"Kara Swisher"
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Hey guys, I'm sorry. I'm really, yeah, sorry. I just got here. I'm really out of breath. What, uh, what's happening? We're going to do a show. We're going to do a pod. We're going to pod the hell out of this. Are you fucking... Let's do it. Are you ready to pod? I don't know if I'm... Get in the pod. Yeah, okay, let's get in the pod. Okay, let's get in the pod. We have the cast. We're ready to pod. Okay, let me just... Get it? Guys, that's how the name came up. You put a cast inside a small area, like a pod, and then you speak.

Yeah. It makes a podcast. Yeah, you cast a podcast. That's how it... So anyway, I'm going to show you how it works. Here we go. Okay. Welcome to Smartness. Smart. Less. Smart. Less. Smart. Less. Well, I've never seen your hair so flat. Flat. I know. I said, well, you just...

Did you have a hat on? There it is. Are you late because you were at a flattening? Yeah, I just had to get my hair ironed, and I can never book this guy. Because for a while, you were crimping it, weren't you? Yeah, yeah, it was fun. Crimper. Yeah. Do you guys remember...

Scrunchies? I sure do. Yeah, scrunchies and leg warmers. Yes, I used to wear my socks as leg warmers. That should be the title of your, there it is, of your autobiography, Jay. Scrunchies and leg warmers? Leg warmers. The Jason Bateman story.

And then what were the things called where you'd strap on weights to your wrists? The little heavy hands walkers? Oh, yeah. I don't remember that. It's a whole lot. Jason, I asked you this before. How in the world can you handle the heat that long outside playing golf every day? I can't even handle it walking to physical therapy.

You have to accept the fact that you're gonna be wet and gross and sweaty and then go forward from there. I don't like getting hot when you're not supposed to get hot, you know, when you're not supposed to sweat. Like if you're moving furniture.

Or how about acting in a scene that's supposed to be in the winter, but you're outside and you're shooting it in the summer and you're not supposed to be sweating and you're in heavy clothes. Or it's like being stuck in a hot car with the windows that can't roll down and someone's giving you a haircut. Yeah.

To me, that's the biggest nightmare I could ever imagine. Because the hair sticks to your skin, you mean? Yeah, a dry haircut in a hot car with the windows broken. A dry haircut. What in the world made you think of that? That's so funny. Oh, no. Hey, you know what? By the way, I want to ask you this. I just came back from Zabar's. I had my little tuna sushi.

And I'm standing, literally just five minutes ago, and I'm standing there and somebody goes, excuse me, are you online? I go, no, I'm in line. I'm not online. You know people who say online? Yeah. I don't understand that. How old was the person?

Pretty old. Yeah. This is what happens. But do you say online or inline? I was like, who says online? I say I'm... Oh. You're standing inline. If I'm waiting to buy groceries, I'm inline. Yes, exactly. If I'm logging into my Hotmail account, I'm online. Online, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And in Canada, they say line up. They say there's a huge line up instead of a huge line up. At the grocery store? Yeah, they'll say there's a huge line up. And they all say line up.

So, whatever. I don't know. I didn't understand online. So maybe some people get it and say, like, are you online up? Okay. Maybe not. Well, we've lost all of our listeners before the guest. All right, let's get to it. You know how I love tough cookies. Today I got a tough cookie who's super soft and squishy on the inside, full of love. I love this person. She's a super smarty. She's known for having her finger on the pulse of what's next in the tech world. She's also a podcast pioneer. I've actually heard her take credit for this.

This one. Oh, my God. I love this woman. I have the highest respect for her. We finally get this woman back. She's been a friend for quite a while. Most interviews she does in aviator sunglasses. Let's see if she has one of them on today. It's the host of On with Kara Swisher and co-host of the Pivot podcast, my brilliant friend, Kara Swisher. Hi. Thank you so much for... She had to suffer. You had to suffer through that. That was exciting, the online thing. Well, oh, there's the Bidens. You put them on the Bidens. Bidens? I was before Bidens.

Joe, do you hear that? Yeah. I'm sure he's listening closely. Didn't I say, Will, you clowned me during the interview with Biden, and didn't I call his wife by her first name? Yeah, you sure did. Jill. It's Dr. Biden. It's Dr. Biden. Jill. Right. Yeah, you said Jill, and I said, oh, are we saying Joe and Jill? Yeah, like I'm boys with Joe and Jill. Yeah.

Kara, thank you so much for saying yes to the rude Sean for canceling on you on the road. I know he did. I know. I heard it was in your HBO thing. I haven't watched that yet, but I heard. You should be in full protest. It's fine. Who did you replace me with? Matt Damon or someone like that? Matt Damon. Matt Damon. Someone becoming a lucky actor whose career is over now. It's over. Out of the business. That Oppenheimer thing was a waste. It was a disaster for him. No, we had a. It's okay. I could give a fuck.

but okay. Wow. That's what Sean said you'd say. Yeah, yeah. I was going to ask you if you were nervous to be on today, but clearly you're not. You don't care. I'm like 10 podcasts in this morning and I'm prepping for a Chris Christie interview, so I'm really fine. Wait, you just, did you interview Chris? No, it's Monday, Monday or Tuesday. So I'm like,

How do you prep for a Chris Christie interview? Now, I'm a diehard Democrat, but I don't mind listening to him speak sometimes. He really can frame a position. Well, when he's attacking people in his own party, he's, you know... Yes. It's like a symphony. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, that's the issue is that do you forgive him from his trespasses kind of thing? And I think a lot of people don't want to because he really was down with Trump for a very long time until Trump tried to kill him with COVID. Right.

