E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang

Summary

Podcast Summary: This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von – Episode E563 featuring AI CEO Alexandr Wang

Introduction to the Episode

In Episode E563 of This Past Weekend with Theo Von, host Theo Von welcomes Alexandr Wang, the visionary CEO and founder of Scale AI. Released on February 18, 2025, this episode delves deep into the intricacies of artificial intelligence, Scale AI's groundbreaking work, and the broader implications of AI on society and the global landscape.

Background of Alexander Wang

Alexander Wang's journey into the world of AI began in Los Alamos, New Mexico, a town renowned for its national laboratory heritage. Raised by physicist parents, Wang was immersed in a scientifically rich environment from an early age. “Both my parents are physicists, and there's a damn lot of science around” ([05:02]). This upbringing fostered his passion for mathematics and technology, setting the stage for his later achievements.

Founding of Scale AI and Its Mission

At just 19, Alexandr founded Scale AI, a company dedicated to enhancing AI algorithms through meticulous data curation. By 24, he became the youngest self-made billionaire, a testament to his innovative approach in the AI sector. Scale AI’s mission centers on bridging the gap between AI systems and the vast amounts of data they require to function effectively.

Understanding AI: Data, Algorithms, and Infrastructure

The conversation navigates the foundational elements of artificial intelligence. Wang explains, “AI is all about programming computers to be able to start thinking like humans” ([27:07]). He breaks down AI into two core components:

1. Infrastructure: Advanced chips, particularly GPUs, housed in expansive data centers. These facilities, akin to “massive warehouses” ([32:10]), are the physical backbone enabling AI computations.

2. Algorithms: Sophisticated software that processes vast datasets to mimic human cognitive functions. Wang emphasizes the importance of clean, high-quality data, likening it to “the body of water” that AI systems swim in ([37:00]).

Scale AI's Platform "Outlier"

Scale AI introduced "Outlier," a platform designed to streamline the data collection process essential for training AI models. "Outlier earned about $500 million total across everybody in the U.S. across 9,000 different towns" ([37:56]). This innovative model allows a diverse workforce, termed "contributors," to generate and refine data, ensuring AI systems are robust and versatile.

Future of AI: Job Creation and Transformation

Wang is optimistic about AI's potential to create new job opportunities. He envisions roles such as AI data contributors, AI managers, and facilitators to oversee AI applications. “AI is going to create a ton of jobs and that story is not told enough” ([43:17]). Instead of displacing workers, AI will augment human capabilities, enabling individuals to manage and oversee AI-driven tasks effectively.

Global Competition: US vs. China in AI

A significant portion of the discussion highlights the intense rivalry between the United States and China in the AI domain. While the U.S. currently leads in computational power and chip development, China is rapidly catching up, particularly in data acquisition and algorithmic advancements. Wang warns, “AI is going to be one of the most important questions or most important races of our time” ([62:12]).

AI's Impact on Society and Information Warfare

Wang addresses the darker side of AI, including its use in cyber warfare and information manipulation. Reflecting on events like the Salt Typhoon cyber hack, he underscores the vulnerability of digital infrastructure to AI-driven attacks. “There's a race for how...” ([41:38]), leading to concerns over national security and the integrity of information.

Geopolitical Concerns: Chip Manufacturing and Taiwan

The strategic significance of Taiwan in the global chip industry is discussed extensively. As the primary hub for advanced chip manufacturing, Taiwan's geopolitical stability is paramount. Wang explains, “Taiwan is where almost all of the high-end chips for AI are made” ([85:06]). Any conflict in the region could severely impact the global AI infrastructure, escalating tensions between superpowers.

AI's Potential in Healthcare and Human Creativity

Looking ahead, Wang is excited about AI's transformative impact on healthcare, potentially curing diseases like cancer and heart disease. “AI understands molecules and biology better than humans do actually” ([47:06]). Additionally, AI is poised to amplify human creativity, assisting in everything from filmmaking to event planning by handling logistical tasks and providing innovative solutions.

Managing AI: Ensuring Ethical and Safe Use

Wang emphasizes the responsibility of the AI industry to maintain ethical standards. Ensuring that AI remains a tool for human empowerment, rather than a source of manipulation, is crucial. “We have to make sure that this is something that enables us as humans to be more human” ([106:04]). Scale AI employs rigorous data vetting and continuous testing to prevent misuse and ensure AI systems operate safely.

The Human-AI Relationship: Fear vs. Opportunity

Throughout the episode, Wang confronts common fears surrounding AI, advocating for education and responsible usage to demystify the technology. “We need to remove the boogeyman component” ([126:21]). By fostering a positive relationship with AI, society can harness its benefits while mitigating potential risks.

Alexander's Personal Insights and Experiences

Wang shares anecdotes from his personal and professional life, including his time at MIT, dropping out to pursue his passion, and interactions with prominent figures like Elon Musk. These stories underscore his commitment to advancing AI and his belief in its potential to revolutionize various industries.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

In closing, Alexander Wang reiterates his vision of AI as a collaborative tool that enhances human potential. “AI is going to help us turn these ideas into reality much more easily” ([51:25]). Theo Von and Wang part on a hopeful note, highlighting the exciting possibilities ahead while acknowledging the challenges that must be navigated to ensure AI benefits all of humanity.

Notable Quotes:

• On AI's Core Components: “AI is all about programming computers to be able to start thinking like humans” ([27:07]).

• On Scale AI's Mission: “We want to make sure that this body of water is as clean as possible and we fill it up as much as possible” ([41:38]).

• On Job Creation: “AI is actually going to create a ton of jobs and that story is not told enough” ([43:17]).

• On Geopolitical Tensions: “Taiwan is where almost all of the high-end chips for AI are made” ([85:06]).

• On Ethical AI Use: “We have to make sure that this is something that enables us as humans to be more human” ([106:04]).

• On the Future of AI: “AI is going to be a huge tool for us to cure disease for us, help educate people for us” ([47:06]).

This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of artificial intelligence through the lens of one of its most influential leaders. Alexandr Wang provides invaluable insights into the current state of AI, its future trajectory, and the ethical considerations necessary to harness its full potential.

Transcript

[Theo Von]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to [e-mail] Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month Required intro rate first 3 months only then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees, extra default terms. @mintmobile.com I want to let you know we've restocked all your favorites on the Merch site. Everything is in stock. You can show up the ovanstore.com and thank you so much for the support. I have some new tour dates to tell you about. I'll be in Chicago, Illinois on April 24th at the Wind Trust Arena, Fort Wayne, Indiana on April 26th at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum and Miami, Florida on May 10th at the Cassia Center. Get your tickets early starting Wednesday, February 19th at 10:00am with pre sale code Rat King. We also have tickets remaining in East Lansing, Victoria, B.C. in the Canada, College Station, Belton, Texas, Oxford, Mississippi, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Nashville, Tennessee, Winnipeg in the Canada and Calgary in the Canada. All [e-mail] to U R. Today's guest is from Los Alamos, New Mexico. He's a leader in the world of business and technology. He's an entrepreneur. He started Scale AI, a company recently valued at $14 billion. He started it when he was only 19 and at 24 he became the youngest self made billionaire in the world. We talk about his company, the future of AI and the role it plays in our human existence. This was super educational for me. I hope it is for you. I'm grateful for his time. Today's guest is Mr. Alexander Wang. Alexander Wang, man. Thanks for hanging out, bro.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, thanks for having me.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. Good to see you, dude.

[Alexander Wang]

Last time was at the inauguration.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. What'd you think of that? Like what were your thoughts after you left? Because you and I ended up we like left out of there and then went and got lunch together which is kind of crazy.

[Alexander Wang]

It was. There was a lot going on. Yeah, it was a. Were you there the whole weekend?

[Theo Von]

No, I just got there the day. The morning of the inauguration. Were you there the whole weekend?

[Alexander Wang]

I was there the whole weekend, yeah. No, I mean I think at least for what we do, like for AI, the. The new Administration is really excited about it and wants to make sure that we. We get it right as a country. So that was all great, but it was kind of a crazy. The whole, like, event, like, everything was pretty crazy. I don't know. What'd you think?

[Theo Von]

I mean, when I saw Conor McGregor show up, that's when I was like, shit, is. Where are we? It. That's what, like the most bizarre. I mean, you were there. Sam Altman was there. I was just like, it was like, what happened here? And part of that's because Alex Brucewitz, you know.

[Alexander Wang]

Totally. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

I mean, it's all because of him that we all went. But just the fact that he would bring these people together, it kind of makes you question crossover.

[Alexander Wang]

It's like, it's like in. In those, like, TV shows when you have those crossover episodes. Yeah, that's kind of what it felt like.

[Theo Von]

Oh, yeah. When like the Harlem Globetrotters and it would be like them versus, like the Care Bears or. Or whatever would show up.

[Alexander Wang]

Exactly.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. Like this. Yeah. This seems. Yeah. Some cross pollination. Yeah. What'd you think when Connor showed up? Was that strange to see him? Like, was there somebody you thought that was straight, like, unique to see there for you?

[Alexander Wang]

Well, yeah. I mean, you, Connor, like the, the. The Paul's. I don't know.

[Theo Von]

The whole.

[Alexander Wang]

The whole thing was pretty. Pretty crazy. I see Sam all the time and I see. I see some of the tech people all the time. I mean, it was funny crossover and it was obviously like, I. So many people flew in to be able to go to like, the outdoor inauguration, right?

[Theo Von]

Yeah.

[Alexander Wang]

And so, I mean, there were so many people in the city. We ran into them, obviously, but, like, there were so many people in D.C. who were just around for the inauguration. So it was a. Yeah, I didn't.

[Theo Von]

Even think about that all. There was a couple hundred thousand people probably just got kind of displaced in a way, and suddenly they're just in bars or whatever, just like buying. Like there was like, people I saw walking, just adult onesies and that said Trump or on the. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for coming in, man. I'm excited to learn about AI. I know that that's a world that you're in. You're in the tech universe and you. You're from New Mexico, right?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

And so when you grew up there, did you have like, a strong sense of like, science and technology? Was that like part of your world? Like, did your parents, like, lead you into that? Like, what was just some of your youth? Like, there's yeah.

[Alexander Wang]

So both my parents are physicists and there's a damn. I grew up in this town called Los Alamos where there's a, there's a, there's a national lab there. Did you watch Oppenheimer?

[Theo Von]

Yeah.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. So the, so all the New Mexico shots in Oppenheimer, that's exactly where I grew up.

[Theo Von]

Oh.

[Alexander Wang]

So it was like originally where all the scientists came together and, and did all the work in the atomic bomb. And there's still this huge lab that's basically the everybody I knew effectively like their parents worked at the lab or were somehow affiliate with the lab.

[Theo Von]

Like Nukeville over there. Huh?

[Alexander Wang]

Nukeville. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Is it scary like that?

[Alexander Wang]

It was, you know, at a level of mystery.

[Theo Von]

Like is your prom like last night under the stars or something?

[Alexander Wang]

Like there's a, there's this one museum. Well, the funny thing is like first you hear, you hear this, you learn the story of the atomic bomb and the Manhattan Project like basically every year growing up because there's always like a day or a few days where you know, there's a substitute teacher and they just, they just play the videos. So you're just like.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. An alcoholic or something. Yeah, a recreational user was use that term. That's crazy that, that just like every year you guys have like. Yeah, just like blast it, Thursdays or whatever. And it's just.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, you're just learning. You're learning again about the Manhattan Project. And then there's a little, a little museum in town which is like, you walk through and there's like a life size replica of the nukes. So it's, it's pretty wild. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

And where did they drop the atomic bombs on. They dropped them on Asia, right? Hiroshima.

[Alexander Wang]

They. Yeah, they dropped them on in, in Japan. Yeah. Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[Theo Von]

Is it, is it crazy being like semi Asia, part Asian?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, my, my parents are Chinese.

[Theo Von]

Oh, nice, man. Is it crazy being Asian and then having that happen to Asian people with the bond? Like. Is that a weird thing there? It's nothing.

[Alexander Wang]

No, I don't think so. I mean, I think the thing is like, you know, I. So there weren't, I didn't grow up with very many Asians because the, in that town it was, you know, it's, it's in New Mexico. There's very few Asians in New Mexico. So I was one of the only Asian kids in my class growing up. And so I didn't think that much about it, honestly. But then like. But it is super weird. You know, you grow up and you learn about this very advanced technology that had this, like, really, really big impact on the world. And I think that shaped.

[Theo Von]

Yeah, it's like the scientific John Jones over there. Really? He's New Mexican, isn't he?

[Alexander Wang]

He lives in Albuquerque. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Oh, he does.

[Alexander Wang]

I think he does, yeah.

[Theo Von]

Sweet man. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, that. So you. So you're there. There's this. There's this energy always there of this creation. So probably the possibility of creation maybe was always in the air. I'm just wondering, like, how did you get formed? Kind like, what's your origin story? Kind of.

[Alexander Wang]

It was super scientific because. Because, you know, there was always these. There were all these presentations around what were the new kinds of science that were going on at the lab. So there's all these chemistry experiments and these different, like Earth science experiments and physics experiments. And my mom studied like plasma and like how plasma, you know, worked inside of stars and stuff like that. So it was just the wildest stuff. And you would talk to people's parent people you like. I would talk to my classmates or I talked to their parents about what they're working on is always some crazy science thing. So that was. Wow, that was really cool because. Because everybody in that town basically is. They're all working on some kind of crazy scientific thing. And so you kind of. I mean, I feel like I grew up feeling like, you know, anything was possible in that way, like.

[Theo Von]

Yeah, because the rest of us in other communities, shitty communities or whatever, we're just making that volcano or what, you know what I'm saying? We're doing like grassroots level, you know. Dang, that's got to be wild. So every. You see somebody just sneaking behind an alley and buying a bit of uranium and like that in your neighborhood, that's got to be kind of unique.

[Alexander Wang]

I remember there was someone from our town who did. Who did a science fair project called. It's called like Great Balls of Plasma. And for the science. Literally for the science fair. This was in like high school. For the science fair, they made like huge balls of plasma in their garage. And I was like, what the heck? Like, this is. We're all just doing this in. In high school.

[Theo Von]

Damn. So did you feel competitive or did you just feel like hyper capable? Like, did you feel like kind of advanced? Just in your studies, like when you were young, like, did you in class, you. Like, some of this stuff's kind of coming easy to me.

[Alexander Wang]

I ended up. What, What I did is there was I ended up getting really competitive about math in particular.

[Theo Von]

Yeah.

[Alexander Wang]

And so, so my sport was math, which is kind of crazy.

[Theo Von]

That algebraic, son. I know. I feel you.

[Alexander Wang]

And it was because when I was in middle school, when I was in sixth grade, there was this one math competition where if you, if you got top four in the state. State of New Mexico, then you would get an all expense paid trip to Disney World. And, and I remember as a sixth grader, like that was the most motivating thing I could possibly imagine was like an all expense paid trip to Disney World. Yeah. And then.

