A Tech Love Story with Kara Swisher 57:54

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Hey everyone, it's Reed. Before we get started, I just want to reiterate something I said on a recent episode. This is a campaign about values. This is a fight about values. Who are we as a people? Who are we as a nation? Who are we as individuals? I know that if you're listening to my voice, you're on the right side of history and you're on the side of good.

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Welcome back to The Lincoln Project. I'm your host, Reed Galen. Today, I'm joined by journalist, author, podcaster, tech industry expert, and whatever else fits on our business card, Kara Swisher. Kara's the host of the podcast On with Kara Swisher and co-host of the Pivot podcast with Scott Galloway, both distributed by New York Magazine.

She was the co-founder and editor at large of Recode and host of the Recode Decode podcast. She's written for numerous outlets, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and is a contributor to CNN. Her latest book, a New York Times bestseller, is Burn Book, a tech love story, which was released at the end of February and is now available wherever fine books are sold.

Today, she's coming to us from Washington, D.C. Cara, welcome to the show. Thank you, Reed. I contain multitudes. That's how I like to put it. Yes, you certainly do. Well, first and foremost, thank you for joining us. This is just a treat for me. So the

The book is a fabulous travelogue through the history of tech. It is. If you want just that, yes, you can find out sort of the history. And it's the history of recent tech, internet. You know, I'm not talking about chips or the beginning of the graphical user interface, although I reference it, but it's not the early tech.

No, no, no. It's not when Hewlett Packard was the height of cool. Yeah, I do know about that. I have that information if you want it. And it was all aerospace and Raytheon and all of that. Raytheon. But I want to talk about sort of the, let me call it the philosophy of the tech industry over the last...

quarter century, because I find it fascinating and you go through a lot of the personalities you dealt with. We were talking about Steve Jobs just before you came on. Obviously, there's Elon Musk, who is whatever. So let me start with the biggest first is

At what point or what valuation, to use a venture capital term, does a tech founder go from an otherwise geeky and quirky individual to someone with very, I don't want to oversell it by calling it messianic, but their belief is their belief and no other belief can possibly contain it.

Well, you know, I joked about we can name multitudes. So does tech. Not everybody is like this. You know, you have someone, I was with Steve Case last night at Georgetown. He's a lovely guy. You know, we disagree about things, but he's perfectly normal and or Reed Hastings or anybody else. But there are certain figures, I think probably principally Elon Musk at the current time, who's kind of messing up the curve for everybody at this point. And Zuckerberg to an extent,

And several others who have enormous power and perhaps they're not quite up to the task of the power they hold. Well, and I guess that's the point. I mean, you know, there's the everybody said it a million times, you know, absolute power corrupts. Absolutely. Sometimes. And so, yeah, I guess that's my question. So one of my friends once said.

I could never figure out why people wanted to hang out with movie stars, right? They were the drama dorks in high school. And I feel a little bit about some of the guys in the tech sector, and they are mostly guys. They can be very popular because of the control they have, of the money they have, of the influence they have. But the truth is, is like Mark Zuckerberg was a weirdo in a dorm room, right? Mm-hmm.

Well, I didn't know him when he was a doorman. Weirdo, I think is a strong term. I think he, you know, he was a technology kid. That's all, you know, that kind of thing. And there's definitely, you know, there's politics kids and technology kids and they're, you know, the type kind of thing. And they're often like the type they are and they tend to coalesce around each other.

I think what has happened here, there's a couple of things that have happened is one, tech has become so important to our culture. It's addictive, it's necessary, it's ubiquitous everywhere. And it's impacted every single industry profoundly. This current technology, which is digital, online, pretty much internet, I guess, writ large. And it's changing every part, like jobs, it's changing how we communicate, it's changing how we shop, it's changing how we eat and everything else. And so

The profound effect is why they're so popular. The second part is the enormous money that they've made doing so. And we've always had a fascination in this country, particularly with rich people, right? Whether it's Andrew Carnegie or Henry Ford. And they've always had an influence, an outsized influence on our politics or whatever. But this gang is the richest and the most powerful. And their companies are the richest and most powerful. And they are unaccountable, unregulated, and unstoppable.

And so I think that's probably why. Why certain people turn, like you asked earlier, I don't know. Maybe their character, maybe they're jerks, maybe they had bad parenting, but it depends on the person. But there is a quality of being I am Jesus kind of thing to several of them that is really disturbing, I would say. And let me work outside the individual into sort of the broader tech thing. So years ago, probably 10 years ago, I did work for this group called Lincoln Labs, which

It was 2013. It was post Mitt Romney, right? The Mitt Romney campaigns tech such as it was had melted down because it was all vaporware to begin with. And so this was a group of guys who are like, OK, how do we bring the Republican Party at the time? Right. This is a long time ago. Up to speed with the Democrats. And so we had several conferences in San Francisco. They were always well attended.

by the press, by interesting people in tech. I think Joe Lonsdale showed up one year. This was when Rand Paul was quirky, but still not nuts. But one of the groups of people who showed up for the first two or three years were the crypto people. And I don't want to talk about crypto, but

It was the holiness with which they held the idea of cryptocurrency or with Sam Bankman Freed in this, you know, effective altruism or with Andreessen with this new manifesto optimism. It's terrible. It's not a very good manifesto, but go ahead. No. And so.

Are they trying to replace God either with themselves or with some other idea? You know, they are God, right? That's not really, you know, it's interesting because some of them believe that we're in a simulation, you know, some of these people think we're not really real. Some of these people think we live in the matrix. That's correct. They do. Elon Musk is one of them who talks about it a lot. Tony Hsieh, who died, sadly, was a big who used to live here in Park City. I

That's right. A lot of them think that. Some of them are without an anchor. It's like a cult in a weird way. I mean, you could look at some of the Elon people and think cult, right? And same thing with Trump, you know, cult. And I think that's probably the appropriate word to use. I don't know what motivates them. Some of them are picked last at basketball. Their nightmare is now our nightmare because they're working out their problems simultaneously.