And so like what happened? Like that kind of thing. And of course there's the bridge gate and obviously, you know, but he's a great, he was a prosecutor in New Jersey. And there was also the closed beach gate as well. The beach gate, that was a nice thing. Do you remember that one? Yeah. No, what happened there? Kara, I remember, do you want to tell it? You tell it. Yeah, he was on a beach by himself with all these pictures and then it became an internet meme which was my favorite part

Because, and here's why, is because he was using the New Jersey governor's summer beach house, right? They have one. And he had closed, as governor, he had closed all the state beaches for various reasons. I think for maybe because there was...

- COVID. - Was it COVID? - Yeah, it was COVID. - Nothing attracts the virus like a two foot swell. - Like a beach, like sand. - But then he was out on the beach by himself. - And that was the first time we ever saw a politician be a hypocrite. It was astonishing. - It was astonishing. - But it's called the Jersey Shore. Just remember, it's the shore.

There's no beach in Jersey. It's the Jersey Shore. It's the Jersey Shore. Sure, sure, sure. That's fair enough. But he did wash up there. I mean, there were a lot of, obviously, comparisons that were made, too. Whales. Yeah. Oh, God. I was waiting for someone to take the softball. Well, anyway. Anyway, it was great. We didn't. We didn't. No, you brushed against it. You did not hit the ball. No, no, no. It was just a foul. Just a...

Kara, you just do podcast after podcast after podcast. Yeah, I do. And how do you, do you still love to do it? I love it. I started about 10 years ago. Are you not podcasted out? No, I think you guys are doing great. Are you going to get into radio eventually? What's going on?

No, no, no, no. I actually, no, no. It's a dying medium. No, I actually went to Bob Pittman who runs iHeartRadio when I had this idea and he sat me down. I've known him since he covered AOL. I wrote a couple books on AOL. He was one of the characters in the book. And he goes, Kara...

podcasting is a dead end. You shouldn't do it. And I was like, oh yeah. Oh, Bob Pittman. Okay, Bob. You should do radio. But then you know who straightened him out was John Sykes. Johnny Sykes. Johnny Sykes told him, you're wrong, Bob. Yep, yep, indeed. But anyway, so I loved it. I love doing it and I love doing all the different ones we do. Well, for my sister who may not know

what you do and the brilliance that you are. Sure. You have been reporting on the tech industry since the early 90s. You're like one of the first people to ever kind of dive in with the big CEOs of all of these companies and get into their heads and interview them. And you've spoken to all of them, Bezos, Elon Musk, like just everybody. Yeah. And you're one of the most brilliant, I think, people I've ever met and known and been friends with. Thank you so much. And I love it. You're like your free...

Like if I don't have to read a book thanks to our friendship because it's just like I text you. I'm like, what does this mean? You're like, do this, don't do that. And it's fantastic. Yes, I'm your Circuit City service desk. You're like your super valuable asset to all of us dummies out here in the world. Yeah. You seem dumb. You seem dumb, Jason. Yeah.

It's the hair. She noticed it too. When I was crimped, people thought I was... You're the pretty one. You're the pretty one. Yeah, well, you should have seen me with the crimp. No, actually, Will, with the gun show that you were just doing. Right? Yeah. What's going on there? But what an asset we have in you. It's a show that's been running for a long time. And your podcast, the way that you explain and break down things for all of us, it's so complicated. Thank you. We're trying to figure out and navigate all this stuff. Yes, I want to ask you about AI and stuff.

Yeah, AI I want to know. But front of mind right now for me are two things, both Musk related. One, current status on the cage match and also why are we switching from the bird to the X?

And I'm sorry if there are articles out there that explain all this, but I'm not a reader. Well, I think the X one is this is your brain on drugs. But let's start with, well, you know, it's interesting because I knew Elon when he had a failed company, actually. One of his early companies he got kicked out of. He made a couple million dollars, but was sort of washed up pretty early on and then started a company called X.com, which was a competitor to PayPal. Yeah.

They hated each other, I covered them. They had this sort of boy fest arguments going on and then they merged and luckily sold to eBay and made their fortunes. And Elon had a lot of mistakes before that and actually was a really intriguing and interesting person because the rest of them went off and did kind of stupid things and Elon started doing space stuff

Tesla, really cool stuff. And I've spent a lot of time with him and he's changed rather drastically. Let me ask you this because obviously you know this. So yeah, I remember when X and PayPal merged and he tried to bring X on. He tried to drag that over and he tried to get rid of PayPal. And there was a legal thing there with Peter Thiel. He had a big argument about that. Yeah, he got zeroed out. And he got zeroed out. And it seems like...

To me... Mm-hmm. Uh... He's obviously a... Uh... A fairly... Uh... Clever guy. Very. Um... And... Uh... Elon Musk... Uh...

It does appear that he misled people about his education. It seems like he did not graduate with any degrees from any of these places that he claims he graduated from, including Queens in Canada. And he doesn't have all these highfalutin degrees. And he calls himself a physicist and all this kind of shit. Yeah, he calls himself a lot of things. So it's bullshit. So what's happening is, and Jason, this would make you crazy, because he's actually just lying about it.