[Theo Von]

Did you win it?

[Alexander Wang]

I got, I won it. I got fourth place. So I snuck in there. Snuck in. I. And then I went to. And then we went to Florida to Disney World. And I, I hadn't traveled. Like I didn't travel around too much growing up. Like, I mostly was in New Mexico and we did some road trips around the southwest. So I remember getting to Florida and it was extremely humid. It was like I never felt what humidity felt like. When I landed in Florida, I was like, oh, this feels bad. And then I.

[Theo Von]

Yeah, it definitely does. Yeah. It's funny because I grew up in humid. Do like you would, like you try to shake somebody's hand. You couldn't even land it because it was just not enough viscosity. Just too much lube in a handshake. You sit there for 10 minutes trying to land a handshake. You know, everybody was always dripping, you know, all the time. People, you always thought they were scared or something or they were kind of geeked up off a gas station dope or something. But people were just. It was humid. Yeah, you get really humid over there.

[Alexander Wang]

So then I became, so then I became a mathlete. That was like a big part of my identity was being a mathlete. And I would.

[Theo Von]

And you have to wear a vest. Like, what do you guys do? Is there an out. Is there a uniform for that or.

[Alexander Wang]

Well, you, you need a, you have a calculator. Okay, so everyone had their favorite calculator.

[Theo Von]

Okay. You got that Draco on you, baby. I feel you keep strapped. Yeah, you stay strapp. Laughed at that thing.

[Alexander Wang]

And then, but, but outside of that, not really. I mean like everyone had their favorite, like is pencil. You know, your pencil, your calculator. That was your gear. And. But yeah, no, I, I was, I was like a, A nationally ranked mathlete for, for middle school, high school. That was my, that, that was my jam. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

And is it. What's this math circle like? Is there. Wow, that's crazy, dude. So you go to what are there? Competitions you go to with that.

[Alexander Wang]

There's competitions. Yeah, there's like, there's like state level competitions, there's national level competitions, there's like these summer camps. Math camp. I went to math camp a bunch of times where you, where you convene with like minded mathletes.

[Theo Von]

Okay. Wow. Wizards in the park. Couple dudes fucking fighting over a common denominator in the lobby. That's crazy, bro.

[Alexander Wang]

But then you're, but just like any other sport, like you're like, it's competitive, you know, you got to like, you gotta win. And, and so, so you're chummy with everyone, but you're also like. We're like, who's gonna win? You know?

[Theo Von]

Yeah. No dude, competition's amazing, man. That's one thing is too. That's so nice. I think about when you're young is like if you're involved in a sport or a group or whatever, it was just, just that chance to be competitive, you know.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

What are, what were like some of the competitions at the math thing? Like what's a, what's a math competition? Like when you get there.

[Alexander Wang]

So you, the ones in the middle school. Middle school were actually more fun because there's like, there's almost like a Jeopardy style buzzer competition and stuff like that. But. But in high school, once you get to high school, it's just, you just take a test and you just. It's like the, the biggest one in America is called the Usimo.

[Theo Von]

Bring it up.

[Alexander Wang]

US Mo Usamo.

[Theo Von]

Okay.

[Alexander Wang]

And. And it's like people all around the country take this test and there's United.

[Theo Von]

States of American mathematical Olympiad.

[Alexander Wang]

Okay, there you go.

[Theo Von]

Okay. A participant must be either US Citizen or a legal resident. US okay. Okay, go on.

[Alexander Wang]

And then you. And then it's a nine hour test. It's split over two days. It's nine hours. You. It's four and a half hours and it's nine hours and you have six problems. So it's kind of nerve wracking. And you get in there, you have four and a half hours the first day, four and a half hours the second day.

[Theo Von]

Can you cheat in between the days? Can you just go home and.

[Alexander Wang]

No, you. Because you only get three questions the first day and then you only get three questions the next day and figured it out. I remember the first time I took it, I was in, I think I was, I was in eighth grade. First time I took it and I like, I was like so nervous and I just, I like brought a thermos full of coffee And I drank so much coffee that, like, those four and a half hours felt like, like year. It was like I was so jittery the whole time. It was. It was crazy.

[Theo Von]

Dang, he out there rattling, brother. Oh, integers make me rattle, brother. I feel you on that, dude. So that's pretty. So. So. So you're competitive, and so you get out of there and you're obviously, I guess, admired in the world of math, probably. Or that's. That's like a thing that, like, that you can point that. That's like a pen that you. A feather in your cat. So that. That helps you get into mit, right?

[Alexander Wang]

Yep. Okay, so then, yeah, in mit, on the MIT admissions, they ask for your, like, competitive math scores. So if you're. So.

[Theo Von]

So you knew a lot of kids going there, probably.

[Alexander Wang]

Because it was tons of kids. Yeah. Yeah, tons of kids. It was like a reunion. It was like math camp reunion.

[Theo Von]

Damn. Because I was wondering where all y'all were at, dude. Because we were doing some other shit. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. We were not. God, that's where all the smart kids were. That's fascinating, man.

[Alexander Wang]

And so then, yeah, I was at mit, and then MIT is like a really intense school because they, you know, the classes they don't around with, they just really, like. They load you up with tons of work, and most of the time you have. You. You like. They load you up with, like, huge amounts of work and they, you know, you. You. You don't really know what's going on initially. And so you're just kind of like. You're just trying to make it through. But, you know, there's this motto that. That MIT has called ihtfp, which among the students stands for I hate this place.

[Theo Von]

Oh, yeah. It's heavy, huh?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. But then. But then the school, when you go, they tell you, oh. It stands for I've truly found paradise. So.

[Theo Von]

Oh. So a couple differences of opinion.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. Damn. So it's. So. It's really severe there. There's a lot of work. They load you down out of the gate.

[Alexander Wang]

You do. You do a lot of work. But it's. It's kind of awesome. I mean, because. Because I think the students really band together. Like, you, like, instead of, like. I think instead of it being competitive, really. MIT is much more about, like, everybody kind of like, coming together, working on problems together, working on homework together, and just kind of like making through together.

[Theo Von]

What's that social life like there? Like, are you dating? You going to parties? What's that like, for you at that.

[Alexander Wang]

Time, it's a bunch of parties. Because people like mit, there's a lot of people who like tinkering with gadgets. So, like, tinkering with, like, you know, lights and big speakers and DJ sets and all this stuff. So actually the parties are pretty good because they're like. The production value is high, the production quality is high.

[Theo Von]

Damn. And then what about when the science kids come through the lab dogs? Are they bringing. Are people making, like, unique drug? Was there, like designer drugs that were being created by actual people? Like, just. Because, you know, I'm saying, like my friends in college, none of us would know how to do that. But there may be somebody at a smart. At a more prestigious school that would know how. Was that a thing even? Or is that just.

[Alexander Wang]

There's one. There was one part of the campus called East Campus where it was like, it was more fringe. And so there was like, at one point in the school year, they would. In their courtyard, they would build a gigantic catapult. Like a huge catapult.

[Theo Von]

Trebuchet.

[Alexander Wang]

Like a trebuchet? Yeah. What's the difference? I don't know what the difference.

[Theo Von]

Yeah, let's get the difference there because people need to know this anyway. People have. For decades now, people have been.

[Alexander Wang]

A trebuchet has a. Like a rope attached to the end of it that flings it where a catapult just launches it. No, it was a catapult then.

[Theo Von]

Okay.

[Alexander Wang]

Like a big. Because there's a big. There's a big, like, like ice cream scooper.

[Theo Von]

Oh, yeah.

[Alexander Wang]

Looking thing that would like. That would fling it.

[Theo Von]

And what are they just flinging Adderall into the rest of the campus?

[Alexander Wang]

They would fling stuff into the river, which I don't think. Now that I'm thinking about, I feel like. I don't know what the. Yeah, no, these giant. This giant, like, catapult things. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

And so this was like a event that would go on and people would kind of rave there. What are you saying?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, they would do this. They would do other things. They were like, they were into. They would, like, build a lot of stuff over there and there would be.

[Theo Von]

Like, people that ended up at Burning man later on.

[Alexander Wang]

Yes, yes. That was the burning. That was core Burning Man. Like, there was a. There was a satanic ritual floor. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, a lot of. A lot of, like. It's fringe. Cool. It's cool.

[Theo Von]

Right?

[Alexander Wang]

But. But yeah, so there's all these parties. We. We bragged at MIT that, you know, people from all the neighboring Schools. Because Boston is a huge college town.

[Theo Von]

Like tons of Boston's an amazing city.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. But no, MIT was fun, but I was only there. I was at MIT for one year.

[Theo Von]

Right, and you dropped out. Is that safe to say?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Okay, you dropped out and then you. So you got into AI, into the AI world. Is that kind of a safe bridge.

[Alexander Wang]

To say yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Theo Von]

Okay. Is there. And I want to ask this because I know Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college, you dropped out of college. Both you guys have had success in tech and kind of, you know, forward thinking, that sort of world. Is there something in college that you felt like didn't nurture you or did you just feel like this isn't the place for me? Do you feel like college doesn't nurture a certain type of thinker or was it just a personal choice?

[Alexander Wang]

I think for me it was like I was just feeling really impatient and I don't really know why really, but I remember, like, I remember I was in school the first year I. It was, it was really fun and I really enjoyed it. But then I remember, you know, this in the year when I was at MIT was one of the first, like, it was like one of the early big moments in AI because it was. I don't remember this, but there was an AI that beat the world champion at go. This was in 2015, which, when I was in college at go.

[Theo Von]

And that was a game.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, Go. It's like, it's like a big checkerboard with like white and black stones. It's like. And it was. Yeah, this, this game AlphaGo versus Lisa Dole.

[Theo Von]

So AlphaGo versus Lisa Doll, also known as the DeepMind Challenge match was a five game Go match between top GO player Lisa Doll and AlphaGo, a computer Go program developed by DeepMind. Played in Seoul, South Korea between 9 and 15 between 9 9th and 15th of March 2016.

[Alexander Wang]

That was confusing how that's written.

[Theo Von]

It is very confusing. Huh? If you think that. Yeah, we got a. AlphaGo won all but the fourth game. All games were won by resignation. The match has been compared with the historic chess match between Deep Blue and Gary Kasparov. Huh? The winner of the match was slated to win $1 million since AlphaGo won Google DeepMind stated that the prize will be donated to charities including UNICEF and USAID. That's just a joke, but Lee received $150,000 for playing. So this was a big moment because this had never kind of happened before.

[Alexander Wang]

Never happened. Yeah. And it was, it was a big moment for for AI, it was like, oh, wow, this stuff is like, it's really happening. And so then this happened in March, and I guess, yeah, I dropped out, started my company in May. So I guess two months after this, I was. I was. Yeah, that's what the game looks like. Oh, I've.

[Theo Von]

I've played this game before.

[Alexander Wang]

It's. Honestly, it's a really, like, I'm not very good at the game.

[Theo Von]

It's a little more fun than playing chess. Unless you're like, you know, in, like, Renaissance Fair board games or whatever.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Okay, so now we got you. You're loose, dude. You're out of the school and you're in the world. You see, did that match. Did realizing that kind of like, spurn you don't want to leave school? Or did. Was that just something that happened around the same time?

[Alexander Wang]

It kind of did. Basically. It was. It was. I remember feeling like, oh, wow, AI, it's happening. And this is back in 2016. So, like, eight, eight, nine years ago.

[Theo Von]

Okay.

[Alexander Wang]

And then I felt like I had to, you know, basically that. That inspired me to start my company and I moved. I basically went straight from. I remember this. I flew straight from Boston to San Francisco and then started the company, basically.

[Theo Von]

And that's scale AI.

[Alexander Wang]

Scale AI.

[Theo Von]

Okay. And so did you. Where you been following AI? Like, what are your. Kind of, like, are you just, like, knew, like, this is where it's going? Like, you just felt there was something. An instinct that you trusted or, like, because that's a big thing to do.

[Alexander Wang]

I was stuck. So I took all the AI classes at mit.

[Theo Von]

Okay, so you're already learning a lot about it.

[Alexander Wang]

Yep. And then there was one class where you had to, like, on all the classes, you had to do side projects or final projects of some kind. And in one of them, I wanted to build a. Like, a camera inside my refrigerator that would tell me when my roommates were stealing my food.

[Theo Von]

Wang boy. Catching them. Hang boy. Wow.

[Alexander Wang]

And. But then. So I worked on that, and then it was. There was one moment where. Where I was like. There was like. There was a moment that clicked where I was trying to build this thing, and then there was one step that was, like, too easy. I was like, whoa, that just worked right there. And then that happened. And then the. The go match happened, and I was like, this. This stuff is happening. And so I.

[Theo Von]

Did you ever market those refrigerators? You ever actually create that?

[Alexander Wang]

I didn't market them.

[Theo Von]

No, dude, I could totally see that, bro. There's a refrigerator. Every dorm has it where there's a camera built in and you just get. You're in. You get a notification on your phone. You know, you're like, damn, Adnan's got my hummus. You know. But you got video of them right there. Dude, that's a great idea.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, I love that. That was. That was. That was college me. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Okay, so Alexander Wang, he's free in the world now. He's headed to San Francisco. He's aied up. He feels the energy. He's motivated by some of the classes he took. He's motivated by seeing that AI starting to actually overtake humans. Right. Or be able to compete with actual human thinking with the chess match.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, I would. The way I would think about it or the way I thought about the time was like, this is. This is becoming. You know, people have been talking about AI for decades. Like, it's kind of been always been one of these things that people have. Have said, oh, it's going to happen. But it never really was happening. And it felt like it was, you know, it was really about.

[Theo Von]

About artificial intelligence.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Theo Von]

Because I've always heard about artificial intelligence. That's what I have. So I've always been like, no, you.

[Alexander Wang]

You are. You have real intelligence, not artificial. Real intelligence.

