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- [00:24]
A
How am I sound? I had two breakfast tacos today.
- [00:36]
B
Are you. Wait, are you talking quietly on purpose?
- [00:39]
A
No.
- [00:40]
B
I'm gonna have trouble hearing you.
- [00:42]
A
I'll talk louder.
- [00:44]
C
This is the register of the podcast.
- [00:46]
B
Okay, so it's like npr.
- [00:48]
C
Hello. Hi.
- [00:50]
B
All right, so I should. I should take my voice down.
- [00:54]
A
That's okay.
- [00:54]
C
Yeah.
- [00:57]
B
Testing, 1, 2, 3. This is the register of the podcast.
- [01:03]
D
No, you just talk the way you want to talk.
- [01:04]
C
Yeah, right.
- [01:05]
D
Like, he can, like, figure out this. You know what I'm saying?
- [01:11]
B
All right. What, do you want me to go again? I'll try to talk like this. I'll try to keep it consistent.
- [01:17]
D
All right, let's go.
- [01:18]
A
Are we recording?
- [01:19]
D
Yeah.
- [01:19]
C
Oh, cool.
- [01:20]
A
We're back. We're in.
- [01:25]
D
Shh.
- [01:28]
A
We're in Austin, Texas. We came to town for the Futo conference, and we have two special guests today. We have the CEO of FUTO, Mr. Aaron Wolf, and his director of operations, friend of the POD return guest, Rab Khan.
- [01:46]
C
That was good. That's a good intro. This is very professional. I'm not used to having other people do everything for us. Should we just, like, jump into it?
- [01:57]
D
Let's go.
- [01:57]
C
Yeah, let's go. Let's do it. I guess my first question for you guys is, what is Futo? What does it stand for? What kind of projects were you funding before, and what is your mission now? Because I'm guessing none of our listeners have any idea who you guys are.
- [02:17]
D
Yeah.
- [02:17]
B
Yeah. So, I mean, Futo is kind of a reaction to the way that big tech companies have basically lost all respect for their customers or for the people using their software. So if you look at the way a company like Google puts all this R and D into things like the browser and Android and their search engine and all these things, and they do give us good tools. Gmail even, you know, they do give us good tools, but we're not actually their customer. Their customer is marketers that want to influence our behavior. So that means they start doing all this creepy surveillance of our behavior while we're using the software and start learning how to influence us. And that's actually their product. The product that Google and Facebook selling is us, the people, right?
- [03:11]
A
There's an adage that, like, if you're getting something for free, then you're. You're the product, Right?
- [03:17]
B
Exactly. Exactly. So I'm a. I'm just a software developer who, like, I do kind of see it as my. You know, as somebody who started programming at a young age, and I was able to write some software that people found useful, people liked. I do see it as my kind of mission in life is to write software for people like yourselves that you can enjoy it. And it's like, there's an honest relationship between me or whatever company I'm working for making software and you enjoying the software.
- [03:49]
A
So Futo is a software development company?
- [03:52]
B
Yeah, for the most part, yes. We're also.
- [03:55]
D
Most of the employees are engineers. That's one thing.
- [03:57]
C
Previously you were funding other people's projects and now you're embarking on your own projects. Is that the idea?
- [04:05]
B
That's fair to say. Fufuto really got going in 2021 and the. Our first kind of endeavors were we. We want. We found some fellows, we found some companies to invest in. And that was, you know, basically based on, well, let's just like, you know, I was looking at it from the standpoint of I have, you know, a lot of money. I don't really get interested in the sort of things that most venture capitalists would get excited about. With the funding that I had, I was like, well, I just kind of want to build an organization that I would want to work at.
- [04:48]
C
Like, sure, but in terms of like giving an elevator pitch to consumers, to clients, what would that be? What kind of software are you developing? That sort of thing.
- [05:00]
B
So everyday software that you use, like, we are like a browser. Well, we are helping somebody make a browser. There's things that are really hard to do. So a browser takes a ton of money and it's not clear how you can. How you can. Well, the browser, I guess maybe what I should say is there's a lot of work to do here. Like, it's a whole computing ecosystem. The browser is part of it. We're working on different elements of the software we use every day. The most prominent thing that we have right now is our image product, which is basically what you get on your phone. When you have an Android or iOS phone, you get little applications that you take photos. You have photos on your phone. You usually put them in iCloud or Google Cloud. Our image product is. Okay, what if I just want to. What if I don't want to give my photos to big tech? Well, I can run a Linux server and then I can put those photos on my own Linux server. So that's the kind of thing that we're trying to do. It's a software that you use every day. It is something that.
- [06:13]
A
So it would be like, sorry, I'm a little bit of a Luddite. So say I.
- [06:18]
D
A little bit A little bit say
- [06:20]
A
I don't want to put my photos on the cloud. I could then download a different app
- [06:27]
B
and use that you'd have to do right now. This is all very difficult right now. Right now you actually have to be able to run your own Linux server. We're working to make it so you don't have to do that.
- [06:37]
A
What is a Linux server?
- [06:39]
B
So Linux server is. So Linux is the operating system that kind of built Google and built Facebook and it was done by open source developers who actually just did it for
- [06:53]
A
love of the game.
- [06:54]
B
For love of the game Linux. Torvalds is just this really hardcore developer who just wanted to make an operating system and make it free for people. Unfortunately what happened was companies like Google and Facebook and a company I worked for, Yahoo, we wound up using software like that and then we build all these data collection services on top of it. But anybody can run Linux. So there's a lot of enthusiasts in the world who do run Linux. It's not that hard to do it. It takes, you know, if I walked you through the steps to run Linux, you, it'd probably take, you know, take us a half an hour for you to get Linux running on a little server in your home. Problem is it does take maintenance, so you'd have to.
- [07:39]
A
A server in my home?
- [07:41]
B
Well, I guess this is the way the Internet was. Yeah.
- [07:43]
C
Like my sense is that most like consumers would be happy to trade their privacy and data in exchange for like the consolidation, the centralization, the convenience. Yeah, big tech platforms offer them and I think even when they're made aware of all the horrible breaches and abuses, they don't care. I don't really care. But how do you sell a product like this?
- [08:07]
B
And this is what I'm telling people all the time because there's so many kind of nerds out there who are building stuff and they're like, oh. Because the people who do care about it, they're like, oh, well we built this and it works great for me. And then if you try to use it, you're like, this is a pain in the ass. I'm just going to use what's easy.
- [08:23]
A
Right.
- [08:23]
B
Well we should make it easy. If we made it easy, you might use it. If it's as easy as Google, you might use it. If you just had a choice. The real choice you have to make, hopefully if we can execute on building the good products is, well, instead of having I buy an Android phone for really cheap and then I get all the stuff for free and I'm getting surveilled and manipulated. And I see ads. Well, what if you spent a little bit more and you got something that was just as good and just as easy and convenient, but it didn't do all the, all the surveillance of you? Like that's kind of what we're hoping that we can get people to make that decision. And then maybe you're, I mean there's going to be a lot of people are just whatever. I'm going to take the cheapest thing. But.