Some of them just have these, you know, have become radicalized. There's no other way to put it, by certain ideas. I think a lot of them are by nature contrarian, and now they become contrarian for contrarian's sake.

And they like to burn it down. I mean, if you look at some of their sayings, like you have Facebook with move fast and break things. It's not move fast and fix things. It's a software term. Nonetheless, it's the one they picked. Like that's the one they picked. And it's meant to like make sure your software is stronger. But it's really interesting the phrasing they use, disruption.

It's all violent. It's all violent. And you see it in Peter Thiel. Like he wants to burn it all down. Like that's what he doesn't like the system. If you read his books, you know, at the heart, the system is not broken. Let's fix it. Let's get rid of it. And they think they know better. That's, you know, that's the disease of technologists. Well, and another one of these strange conferences that I found myself at was Thiel wasn't there personally, was some weird seasteading thing where they were. Oh, yeah. I love that. Yeah. I

Islands of liberty. He's into that. He's into going off if there's an apocalypse. He's into the seasteading. You know, Elon's into the space travel. They want to leave this planet. They don't seem to like where we are. And the only thing about space travel is, yes, we have existential issues. So perhaps we might want to explore living somewhere else. And that's not a bad idea. But it becomes weird. It becomes...

intense and religious. And so that's their religion, which is themselves, really. Yeah, because then look, I mean, this is you mentioned Carnegie Ford mentioned any of the guys on Wall Street, right, or in Hollywood or in politics.

There is a cult of personality that I don't want to say necessarily, but typically grows up around them. Yes. Right. So this is not an unusual people who want money like enablers. That's like the court of King Henry VIII. It's not this is not a fresh new take on civilization where the money is, where the power is. People tend to coalesce and be obsequious.

And each of those people you mentioned all had their own little theories. Henry Ford was full of them, most of them anti-Semitic. Yes. Well, yeah, he published the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which still haunts us today. Yeah, exactly. You know, Kellogg, the guy who does Kellogg's serial, had a whole thing around. If you read it, you're like, oh, that's strange. You know, they all had their own little strange theories.

It's just the impact of these people is so much more and ubiquitous and across the global in a way that it never was. Yeah. And so let's talk about the impact, because to go back to the matrix thing right in the matrix. Remember that when Lawrence Fishburne is just yeah, Lawrence Fishburne is describing to Neo what's going on. He holds up a Duracell battery right to turn a human being into a copper top. That's right. But now we aren't necessarily plugged into the matrix unless you believe Elon Musk.

Kind of we are. Don't we give our data? But that was exactly what I was going to ask, which is we are the batteries individually that power this stuff. That's right. It's the data and the, you know, there's a poet,

He said, paths are made by walking. We walk all over the place and they use those paths to track us. And they use where we go and what we do to power everything. All the data, which is gold now, it really is, or oil or whatever metaphor you want to use, is that. And therefore, we are the battery. We are...

fueling their wealth. We are fueling their wealth. AI is nothing without us. And not just that, lots of data. There's weather data, there's insurance data, there's et cetera, health data. There's all kinds of data, but it's all generated from humanity humming on this planet, essentially. So I was at a dinner last night and I was standing with a gentleman I hadn't met before and somebody looked down and

He was wearing these shoes and it had like a little flying saucer and like a guy being drawn up in a, you know, like a little beam. And they're like, oh, cool shoes. He's like, Instagram got me. And I was wearing this pair of boots. I go, they got me too. They are good at Instagram ads are quite good. I mean, like they had dialed me in Kara 100%. They're very good. Of course they are because you're giving them the information. You're helping them take money from you essentially constantly.

And not just that, because it can be used to buy shoes. Who cares, right? Okay, good. It's good you get shoes you like, right? That's kind of cool. You don't have to wander through a Target to find the shoes you like if you could find them at all, right? So that's kind of okay. It's not the worst thing in the world. It's just that you don't have control over it. You don't get a piece of it, of the action for all the stuff they're taking from you.

whether it be your content or anything, including content of media companies, you don't get any piece of it. And it can be turned so quickly into malevolence, right? If it's going to be used to sell you shoes, it can be used to explain to you why Antifa is coming to your small Indiana town, like, you know, and then get you into a state of...

And I've used in the book, enragement equals engagement, right? And so it can go either way. It doesn't have to go bad, but often it's such a tool for going bad that it's amazing we have no regulation around things like that.

So four years ago, almost the Lincoln Project launched an ad called Morning in America. Yeah. And it was the the Hal Reine 1984 ad in the minor key. And Facebook flagged it as inaccurate because there's a line that says Trump cared more about Wall Street than Main Street.

And it got flagged as inaccurate. So accurate. So I called a friend of mine who is still a senior communications person at Facebook. And I said, man, this is not inaccurate. He goes, well, you know, this group, you know, whoever it was, they decided we can't do anything about it. Blah, blah, blah. I'm like, but it's not inaccurate. Like we have the backup is like nothing I can do, man. I'm like, you have.

Thousands of groups of proud boys, militia members, QAnon freaks and everything else running around your platform and you do nothing. And you're telling me one line that is accurate in a political ad that is inaccurate and you can't do anything about it because you don't know what to tell you, man. Yeah. Welcome to Facebook. Right.

It's like all the library books on the floor run by people who aren't paying attention. I use the metaphor of a city. They own the city that is built of our data, by the way. It's built from us. They own the city. They run the city. They don't have police, fire, garbage, street signs.