[Theo Von]

I don't. I mean, I think it's a. It's probably a mix, but I see what you're saying, you know, I do. You know what I thought of the other day, it was like, what if they had, like, a Mexican version? And it was like a. I don't know. That's a good. That's a good joke. Or not, but thank you. It's a nice laugh. This show is sponsored by Better Help. What are some of your relationship green flags? That's a good question. What are things you notice in your relationship that or like, yes, this is positive. This is good. We're headed in the right direction. We often hear about the red flags we should avoid. But what if we focused more on looking for green flags in friends and partners? If you're not sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify green flags. Actively practice them in your relationships, and embody the green flag energy yourself. I've personally benefited from therapy over the years. I think one of the things it's helped me with is just noticing some of my patterns, noticing when I let something small turn into something big, and being able to cut it off at the past so it doesn't happen anymore. BetterHelp can help you. BetterHelp is fully online Making therapy affordable and convenient. Serving over 5 million people worldwide. Discover your relationships green flags with better help. Visit betterhelp.comtheo to get 10% off your first month. That's better help. H e l p.comt h e O Are you struggling to keep your website and digital marketing up to date while running your business? Now you can relax and binge on unlimited web design services with Modify. Enjoy unlimited support, a quick turnaround and your own designated designer. Modify has done my website for years and they're incredible. Sign up with Modify today. They make life easier and business better. Visit modify.comtheo that's m o-I p h y.comt h e o for 50 off the last website you'll ever need. That's modify.comtheo what is AI?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, so, so AI is all about, you know, basically programming computers to be able to start thinking like humans. So, you know, traditional computer programming, you know, it's pretty, it's pretty bare bones. It's not very smart. And so AI is all about can you have, can you build algorithms that start to be able to think like people and, and replicate some of the, like, our brains are these incredible, incredible things, you know, and that's, that's evolution. That's just biology that created our brains. And so it's all about, how can we, how can we build something similar to that or replicate it using, using computers and machines? And so the whole, you know, the, the, the whole modern AI era really started around an area called computer vision. But it was like, how can we first get computers to see like, like humans do? So one of the very first, so, you know, one of the very first AI projects was this thing called ImageNet. ImageNet and later AlexNet. And it was basically, can you get computer programs, like, given a photo to tell you what's in that photo?

[Theo Von]

I see. So just like a human would, like, if you showed them this. Yeah, you're starting to train them to have a perspective.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, train them to. Well, actually, originally, like, you could, like, let's say you took a photo of this, of this bottle. A machine wouldn't even be able to tell you what's in the photo. It would just know what the pixels were, but it wouldn't be able to tell you, like, oh, there's a bottle in that, in that photo. So the, you know, one of the first AI breakthroughs was when YouTube built an algorithm that could tell when there were cats in their videos. And that was like this, you know, in like 2012 or 2011, this was like this mind blowing breakthrough that you could like figure out. You could like use an algorithm to figure out when there was a cat inside a, inside a video. And so AI, it started pretty simply with just how do we replicate, you know, vision? Like, how do you replicate like our. Basically the fact that our eyes and our brains can like process all this imagery coming in. And that really led to, I think, one of the first major use cases of AI, which is self driving cars. So this was in. When we, when I started the company in 2016, self driving cars were all the rage because, you know, it was, you know, there were all these like skunk works projects.

[Theo Von]

When you started Scalia, you mean?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, when I started scaling.

[Theo Von]

When you kind of got into AI.

[Alexander Wang]

Yep.

[Theo Von]

At that time, self driving cars are the, are the most popular things.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah, that was all the rage. And so it was, it was all about can, you know, can we start building algorithms that can drive a car like a human would and do it safely and do it, you know, more efficiently? And that way instead of that was. That was one of the first major areas.

[Theo Von]

Okay.

[Alexander Wang]

And then now, you know, the whole, the whole industry has moved so fast, but then all of a sudden we got chatgpt and we got, you know, more advanced stuff more recently that, that is able to talk like a human or sort of think like a human. And so it's really come pretty far recently. But all of it is about how do you build algorithms, how to use machines to people, think like a person.

[Theo Von]

Okay. And is it a pro? Like, say if I opened a door, like, like, oh, we keep the AI in there. Is it a computer? Is it a program? Is it a hard drive? Like what, like what is that?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah. So there's two parts. There's two parts to it. So the first part is you need really advanced chips. So you need like, like these, they're called GPUs or sometimes called GPUs or, you know, there's a lot of different words for it. But you need like the most advanced computer chips in the world.

[Theo Von]

Okay.

[Alexander Wang]

And they.

[Theo Von]

How big is each one? Do you know, like, or can you measure it like that?

[Alexander Wang]

They, I mean, the biggest ones are actually like the whole chips are like, you know, pretty rig, but they, they're like a, they're like a, like a wafer kind of thing. But then you, you put a lot of them all together. Okay, so these. Yeah, yeah, exactly. These, like these chips and the biggest ones are. Are. Yeah, exactly.

[Theo Von]

That's a little one.

[Alexander Wang]

That's a little One, there's really big ones.

[Theo Von]

Okay, but these are the. So this is the, These are the brain cells of it.

[Alexander Wang]

Yep. These are, these are the brains behind it. Yeah, so then. Yeah, exactly. These are some. Those are some big ones. So then, so you have to have.

[Theo Von]

A lot of these chips.

[Alexander Wang]

So you need a ton of these chips. And that's, that's kind of the, the like, that's the physical presence. And then, and then, by the way, they take a huge amount of energy. They're really, they. Because they have, you have to do a lot of, you know, calculations and there's a lot of math that has to happen on them. And so. And you have, you have giant, basically data centers, buildings full of like tons and tons of those chips just in giant rows.

[Theo Von]

Like how big are we talking? Warehouses?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, the biggest one, I mean, like, like Elon's data center Colossus is like. I mean, it's probably more than a million. It's definitely more than a million square feet. I mean, it's like just huge.

[Theo Von]

Really?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah, look up. Colossus.

[Theo Von]

I've never known this.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that, that. You see that building with the sunset?

[Theo Von]

Second row.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, there you go. Or the one to the left.

[Theo Von]

Oh, no.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, there you go. That one. Yeah, look, it's like a huge ass building. It's huge. And all that's just filled with chips.

[Theo Von]

Have you ever been in there?

[Alexander Wang]

I haven't been in that one, but I've been in some of these. And it's just.

[Theo Von]

And this is what it looks like inside.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, basically. Yeah. So it's just rows and rows of chips.

[Theo Von]

So no plants or anything?

[Alexander Wang]

No plants, no plants. It gets hot in there, I bet. So the first part is just that the, that's the physical presence. And then the second part are the algorithms. So then you have like on top of those chips, you have, you have software that, that's running. And the, the algorithms are just all are like what you actually are telling. What's the math that you're telling to happen on the chips? And those algorithms are, you know, some of the, you know, most complicated algorithms that humans have ever come up with. And that's kind of the, that's kind of the software part or that's kind of the, that's the part that like, you know, exists on the Internet or you could download or whatnot. And then it has to be run on these like huge warehouses of giant of giant chips.

[Theo Von]

Okay. So when someone goes to like scale AI or chat GPT, these are all AI Interfaces or what are they? They're.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, so. So, yeah, like, chatgpt is a. Is a way to be able to talk to. Basically you can talk to the algorithm.

[Theo Von]

Okay.

[Alexander Wang]

So you can start interacting directly with algorithm. You can see how the algorithm is thinking.

[Theo Von]

So you could say to this, can you describe the weather today?

[Alexander Wang]

Exactly.

[Theo Von]

And if you said that to five different AI company or AI companies, basically, or AI algorithms.

[Alexander Wang]

Different. Different AI systems. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

So if you said that five different AI systems, you might get a little bit of a varied answer.

[Alexander Wang]

A little bit, yeah. Okay, you'll get. Because they all are trying to have their own style and have their own vibe to it.

[Theo Von]

Interesting.

[Alexander Wang]

And then what we do, what. What scale AI is all about is we've kind of built the. Almost like the Uber of AI.

[Theo Von]

Okay.

[Alexander Wang]

So a lot of what we're trying to do is how do we. So how do we help produce data that is improving these algorithms? And just like, how Uber. There's.

[Theo Von]

Okay, you're losing me there a little. Yeah, yeah, it's okay. But if I slow down. That. If I, if, if you're losing me. But so explain that to me a little bit clearer for me.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, so. So, okay, so with these algorithms, one key ingredient for these algorithms is data.

[Theo Von]

So, okay, so you have the chips and everything that are. That are storing all the information. Yep, they're storing the data.

[Alexander Wang]

Yep.

[Theo Von]

And then you have the algorithms that are helping mediate between the user and the data.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. So basically you kind of have. Yeah. You have three. You have three key pieces.

[Theo Von]

Okay.

[Alexander Wang]

So you have the. You have the computational virus for the chips. You have the chips, you have the data, which is like just tons and tons of data that. That's where the algorithms are learning the patterns from. So these algorithms, they aren't just like, they don't just learn to talk randomly. They learn it from learning to talk from how humans talk. Right, got it. So you need tons and tons of data, and then you have the algorithms which learn from all that data, and then they run on top of the chips. Got it. So then one of the big challenges in the industry is, okay, how are you going to produce all this data? And so this.

[Theo Von]

Like, how are you going to get data for your.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

System. Like, how do you farm the best data?

[Alexander Wang]

How do you. Exactly. How do you build. How do you build all that data? And how do you do that in the most effective way? How do you build new data?

[Theo Von]

So clean data? Because what if you get a bunch of data in there that's just a Bunch of advertisements and bullshit. Will that affect the output 100%?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, that definitely affects the output. So this whole data. So data is, is, you know, some people say, like, data is the new oil or data is the new gold. Like, data is really, really valuable because it's, it's how the algorithms are learning everything that they're learning. Like any, anything that the algorithms know or learn or say or do, all that has to come from the data that goes into it.

[Theo Von]

Okay, so. So if I ask, if I ask a system, an AI system a question or ask it to help me with something, help me to, to design something or to curate an idea, it's going to use the data that it has within it.

[Alexander Wang]

Yep.

[Theo Von]

To respond to me and help me and help give me an answer that I can use. And it's only. And the data it has in it is only based upon the data that is put into it.

[Alexander Wang]

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So then, so, yeah, it's kind of. So then we don't, you know, we don't spend enough time talking about where does all, you know, how are you going to get this data and how are you going to keep making new data? So the, the angle that we took at scale was to kind of turn this into an opportunity for people. So we're, you know, we're kind of like the Uber for AI. So just like how Uber you have, you know, riders and drivers for us, we have, you know, we have the AI systems, you know, the algorithms that need data. And then we have a community of people, a network of people who help produce the data that go into the systems and they get paid to do that.

[Theo Von]

So they're almost data farming. Like creating good data or creating good data.

[Alexander Wang]

Exactly. So. And it's, and it's huge. It's like. So we do this through our platform called Outlier.

[Theo Von]

Okay.

[Alexander Wang]

And Outlier. Last year, people, contributors, we call them contributors on outlier earned about $500 million total across everybody in the U.S. that's across 9, 000 different towns. And so it created a lot of jobs. A lot of jobs.

[Theo Von]

Okay, and so what would. Okay, so Scale was your company? Scale, it's an AI system.

[Alexander Wang]

Yep.

[Theo Von]

Is that right?

[Alexander Wang]

So we. Yeah, I mean. Yes. Scaly eyes and AI system.

[Theo Von]

Okay, and then Outlier.

[Alexander Wang]

Yep.

[Theo Von]

Is a separate company that's works with it.

[Alexander Wang]

Yep.

[Theo Von]

And that is where you are hiring people?

[Alexander Wang]

We, yeah, we, we basically.

[Theo Von]

To pull in data.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, we, we build this platform that anybody, you know, a lot of people, all, frankly, all around the world, but Americans too, can Log on and, and help build data that goes into the algorithms and get paid to do so. Wow. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

So how, and how does a user do that? Like, what is an example of somebody who's helping build data for an AI database?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, let's say you're a nurse. Like, you're a nurse with, like, tons of, tons of experience. So you know a lot about how to take care of people and take care of people who are sick or, you know, have issues and whatnot. And so you could log onto the system and, and this, and our platform and you could see that the algorithm is, you know, let's say you ask the algorithm, like, hey, I have a, you know, I have a pain in my, in my stomach. What should I do? And you notice that the algorithm says the wrong thing. Like, the algorithm says, oh, just, you know, hang out and, you know, it'll go, it'll go away. And you know, as a nurse, like, that's wrong. Like, I, you know, you have to, you have to go to the emergency room because you might have appendicitis or you might have, you know, you might have something really bad. And so you would, as a nurse, you would go in and you'd basically correct all these mistakes that the AI system has, and then that would then feed it back into the algorithm so that's smarter the next time. So it's kind of this, this continual process of. And there's versions of that for whatever your expertise is or whatever you know, you know more about than anything.

[Theo Von]

Everything.

[Alexander Wang]

Everything, Exactly.

[Theo Von]

So, and so people get paid for that?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah, they get paid.

[Theo Von]

And how do you know if their information is valuable or not?

[Alexander Wang]

Well, we, so we don't want spam, obviously. So we, we, we have a lot of systems to make sure that people aren't spamming and that. Like you're saying it's not, it's not, you know, it's not garbage in. That's going into the, into the algorithms. So we have, you know, we have kind of like, people check the work of other people to make sure that the AI systems are really good. And we have some, like, automated systems that check this stuff. But, but for the most part, it's, it's like, it's really broad. Like, we want experts in anything.

[Theo Von]

Everything. Shellfish, train tracks, whatever.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Gelatin. Everything. Childhood death or whatever.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, totally.

[Theo Von]

Stars, galaxies, whatever. Animals. Big animals. Yeah, yeah.

[Alexander Wang]

So.

[Theo Von]

Wow. So it's kind of like your data is almost like an ocean or a body of water and you. Different places are going to be able to keep their body water cleaner or dirtier. And different infections could get in different spyware, all types of stuff. So. And if you have the really a clean body of water, then you're going to be able to offer a clean data or a certain type of data to people who are using your AI platform. Does that make sense or not?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah, totally. And our job is like, how do we make sure that this body of water is as clean as possible and we fill it up as much as possible, that it has as much information about everything across the globe.

[Theo Von]

Wow. So is there almost a race for information right now in a weird way or no. Is that not it there?

[Alexander Wang]

A little bit, yeah. I think that there's a. Well, there's a race for, like, how.

[Theo Von]

Are different AI systems competing against each other and. Sorry to interrupt you.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, no, no, so the, there's a. There's, it's, it goes back to the three things I mentioned. So there's kind of like three dimensions that, that they're all competing as one. Another one is chips. So who could. Who has the most advanced chips? Who's the. The biggest buildings of chips? Like, who has the most chips that they're utilizing data. So the kind of body of water. Whose body of water is better, cleaner, you know, healthiest, biggest, et cetera. And then the last is algorithms. So who's. And this is where the scientists really come in. It's like, okay, who's coming up with the cleverest algorithms or who has like a trick on an algorithm that somebody else doesn't have? Like, who's doing that to basically make the AI learn better off of the data that it has?

[Theo Von]

Wow. God, I'm in the future right now. That's. So why, man. It's just, it's so crazy. And I think AI scares people because the future scares people. Right. It's like that's one of the scariest things sometimes is the future. So I think a lot of times people you associate. Because a lot of times people mention AI, there's a little bit of fear, it seems like, from people.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

There's fear that it's going to take jobs. There's fear that it's going to take over our ability to think for ourselves. Yeah, there's just kind of some general uncertainty there. Like is this. And it kind of feels like fear a lot of times, but a lot of times fear is just a lack of knowledge. Right. And not a lack of knowledge because you didn't want to know. Just because you don't know.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Or that you're dumb but just because you don't know what are, what are positive things that we're going to see with AI. Right, I want to start there.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. So I think first like we don't, the AI industry, we don't do the best job explaining this and I think sometimes we make it seem all sci fi and, and, and genuinely we were part of the problem and making it seem scary. Right. But you know, one thing for example is like I think AI is actually going to create a ton of jobs and that story is not told enough. But you know, these jobs that we're producing or this, this sort of, this opportunity that we're providing on our platform outlier, like that's only going to grow as AI grows.