And nobody just says he's just lying, right? Well, you know, look, let's be clear. He's had, look, what's interesting is to meet these people before they had money. Very, you know, and they change rather drastically. When some of them do, some of them don't. I mean, Tim Cook is a lovely guy. Brian Chesky runs Airbnb. Couldn't be nicer. But some people get warped really beyond repair after they get...

so much money and being the world's richest man. And then this concept of yourself. And, you know, there's a book coming out by Walter Isaacson that's going to talk about his early life, but it was, his father was quite brutal to him. He was bullied as a kid. That doesn't mean every bully becomes this. But yeah, but I'm saying he is a self-made person in terms of the stuff he's done as a business person.

Sure, sure. However, at the same time, he's also, so not only has he lied about that, but he's also misled people about he didn't invent Tesla. He didn't invent any of these things. He stepped in, and I think that he's obviously quite a shrewd businessman. That's what he is best at. But he tries to sell himself as the inventor when really he's a good businessman.

And it's okay to be a good businessman, but he doesn't get his, he wants the credit for being a big brain. A tech visionary. I mean, I think he sees himself as the Iron Man, that, you know, that guy. I think that's Robert Downey Jr.'s role there. But he's, he's, he does have technological chops. There's no question. You couldn't, you couldn't fake it this long. But you're right. He didn't start Tesla. You know, he bought companies. He's buying Twitter. He's turned out to be very bad at media. Yeah. And, but he is,

let me just say, he is quite brilliant in terms of business and he also, you could say that about Steve Jobs, didn't have real technical chops. It was others, Steve Wozniak and others, but he knew how to build a business. And that was critical. That was critical. Agreed. And by the way, I'm not suggesting that he's not smart. I can't believe I'm defending Elon right now.

No, I know. He's a super chode right now. Well, this is your fifth podcast of the day. The one thing that sounds pretty interesting that he's, well, there's a few things he's doing that's kind of interesting, but this... Starlink. Is Neuralink or... No, Neuralink is a brain, just a chip in your brain, essentially. Yeah, is that as kind of real as they want it to sound? And if so, what is it? No? No.

It's the idea, sort of like, you know, you watch The Matrix, you put something in your brain and it gives you, you know, you immediately can do karate or whatever. It's like a port that you can, like, put a thumb drive into. Sean, if you learned karate in a nanosecond, I'm going to fucking lose it. Wait, what are we talking about? What are we talking about? It's a pill? No, it's a chip. It's a chip.

It's technology that you put. There are some ideas that it could help people who cannot walk and things like that. Eventually, we'll have that, yes. And so Elon's idea, and this was really interesting when I interviewed him once, was that AI was, he's been obsessed about AI for a long, long time and very worried about it. And in fact, he was an early investor in a lot of stuff. He's quite prescient about a lot of trends.

And so he thought at first that AI was going to kill us, essentially. That, you know, that same old trope. And then later, he decided it was going to treat us like house cats. Like, that we were, okay, we'll just feed you. Then he moved on to anthills, which was interesting. So that, like,

When we're building a highway and we destroy an anthill, we don't know it. We don't want to, but it's in our way. But we don't think, ah, I shall kill the ants today. So he thought that we need more throughput in our brains to keep up with AI. That was the inspiration. But then he also has Starlink, which is different, which is doing satellites. What's Starlink?

Which is internet. It's satellite internet. It's being used in Ukraine quite actively for battlefield communication. As opposed to fiber optics? Yeah, it's a satellite, and he's got the... Nobody is as far along as he is. Same thing with SpaceX. Why is that more advantageous than fiber optics? Because it's in the air. Places where they don't have the cable laid. You can't drag the cable to where you live in Los Angeles. It's all cable. You've got cable right up your ass.

And we will be right back. All right, back to the show. All of these tech companies that care that you... Wait, I want to stay on AI first because then I want to ask that last question. So... AI will decide what you're going to stay on. What are you thinking about? I'm sorry, Sean. I'm fascinated just by technology. I just love it. And you know, Scotty, my husband lives for... Yeah. Yeah.

We can't just have a light switch. It's got to be, you know, this button turns this and I can do it from my phone or whatever. But now, and then like last November, it was a chat GPT seemed to come out of nowhere. It was like, what? Everybody's like, what's chat GPT? And like in two days, everybody was...

You can ask it this and do this. And then since then, there's been like, you know, and you hear like 50 companies coming out. So talk to me about that. Where is that coming? Where did it come from? Why did it come out so fast? And does it scare you or what? No, I'm not scared of AI. I'm scared of people who use AI. How's that? Like it's kind of, you know, don't be scared of the actual tech. It's like being scared of the Internet. It's what people do with the Internet.

And it's not going to suddenly become self-aware and do a Terminator move. A lot of sci-fi is based on that, that these machines care about us. They don't. They don't have any opinion about us. Yeah, they're not going to lock the pod bay doors anytime soon. Yes, and decide, hello. You know, I

I think when the issue is a lot, this has been around for a while. And by the way, Elon was an early investor in OpenAI, which was a public, it was a nonprofit. Which is the company that owns Chachaputi, right? Yes. And then it now has a capitalist arm. It has a profit arm. But what it was, was he and others, not just him, were worried about the development of AI then that would be controlled by the Googles, the Facebooks, the Apples, and the Amazons of the world.

