Diet TBPN: October 20th, 2025

Our favorite moments from today's show, in under 30 minutes. TBPN.com is made possible by: Ramp - https://ramp.com Figma - https://figma.com Vanta - https://vanta.com Linear - https://linear.app Eight Sleep - https://eightsleep.com/tbpn Wander - https://wander.com/tbpn Public - https://public.com AdQuick - https://adquick.com Bezel - https://getbezel.com Numeral - https://www.numeralhq.com Polymarket - https://polymarket.com Attio - https://attio.com/tbpn Fin - https://fin.ai/tbpn Graphite - https://graphite.dev Restream - https://restream.io Profound - https://tryprofound.com Julius AI - https://julius.ai turbopuffer - https://turbopuffer.com fal - https://fal.ai Privy - https://www.privy.io Cognition - https://cognition.ai Gemini - https://gemini.google.com Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235 https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

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

• 0:00John Coogan?

  You're watching T B P N. Today is Monday, October 20th, 2025. We are live from the T B P N Ultra Dome, the Temple of Technology, the Fortress of Finance, the Capital of Capital. Later in the show, we also have the CEO of GameStop, Ryan Cohen, joining the show at noon. So if you're new here and you're tuning in for the first time, please stay with us. There are also, do you think the A W S outage is, is it entirely because of us? And the GameStop shorts want us to stop podcasting? So that we can't bring them the latest in the world of GameStop?

• 0:33Jordi Hays?

  I think it was potentially Amazon just turning it off for a second to show everyone that, hey, cloud, clouds is still pretty important.

• 0:41John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 0:41Jordi Hays?

  Forgotten about us.

• 0:42John Coogan?

  That makes sense.

• 0:43Jordi Hays?

  You're still dependent on it.

• 0:44John Coogan?

  Andre Karpathy made waves this week on the Dwarsh Patel podcast. He said a lot of, he called AI slop. He also said that the models are amazing. He said that autocomplete is his sweet spot. He had a bunch of positive things to say, but overall, people did not react positively. Everyone says the AI bubble is over. It's popped. You gotta rotate out of AI stocks. My take is that if you're looking for something safe, you gotta rotate into food, water, shelter and guns. All of industrialization is a bubble. We're going back to monkey. We're returning to monkey. We're going to be living in huts because technology is a bubble. Technology is fake.

• 1:25John Coogan?

  And all we have left is to homestead and live in a shelter. So get ready to go back to sticks and stones. That's my take.

• 1:33Jordi Hays?

  Good take.

• 1:34John Coogan?

  Andre Karpathy was a co-founding member of OpenAI. He was there from day one. He also was at Tesla and built the self-driving car program there. He is one of the most respected AI practitioners, researchers, basically saying that AGI is like 10 years away, not one year, not two years. He's kind of debunking the idea, or at least he's just sharing like the vibes that he doesn't feel like the AI 2027 fast takeoff scenario is probable. Over a year ago, September 23rd, 2024, Sam Altman posted a blog post, said the intel, call it the intelligence age. And this is what he said in there. He said, it is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days. He's still setting expectations to be like AGI is a decade away, which is exactly what Andre said.

• 2:19John Coogan?

  But when Sam said it, everyone was like, let's go super long. And when Andre says, oh, it's bad, which is kind of an interesting tweak. Whenever you talk to a technologist and you say like, okay, you're working on getting us to Mars. You're working on fusion reactors. You're working on quantum computing. When will this actually change my life? When will this be, when will this technology be ready for primetime? Everyone says it's just a decade away. It's going to be so long that everyone will have forgotten in a decade.

• 2:44Jordi Hays?

  Some people listened to the Karpathi interview and thought, great, I have 10 years to escape the permanent under.

• 2:51John Coogan?

  Yeah, totally.

• 2:51Jordi Hays?

  Which is, which is exactly, exactly how OpenAI is also acting, right? They're acting like a big tech company. They're launching a social media app. They're working on ads, working on commerce. They're trying to scale paid users, right? They're just acting like a traditional hyperscale.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  The fact that 10 years AGI is like a bearish take.

