Cheat on Everything: Cluely's Vision for Always-On AI Assistance

Roy Lee, founder and CEO of Cluely, discusses his AI startup's $15 million Andreessen Horowitz investment and their provocative "cheat on everything" marketing approach that has gone viral across the tech industry. They explore Cluely's real-time AI assistant that provides undetectable information during meetings and interviews, Roy's philosophy of "AI maximalism," and his vision for a post-AGI world where humans are freed from economic necessity to pursue intrinsic interests. The conversation covers his controversial stance on dissolving copyright and privacy norms for efficiency gains, the resonance of his message with young people, and how he believes society should adapt to increasingly capable AI systems. Despite the edgy messaging, Roy presents thoughtful perspectives on competing with tech giants and building technology that anticipates entirely new social contracts in an AI-dominated future. Sponsors: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is the next-generation cloud that delivers better performance, faster speeds, and significantly lower costs, including up to 50% less for compute, 70% for storage, and 80% for networking. Run any workload, from infrastructure to AI, in a high-availability environment and try OCI for free with zero commitment at https://oracle.com/cognitive The AGNTCY: The AGNTCY is an open-source collective dedicated to building the Internet of Agents, enabling AI agents to communicate and collaborate seamlessly across frameworks. Join a community of engineers focused on high-quality multi-agent software and support the initiative at https://agntcy.org NetSuite by Oracle: NetSuite by Oracle is the AI-powered business management suite trusted by over 42,000 businesses, offering a unified platform for accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR. Gain total visibility and control to make quick decisions and automate everyday tasks—download the free ebook, Navigating Global Trade: Three Insights for Leaders, at https://netsuite.com/cognitive PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (03:24) Introduction and Cluey Overview (10:55) Future Rules and Privacy (13:20) Positive Vision for Future (Part 1) (18:01) Sponsors: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure | The AGNTCY (20:01) Positive Vision for Future (Part 2) (21:23) Entrepreneurship and Impact Theory (24:22) Anti-Establishment Marketing Strategy (27:26) AI in Universities (30:16) Columbia Expulsion Story (32:48) AI Maximalism Ethics (Part 1) (32:53) Sponsor: NetSuite by Oracle (34:17) AI Maximalism Ethics (Part 2) (38:29) AI Identification Debate (46:00) Output vs Input Philosophy (51:35) Learning and Skill Building (56:40) Trust and Market Effects (01:03:42) Assessment and Hiring Revolution (01:06:47) Viral Marketing Strategy (01:12:39) Long-term Company Strategy (01:15:59) High-End Talent Acquisition (01:18:56) Outro

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nathan Labenz?

  Hello and welcome back to the Cognitive Revolution. Today, my guest is Roy Lee, founder and CEO of Clouly, the AI startup that recently announced a $15 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz after repeatedly going viral, both within and beyond the tech community, with their provocative invitation to cheat on everything. Now, it might surprise even some regular listeners to learn that despite all the concern I've expressed about AI-related existential risks on this feed, that I'm actually usually a fan, both of edgy marketing and more generally of people who dare to challenge what are arguably outdated social norms. And yet, it wasn't the viral videos or the fundraiser that inspired me to have this conversation,

• 0:42Nathan Labenz?

  but rather a surprisingly earnest response to Y Combinator president Gary Tan, after he tweeted that he was muting the term "Clouly," in which Roy wrote, quote, "I have big dreams for this company, Gary. I know you might be turned off by the messaging and think that I'm some stupid kid who's doing something immature and unethical, but the end goal of this company is, I believe, a giant positive for humanity." That goal, as you'll hear, is to help humanity achieve a utopian world in which humans are free to do whatever it is they intrinsically want to do, rather than what economic necessity demands. I love that vision and I applaud the ambition, and yet I do understand why so many people are uncomfortable with such an aggressive approach to AI adoption.

• 1:25Nathan Labenz?

  So I tried to channel their concerns throughout this conversation. We begin by covering Clouly's product, a real-time AI assistant that feeds you relevant information and suggestions during meetings, sales calls, and yes, interviews, all via an undetectable screen overlay that's strikingly similar to Apple's new Liquid Glass and clearly anticipates an always-on augmented reality form factor in the future. Beyond that, we discuss Roy's experience getting kicked out of Columbia for posting a video of how he cheated on an Amazon interview, his thoughts on why his cheating-centric message is resonating so powerfully with young people today, his belief that copyright and privacy norms will dissolve in the face of efficiency gains, his philosophy of AI maximalism and

• 2:09Nathan Labenz?

  personal code of conduct with respect to AI use, his thoughts on the overemployment phenomenon, which is obviously super relevant in light of this week's Soham Gate story, his advice to people who are trying to evaluate talent today, and finally, his thoughts on how Clouly can compete with tech giants in the long term.

• 2:27Nathan Labenz?

  Overall, I found Roy's answers refreshingly bold, but still quite thoughtful. At a minimum, regardless of whether you're inclined to cheerlead or criticize his approach, you have to recognize that he's thinking much more seriously and concretely than most about what life will look like in a post AGI world. Before we dive in, just for the sake of transparency, I did want to note that A16Z did not have any role in the creation of this episode. The conversation came together through a simple Twitter DM exchange before the investment was announced. And as always, I am solely responsible for the guests I invite and the questions I ask. In this case, nothing substantive was cut during the editing process. Now, I hope you enjoy this conversation about AI maximalism

• 3:09Nathan Labenz?

  and building technology that anticipates and might actually help create not just new social norms, but perhaps an entirely new social contract with Roy Lee, founder and CEO of Clueley. Roy Lee, founder and CEO of Clueley. Welcome to the cognitive revolution. Thanks for having me, brother. I'm excited for this conversation. You have made quite a bit of noise online in recent weeks. I think anybody who is paying attention to the AI space has certainly seen your face and your posts and your cinematic, sometimes provocative, marketing come across their feed. So I think there's actually a lot to unpack here. For starters, A16Z, which recently led a $15 million

• 3:54Nathan Labenz?

  investment into the company and put out a blog post about why they're doing it, opened that blog post with the provocative question, what if breaking the rules was the unlock? But you've got the motto cheat on everything. So for starters, what does it mean to cheat on everything? What has clearly helped me cheat on, broadly speaking, what is clearly?

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, Clouly is the new way that humans will interact with AI. Instead of going to chatgpt.com, we envision a future where people use Clouly instead. And how it functions is a desktop app that integrates very deeply with your computer. It has access to your system audio, your microphone, and shows up as a essentially a pane of glass over all your other applications. And it feeds you relevant information in real time. During a meeting, Clouly will take real time notes and at any point it will suggest questions that you might have. For example, what does cheat on everything mean? Cheat on everything means using Clouly to gain advantage in any situation by instantly accessing relevant. And this is all information that Clouly is feeding me directly. So maximizing productivity and performance with AI everywhere.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  This is all stuff that that Clouly literally tells me whenever you mention terms. It will float up definitions of the terms all in real time without you ever knowing that I'm using AI.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  This is clearly.

• 5:11Nathan Labenz?

  I was using it the other day in a conversation I was having with the CEO of Waymark, who's been a longtime friend of mine. And it was a pretty funny experience. I mean, it definitely is. I'm interested to hear a little bit more about sort of the undetectable screen overlay. But, you know, it is transcribing the and just kind of giving you this sort of running diary of what is happening. And then I was just constantly refreshing the what should I say now prompt to have it spit up things for me to say. I thought often enough it was pretty good. I think the an obvious challenge, and I'm interested to hear how you think about this as well from a kind of product vision perspective.

• 5:53Nathan Labenz?

  You know, a lot of the things that you have put forward in terms of use cases are sort of earlier in relationships or they're sort of like episodic, you know, moments. Like you're going to do a coding test for a class or a job or something. These are things where there's not like super deep context. So I think another interesting question is going to be, how do you kind of build up context? Where you can actually get to the point where you can help, you know, me in a 10 year plus relationship, right? Which I have with my CEO. Cause there was just a ton of stuff there that is like commonly known and unspoken between the two of us that the thing just has never had any chance to get access to.

• 6:35Nathan Labenz?