Which all have now their own AI. That's right. And so it started like that. And so it's being run by Sam Altman, who I have huge regard for. I really like him. He's a great guy. Yeah, I want to meet him. No. No, no. He is. Let me just say. I don't want you to meet him. He's up. He's up again. No, no, no.

I don't know if you know this. They siphon through who I can see. You can't meet him. Oh, really? Okay. You can see him. Also, he's a gay, by the way. I know. I think he's a smart gay. He's a smart gay. So anyway, so what's happened is there's been a quantum leap in computing. There's been a quantum leap in the development of it. It's been going on for...

a long, long time, like more than a decade or longer than that, machine learning and stuff like that. And so suddenly it started to take some leaps because of computing power and scale and information. And there's these things called large language models, LLMs, that's what they call them. It's a catchy name for them. And as we get more data, the data starts to teach itself and pattern match. That's really, I'm trying to...

It's like, to do an easy thing, like say you had abacuses and calculators for a while and then you got the spreadsheet. Abacai. Abacai. Abacai, thank you. I don't know. I have all their albums. I actually don't know. You're so smart, Will. So it's just that the computers are becoming smarter and smarter and teaching themselves. And so artificial, it's not a really great word, artificial intelligence. Generative AI is the best term.

is that it generates itself based on the patterns that come with it. And G-A-I spells gay. Right, guy. But, Kara, it occurs to me that recently I was thinking about, like, we assign the term AI kind of to everything. Now you go online or you're going to buy something or whatever they say, and it's, you know, it's AI generated or AI, you know. Well, that's just marketing. We're just talking about it. It's just technology.

That's all it is, right? No, no. Okay, sorry. No, it's not. It's different. Before, you'd search for Google and then it would come back with whatever, like your name, right? Sure. Now it can do, it goes into the search. And so before you'd get the page related to you, now you get all the information and then it gets fed back at you, which is much more interesting. So it goes deep into the sites and then generates information

you know, I'm going to France, give me a thing before you'd have to search. And now it will do things and it will be embedded in, it's now being embedded in Microsoft, in Gmail, in everything you do. And there'll be an AI for insurance. There'll be an AI for healthcare, lots of different healthcares. There'll be an AI for everything like travel. And that's, it's just bringing you information faster in a way that's,

that will predict things. Help me understand one thing that, um, uh, our industry is currently battling with, with the, with the strike, both in the, uh, with the writers and the actors. Uh, one of the issues that they're concerned about that we are concerned about is this, uh, when you're talking about generative AI and, and the way in which it aggregates a bunch of previously, um,

um, created content or performances, books, uh, movies, all these things. Um, um,

So when it ingests all of these things such that it can train itself to spit back out a result, there are people like Sarah Silverman and these novelists that are saying, well, hang on a second. You are training your model based on things that we have done and we should be compensated or get a license fee or something. How did they think – because I'm assuming the horse –

All of them, the millions of horses have left the barn now. No, no, no, no, because it's not protected by Section 230. It's copyright issues, and that's one of the ways they got money out of YouTube. And so what she's doing is absolutely correct. I think Barry Diller is going to do the same. A bunch of newspapers are getting together. And actually, ChatGPT just licensed AP, the content for AP. So the name of the game now is to own your IP if you're a creator or you're an actor or whatever. And that's what you guys are arguing over.

And let me just say. Help me understand that. Yeah. So let's say that somebody, so for Tracy or people like me out there that are not. There's a lot of Jason Bateman. There's a Jason Bateman AI. There is. So, yeah. So, I mean, I could put a prompt into an AI thing and say, give me a performance that combines Jason Bateman's role on Silver Spoons with his role on Arrested Development, whatever the hell it is.

I'd watch that. I have that. I'd watch the book. I've done it. The people who own the show Silver Spoons and own the show Arrested Development, do they get compensated for those performances being in the blender? Yes, but you don't because you signed away your content rights a long time ago. That's why. Whoever owns the content...

that particular content. Now there might be some legal cases where you say, "Well, this was never imagined that it would take my face or it would take my performance." But ownership of IP is so important, intellectual property. I own all my IP right now because I want to do it. Google used to just grab things and they didn't care about IP, they got in trouble for that.

But they do own, they have owned a lot of your stuff. So does Facebook. They own all your stuff because you signed it when you didn't realize it. But then, sorry, so I can hold on to this track. So then the people who do own Silver Spoons and Arrested Development, have they received a check from...

for this use of that material in order to train these AI machines? They will. I think these companies are not going to... There's now a bill in Congress that will say it's absolutely not protected. Section 230, you know what that is. Why does that have to be retroactively challenged in the court? But, well, then why didn't they receive a license fee before they ingested these products?

They didn't ingest everything. They may have made a mistake by ingesting it. They'll have to go back and pay for any kind of copyrighted content that's under copyright. So all the things that are aggregated inside of AI that are owned by... Some of them are owned by them. Some of them are their own data models. And so it'll just depend on what's in there. And so the provenance of where it came from will be super important. But I guess what Jason's saying, I think Jason told me, that their entire model is built on information that was not created by them. Right.

Right. But they might own the rights to. But they don't own the rights to all the books that Tom Clancy has written. If they're out of IP, they can. Right. What do you mean out of IP? What does that mean? Out of copyright. Yeah, if they're not copyrighted. Meaning it becomes public domain? So they can take Beethoven music and they can take... Well, but that's over 100 years old. Tom Clancy books are not 100 years old. So they're going to have to... YouTube pays licensing fees. Like, there are... It does happen. And so the question is what...

