Sam Lessin on Artificial Intelligence

Essays

From the Podcast

This is the question is, look, there's a lot of ways in which Apple actually will come out of this era looking good Hilariously good. They didn't sink all the money into data centers, right? They're gonna do it on t- they're gonna get to sit on top of every model as the last model to consumers, they can maintain that. It's very possible in 10 years that Apple is laughing all the way to the bank, and people will be blessing Tim Cook for having done, fallen into none of the traps. Didn't big a- build a big research team, didn't do data centers, didn't get snowed. Like, then people will be a hero. If that's not true, right, and it turns out that Apple is internally dysfunctional, can't get AI stuff done, blah, all the negative stories, then the story will be Tim spent the last 15 years optimizing last year's game. It's classic innovator's dilemma. He missed the big swerve, and he's gonna be vilified. But we won't know for 10 years.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 164

I do think, Dave, the thing I think you and I can agree on is we're gonna look back in 10 years, and Tim Cook is either gonna look like a fucking genius or an idiot, and Apple will either be a really important company or have completely missed an era. And, like, we don't know yet. I think his legacy will be defined by the AI, what comes next.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 164

Did you see with no AI with Claymation? People were panning that on the internet. Well, the whole commercial for it is a bunch of Claymation, which is very fun and cool, but, like, how do you not use AI in a product that is fundamentally about AI?

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 164

This is my being really cynical, snarky, but the cynical, snarky take is, in about 15 years, you can supply chain optimize the hell out of a company and make stock go way up, but then Apple better figure out how to not be Nike, right, and come up with the innovations and stay ahead of the market, because literally it's almost, like, to the month. This chart implies he's leaving Apple at the maximum price possible for a Tim Cook style optimizer. But it's obviously just a silly chart, but it is funny to look at.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 164

I'm very proud of this. I said, "Hey, Claude. I want a chart that basically talks on a, obviously a zero, a percentile basis, so you can baseline it, when Tim Cook became in charge of Apple and when he joined the board of Nike, and the market cap of the two." And it's hilarious, because he joined Nike five years as a board director before he became the head of Apple. And if you look at the charts, for the first 15 years or whatever it is, 15 and change, which is the, the time I said, that is literally Nike's maximum stock price, and it is now back down to basically where he started. And so it's really funny. If you look at the chart, which I will post a link to if I remember-

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 164

Even iMessage. Like, take iMessage. Like, they have all these fucking controls. Who can talk to your teen? It's too much. But if you said to me... And, like, by the way, you know what I have? I have a desktop, like, sitting in my compu- in my room where I just, like, logged into my son's iMessage account, and I sit there and fucking screenshot it all day long algorithmically, 'cause there's no APIs to it, so I can process, like, what he's talking about and who he's talking to as a parent, right? Like, that's insane. It should be really easy to just be like, I get CC'd easily. And by the way, this is beautiful in the agentic world, because in an agentic... Before it'd be like, that's really hard to review all that stuff. I don't wanna, like, click on everything. Now you're like, look, I can just run Claude on it and just care, these are my values. What should I care about? Things like that. But you can just be so much smarter about the product decisions and, like, policy-wise what you're actually shooting for in a way that, like, enables parents and helps people, right? And people aren't.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 164

Then you're like, okay, this is a rule for everyone. This isn't just for Instagram. It's like, look, yeah, kid, do what you're gonna do on Instagram, but I get to see everything you're looking at and clicking on. Watch what you're gonna watch on YouTube for now, but I want the log of it really easy to access. And then the obvious next step is I wanna be able to have a conversation with you about it. In theory, I wanna be able to block you from channels in the future. But if you said to me, "Hey, until you're 18, I'm not gonna, like, limit your screen time," that's stupid. I'm not gonna, like, try to come up with these nettling rules. It's a very, very simple concept. Simple, low level. If you're looking at shit on your phone, until you're 18, I have an easy way to sidecar.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 164

I think this is good. Can I embrace and extend? So one, interestingly, I think if you gave everyone, you said, "All your software is now customizable," the humans will be like, "More boobs." Customizable software is not gonna be, lead to restraint. The people are gonna be like, "I want more powerful marijuana strains." Like, they don't want less powerful shit, right? And so, like-

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 164

No one wins, but everyone gets to go to their constituents. It's kind of like, how the hell do you get out of Ukraine or Hormuz? You need, everyone needs to be able to claim a win and then realize we probably shouldn't have gotten into this fight in the first place. It, or like the way we set it up was wrong. And I just think, like, I wish that we could have real conversations. And I actually appreciate Meta at least being like, "Look, we'll do what we need to do to, like, give you a win. Like, let's move on. We're happy to do some things, whatever." But also opening the door and being like, "Hey, let's like... If you wanna have more real conversation, we're down for it. But like let's do it in like a actually sensible, logical way, as opposed to this being like a selective enforcement game of politics." It's like you're fighting last generation's war.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 164

Like, we can talk about liberty and, like, the extents of it and, like, things like that. I think those are all really interesting conversations. Well, we can't really have a intellectual or big picture conversation about this or AI. So instead we're gonna look for, like, reasonably easy targets and then selectively ask them for some money and some changes, is just that good. 'Cause I don't think it does anything. I think it's all theater. Like, you started out by saying it's a nothing burger, Dave, like, in terms of a slap on the wrist. I'd say it's a nothing burger for actually helping anything.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 164

I have figured out, by the way, you can't talk about certain things on our podcast or av- YouTube won't let you promote it.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 164

It's not. But let's just acknowledge we are, and, like, that's the conversation nationally. And you're not going after the everything apples to apples. And so I think Meta's making a really good point, which is like, look, if we as a society wanna make a decision at a national level that we believe that kids should only do an hour of screen time a day in similar services, fine. Then, like, we can all agree to that, but selectively going after one provider and not the others, like, I think it's actually a very brilliant thing, being like, "Look, we're gonna do part of it be- because we wanna settle with you guys. We wanna move on from this. Candidly, we wanna be an AI company. Like, let's be done with this. But, like, we're happy to give more money, go even more extreme. You guys actually have the legal horsepower, and society believes that we should only have kids do an hour a day. Fine"

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 164

I don't know. I, I honestly think this is a totally logical conclusion for everyone. My sense is Meta probably, like everyone, there's, like, a bunch of emails you just don't want out 'cause, like, that's how these things work. You gotta settle. You gotta give them a pound of flesh.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 164

What would have become of poor you and me without Ain- AOL Instant Messenger back in the day?

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 164

Guys, I gotta tell you, listen, the email agent thing, I was on with an entrepreneur, actually two in the last week, and he's like, "Well, I have, like, the... I call the agent, and I text the agent." And I was like, "Yeah, but email's by far the best," and he's like, "Yeah, it is." Email's sick. The multithreading of it is so good, right? I don't know. Anyone who's texting with their agent doesn't get it.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 164

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