  Yeah, two parts there at least, and you can take it as many directions as you want. But how are you making this undetectable screen overlay thing work? I haven't tested that, but does that mean like if I take a screenshot, it won't show up? Or help me understand that a little bit better.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you take a Mac native screenshot, it won't show up. If you screen record on your Mac and it will show up. The Mac screen record functions at a lower level in the OS. But I think undetectability is just a for fun feature. Essentially, when you're like, say you're a sales rep and you're demoing a product and you want this overlayed on top, but you don't want anybody to know that you're using it, then then the undetectability feature is pretty interesting. And if nothing else, it's an interesting marketing hook. And I guess, yeah, like like context depth. So the way we're thinking about this is it is inevitable that a model will come out that has a very extended context window that is fully natively multimodal. You can feed it not just two minutes, but one year of your everything you've done on your computer. And it will be able to reason over it and learn everything about you and become this hyper personalized AI assistant,

• 7:33Speaker 01

  like essentially like Jarvis. And I think this is really what every every consumer AI company in the world is building towards. The way to win that, I believe, I think we're on the right track with the user experience. I think Apple pushes out liquid glass, which is essentially the exact same UX that that we have, the translucent glass pane overlay on everything. And I think this is the world is realizing this is how AI will be used in the future. We are the first to to market with this UX and it's a land grab to force people into this interaction pattern of instead of going to chatp.com, I'll press command backslash and I'll use AI in desktop assistant that I have. And I, once we lock people into that interaction pattern, then we can collect all this data about them. And when the time comes that an open source model comes out that is super intelligence,

• 8:17Speaker 01

  then we will be the ones to distribute that. And we will have all the data to make this Jarvis.

• 8:24Nathan Labenz?

  Interesting. So the idea now is to, and obviously this is a pretty well established best practice in AI application development. You want to be preparing for future model capabilities and not just trying to supplement the current models and compensate for their weaknesses, but really position yourself for new strengths yet to emerge. Like, how much data are you gathering? That is not entirely clear to me yet as a user. I know that like when I do a recording, then there is like a session that I can go back to later and check out on the web. When I do just like a random chat with it. I'm not sure if that's all getting stored or where it would be stored because I don't.

• 9:06Nathan Labenz?

  The sessions right now in the web seem to be just like the actual audio and visual recording, right? But the

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:13Nathan Labenz?

  just like, hey, here's my screen, do something right now. Is that stuff also all kind of being logged? And is there even more being logged beyond that that I haven't thought of yet?

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Right now, what we're like, like in meetings, when you use Cluey to record audio, it is actually like not legal to have just like a running recording of someone and say that recording somewhere. But it is fully possible for you to have an AI note taker that will like transcribe the meeting and summarize it essentially like turn into notes. And that that's what we do. We don't save the actual like MP3 audio unless you're an enterprise user who specifically requested that. We don't save that. We only save the AI summary of what happened during the meeting. Similarly, when whenever you use Cluey to trigger response, we save the response and like the question that you asked it. But all the data is like stored under an encryption layer. So we'd actually don't know which user is making which request.

• 10:00Nathan Labenz?

  Yeah. Interesting. Okay, cool. So I think this is both a interesting technology discussion, but perhaps even more so an interesting sociological discussion. And I do think you've done a masterful job of creating some provocative marketing and stories and even just positioning yourself. And I do appreciate that, by the way, I'm always kind of been a fan of provocative marketing strategies. One of the more interesting things I've heard you say is in the future, it will all be legal. I guess I'd love to hear you unpack like, what do you think are the current rules, norms, you know, just expectations that people have of one another

• 10:42Nathan Labenz?

  that will with time be looked back on as being sort of, you know, clearly anachronistic or clearly from an earlier time, and we'll all just agree that it was silly to ever have thought that way.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the entire concept of like, I guess, data privacy is going to, I can only imagine in the future that that fear is going to go down as soon as there is one technology that will massively improve your efficiency in exchange for less privacy, less data privacy. I think people will just like run to that. It has been like proven in the past that humans value efficiency of their own work more than pretty much anything else. And if giving up your own data will make your model more personalized, more efficient, then people will not hesitate to give it all the data that they can. And I think that will be a relic of the past. I think the whole concept of like copyright laws and like, like protection laws around what data models can and can't use views to train on. I think that will all float away into the past.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Like right now, America is in an AI arms race against China. And right now, China gives their AI model providers full access to all the data that China has. And it is inevitable that America, in order to keep up, will have to ease up on the legal restrictions around that. And if it means that we all in turn get a much better model, then I think everybody will be happy. I think the whole concept of like copyright infringement, like patents and like technology, like protecting your own technology, I think that this will go all go away. I can only imagine that in the future, we will tend towards a world of everything is open source and everything is available for everybody to use. And technology will be fully, fully democratized. It is the only way to make sure that the AI coding agents are improving because they have access to the production level database code bases of the best companies. It is the only way to train models that will significantly beat our China's.

• 12:22Nathan Labenz?

  There's a whole other conversation we could have about the competition with China. I might bracket that one for now. Can you maybe give me, I think this is in such short supply. I have these like various AI mantras. One of them is that the scariest resource is a positive vision for the future. So what is your positive vision for the future? And I would give you all the time you need to flesh it out in as much detail as you can. You know, what's life going to be like? Are we going to be still working? Are we going to be working less? Are we going to be? You know? All exploring nature all the time while the AIs do all the work. Are we going to have universal basic income?

• 13:05Nathan Labenz?

  You're clearly thinking about major societal changes, but I would love to hear the sort of what's in it for the every average, everyday person who's not like at the frontier right now, like what sort of life should they expect? And hopefully find compelling enough to be excited about.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's a hard, it's a hard question. You're essentially going back like the, the analog would be you go back 600 years in time and you ask a blacksmith. Hey, here's a steam engine. Can you predict what the world will look like with a steam engine? And he couldn't possibly imagine that there will be data analysts in the future. The only thing he could see, which is quite, quite short sightedly would be wow, this invention is going to completely automate away my jobs. People are not going to learn how to put the hammer to the metal and they're going to lose core critical thinking skills that define what it means to be human. They're going to lose out on the core, like, you know, like the manual labor that comes with blacksmithing. This is an art and like, like he will think only negative things about it. He, it will not be possible to understand the positive implications of technology. And I think thi- thi- this is something that I think most people are short sighted in.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  In reality, if we do have a super intelligence and, and AI that can just cognitively do everything that a human can do, but better. This will inevitably result in faster scientific progress like, like cancer is no longer a thing. Alzheimer's is no longer a thing. You and I don't die at 80 years old. We die at 800 years old and our lives are infinitely expanded. And the whole concept of like capital creation and the idea of like working to add value to, to add like capitalistic value to society. I think that will be sort of like probably removed as a concept. In reality, assume you had all the money in the world and at the snap of your fingers, you could essentially gain anything you want. Because that is the world where you're looking at with super intelligence. If you want a hamburger, you can snap your fingers and AI super intelligence will know how to optimally get you a hamburger in time. Anything you want is at your fingertips. What is there left to do?

• 14:45Speaker 01

  And I think that sort of reveals the true human instincts in this world. You won't be just some mindless puppet. You will be doing what you natively want to do, which means you're, you don't just go out and get a coffee and like, you don't go out, work at a data analyst job, eight hours, eight hours a day. Doing some, some work, some minus work that you hate. Instead you go out and you go out, walk, go on a walk to get a coffee because you go on, you want to go out and walk and get a coffee. You run a coffee shop because you want to run a coffee shop and you go out and meet interesting people and you talk about interesting things and you philosophize about life. And you go out and explore nature and you do all the things that you were naturally compelled to. I think it is proven that. Even when AI automates away difficult things, humans will still err towards doing difficult things. And we see that with chess. When the first chess bot came out, that sort of like solved chess, everyone thought, man, this is the death of chess. But in reality, chess

• 15:30Speaker 01

  is now more popular than ever because humans do not, like, the default, our default states of desire do not evolve to just like output for the sake of output. I think humans naturally do things because we naturally want to do things. Everyone has things that they naturally want to do. And when the science comes for us to like truly realize, abstract away all the shit that is unnecessary and only do the things that we truly enjoy doing, then this will be a complete different, every single day you will get to do the things that you want to do most. And all of the lazy grunt work that you don't want to do, you will not have to do unless you truly want to do it. And I think it will be obvious that people will truly want to put effort into things. You will now no longer find beauty in woodworking for the sake of like, like, having like a final sculpture at the

• 16:14Speaker 01

  end. You will just find beauty in the process and of doing it. And you will do it because you intrinsically want to do it. And I think like another thing that I'm quite optimistic about with like scientific progress is the ability to sort of control and turn on and off what we find joy doing. Right now, like probably one, one, one of the big societal dangers is that everyone doom scrolls four hours a day and you're just like scrolling on this mindless algorithm and you essentially are not gaining any skills. Your brain is literally decaying. What if there was some sort of like biological mechanism where you could just, you know, like literally flip a switch and you could find no, you could no longer find dopamine from scrolling and you would instead force yourself to find dopamine from, I don't know, reading like English texts from the 1800s. Every single person in the world would want that, like the ability to choose what they find joy in. And I guarantee you, 99% of humans would choose the ability to find joy in is not,

• 16:59Speaker 01

  you know, like, like hedonism or mindless, like, like going to spa, like, people would want to do things that make them like, like read literature, paint, art, like go out, go for runs, live healthier lives, gardening, like, like, these are the things that we are naturally biologically inclined to want to do. And truly the end state where output is no longer a scarcity at all, and output is essentially infinite. You can have anything you want. I think many people are, they are. Bearish on this for, I think, the wrong reason. If you can choose exactly the life that you want to have and live that, then every single person in the world would be living exactly the life that they want. And I think this will be like as close as we can get to utopia. Of course, that is the scenario where superintelligence does come out. And if superintelligence does not come out,

• 17:44Speaker 01

  then everything everyone's been saying is just a joke. And AI just ends up defaulting to just a tool. Maybe 10, 20% of white collar jobs get automated away. But essentially, everyone just lives the same life and they're just 20% improved.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Hey, we'll continue our interview in a moment after a word from our sponsors.