They can't just grab anything, although I'll never forget, I was walking with Larry Page, who started Google, at Google in the early days, and there was a room of televisions. And I said, what are you doing? They were on, like it was a Circuit City at the time. And he said, I'm taping all of television. And I was like, what? Like, it was so crazy. No way. And he was using closed captioning to search television. And I said, do you have the rights to do that? And he goes, well, it's going to be great for people to be able to search television. It's great for the companies. I said, but then you...

You control it. Like you can't do it without asking. And he just was like, well, of course I can. And I was like, well, I hope they sue you because that's what's going to have to happen. There's going to be a lot of lawsuits. I think luckily a lot of the media companies and the publishers do understand this right now early. And they won't be able to grab a lot of copyrighted content very easily. Yeah.

We were talking about it yesterday, the three of us. One of the things that's going on with the labor dispute that's going on in our business is...

You know, that the companies want to be able to have this blanket usage of likeness and stuff, right? Sure they do. Right. And they're claiming, you know, fuck you, we can do whatever the hell we want and how dare you tell us what to do. Well, at the same time, we know for a fact that they're involved in litigation right now to try to protect their info from being used. That's right. So they're sort of...

Once again, you can understand how outraged I was because as you saw before that I hate people who are... Right. Hypocrites. Yeah, who are total hypocrites. And...

That seems to be the name of the game. And I think, and also correct me if I'm wrong, is there is bipartisan support in Congress for solving this issue with AI, right? 100%. Yes, because they're going to do to what they did before to publishing companies and media companies, they're going to fuck them. And that's what they're trying to do now. They're going to have a harder time here because they're going deep into the content versus pointing to it, which gives you power. And so with you in the studios, though,

I always say this to the studio heads that I talk to and everything else is you're all on the same side against the tech companies in the end because that's just going to fuck you. They have the money, they have the time, they have the means. So Netflix interests are very different than Disney's interests that are very different than Apple's interests. And so that's your problem. And also AI, it's not clear where AI is going yet.

But you can anticipate that they're going to want to feed in all of silver spoons and make a new show that's like that. They can do that. But what happens while all this is getting sorted out and litigated? Is there an injunction where AI gets frozen? No. Or does these AI companies get to continue to make profits while they figure out who's going to win or lose? And once they do lose, do they then retroactively compensate all of these companies? That's what happened with YouTube. That's what happened with YouTube. But that's what happened.

in American business, that's all they do, which is you keep going, you do whatever the fuck you want, and at a certain point, your chickens come home to roost, and you've got to end up paying people back retroactively. Well, except you guys have given away a lot. I had this argument with a guy, Third Rock from the Sun guy. What's his name? The creator. John Lithgow? French Stewart. No, no, no, no, no. The creator of Third Rock? The creator. Oh, you know. Kristen Johnson. Casey Warner? Tom Warner? No, no, no, no, no.

God, I'm going to blank on this. Joseph Gordon-Levitt. No, I love him. He's great. I'm just going through the cast. He wrote a great piece in the Washington Post. I'm going through the cast. No, it's not the cast. It was the creator. I know. I know. I'm being silly. I'm sorry, Kara. His name is Terry Turner. No. Bonnie and Terry Turner. Bonwit Teller. No, Bonwit Teller. I'll find him. Third Rock from the Sun? It's a guy who did... Bonnaroo. Or 30 Rock. Three Men...

No, three men and a baby. Three men and a baby. Bonzo. Two and a half men. The two and a half men. Chuck Lorre. Chuck Lorre. Oh my God. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Ding, ding. We were sitting next to each other at a dinner on the other side was a Google executive, a very wealthy Google executive. And he, Instagram had just gotten bought. And he goes, why did that guy get so much money? Like, I think it was a billion dollars or whatever. And I said, because he owned it, Chuck. Like,

Like, sorry, he owned it. And he goes, well, why should he get that? I said, because he's the owner. He owns the company and he has a piece of it. And I said, you're a well-played employee from what I can tell. You sell your content to them and then they own it, CBS. And you're the reason CBS is so valuable. And you should get a piece of that. But why don't you get a piece of it? Oh, he does. He does, but he still is not getting the piece that he created value with.

you know what I mean and so you know he got very exercised about it but the whole point is you all have to start to rethink your entire economic system in Hollywood because either you guys are going to have to get a piece of it or have to be entrepreneurs yourselves rather than rely on studios well we have to go to Wells Fargo and get the loan for production instead of the studios that's right Wells Fargo to get the loan for

That's correct. You have to take the risk. But that's hard because your industry operates on fear, loathing, and insecurity, right? First of all, Cara, thanks very much. And how dare you? Secondly, secondly, we've got, in Hollywood, we've got our top brains on it and we're all like, uh...

We're screwed. Karen, so all of this tech stuff that you have been involved with, journalism and everything since you started, what drew you to it? Why do you still love it? And have you ever tried to start your own company? I have started many companies. No, I meant podcast companies, but I meant like techie kind of stuff. Oh, no. No, I'm not techno-

No, I haven't. I've been offered jobs at all the big companies. I would have been a billionaire at this point had I taken them. I'm sure. I sadly didn't. I was like, what do I need you for? I'm a journalist like an idiot. I know. I had a really early Google offer. I didn't want it to Amazon very early. I have a feeling those opportunities are not over for you.