- [09:08]
A
Well, what is like, I guess the like alarmist, doomsday big tech scenario that you are trying to combat? Like what's, I know that like yeah, you might not want to be surveilled, you might not want to be manipulated. But like what's, what's the real harm?
- [09:25]
B
I mean it's the consolidation of power. Ultimately it's about, you know, company, you know, big companies, big tech.
- [09:32]
D
Okay, just. Sorry to interrupt but like, Well, I mean, consolidation, power, the de platforming that we saw five years ago, for example, of a bunch of people, you know, around five years ago, that's because the big companies, there's like, you know, four or five of them that control your social media presence. Well, if they just decide to X you out, what are you gonna do about it? Right? You don't, you don't have your own unique position placement. You know, back in the 1990s, people had their own, you know, worldwide web page and all these like little homebrewed things that they would have. And that was very decentralized. And it was also a situation where, you know, there wasn't, I mean, there were ways that, you know, the web hosts could remove the pages. I mean, but, but it was kind of a pain in the butt. Whereas like, okay, like you put all your information, or like you use Twitter as your primary medium of communicating with the world. Well, I mean you could just be disappeared really quickly as a lot of people were.
- [10:23]
C
Yeah, I mean, I can see that. But I think even in terms of something like, you know, when you get like algorithmically served ads, which can be annoying and a nuisance, but very often those ads are like pertinent and relevant. I've clicked through and bought stupid bullshit on the Internet. On that note, obviously this tech is a world that attracts a lot of people who are like anti authoritarian, anarchist, libertarian and stuff like that. But are we just talking about swapping one set of gatekeepers out for a new set of gatekeepers and who decides who the gatekeepers are in that scenario?
- [10:58]
B
So you don't have to do it that way. Google consciously, when they built something like YouTube, they consciously made it so that they would be the gatekeepers. We are building things in a way that there are no gatekeepers. So, for instance, like, YouTube could have easily done this when they built themselves up. It's like, well, there's one recommendation engine for YouTube. That's it. If you go back 10 years before YouTube or 5 years before YouTube, if you uploaded anything, you'd have 6 search engines that, that were competing fierce. The search engines would compete fiercely with each other to connect people searching with the content they wanted to find. Well, now you just have Google that's connecting you to the video you're trying to find, and that's it. Why couldn't Google have built a system where you could plug in your own search engine where other people could make search engines from the data? They could have done that, but they didn't. Because obviously, if you want to be a trillion dollar company, you want to keep control of as much as you can.
- [11:59]
A
Yeah.
- [11:59]
C
And you're subject to all sorts of, like, profit motives and political incentives and that. That seems to be the bigger thing to combat. But that's difficult for, like any one company to do it.
- [12:11]
B
Yes.
- [12:12]
C
Can you talk a little bit about your background, where you're from, what you were doing before you started fudo? People are familiar with Razee, but not with you.
- [12:22]
D
I wasn't that familiar with me.
- [12:23]
C
Well, you were.
- [12:24]
A
You've been on the show.
- [12:25]
C
I mean, they know you as like a geneticist and a poster.
- [12:28]
D
Okay. Yeah, that's fair. Okay.
- [12:29]
C
Not in your new role as director of operations.
- [12:34]
B
Okay. Yeah. So I guess, you know, as I grew up in Tucson, I had a computer and I got to. I was a nerd, didn't have a lot of friends. So I programmed programming has always been kind of what I like doing because, you know, if it does what you want, it does what you tell it to do, and it's your fault if it doesn't do what you're expecting it to do. Actually, when you program, it's like a control thing. Yeah. It's kind of interesting. Yeah. So when I was in grad school, I went to UC San Diego and I was just. The Internet was just starting. I really liked board games, so I built a little board game service where you could play games like chess or hearts or backgammon or spades or checkers, whatever, on the Internet with your friends. So this would be an early. This is something I launched by myself in 1997 and it very quickly picked up steam and like I had like hundreds of people playing games. Yahoo. Which is, you know, kind of the proto Google. I like to say, like you Yahoo. Is the failed Google. Or if I get it really obscure, it's the Count Fenring to Google's Paul Muadib. Oh my God, he always hates it when I use that analogy.
- [13:57]
A
What is that a reference?
- [13:58]
B
So you know Paul and Dune. Oh, there's actually the Bene Gessic.
- [14:05]
A
I know men like Dune.
- [14:07]
D
Paul is the messiah and he is the. He is the. He is the successful messiah. He is the.
- [14:13]
B
Yeah, he's the one that he actually took and the Bene Gesserit a generation before Paul tried and they created Count Fenrin who had just not quite what they needed.
- [14:24]
A
Do you like David Lynch's Dune?
- [14:25]
B
I do like David Lynch's Dune, yeah, quite good.
- [14:28]
A
It's actually his most coherent film.
- [14:31]
B
I like it more. As weird as it is, I like it more than the newer ones. But, but anyway, so back to. Yeah, so Yahoo was, you know, I joined Yahoo. There was like, it was like a 500 employee company when I joined and I was there six and a half years. I did Yahoo Games, which was, you know, got very, you know, we had like 10 million people playing every month at some point we had like, you know, nothing. We didn't. We weren't doing Doom or any kind of anything like you know, triple what they would call AAA games. But you know, we were doing, we had a nice service. People used. And then I left Yahoo. In 2000, 2004 and after that I just, I was, I had kind of plans. I started programming my stuff. World of Warcraft actually got released though, like that year too. And it somehow it captured my mind because like I could. The nice thing about World of Warcraft was you could like work really hard and there was no bullshit. I was like, if you worked really hard, you got everything you wanted, you know, like people would appreciate you like doing a good job. There was no politics in. There's hardly any politics in World of Warcraft. Like you would still have to be in a guild with like 40 people to get stuff done. So. So there was big organizations, but there was also very, very clear. Clearly it was very clear who was pulling their weight and who wasn't. So I kind of like that environment.
- [16:04]
C
Yeah, but how did you end up starting Futo from that?
- [16:10]
B
So, yeah, I mean, honestly, I just kind of did random gigs with my friends for many years and that's how you made money. I would. So, okay. So I left Yahoo with a decent amount of money because I was aqua hired by Yahoo.
- [16:24]
C
We were told that billionaire. Is that true?
- [16:26]
B
Yes, that is true.
- [16:28]
A
How did you become a billionaire?
- [16:30]
B
Okay, I guess that's. Yeah, I mean it's, it's basic. I mean so when I left Yahoo, I, I basically invested in companies that annoyed me, like if that makes sense. So I would invest in even if I didn't use our product. In fact I invested in Google, I invested in Apple, I invested in Facebook, I invested in Tesla. Like just any, like I've never, like I was not an Apple person when I owned Apple stock, but I kind of could see how they were doing a good job.
- [17:02]
A
So you made money investing in these companies and now you've turned against them.
- [17:06]
C
I was always friends who's waging war on.