• 3:10John Coogan?

  It's crazy.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  That's so bullish.

• 3:12John Coogan?

  That's extremely bullish.

• 3:13Jordi Hays?

  Did you see a lot of pushback from anyone at the big labs on the interview?

• 3:18John Coogan?

  No, I didn't see anything.

• 3:19Jordi Hays?

  I expected to see more people saying Karpathi has been out of the game for a few years. He doesn't have the scale. He's not really at the frontier. He's not seeing what we're seeing. And I didn't see any of that.

• 3:31John Coogan?

  Whatever you are thinking of doing in the public markets, go to public.com. Investing for those that take it seriously. They got multi asset investing, industry leading yields. They're trusted by millions. Oracle's now on the hook for something like $300 billion in infrastructure over the next five years. That's a lot very quickly. They're hoping that OpenAI revenue will pay for that.

• 3:51Jordi Hays?

  It is very notable that OpenAI has announced partnerships with Etsy and Walmart.

• 3:57John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 3:58Jordi Hays?

  And not Amazon and eBay. Amazon's management team, eBay's management team aren't so quick to let Sam, the fox into the hen house.

• 4:07John Coogan?

  Things can get out of control where like the iPhone got so dominant that Google had to pay Apple to be the default search. It's not the right framing to say like, we've never seen anything like this. It's breaking all of our patterns. So we're just completely. Operating off playbook, I think it's much better to just say that like this is a new hyperscaler. We all saw what happened with Google and Amazon. They were started before the dot com bubble popped. And they scaled very fast. OpenAI scaling faster on users and revenue. And so we are investing more, but it's all proportionate. And so it's the exact same playbook.

• 4:39Jordi Hays?

  OpenAI growth, ChatGPT growth is seemingly slowing a little bit. And that makes sense just based entirely on the scale that they're at right now. There's a reason that OpenAI wants its own browser, perplexity wants its own browser. I don't think they've properly even leveraged Chrome yet in order to drive Gemini usage.

• 4:57John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:58Jordi Hays?

  Browser wars of the summer of 2025.

• 5:01John Coogan?

  I want to preregister the following opinion. I think it's plausible, but by no means guaranteed that we could see a massive financial crisis or bubble pop affecting AI in the next year. I expect if this happens, it will mostly be for mundane economic reasons. Overleveraged markets, financial policy of major nations, mistiming of bets, even by a small amount of and and good old fraud, not because the technology isn't making rapid progress. Yes, we we gotta go even harder. The bear market's bullish for doom. Uh underrated AI doom scenario. The bubble pops so hard that everyone goes bankrupt. There's mass famine and starvation and humanity, population collapses, all because we went too levered long AI. What do you think about that?

• 5:47John Coogan?

  Plausible? It just might be. I feel listening to this podcast, it's a balloon popping. We will see about.

• 5:54Jordi Hays?

  The reason it is so important for everyone to keep pretending that AGI is definitely right around the corner is that there is now over one trillion of investment riding on this belief, either already expended or committed.

• 6:05John Coogan?

  We should move to the uh the Napoleon jewels that were stolen from the Louvre in a major robbery. The thieves stole jewelry from display cases in Gallerie de Paulion.

• 6:16Jordi Hays?

  Finally, a brazen heist.

• 6:18John Coogan?

  We are anti heist. We are anti crime. Do not do this. If you have information that could lead to the arrest of these thieves. Let us know, we will send you a hat. Is this the cure for male loneliness?

• 6:29Jordi Hays?

  Tourists were streaming into the world's most visited museum on Sunday when a group of thieves burst in through a window of a gilded gallery on the second floor and made off with a set of priceless royal jewels. Two of the perpetrators, at least one, wearing a high-visibility yellow vest.

• 6:43John Coogan?

  That looks blend in so much. He just looks like work.

• 6:46Jordi Hays?

  And they used angle grinders to cut through the window and get inside.

• 6:49John Coogan?