I doubt, but doubtful. You put your hand up, you get gobbled. I decided to innovate with journalism. And so I broke away from the Wall Street Journal, created my own company. Now everybody's doing it like Substack and stuff like that. Created a conference company. It's highly lucrative. So the reason I was attracted is because I was at the Washington Post and I was headed for the big time, which would have been covering the Clinton administration.

And I just couldn't do it. I was like, this is not what I want to do, cover politics and be part of a thing. And I just kept seeing, I went to this fellowship at Duke and started using early internet tools. And I

I downloaded a book onto my computer and I messed up the whole network at Duke at the time. And the guy was mad at me, this nerdy guy. I was like, what did you do? I said, I downloaded a book. You clogged the pipe. Yeah, I clogged the pipe. And he goes, you made a mess. And I said, I downloaded a book, you asshole. And he goes, you clogged up the pipe. I said, but.

I downloaded a book. And I said, then everything could be downloaded. And so it occurred to me at that moment, and this was back in the 90s, that everything that can be digitized would be digitized. And that was, that's, I was like, oh, well, that's, that's like the Gutenberg Bible. That's like radio, television, except bigger. And it's a worldwide network of information. And so the minute it happened, I was like, oh, I see. This is a big fucking deal. This is so, that's all. Wow. And now a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

It seems like every industry would benefit from an equally devised council. In other words, thoughts and interests equally represented from both sides, whatever those are, in every industry to figure out

and to be creative and curious about what the potential problems and pluses are from this specific thing, this AI thing. Because like we're dealing with these strikes right now, I think everybody kind of agrees we don't have brains big enough to figure out how to language everything specifically into this term of the contract. We're going to need these next three years to really figure out the micro, but what is the language for the macro foundational stuff

such that as we start to learn the specifics of how this stuff benefits us or hurts us,

the language is already established that we can, you know, make it all fair as we go forward. Like, where are the brains that can fill these rooms? Hey, Jay, you know, I've noticed something, and this is sort of related. I think that, Jason, you would have been, you would have, you'd make a really good Canadian because this is not the first time you've talked about the idea of like, there should be a broad council, there should be a consensus given by a government agency that we can all turn to. I mean, you're really, you would make a, you would fit really,

right in in Canada. Yeah, he would. And I mean that as a compliment. I truly do. Listen, I love it up there. I do too. But you know, you guys are creative. Look at Sean just did with his show. You know, creativity is not going to be digitized easily at all in any way. Creativity and entrepreneurship. They can't copy Quirk.

They can't. They can't. And that's powerful. That's super powerful. But Elon Musk can try. He will. But I got rapid fire like last three questions because we've got to let you go. Okay. No, we're not going to let you go. We have like 10 questions for Chris. Okay, sure. Well, I want to talk about military intelligence because you're like... You'll love the Apple Vision Pro, Will. Really? I'm going to get a demo of it next week. Good. I was supposed to go and Jason's there and I'm not.

You know what? It's not quite there yet, but if you get it, you'll get it. Cara, tell my sister Tracy what that is. Apple Vision Pro is a headset. It's like the Oculus, but it's very different. It's going to change work.

It's like ski goggles, but you can see stuff inside it. You can see through them, actually. How's it going to change work, Kara, just quickly? Because you're not going to need a screen. Everyone's like, it costs $3,000. I said a really nice screen costs $3,000. I think you're going to have the screens in front of you, and when it gets lighter and better, you'll be working in front of you. Yeah.

Heads up display is the way it's going to go. 100%. This is the first step there. You'll really enjoy it. And touch the dinosaur, Jason. Touch the dinosaur. Touch the dinosaur. You'll know what I mean. That's not a euphemism, right? No. Okay. Porn will be really good with this. Yeah.

Porn will be amazing. I've got a tramp stamp that says touch the dinosaur. But Kara, remember the Google glasses? Like why not that? I have a pair. I just found my pair the other day because it wasn't right because it was too... Nobody's going to walk around with the whole thing over your head. It's not going to look like that. Nobody's going to walk around. Calm down. Look at early internet. The internet looks like shit.

everything looks like shit at the beginning. Remember the headphones, AirPods? Sean, don't worry. Nobody's walking around to go anywhere. Sean, look at your baby pictures. It'll look like your glasses. It'll look like your glasses. I told you, it's like the automated car. We're all going to be getting in automated cars. People are going to be showing up at restaurants dead. I just did it yesterday with my son. You're going to order one. The user before is going to be dead instantly.

in it. No, no. It's going to show up and these things are going to be moving coffins. That's crazy. No, no. I just rode the Waymo yesterday around San Francisco with my son. What's the Waymo? What is it? Waymo is owned by Google and then there's Cruise by GM and then there's Zeus by Amazon. It's a driverless Uber, man. No people in the cars. Why would you ever get into that? It's so cool. I'll send you the video. Is it like an Uber? Can you text me that video? It's like an Uber. Yes, I just put them up on threads. It's a rideshare thing. Like a rideshare thing and you call it. Oh my God.