• 18:02Nathan Labenz?

  It sounds like you are a quite AGI-pilled, superintelligence believer, though.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, I think it is inevitable that the future will come. If not now, a few years from now.

• 18:13Nathan Labenz?

  What role do you? I mean, I find entrepreneurship in this context interesting, almost to the point of like paradoxical. I've spent most of my career as an entrepreneur and that's kind of always been my instinct. And yet I find in this AI era, I'm a little less inclined toward it, partly because I'm like, you know, where are the moats and all that kind of basic analysis? But also partly because I'm like, well, is it all going to just kind of come out in the wash? Or, you know, is there the sort of idea of like, oh, I could build a generational company and have this like long-term impact, maybe even something that outlives me? It feels like that's very, very hard to do in a future scenario

• 18:56Nathan Labenz?

  where a superintelligence for all comes on the scene and everybody is sort of living their best, most philosophical life. Like, what is the contribution that you want to make and on what time scale? And in a sense, do you like, who's it for? Like, is it for you? Is it for the public? Is it like in a world where everybody is sort of in that state, in the end state? Like, what difference does it make what you do between now and then?

• 19:24Speaker 01

  I think, well, i- i- if that future isn't a, the future isn't eventuality only because there are human beings who work tirelessly to make that future an eventuality. But there are enough humans out there that it will inevitably come. And I think I find it very exciting that I am helping society progress towards that future. If my only contribution is sort of like, like, plant and expanding the, um, the user experience of this translucent glass paint overlay for AI usage, then I will be very happy with that contribution. If my contribution can be much more, then I will be even happier. And right now, I think I'm living like the most fulfilled life I could ever be living. In a different world, I would be interning at Meta as like some brain-dead software engineer, fearing for my job and career and future prospects and getting ready for summer classes in my junior year at Columbia next year.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  And that, that is just, um, an, an existence I don't find fulfilling at all. Right now, this is probably the most exciting time in human history. Really, nobody knows, e- even these projections, I'm telling you, take it with less than a grain of salt. Nobody knows what the future looks like in five, five, 10, 20 years. And, um, the only thing you can do is make movement in the direction that you believe is positive. And I truly believe I'm moving like the most positive direction for human society. In my, in my perspective, I am working towards a future where cancer is cured, Alzheimer's is cured, and we all live to, um, eight, as, as we all live for, forever in the most optimal idealistic life that we ever want. And that, that is the future that I'm chasing, and I think that's a, that's a very, that's a very positive future for me.

• 20:45Nathan Labenz?

  And the theory of change, just to make sure I'm, you know, confess the Turing test, intellectual Turing test, and say it back to you, is basically by normalizing and creating the right mode of interaction for always-on AI assistance for everyone, that your sense is, is the way that you can contribute to getting us to that future?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  The more that people use AI, the more productive they will be. And if this tool, like, if all it does is make everyone 10% more productive, then I will have, single-handedly resulted in essentially like 700 million human beings worth of productivity in, into the world, which would be really, really great. And if, alternatively, but I, I actually think that this technology is way bigger than that, and if it is more than that, and if it like actually like... Rapidly enhances AI adoption worldwide, then I think it will do much, much more than that. Like the world, there will be more money that is funneled into AI research and development. There will be more of a comment, okay, we're all using AI, like this isn't so bad, like, like this is great. It will like, like increase optimism for AI. It will increase usage and consumer adoption and, and every single step that is required before

• 21:54Speaker 01

  we hit this utopic state. I think the spread of this tool will be singularly capable of, of, of helping with.

• 22:00Nathan Labenz?

  So, tell me about your, I don't know if this is a strategy from the beginning, or if it's something you kind of stumbled into and then it, you know, found has worked and doubled down on. But, you know, even in just your last couple of responses, you took a couple of shots at the sort of, let's say, mainline default respectable career path for young technologists.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:22Nathan Labenz?

  What is it about hating on that that you think is so resonant? Why are people so drawn to or so activated by shots across the bow of the university or shots across the idea of taking a, you know, what would normally be considered like a pretty high prestige job at big tech?

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, A, I think people always want to root for the underdog. Right now, I might be pretty viral, but I'm nowhere near as viral as like the immortal legacy of an Ivy League or, or, or, or like a big tech institution. But also, I think people naturally, like, they don't want to be a cog in the wheel. Nobody wants to grow up and live a life that is meaningless, you know, like capital production, and that's all they do, and that's all they will ever do. And everyone wants to make an impact and a dent in the universe. And I think like, there, everyone is attracted to the idea of starting their own thing because, you know, like, it'd be great if I could make an impact on the universe and great if I wasn't a cog in the wheel. And I think like me, I, right now, I am probably a living example of what happened, like, like what that could look like. And I think people are

• 23:25Speaker 01

  People of my age are inspired and excited by the life that I am living and like the alternative career path that I'm suggesting. And I don't think there's like, there's been very few people in this world who have been happy and completely content with just like being some industrial cog. And I, I, I also think that the glamour of school and jobs is like, it's getting lost in the newer generations. I mean, we were all told growing up, all you've got to do is go to a good school, get good grades, and you'll get a good job, and you'll be, you'll be safe. But in reality, that's like, not what we're seeing. Like, like, college graduates was like thirty percent unemployment rate. It's, it's like ridiculous. You graduate college, you do everything that you were told, and it's just not true. And there's this seed of doubt in everyone's mind, like, hey, maybe like everyone, everything the older generation

• 24:09Speaker 01

  told us was wrong. Like, they sort of put me in this terrible position where I ended up spending years and years of my life doing something that I hated doing, which is like world memorization, like, like studying for bullshit uses concepts, all in exchange for some semblance of stability. And now, like, there's AI here, and there's unemployment rates are skyrocketing. And like, what, like, what, what can I do? And I think there's like, a lot of frustration in my generation and, and an interest in choosing, like, something, that there must be something better that I could have done. And I think, like, I am like a, a metaphorical and physical manifestation of like, like, the path not trotting.

• 24:39Nathan Labenz?

  It's, it's interesting how broad that critique is. And I'm certainly pretty sympathetic to a lot of it. You know, the gerontocracy is not serving us super well in many different ways, I would say. But it wasn't, that wasn't a super AI-specific account. What is, you know, I know you've been kicked out for a little while now, but like, what's your report from the front on the university level in terms of what's going on with AI there? And obviously, students are using Claude and ChatGPT and stuff, but like, are the universities?

• 25:17Nathan Labenz?

  Is Columbia specifically like starting to find its footing at all? Or are they still taking a bury the head in the sand approach?

• 25:26Speaker 01

  They're they're they're sort of letting like the professors manage the classes as they please. And everyone has their own rules around AI. But generally, I can I can tell you with 100% confidence that at least 95 to 99, if not fully just 100% of all Columbia students have used AI to cheat on an exam before or or sign it before. And it's just not um.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  It is you you would literally be weird if you said, I've never used AI to cheat and sign for like like for homework or something. It would little you would literally be seen as like the odd one out. And I think schools and just older generations have not caught on to how massive the AI hive mind has been for like college students and like people of my generation. Every singles, the people that will grow into high profile drop in the future. Every single one of them has like cheated using AI and like use AI to like realize the potential of AI to massively improve their output in school. And yeah, I think that people are not ready for what happens when these kids get five years older and they are true. These are this is truly an AI native generation.

• 26:27Nathan Labenz?

  So I feel like there's an interesting distinction between the homework and the exam. And one just kind of hear you unpack that maybe a little bit more like when I was in school, we didn't have the AI without, you know, a lady never reveals her age, but without revealing too much, it's been a couple of years. So there but there was a generally understood idea that like on the homework level, people would work in groups, you know, they would talk to the classmates and just kind of everybody usually would get mostly the right answers on the homework one way or another.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 27:00Nathan Labenz?

  And so it's not it doesn't strike me as like too different from a sort of,

• 27:05Nathan Labenz?

  you know, code of conduct standpoint that you might consult AI since you were already like consulting, you know, the smartest person you knew in the class. On the other hand, when you like show up to take an exam, we didn't really have means of cheating. I think cheating was pretty rare. Do you think that cheating is actually common on exams in today's world? Or is it more at the like homework level that you're seeing people use it?