- [17:09]
B
It's, it's more of hedging my emotional state. So I was really not happy with Microsoft in the 90s because they were like a big bully company. They were doing lots of anti competitive things and I was like, well now that I have money to invest, I know these companies are going to piss me off just as much as Microsoft. But at least I'll, I'll like tag along for the ride. And then also I would say a big thing that also helped was I invested in WhatsApp, which wound up getting acquired by Facebook. So that was a big, big windfall there too. So just kind of all accumulated over time. My net worth doubled every few years for 15 years, you know.
- [17:51]
C
Yeah. Do you think that
- [17:55]
D
American dream is still alive?
- [17:59]
C
Do you think that it's changed you in any way? Like what's your mind frame, anything like that?
- [18:05]
B
Yeah. The thing that changed, I think when
- [18:06]
D
I hit, I do have to say when I met this guy, I met this, I met him four years ago. I think it was a party at, at a certain person's house that we actually hung out with yesterday here in Austin. And he was showing me something on his iPhone. And look I was, I knew he was rich but I wasn't like wait,
- [18:25]
B
no, I would know I had an Android or Android.
- [18:28]
C
How did you know he was rich? Because he was wearing flip flops.
- [18:30]
D
No. Okay. There's some funny stories about that, but I'm good friends with his former former director of operations, Ian Mason. He's like, oh my, my boss is just this rich guy, so. Which I didn't know that you were the rich guy for a long time because where he dresses, you know. But he showed me something on his Android and the phone had like, cracked screen. So it's like, well, this is how he lives.
- [18:54]
C
Yeah. I imagine that your personal expenses are pretty low.
- [18:58]
B
Yeah.
- [18:59]
C
You mostly just invest your money or you've thrown it into this company or.
- [19:03]
B
So my goal is to eventually throw it all into this company. You know, we have to build our capabilities before.
- [19:09]
A
When did you start futo?
- [19:11]
B
2021.
- [19:12]
A
Okay.
- [19:12]
B
Yeah.
- [19:13]
C
And how did you link with Razeeb?
- [19:16]
B
Just in Austin, I think. You know, I start. I started with Ian in 2021, and Ian was trying to get me out of my shell. I was still playing World of Warcraft in 2021. Private servers, not. Not the Microsoft crap, but I was. You know, Ian would try to get me out of. Out and go to the parties, same kind of parties that Ra was at. And that's where I met.
- [19:39]
D
Actually. There is. There is like, I'll just like, put the lore explicitly because it's kind of a funny story. In 2022. In September of 2022, my friend John Carney, who is an economics journalist at Breitbart, said that Alam Bokari had moved to Austin, who also worked at Breitbart Technology at the time. And so I. He was like, you should have dinner with him. So I was like, okay. And so I messaged him on Twitter and he's like, let's have dinner. And then I was like, can I bring my friends? And so he brought. Well, he brought. Ian was one of the people he brought. And then I got a message from Dick Hanania, and I didn't know that. Yeah, I got a message from him. Actually, I got a message from him. He was like, oh, I heard you're going to have dinner with Ian Mason. He's lame. And I'm like, who the is Ian Mason? Like, I don't even know. Like, I didn't know that he was. I was gonna have dinner with this guy. But anyway, Alam had told someone else, a mutual friend, and he had told Richard. And anyway, so I became friends with Ian, and obviously Ian works for him. So I would see. I would see Aaron around. I will tell you one really quick story. It was like at, like the Return, the magazine Return back when Pulos was running it at the party. Like, most of the people there were wearing, like, dress shirts, some people wearing jackets. And he came in his Dropbox hoodie, I believe, in his flip flops, and he was having some hors d' oeuvres, and it was, you know, kind of, you know, semi fancy. And he looked definitely out of place. And I was just like, chilling with some buddies, and I heard the servers having a discussion whether they should go talk to that guy because he didn't look like he belonged there. And I was just like, no, don't worry about it. He actually does belong here. And they're like, well, I don't know. He doesn't like. I'm like, don't worry about it. He's rich. And they were like, okay. And I'm like, trust me, you're probably gonna get in trouble with your bosses. So they, like, didn't bug him.
- [21:20]
B
I don't. Nobody would. Yeah, they would have been fine. They would have been fine.
- [21:24]
D
You wouldn't have cared.
- [21:25]
B
Oh, yeah, I wouldn't care.
- [21:27]
D
I'm just saying that the bosses would be like. You know how bosses are.
- [21:30]
B
Yeah.
- [21:31]
A
So what is the futo. Like, is there a mission statement?
- [21:37]
B
I mean, the mission. There isn't actually an official mission statement, or do we have a official mission statement?
- [21:44]
A
The conference is called don't be Evil.
- [21:46]
B
Yeah, don't be evil. And that's kind of a play because that used to be Google's. That was actually in their documents, even when they did stuff with Google. Our mission is to destroy Google and Apple and Facebook and have them not be so powerful.
- [22:05]
A
And this is something that you feel like, a ethical inclination towards. It's a sense, I guess I'm asking.
- [22:11]
B
Part of it's ethical. Yeah. I see it as ethical because I do see a lot of dishonesty from big tech and the way they relate with their customers. But it is also just. It's like I said earlier, I feel it's like my mission. My mission in life, for whatever reason, is like, I can program. I should be trying to do the best I can to make good. To the extent that the world is having to deal with kind of this software ecosystem that is causing problems, that's partially my fault as somebody who's capable of writing software.
- [22:41]
A
So are you, I guess, are you motivated more by, like, a sense of justice or duty or competitiveness, really?
- [22:50]
B
Like, I want to win, like, but. But in a. Like, in a fair way, you know, like, not. I don't want to be. I don't want to be winning. I don't want to be better at them at screwing over customers. I want to be better than them at making a good product.
- [23:04]
A
Do you think power ultimately corrupts? Like, if you.
- [23:09]
B
No, I would do another back to Dune. Power attracts the corruptible. Yeah. Okay, I see. Power attracts the corruptible. Yeah, I think. I think there is some. Some. Some of it is like, I would guess that a lot of these people, they just stop seeing themselves as being like, on the same plane of existence with kind of like everyday people. I think when you get like in the position of someone like Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah. You're just kind of like, well, these people are just. I control them. They're like, I've got my, like, my strings connected to them.
- [23:48]
C
Some level of contempt for, like, normies or NPCs.
- [23:51]
B
Yeah.
- [23:52]
A
And I think probably the autism, it's prevalent in the tech sector, inhibits like, like an empathetic ethical business model from.
- [24:02]
B
But you do. I mean, look, at the end of the day, I mean, Zuckerberg is where he is because he does know how to abuse. Like, he does kind of see the weaknesses in people. He'll give people these products that are very abusive that he would never have his own family, his own children using. Right. And he'll have them using it. I mean, have you seen the famous picture of Zuckerberg with a tape over the camera on his laptop? Right. Yeah. So he does stuff like that. Like, you could probably find it if you.
- [24:29]
A
Should people be doing that?
- [24:33]
B
I actually don't do that myself. There's kind of a little bit of competition now in big tech. So Android and iOS do try to make sure that a Facebook app isn't turning on the camera on you just when you're randomly using your phone. So those things are. I don't like to be a tinfoil hat guy. I don't think that Zuckerberg. I don't believe that if I have Facebook installed on my phone that when I'm not using the Facebook app, they're not going to have access to camera. Or if I turn off access to the camera using the software controls on Android, I trust that it works.