They have them in L.A. I've seen it in L.A. Really? They're just starting in L.A. They're in testing right now. But they're in Phoenix going to the airport now. And in Houston, they have long-haul trucks in Texas doing driverless trucks. They should offer helmets to the riders just for the first year. You don't need it. You get in a car with...

with an Uber driver who's like 16 and you're good with that? I'm sorry. I can't wait to get in one of those and join the foot and a half club. I have ridden these things. With my girl. Yeah, with your girl. Oh, really nice. You would do that anyway with someone in the front seat is my guess. I would. You're right.

I want to know about, okay, so just, okay. Well, I wanted to get into military intelligence because I know you are into that. It's like, I don't want to. Military, okay. Tell me about that. Like how, because you grew up like learning about it and then you pivoted, right, or something or your dad was into it or something? I couldn't go in military because I was gay, Sean. That was why. It was don't ask, don't tell and I'd like to tell. I'm going to ask. Yeah, remember that? Remember don't ask, don't tell? You made them ask. I made them ask. I couldn't be in the military because I was gay. My dad was in the military. Fucking ask me. Fucking ask me. Ask me fucking because I'll tell you.

I'll kiss her. I'll kiss her. And then you're going to ask me. I'm going to start kissing her and then you're going to ask me and I'm going to tell. Thank you, Bill Clinton, for that, by the way. Well, that's too big of a problem. We'll get into that next time. But what is it? What's your favorite new techie gadget of the year, of the last 10 years? Is it this dumb ride that I'm never going to get into? Is it the Google thing with the VR? No, it's Apple. It's Apple. It's Apple.

Apple, sorry. I really am really heartened by these autonomous cars. I have ridden them for 20 years and they are really getting good. They're getting good. They're getting real good. The truck thing is an issue though, right? No. Because that's a lot of drivers that are going to go out of work. You know who gets in accidents? No, it's not. There's not enough drivers in this country. We're down 100,000 drivers. Oh, really? Instead, you have the long haul. Long hauls shouldn't be done by people, FYI. It's very dangerous and it's dangerous.

not good work and so what you do is you have the autonomous trucks do the long haul and then in short terms into the cities you have people do them so there's all kinds of and then there's job opportunities to run them and there's it's a false argument to say we have enough drunkards we don't but a lot of these automated robots are becoming drunks and so they're forming like alcoholics autonomous so listen

You're funnier than Elon Musk. No, I'm not. Way to dig that one out, Willie. That was sloppy. That was an Elon Musk joke, just FYI. That was sloppy. That was something I might have heard. Hey, what's the opposite of artificial intelligence? What? Here it comes. Natural stupidity. Hey, guys. So, Kara, tell me about the greatest military, you know, invention of the last few years. I think the Starlink, what it's doing in Ukraine is really important. It is. It is. It's...

Now, when you were a kid, and then we're going to let you go because these are the things I wrote down that I want to know. I can't imagine, like, I would have killed to know you as a kid. We would have been best friends. Best friends. But what do you... Princeton, New Jersey. I can't imagine you working at KFC or something. I didn't. What was your first job? I was an entrepreneur. I took pictures of people for their senior...

seeing your pictures. So you were a little photographer in high school? Yeah. Really? In a dark room. Creepy. Did you hold on to all the photos and then load them online and digitize them and then own the IP? Fuck you, Kara. Do you ever come down to Los Angeles so we can see face-to-face and share a meal? Yes, I come in

Yes, 100%. Will you come and have dinner with us? Yes, I probably, if you mean it, unless it's just fake. No, it's not Hollywood fake. Well, I'll speak for me. I want to be your friend. I need more smart people in my life. Yes, I'd be happy to. I love Los Angeles. It's one of my favorite places. Last question I have. Do you ever take a break from tech?

From your phone, from your thing, from your computer. Yes, I have four children, Scott. Sean. I mean, I have, Sean, excuse me, I'm calling you Scott because I just did pivot. I have four children, yes. No, but I mean, like, do you ever do like a scheduled two weeks where you're not going to do, you know, one of those things? No, I'm working all the time. What do you do to dumb down? What's the dumbest thing you do? I went to see Barbie twice. No, I love Barbie. I think it's brilliant, actually. You know, I do things like the Succession podcast, which is, I'm a big fan. I enjoyed that, for example. Dumb down? Um,

TV. I watch TV mindlessly. What are you watching? Some bad TV? No, I think it's good. Whatever. I like, you know who I like? The guy who's in play, Gerard Butler. I love Gerard Butler. Gerard Butler? Gerard Butler. I love him. I don't know why. Sounds like you really love him. You don't even know his name. You know, he's in all the, and Liam Neeson has a new movie that he beats people up. I like that. Listen, Kara, do you ever... I don't care. Kara?

Just kill someone for me. Just a hunk that's missing something and needs to find it. You're in. Let me ask you something. I'm going to prescribe something to you. I'm going to write this down. I'm going to write it on my prescription pad here. All right, thank you. What I want you to do is, right now, okay, I want you to go outside. Unsolicited advice from a white guy. Great. I'm super excited. Take your shoes off, and I want you to put your bare feet on the grass. All right?

Don't do that. Don't do that. I have to listen to tech people on this bullshit. This is a Long Island guru. Go ahead. Put your bare feet on the grass in the sand. You know what? I have one of those electric pads. Disconnect from your tech. From your tech. No, no, no. I love my tech. When I was having a baby, this is my last story, I was having my son. I was holding a Blackberry and texting him. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I love it. Well, I had an emergency seat section and I was texting Walt Mossberg, who was a great technology journalist, and he was my partner at all the things I did. I was texting him saying, eight centimeters, seven, whatever the centimeters was.