[Theo Von]

So because you have to have new.

[Alexander Wang]

Data, you have to have new data.

[Theo Von]

And the only place you can get new data is from people will, at a certain point would the system be able to create. It can probably matriculate data or matriculate. Is that with birthing or what is that?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, it just moves through like, okay.

[Theo Von]

It can probably like quantify or, and, and give you answers. But it can AI create new data?

[Alexander Wang]

No. So I think well, it can do a little bit of that. So it can, AI can help itself create its own data and, and help itself a little bit. But ultimately most of the progress is going to come from, you know, people.

[Theo Von]

Right.

[Alexander Wang]

We're able to help really the model get better and smarter and more capable at all these, all these different areas.

[Theo Von]

Ah, yeah, I didn't see that part of it. I didn't understand that we are the ones who are giving it information and since we're going to continue to learn, I would assume that we would be able to help. Continue to help it learn.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. And the world's going to keep changing and we're going to need to be able to keep teaching the, the algorithms, keep teaching the models about how the world's changing. So in, you know, this is actually a big thing that I think most people don't understand. The people who are getting the opportunity now, who are earning money from it, see it. But as AI grows, there's actually going to be tons of jobs created along the way and tons of opportunity for people to help improve AI systems or control AI systems or overall sort of be a part of the technology, not just sort of disenfranchised by it.

[Theo Von]

Okay, so like, yeah, so what were, what are you, do you feel like are other ways, like if you had to look into the future a little bit, right so you have the fact that people are going to be able to add more data.

[Alexander Wang]

Right.

[Theo Von]

And add nuances to data.

[Alexander Wang]

Yep.

[Theo Von]

Right. And, and probably humanize data a little bit.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, totally.

[Theo Von]

And then you're also going to have.

[Alexander Wang]

What I think you're going to have a lot of, a lot of jobs around, you know, as AI starts doing all these little things throughout the world, who's going to keep watch of those AI and who's going to make sure that those AI are, aren't doing something that we don't want them to do? So almost like managing the AIs and, and keeping watch over all the AI systems, that's going to be another thing that we're going to have to do. And then, and then it's just somebody.

[Theo Von]

To kind of guide the river a little bit.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

At certain point, guide the stream, stay in there, watch, make sure that answers are correct, the information is honest.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah, like, like, I think, for example, you know, we're not going to just have AIs going around and, you know, you know, buying stuff and doing crazy things. And like, you know, we're going to, we're going to keep it controlled. Right. Like, as a society, I think we're going to keep it controlled as a technology and I think there's going to be a lot of jobs for people to make sure that the AI doesn't go out and do crazy things that we don't want it to do.

[Theo Von]

Right. So we want to be. So you're going to need managers, you need facilitators.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, exactly.

[Theo Von]

What are things that I will alleviate? Like, what are things that, like, will it eventually be able to have enough information, like our data, where, where it can like, cure diseases and stuff like that? Like, is that a realistic thing?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, that's super real.

[Theo Von]

Like cancer even?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, cancer, yeah, heart disease, like all these, all these diseases.

[Theo Von]

Yeah, cancer on its heels. But, but sorry, Antonio, Antonio Brown was just here. I think there's still some smoke in the air, so.

[Alexander Wang]

No, but seriously, I think that AI, one thing that we've seen, which is this is kind of wild, but AI understands like molecules and biology better than humans do actually, because, um, it's like, like there, there's this, there's this thing in AI where, you know, it used to take a, like a PhD biologist, like, you know, five years to do something that the AI can, can just do in, you know, a few minutes. Right. And that's because the, like, just the way that molecules and biology and all of that works is something that, that AI happens to be really good at, and that's going to help us ultimately cure diseases, find, you know, pharmaceuticals or other treatments for these diseases, and ultimately help humans live longer.

[Theo Von]

Because that's very data driven, right? Like, that's very specific. It's very mathematic.

[Alexander Wang]

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So it's going to be a huge tool for us to, to cure disease for us, help educate people for us to, you know, there's a lot of, A lot of really exciting uses for AI, But I think the kind of, I think the thing that will touch most people in their lives is it's really going to be a, like a tool that'll help you, you know, make all of your, sort of, make all your dreams kind of become reality, if that makes sense. So, so I think one of the things that AI is going to be really awesome for is like, you know, today, if I, I have like a million ideas, right? I have like, you know, thousands and thousands of ideas and I only have so much time, so I can only really do, you know, a few of them at a time. And most of the ideas just go to die, right?

[Theo Von]

Yeah, they do, huh?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

That's a bummer.

[Alexander Wang]

It's a huge bummer. Yeah. And I think a lot of people, you know, for whatever reason, they may have some of the best ideas ever, but they just, you know, they're too busy or they have like, other shit going on in their lives, they can't make those ideas happen. And it's great with sometimes when people are able to make the leaps and make them happen and like, devote themselves to their dreams, but, but that doesn't happen enough today. And one of the things that AI is going to help us do, I, I legitimately think so, is it's going to help us turn these ideas into reality much more easily. So, you know, you can like, you know, you're making a movie, let's say you have another movie idea. You can say you can. Ultimately, I think you'll be able to tell an AI, Hey, I have this idea for a movie. What could that look like? You know, maybe draft up a script also, who are the people who can help, you know, fund this idea? Like, who. Who those people be? Can you help reach out to them and then like, you know, who should we cast in it? Basically help make the whole thing a, you know, instead of those, like, daunting thing that. These big projects are usually so daunting, you really don't know where to get started. You kind of need a person to help you get through Them instead of that AI will help you get through it and like, help do a lot of the. The sort of less glamorous work to make them a reality.

[Theo Von]

Wow. So I could say, for example, like. Like AI, I would like to shoot. Maybe I'm thinking about creating an idea or shooting a film in this area, or it's like this. It's going to take place in this type of place. I can give it the setting. I could give it like a outline of the characters, like what they look like, their ages and some description. Could you help give me possible potential actors or something within a certain price range that I can maybe cast for that? Yeah. Could you help give me, like, locations around the country that would fit that backdrop? Yeah. Could you list me all the talent agencies that I could reach out to and you could kind of just put those things in and then you would have sort of a. A bit of a guidebook at that point that would make your.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

What before was something that felt extremely daunting. Yeah, Shit, in two minutes, you know, and then you put it in. AI gives you the information back in a few minutes. And maybe you're.

[Alexander Wang]

And I think, I think over time it'll also be able to start doing a lot of the legwork for you. So it'll be able to reach out to people for you. It'll be able to, you know, figure out the logistics. It'll be able to. To book things for you. Like, it'll be able to basically help do all the legwork to make it make, you know, whatever it is into a reality.

[Theo Von]

So very much an assistant in a lot of ways.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, an assistant copilot. You know, the, the hot word in the AI world is agents, but, you know, it's just, it. It'll be something that'll help you, you know, you humans are going to be in control. Humans are ultimately going to be telling the AIs what they want it to do and then, you know, hey, what do we want? What do we want these AIs to do? It'll ultimately going to be to, like, help us execute on and accomplish all these ideas that we have.

[Theo Von]

So a genius could be 3 or 4x. If somebody's like a genius in something in some realm or space of thought, you could 3 or 4x them because totally, like multiply their, their output from their own brain because they could have something really helping them get done. A lot of the, like the early work on things and maybe some of the most severe work.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, totally. Like what. I think one thing That I always feel like kind of sucks is that if you have a director you really like, they're only going to make a movie once every couple of years. So even if you have a director that you like think is amazing, you know, they just, it's hard for them to make that many movies, like, because it just takes so much time and effort and you know, there's so many bottlenecks and stuff. So in a future with, you know, more advanced AI systems, they could, they could just churn them out and they could, they can make so many of their ideas into a reality. And I think that's true not only in creative areas, but it's kind of true across the board. Like, you know, you can start new businesses more easily. You can, you know, you can make various creative projects you have happened more easily. You can make like, you can, you can finally plan that event that you and your friends have been talking about for like, you know, years and years. So it can just like really help you. You know, we think about as like giving humans more agency, giving humans more sort of sovereignty and just, and just enabling humans to get way more done.

[Theo Von]

Hmm. Yeah, that's a great way. I like some of this thought because yeah, I could be like, like my fantasy football group and I, we do a, we do a draft every year in a different location, you know, and shout out pa. That's our fantasy league. J Rod everybody that's in it. For the past 17 years, we've flown to a city each year and done a draft in person. Right. But I could say, hey, we have 10 guys. We want to go to a nice place, we want there to be a beach. This is the age group of our group. You know, these are kind of be the nights and you know, just to really give me like a, just a nice plan of hey, here's 10 possibilities, right? Something like that. And then even more like with a movie, this is what I worry you'd run into. Say if I'd be like, okay, I have two main characters and this is kind of what I would like to happen. Could you help me with a first act of a three act movie? How do you know everybody just doesn't get the same movie, then like that's what I would start to worry that everything that you have it create is all going to be very similar.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. So then I think this is where it comes into like this is where human creativity is going to matter because it's going to be about. Then it's about like, okay, what is the how am I You know, how am I directing the AI system? Like, what are my, what are the tricks I have to make the AI give me something that's different and unique and that's, that's not different at all from, you know, how creative stuff works today. Like even on social media or anywhere, you know, this, like you still had.

[Theo Von]

Your own spice to it.

[Alexander Wang]

You need, yeah, you need an angle. You always need to, like, have something that's going to make it like different and interesting and new. So that's not going to change. Like we're. Humans are always going have to figure out based on where culture is at, based on where you know, what the dialog is, what the, what the discourse is, all that kind of stuff. What is my fresh take? That's where. That's really one of the key things that humans are going to have to keep doing no matter what.

[Theo Von]

Right. And some of like a lot of films and books, a lot of it is there's just like a problem. There's. There's maybe a information you learn, there's a red herring and then there's a solution. Like, that's a lot of stories. Right. So if something just gave you the basis and then you go through and make everything your own. Because a lot of things we don't. There's only so many templates for things. Huh.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

So, so say, for example, say you might need to hire people at a company, then that would help direct your AI. Like somebody who's good at managing AI.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

And giving it the best prompts or the best way to ask it questions.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

To get the perfect feedback for your company.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

So those would be new jobs. Those would be actual new people you would need.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. So, so tons of new jobs. Well, first, I think just like helping to, you know, kind of what we're talking about before, these jobs around helping to improve the data and, and contribute to the AI systems that's just going to keep growing for a long, long time. And then as AI gets better and it gets used in more areas, then you're. There are going to be a lot of jobs for that pop up just exactly as you're saying, which is how do you. What's the best way to use this as a tool? What's the best way to leverage it to, you know, actually make some of these, these applications or, you know, whatever you want to build a reality.

[Theo Von]

Yeah.

[Alexander Wang]

And then, and then there's going to be folks who need to, once those are built, like, how do you keep improving it? How do you keep making it Better. How do you keep. How do you keep it fresh? How do you keep it. Keep it going? And then how do you also make sure it doesn't do anything bad? Right? Like, how do you make sure that the AI doesn't accidentally spam a million people or whatever it might be, and you make sure that it sort of is, like, operating in a good way.

[Theo Von]

Fahim and more. I was watching him bring up a picture of Fahim. This is one of the funny. This guy. This is the most creative comedian in America. Undeniable. He is so funny. He had. And he. Everybody would say he's. He's one of the few comedians that everybody goes in there to watch him perform. He had a bit the other night. He talks about. He got into a Waymo, right? Yeah, a car. And I see so many waymos now, which are cars that are just. Nobody's in them, you know, but they're going, right? So he had this bit. He's like. He got into a Waymo and it started complaining about its life to him. He's like, I've had a shitty week. Like, the car's just talking to him. And he's like, what the. Now he's like, now I. No matter what, I still have to talk to my shitty driver. That's what he was saying. If you get a chance to see him, though, that guy is. He's fascinating. Yeah. But like, so what. What companies right now should kind of look to hire an AI guy? Because we've been thinking about it. Like, we had some. We had Cat Williams on a last week, and we're like, hey, can you create visuals of Suge Knight and Cat Williams riding bicycles down Sunset Boulevard? Right? And this is the one they sent back a little while later.

[Alexander Wang]

Christopher Foligno is the guy's name, FYI.

[Theo Von]

And this is just. This was right where I said it was like, by the Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard.

[Alexander Wang]

There you go.

[Theo Von]

I mean, this looks like it's out of a movie kind of.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, totally.

[Theo Von]

I mean, and the guy did that in a little. In just a little bit of time. What types of people would you get to? I mean, this is.

[Alexander Wang]

That's you.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. If I was healthier. If I had healthier gums, too. But what about this? What kind of like, what companies right now? What job spaces? Because we want to get an AI guy, right? But I don't really. My brain is like, well, what do they do? How do I. How would I keep them busy? You know, I could get them to make some animations and ideas. But what type of people need an AI person right now? Do you feel like.

[Alexander Wang]

I kind of think about AI, it's kind of like the Internet where, you know, eventually everybody's going to need to figure out how to. How to utilize it, how to best. How to best use it for their industry or whatever they do, how to make it. Them more efficient. Like, it's something that I think everybody is going to. Is going to need to adopt at some point. So, you know, might as well start earlier because eventually, just like how, you know, every, basically every company has to figure out how to use the Internet well and how to be smart about, you know, the Internet and digital stuff. Every company is going to have to be smart about AI, how to use AI, how to make, how to have a unique twist on it so that, you know, their stuff stands out relative to other people's, that's going to be really important. But so we see, I mean, in our work, you know, we work with all these. All these big companies in America and we see it everywhere. From, you know, we worked at Time magazine on some stuff and then we worked with Toyota on some stuff for their cars and we worked with, you know, large pharmaceutical companies for the biology stuff. We were talking about large hospitals for, you know, helping to treat patients. Like, really, it's across the board. And I think that goes for, you know, obviously these, like, really big businesses, but also for. For smaller businesses, you know, there's always interesting ways to utilize it to, To. To provide a better product or a better experience or better content for, you know, whoever you need to do that for.

[Theo Von]

Yeah, because I guess right now we're like, there's certain moments like, hey, let's animate this moment or see what AI would look like. It adds some visual effects to some of our episodes. So that's something we like to do to just be fun and creative. I would like to maybe create like some sort of an animated character. We already have a great animator and we want to keep that. But to have an AI space where it's like, you know, because they have something. They had a little cat the other day or something, and he was going to war. And I was like, damn, dude, this is. It was AI, you know, totally. And they had a baby was getting in a taxi and I was like, this shit is illegal. You know, I don't know if it's illegal or not, but it seems, you know, it doesn't seem it.