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it depends. I think like, like, there's different sorts of exams. For a writing class, the exam might be a take home essay. And I guarantee you, most people are brainstorming, drafting, outlining, and making edits with AI. That is functionally over. But unlike the actual, you go in a classroom, you sit down, take an exam. A, I think this actual format is outdated. And probably in five years, we won't see this again, like ever anywhere in America. But also, B, I think it is like, regulations on that have been as stringent as they have always been. And it is like, very hard to cheat on those. But I think it's just, it's an outdated format, and probably will be obsolete very soon.

• 28:04Nathan Labenz?

  I've seen a bunch of different accounts online. And I don't want to spend too much time on this, because there is a bunch of stuff online about it already. But how would you briefly tell the story of how and why you got kicked out of Columbia?

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. So earlier in fall semester of this year, I had thought, I had entertained the idea of like, working at a big tech job. And to get a job at a big tech company, you need to pass a programming riddle interview. And they'll essentially ask you the programming equivalent of, you know, like, how many hairpins will fit in the Empire State Building? And it's pretty ridiculous, because the questions are all online. So it ends up becoming not a question of critical thinking, but a question of how much, how many hours have you spent memorizing these riddles? So it was pretty stupid, it's pretty obsolete. And it's quite simple. It's just take a picture of the riddle, ask hashtag BT, what's the answer to the riddle, and just get the answers. That's exactly what I built. A tool called Interview Coder, which is an invisible, the UX looks extremely similar to Cluey. It's a pane of glass that appears over your screen, is invisible to screen share. So an interviewer doesn't know that you're using AI. It'll take a picture of the screen, it will give you the answer

• 29:00Speaker 01

  of what exactly is the answer to the programming riddle. I record myself publicly using this tool to get an offer at Amazon. I use it through the entire interview process, and I completely fool the interviewer into not thinking that I'm using AI. I posted on YouTube, it goes very, very viral. And Amazon interviewer sees it, and Amazon executive sees it, they report it to Columbia, essentially saying, hey, if you don't expel this kid, we're never going to hire from your school again. It was like a very thinly, thinly veiled threat. And Columbia hears this, drags me into a loop of unnecessary disciplinary hearings that ultimately end in my suspension from the school.

• 29:31Nathan Labenz?

  Interesting. The, I'll have to

• 29:34Nathan Labenz?

  Request comment from Amazon on the on the threat concept. But we do know that Columbia administration is at least somewhat willing to to bow to threats. I've seen that on multiple dimensions. So at that point, was it basically over for you? Was there any sort of, were you offered a chance to like recant or apologize? Or was it kind of like, this is just beyond the pale? We just can't have it.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  I was offered chances to apologize, but I think I would have rather died than apologize at the moment. I thought what I was doing was like an obvious like, like not only was it essentially the equivalent of how a computer science major conducts a protest, but it also was, I think, like generally a way that the future will tend like. It is ridiculous that I'm not allowed to use AI on the programming assignment when in the job I'll be using AI to write 90% of the code anyways. If that's the number that Google's reporting, it's just absurd to me. And I thought if I bowed my head right now, I am probably one of the few people in the world right now who are capable of like charging this this perhaps revolution, then I might be a bit like high, high horsey of me to say, but, but, but like, like, like this, this, this change in the industry. I'm the best person in the world to take a meaningful stab at it.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  And I think if I apologize right then and there, then it would just dilute the story and it would, um, I would not internally feel proud of myself for doing that.

• 30:48Nathan Labenz?

  Yeah.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  Hey, we'll continue our interview in a moment after a word from our sponsors.

• 30:54Nathan Labenz?

  How would you describe your own just kind of personal code of ethics as it relates to AI? I have some sub questions there, but maybe start off with the broad one.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  I guess I live principally by a theory of like AI maximalism. I think every single chance I am able to use AI where it helps me, I should use AI where it's helpful to be helpful. I think if you think that if an AI can do a task today, then you would have to be really stupid not to think that it could do the, do the task in five years. And the models we use today are the stupidest models we will ever use and for the rest of our lives. And if you adopt that framework, then you realize that a lot of the work that I'm doing, I should not have to be doing right now because an AI is capable of doing it. I, I, I live by this individual lead, but I also think that other people, everyone in the world should adopt this framework.

• 31:39Nathan Labenz?

  I'm also an AI maximalist generally. I feel like I'm always trying to do two things at once, one of which is accomplish the object level task in front of me and the other is figure out how much and how AI can actually help me accomplish that task. I definitely share that. I guess, you know, is there a limit to it though? Like in, in thinking about this, I recalled the overemployed subreddit, which is, and this exists, by the way, earlier than AI, which is, you know, maybe its own indictment of certain big tech companies where people report doing this. But the thread is full of people telling stories of how they got multiple remote jobs at tech companies and sort of tried to like

• 32:23Nathan Labenz?

  do the minimum to not get fired at both of them and just like collect multiple cop packages. And of course, they're generally doing this without telling the companies that they're doing it. Does that feel okay? Like if you're, if you're smart enough to hold down multiple big tech jobs with your AI assistant?

• 32:41Speaker 01

  More probably, or like 100%, like, like the companies, they themselves don't care. Like they're hiring you to fulfill, to, to eventually get to some level of output. And if you're performing at that level of output, then why should they care about your input? That's like also the framework that we adopt here. We don't set any strict hours on anything, but people, like we, we do set strict output requirements and the output requirements are quite strict. And I think everybody works hard to fulfill the output. But if everybody could do this amount of output in an hour, then you would not need to do any more output. Like you not need to come into the office for any longer. And overemployment is like a fine thing. It is the fault of the company and it is the onus of the company to make sure that their employees are performing at a level that they are happy with. And if you're happy with it, then you shouldn't be, you shouldn't like bitch about hours.

• 33:24Nathan Labenz?

  Okay. I know that right now, Cluley is this sort of real time pane of glass assistant. I don't know what it might evolve into, but one could imagine if you are a maximalist and trying to help people get the max outputs, including potentially holding down, you know, N remote jobs with as little input as possible, thanks to AI. You could imagine just kind of taking the human out of the loop entirely, or just like, you know, I maybe have eight Cluleys running on eight laptops, you know, one for each of my eight jobs. And at some point, the AI is just kind of doing the job. And it's, you know, if it's today's AIs, it's probably doing kind of a not so great job, but. You know, it can respond emails, maybe it at least allows me to not get fired for

• 34:08Nathan Labenz?

  long enough to make it economically attractive to try to pull this off. I guess, is that the direction that you would imagine going? And then, one thing that people are going to start to do, I think, pretty soon is start to try to interrogate entities and figure out, like, are you an AI? Are you a human? Are you some sort of hybrid? Like, what is it that I'm dealing with here? One of the more interesting proposals I've heard for just like, short and sweet, but I think powerful AI regulation, you've all know Harari has advanced this idea that AI must always identify itself as AI. So I wonder what you think about that rule, first of all? Like, if, if society wanted to put such a rule in place, like, would you support it?

• 34:51Nathan Labenz?

  And do you imagine kind of pushing the product frontier to the point where this, like, question of will the AI identify itself as AI actually becomes like a real live issue for you in terms of how much people can push the cheating frontier?

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, I, I don't think that's the solution. I think we're already seeing like, AI output and human output sort of like converging. When you use AI to help draft an essay, and is that, are you required to say this is AI-generated? What if you just use it to add the final editing touches or help you outline, like, at what point is it AI-generated and at what point is it human-generated? I think a much better framework of thinking about it is just, AI is a tool that will help you, like, make, make, make more output in whatever capacity that means. And I think if you think about it that way, like, I don't say this hat was made by a Chinese worker and it was made by a stitching machine and that was made by silicon and that was made by, like, like, like, there's, there's, you can get infinitely regressive with the blame.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  And I think the only thing that should matter, that ought to matter, is output for everybody, everybody involved. It should, it should be output. If you go on a great date, like, like, even the most extreme example, you go on a great date, you have a great time. That is the output. And like, if the output of that is like, is satisfactory, then like, what have, so what if you went on an AI, went on an AI date? And I, I, I, e- e- even cases like that, like you shouldn't have like an AI be forced to announce themselves as an AI. I think it's a pretty ridiculous, partially because it's completely unenforceable and also partially because truly the only thing that matters is output. And I think it's really hard for me to think of jobs that an AI could be able to automate that a human would be more internally, intrinsically fulfilled in doing. For example, customer service support calls, that is like a shockingly big use case of AI.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Humans are currently able to do customer support calls, but is, is there a person in the world who wakes up excited to go to their job where they are just like a customer servicer? I would argue probably not. They probably have a lot more fun and live a much better life. They're doing maybe literally anything else. And I think, of course, an AI should be able to do that. And I just think, uh, in the world, there's way too much focus on input and way too little focus on output. And there's also way less thought on what happens when output 10x is. And when output 10x is, I just think it will be a better future for everybody.