- [25:16]
C
I don't even trust that. But I don't care because it's kind of an overwhelming.
- [25:19]
A
It feels futile. But it's inspiring that you don't think that. I have a question. I have a question.
- [25:28]
D
There are people that if you focus enough, put enough time, you can.
- [25:32]
A
You can shift. Yeah.
- [25:34]
B
I mean, if I like Zuckerberg, does the brain rot that this stuff can induce in children probably is more serious than kind of the tape over the camera.
- [25:45]
A
Well, I have a question. I've noticed, as people remark on this phenomenon where sometimes you say a word like Levi's, and then you go and look at Instagram and you get ads for Levi's. Is that because you're. They're dead ass listening to You.
- [26:03]
B
I don't. I actually, I haven't looked at this deeply. I always figured that's not actually happening and it's just a coincidence and people think it, but maybe, like, it's because
- [26:11]
A
I did something else on my phone pertaining.
- [26:13]
B
Yeah, something like that. Yeah. I mean, I think you could test this if somebody really wanted to do a hardcore test. I've actually, because I talked to people, this question was asked for me and I've like, made jokes like a trainer. Like, we're talking about, like, well, is it your time of the month now? And like, so we'll have all this conversation about, like, him maybe needing, as a joke, like, him maybe needing some menstrual cycle products and to see if they come up. And they didn't come up. So, like, we actually did some of these experiments as a joke.
- [26:44]
D
Yeah, I mean, they should. They would know that you're both male, probably.
- [26:50]
C
How would they know that? By all the other data.
- [26:54]
B
I mean, so it's not like they change. Men have to buy these products for their girlfriends anyway.
- [26:59]
D
Changes.
- [26:59]
B
But fair enough.
- [27:00]
D
I don't want to talk about.
- [27:03]
A
Sure.
- [27:03]
C
But also these technologies are, like, stupid and limited in some ways. I have a question about, like, AI that's really a question about, like, tech more broadly because there's always this discourse about AI that it will, you know, be apocalyptic and a doomsday in this kind of like, cool Blade Runner, sci fi way where it'll take all of our jobs, singularity. And I guess my sense is, like, if AI is soulless and scary and dangerous, it's in a much more mundane way because it makes. It's not so much that it's going to gain sent hands, it's that it makes people less sentient because it deters people from, like, developing skills and brings more slop into the world, whatever. But should we really be worried about AI? Is it a little. Is the hype a little overrated?
- [28:00]
B
I think there's nothing but hype with AI right now in both directions. I mean, clearly it is making people's jobs less important. An Uber driver is less important now as Waymo starts taking off. Right. You know, I used to always lament, you know, I used to always be like the guy who could navigate. Right. And so as soon as smartphones come and everybody's got a smartphone that can navigate, I was like, oh, I suck. You know, I'm less important now because nobody needs me to help them navigate.
- [28:32]
D
Right.
- [28:32]
B
So it's going to make a lot of people less important. And it Could. I think it's going to increase the IQ necessary to have an impact that you might want to have in the world. Right. So there's going to be a lot of people who are kind of maybe lower IQ, who just can't do anything productive that they used to be able to do.
- [28:55]
C
But isn't that already upon us and is that necessarily a bad thing? I guess, like, I don't think it's totally overblown. Obviously that AI is gonna take over some people's jobs and like render them obsolete. But it's mostly like low skilled workers and like pink collar women.
- [29:13]
D
Yeah, lower and white collar seem to be really.
- [29:16]
C
I guess my question for you guys is what happens to those people? Where do they go?
- [29:21]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's, I mean, I guess, you know, we have more and more people in this world who are kind of like having trouble justifying their existence. I don't know.
- [29:30]
D
Yeah, but I mean, to be fair, like, you know, even within our lifetimes, not necessarily yours, because you guys are millennials. It's like, you know, the number of secretaries, like, and what they did was radical. So those women, mostly women, they went and got other jobs. Right. So I think, I think one of the problems.
- [29:46]
A
But there's only so many jobs if like a huge sector of the working population isn't able, you know, not everyone is going to be able to find another job.
- [29:56]
D
I mean, it depends on increased productivity, right?
- [30:00]
B
Yeah. Look, I've been of the opinion that like 90% of white collar jobs for the last 30 years have been busy work.
- [30:08]
C
Yeah, they're bloated bullshit.
- [30:10]
B
So can we find busy work for people? We're going to have abundance. The AI, I mean, I mean, Peter gave a good talk yesterday. We are going to have abundance. We have abundance. Okay, so we have busy work for people and we trick them into thinking they're doing something important.
- [30:27]
A
But with the bad actors out there that are powerful, even if there is abundance, it doesn't mean that it'll be distributed.
- [30:37]
D
Yeah, I think the problem is less technological than it's like political or social in terms of it could. I mean, you know, what's China going to do with AI and all these? They're going to create a massive surveillance state. And I think that's the problem. It's not that I no longer believe or if I ever did, but I don't think that there's going to be, you know, singularity with artificial general intelligence in the next like 20 years where all of like human life disappears or something. Weird. Like that, right? Yeah.
- [31:03]
C
People think of this in terms of like some hostile AI, like HAL in 2001 A Space Odyssey or whatever. Like takes out humankind.
- [31:11]
B
No, I mean to me the thing that I don't like the most about AI is it makes the centralizing forces that we're fighting against at Futo more powerful. So AI is going to help big tech more than it helps little tech. I think AI is going to help. Like Razeeb said, governments do surveillance and governments have more control. So I don't like AI because of those things. At the same time, we are trying to do everything we can at Futo to have local models running on your own computers that you have some more control over that are there for you. The Terminator thing I think is ridiculous. It's always going to be a human or a group of humans who are in charge and they're going to be using AI to be more in charge than they already are.
- [32:05]
C
That's still scary. The big takeaway I think is that for all like the dooming and fear mongering, AI is like a useful tool for already small, smart, already skilled people to like streamline their workflows and build stuff they want to build. Another question I have about the abundance issue is that like, I think we are already in an era of abundance in the sense that like in the United States for example, you're practically rich if you're a poor person. Like as opposed to poor people in
- [32:43]
D
the United States are obese. Yeah, that's what rich people used to be.
- [32:47]
C
So it seems like abundance is pretty evenly distributed. And I think the bigger issue that it creates is like some kind of existential or spiritual crisis among people.
- [32:59]
B
Yeah, and that is true. I mean a lot of programmers getting affected by this actually that where they're like especially like less capable. The less capable programmers are like, what's, what's my point now? Because the AI is maybe better than me at this point.
- [33:15]
A
Right.
- [33:17]
B
And yeah, it's just, I don't know, people got to figure out their purpose in life and it doesn't have to be, you know, what it was before.
- [33:26]
D
We're not going to do it right now. We can make some references to Doodle or here because that is like the premise of this Dune universe where humans were basically like, we matter and like we are an ends unto ourselves and we're going to abolish computing and artificial intelligence because they trivialize the human, you know, importance in the world.
- [33:47]
A
Sorry, who does?
