state level is an extremely long time. If you believe anybody who's come on our show in 10 years, that will be sort of the end of the ball game. Very powerful intelligence is here. So what I hope is that as people learn more about this stuff, they push more. And I think we're gonna need to see some sort of bottom up public participation here, because it's not gonna come from the industry.

[Kevin Roos]

All right, next. Yes.

[IBM Sponsor]

Love the show. It's been said over and over and.

[Casey Noon]

I'll say we'll keep hearing it.

[IBM Sponsor]

Several people that you've interviewed on the show and technology leaders, you know, there's a lot of techno optimism, and I think a lot of it is well warranted. But one area where I'm kind of not buying it is the. And everybody will reap the benefits of the wealth and the monetary benefits of this. And I understand how the people who create the AI reap the benefits of the well. But I have never heard anyone talk about how that trickles down or gets redistributed. And I'm wondering what you've heard.

[Casey Noon]

Have you heard anything else?

[Kevin Roos]

This is such a good question. This drives me me insane when people just come on the show and they say, we had these guys on last week from Mechanized. They said, this is all going to trickle down. We're all going to have radical abundance. And it's like that is a deliberate policy choice that many people do not want to make. That does not happen automatically. And so I think if I were running these companies, which, thank God, I'm not, but you actually do have to be out there advocating for the kind of world that you want, want to see. It's not just enough to build the technology. It drives me insane. I'm just going to get this off my chest. I'm popping off tonight.

[Casey Noon]

Preach it.

[Kevin Roos]

People are always comparing this to the Industrial Revolution. During the Industrial Revolution, There was a 50 year period called Engels Pause where productivity and profits went up, but wages did not. So workers literally for 50 years did not see the benefits of the Industrial Revolution. What worries me when people say this is just going to be like the Industrial Revolution, is that they have not actually read their history. It sucked for a lot of people for a long time, and I want them to know that.

[Casey Noon]

Yeah. All right. I haven't really called on anyone over here and I see a person at the farthest extreme of the theater and I would like to.

[Kevin Roos]

We just want to make sure our mic runners are getting their steps in.

[Casey Noon]

Yeah, the steps are in.

[Kevin Roos]

It's very important.

[Casey Noon]

The steps are in.

[Kevin Roos]

Vamp. Casey.

[Casey Noon]

Oh, have you. Oh, we're right there. Okay, great. Right, right here. Yeah, over here.

[IBM Sponsor]

Thank you so much. Love the show. I'll say it again, longtime listener. So, Casey, in particular, I think you had mentioned a couple of weeks ago that you had a really clear picture of your definition of AGI and I wanted to hear more about that. And Kevin interested in yours as well. But Casey seemed like you had, like, a picture of it, and so I want to hear it.

[Casey Noon]

Yeah. And I want to say that, like, I'm not necessarily advocating for this as, like, a perfect outcome, and I'm not, like, rooting for this. This happened as quickly as possible. But I work with an assistant who is amazing. She helps me schedule things. She helps me sell advertising. She helps me help you with customer service if you're a platform or subscriber and you need to change your email address. So when people say AGI to me, I think, oh, it will do that. Do you know what I mean? And I think everyone in this room has their version of that. There is kind of the subset of things that you do that are mostly routine, that feel a little bit like drudgery to you, that are not the sort of creative part of your job that's exercising all of your human muscles. And if 0789 can just kind of do that layer of things, that would be AGI to me. Now, you know, I love my assistant I want to keep working with. So one question would be like, well, is there some new set of tasks that she could work on that's to be explored? But when everybody is like, AGI, it's just a marketing concept. It's so fuzzy. It's like, no, it would just do what my assistant did. Does that sound crazy?

[Kevin Roos]

A little bit. Okay, you did talk about having an assistant a lot. Let's do one more. Let's do one more. And let's do it right up there. Yes.

[Casey Noon]

Okay, I got it. So, gentlemen, last week, standing in my kitchen, chopping vegetables, listening to you earnestly.

[IBM Sponsor]

Try to give PR advice to Mechanize, and I almost cut my finger off.

[Kevin Roos]

Because I was laughing so hard. Lose a lot of fingers that way.

[Casey Noon]

So I want to give the opportunity to give PR advice to four or five other companies that you think might need it right now. Give PR advice?

[Kevin Roos]

Yeah.

[Casey Noon]

Let's see who needs it right now. Meta could use some PR advice, and here's why. They think that when you go around saying, we're offering people $100 million, that people are gonna be like, wow, that's so cool. When what it really means is you would have to pay me $100 million to work at Meta. All right, I think that's everyone from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[IBM Sponsor]

Thank you, everybody.

[Casey Noon]

Sam.

[IBM Sponsor]

This podcast is supported by IBM.

[IBM Advertiser]

You don't need to use an oversized AI model for everything. Just like you don't need to use an axe to slice a cake. Find out how smaller models can deliver the right results and help cut AI costs up to [e-mail] the AI built for business IBM looking for an AI glow up that passes the office vibe? Check what AI that only knows the Internet doesn't make sense for business? Get AI trained on your [e-mail] the AI Built for Business IBM.

[Casey Noon]

Hard fork is produced by Rachel Cohn and Whitney Jones. We're edited by Jen Poyant. We're fact checked by Kaitlyn Love. Today's show was engineered by Chris Wood. Original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell, video production by Sawyer Roque, Pat Gunther and Chris Schott. You can watch this whole episode on YouTube and you [e-mail] hardfor Special thanks to the New York Times Live Event Team, Hilary Kuhn, Beth Weinstein, Kaitlyn Roper, Kate Carrington, Chantal Rainier, Melissa Tripoli, Natalie Green, Angela Austin, Kirsten Birmingham, Marissa Farinha, Jennifer Feeney and Morgan Singer. Thanks to everybody at SF Jazz and thanks to the Brass Animals, our live band. Also special thanks to Matt Collette, Paula Schumann, Pui Wing Tam, Dahlia Haddad and Jeffrey Miranda. You can email [e-mail] but you should know that we're on vacation right now. Sa.