So lots of potholes, lots of potholes, no concrete, really. It's like the purge every day. And so but then they're like, don't regulate us. And you have no ability to go to them and say, this isn't right. Or I'd like this fixed because they don't have to listen at all. And there's no reason yet. They charge you. That's my favorite part in some fashion, whether it's they're buying those shoes. It's not you know, they say it's free, but it's not free.

or they find ways to charge you or upgrade you or do something else. And it's just, it's such as, it's like literally, it's not a scam, but what's another word for scam that's a scam? Like it's kind of fascinating. Well, you're the mark. Yes, that's right. Yes. But let's talk about that because, you know, something I've thought about a lot in the last few years is this idea, and you referenced it in the book too, and you just did a few minutes ago, is this idea of

authority without responsibility or authority without accountability. Or ability to get rid of them. They can't fire them. Right. They are not answerable to anybody. And because they understood very well, most of them now understand very well how to grease the mechanics of Washington, D.C., Facebook in particular, right? They hire, you know, a senior Bush guy. I believe they have Chuck Schumer's daughter on the payroll. And so, you know, there's the

connection aspect of it, then I think there's also just the flat out ignorance of how any of this works, which is, does anybody expect a legislative body whose average age is in their 70s, right, to have any conception of how any of this works? And so when they haul up a Zuckerberg or whoever it is, you know, their staff is just looking to score points.

but it's clear that none of them have any understanding of the real underlying feature. I'm going to push back on that because they also regulate planes. They train, they regulate pharmaceuticals, they regulate Wall Street. Do you think they have any idea of that? I think that's a canard that tech puts on it. You don't get us. It doesn't matter. You're a business. I get a business. We need to tax you more. If you're hurting people, we need to sue you. If you're doing things that are dangerous, we need to create a law. They'll figure it out, right? And

And tech loves to operate in that space. Like we're magicians. You don't understand what we're doing is magical. It's not magical. It's not. It's they're selling Twinkies. I don't know, whatever. Twinkies are more complex than what Facebook is doing. Think about the logistics of bringing you that Twinkie. It's not easy and it should be monitored in some fashion. And I'm not talking about

A ton of regulation, I'm talking about any, any, there's none. And the legislation that exists benefits them because they can't be sued. And therefore there's not the dulcet effects of lawyers, which I, you know, we can complain all you want about lawsuits,

But they work, right? And they tend to keep this system clean, right? Donald Trump can be sued. He's been in court. You can't take Facebook to court. I mean, now they are in terms of antitrust. They're trying to find pricing. But it's difficult because the antitrust laws aren't updated enough. They're trying to figure out markets. The only way, I'll tell you, what really the penny dropped for me is I did an interview with one of those Sandy Hook kids.

parents. He's a wonderful guy, terrible tragedy. He wasn't able to get Facebook to take stuff down. Very similar to what you had. Can't do anything about it, bud. That kind of thing. Free speech, bud. That kind of thing. And he finally was able to stop them through copyright because we have very good and strong copyright laws in this country. So they took these terrible people, these heinous people, took the pictures of his kids and manipulated. And so he was able to take them down because they did that. What did

terrible thing. He should be, they should have won morally. They should have taken it down. And again, it's at the behest of someone like Mark Zuckerberg, even if they have, you know, rigorous debate within the company. I had a big argument with him about Holocaust deniers. And I said, you need to take, you need to take Alex Jones on. He's breaking your rules as I see written. So they were like, well, you know, he didn't break the rule. I said, no, he did like here, here, here, and here. It doesn't matter. It's just, it's just capricious.

And why have rules in the first place if you're not going to enforce them? Can I be overly simplistic and maybe even naive? Sure. And maybe this goes back to the first question I asked you, like, isn't there any level of morality here?

I don't know. I don't think they think about it. I think there should be. I don't really care if they're moral. I think you should be able to sue them. And if you lose or win, you know, I don't think we should make them into our gods in that regard. Sure. But is there morality to the cigarette manufacturers or, you know, people who hire young kids?

To help in, you know, chicken farms or whatever? I don't know. Sure. Yes, I wouldn't do it. But, you know, this is the first line of the book is very clear. So it was capitalism after all. So if it's going to be that, we're going to have to have a little discussion about guidelines about how we're going to operate in a democracy and keep people safe.

And again, and if you don't keep them safe, we'll sue you or someone will sue you. That seems fair. Because this is something that, you know, I think what your book describes in your whole career is you talked about after all, it's capitalism, stupid. Yeah. Andreessen's, you know, cockamamie manifesto is. Yeah, he has a lot of them. Capitalism for me, but not for thee. Well, that manifesto. We're capitalists.

We can do whatever we want. But to your point, you can't sue us. You can't break us up. Right. What we do by definition is OK, whether you like it or not. Yeah, because we're magical. We're magical unicorns or whatever. I don't care what I just think they're business people. And so, sure. You know, Rupert Murdoch got sued and lost. He has to pay a billion bucks. Right. OK.

That's it. Why does Rupert Murdoch get sued if they don't? He used to rant on about this to me and I agree with him. Like why in the world does he have to adhere to libel laws and they don't? Like, I don't know. Or something or something. Safety. What's happening to kids? You know, why does manufacturers have to label things and tech companies don't?

Why is that? Because you can tell the self-esteem is going down. It's addictive. Why isn't that labeled? It's just a question of fair playing field as far as I'm concerned. And then with Marc Andreessen, what he does is that particular one you're referencing was, you know, the tecto optimist, whatever the hell, you know.

It's an astonishing thing to be that reductive that you're either with us or against us. Who does that sound like? You're either with us or really? Life isn't a little more nuanced or complicated? Really? Can you like technology and still say that's a problem? And then the whole rant about the elites, like the elites and the academics and the blah, blah, blah. I was like, you're the richest f***.

guy in the world. You're the man. You're the man. I always say that whenever they're like the man, whenever a rich person goes the man, I'm like, you're the man. You're exactly what you're railing against. Taylor Swift's lyrics are perfect, right? By the way, Taylor Swift is the man too, but she owns it. She's a very powerful figure. She knows it. You don't hear her belly aching about unfairness, do you? You don't. She makes stuff. She delivers it to you. She sells it to you.

and she's actually gives people a lot of money that work for her seems fair, but you don't hear her belly aching. And, and you don't hear like, there's a lot of people that don't, you don't hear Tim Cook telling us what he thinks about Ukraine. Like why would he? Cause he's an adult. He just makes his phones, sells them to us, has some issues in China that they're fixing sort of, but maybe not, you know, but you know, and then if he doesn't, we'll deal with it kind of thing.