- [33:48]
D
Well, the Dune universe, that, that, that, that Aaron, like Referenced.
- [33:52]
B
Now you're getting ner.
- [33:55]
C
Wait, receive. How many of those hats do you own? He's wearing a cowboy hat.
- [34:00]
D
I have. Well, I have. I have three hats that I rotate between.
- [34:03]
C
You look like James Brown.
- [34:04]
A
Many hats.
- [34:06]
C
Go on.
- [34:07]
D
But yeah, I'm wearing a cowboy hat for the listeners.
- [34:09]
C
So you're like an Indian guy who's larping as a different.
- [34:13]
A
You know what?
- [34:14]
D
Like, I was confused as Native American at a party recently.
- [34:17]
A
So you should get a long braid.
- [34:22]
D
My hair is getting longer. Like, several people when I wear a cowboy hat are like, wait, are you a Native? And I'm like, I could be, you know, but anyway, in the Dune universe, there is an age of abundance, like in their. In the lore, like in the. The deep. It's because the future history. And you know, humans are basically just like allowing computers to do everything and they're fat and they're happy and there's a cultural revolution basically where people are like, you know, we need to destroy the computers and destroy the robots because we don't do anything for ourselves and we have no purpose. And what ends up happening is there's a conflict between humanity and the machines. And in the end, the humanity wins in something called the Butlerian Jihad, which was led by a woman named Serena Butler. And they basically destroyed.
- [35:10]
B
I'm so stupid.
- [35:11]
C
I always thought that Butlerian Jihad was like some meme term that people for like feminism about Judith Butler and her adherence.
- [35:18]
D
Anyway, now see, like, this is transformed your view of Amin now. Yeah, yeah. So they destroy the. In the Dune universe, if you watch. And a lot of the listeners will watch the movie. In the movies, they have high tech. They have like high technology, but like computers replaced by something called mentats, which. They're human calculators, you know, and so humans basically, like, they didn't genetically engineering because they can't do that. But anyway. But they bred themselves, the Benny Jesuit bred themselves to replace a lot of the functions of machine. Of computing. Right. And that's because computing had taken, you know, the worth out of humanity. So, you know, science fiction has written about this and there's like all sorts of like scenarios. Right. And we are. We're probably. Yes, probably. It's this century. We're on the precipice of having to confront these issues.
- [36:07]
C
How do you see that taking shape or taking place? Like, how do you think that's going to go down the United States and our world? Yeah,
- [36:17]
D
I mean, I think we will have like some sort of. I suspect that in the next generation like, you know, our current religious like, you know, configuration of like Christianity and Islam and Judy. You know, like all these religions, they've been around for like over a thousand years. Right. There hasn't been like a new great religion in a while. I, I, I suspect that there will be some sort of. It might not be like a, a new religion. It could be a new way to interpret Christianity. But I think, I think it's gonna mess. Like, I'll just swear it's like it's gonna mind when, when AI gets smart enough that like a lot of people will be like, this is a conscious. Well, organism.
- [36:56]
C
There was a, I forgot or something about like women using like AI companions.
- [37:02]
D
Yes.
- [37:02]
C
To give them like therapy and advice and emotion or like, I mean there's
- [37:05]
D
many people fall in love with their AI.
- [37:07]
A
Yeah, yeah, I see that. But those people seem brittle.
- [37:11]
D
Her.
- [37:12]
C
Yeah. Do you think people are capable of religious faith in mass in this day and age because they're capable of like religious fervor or religious.
- [37:24]
B
Definitely. They absolutely are.
- [37:26]
C
Okay.
- [37:26]
B
If something like Tesla is, it's a
- [37:30]
D
religious Tesla and Bitcoin to use some like non traditional examples. The though the people that are obsessed with Tesla or Bitcoin or believe in.
- [37:39]
B
I'm saying this is a Tesla show holder, by the way.
- [37:42]
D
You know, I mean, Elon's a big Dune fan, right? Elon and Grimes are big Dune fans.
- [37:46]
A
Yeah.
- [37:47]
D
Like I've been to Grimes place in Austin. It's like there's a lot of Dune dude memorabilia on there.
- [37:50]
A
She loves it. She's always talking about it.
- [37:52]
D
Yeah. So I mean, you know, he believes and he's also worried about, I know he's worried about the machines.
- [37:57]
C
Do you guys with Battlestar Galactica.
- [38:00]
B
I loved that show.
- [38:02]
C
Me too.
- [38:03]
B
I like them both. I love, when I was growing up, I loved the 1970s version and then I really loved the Ronald Moore version.
- [38:12]
C
Yeah, that's the one I saw.
- [38:14]
A
So people like me who don't have tech literacy, are they kind of doomed?
- [38:22]
B
No, I think you just make friends, make real connections with real people and have some people who are tech literate in your sphere. I think that's the main thing.
- [38:31]
D
Okay. I would say, I would say something different. Like, you know, I don't want to jump in because you're talking, but in terms of what kind of jobs can people do? I mean, you're a creative, right?
- [38:38]
A
Yeah.
- [38:38]
D
Creative people like artists like have not disappeared, even though painters have not. I mean, okay, there's not that many painters, but painters are not disappeared. Even though there's photography.
- [38:45]
C
But artists, AI can make.
- [38:48]
D
It depends. I think people will purchase things that humans make. You know, people will watch things that humans do. Even if, like, unless, like, you know, unless you want to get plugged into a machine and live some artificial sensory existence, you know, and like, just like, pump up, like, you know.
- [39:03]
A
Well, right. With the WGA strikes and stuff. That's a big point. For that is like, they want protections from AI, which I think is a little futile, delusional.
- [39:13]
D
You got to adapt to it.
- [39:14]
C
And also, if. If you're like a writer and you. You're worried that I will take over your job, maybe you're not that good.
- [39:22]
D
Yeah, that's the fundamental problem.
- [39:24]
C
I also think, I mean, Dasha had the best line about this, which kind of actually answers your question about how, like, it's not so much that AI cannot mimic human consciousness, it's that it cannot mimic the human subconscious. So I think, like, authentic, original humans, whatever that means, will be trading at a premium.
- [39:42]
A
Right.
- [39:43]
C
Like, if you're a creative. Yeah.
- [39:44]
D
If you add value as a human being, you probably will continue to add value because at least, like, from what I can see currently, like, so AI writing, for example, it's like B. Right. Like, you know, it would be like a B essay. It's not like an A essay, it's a B essay.
- [40:00]
A
I mean, in a way, it maybe if you didn't know what AI was, but now that everybody does, you can always tell when something is written by
- [40:10]
D
AI and we're adapting to it in real time. Like, we have certain expectations and those
- [40:14]
A
expectations, the M Dashes and all of that.
- [40:16]
B
I mean, I'd also like to point out, like, I'm kind of not. I don't know. I don't want to pretend like I know what's going to happen. A plausible outcome, though, is like, any day we could just realize, oh, the AI's plateaued and it's not going to get any better than it is right now. Like, probably maybe 20% chance. AI never gets to the point where it can do anything that people are saying it's going to be able to do.