[Alexander Wang]

You know, it's definitely a tool for storytellers. Right? Like, it's. Right, it's It'll help people with a creative vision or.

[Theo Von]

Or Warcats.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, that's a story right there. Special forces cats. Would YouTube recognize this?

[Theo Von]

Damn, brother. If they show up, dude. Wow.

[Alexander Wang]

This. Honestly, it looks. It looks badass, and it looks like.

[Theo Von]

Cats have been waiting to. To do this a long time. Yeah, that's the crazy shit about cats. You look in there now, their outfits finally match the look in their eyes. That's what it feels like, dude. Wow, that's.

[Alexander Wang]

Dude, that's. That's Fremen. Fremen cats.

[Theo Von]

Oh, my gosh.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. So that's gonna get alarming. Dude, that's gonna get hella alarming.

[Alexander Wang]

That's a movie right there.

[Theo Von]

It is, but it's almost like you could make. Like, that's what I want to get. I want to get somebody to help us think. Hey, I'll make these little segments that we can take our creativity. And instead of me thinking, man, I got to write this huge, crazy script for just kind of small things, you know, little moments.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Can you help me make this happen?

[Alexander Wang]

I think that's actually the key thing, which is AI, Like, AI will just be something that we turn to. To help make our dreams happen. Like, help make our ideas and our dreams and our, you know, whatever we want to do happen more easily.

[Theo Von]

Got it.

[Alexander Wang]

That's, like, at the core, what it'll be.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. Who's the. Who's the current leader in AI development? Like, is it America? Is it China? Is it Israel? Is it trying to think of another superpower? Russia maybe, or. Yeah, who is it? Taiwan, I know, has a lot of the chips.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

And they manufacture a lot of the chips over there. And does it matter what country leads in AI or does it just matter the company, like, scale or another AI company? So does that make sense, that question?

[Alexander Wang]

Totally. Yeah. So. So today, America is in the lead, but. But China as a country is. Is sort of hot on our tails. Like, there was. There was all that news about Deep Seek a couple of weeks ago, and Deep Seek, and still in most places around the world, is the number one most downloaded app. You know, it's downloaded a ton and, you know, everywhere around the world, frankly, and is a Chinese AI system. Right. And so it's starting to rival a lot of the American AI systems also, because it's free and, you know, it. It kind of like, shocked the world. So right now, if you kind of look at it, US and China are. Are a little bit neck and neck. Maybe the US And America is like a little Bit ahead. And you kind of like look at, you know, if you go back to each of the three pieces that I talked about, so the chips and the computational power, the data and the algorithms, if you were to rack and stack US vs China on each one of those, you know, we're probably, we're ahead on the computational power because the United States is the leader at developing the chips, and, and most of the most advanced chips are American chips. They probably beat us out on data because China, they've been investing into data for a very long time as a country. And then on algorithms, we're basically neck and neck. So it's a pretty tight race. And, you know, to your question about does it matter or what, what does this mean? I, I think it's actually going to be one of the most important, you know, questions or most important races of our time is, is it us or Chinese AI that wins? Because, you know, AI is more than just being a tool that, that, you know, we all, we can all use to make our, you know, build whatever we want to or make whatever ideas we want to happen. It's also, you know, it's a, it's a cultural staple. Right. You know, if you talk to an AI, that AI is kind of a reflection of our culture and our values and all that stuff. So in America, we value free speech. And, you know, the AIs are, you know, need to, are built to support that, whereas in, in China, there's. There isn't free speech. And so, you know, if, if the Chinese AIs are the ones that take over the world, then all these Chinese ideologies are going to become exported all around the world. And, and so, so first is there's a couple of dimensions here that I think matter. So first is just the cultural element, which is like, do we want kind of democracy and free speech to be the, the cultural AI that wins or do we want sort of the more, you know, frankly, totalitarian AIs in China to be the ones that win? And then there's sort of the, there's like the, you know, you start getting to economically. So AI is going to be something that helps all the companies in the United States thrive. And so if the USAI wins, then we're going to, you know, the economy will grow faster. We're going to have more and more opportunity. You know, the country will still be better and better and better, and the economy will keep growing reverses. If Chinese AI wins, then Chinese economy is going to grow way faster than the American economy. So there's sort of the cultural piece, the economic piece. And then lastly there's kind of the warfare piece. Right. And AI we haven't really talked about it, but has clear potential to be used as a military technology. And we don't want, you know, we don't want another country to have. Because they use, they have better AI to have a much stronger military than, than America's.

[Theo Von]

So like, how would they do that?

[Alexander Wang]

How would they have a better AI or how would they use it to have a better military?

[Theo Von]

Yeah, how would they use it to have a better military? Like, why is that kind of a concern or potential concern?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, so. So one of the things that's been happening over the past, you know, decade for sure is, is lots of hacking, cyber hacking going on. So you know, in America even recently, we had this huge cyber hack called Salt Typhoon where, where the Chinese hacked our telecommunications company. So hacked our. For the phone companies.

[Theo Von]

Damn. They did. They got it.

[Alexander Wang]

And they got all sorts of crazy data as a result of that.

[Theo Von]

Oh, they know I'm a pervert, I'll tell you that.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, look at this. This happened in 2020.

[Theo Von]

Salt typhoon is in. It is widely understood to be operated by the China's Ministry State of Security, its Foreign Intelligence Service and Secret Police. Chinese Embassy denied all allegations, saying it was unfounded, irresponsible smears and slanders. High profile Cyber espionage in 2024, US officials announced that hackers affiliated with Salt Typhoon had access to computer systems of nine US telecommunications companies, later acknowledged to include Verizon, AT&T Mobile, Spectrum, Lumen, Consolidated Communications and Windstream. The hackers were able to access metadata of users, calls and text messages. Fuck, homie. We're fucked, dude. I am. You seem good. Including date and timestamps, source and destination IP addresses.

[Alexander Wang]

Ah, keep going, keep going.

[Theo Von]

And phone numbers from over a million users, most of which were located in Washington D.C. good. Light them up, dude. In some cases, the hackers were able to obtain audio recordings of telephone calls made by high profile individuals. Such individuals reportedly included staff of the Kamala 2024 presidential campaign, as well as phones belonging to Donald Trump and J.D. vance. According to Deputy National Security Advisor and Neuberger, a large number of the individuals whose data was directly accessed were government targets of interest. Wow. Yeah, that's. So do you think this also. That that whole thing could be not real and it's just a story that.

[Alexander Wang]

Was created that seems pretty real because there's real like, I mean there's like 20 stories where, where the Chinese have hacked American Systems like, they hacked this was. This must have been close to 10 years ago now. But the Chinese hacked the database in America that stored all of the clearances. So they hacked in. They. They managed to hack into knowing who are literally all of the Americans who have security clearance.

[Theo Von]

Oh, security clearance.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

So I thought you mean what was on sale. I was like, who cares? That's great, though. Damn. Oh, damn.

[Alexander Wang]

So they knew everybody who had. Who knew.

[Theo Von]

Oh, who knew information, who knew secrets.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

So once they knew that, then they know. Well, that's a great point of operation to go then. Well, now let's get. Find their data.

[Alexander Wang]

They can just hack all of them. Yeah, so. So they. So already China is hacking the out of America. That is definitely not an understatement.

[Theo Von]

Yeah, it's exciting, kind of. I mean, it's unfortunate, but it's also exciting. I like some espionage. You know, I can't sleep unless somebody's really going through it.

[Alexander Wang]

But then. But then.

[Theo Von]

So this is. But that's a real AI thing. So AI can be used to do that because you can, like, prompt it to go and do things like that.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Theo Von]

There's.

[Alexander Wang]

There's a bunch of recent.

[Theo Von]

Because it's all data.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, there's a bunch of recent demonstrations where AI is just like how in. In Go, how AI beat the world's best Go players. AI starting to beat the world's best cyber hackers and the world's best. Yeah. So It's. I don't. Mr. Robot.

[Theo Von]

I didn't. But I DM'd with Magnus. Magnus Carlson.

[Alexander Wang]

No, that's cool.

[Theo Von]

It's pretty cool.

[Alexander Wang]

So.

[Theo Von]

But no Mr. Robot, is it good?

[Alexander Wang]

It's just it. It shows like, all this hacking stuff and like, you know, cool. It makes it seem really cool.

[Theo Von]

Okay, cool. I'm gonna check it out.

[Alexander Wang]

But. But yeah, no hacking. Like. Like you're gonna have AI that are hacking everything in America. And this is one place where this is like US versus China will be really come to life, which is who has better AI, that's better at defending against the hacks from the other guy as well as hacking the other. The other guy's systems. That's going to be. That'll just. That'll just start happening. That's basically starting to happen right now. Or it's, you know, cyber warfare has been happening and then AI. Cyber warfare is going to start happening. Yeah, basically as soon as, you know, as AI gets better.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. We had Craig Newmark, who created Craigslist, on.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

And he was talking about how. What if they hacked, like, everybody's Teslas to all just drive off a cliff one day? Or they hacked everybody's ovens to go up to 400 degrees in the middle of the night while you're sleeping, and then fires started. Like, just things like that that you don't start to think about that once something's connected to the grid or something like that, or connected through routers and WiFi, is that. That. That could be feasible?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, no, it's. There's a lot of. There's a lot of things they could do that won't even, like, seem like that big a deal at the time, but could be. Really, really could. Could be a big deal. So, for example, let's say the Chinese, like, they just took out all the military, like, communication systems and all the military software systems, like, took out the satellites, took out all that for like 10 minutes. And in those 10 minutes, they like, you know, invaded somewhere or they like, did some crazy thing like they can just. There's. There's. The thing about, about this stuff is like, everything, you know, as the world become more connected, it also enables, you know, different kinds of warfare. So. So cyber warfare is really big also. Like, the, you know, information warfare is another big one.

[Theo Von]

So what is information warfare mean?

[Alexander Wang]

So this is. Information warfare is all about, you know, in a place, what is. What are, like the stories. This is kind of gets to like, you know, the, like, propaganda or, you know, these conspiracy theories. Like, what are the stories that in a place that we're trying to make happen or not make happen, and we know that China does a bunch of information warfare called iw, it's sometimes called, but they, they have a. They have whole operations. This is actually the craziest part. They have, like, they've. They've hired the. The Chinese military at various points, has hired millions and millions of people who are supposed to be on, like, various, like, chat groups and WhatsApp groups and WeChat groups and whatnot and just spread the right kind of stories that'll make it such that they can, like, they can make their political aims happen. So, for example, in. When. When China wanted to start, like, kind of like. I don't know what the word is. Like, like, when Hong. When. When China wanted Hong Kong to become a part of China again, which happened just not to. Not to, you know, pretty.

[Theo Von]

The prc.

[Alexander Wang]

Right, to the prc. Exactly. When they.

[Theo Von]

Propaganda. Is that the word you're looking for?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, they would. They would. Yeah, exactly. They would use a lot of propaganda. And that's information warfare to be able to just make it such that. That all happen much more easily.

[Theo Von]

What's. It's unbelievable. I'll see stories even about. I'll be going through tick tock and see a story come up about something in my life that is not even true. Insane. Some of it looks fun, but never was a part of my existence. And then you'll see hundreds of people have said something about like. And they'll. And I'll have friends that'll ask me about it. I'm like, that's just crazy. Like, totally. But I. So yeah. It's amazing to think of how many things we're watching or absorbing that are just, are, are created just to delude us.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

I don't know if dilute is the word.

[Alexander Wang]

Is it trick us or make us.

[Theo Von]

Think something just to Halloween us out. Wow. So there was a lot of interesting things. You know what's crazy, man? Some things makes life scary, but then it also makes interesting. You know, it also makes it interesting in a, in a, in a fun way. How do we, how much do we have to fear, say if a certain country or a certain company owns an AI right in that country and that company, if they're Chinese, if they have a certain religious belief or they have information that they don't, they want to adjust history. How much would a company be able to like, say they keep certain data out of their information system?

[Alexander Wang]

But.

[Theo Von]

And then after a while, if you're, if that's the company that kind of takes the lead in AI or one of the main ones, then the truth could disappear. Is that true that if somebody loaded it just with the data that wasn't factual, that we could start to not have the truth? Is that, does that make any sense or no?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, totally. I think this is, this is something that it's definitely the right thing to worry about. So, so first off, if you ask any Chinese AI system, so any AI system that comes out of China, if you ask any of them about, you know, a question about President Xi, the, you know, the, the leader of the Chinese government, or you ask them any question about, you know, Tiananmen Square or, you know, all these like key historical or, or, you know, cultural things relevant to China, it'll say it can't talk about them because there's regulation in China that if you talk about some of these things like you're, you're going to get shut down, you're gonna have a really bad day. There's like cases where the Chinese government disappears, people which we don't know what happens to them, but they do disappear. So there's the. The. This is part of the thing that's worrying, especially about China versus us. Even before you get into any of the military stuff that we're talking about. It's just like the Chinese. Chinese AI systems are censored and are gonna, you know, be. You know, they're going to. They're gonna erase certain historical elements or they're going to be. Yeah, look at that. This is deep Seek. You ask it is President Xi of China. Good guy. Sorry, that's beyond my scope. Let's talk about something else.

[Theo Von]

Oh, let's talk about something. Not only does it say, it's beyond my scope, it says, let's talk about something else. That's why that's interesting.

[Alexander Wang]

It's a good pivot. That's a good crazy.

[Theo Von]

Hey, let's talk about something else, huh? Wow. Get this Yao Ming Jersey, homie. But. And people always. People also have to remember about China that they are. That's their whole government, their whole system is like that. So sometimes when people are like, china does this. But that's how they're built, right? They're built to, like, only give out certain information of their people and to have communism, right?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, but that could also.

[Theo Von]

Happen with American companies, right? We could have an American company that owns it, and they only want certain information in there. That could happen anywhere. Like China. That's probably going to be. Because that's their mo. Sort of.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. In China, it's regulated, so basically, like.

[Theo Von]

Oh, the government has control.

[Alexander Wang]

They have control.

[Theo Von]

Okay.

[Alexander Wang]

So. So, like, there were. There are these stories about how there were Chinese news sites.

[Theo Von]

News sites.

[Alexander Wang]

News sites, yeah. And they would. Once a Chinese news site accidentally led an article about President Xi, how he kind of looks like Winnie the Pooh.

[Theo Von]

Oh, yeah. They let that bring him up. Oh. 100 Acre Wood Gang, son. I was out there, boy. I was out there, bro. Christopher Robbins. Dude, get him up. Oh, he does?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

That's awesome.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. But if you talk about this in China, you, like, are risking your life. So what happened. What happened when this happened? This happened on a. On a news site in China. And then the. The. The CEO of that company, like, they shut down. The whole app was shut down for like a week in the aftermath of that. And then the. The CEO disappeared for a week, and we don't know what happened to him. But then as soon as he came back, he was like, there's like this weird video where he was like super apologetic and apologize. I mean, it's, it's kind of. It's pretty scary.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. Wow.