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Let's talk about the business of tech there, because you brought up a good segue there for me. So thank you for that is. All right. So like I have I think this is an iPhone 13 and it is beat to heck. The back is cracked. It's coming apart. But I'm going to I'll use it till it dies.

You know, every iPhone, you know, every time when Steve Jobs first announced it and then every iteration, you know, even after that, right, people were outside the Apple store lined up ready for the next one. It's a marginal improvement over the last model for the most people. The 15 is a lot better though than the 13. It is. And I understand. I sort of put it in the context, Karen, maybe this is again. Yes, thank you. You're smarter than I am. So you got to where I was beforehand, which is...

I drive an old car, but the guy at the service center said, most people buy new cars because of the stuff in them. Their old car was fine, but they want the new thing. How long does that go on? Is that a continual thing? Can they live on the margins like that? Yes, they're doing rather well. I think they're a $3 trillion company. Fair enough. And actually what's growing with them more is software and services. So you're in the Apple ecosystem. It doesn't matter if you replace that phone because they're making money other ways from you.

whether it's software, whether it's music, whether it's, you know, there's a whole range of offerings they have now that they've supplemented their business, which is the right way to do it. Like, okay, we're going to get everyone using this iPhone. Then we're going to sell them things to do on the iPhone. And then we're going to charge people in the app store, which is controversial how much they charge, but you leverage a business. You do that at the Lincoln project, right? You do this and then you leverage it to that. Like that's what a business does.

And so, you know, a lot of their software and services is becoming a significant business. Now, you know, you'll upgrade in certain ways, maybe not the phone, but AirPods didn't exist a couple of years ago, right? And then it's a huge business. Same thing with the watch. Started off a little slow. Now it's huge business for them. And so, but they all work as an ecosystem. And that's why they just did the Vision Pro, another piece that they'll be smaller.

Eventually. And so you'll use that and maybe you won't buy their screens someday, but now they'll have that. And so that's what they're doing. They're just doing their little business. It's like just their little business, their little $3 trillion business. Right. They're all children now. Right.

So let's bring all this together. So you mentioned, you know, the Apple ecosystem and, you know, reading up about Steve Jobs, he was very particular. I guess I'll use the word maybe even fanatical about the idea that you had to operate in our limits. Right. Within, you know, like I can't take the battery out. Right. I can't add memory to it.

Now it's all via the cloud now anyway, so a lot of it doesn't matter. Like, how do we now, you know, what comes next? Where do we go from here? If everybody has a phone, if everybody's got a screen of something, how do we bring together all of the tendrils of

you know, near constant screen time. I think it was, was it you that in your book that said you like your phone is your most important relationship. It's the first thing you touch in the morning. It's the last thing you touch when you go to bed. That's correct. You know, there's something called tech neck because we're all looking down. Yeah. I saw that piece in your experience over the past couple of decades.

is there a sort of quasi Luddite reaction? People say, I'm putting my phone down. I don't want to use it. Okay. No, it's like electricity. You're going to stop turning on the light. No, it's not. It's going to become more like a utility. You know, it's going to just be integrating your life and it'll change. You're not going to have that phone. Our kids are not going to have phones. They'll have heads up display. They'll wear glasses or some screens will be on walls. You know, it'll be different.

Like the change in the past 20 years has been astonishing. I mean, I carried around at the beginning of my career a suitcase phone and now it's gotten bigger, smaller, whatever. But now it's a mini computer in your hand. It's a powerful, the computers they use like to launch nuclear codes. That's what you got in your hand compared to 50 years ago. Yeah, and what we landed on the moon with is, you know, one hundred thousandth of the computing power. Right, no, the Oppenheimer. I'm like, that's a shitty little computer compared to like, you could do this all on your phone.

You know, and they used to be abacuses before that, right? Okay. So we are going to have a different thing and it will evolve. I'm very interested in heads up display because I think it makes sense to have maybe, you know, Google was working on contact lenses that had display in it. And you look, just looked around, I'd look at you and say, ah, read. So I didn't have to know

you know, who you were. Oh, he is this. This is how old he is. He happens to like chihuahuas, whatever. You know, like instead of- Black labs, please. Black labs. Sorry. I don't know. I don't know.

Anyway, see, now I don't know. But if I had these things in, I would know. So based on your social media, for example, you could see it. You know, people are working on chips, including Elon chips on the brain. Lots of companies are doing that and sort of to neural networks. And, you know, it's just going to be so different. You know, science fiction really does a good job of predicting stuff. You know, I would recommend. Star Trek in particular. Yeah.

Sort of, I would think more, a little bit. Yes, the communicator is a cell phone, right? It is. Computer is Alexa. Computer, tell me this.

you know, that's Alexa. It doesn't like, it does a very good job. We're still not in those weird outfits they wore on it, but I love minority report. If you go watch that, it's full of stuff, but that was because it was designed by futurists. You know, this is where it's going to be. This is what's going to happen with porn. This is what's going to happen with eyes or ads or, you know, the walking through the,

mall and he had the eye that was taking a picture of his eye every second and saying, hi, Mr. Yokomoto, would you like to buy fleece? You bought a fleece last time. Your clothes will be perfectly fitted to you, for example. It will be made just in time. You'll be able to pick the stuff that looks best on you because your computer will know you. Your assistants will talk to you. Like I'll have an AI assistant, you'll have an AI assistant, and they'll talk, have arranged this. Won't be emails and stuff. So

This is just me just thinking off the top of my head. And it's going to be so much more than that. Let's talk about the AI piece of this.

Because near as I can- By the way, AI has been around for a long time. Let's just keep that in mind. Right. And what did you call it? It's had its moment. What was it called before it was called AI? AI. Machine learning. Machine learning. That was the expression you used. It was called AI. The whole time. But it feels like now that artificial intelligence, AI- Artificial general intelligence. Yeah. That's the new thing. It's not there yet, but go ahead. Is-

Like it's it's something that people like slap up next to anything as a marketing. You know, it's the new, new, new, new, new, new thing. You know, I was I think I mentioned this to somebody else. Like I was at a doctor's appointment and the doctor said, so I'm using this AI thing on my phone and you're the first person to, you know, use it. Yeah. And I said, but that seems more like transcription than AI.