• 37:01Nathan Labenz?

  Yeah, that's fascinating. So, I mean, putting your own dating head on, I don't know if you're, uh, on the market for romance these days, but if you went on a date.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:12Nathan Labenz?

  And your, your date was later revealed to have been using a AI assistant that was telling him or her whatever to say at every given point. You feel like that's fine, no big deal. Uh, in the future, everybody will, uh, like, are you envisioning a world in which spouses like? Just say to each other what the AI is telling them to say to each other. It starts to feel a little dystopian at some point, right? Like, there's, I think people have a sense that it's not exactly all about the output. It is also like people do sort of, maybe you'll just say this isn't gonna be, one day we'll look back on it and feel like it's, you know, was a product of an earlier time.

• 37:54Nathan Labenz?

  But people do, I think, care about where it comes from. It's like the idea that it's the thought that counts, right? I mean, that's an old adage that people are kind of like, yeah, well, my kid may not have made a great piece of art for Father's Day. But they made some art for Father's Day, you know, and it's the thought that counts. I don't really, and Google had this likes, you know, kind of step in it moment, right? I'm sure you recall this where they, during the Olympics. Had this ad that showed, um, the story was that the little girl wants to write to her hero who's an Olympian and the dad's like, this letter's got to be perfect. And everybody was like, that's totally the wrong way to think about it. Like, it doesn't need to be perfect. It's about the kid and them expressing themselves and like figuring out who they are and what they care about. And so

• 38:38Nathan Labenz?

  I, I do feel like there's, I don't know, I don't think it's just the old man romantic in me saying that, are we really making everything better if we judge it purely on outputs and, um, you know, have the AI do it? It seems like there, there are some areas where there is like this intrinsic preference that still feels right.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  I think at one point, things filter down and, and I actually agree with you on this. Like, like, like 100%, there's some conversations and some things that you value only for the like, like sentimental value or like the knowledge, some human put effort into it. And I think those things can coexist in a world where AI sort of automates away all tasks. Like I think the dad with the image example is like a perfect example, actually. And AI can generate an image that is great. And if you ever needed an image, if you ever cared about the output of having like a proper image, then like you can already do that with an AI. The technology already exists. Yet the child decides to do it and, and it makes, makes the moment all the more meaningful. I would argue that is a very, very human experience that can exist in a world of, you know, like complete AI

• 39:39Speaker 01

  superiority. Like, like I think those are actually the only things that will matter is a moment, some things of effort that, um, we, we intrinsically value. And this is sort of like, like, like at the world that I was, as I was picturing, when all output is immediate and, and complete, like the path to getting anything is obfuscated, then we will still find value in the meaningful things that, um, we ourselves put an effort into. And a child will still want to draw despite just being able to like have an AI automatically spawn in a beautiful painting. It, it doesn't matter because and I, I now would argue that's probably a case where the output is, is, is something different than just a tangible, good, good drawing. I would argue that, that the, the actual output that you're wanting there is, um, human input. And that is something that AI sort of will, will never be able to completely obfuscate away. If, if, if, if that makes sense.

• 40:23Nathan Labenz?

  Yeah, I think so. I mean, it sounds like there is a distinction that you're making between things that are done for economic production purposes, in which case we really care about outputs. And then there are things that are done for. You called it sentimental and I call it connection, you know, sort of overarching narrative of who we are and how we exist together and all that sort of stuff. It sounds like you would sort of acknowledge like if my kid used it AI and tried to pass it off as their own work and giving me a Father's Day gift, that would be sort of a form of cheating that you would say is in some sense like still going to be a norm violation in the future because it wasn't supposed to be about that or it wasn't it

• 41:07Nathan Labenz?

  wasn't just about the output in the first place. And so in that cheating, like there's still something that I, I guess, should I be upset, you know, in when my kid is a dad and they their kid tries to pass off an AI-generated Father's Day card as a hand-drawn thing, should my kid be upset at their kid or should they just be like, well, you know, this is kind of the new world that we live in?

• 41:29Speaker 01

  I guess it's like to what do you actually like, like judging the output on is it's obviously not the talent demonstrated in the painting. It is, it's like the level of input that you put in. And I think like then that's just a bad judgment, like, like it's poor output is what it is. But I think generally, yeah, like, like for most things that are economically productive, strictly economically productive, having an AI automate them away and not reveal itself to be AI is just like a positive for humanity. Really, I guarantee you wouldn't care if your shipping was all done by robots. Like you, you order a T-shirt and instead of being made by like, like Chinese child workers, it was instead made by a robot. Like you'd probably be pretty happy with that. And in fact, and then there's just like an AI automating itself. There's no need for it to in every step of the process

• 42:11Speaker 01

  say that, oh, when AI or robot did this, it's not done by human. It doesn't matter. But I like, like certainly there's some tasks where you value the human input and the actual output is the human input. And I think those will be evergreen and continue to last even in the world of ASI. And so actually be the only things that we do, the only things that we do of any value or spend any meaningful time on is the kid drawing a drawing to give to their father.

• 42:33Nathan Labenz?

  Yeah, I'm with you, by the way, on most of this, if not all of it. I think the it's so often people who are in the AI discourse are extremely fortunate in terms of the employment that they have and how much they enjoy the work that they get paid to do. And I think it's a very healthy reminder that a very significant, probably like, super majority of people, even in, you know, a well-off country like the United States, like, if given the option to not have to work for that money anymore, would absolutely take that. And I do sometimes ask people that question. And depending on who I ask, you know, sometimes people just look at me like I'm crazy. And they're like, you're telling me, just to make sure, right? Like, the deal you're offering me

• 43:18Nathan Labenz?

  is, I get the money, I don't have to do the job. Like, they're like, yeah, I take it. It's like, you, you sound crazy, kind of asking it in a lot of, in a lot of corners. So I'm with you on, on that. I do think there's, and I'm pretty bullish also on just kind of how adaptable people will be when it comes to finding new things to fulfill themselves and new, new sources of meaning, so on and so forth. In the utopian scenario, I think all that stuff is like, is probably, you know, there's more anxiety around it than I tend to think is probably merited. Of course, the transition from here to there is probably going to be pretty choppy. And, you know, that's where, hopefully, we can make good decisions. In, in practical terms, where

• 44:01Nathan Labenz?

  does it pay to cheat today? And where would you say it fails? I guess the, kind of, unpacking that question slightly, one of the things that people presumably are concerned about, you know, if they're university administrators, or if they're hiring junior software developers, they're kind of like, look, the, we, we get it, right? Right? Like, the coding test that we give you, it's like, not fully representative, it's not maxing out your skills, you know, we get that. However, it's a proxy metric that we have, that we use, that we kind of, we need something. We can't like, hire you for a year to do the job, and then decide, you know, whether to hire you.

• 44:40Nathan Labenz?

  So we've got to have some reduction in scope. And so we kind of need something there to try to measure, gauge, assess on. And if you're cheating on that, then we basically lose signal. And we don't know what you're going to be able to do in the actual job. So I guess, you know, a couple of different angles on that question. The first one is just like, in what areas does the AI cheating actually get you into a place where you can then be successful? And in what maybe other domains, if you like cheated through the initial hurdles, would you find yourself in like way over your head and end up failing? You know, because like the AI can't actually help you with the real thing.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think this is like, sort of goes back to the whole idea of output is the only thing that matters. I think two, two, two responses to this. A, I think assignment should be sort of like obsolete and all your work should be judged, or your entire competency should be judged based on the output you have generated in the past. And my, my second point is a little bit more complicated, but generally, yeah, I think the whole concept of a programming model should be obsolete. Instead, I should have open source, all of the work that I've ever done in the past. You should be able to look through all my code, and if not you directly, an AI should be able to look through all the code that I've ever written, or all the tasks that I've ever done in my life, and then it should be able to tell you with exact, exact certainty, like, hey, this guy is like a proficient TypeScript developer, and he's like lacking in this and this, he's like overall like, like a seventy-six out of one hundred percent candidate.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  And like, like that, that, that should be how assignments are done in the future. Like, and if either a human or an AI judges you strictly based on the output of your work in the past, and that is used to determine the output of your work in the future, and anything else will be obsolete. And, or perhaps, perhaps not obsolete, but generally, any assignment that can be done by an AI should not be asked anymore. That, that would be response one. And response two is, I think, when you start with the framework of like thinking about output, like, let's, let's, let's suppose that my, my goal here is to ma- make Google, and I'm free to use any AI tools at my disposal. There's only so far that an AI code editor can take me in the task of developing Google. If it can take me all the way, then like, like, like beautiful, but realistically, it can't.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  There will need to be, like, at some point, the AI will not have enough knowledge as, as the model stand right now. Yeah, then, then my task, like, like what cheating to cheating using AI to make Google looks like is actually going back and manually backfilling all the information that I might need to fill Google that the AI can't do. And perhaps that will go like as far back as learning addition and basic multiplications that I can get to matrix multiplications that I can get to the particular like, like linear algebra that is the Google patron algorithm. Perhaps it is all of that, but most likely it won't be, like, there will be an AI that can fill in the jumps, like, that can fill in many of the gaps for me. And, and oftentimes, the way to cheat, like,