- [40:43]
A
It's really about it. Cheating at Scrabble. It's.
- [40:48]
B
It's pretty.
- [40:49]
D
I mean, it's good at certain things.
- [40:50]
A
Chat. GPT is not. I mean, I feel like a computer is better.
- [40:54]
B
Well, that's just. I mean, that's. I kind of get disappointed with the AI researchers because they don't even focus on winning at games anymore. That was, to me, like, the cool accomplishments of AI. Like when, you know, in the 90s, when AI beat became the best chess player, or like, I think 10 years ago, it became the best go player. Those were cool accomplishments. And I'm sorry, AI can kick your. Kick the shit. Whatever you call it, whatever you want. It's not an LLM. But Scrabble is going to. You're going to lose. You're just going to lose to an AI.
- [41:23]
C
Wait, did it mean Gary Kasparov?
- [41:26]
B
Yeah, that was in the 90s, so that's cool.
- [41:27]
C
He deserves it.
- [41:31]
A
But as a user, as a consumer of someone who's trying to cheat at online Scrabble, I put the screenshots into ChatGPT. Yeah, that's just like, can't. It can't come up with words. It, like, can't even read the information. It's worse than me.
- [41:45]
B
But that's only because LLMs are not good for playing games. But if you actually had, like, custom coded bot to play Scrabble, it would win every game.
- [41:58]
A
But isn't that. I mean, it's amazing that people. That chess is still as popular as it is.
- [42:04]
B
Yeah. So it's kind of neat. I like. So that's maybe a good point that, like, you know, for whatever reason, chess is more popular now than it was 40 years ago before, you know, AI became the best chess player.
- [42:18]
D
So that's not just about winning. It's not always about winning.
- [42:20]
A
Right, right.
- [42:21]
D
I mean, like, people still ride horses. I mean, people like to do things the game.
- [42:25]
A
Love of the game.
- [42:26]
D
Yeah.
- [42:27]
A
What's your chess elo.
- [42:28]
B
Do? You know, I am. I actually don't like chess, so I've never gotten. The only game I play like that is I do play backgammon because I. I programmed a backgammon game recently, so I was like, okay, I'll play backgammon. But I. I don't have the patience for chess. I just like.
- [42:43]
A
What about blitz? You can play a quick one.
- [42:46]
B
Oh, I think you have to get good at. Not blitz before you get good at blitz, though.
- [42:50]
A
Yeah, yeah. I. I play chess compulsively but almost
- [42:54]
C
as like, what's your reload?
- [42:55]
A
It's low. It's like a thousand. It's like, not very good.
- [42:59]
C
She was playing it on the.
- [43:00]
B
I think you would. I think you would. I think you would beat me, like,
- [43:02]
C
staring at the screen and. And she's like, going to town.
- [43:05]
A
I'm watching Frasier. I'm playing chess. I have adhd, so I have to do.
- [43:08]
B
Yeah, so you're still enjoying. So I remember in the 90s, I was like, well, because I already kind of hated chess when that happened. So I was like, well, good. I'm glad I hated chess because. And all you people who still like chess are stupid because the computer is better than you, but I don't care.
- [43:22]
A
It's ig.
- [43:23]
B
Yeah, it's fun for people to keep playing chess.
- [43:27]
C
How do you guys feel about Austin? I guess he asked us that question. Yeah, I'll throw it back.
- [43:33]
B
Yeah, let's talk. I mean, so I moved to Austin more than 10 years ago now.
- [43:37]
D
What was the exact. I think you moved here. Like, did you move here a little earlier than me?
- [43:40]
B
Yeah, I moved here in December 2015.
- [43:45]
A
What drew you to Austin?
- [43:47]
B
Honestly? So I am not. I'm a very introverted guy, so it doesn't really matter that much where. Where I am. I honestly picked. When I was leaving, I knew I had to leave California because I didn't. The reason why I had to leave California was because I wanted to do things like futa with my money. I didn't want to give it to a corrupt government in California. So in Texas allowed me to do that. There's several other states that allow you to do that. Yes.
- [44:20]
A
What does that mean?
- [44:21]
C
They don't pay state income.
- [44:23]
D
We don't have a state. Yeah, we don't pay.
- [44:25]
C
Yeah. That's why people. But people always say that as, like, a reason for why they moved to Austin. But you could hypothetically, like, live in any city in Texas. Like.
- [44:31]
B
Correct.
- [44:31]
D
He's not gonna be living in Dallas.
- [44:33]
C
Yeah, Dallas seems fun. I've never been there.
- [44:35]
D
But you want to live. If you want, like, a big house in Plano with four kids and a wife with big blonde hair, It's a whole lifestyle.
- [44:45]
C
Yeah.
- [44:45]
D
Yeah, that's fine. But I'm just like, this is not him.
- [44:47]
C
No, I know. I got.
- [44:48]
D
If you want to do tech, if you want to do culture and the arts, you come to Austin.
- [44:52]
C
Do you see any, like, commonalities between Tucson and Austin?
- [44:58]
B
Funny enough, I think Tucson and Austin were about the same size when I was growing up, and it's amazing how much Tucson has failed since then compared to Austin.
- [45:07]
A
Why do you think Austin has succeeded?
- [45:09]
B
Well, if you just look at the population itself, but just like, we have an actual skyline, and Tucson still has the exact same three buildings that were downtown that I had when I was growing up. I don't know why. I mean, I would. There's, like, little things that I like about Austin, like having town, lake. It's Like a nice lake in front of, you know, downtown. You can ride your bike around it. That's really nice. Like, that makes a big difference, just having something like that. But I just. I'll be honest. I didn't know what I was doing. I just knew I had to leave California. I kind of want to stay on the West Coast. I was really looking hard at Seattle area, but I knew one person, and in Austin, and I knew nobody in Seattle, so I moved to Austin. It was kind of like, yeah, I'm
- [45:50]
D
from the Pacific Northwest, and I don't personally perceive this, but enough Californians. Partly it's because they're Californians, but the people in the Pacific Northwest don't like people from California. But people from California that move to Portland or Seattle often say there's, you know, Pacific Northwest freeze, Seattle freeze. People are, like, very insulated, and they hang out with people they grew up with, the people they know from high school or college. And so it is difficult for Californians, from what I've heard going to Seattle, for example, as opposed to Austin, where I feel people in Austin are actually very, very welcoming and very, very open. Like, a lot of us are transplants. I think that's part of the issue. But I think, like, it must be just the native Texans themselves, because there are. You know, I do meet Austinites, and they're also, like, pretty. Like, you know, like, sometimes they. When I first moved here in 2016, there was a lot of complaining about gentrification, but I don't really hear that anymore. People just giving up.
- [46:33]
C
It's like, okay, they are chatty and friendly.
- [46:36]
D
Yeah, just like, we're just gonna grow. There's gonna be newcomers, and as long as we don't change things too much. We've changed things some. Like, you know, the music scene and the art scene has had some issues because tech, money, you know.
- [46:46]
C
But it's funny that people find that to be a draw because, like, my criteria for moving anywhere is that people don't talk to the idea of, like, moving somewhere. People are friendly and want to talk to you. But both Tucson and Austin have, like, kind of burnout, tweaker, weird, quirky, deadhead energy.