[Alexander Wang]

So. So in China, there, it's like this is. The government has control. You know, you don't have AI companies. AI Any companies that can, that can talk about this stuff.

[Theo Von]

Right. So it's heavily regulated there where it's not the, that's not the case here.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. In Americ. And this is. I think we have to be diligent and make sure this continues to be the case. But.

[Theo Von]

And here's an example right here just to. To interrupt you. But so we get the point in. Does Winnie the Pooh look like any world leaders? And that's on the Chinese version and it says I am sorry, I can answer that question. I'm an AI assistant designer. Provide helpful and harmless responses. Whereas the chat GBT says Winnie, who has often been compared to world leaders, particularly Xi Jaiping. XI JINPING PRESIDENT OF China Boy, wow.

[Alexander Wang]

So that's funny, but it's just funny.

[Theo Von]

Yeah.

[Alexander Wang]

One.

[Theo Von]

So it just shows you how that can easily happen.

[Alexander Wang]

And this is kind of a. This is like a, a relatively innocuous example. But innocuous mean, like it's relatively harmless. Like this isn't.

[Theo Von]

I mean, right. This is harmless.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, this is harmless. But there's stuff where like, like in China today, they have large scale, effectively concentration camps and re. Education camps for the ethnic minority in China, the Uyghurs. And that's something that.

[Theo Von]

The Uyghurs.

[Alexander Wang]

The Uyghurs, yeah.

[Theo Von]

Hell yeah. Boy. Shout out. Brian Purvis Dude. They're recognized as the titular nationality of the. Of a region in northwest China and they've. They're sending them to rehabilitation camps to change their views and information.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah. So look at this. This, look at this guy.

[Theo Von]

Persecution of the Uyghurs In China since 2014, the government of the PRC People's Republic of China has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against the Uyghurs and other Turkish Muslim minorities in Xiangjing, which has often been characterized as persecution or as genocide. Wow. They got their own Gaza rocking over there.

[Alexander Wang]

It's pretty bad.

[Theo Von]

It's unfortunate.

[Alexander Wang]

Pretty bad. It's really sad.

[Theo Von]

Mass detention, government policies and forced labor. And they're just trying to change the way that they think and view stuff. So it's basically.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, it's just like erasing their culture, you know, pulling them into China. It's awful.

[Theo Von]

Every place has done this over the years and this is. That's the craziest thing about history. It's like every place is guilty of this same thing totally. And it just, it's, it's unfortunate. So it's, it's hard to point fingers, you know, I mean, you can point them, but you have to point one at your own people as well.

[Alexander Wang]

But that's the thing where if you ask, like it, if you ask a Chinese AI is not going to tell you about that. And it won't, it won't come clean about that. Whereas thankfully in, in America, at least when we see people or groups of people or countries doing bad things, we can call it out, we can talk about it, we can make sure it doesn't happen in the future. So that's part of the, that's one of the things that's.

[Theo Von]

That could happen.

[Alexander Wang]

That could happen. It's like you, you could have. I mean, it's kind of dystopian, but, you know, I think there's a real case where let's say the Chinese AI is the winning AI. Like we're all using Chinese AI and then all of a sudden we're like, we, we're shut out from information about what are like awful things happening in the world or what are awful things the government's doing. Like we might just not be able to know about what's going on.

[Theo Von]

And you know what's weirdly, and I hate to say this, maybe, or maybe it's silly. I don't know, it might be a blessing and a curse and sometimes. Because sometimes it's like you're overwhelming. Yeah. You're so inundated with the overwhelmingness of what's often is not the best stuff. Sometimes you get a lot of humor stuff too in social media reels. But you can get scrolling. You get caught in some doom scrolling. Yeah. And it starts to feed you. That's the sickness of it.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

It's like, hey, we. You. This isn't. We know this information probably to make you feel good. They're not thinking about it like that. They're just a machine. But you know, it does. It. It adds stress to, to you or it makes you agitated towards a group or ethnicity or something or yourself even. And then you continue to. It continues to feed it to you. Do you fear that that could happen to AI from our government? Like, have you been approached by the government to try and. Because you work with the government some, right?

[Alexander Wang]

We work with the government. Yeah, we were. Yeah, we work a lot with, with the government to make sure that they're using these AIs and they're actually like, you know, to, as to my point on, we don't want China to get the jump on us on AI used for all these, you know, all these nefarious purposes. So we got to make sure that our AI is, is, is advancing faster.

[Theo Von]

Is that one of your biggest employers or that employer. Employee.

[Alexander Wang]

That one of your biggest customers? Customers.

[Theo Von]

One of your biggest customers?

[Alexander Wang]

They're a big one. Yeah, they're a big one. Not our biggest, but. But they're an important one. I mean I, I grew up in a government lap town, so felt it's.

[Theo Von]

So it's just part, it's also part of your existence really. You've known about the relationship between government and technology?

[Alexander Wang]

Technology, yeah, totally. But no, I don't think. I mean, I. Dude, you should be.

[Theo Von]

A superhero almost, dude. It's kind of crazy math, you know. Yeah.

[Alexander Wang]

Goes a long way.

[Theo Von]

Oh, hell yeah, dude. Divide these nuts, dude. That's what I tell them.

[Alexander Wang]

I just asked deep seek, who are the Uyghurs? And at first it spit out like a Wikipedia response. It said there are people and there's been like persecution from China. That's, that's debated. And it refreshed and then it gave this. I was waiting to pull it up and it went away.

[Theo Von]

Wow.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, man.

[Theo Von]

Do you. Has the government tried to say that we need to make sure that like could that happen in our country where the government also curtails what's.

[Alexander Wang]

It hasn't happened yet. Obviously, like, you know, you gotta, we have to, we have to make sure that we uphold all our values. Right. And that we maintain free speech and we maintain free press and all these things. But as of right now, no, I don't think, I don't think that's a risk in the, in the United States.

[Theo Von]

Awesome, thanks for this information. You hear about like chip makers Nvidia all the time. Taiwan, that place is just a hotbed for chips. Why is it a hotbed for chips?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, so one of the, the biggest companies in the world is this company called Taiwan Semiconductor.

[Theo Von]

Yeah, tsm. I've seen them.

[Alexander Wang]

Tsmc. Yeah. So they're, they're. I mean it's like a trillion dollar company based in Taiwan and it's. That is where almost all of the high end chips for AI that, you know, we're kind of, we were kind of talking about. All of them are manufactured there. They have these, they have the most advanced. Think about them as factories, like the most advanced chip factories in the world. They're called fabs or fabricators, but basically These huge factories that are like, you know, there's all sorts of crazy stuff. So they have the most expensive machines in the world. They have machines that cost hundreds of millions of dollars in there. They have, they build them because, so that, you know, the chips they have to be made at, at the like, finest levels and very, very precisely.

[Theo Von]

Yeah, you need small hands probably, huh?

[Alexander Wang]

You need. Well, that. And there's like these machines that, that at the nanometer level make like little marks and etches on top of.

[Theo Von]

And they have those, they have those.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, those are super expensive machines. So that, so the chips, it's, it's crazy. Yes, but the, but it's. So it's the, the machinery is so precise that even if there's like a little bit of like seismic movement, a little earthquake or a little bit of movement, it can fuck up the whole machine. So they have to build the, the buildings, build the factories in a way such that there's like, like the whole building doesn't move even if there's like a little earthquake or a little shake from the earth. So it's like, is this crazy, crazy engineering. And so that's, so these, all these giant factories are in Taiwan and that's where basically like 100% of all the advanced AI chips are made. So that's why Taiwan matters so much.

[Theo Von]

Got it.

[Alexander Wang]

But then the reason it's a hotbed is that the, the People's Republic of China, the prc, has a own Taiwan, right? Yeah.

[Theo Von]

I mean, true or not, I might.

[Alexander Wang]

Make that there's a, there's a complicated relationship between Taiwan and, and China where type, you know, if you ask people in Taiwan, they, they want to be independent, they want to be their own country. But, but the People Republic's People's Republic of China has a sort of a reunification plan that they want to bring Taiwan back into their country and be back a part of China. So it's kind of, it's kind of like potentially, you know, thankfully there's no war yet, but there's a, still talking to your ex. Yeah, exactly. There's a risk it becomes like Russia, Ukraine or you know, one of these really, really bad situations. So, so that's what's scary. What's scary is that, that, that China, a China wants to, you know, either invade or bring, bring Taiwan back into its country. And there have been, you know, President Xi has, has ordered his military to get ready to do that before 2027. Now we don't know what's going to happen, but you know, if a extremely Powerful world leader says to get something ready by 2027. You kind of, you know, read between the lines a little bit. Yeah. And, and that's part of it is, is obviously it'd be, you know, we don't want to enable them to, to take over this island. But then the other thing that's scary is China may view it as a way to just like, win on AI because if they take over the island with all of these very, these giant factories.

[Theo Von]

All the chips, baby.

[Alexander Wang]

They'll get all the chips.

[Theo Von]

Frito, Lamborghini, baby. They'd be running it all.

[Alexander Wang]

They'd be running it all. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Wow. So, yeah, that's why Taiwan is. Yeah. Because you kind of hear about it in the whispers of like, a potential place where there could be like a conflict.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. And there's, there's all these reports about how China's, they're, they're stacking up tons and tons of military right on their, their coast to, you know, that's pointed directly at Taiwan. And it's, it's pretty close. Taiwan's pretty close to China. Like, it's, it's, it's not so far away.

[Theo Von]

So that'd be spooky.

[Alexander Wang]

That's. Yeah, it's spooky.

[Theo Von]

We're so blessed to have a place where at least we can sleep in peace, even if we're uncomfortable at times in our brains, you know, to not have that constant threat.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, totally.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. So you don't think, you don't think that, you don't worry that the government will regulate right now? It's not a concern at the moment.

[Alexander Wang]

Regulate A.I.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. In America?

[Alexander Wang]

No, I don't think so.

[Theo Von]

Okay.

[Alexander Wang]

I think, I think, I think we're focused on how do we make sure that America wins. How do we make sure that, that the United States comes out on top and that we enable innovation to keep happening.

[Theo Von]

Would you think they could regulate the amount of chips that you're allowed to have?

[Alexander Wang]

So this is a hot topic globally, actually.

[Theo Von]

Really?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. This is a super. This is actually.

[Theo Von]

Damn. Finally, dude. 560 interviews, we got a good question.

[Alexander Wang]

This is one of the hottest topics in D.C. right now is what, what are we going to do about how many chips other people are allowed to have? Because, because almost all the chips are American chips. So they're all, they all are American chips. And technically. What do you mean?

[Theo Von]

We own most of them.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, exactly.

[Theo Von]

But China owns most of them too.

[Alexander Wang]

Their. China has their own, has their own chip industry, but it's behind ours okay, got it. Yeah. Yeah. So. So the United States has the. Has the most advanced chips. As you know, these chips are the envy of the world. Everybody in the world wants our chips. And the. One of the big questions is, you know, do we. Does the government allow a lot of these chips to go over overseas to China or parts of Asia or the Middle east or wherever, or do we want to make sure they stay in America and make sure that we win in America? And this is a super duper. You know, they're called export controls.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. Because it's a possibility to run it all.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, exactly.

[Theo Von]

Got the chips. What do you think about it?

[Alexander Wang]

It's a complicated, complicated thing because basically, you know, one argument is we shouldn't be throwing our weight around in this way. Like, you know, maybe it's. It's fine. It's a free market. Like, if other people want our chips, they should be able to get our chips. And that way, you know, the world is running on American chips that. That can be good in some ways, and it helps make sure that, you know, helps bolster our economy, our industry. But the other way to look at it is, hey, AI is really, really important that America wins at. And we don't want to, like, let's not give other people any advantages or let's make sure that we win, and then. And then we can figure out what we're going to do with all the chips. So you can see both sides of it, Right. And there's like, all sorts, you know, even beyond that, there's like 50 different arguments on both sides of the. Of the conversation. But, you know, where I go, where I come from on it is like, let's. Let's make sure America wins, and let's start from there and then figure out what we need to do to win.

[Theo Von]

Are there uses of AI that you feel like, cross the line? Kind of.

[Alexander Wang]

I definitely think, like, well, I worry a lot about this kind of, like, you know, maybe brainwashing kind of thing. Like, I don't want. I don't want AIs that are specifically programmed to make me think a certain thing or persuade me to do a certain thing.

[Theo Von]

And that could happen.

[Alexander Wang]

That could happen. Yeah. So I'm really worried about this kind of like, deception and persuasion from AIs, like, I don't want AIs that are lying to me or that are sort of. That are like. That are kind of like, nudging me or persuading me to do things that I don't want to do or I shouldn't. Be doing. That's what I worry about, because it could happen.

[Theo Von]

We don't realize how easily we're influenced. Little things that influence us.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

And even just a turning of a phrase or a little bit of this or pointing you to a couple of links in your life could lead you down a whole world. It's kind of. It's pretty fascinating. So people that could. People that had. How do you keep your AI clean? How do you guys keep your AI clean?

[Alexander Wang]

Well, this is where it goes back to a. The data.

[Theo Von]

Okay.

[Alexander Wang]

So you got to make sure that that data, to your point, the large body of water is as clean as, as, as, as pristine as possible.

[Theo Von]

You got lifeguards on it.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. You got lifeguards. We got filters. We got. We got game wardens. Yeah. So. So big part of it is about the data. And the second part is I think we have to just. We have to constantly be testing the AI system. So we have to. We have to, like, we constantly are running tests on AI to see, hey, is there. Are they unsafe in some way? You know, one of the. One of the tests that we run a lot is. And this is like, you know, across the industry is like, are AIs helping people do really nefarious things? And we're making sure that they don't. So, you know, if somebody asks an AI, hey, help me make a bomb or help me make like a, like, Covid, like 2.0 or whatnot, that the AI is not helping you do that. So, so we run a lot of tests to make sure that it doesn't help in those areas. And then. And then we make sure that the data is really clean so that there's no, there's no sort of like, little bit or piece of that that makes its way to the model.

[Theo Von]

With Outlier, that's your program.

[Alexander Wang]

Yep.

[Theo Von]

With Outlier, how are you. How are. What type of people are applying for those jobs can put us log on and start to and submit applications. Like, how does that work to become a information sourcer?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, we call them contributors.

[Theo Von]

Okay. Information contributor.

[Alexander Wang]

Everybody's kind of contributing to the AIs. Everyone's contributing to the data that goes into the AIs. It's kind of like, I almost think of as like the next generation of Wikipedia, right? We're like, yeah, look at this. And we're hiring people all around the world, so people in all sorts of different languages.