• 47:24Speaker 01

  Even if you adopt a cheat on everything philosophy, there will still be things that you have to learn. And I guess like that is why cheat on everything, I think is like a valid moral framework. If you try and do things like the fastest way that you possibly can do everything, there will still be some things that the AI cannot do. And for you to make that last jump off it, it might require like four years of learning before you can make that last jump on your own. And even if you wanted to cheat, you could not cheat there. And I but I still think it is a good framework. You should take every jump you possibly can before a jump that technology cannot get you to, in which case you should take all the necessary steps to backfill the prerequisite skills that it takes to complete the last jump, i- if that makes any sense. So do you have any still Go ahead.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Cheat on everything and learning foundational skills, like both of those coexist in the world that I propose?

• 48:13Nathan Labenz?

  Yeah, similar. I always am looking for these short, pithy mantras. Mine on this point has been, you want to learn how to do hard things, but not necessarily the hard way. And I think that's a pretty similar philosophy to what you're saying. I don't really know where I come down on this, but do you give any credence to the idea that like, you know, kids need to learn to write essays in an unassisted way as sort of just a generally like important foundational step? I mean, and I'm genuinely uncertain about this, but like, we have tools that make many things like not strictly necessary. And yet

• 48:58Nathan Labenz?

  there is some like fundamental strength building that feels important, right? Like in the physical realm, like we have cars and we have boats, but it's like still pretty helpful to like run and swim to, you know, just build up the physical capacity to do that. It's like part of being a strong person. Is, do you think that there are things that are just important to like building a strong mind that?

• 49:25Nathan Labenz?

  Kids need to do, or it could even be into adults. I'm not necessarily leaning to kids or young people. But are there things there that you think are potentially important that we might run the risk of losing? If people become AI maximalists too enthusiastically?

• 49:42Speaker 01

  I think generally people should be output oriented and like goal oriented. And like kids, when kids get together and decide I'm going to, we're all going to build a sandcastle. They see the vision of the sandcastle in their head and they enjoy working towards the vision. They will learn a bunch of random skills as they're building towards the sandcastle. And this is like objectively a good thing. And I think if, I can only imagine if I was like seven years old and my goal was, man, I really want to learn. Like I just read Harry Potter. This was amazing. It was a great book. I want, I want to learn how to write like that. If you gave me, if you gave me nothing but pen and paper, then I probably have a lot, I probably have a really hard time. And it probably gets maybe like, like, like two pages of seven year old generated bullshit before I get to realizing like, oh, I'm not, I'm not J K Rowling. I can't write this great book, but imagine you gave that seven year old AI. And all of a sudden I can generate, you know, I can generate like a million different story ideas.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  I can have AI draft a million different things and all of a sudden I can explore different, different pipelines. And maybe I will actually come to something very interesting. As I'm writing, I will realize, hey, this, this, this isn't exactly as good as a J K Rowling's or hey, the plot, plot. Like I feel, I feel like the Harry Potter story was, was like a lot cooler in this way, like I can go in this direction. And I think, I guarantee you, I will have learned more from doing that exploration than I would have if you just gave me pen and pencil by a fucking firelight. And told me like, write a story that is comparable to Harry Potter. And I will have learned different skills. Sure. Like maybe I don't know exactly, like, like may, maybe my grammatical knowledge is a little less. I don't exactly know when to put a semicolon, but I do know how to like, like I will have the ability, like. The goal of mine would be to recreate Harry Potter. And this is like, I'm speaking from like a life experience, something that I tried to do in seventh grade or like when I was seven.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  And just, um, if I had AI, I can only imagine I would have learned so much more. And perhaps I wouldn't have learned the same foundational skills, but I would have learned a lot more foundational skills. And I, if, if, if you have, if you have a child, like I'm, I, I bet you would be excited to see them try this too. Like, like you, you would have loved to see them rather than pen and pencil, try and write, write a novel. Just play around with AI and see how cool of a story they can make. Everybody agrees that this, you would probably learn more foundational skills doing that.

• 51:35Nathan Labenz?

  Yeah, I think I'm very largely with you. We just did an episode not long ago with Mackenzie Price. He's the founder of Alpha School and they're doing all AI instruction in two hours a day. And then the afternoon is just like all about these exploratory projects. You know, kids going all kinds of different directions, often with AI as a co-pilot or assistant to them in their adventures. And yeah, I mean, I'm probing for what the possible downside of that may be. And I suspect we will identify some over time, but it does, I do agree that the output seems likely to be much bigger and that's not to be ignored for sure.

• 52:15Nathan Labenz?

  I wonder what other externalities this sort of technology might create and specifically around the sort of like cheating positioning. One thing that I do kind of worry about in society in general is a general trend toward lower and lower trust. It seems like that is a condition that predates AI, but also might make it more of a problem. You know, even just in like online discourse, right? Like there's, there's always the question like, am I arguing with an AI right now? And that's also one of the reasons I kind of think an AI must identify itself rule is

• 52:55Nathan Labenz?

  potentially good because like here I am thinking I'm like engaging in discourse and you know, trying to move my fellow voters and trying to help steer society in a positive direction. And that's the way I'm thinking about the output. But the, you know, Russian troll farm on the other end of the equation, they're thinking about the output in terms of like sucking up my time and making me disillusioned or whatever. Obviously, the Russian troll farm isn't necessarily going to follow the rules anyway. So that's not a perfect example perhaps, but do you worry about like?

• 53:29Nathan Labenz?

  Loss of trust. Do you worry about some markets that exist today kind of coming under stress? I was thinking also about like when I go on to Fiverr, for example, or Upwork, and I look at somebody halfway around the world, I'm like, I feel like I can sort of today, like, trust to a degree, you know, my back and forth with them and whatever. But in the future, if they're kind of cheating on that, I'm like, oh, God, I don't know, you know, what can I make of this? Can I even, is it even worth it to me to go into such a market? So, yeah, externalities, loss of trust, any particular markets that you think might be adversely affected by this sort of, you know, if you were to take the Kantian, you know, universalize the maxim, are there places where it fails?

• 54:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would propose like a different sort of example. Imagine I'm speaking with someone from like Mexico. They only speak Spanish and I only speak English and I can use AI to live translate everything that they're doing and essentially like assist me in the conversation that way. Is that a loss of trust? Probably not. Well, like, you'd probably look at that and think probably not. Now, let's take that a small step further. Imagine I'm talking with a consultant who knows a lot about, say, like coal mining space, and I know nothing about the coal mining space, and we're trying to have an eager conversation about coal mining space. And as we're talking, I have clearly pull up definitions that I know exactly what he's talking about. He's talking about the Amherst mining incident of 1982, and I know, and I have extra context about the conversation. Now we can have like a deeper conversation about like, whatever it is he's actually

• 54:58Speaker 01

  trying to get at. Is that actually like losing trust in conversation? Is that like a loss of trust? I would argue probably not. It's just something that helps the conversation get to a point where, you know, like beyond the random need for memorization facts and all this stuff. And I think people are worried about a time where AI is like more human than humans. And I think this is just like the incorrect worry, like they worry about a time when AI is able to romance their girlfriend, or like enjoy itself better than humans, and then like tell you, you will have more fun if you go to the pool right now than if you go to the beach. But I think actually an AI will never be able to do this because these are all like, you know, like our own preferences and opinions and like, these are things that the ultimate meaning of what it is to be human is to decide the things that you want to do. And I think an AI will never actually be able To make those decisions for you, it will just be able to infinitely make it easier to make those decisions.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  To like get back to the conversation of like whether we are like losing trust. As a society, I I think there are so many cases where it is not the case that a trust is being eroded, but rather. We're getting to like the actual core, you know, philosophical meaning of the conversation or like what is you're actually trying to talk about. You have an enriched conversation thanks to AI and the the. Conversations will as as AI usage grows and grows, they will boil down to the deepest, most human.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  I guess like essence of the conversation, like what is it you are actually trying to say, why are you here in a conversation with me because. At some point, two humans made the conscious decision to engage in a conversation with each other and like to talk about something. And like like perhaps the discourse is like like ma- ma- ma- maybe discourse on like. Hey, what year did a World War Two start and AI tells you the answer like like maybe that's where discourse goes away, but I don't think that's actually discourse at all. AI serves best in giving you information and helping you. Helping you decide the core tastes and thoughts and opinions that you have, but at the very core, the impetus of everything is your human decision and your human impulse. And I think society will just trend towards expecting that people are using AI, but AI will never ever replace the. You think this girl is pretty good, talk to her like I make that decision.