- [47:07]
A
I guess that's still here.
- [47:10]
D
It's in pockets, actually. There. There's certain, like. There's certain, like, shops that I've gone into where I'm like, wait, am I in Portland? Like, the vibe is, like, totally Portland all of a sudden. Whereas there's, you know, a lot of the other. Like, if you go to the Domain, which I Don't know if you guys know the domain. It's like by like, you know, towards the north where all the tech companies are. And it's like there's a very Silicon Valley vibe down to like the fact that you're surrounded by like women in sa kamisas, you know, do you have
- [47:35]
A
a prognosis for Silicon Valley? Like, why are there so many tech billionaires in California when they could optimize, so to speak, in Texas?
- [47:49]
B
It, it. I mean, for me it's the. It's so nice there with the weather and the ocean and the mountains. And then for me it was like, okay, I went from Tucson to San Diego to Silicon Valley. I'm like, okay, there's nowhere to go now. I've made it to Silicon Valley. But then, so that doesn't change. It's hard to lose that. It's really hard to lose that. So it'll just be there forever. And the geographical advantage is it's impossible. Like Austin can never replicate those things, unfortunately. So.
- [48:24]
D
So it's basically a California. It's like California's messing up a lot to drive people to Texas, to be honest. But it is.
- [48:33]
B
Yeah.
- [48:34]
A
What's your sign?
- [48:36]
B
I think I'm Leo. Yeah, Leo.
- [48:38]
C
Nice. What day?
- [48:39]
B
August. I mean, August 18th.
- [48:42]
A
Okay, great.
- [48:47]
C
So weird that you would be introverted. Our model keeps failing over and over again again. I know just like talk authoritatively about this and know nothing about it. I have another tech question. What percentage of tech do you think is fake and where does the actual value lie?
- [49:11]
B
So I mean, that's kind of there's a continuum, right? Like there's a. There's how fake? 100% fake? If you're talking about the companies in Silicon Valley, not that much. Honestly. I've dealt with a lot more fake tech since I tried to like engage with the kind of the peripheral, like kind of the anti establishment tech scene. 95% of the anti establishment tech scene is fake, in my opinion. If you look at something like,
- [49:44]
C
I
- [49:44]
B
mean, I don't know, I think maybe if you ask me like a specific example, I can tell you how fake I think it is. But like, obviously Apple is doing incredible products. Like Apple is doing incredible products like it.
- [49:56]
A
Yeah. Why are you an Android guy?
- [49:58]
B
So it's a real simple. You know, people ask that because I admire Apple so much for making a good product. There's one simple reason why I had to become an Android person early on, which was the side loading of applications. So as a software developer, I was able to self publish When I did my game site, I was able to self publish on the Internet. With the Android and iOS duopoly, you have to get their permission to publish your applications. But there is. Android is kind of smart because they actually do realize developers, you know, kind of like oppositionally defiant developers such as myself, find that unacceptable. So they have sideloading.
- [50:46]
A
What is sideloading?
- [50:48]
B
Sideloading is basically I can create an application and I can just give you that application. I could even send it to you like in a direct message and then you can install it. I can send it to you, you can download it from my own website and then you can install it on your phone and it'll try to scare you a little bit before you try to install it on Android. It'll say like, are you sure you want to install an application? Or from an untrusted source? But it's still possible. And so that was. That's why I'm an Android. Like that's it.
- [51:14]
A
Because Apple's just too.
- [51:15]
B
Apple's too controlling, too closed. Like it's impossible to succeed in the Apple ecosystem without giving just a 30% tariff to them, basically, or whatever you want to call it. 30% of what you make.
- [51:30]
A
Are there any technologists that you admire?
- [51:36]
B
Yeah, I mean the people who. Yeah, there's people who build great things I admire. So in terms of, you know, I love Bram Cohen, who invented BitTorrent. Right. Like that's, you know, one of the, you know, Satoshi, whoever he. That might be obviously very admirable what those people are doing.
- [51:58]
A
Bitcoin.
- [51:59]
B
Bitcoin, yeah. Satoshi made bitcoin.
- [52:01]
A
I just heard. I just learned about him. I'm learning a lot this weekend.
- [52:05]
C
Like yesterday?
- [52:06]
A
No, like today. Somebody just said his name. Well, okay. So last night at dinner there was sort of a heated discussion about effective altruism.
- [52:21]
B
Oh yeah, I was. Yeah. What were they talking about?
- [52:25]
C
I guess the nature of the question was do effective altruists believe or do they just believe? They believe. And like are they religious zealots or are they.
- [52:36]
B
I don't quite. I was having this conversation actually separately, just with the. No less wrong people or something that's overlapping.
- [52:44]
A
I didn't under. Yeah, I didn't understand really what I had a hard time following. But the idea was that they are trying to regulate, overly regulate AI because
- [52:54]
B
they want to control it. So they've convinced themselves that their purpose and I mean they've just. It's kind of a cult. Like we talked about religion, right?
- [53:01]
A
Yeah.
- [53:02]
B
So they've convinced themselves that you know it's their purpose in life to stop AI from the AI. So I think they're wrong. And I don't, I don't think there's. I don't, I don't think their techniques are going to be successful, like.
- [53:17]
A
But do they really believe that? I guess. Or do they just want to control it?
- [53:22]
B
Oh, they definitely. Yeah, that's absolutely true. I mean, you look at, look at Open AI, it's hilarious, right? Like, it was all about. OpenAI was founded because they didn't want Google to control AI. And then, so Sam Altman. And then Sam Altman tries to control OpenAI, and then Elon Musk is like, oh, well, I should control AI. And they're just fighting over who's controlling the AI and they're pretending like it's altruistic.
- [53:43]
A
They don't seem like they're anti AI, they just seem like they want to like be gatekeeping.
- [53:48]
B
They're all fighting over who gets to control it.
- [53:49]
C
It's really like a stupid question to ask whether they're like serious adherence to the faith or are just doing it to seem credible or for the clout
- [54:00]
B
or whatever, but they'll admit they have no answers.
- [54:04]
C
Is gatekeeping necessarily bad?
- [54:10]
B
Like anything, it can be good or bad, depending on how it's used. Gatekeeping has been very effective for Apple. I was just complaining about the gatekeeping that the app stores do. It's clearly been very effective too, at keeping a high quality of applications for Apple users. So, you know, it's.
- [54:30]
A
I. So with the question of digital sovereignty and big tech overreach, I guess my question is like, what's the best case scenario and what's the worst case scenario?
- [54:45]
B
I mean, worst case scenario is, you know, we live in Mad Max future instead of Star Trek future. Right. So by the way, Star Trek future is complete bullshit. But I like to call it communist. I like to call it the Star Trek mind virus that some people are afflicted with. But anyway, you know, a future of abundance maybe would be a better way to say it.
- [55:05]
A
That's the best case scenario.