  Yep, tempted but failed to set fire to their truck. So they were trying to burn the truck on the way out to like get rid of all the fingerprints, I suppose. And they dropped the crown of Empress Eugene with nearly 1,400 diamonds before they sped away. It was found damaged. No one was injured. Eight pieces in total were stolen, including an emerald earring and an emerald necklace that belonged to Empress Marie.

• 7:11Jordi Hays?

  Such a brutal fumble. Fumbling 1,400 diamonds.

• 7:16John Coogan?

  Massive fumble.

• 7:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, obviously, they're never going to be able to capture the same value necessarily as if you're able to do an open auction. There's a small pool of buyers.

• 7:25John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 7:26Jordi Hays?

  There's probably 100 people in the world.

• 7:28John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 7:28Jordi Hays?

  That would be willing to pay tens of millions.

• 7:32John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 7:32Jordi Hays?

  And potentially more.

• 7:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 7:34Jordi Hays?

  Just, just to know that they had it and just to be a family secret.

• 7:38John Coogan?

  Do you think there are any buyers that would flex it? What if you're Vladimir Putin? What if you're Kim Jong-un?

• 7:43Jordi Hays?

  Elon says, "My estimate on the probability of Grok 5 achieving AGI is now at 10% and rising." Gabe says, "10% chance Elon declares he reached AGI a fourth time."

• 7:54John Coogan?

  Elon says a lot of crazy stuff about like, "I hope that we'll be able to do novel physics. I think the next version's going to be really powerful, this and that." But I don't know that he's ever actually called a version of Grok AGI. But anyway, clearly, it clearly upset Elon because he replied and said, "You call yourself a quote-unquote researcher." Hitting somebody with the double quotes, we know with the pain that that inflicts, it's terrible. You never want to be hit with the double quotes.

• 8:21Jordi Hays?

  Jensen Huang was at a Citadel event, Future of Global Markets, and said, "We are 100% out of China. We went from 95% market share to 0%. I can't imagine any policymaker thinking that's a good idea." 100% out of China, but doing astonishingly healthy business in Singapore and Malaysia, totally out of the blue. Swinging around accusations that...

• 8:47Jordi Hays?

  Singapore and Malaysia are fronts for Chinese chip demand.

• 8:52John Coogan?

  We also love ramp.com. Time is money. Save both. Easy to use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting and a whole lot more all in one place. Why the China doves are wrong. American business leaders cozying up to Beijing refuse to see that the Communist Party wants us to fail. That while some Americans wear the label China Hawk as a badge of honor, it is really a badge of shame. The future, Mr. Wong says, doesn't have to be all us or them. It could be us and them. A lot of this is all teeing up a major trade deal. The rare earth equation is certainly a big one. America has a bunch of levers to pull. If they were truly like, the next scaling run is what does it? They would be like, oh, let's take the Nvidia chips as well. Instead, they're saying, okay, well,

• 9:34John Coogan?

  let's, let's actually gear up for independence over a long period of time. JP Morgan says Nvidia CEO Jensen Wong's projection of AI capex growing from 600 billion today to three to four trillion by 2030 is financially feasible, though ambitious. Even with a projected 1.2, 1.6 trillion annual funding gap, private markets could contribute about 500 billion per year by 2030, leaving the rest to be covered by leverage expansion.

• 10:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. The key question is, you know, if you want AI capex to scale to three to four trillion, you're going to need revenue to support that.

• 10:09John Coogan?

  Jordy, have you, have you received any, any inbound from random people who seem to have GPT psychosis?

• 10:17Jordi Hays?

  Hard to say. Humans no longer necessary. So we're getting rid of them. Replacement AI can do anything a human can do, but better, faster and much, much cheaper. Quote from Sam Altman, AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there'll be great companies.

• 10:30John Coogan?

  That's a wild quote.

• 10:31Jordi Hays?

  Quote here from Dario. I think there's a 25% chance that things go really, really badly.

• 10:36John Coogan?