• 56:55Nathan Labenz?

  Unclear to me to what degree you cheated with the initial example there of the real time English to Spanish translation, but. I.

• 57:05Nathan Labenz?

  Did not too long ago tweet something about the Google Meet demo that they showed at I O, which was a real time simultaneous translation. And I do think that is one of the most just purely. Aspirational AI product implementations that I've ever seen because. You know, it's just been a human. Impulse or desire dream for so long to overcome language barriers.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 57:30Nathan Labenz?

  And they have something here that is like actually making it real. And so as you were talking there, I was kind of reflecting on, okay. How should I feel under different situations where. You brought that up purely randomly and it just happens to be a coincidence that I also, you know. Have specifically like cited that example is something I'm excited about versus. What if you like really did your homework on me and scrolled back through my Twitter feed and saw it. Versus would have clearly just popped it up right now. And I think in this example, I don't know that I really care that much. I mean. In a way, maybe I prefer the like purely serendipitous one. Um, between like you taking the time to like go do your homework.

• 58:15Nathan Labenz?

  And the AI like helping you pop that up at runtime. Um, yeah, I don't know. I think that is probably comes down to the. It's output oriented. It's a good point.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. I guess right, right, right now, the way, the reason you prefer the serendipitous way is because as you understand it, the way, the, the, the way that it gather that information is by like, like going through and doing research on you manually via, via, via Twitter. And it's not yet universal and commonplace that I could use an AI to just pull that information up. But that, that, that's because like, like your understanding of how like. Knowing X knowledge means Y effort like, like that as soon as that logical train of thought is broken, then in the future, like you probably wouldn't think that. And like, like, for example, um, in. It probably meant a lot to someone to get like a beautifully typed up, al- almost like, like, like, like calligraphy that looks typed up. Letter from someone because they know that if, if, if letters are beautiful, that means that someone put a lot of effort into making letters beautiful.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  But today that means nothing because your default assumption is that they probably just typed this up. And I think in the future, when there are more powerful AIs that are capable of doing exactly what Kuli does. Uh, then you will start to dissociate these things and you'll start to make different connections like, like, like perhaps it is not a. Knowledge of your Twitter algorithm that suggests effort being put into researching about you. It is perhaps like, I don't know, like. A, a deeper knowledge about something personal that, that you might've only told me in person. And that, that would be suggested level of like effort. But I, I think as when you break the, that one link. It doesn't actually like undermine the entire, I, I, I appreciate it when people put effort into me. It just, it just disconnects the, that, that one specific link.

• 59:53Nathan Labenz?

  Going back for a second to the question of assessments, I thought you had a pretty interesting idea there around just like.

• 1:00:02Nathan Labenz?

  You know, i- if my concern as a hiring company is I need something that I can do in manageable time to get a sense for this person's skill level. Your answer to that is. Go much, use AI to go much deeper and it's on the person to like show you a lot more of who they are. I think that's pretty interesting and like, maybe could really work. Um, do you feel though, like, that's like asking too much of people in some way? I mean, it's, I know it's like common, of course, in the software world to like have an open source profile and whatever, but it's like a lot harder for a lot of other things, right? If I'm a salesperson, I can't like open source all the deals I've ever done. If I'm, you know, just so many different contexts or,

• 1:00:46Nathan Labenz?

  and even just like my, um, I think one, one concern we might have about AI and society in general is like, it may sort of track us prematurely or sort of i- if we become overly informed about every other person's history and we kind of know everywhere they've been, everything they've done and how well they've done it, it potentially starts to prevent people from like upleveling and switching, switching from like track A to track B because their, their sort of long-term narrative as understood by AI is like on this, you know, particular course and like, why would we take a bet on them to change it? Whereas in today's world,

• 1:01:29Nathan Labenz?

  like I can kind of mothball my old LinkedIn profile and kind of reposition myself as a new kind of professional and, you know, if I can pass the assessments, I can kind of get in. I don't know. I'm always looking for these trade-offs. Any thoughts on that?

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think if the AI does get to a point where it can track everything you've done, like judge all your output and like quantitatively determine how good you would be as a customer support rep at Verizon, um, then that AI will also be smart enough to like, like hopefully have the same, have like regulations on, or at least be able to determine what regulations would be most optimal for society and in terms of like, like what information that we are able to know about each other. But alternatively, like let's assume that the models don't get much smarter and they're only as capable as they are now. I still think that right now, the current system is very, very flawed where you try to shove every single bit of your professional experience on a one-page resume and like- Like that that gets sent to a human whose subjective eye and like like their laziness, their their mood during the time of day, there's like a million external factors.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  And like like you could have lied about your resume, like there's so many, so many things that that um make the current hiring process extremely inefficient. And I think that right now currently a better thing exists where probably you could just. And and I and I'm pretty sure this is like sort of sort of what Merkord does, but there's like a different type of resume where in AI, you can just sort of speak to an AI about the things that you're good at and AI judges your your your. The relevant skills that an employer puts in for example, the employer says, I really care about the guy's cadence and his ability to speak and his ability to persuade me and the AI just throws a bunch of random questions that you. Gives you a personalized assessment and evaluates you based on um that plus like your description of all the things that you've done in the past, plus like an attempt at like. Going deep and trying to figure out and like verify that you've done the things that you say you've done. Um but I but I think like.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Eh almost anything is better than what we have right now, partially because it's gamable and partially it's it's too gamable and partially because an AI can sort of do do it better.

• 1:03:22Nathan Labenz?

  Um let's change gears to your marketing. You are producing a lot of uh viral content.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03:28Nathan Labenz?

  It is often quite cinematic in its look. Um. How are you doing that? I assume you're an AI maximalist in marketing too.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I actually think um we have almost like an entire in-house film studio. We have like videographers, we have a really nice camera, we have lighting, we have editors, we have. If everything that is needed to almost produce a movie in-house. Um and I think like. We don't use AI because AI is not yet capable of, well, we we don't use AI for a lot because AI is not yet capable of doing. The the level of videography and editing that we ourselves are personally capable of doing. And again, like the only thing that matters is output here. What we can use AI for and what we often use AI for, it's like storyboard, exactly what every video looks like and help us draft scripts that will be funny and comedic. But yeah, like like like how we actually come across these ideas. I think this is just a like, we're we're a bunch of like twenty twenty-one year olds with like a bunch like.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Who've spent like four hours a day scrolling on IG TikTok. We are sufficiently brainwashed enough to know what lands, what is funny and what is the funniest thirty second video that you could see. I think most of these tech bros are just like so nerdy, they don't scroll, they pride themselves on not scrolling, they pride themselves on literally being like. And not funny as a result like when I when I come out and I'm I've been fucking like spent last twenty years of my life on Instagram like I know what's funny way better than these tech bros do or at the very least I know it's engageable better than they do. And all that's left is now I've just been blessed with with with the money to make it controversial and cinematic. And um, I think the second benefit of something being cinematic is uh, people pause and will watch it way more if there's like, oh, someone put effort into this thing.

• 1:04:59Nathan Labenz?

  Are you not a tech bro? I think from the outside world perspective, you're a tech bro, right?

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I consider myself of a different ilk. I think um, I like I I I am more of a bro than I am a tech bro. What's the difference? I mean, since um, I think I think tech. You're in tech. Specific type of nerdy in front of a computer, code code all day and uh, talk A A I SaaS and all this shit. But I like like in reality, I feel like I am a I'm much more of a bro. I'm more human and more tech agnostic. But I I have no idea. It's just like me like random personality descriptions, but I I but the the world will probably see me as a tech bro, but I think no tech bro would see me as a tech bro.

• 1:05:42Nathan Labenz?

  I might have a proposal for you from my company Waymark, which we've just launched Waymark Cinematic. So our our core product is an AI video creator for small business. And it wouldn't hit on the level that you guys are shipping on, but it does actually work really well for like local and small businesses in their local communities. But with all the new stuff that is has come out, we recently just launched kind of a managed service line, Waymark Cinematic. And I would be very interested to see if we can use AI tools to hit your level. We just did one with the company Better, featuring an AI Jake Paul. And it actually, I'm not, it's funny, I, part of the reason I started this company and

• 1:06:25Nathan Labenz?

  created an AI video maker for small businesses because I myself am not good at this sort of thing. So I very much had to partner with people who really know it. But I would be interested to see if our creative team could use an AI process and create something that might actually fit in with the cinematic universe that you're creating.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  I would be very curious to see that too, yeah.