- [55:07]
B
Yeah. So in terms of like, what path gets us there? I have chosen a side. I've chosen a side of decentralization and trying to keep entities from getting too powerful. Like, that's kind of my philosophy. That's my side. I might even be wrong. But like, I've chosen that side. Right. Like I. So I could. From my standpoint, I feel like you get a more fragile civilization if you have too much centralization of power and if you have a fragile civilization, then it can't recover from some potentially, you know, catastrophic event that maybe a less centralized civilization could survive. Yeah, exactly.
- [55:49]
A
But something like China, they're very centralized and hope to be more so, and yet they seem strong until there's. Until they're not brittle.
- [56:02]
C
I always assumed, I thought they would be fragile because they have, like a looming demographic crisis. Right.
- [56:08]
D
But I mean, that, that's going to really kick in. In like, you know, 20 or 30 years. They still have a lot of people and, you know, like a lot of working age people. That's.
- [56:16]
A
And what happens if they take Taiwan?
- [56:18]
D
Well, I mean, I think they probably will. Right?
- [56:21]
A
It'll probably be, I don't know, we're
- [56:25]
C
supposed to take Taiwan.
- [56:26]
B
Yeah, I think they're just. I think they're just playing the slow. They're not going to have to take it. They just, I mean, also the t convince more and more people they're disappearing. They just convince more and more. The. The generations do just decide they want something else over time. And so the Taiwan youth could very wind up being. Again, this is where big the tech and soft influence can convince the younger generations to just want to be part of China. And then there's no issue in America.
- [56:55]
A
Do you sense a generational. Because I sort of see it with zoomers. Anna and I are millennials and I feel like when we started using the Internet, we had this really, like, you know, every. We just gave so much of our data because we, you know, early Internet was so much about like, welcome to Dasha's page. And like, here's all this stuff about me. And I see younger people being less. Less willing to do that.
- [57:19]
D
Yeah, that's a lot of info about you.
- [57:21]
A
Yeah, but we were like, yeah, we just kind of like mindlessly did it unironically sincere.
- [57:27]
C
And we were like, oh, let's just tell people our tastes and preferences and create a social network of similar gullible retards.
- [57:35]
B
I think the. We haven't really talked about this yet, but a huge. Anybody who's, like, doing electioneering in our Western democracies knows how to get the results they want by spending money on these things. So that's a huge part of it, too, is just you can get the result you want by influencing what people see and making sure that the right people have their voices removed, things like that.
- [58:02]
A
What's the futo keyboard?
- [58:05]
B
Just a really simple thing. It's kind of the embodiment of what we're trying to do. So if you're using an Android keyboard, you're sending all this data to Google as you type, or if you're doing voice prediction. Android keyboard is just a way to interact with your phone and your applications without Google knowing what you're doing. It doesn't even have a connection to the Internet. So Android keyboard only has a connection to the application that is that you're using, that you're typing into.
- [58:34]
A
So if I have an Android and I don't have a photo keyboard and I'm like typing a note, then Google has access to it.
- [58:41]
B
Yeah, Google said they don't have access to what you're typing, and they try to blind it. So there's all this cryptography that's going on that some of it's real, some of it's not real. And they've published papers saying that even though everything you type is being sent to Google, that they're scrambling it in a nice cryptographic way. But voice to text, they're not. So if you're using voice, a keyboard is also responsible for voice to text, if you use that feature. And our keyboard, Fudo keyboard, does both voice to text and text prediction. And we don't have a connection to the Internet. We just want people. It's a very simple proposition. We made a keyboard for you. We are hiring engineers. We try to make it as good as we can for you. Pay us for using our software.
- [59:34]
A
Are there any other products you'd like to.
- [59:39]
B
We're working on our polycentric product. This is something that's been in the works for a while. We've kind of had some stumbles, like finding the right engineers to work on it.
- [59:48]
A
What's polycentric? Oh, yes. Pluto needs engineers.
- [59:51]
B
I actually have good feeling about polycentric now because we have some new people in place.
- [59:59]
A
What is polycentric?
- [60:00]
B
So polycentric is what I feel like publishing should be on the Internet. And the idea is basically instead of publishing to a specific platform that can censor you or manipulate you as a creator through, like a YouTuber gets quite a bit of guidance from YouTube about how to maximize their reach. Instead of that, we just want people. What we were talking about earlier, we want people to just publish to the Internet and create an ecosystem where there's lots of people creating ways for your audience to find you based on the fact that you just published it to the Internet. We are truly the cloud. You publish something, you publish it to multiple servers. So you don't publish it to just one server. You publish it to multiple servers. As a publisher, that just becomes a Part of the public record. Instead of something that's inside Google's database that they can just delete or hide anytime they want, it's part of the public record that you publish this.
- [61:04]
A
And how people who are interested, how can they learn more?
- [61:10]
B
Futo Tech is our site. We've got a lot of information there.
- [61:16]
D
You know, we have an X account.
- [61:18]
B
We have an X account. Futa underscore Tech on X. We publish. We do publish videos on YouTube because we're trying to reach the audience where they are, which is unfortunately on YouTube. So is it.
- [61:29]
C
Is YouTube still.
- [61:31]
B
YouTube's huge. Yep. Yeah, yep. It's. It's.
- [61:35]
C
Everybody was on Tick tock now.
- [61:37]
B
Well, TikTok is harder to actually communicate with anybody more than just silly dances or whatever. So we do try to have substance when we communicate with people. And so YouTube is what we're using now. We also publish to YouTube competitors as much as we can. They're very niche, the YouTube competitors, but we do publish to them too. If you're here in Austin, we do our lunches every Friday. If you like programming, if you want to talk to other people who are working on tech and care about making good products, which is honestly, like, I've been very happy that we found a lot of people like that that are like me and just they want to build a good product for people, there's pride of workmanship. You know, you're. You're good at programming. You should want to. You shouldn't want to build something for Google or Facebook.
- [62:32]
D
You don't need to come.
- [62:33]
C
You should come to the.
- [62:34]
D
You don't need to.
- [62:35]
B
Yeah, but you should also be kind of like sad at what they've done to your work, I think. Sure, sure, sure.
- [62:40]
D
Yeah. I mean, basically, it's like, you know, you just. People have to sell out to some extent, more or less. Right. But it's like you don't have to be happy about it. You know, it's just how it is.
- [62:52]
A
Okay, well, thank you so much.
- [62:56]
B
Thank you. It was great talking to you.
- [62:57]
A
Good luck with your ventures.
- [62:59]
C
Yeah. If any of you listeners want to go work for fudo, where to find them. It'd be funny if a bunch of retarded E girls show up.
- [63:12]
A
Your listeners slide into Razeeb's DMs.
- [63:16]
B
You know, every. Every. It is rare that, you know, the people who can do this stuff are rare people, you know, so it's not a lot of them, but they do all have friends, you know, they have friends who are listening to your podcast probably they might be listening to your
- [63:29]
A
podcast sometimes, you know, you never know if you might be out. They might be out there.
- [63:35]
C
Yep.
- [63:37]
A
Okay.
- [63:38]
D
All right.
- [63:39]
A
See you now.
- [63:41]
B
Thank you.
- [63:41]
A
Thank you.
- [63:42]
C
That was fun,
- [63:54]
D
Sam.