It could be, yeah. He said, well, yeah, it's transcription. It's called narrow AI. And so narrow AI has been around in a lot of ways, whether you're talking to Alexa or whatever. It's narrow and it brings you – it's designed for specific things, like a specific task. In this case, probably transcription. What they're talking about, what you're hearing about is something called artificial AGI, artificial general intelligence, and it's very strong AI.

And it could be cognitive, like a human. It can think and perform like humans on a cognitive. It could reason or say what they really want is this. And so they don't think it's been reached yet, but things like OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic have been working about all these projects. And there's a big debate among people about, you know, what they do is they ingest these large language models called LLMs, and then they spit out things.

And so there's a lot of people worried about the threat and it's there. And there's a lot of people thrilled with the ideas. I think the way you can probably better than just saying AGI, it's called, they call it lots of stuff, but it's strong AI. It's strong AI versus narrow AI is probably the better way to do it. So in the best case, from your perspective, what does this help us do? What does this, what does this strong AI do?

Oh, everything. Like they're doing stuff around gene folding. They're doing stuff around cancer research, drug discovery, drug interaction. You know, drug interaction kills a lot more people than you realize. Oh my God, everything. I

What's actually happening in our climate, what's actually happening, given the data, doctors, forget it. Doctors can't keep up with all the medical information. And they're often wrong. I know that's hard to accept, but because they don't know. Like, give me an example of my brother. He's an anesthesiologist. And he used to say he has a difficult case. He used to consult three doctors on it.

Well, that's the limit of what he discussed. Two of them were wrong, by the way. One of them had a good idea. AGI, or stronger artificial intelligence, gives him 100 ideas. Here's what I'm doing. I'm doing a liver transplant. This is the information from the patient's

It'll go study all the cases and everything else and go, well, actually, you should use this drug here and in this amount. And this is, you know, this is better based on this. And then you can decide what if what they say as a human. OK, good idea.

Good idea. It's good ideas over and iterated in ways that you hadn't thought about because you can't think about it because you can't read everything. You can't know everything. Or, you know, that reminds me of the Boxer Rebellion. And before you'd have to search it. Now it will say this has feelings of this.

It's because you're not going to you're going to remember only so many things because your brain, even though it's in a magnificent computer device, it really is. It's and we don't know so much about it is it will be able to do all kind, especially around health care. But I don't even know. Like, I don't know. Insurance media. Can I just interrupt for one second? You know, to your point about the brain. So if you've been lucky enough to go to the Louvre in Paris, right, or, you know, name your museum.

I've always believed, Kara, that like you see the Mona Lisa, you remember it, but you probably really remembered seeing a picture of it. And then you stood in line and you said, you go to that. But but after the first 45 minutes, like your brain's full, you know, unless it's something so shocking or famous, like after that 45 minutes, your brain is full of art. Right. It's just going by from there on. Right. And maybe that's the same with your brother, the anesthesiologist, which is

He's looking at files. He's looking at different things. He's looking at case studies. But it takes, you know, if it's a case study that's 42 pages, he's got to take an hour to read it. But if you've got the strong AI now, it's to your point, it's digesting all this stuff and it's now giving him an answer. It's doing more than that. To get to this idea of real intelligence, it's got a reason. You know, it can do that already. Solving puzzles, that kind of thing. It's good at that. It's good. It's passing the law exam.

to get your legal degree. It'll have all the knowledge, right? And because it'll have input that some of it will be bad, by the way, just like people, you know, I remember this, you're like, that's not what happened. Like when I have people tell me about the First Amendment, I'm like, that's not what it says.

Not including Mark Zuckerberg. That's not what it says. That's not what it says. But so there's knowledge and then the ability to plan and learn and not just compute, but sense and to act. That's what humans do. And so it could do that kind of stuff and come up with ideas. And you remember that movie with Matthew Broderick? What was it? The one where they almost blew up the world.

Oh, yeah, war games. War games, right? It was like he played tic-tac-toe with it and understood futility, right? He was teaching it futility in that regard. There's no winners. And so that's what nuclear war, there are no winners. There really aren't in the end. And so humans kind of have gotten that. And that's why we have not blown each other up. Fingers crossed. Unless people who, well, there's people who want to blow us up. So there's that. There's people who do want the world to burn. And that's the dangerous people. But in this

case, like say you said to human level AGI, which does not exist, although some people think it does, but it does not from what I understand. You solve world hunger, solve world hunger. What do you think it would do if you didn't give it any more parameters than that?

It would kill people. That's the smartest way to solve world hunger. It could also think of, here's new ways to do crops. Here's 26 new ways to do crops that we can have more yield, this and that. It could also say, put on all these chemicals to do that. And that's bad for people. So you've got to start telling it. But logically...

It's sort of like Spock. What it'll do is kill people. Of course. That's the answer. One of Sam Kinison, God rest his soul's first thing was, how do you solve world hunger? Stop sending them food. Yes, that's right. And that's what that might be what the AI bot would say, too. Well, if you want to feed more people, you need less people.

Exactly. And there's all these tests for what there's the Turing test that you didn't know it was a human making the decision. There's all kinds of things that it could possibly do. They have all these tests for being able to do it. It's just that in the end, I'm not so scared of AI or these advanced AIs as I am of people manipulating the AI. People are always the ones that f***

everything up. It's not Terminator. It's not going to go, ah, humans, let's kill them. They just, why would they? Why? They don't have a feeling about us that we're bad. Like, exactly. You know, we're not going to turn them off. So why would they do it? It doesn't make it, it's, you know, Elon Musk actually started with that and then moved more to, we're like an anthill and they're building highways. And if we're in their way, it'll roll right over us, but it's not angry at us. The guy who's making the highway doesn't hate ants.

doesn't think of ants is really more the point. But I guess my question is this to that point, like we've seen with algorithms where the algorithm recognizes, first of all, the algorithm is designed by a human and that the algorithm, but it learns this new thing. It learns it doesn't need a human after, but that's my, that's my question though. Kara is, um,

If the algorithm has learned on Facebook or YouTube or name your social media platform that, to your point, enragement equals engagement, what happens if AI or should I say when AI picks that up or when somebody says it's doing that, look at what engagement it's driving or whatever it's doing. I might be able to say this seems...