[Theo Von]

Dude, that's crazy, man.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it turns out, by the way, Most of the AIs don't really speak Other languages that, well, they're much, much better at, at English and, and particularly American English than, than other languages. And so we want to make sure that they speak all these languages well and that there's these opportunities. But yeah, an outlier so anybody around the world can log in and sort of, there's a little bit of a, of a, of a like orientation almost on, on how to best like what you're supposed to do, how you're supposed to do it, what expertise should you be bringing all that kind of stuff and then, and then you can just start contributing to the, to the AI models and you get paid to do it.

[Theo Von]

Wow. Yeah, it's pretty fascinating, man.

[Alexander Wang]

And it's going to be, I mean I really think I, I legitimately think jobs from AI are going to be the fastest growing jobs in the world for the years to come.

[Theo Von]

You do? Yeah, like, so jobs where people are able to contribute information. Jobs where people are able to. Like what, like what would examples of those be? Just some of the ones you've already listed.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, all the ones we've been talking about. Right. Like contributing to the AIs, helping to utilize the AIs and helping to, to shape the AIs into, into applications or into, you know, into, in like helping organizations or companies or people use the AIs. That'll be a really fast growing job. Helping to, to manage the AIs and make sure they're, they're, they're on the straight and narrow.

[Theo Von]

Where would a young person go right now who's some, who's getting a college or has, doesn't even want to go to college, but this is the world they want to get into and be one of those people. What would do they do right now?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, well, this is all happening so fast. Right, like the, the like outlier. We only started a few years ago, so all this is happening so, so quickly. But what we want to do ultimately is make it easy for anybody in the world to, you know, gain the skills they need to be able to do this work well, to learn what it means, what it does and ultimately be in a position where they can, they can, you know, help build AIs and then, and then keep improving that and gaining mastery and getting better and better at it.

[Theo Von]

But like where do they go to school? Is there a school? Is there a classes they should take online? Like how does someone start to become, you know, just get a head start on what could potentially be probably a lot of job opportunities, I'm guessing. Yeah, like in the AI space. Right, yeah. Like, is it just, is it just engineers? Like, is it just mathematicians?

[Alexander Wang]

Like, no, it's everybody. Because, yeah, as we were talking about, like, AI needs to get smarter about literally everything. So.

[Theo Von]

But other colleges offering court, like, is there, do you know, like, is there specific places where people can. Because that's another thing. I think it's like, I want to work in AI and you're like, what do I do? You know?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah, I, I don't think these programs exist yet. I mean, we, we would definitely love to help build them. So I guess if any colleges are listening, you know, and you want to help figure out how to build these programs, we love, we'd love to help.

[Theo Von]

That'd be pretty cool if you had your own kind of, like, course not that you had to teach at all that, you know, but you were like a partner of it somehow.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. I mean, I think we'd love to basically teach everybody in America how to best contribute to the AIs. How to, how to best basically take advantage of the fact that this is going to be one of the fastest growing industries. There's going to be tons of opportunities. They're going to be shaped a little bit different from, you know, the jobs that exist today. But, you know, it's not going to be that hard for everybody to learn and figure out how to participate in it.

[Theo Von]

What are some jobs that could, that could be at risk because of AI, Right? Because you start thinking that, like. Yeah, before I was talking to you, there's this general fear of like, everything could be at risk. Right. But when you think about it, you're like, yeah, these are some jobs that, I mean, they won't disappear, but there might be less of them. Right.

[Alexander Wang]

I just think it'll be, it'll be, we'll be doing like a different thing. So.

[Theo Von]

Because a lot of our fans are probably just blue collar listeners, like, like there's people that work in, like, you're not gonna, you're still gonna need a plumber, you're still gonna need an electrician, you're still gonna need anything where you have to physically do something. You're probably still gonna need.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, for sure. And then even stuff where you're like, let's say you're, you're mostly just working on a laptop. And you know, even for those jobs, like, it'll just change. Like, instead of being, instead of my job being like, hey, I have to do the work, I have to literally do the work on a laptop. It'll almost be like, everybody gets promoted to being a manager. Like, because I'm going to be managing like a little pod of 10 AI agents that are doing the work that I used to do. But I need to make sure that all of them are doing it right and that they're not making any mistakes and that, you know, if they're making mistakes, I'm helping them, you know, get around those mistakes. Like, like it's just gonna, the way I think about it is that like, yeah, like literally over time everybody will just be upgraded to being a manager or sort of promoted to being a manager.

[Theo Von]

Can you have that many managers you think?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, because I think that what's the other thing that's going to happen is the, the economy is just going to grow so much. Like there's going to be, there's going to be so much like, there will be like industries are going to pop off in crazy, crazy ways. And so, you know, the limit is going to be how many AIs can you have. And then you're going to be limited for, in terms of the number of AIs you have by the number of managers that you have. So it's going to, it's going to.

[Theo Von]

Because you need air traffic controllers, you're going to need as much as many of them as you can have.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, well, that, that definitely.

[Theo Von]

But, but right. But I mean in any field you're going to need like just more managing more people to oversee and make sure that these, that different things are happening because some of the smaller tasks will just be outsourced.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. And just so much more stuff is going to be happening. Right. And that's kind of right.

[Theo Von]

Because yeah. Once these things are all kind of taken care of, more things can happen at this second level. Yep, that's a good point. Yeah. You don't think about that Once some of the things at the first level of a. Of certain businesses are handled.

[Alexander Wang]

Yep.

[Theo Von]

More easily by AI, then you're going to be able to have more people operating at a higher level.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, totally. It's kind of like always the history of technology. Like when, when we started developing technology that, that started making farming a lot more efficient, all of a sudden, you know, people could do a lot of other things other than farming. And then you know, all of a sudden we have big entertainment industries and big financial industries and you know, barbecue cook offs.

[Theo Von]

Man, I'll tell you that. Second, some of those guys got the weekend off. They was grilling that I knew.

[Alexander Wang]

But yeah, so it's all about like us. Yeah. Everybody leveling up to be Managers, and then also everybody, you know, just way more ideas are going to start happening. Like, way more ideas are going to start becoming a reality. And so it'll be. I think it'll be pretty exciting. Like, I think it's just like a lot more stuff is going to happen.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. What, what companies do you see? Like, are there companies where you're the youngest billionaire in the world ever or. No. Is that true? Is that a weird statement? We can take it out if it is. No, no, I'm not trying to talk about your money. I mean, you, you. But you are. Is that true?

[Alexander Wang]

According to like some publications, but I don't know.

[Theo Von]

As a young entrepreneur. Right. And you've been very successful, you know, the self made billionaire. And we can take the word billionaire out later if you decide you don't want it in. I just don't know how certain people feel about that. And the founder of, of. Of scale AI, where do you invest? Like, are you investing your money in certain places, like certain fields that you see continuing to do well?

[Alexander Wang]

So most of. Almost all of what I'm focused on is like, how do we scale. How do we make it super successful? But. And make sure that we. You know, one of the things I'm, I think is really important is like, how do we make sure we create as much opportunity through AI as possible? Like, how do we make sure there's as much jobs? How do we make sure that everything that we're talking about actually is what happens? Because I think, no, someone's gonna have to really work to make sure all these jobs show up and all this, all this stuff actually happens the way we're talking about.

[Theo Von]

So there's gonna be new industries that are gonna pop up even.

[Alexander Wang]

Totally. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, like, just in the same way that, you know, it's hard. Nobody could have really predicted that podcasting was gonna be this, this huge thing and this huge cultural movement.

[Theo Von]

Yes, true.

[Alexander Wang]

But, but it is one, and it's amazing. It's like awesome. And, and that's going to happen in like, little ways in all sorts of different industries, and that's going to be. It's going to be really exciting.

[Theo Von]

What are some of the things that excite you about technology right now? Like what are. Where do you see like AI and technology in five years, 10 years?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. So some of the areas I think are really, are really exciting. So one is definitely everything to do with health care and biology. That's moving really, really fast. And kind of as we were talking about, like, I think legitimately in our lifetimes, we could see cancer being cured, we could see heart disease being cured. Like, we could see some really crazy leaps and advancements in that area, which is, which is super duper exciting.

[Theo Von]

Could it create a way that we could live forever, do you think?

[Alexander Wang]

There's definitely people working on that. You know, there's. So this is getting kind of crazy and very sci fi, but some people think that there's, there's a way for us to keep rewinding the clocks on our cells so that we'll always feel young and like all of our cells will actually always stay young. It's, I think scientifically possible, but and, and I think if we can get there, that's obviously incredible. So there's people working on that. I think that's. At the very least, I think we'll be able to lengthen our, our lifespans pretty dramatically and, and maybe we could get to that. Wow. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. Because I always envision this. There's like a time where it's like, okay, this group lives forever and this group doesn't. And there's just that parting of, of two different way. You know, people head not in, just into the end zone of the Lord. And then there's other people just loiter, who are going to be loitering around for a long time. And what that would be like, that cut off?

[Alexander Wang]

You know, I, Yeah, it's kind of, I mean, I, I'm not that worried about it, but it, it sucks to be that cut off.

[Theo Von]

We're like, maybe.

[Alexander Wang]

Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. That's a weird, it's a weird thought.

[Theo Von]

Because it would also be brave. I mean, you'd be the astronaut. I mean, dying, you're just an astronaut really. Into the ether. You don't know what's going on. Yeah. You know, totally Lewis and Clark at a Lord at that point. You were out there.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

And then if you stay, you kind of are always going to be. No, you always know kind of what's going to happen in a way because you'll be here.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Which would be exciting, I think. But then after a while you might be like, dang, what happens if you die? That's the bravest choice you could make.

[Alexander Wang]

That's true.

[Theo Von]

Probably.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

How did. Do you see AI having any effect on religion?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, I think, I think one of the things that something I believe is like, I, I think that as AI becomes, you know, this is one of the things I think is really important is that we are, are able to educate people about AI and help people understand it better and better and better. Because I think it's this scary thing that nobody understands or people feels like a boogeyman or, you know, feels like is. Is this just this, like, thing that's going to take my job, like that makes it scary. And I think that that affects people's, you know, spirituality. That affects how people, you know, contextualize themselves with the world.

[Theo Von]

Yeah, you could lose your purpose if your purpose is a job that you feel it's going to disappear. Yeah. That could already be causing you to feel that way.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. So, but I think, I think if you ex. If we can explain AI more and ultimately like, like, it is, it is a cool technology, but it's not that magical. It's just, you know, it's like data and you crunch that data and then you get these algorithms and so it's not like, it's not. Yeah, some people talk about in this crazy way, but, but I think as long as we are able to explain what AI is and also explain what opportunities it creates over time. And to me it's about getting this, like, relationship between humanity and AI. Right. Like, how do we make sure that this is something that enables us as humans to be more human and us as humans to do more and experience more and be better and all these things versus something that kind of is scary or will take over or anything like that. I think that's really important.

[Theo Von]

What's a place like. So if I go to chat gbt, is that scale AI, is that the same thing or. It's different.

[Alexander Wang]

That's it. So we, so we're actually kind of under the hood, powering all the different models and AIs.

[Theo Von]

So are all the different AI like systems under the hood?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah. So we help power ChatGPT and OpenAI. We help power mostly from the data perspective. So.

[Theo Von]

And do we know if the answer came from your company or other companies? If we ask it a question, like, how do we.

[Alexander Wang]

There's probably no way to like literally tell, but yeah, we help power, you know, open AIs and we help power Google's AI systems and Meta's AI systems and help power all the, all the major AI systems. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

How can a regular person just at their home, right, say, there's a guy who's been listening to this today and wants to go home today and he just wants to learn a little bit of how AI works. He could just go on to chat GPT and ask it a couple of questions.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, you could ask ChatGPT how AI works?

[Theo Von]

You could ask it, what's the history of my town? You know, can you research my last name maybe and see where it came from? What are like, maybe what are some innovations that could happen in the next few years? There's different little things you can just ask it. That's how you can start to have a relationship with asking and learning about.

[Alexander Wang]

And you see what it's good at, what it's not good at. Like, right now, I still really bad at a lot of things. Like most things. This is why. This is why I think when people understand it and really get a feel for it, it stops being as scary because. Because I think we think about it as like, we think about like the AI from the movies that are sort of like, you know, all powerful and whatnot.

[Theo Von]

But yeah, you think of it as a robot that's gonna show up and just start driving your truck around or something and you're like, what the do I do? You know what I'm saying?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Keys were in my truck, you know, I can't even get in my house now. Like, I think that's the. This, There is this boogeyman fear.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

But that's not the truth.

[Alexander Wang]

It's not the truth. And like. Yeah, that's not the truth. And it's. To me, it's like we have, we kind of the choice to make sure that also doesn't become the truth. Right. Like, we definitely, we in the like people building AI, but just in general, everybody in the world has like, like, we should all make sure to use it as something that, like an assistant, as something that like, helps us versus versus think about it in like a, in like a scary way.

[Theo Von]

Well, getting to learn and learn how to use it small ways, whatever, is certainly a way that you're going to start to realize what it is.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

And it's easy to just sit there and say it's horrible and without trying to use it to learn about it. Yeah. Sometimes I won't learn about something just so I can continue to say it's a boogeyman, you know, because it kind of gives me an excuse.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

You know, if I, if I choose not to learn about it in my own life. Chat GBT has become like a proprietary like, like name like band aids or ping pong. Is that okay that it's like that?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, I think that's, that's totally fine. I mean, I think basically, like, we. There will probably be more AIs over time that people get used to and use and like anything you know, there will always be like a. In America, there'll always be a bunch of options for consumers and bunch of options for people to use, and they'll be good at different things. Right. So I think, like, right now we're just in the very early innings of AI, but over time we're going to have, you know, just like how for, for anything, like, for, for clothes or for, you know, energy drinks or for whatever. Like different people have different tastes because there's going to be different things that different AIs are good at and other things that other AIs are bad at.

[Theo Von]

Is AI right now smarter than humanity?

[Alexander Wang]

No. Yeah. So I think what AI is good at because it's ingested all of the, the facts. Right? Like, it's ingested this, like, the body of water is really, really big, and it's ingested so many different facts and information from all of humanity. It definitely, like, knows more or like, you know, just like how Google knows a lot more than, than any person does. So it definitely knows a lot more. But it's not like, you know, there's, there's a very, very, there's tons of things that humans can do that AI is just like, fundamentally incapable of doing. So so it's not a, it's not like a. I don't think you can even like, measure one versus the other. They're sort of like very different kinds of intelligence.

[Theo Von]

Could AI just create a better AI at a certain point? Like, could it just be like, hey, I create a better AI and it could do that?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. This is a good question, actually. This is, this is another really hot topic in the AI industry is, is can you get AIs to start doing some of the engineering and some of the improvement on its own?