• 1:06:46Nathan Labenz?

  How about the influencer marketing game? I haven't honestly seen too much of this content myself in just preparing for this. I saw comments online from people saying like, all I'm seeing is like clearly, you know, UGC campaigns.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:02Nathan Labenz?

  So is this another area? I assume you're like indifferent to AI influencers versus real human influencers versus hybrids. But what's your kind of approach to the affiliate market?

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  I will also say like, there's, there's two big types of consumer marketing that is done on IG TikTok. One is influencer marketing and the other is UGC. And UGC is among many, those are sort of the two most popular ones. UGC, you just have like some random 20 year old. Literally, these videos are not 10 seconds, not even 10 seconds long. These accounts are completely fresh. And the only thing that you want to get at is a, this feels like a real person talking and they'll come up with some, like some viral hook. And they'll just talk about your product and it's like really simple.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  Maybe two sentences of dialogue, the whole thing. And it will be ridiculously simple and it'll be 10 seconds. But these are the videos that generate 5 million views and are like the most converting videos that we have on the platform. And for this, like, we know exactly which UGC hooks will grab the attention of 20 year olds in college. And we have this like down to science. And we know exactly what sticks, what works best, what converts best and all the other metrics. But the reason you don't see it on your timeline is because the hooks are not catered to you. You, like, you are not the ICP of the hooks. The ICP of the hooks is like 20, 20, like 16 and 20 year olds that are in school. And as a result, for some people, it will literally be like, they cannot get this off their timelines because we have nailed the ICP so much. And for some people like you, it'll just be, I've never seen this, I've never seen this particular UGC campaign.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  But you will see some of our other campaigns because, believe me, we are going to take over the internets.

• 1:08:37Nathan Labenz?

  Okay, we'll definitely watch over that. I pride myself on staying reasonably connected to youth culture. So it sounds like I got a little work to do to steer the algorithm to get me into the clearly demographic.

• 1:08:49Nathan Labenz?

  Anything, I mean, we talked about the pane of glass. You shared kind of a vision for the sort of, you know, how you are kind of on the same page in the sense as Apple with like this sort of overlay AI experience. My general sense of your

• 1:09:08Nathan Labenz?

  Trajectories, if I, if I understand it correctly, it's like,

• 1:09:13Nathan Labenz?

  you can't sustain the sort of insurgent position forever, right? If you're right, things that are cheating now won't be seen as cheating later. Like this stuff won't resonate in the future. So is the idea that you are going to blitz scale as much and as fast as possible on the sort of asymmetric advantage that you have now to kind of push, you know, push past like what the sort of polite companies like Anthropic and Google and OpenAI can do to achieve market share and then kind of mature alongside them. And they will also kind of bend your way as norms kind of resettle.

• 1:09:53Nathan Labenz?

  And then you'll be competing with them on like a less asymmetric basis long term.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  I

• 1:10:02Nathan Labenz?

  You see that long-term future unfolding for you?

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, this is actually the future that I'm less certain about because everything depends on how much of corporate culture are we able to change with our marketing right now? I think already you're seeing tremors of the launch video effect startup culture. All of a sudden launches are becoming way more cinematic. People are trying to crack controversial thing way more. And if this actually like becomes more than just a, just a wave in the water and just comes like an actual like gigantic thing and all of a sudden corporate professionalism is dead and no longer, no longer appreciated. Then I think we will carry this rebellious counterculture like, like I fucking, I'm going to do whatever I want, attitude on with us like well into like the company's maturity. But i- if it is the case that this is sort of just a bump that lets us hit escape velocity,

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  but still like standard among all companies that you be professional and you be corporate and you be buttoned up. And perhaps there's a future where we button up and all of this is rested on.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  All of this is downstream with the case that our marketing takes us to escape velocity. And the only question is, will our marketing take us to escape velocity change the game of marketing forever? For everyone. If it doesn't, if it does, then then we'll keep it going. And if it doesn't, then we'll button up. And I guess to to answer the point of like like cheat on everything, will that specific like like? Like we are the rebel, you know, like like like punching up. Um, will that fade as we become like the dominant player in the market? I actually I don't think that it is a us being the little guys punching up right now that people are being so captivated by. I just think generally the marketing, whether it was me that did all this marketing, whether it was Samay or Elon that did all this marketing, it would be just as controversial and engageable.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  And I don't actually think that the core reason people are engaging with us is because we are the underdogs. In fact, I think to many people, we are no longer the underdogs after we did the big raise. I think the reason it's like resonating with people is because it's a more than anything like also like super transparent. Um, I think everything I do, like I seem controversial, but in reality, this is just me being honest. And even cases where I'm not being super controversial, like sometimes I'll be on Twitter and I'll make like a heartfelt like like I respect you a lot. Like that is also just me being honest. And I think like all the controversial shit that I do is just a a a transparent slice of my life and my thoughts, and I just happen to have polarizing opinions. But I don't actually think like we we aim to be like super polarizing. We just aim to be honest.

• 1:12:26Nathan Labenz?

  Um, you mentioned the raise and I've also seen you comment online that you're hiring with comp packages up to a million dollars plus equity. Tell me what you're looking for, you know, for a million dollars plus equity? And maybe just a little bit about your kind of experience trying to hire at the very high end of the AI talent pool right now.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I guess like. I feel like people are so wrong about this right now. Revenue time manager is so compressed. VC money flows quite freely. And if you are actually making a meaningful attempt at swing big, there will be someone to fund you to do it. And everyone agrees, seems to agree that the best way to get to swing big is by having like the best talents. And for some reason, people are still trying to pay like the bottom end of the bottom end of the compensation ranges. For some like stupid reason like, oh, you need to be bought in by the company. Like, bro, nobody knows about your company. You guys were founded two months ago. Why would anybody go like die for your company? You need to give them like something to come in for. And then once they're in the company, that's when you have to like convince them that you guys are the guys that are going to win. Just like, like give them like convince them to have utmost loyalty.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  Right now, there's an employee here who would sell a dollar of their equity because they're so convinced that the company is going to grow massively. And I think like this all happens downstream of us sort of like being willing to pay at the top end of the compensation packages and convincing of the culture. Nobody knows your company culture if they have not been there for like a month. And if they have been there for a month, then they should be employed. Um, so I guess like, like my experience paying, I think paying at the top end of the comp packages allows for a really, really strong top of funnel. And even if like, like the most money hungry guy that will come in saying like, I'm only here for the cash. They'll come in, I promise you, they'll be captivated by the culture and they will not bring themselves to leave. Because it is fun. This company is more fun than any other company in the world. We literally exist like a frat house. We have conversations late at night. We stay together, we go to the gym together, talk about girls together, we talk about dudes together.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  And it's like, this is like a fun, exciting, fulfilling life. Even if you might have come in for the million dollar a year comp package, like you will stay because you cannot do anything other than clue. It is the most fun you will ever have in your adult life. And generally, I think it is, there's surprisingly, there's, there seems to be a lot of noise in programmers. We're looking for like really, really competent full stack engineers. And there's a lot of people who are like really good at research, really good at low latency optimizations. But um, it's not like the, the thing that we're looking for. That's, that's something that has surprised me since trying to hire is that um, there's a lot of people with like really great backgrounds, but it's just background in the wrong thing. And as it turns out, we are actually looking for a very specific type of engineer who is capable of a very specific type of task. Yeah, I think, I think, I think that, that, that answers your, your questions.

• 1:14:55Nathan Labenz?

  This has been fascinating and I appreciate the earnest and just kind of minimally AI assisted conversation. Although I wouldn't have minded, you know, if you had uh, had been relying on Clue Lee from time to time. I know you were at least at the beginning. Any other thoughts you want to leave people with before we break?

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  Is the most interesting time in human history. I think you should take more risks. And right now, the riskiest move is probably what you defer it to be the safest move.

• 1:15:25Nathan Labenz?

  Yeah, food for thought. Roy Lee, founder and CEO of Clouly. Thank you for being part of the cognitive revolution.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  Awesome, man. Thanks for having me.

• 1:15:33Nathan Labenz?

  If you're finding value in the show, we'd appreciate it if you'd take a moment to share with friends, post online, write a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or just leave us a comment on YouTube. Of course, we always welcome your feedback, guests and topic suggestions, and sponsorship inquiries, either via our website, cognitiverevolution.ai, or by DMing me on your favorite social network. The Cognitive Revolution is part of the Turpentine Network, a network of podcasts, which is now part of A16Z, where experts talk technology, business, economics, geopolitics, culture, and more. We're produced by AI Podcasting. If you're looking for podcast production help for everything from the moment you stop recording to the moment your audience starts listening, check them out and see my endorsement at ai podcast

• 1:16:15Nathan Labenz?

  dot I N G. And thank you to everyone who listens for being part of the cognitive revolution.