It won't say this is hateful. This might say this is incorrect, right? That it's not that white people genetically are not better. Like this is incorrect. It would probably come to that conclusion. You know, there's a whole thing because then you also can combine them with say, there's just a very good article, which I've been talking about a long time. I'm glad they're writing about it. Drones that will act on their own, right? It's not just one drone. It'll be hundreds of them.

all reacting to each other and thinking together as like a swarm. Like think about that attacking a group of people, you know, because you won't be able to. And it actually was in the Spider-Man movie. It'll think they'll go, OK, this one got killed. Let's move over here. It'll be like people who are fast thinking. That's it. We're not at that point yet because there's a thing I think it's called the IKEA test.

Where, you know, you give AI an IKEA flat pack box and then see if a robot can assemble it by itself. Most people can't either. But that's hard. That's hard to do. I can, but I curse a lot. I know, but you sit around. But it's actually harder. Again, the human brain is so complex and fantastic. You don't know why you're talking. You don't know why you're walking. We don't know any. I mean, we do, but we don't.

God, the human brain is something else. That's what I'd be studying, honestly, because what a device it is. Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. For

$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. All right, so let's talk about for you and for all of us, what comes next in your mind? What are you looking for? What are you hoping for? What are you working on?

I'm very interested in climate change tech because I think it's the existential crisis of our era. None of this matters. You know, there's there's this expression, you know, Internet, I did this, you know, computer, I did this. And then electricity is like without me, you're nothing, bitch. Like it doesn't matter. Right. So without the planet, it don't matter what we do. We can build the most advanced capabilities. We could build the most wonderful cancer drugs. We could do all kinds of beautiful books.

But if the planet collapses, and just FYI, they always collapse. You know, we have history here. You know, the moon.

was not what it looked like before, right? And so we have to start thinking about what that means and what can we use tech. I'm very interested in climate change tech. I don't think it's going to be the full solution. There's a lot of political answers here and a lot of, you know, even just not recycling, but recycling writ large, efficiencies and things like that. And the way we make things. Like I'm always looking whenever I see houses, I'm about to do a renovation of my house and

I'm like, why are we doing it like this? It's so artisanal. Like houses should be come with computers in them. Like why? This doesn't make any sense. And I just sit there and nobody listens to me. But I'm very interested in climate change tech. I'm very interested in some of the health care thing. I think in this era, we will. I don't think we're going to cure cancer. I think I just did a good interview with Reed Jobs, who's the son of Steve Jobs. Steve died of cancer.

And he's talking about non-lethal cancer. Like that would be great. Like talk about that. Some of these, I'll use Ozempic broadly, some of these drugs, even though the rich are sort of dining out on it right now, it's going to help people get rid of the diabetic industrial complex, cardio things, change addiction. Really interested in that really, like, cause it's really, it could really change things if it gets to the right people, all of us, meaning all of us.

I've talked to so many doctors, many that I respect. And they're like, this is a game changer of sure. I mean, if you go to the pharmacy, there's an entire diabetes, diabetes, everything, pain, addiction,

It's shown to help addiction. You don't want to, when you're on these things, you don't want to drink alcohol. Right. Well, that's interesting, you know, and then some of these psychedelics, even though we have to be subject to Elon Musk and ketamine, it's actually some of these, I was just talking to a cancer doctor and he said they gave them, they were testing psilocybin, which is mushrooms, and it's two months of no pain. Wow. Without opiates. That's amazing. They're testing these things.

I'm not talking about the abuse of them and I'm going on a trip. It's PTSD. It's all kinds of things. I'm super interested in this. And, you know, the obesity, for example, is such a plague on our country. And then it is hand in glove, bad nutrition with crazy, you know, it is mental health. And of course, there's the mental health issues, you know, around the uses of these technologies. I think there's a real epidemic of mental health issues.

I'm not blaming them completely, but it is linked very closely to having so much information and not knowing what to do with it. You know, think about it. So you and I grew up in a pre-tech era. We did. We grew up in the analog era. But remember the boob tube? The boob tube was going to make us all stupid, did it? Right. Well. Not really. No.

No, it didn't. TV is pretty frigging good right now. No, look, there's some incredible stuff. But my question is this, is to your point, in that analog era, and you referenced it a little bit earlier, and then you just brought it up again, is the idea of the information is all there now, right? So let me ask a question I didn't expect was going to come up. So what about humans' desire, need, ability to conduct critical thinking? What happens if we don't have to do much thinking on our own? Right.

So that's that movie, right? The Disney movie. WALL-E? WALL-E, yeah. Or Idiocracy. Idiocracy. There's a lot of them.

I'm thinking we shouldn't do it all. Like, you know what I mean? Like we shouldn't, like someone was bemoaning the lack of encyclopedias and I'm like, you couldn't change them. You couldn't shift them. You couldn't bring them to life. Some of this VR stuff around, like I was with a VR thing and I was looking at the planets and I finally frigging understood the planets because they were all around me and they were spinning. And I'm like, oh,

Oh, like, because I visually saw them. Finally, I'm 60 years old. Oh, now I understand the planets. Like after all that explanation, maybe I'm stupid, but it was a good way to teach me. So some of it's quite good. I think what it is, is that we have to not rely on it for everything decision making some things.

are fine to do it that way. You know, some things you don't need critical thinking for, you're just doing rote work. And a lot of like legal associates should find a new job because they're going to hire a whole lot of them because you don't need them because the AI will do it. But you do need critical thinking on law. Like, okay, now you've brought me all the ideas. Let me think about how I want to do this. Creativity does not die, does not go away. I think we overestimate how many people are critical thinkers. We think we are, but we aren't.