And I had an emergency C-section. They rushed me into the room and it was in my hand. It was a square little thing. Oh, my God. And my brother was a doctor at this hospital and the doctor looked at me and they said, your brother said you'd be a problem around the tech. And so they covered the BlackBerry in a plastic bag and then they taped it because, you know, like germs.

And so it sat there buzzing the entire C-section. It was a great, great moment in my life. Were you one of those parents where you were like, because I know you're a great mom, did you tell them like, put the tablet down, put your phone down? Are you like, yeah, do whatever you want? No, because my ex-wife and I, I'm married twice. My ex-wife used to be the chief technology officer of the United States and was a Google executive. So they couldn't put anything over on either of us. So we had full control of the situation.

And I also could call people. One time when my sons were doing too much Snapchat, I was somewhere and I brought them in a room and I said, here is Evan Spiegel, the creator, and we're going to turn off your Snapchat. And they were like, if you don't stop using it, he goes, yes, I'm going to. And it was perfect. I love that.

Nice, Mom. Steve Jobs. We did a Steve Jobs. Kara Swisher, I love you, and I love that you're such a great mom. Thank you. Boy, that was five minutes long, it felt like. That was five minutes long. My God. Please come back. Yeah, we need to do a part two. I feel like we're just barely scratched the surface. You would have been so much better than Matt Damon. We were supposed to have you on the tour. What happened with Sean? Do you remember what happened? I know.

What happened with that, Sean? Famous people. Karen knows what happened. And then you put so many famous people. I don't care. Dick. I don't care. Karen knows what happened. No, I care. Soon I'll be more famous than all of you. I know, that's true. Wait, are you dying? No. Oh, no. Okay, sorry. Not today. Not today. Okay. Not today. She might kill someone. I don't care. But not today. Gladiator. Gladiator. I don't even know her. I'm such a lesbian. It's so crazy. Okay.

Though I hate sports, so I don't know how that works. All right. I love Gladiator. Hurry down to L.A. for some snacks and giggles. I will, and Sean, I'm coming to New York. I'm coming to New York with my oldest son. Don't miss the play. Get there before the play's done. I'm going to the play. I'm going to see Alex Adelman next week, and then I'll come see you. Literally the theater next to mine. I will come see you the week after, okay? Okay.

Okay, honey. The gap is this big. I know that. I'm going to go see it. I tried to get him on the podcast to talk about it, but he was too busy. He was too tired. Very busy. Who, me? Very tired. I see his wrist. I love your show. Not from the show, just recovering from the carbs. And I don't say I took credit. Sean pulled me aside in Provincetown and said, should I do podcasts? And I gave him a primer on the whole fucking thing. Well, the first time you interviewed me years and years ago on yours-

I was like, how do you do this? Like, what do you do? It's so long ago. You guys have done a great job and I really appreciate it. You guys were in P-Town just to, what, just trying to hit the cliche on the bullseye? Yeah, just being gay. Doing gay things. What are you? Drag shows. Hit the cliche on the bullseye. Meaningless sex. Pop.

Poppers, right? Poppers. Poppers. Phone party. I mistook you for a gay man. You mistook me for a lesbian. Yeah, we made out for just a brief second. It was magical. You guys are freaks. We were at a drag show. We were at a drag show. All right. We love you. Goodbye. I love you. Thank you. Will you text me the video of the car? I shall. It's really fun. I'll do it. All right. I love you. Goodbye. All right. Bye. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's a great guest.

I love her. She's just a great guest. Really great. Couldn't you just literally, like you said, Jay, just have dinner with her and talk about everything? Well, yeah. How does one person have all that info? I could do a whole hour without you guys. Just asking her questions and questions and questions. I know. Or three. Three hours. I know. That's what I told you at the top. I was like, I don't read stuff or go on the internet. I just call her or text her. I'm like, what's happening with this? Yeah. How many podcasts does she have? She's got two right now. I should start listening to at least one. On...

with Kara and Pivot. And one covers tech and the other one covers journalism? Something like that. I was a guest co-host on Pivot. It was really fun. You would be great. You might want to know. Yeah, but I want to get some... I want to increase my Kara Swisher either in person or on podcast. Yeah. Yeah.

You know what else is interesting? Oh, here he goes. Hey, guys. Clear the deck. Sean's got a bike. Sean Hayes is now in the middle of starting a bike. So, you know, sometimes when we pop on and we see each other for the podcast, I wave hello. And then sometimes when we're at the end, I wave hello.

Goodbye. Not his best moment. The shark had no teeth on that one. That's okay. He's going to circle and make another attempt. Here he comes. You know what? When I was in the store today, I couldn't get out of there fast enough. It was so crowded, so I yelled to the crowd, you can kiss my ass.

Goodbye. No, that's not, you know. No? You know, listen, I'm going to grab hold of the stick now. I'm in the pilot's seat, and I'm going to spin it around. It was great having Kara Swisher here.

you know, what I wanted to get into or I wanted to understand, you know. What's that, Will? Well, just, you know, just about the power of computing and what it takes for, like, AI. Like, are we talking giga, mega, or kilobytes? Bytes! Yeah, I've had better. You're the best. Smart. Less. Smart. Less. Less.

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