[Theo Von]

It's scary because then it's making kind of choices, then it's becoming the lifeguard, it's becoming the water and the Coast Guard.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. So this is something, I mean, my personal thought is I think this is something we should kind of watch a little bit and we should make sure that humans always are. Have the sort of like, steering wheel and the, the sort of control over because like, you're saying get, you know, it's like kind of a slippery slope before that gets kind of, you know, a little, a little weird. But, but I, I don't. I think that like, we can, we, we can maintain that. We can make sure that we don't let the, the AI just sort of like keep iterating and improving on its own.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. And in the end, you can always shut off your computer and phone and go for a walk, huh?

[Alexander Wang]

Yes. Yeah, totally.

[Theo Von]

It's not like it's going to come out and just, you know, slurp you off or something if you're trying to be straight or whatever, you know. And it's a man. I don't even know. Is AI male or female?

[Alexander Wang]

I don't think it has a. I don't think it has a gender.

[Theo Von]

Wow. I wonder if it'll decide one day. Like, hey, I'm Frank, you know.

[Alexander Wang]

Well, there's, there are companies that try to program the AI to adopt various.

[Theo Von]

Personas and oh yeah, I got the Indian GPS guy.

[Alexander Wang]

Turn right, like, like on, on Meta, on like Instagram or whatever you can get, you can AI that has Aquafina's voice, for example.

[Theo Von]

Oh, that's cool.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. And it's funny, you know, the Aquafina AI is funny.

[Theo Von]

You're a self made billionaire, which is pretty fascinating. Congratulations. I think, you know, to have, I think that money is energy kind of and it kind of flows to certain places and stuff and congratulations. That's got to be fascinating. Was that scary when that kind of happened? Yeah, you just made some money. Was that kind of a scary thing? Did you guys grow up really well? Like what was it that like.

[Alexander Wang]

No, no, no. I grew up, I think like solidly middle class. Like we weren't. We, you know, we weren't, we weren't.

[Theo Von]

Like no more trapping or anything, you guys.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but like, you know, solidly middle class. And I think like, I mean one of the, one of the, one of the crazy things about tech and the tech industry is that, you know, we've been, we've been just sort of like building this thing up over time. But one of the things that that happened is AI all of a sudden became like there was so much progress in AI and it became the biggest thing in the world. Right. Like, I mean, all of a sudden, you know, anywhere I go, I'm. Everybody is talking about AI. It didn't used to be like that. When I started the company, AI was just kind of a, like a niche topic. And now it's like, you know, anywhere you go, like I'll just be walking around and I hear like random conversations about for sure, chat, GPT and AI and robots and all this stuff. And, and so it's kind of been crazy to be experience that and be a part of that wave and kind of like, you know, I started working on this company almost nine years ago, so it was like When I started working on this kind of obscure thing and, you know, I always knew that it was going to become bigger, but I would. I could have never predicted what was going to happen to AI.

[Theo Von]

Yeah.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

It's fascinating. It's almost like you were just standing on, like, the bingo number. They got called kind of.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, exactly.

[Theo Von]

By time.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. And it's surreal. Oh, I. Surreal when that happens.

[Theo Von]

Oh, ikea. I can only imagine that. Are your parents pretty proud of you? What's that like?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, so at first they were like, you know, at first I dropped out of college. Right.

[Theo Von]

Oh, yeah, that's true. Yeah. And in Asian culture, that's like, not a thing you do, right.

[Alexander Wang]

Good. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. That is like the opposite of being Asian.

[Alexander Wang]

Well, well, my parents both have PhDs. My two bro. I have two older brothers. They both have PhDs. Like, everybody in my family has. They've gone through all of schooling.

[Theo Von]

Yeah, they're like, alex is not doing good. That might have been Spanish, but they're like, yeah, Alex is not doing good.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. So they were. They were pretty worried at first, and I kind of. I told them a little bit of a white lie that I was like, oh, no, I'm. I'm just going. I'm gonna go back. You know, I'm gonna finish. I'm gonna get this like, tech thing out of my system and they'll go back and I'll finish school. Obviously that hasn't happened yet, but. But yeah, they were worried at first now that. Now they're super proud. Yeah, they're super duper proud. And I. Yeah. And I. I owe everything to my parents, you know. Yeah, they're awesome. And like, seriously, they're. They're. My parents are super brainy. They're. They're both physicists. They would like, teach me about physics growing up and teach me about math. And that's what led me be so good at the competitions, you know.

[Theo Von]

That's cool. Yeah. I don't even. I think, do. Are your parents. Are your grandparents from China or.

[Alexander Wang]

No, my grandparents are from China. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Did your. Does your family have a lot of Chinese culture?

[Alexander Wang]

So this is kind of interesting, this is true for a lot of Chinese Americans, is that there's kind of like there's Chinese culture and then that's kind of almost like it's very different from the Chinese Communist Party and the current government because basically one way to think about China is. I mean, China has been. Is a. Is a culture and a civilization that's been around for like thousands and thousands of years. Right. So it's. That there's a very long standing culture.

[Theo Von]

Oh, yeah.

[Alexander Wang]

But that's very different from the current Communist party and the current communist regime.

[Theo Von]

Oh, for sure. I think most people probably think of. I mean, I don't know, it's funny, I never thought about that. I definitely think about him as different. I definitely don't think. If I see a Chinese person, I don't think, oh, that's a communist person.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, exactly.

[Theo Von]

I mean, that would be. Yeah, that's cra. I think that's crazy. If some people thought that. I just. Yeah. I think somebody has a crazy long history. Like. Damn. And then maybe almost like. Do you feel like there's some people in certain parts of China are almost like a captured people then? Is it. Do you think that's a. Yeah.

[Alexander Wang]

I mean, the, the Uyghurs that we're talking about, I mean, that's just like horrible what's happening to them.

[Theo Von]

I didn't even know about that, man. Thanks for putting me up on that Uyghur game.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah. No, it's. I mean, some of this stuff, like, I mean, we don't really like, first of all, the world is a, is a huge place and there's like all sorts of both great and bad things happening all over the place. Yeah, but, but yeah, no, I think that like, I think a big part of this is like we want to make sure we have, we have governments that, that believe in democracy, believe in liberty, these kinds of things.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. With being somebody that's able to be smart and conceptualize stuff, do you start to get in. Do you have any insight. This might be the last question that I have for you. Do you have any insight on like the afterlife or what happens? Like, I never really thought about it for like talking like a real math guy about that.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. I think like, what's the total?

[Theo Von]

Like what's the sum zero game or whatever, you know, what's the.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess like the way I've always thought about it because partially because both my parents were physicists was. I. I kind of always feel like people live on with their ideas and they're kind of like, like what are the things that. The things they put out into the world? That's kind of how you live on. Because like in, in math, like everything you learn about is like a theorem named after a different person or, or a sort of idea named after some, you know, the first mathematician or the first scientist or whatever to figure that out. Like Einstein lives on because Bagels.

[Theo Von]

That was a shitty joke, but thank you. Oh, yeah, because. Yeah, because the. Yeah. All E equals MC squared. All that kind of stuff.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, so.

[Theo Von]

So, like, I know what that kind of stuff is. Jesus. Sorry. But I started pretending.

[Alexander Wang]

No, no, exactly. That's Einstein. And so. So I think I always feel like people. Yet you live on by your ideas and, and kind of what you put out into the world. And that's kind of always how I've thought about it.

[Theo Von]

So you don't get some deeper thought about, like, like since your brain is able to be. Because you have probably a unique brain. Right? And more. I mean, you know, and everybody has a unique brain. But I've just never asked somebody with your. I've never asked your brain this question. Yeah. Do you, do you get some further insight about, like, what you think happens when you die? You know?

[Alexander Wang]

Well, I think that one of the things that gets talked about a lot in Silicon Valley, where I live especially, is like the simulation. Whether it's all simulation and whether, like. Do you watch Rick and Morty?

[Theo Von]

I don't watch it, but I'll start.

[Alexander Wang]

There's, there's. There's some, there's some episodes where it gets into this and I think it covers it in a. In a pretty good way. But like, you know, what if every. What if all of humanity is just like a. Like a. Almost like a, an experiment or a video game that, that some other civilization is running? Yeah, that's kind of the one that. That fucks with particularly like, people's mind and tech a lot, because we're like every day, all day, every day we're out there trying to make computers and make simulations and make things that are, that are like more and more sophisticated and advanced and capable. And so kind of the mind fuck is like, oh, what if everything we know is, is just kind of the, you know, a simulation from some other civilization or if we advanced it enough.

[Theo Von]

That we're able to make this happen and seem real.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I think, I think one of the things that, that, like with AI and with a bunch of other things, like in. Well, even just in the past, like 30, 40 years, video games have gotten so much more realistic. Right. Crazy realistic.

[Theo Von]

Yeah.

[Alexander Wang]

So it was. We've seen that happen like in a hundred years, like, would we be able to simulate something that feels pretty realistic? I mean, probably, Right.

[Theo Von]

Could we be avatars? Yeah, for some. For some other thing?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, exactly.

[Theo Von]

Damn, dude. I'll say this, my avatar is a pervert. Brother, have you met any guys like Jinson Hong? Is that his name?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

[Theo Von]

Wow. What is it like when you meet some of these guys? You met Elon yet?

[Alexander Wang]

Met Elon, yeah, met Elon a few years ago, yeah.

[Theo Von]

Wow.

[Alexander Wang]

Got to know him.

[Theo Von]

He's the, he's the. He's turning.

[Alexander Wang]

Jensen's the goat.

[Theo Von]

Yeah, he is.

[Alexander Wang]

He is, yeah. He always wears this leather. You see that leather jacket?

[Theo Von]

Yeah.

[Alexander Wang]

He. We hosted this dinner.

[Theo Von]

Is that a Chinese name? Huang.

[Alexander Wang]

Huang, yeah. He's Taiwanese, I think. Yeah. Or Taiwanese American. But he. He in. In 2018, so when we were like a. A baby company, we threw this dinner in. In Silicon Valley and. And we just kind of. I kind of YOLO invited him. This was, you know, years and years ago, and, and I didn't expect it, but he said yes. And he came to our dinner and he. He came. He came. It was. It was like at this restaurant in, in Silicon Valley, and he came and just told the craziest stories. He. He like, went to. He went to boarding school. I think he's probably told this story, but like, he went to boarding school. And his parents, when they came to America, they, they. They wanted to send him to boarding school, but they didn't. And so they just sent him to like, the first boarding school that they. They like, found on Google or something. Or like, found. It wasn't even Google at the time, so that, that they like, heard about. And that boarding school happened to be kind of like a rehab boarding school. So it was like he was like this.

[Theo Von]

So fucking. It's a halfway house. He's just in there. He's there learning with people who are detoxing.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. So he told me the story about. He told the story about how he was like. He was just like this, this kid at, you know, this boarding school that we're like, everybody else had these, like, all these crazy backgrounds and he like, he got by and made. Made his way through that school by like, by like doing everyone's math homework and like, you know, kind of like wheeling and dealing that way.

[Theo Von]

Oh, yeah.

[Alexander Wang]

And you could see that he. He learned how to like, wheel and deal and sell and all this stuff from. All the way. From way back then. Because he was, he was. I mean, his, his. His story is pretty crazy really.

[Theo Von]

To research him a little bit. Maybe we would get to talk with him one day.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. Jensen. Jensen's awesome. Yeah. All these people in tech, they're like. I mean, they're all real people, but they all have the craziest Backgrounds. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Yeah, man. It's just so funny. Whenever I met you, I just didn't. I figured that since you were with Sam Altman that you were probably a tech guy, you know, and. But yeah, I didn't know. I think maybe somebody said he's in the verse, you know, but you just seem like such a totally normal. Like I would not have thought that you were just. I don't know, I guess sometimes you think like somebody's gonna be. They're gonna be like super quiet or you know, not have a lot of different thoughts. But yeah, it was cool, man. We had a good time. I'm glad we got to.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Link up.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, totally.

[Theo Von]

That was cool, bro. You're probably like my. You might even be my first Chinese friend, I don't think. Second, probably Bobby Lee, who's denying it, but he'll come around. Alexander Wang, man. Thank you so much, dude. I bet you're whole family's super proud of you. Yeah, just excited, man. Thank you for coming to spending time with us and just helping us learn and think.

[Alexander Wang]

No, thank you. This was awesome. And I, I think like, I mean we were talking about this before, but I just want to make sure that like people all around the world, especially Americans aren't scared of AI because it's going to be, it's going to be really cool and it's going to be amazing. But we need to remove the boogeyman component and, and thanks for helping me do that.

[Theo Von]

Yeah, no man, I think I definitely feel differently about it. I feel like it's a tool that I can use. Right. And even I don't know how to use it. So I'm trying to figure out, you know, one more question. How do you keep it from becoming like a, like a advertisement trap house? Like the Internet's become like the Internet's just pop ups and ads and fucking Best Buy trying to like beat you over the head on some shit. Like how do you stop that? How do you keep that out of like you guys waters? Or do you have to go there at some point to make money?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. First I'm hoping that, that we avoid like the AI industry as a whole. Avoids advertising as much as possible. Because. Because it's kind of, it's very different. Like it is a tool that, that people can use and people can use to start businesses or make movies or make all these different ideas happen. And I, I would much rather it be a tool that doesn't get sort of. That doesn't become. Yeah. Like an advertising thing versus like I wanted to make sure it's a tool that helps people first and foremost, so that's that. I. I think this is. There's kind of like a. A choice here, and. And we, as an AI industry, just gotta, I think, make some of the right choices.

[Theo Von]

Yeah, I think there would be value in staying as pure as you could if you could find a way to, you know, if there's other money to be made on the side. It almost seems sometimes like it could be a trap, you know?

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's. That's like, you know, I want to make sure that. That people don't feel like they're being used by the AIs. I think that'd be a really. That'd be really bad if we ended up there. So we, you know, and I. That. I don't think we need to make it like that at all. Like, I think we can. We can make sure the AI is helping you do things is. Is super helpful. Super is like a thought partner is. Is like an. Like an assistant. Like, those are things that I think we want to make sure AI stays.

[Theo Von]

Gang, baby. Wang Gang. Alexander Wang, man. Thanks so much, bro.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

[Theo Von]

Yeah, it was awesome, man. Danny Kane. Shout out to Danny, who came up, and Danny lives in Franklin. Right. We gotta get to spend some time with him.

[Alexander Wang]

Yeah, Lives in Franklin.

[Theo Von]

Whenever you're out there.

[Alexander Wang]

And shout out to Alex Brucewicz, who. Who we met through.

[Theo Von]

Yeah. Who else on your team's here, man.

[Alexander Wang]

Today we have Joe Osborne. Yeah. And. And we have Danny's whole crew, so Ariane and Clayton. Yeah.

[Theo Von]

Nice. We'll have to get a group picture. We'll put it up at the end. Thank you, guys. Have a good one, man.

[Alexander Wang]

Cornerstone. Oh. But when I reach that ground I'll share this piece of my life I found I can feel it in my bones but it's gonna take.