I think most people have relied on things for centuries, like common knowledge versus actual thinking. But creativity, I don't think it's very hard for AI to be creative. It is. Maybe it will be. But right now, it's very hard to replicate. It's also hard to replicate certain jobs right now, even though I think AI will help, say, a plumber, because they can see, like, how should I fix this? Got it. Yeah, but you still got to fix it.

That's right. Eventually, maybe a robot, but not today, my friend, not for a very long time. So and maybe I will figure out how to do robots that are better. But so far, humans are better. It's I say that often someone's like, you know, oh, books are going to be gone. I'm like, a book is a pretty good technology. I got to say so is an egg. Like it works like kind of thing, but you can use it another way. It's just words kind of work.

So does audio, you know, and so you just have to figure out where it is. But I think critical thinking, I think what's happened more to the point is the reductiveness of our thinking. Like it's you're either with us or against us. It's a witch hunt or it's a righteous cause. Maybe it's a little more complex than that. It's just a little more complex and people don't like complexity anymore. And Donald Trump, of course, has walked into that breach rather grandly and become the king of that reductiveness.

And also someone who was preternaturally talented at social media. I said that. I got so much flack when I said he's the greatest tweeter in history because he used it the way, and I was like, how dare you? I'm like, he is. He understands propaganda and then the malevolent parts of it. And he used it the way FDR used radio or Kennedy used TV. The guy understood, first of all, he's charismatic and he understood moving his message direct to the people. That's

look, other people didn't do it. He did. So, and to your point about FDR in fireside chats at the time or Kennedy at the time that was at the time, direct change, game changer, game changer. And so I don't think it works as well anymore. And he's sort of gone off the rails and it's, you know, it's the same old problem with Trump is I was one of the only people who watched every apprentice. I really did. I liked the show and it gets old. He's getting, it's getting a little bit like, it's like the Rolling Stones now.

Satisfaction. Like you're a little old to be singing. Well, and you know, I was, I live here in Utah and it just referencing, you know, I was, I was talking to somebody the other day and we had, we have caucuses here. I don't know why, but, but 7,000 people showed up for the Republican caucus in the state of 3 million people. That's correct. Right. So it's the loudest among us. And they're like, why only? And because they said the same thing, it's old. The shtick is old. He's old. Like he's been at it nine years. And like, to your point, he just sings the greatest hits.

Yeah, that's why I'm not predicting he's going to win. I remember when that show went off the rails for everybody and I stick with it and I'm like, oh, I see what's happening here. You know, I think he's got unless he gets a new act, I guess he was he's going to do the dictator now, I guess. But whatever. Well, he always sort of had that in the wings. Did he? Yeah, I think. I think he was cosplaying a lot and then it became real. Let me say this.

The only thing I slightly disagree is that not so much that he was cosplaying is that the the matrix in which he was acting inside the Trump organization. Same thing. He was that guy that he was that guy. But it's cosplaying. It's cosplaying a gangster. It's cosplaying. It's interesting. But he uses digital tools really well in that regard, because it's I look at all his stuff and.

I don't say well done. I'm like, oh, I see what he's up to, like kind of thing. I see why he uses those words. And meanwhile, the media is like, can you believe he said that? I'm like, I'm well past can I believe he said it? Like, why is he saying it the way he's saying it? Like, that's always like, can you believe it? I'm like, yes.

Yes, indeed, I can. Listen, we could do a whole other hour on nine years of the media not being able to describe what he's doing and why. Well, it's hard because I think they're not living in the online space as much. And right-wing media is very interesting to watch. It's an up and down thing. It goes way to the bottom of 4chan and right up to Trump. And in between, you know, someone I've paid a lot of attention to, especially in the digital realm, is Steve Bannon.

Everyone's, why are you reading him? I'm like, because listen to what he's saying. He's quite, he understands the digital environment. Yeah, listen, I listen to his podcast not every day, but enough to sort of stay on the pulse of what he's talking about.

And while it is brain melting in many ways, it is always, Kara, a good reminder that there is an entire ecosystem. That's correct. Yeah. Most people don't live in, but enough people live in. Steeped in. Steeped in. And that man understands communications, if I have to pay him a compliment. He does understand manipulation, propaganda, communications, and you can see him doing it. I happen to have studied it for years. So I'm like, oh, look at...

oh, that watch is... Look what he's doing, you know, rather than the words. And so I pay attention to all kinds of things. And that, I suppose, is my greatest worry is because, you know, we call it misinformation, whatever you want to call it, it's propaganda. That's what it is, pure and simple, used since the beginning of time through the Nazis up till now. And it's just propaganda on steroids and it's targeted. And that's what makes it dangerous. And so do you think...

now that we're into the general election, do you think that Facebook got caught with Cambridge Analytica? Twitter has obviously become Elon's sort of flaming ball of whatever. Is it going to be worse? I mean, I don't expect Elon to do anything. He's part of the problem. Oh, he's doing it. He's doing it. But what about Facebook? What about TikTok? I think they have decided not to bother Elon.