  Hmm. The Starbucks CEO Brian Nickel says the coffee giant is all in on AI, reveals real time artificial intelligence systems designed to assist baristas and transform store operations.

• 10:48Jordi Hays?

  Uh, we gotta put on the schizo hat.

• 10:50John Coogan?

  Okay, please.

• 10:51Jordi Hays?

  Starbucks stock is up 6.66%.

• 10:55John Coogan?

  Weird.

• 10:55Jordi Hays?

  Past five days. Coincidence?

• 10:58John Coogan?

  Very weird.

• 10:58Jordi Hays?

  Are they, are they using AI to summon the demon?

• 11:01John Coogan?

  Uber is going to give its drivers in the US an option to make money by doing digital tasks. These short, minute-long tasks can be done anytime, including while idling for passengers.

• 11:12Jordi Hays?

  I hope they put some type of restriction in where if they detect that you're in a mood, like actually moving, that they say you cannot do data labeling right now.

• 11:19John Coogan?

  What if you have FSD?

• 11:20Jordi Hays?

  Somebody in traffic just data labeling.

• 11:22John Coogan?

  FSD.

• 11:23Jordi Hays?

  Tyler, you're pretty AGI pilled, right? Yeah. Okay, well, why don't you earn a hundred dollars doing data labeling? That's your challenge for the next 24 hours. It was weird being in Vegas recently, so quiet, so many fewer people gambling, drinking, partying. My pet theory, Ozempic killing Vegas, just like it's killing snack food brands, liquor producers and Napa.

• 11:44John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 11:44Jordi Hays?

  I would go the opposite angle with the rise of Robin Hood prediction markets and sports betting. There is little reason to go to Vegas. It is more expensive, the house edge is higher, and it's hotter outside. Less drinking contributes too, though.

• 11:56John Coogan?

  For Vegas-like activity?

• 11:58Jordi Hays?

  Isn't it like a recession indicator, right?

• 12:01John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's another, that's a third option.

• 12:03Jordi Hays?

  The real economy is not, not doing well right now. I saw another quote that just said, like, the nightlife scene there has been hyper-financialized to a degree that it's just not even fun anymore.

• 12:13John Coogan?

  People aren't gambling for one reason or another. Maybe it's the Ozempic. You need to make Vegas high-end.

• 12:19Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, what if they set up a bunker in there that, uh, that has a bunch of stolen goods from all over the world? From you says, over the last 15 years, Reddit's relationship advice has shifted towards recommending breakups, boundaries and therapies and against compromised communication and letting people have their space. This is concerning, um, for a number of reasons. One being that, uh, your favorite AI models are all trained on Reddit. If you're having, uh... Relationships problems, whether friend or romantic, and you start a podcast together. That sounds like.

• 12:52John Coogan?

  Okay, so here are the options from Reddit. End relationship, communicate, give space slash time, set respect boundaries, seek therapy, counseling, compromise, other. How about get in the octagon?

• 13:04Jordi Hays?

  Duke it out.

• 13:05John Coogan?

  Duke it out. If you're having a relationship problem with someone, buy them a luxury watch on getbezel.com because your Bezel Concierge is available now to source you any watch on the planet. Seriously, any watch. If you're like, oh.

• 13:15Jordi Hays?

  The Senate Republicans posted a video of Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer thinks playing with Americans.

• 13:21Speaker 03

  Every day gets better for us.

• 13:22Jordi Hays?

  Chuck Schumer.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  When come women, infants. Every day gets better for us.

• 13:26John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 13:27Jordi Hays?

  Okay, the mouth movement is a little. Chuck Schumer thinks.

• 13:29John Coogan?

  It's not dial. It's not bad. I mean, like, it's clearly based on some real image that they took, and so the lighting looks very real, the skin texture looks really real because the AI model doesn't really have to do that much to regenerate it from scratch. But of course, we've seen that, you know, all the models are basically, you know, indistinguishable if you don't have full context at this point. Thank you so much. Leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

• 13:53Jordi Hays?

  Tomorrow.

• 13:54John Coogan?

  See you tomorrow.