It's too hard to regulate themselves and nobody's regulating them. So I think they've fired a lot of content people. They're certainly trying on AI, like we're going to label it. But what does that do? Why don't you just stop it? They still refuse to be the editors that they are. You know what I mean? They refuse to do it. And you saw it in that hearing when he didn't apologize to those parents. He knows he's culpable for

Not completely necessarily, but he knows. I could see it. He knows that he's culpable for some of those deaths. And he couldn't say it. He said, I'm sorry for what happened to you. I'm sorry for anything I've invented. You always know somebody doesn't believe it when you hear the passive voice. Yes. This terrible thing happened. Yeah. I'm sorry it's warm outside. Right. I'm sorry you feel that way. Yeah. All right. Last question about you and the world. And I'm going to let you go. I've kept you too long. Is...

transformation. You have been an incredible transformer, innovator. What do you say to those of us? I got asked this question the other night in Los Angeles, Kara. Where do I go for news? How do I do this in this time in 2024? So explain to us a little bit about your philosophy. And you do a great job in the book of this idea of being

comfortable with change, understanding there's going to be risk. You've got to take that risk if you want to move. So just it's an ambiguous question, but give us a little sense of your world. I am entrepreneurial and I have been in media and a lot of stuff, you know, they're like, oh, they're doing this now. I'm like, we did that three years. You know, I'm starting to become a crank. I'm like, we did that. We did that. I used to wander around with a little tape

It was a little camera, video camera. I used to take it and then post it, interview it instantly. Oh, yeah, right, sure. And now Instagram. Like, I didn't invent Instagram, but we were doing a lot of that stuff around media. We also were making smaller media, smaller, more nimble media companies that had the correct economics, right? I was very interested in the economics. Like...

okay, if I spend this and I make this, I can do this. And I think media companies lost the narrative on that rather significantly. And now they're like, I can't believe we're fining people. I'm like, you're not making enough money to pay for people. Just like, let's try to like get down to the brass tacks of math here. And Facebook and Google control all the digital media. So you're that way. So I don't know what to tell you. You need to find another business.

So one of the things I have always thought of is that you have to embrace change. And I think I do agree with tech people in that regard. I don't celebrate it like they do. They tend to be very dramatic, like causes pain to change. I'm like, no, it doesn't. It doesn't. Like they like to make everything so ridiculous. They're such drama queens. But-

But when I see things, like when I saw the Wall Street Journal doing yet another print edition, I was like, you need to devote yourself to digital because that's where people are reading. I also think it's the canard that young people, for example, don't like long form. They do. They like substance. They don't just watch dance videos. I have a kid who watches everything on YouTube, but the stuff he watches is great. I think we have to sort of start meeting people where they are and continuing to create substantive content.

and stop complaining about the non-substance because it's going to be there no matter what. There was always a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants when there was the New York Times. Like it just did. It doesn't matter. There's always a tabloid magazine, right? There's always. There's never not been. So just make what you make and figure out the economics of it. Like figure out how you can do it for a certain cost.

and reaching the audience. I'll recall one thing, and then I do have to go, is I brought to Sundance Reed Hastings many years ago on a panel. Reed Hastings, Jason Kyler, who had just started Hulu, and Chad Hurley, who had started YouTube early on, Netflix, YouTube, Hulu.

We were there. They put us in the basement of Sundance, which in Park City where you are. Right. Yeah. And I kept saying, this is the future, kids, for everything of watching movies, especially indies. You can finally find your audience because getting in one theater in Los Angeles ain't going to cut it financially for you. I was like, now you can reach your audience. And these people, and then Jason said, there's not going to be screens. Everything is a screen.

And Reed Hastings was like, you're going to get everything streamed to you. And Chad Hurley was like, entertainment is going to be... He essentially was predicting TikTok. TikTok is entertainment, right? They sat there so angry at us about, no, no, people love the theater. No, no, people like film. And I remember sitting there going, oh my...

You know, this is what it was like around the horse and buggy people when the car showed up. Right. No one will ever use one of these. Yes. Right. I never say that. That's how I get ahead. I'm like, huh, huh. I look at it and I think about it. And I and sometimes I'm right. I'm often right. Sometimes I'm wrong. But I definitely don't dismiss any technology because I'm not creative enough to think what it could be. Right. Yeah.

Well, listen, thank you so much for giving us your time. Before we let you go, where can we find you online? Where can we find your work online? Okay. Well, I have two podcasts. One is Pivot, which is very funny. It's distributed wherever you get your podcasts. And it's by, we distribute with New York Magazine and also On with Kara Swisher, which is an interview show. It's just a peer interview show. And I've done it three times. It was called Recode Decode, then it was called Sway, and now it's called On with, it's the same thing.

And then pivot is just this, it's a man and a woman learning how to get along when they don't get along. And that's what it is. It's a sitcom. It's cheer. Yes. It's cheers. It's cheers. And he's Diane. And so, and I'm Sam. And so it's true. That's what it is. You know, I'll tell you one time someone said, they're like, I don't like what he said. He's offensive. I'm like, that's the brand. He says something offensive. I hit him. He says something smart.

Then he says something stupid. I hit him again. End of show. That's how it goes the whole time. And so it is. It's very easy to take things apart, you know, if you look at them. So you can find those two. That's my principal thing I do. Obviously, I have this book, which you can buy anywhere. And interestingly, audio sales are massive compared to book sales. Book sales are doing great. We're on the bestseller list. But audio sales are really driving a lot of the usage of this because people listen to me in podcasts, I think.

And then time to time, I give speeches, you know, time to time. But mostly I have my kids. That's what I do most of the time. Amen to that. And just one last thing before I let you go about, I just listened to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Oh, great. Which I have not read since I was a kid. Yeah.

And The Hitchhiker's Guide is the internet. It's an iPad. What a great book. That's a great book. Any H.D. Wells, go back and Minority Report. It's all there. It's all there. And they miss a lot, but they get a lot. That's H.D. Wells. Read H.D. Wells. You'll be like, uh-huh. Wow. It's all here. Well, as always, gang, you can find me on Twitter and TikTok at Reed Galen on threads and Instagram at Reed underscore Galen underscore LP. Yeah, I'm on those, but I'm not telling you. Whatever.

what it is. And over at Substack, the home front. Kara Swisher, thank you for joining me. Thank you so much. And everybody else, we'll see you next time. Thanks again to everyone for listening. Be sure to follow and subscribe to The Lincoln Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or however you listen. Don't forget to leave a five-star review.

To connect with us, follow us on Twitter, at Project Lincoln. And for more information on our movement, to join our mailing list, subscribe to our newsletter, or make a contribution to our efforts, visit LincolnProject.us. If you want to message the podcast directly, please send an email to podcast at LincolnProject.us. And if you want to personally join the fight to save our nation's democracy, visit JoinTheUnion.us.

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