(Preview) The Economy in the 22nd Century, Amoral Tech and Silicon Valley Micro-Culture, What Nvidia Is Getting From Groq

Andrew and Ben return from the holidays to discuss Ben’s Article AI and the Human Condition, and various responses to the preponderance of pessimistic forecasts for what AI will mean for the future, including thoughts on employment, sex, and the problem with trying to regulate human nature. Then: An email about OpenAI spawns discussion of cultural assumptions, market incentives vs. social incentives, and tech as an amoral force. At the end: Unpacking the logic of Nvidia’s deal with Groq, a regulator’s own-goal, questions on streaming TV vs. music, sperm racing, and advice for a listener debating whether to embrace suburban living.

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

• 0:00Andrew Sharp?

  Hello and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech.

• 0:08Andrew Sharp?

  Hello and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, Happy New Year. How you doing?

• 0:22Ben Thompson?

  I mean, I'm struggling a bit, to be totally honest. Since, you know, the first podcast back, we're starting, what, like?

• 0:29Andrew Sharp?

  20 minutes late.

• 0:30Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, it's just been a real, a real struggle. But you know, whenever I think that things are difficult, I'm having a hard time working through it. All I have to think about is you.

• 0:43Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah, it could be worse.

• 0:46Ben Thompson?

  And the fact that your basketball team just acquired Trey Young. Congratulations. I have a happy Trey Young Day.

• 0:52Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, man. I'm not gonna lie, I'm down pretty bad over all this. The Wizards just traded for one of my least favorite players in the entire NBA. You were mocking me with AI photo shops, photoshopping Trey Young and his thinning hair on my head last night.

• 1:09Ben Thompson?

  I know the problem was I did it the first time. I said, put the hair and beard from this picture onto you. And I'm like, yeah, that, that is a full head of hair.

• 1:17Andrew Sharp?

  Not bald and depressing enough. Yes, that's what I have to look forward to over the next several years because God knows the Wizards are going to give him an extension. And he's just going to be here in our nation's capital until the end of the decade. So, yeah, it's been a tough 48 hours. I was not prepared for the possibility that the Wizards were gonna trade for Trey Young. But here we are. I'm thrilled to be recording a tech podcast where I can escape all of that. I have to record greatest of all talk later tonight, but we could go for hours on Sharp Tech just for my own personal sanity.

• 1:51Ben Thompson?

  I'm not sure I'm prepared to do that, but we'll see what we can do.

• 1:54Andrew Sharp?

  Yes, well, we'll begin with a post from the holiday break that was headlined, Capital in the 22nd Century. Philip Trammell and Dwarash Patel write, in part, if AI-

• 2:10Andrew Sharp?

  Is used to lock in a more stable world, or at least one in which ancestors can more fully control the wealth they leave to their descendants, let alone one in which they never die. The clock resetting shocks could disappear. Assuming the rich do not become unprecedentedly philanthropic. A global and highly progressive tax on capital, or at least capital income, will then indeed be essentially the only way to prevent inequality from growing extreme. Without one, once AI renders capital a true substitute for labor, approximately everything will eventually belong to those who are wealthiest when that transition occurs, or their heirs.

• 2:52Andrew Sharp?

  Or more precisely, it will belong to the subset of this group who save most and most invest with a view to maximizing long run returns. So Ben, we're going to enter the dorm room here to kick things off for 2026. Imagine the economy in the 22nd century. You wrote about all this in your article on Monday. I enjoyed that piece. But before we get to the substance, I'm curious, what prompted you to write that now? As we come back from the holidays?

• 3:24Ben Thompson?

  Well, first off, this piece was sort of ricocheting around, at least my corner of Twitter, I think, over the holiday break. Kind of a note to self, drop like these speculative pieces between Christmas and New Year. No one has anything better to do.

• 3:39Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 3:40Ben Thompson?

  Had to talk about this. The piece and the perspective kind of annoyed me. I was, I was getting worked up in some group chats. I'm like, oh, hey, fine, I'll just, I'll write, I'll write about this on Monday when I come back.

• 3:52Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 3:52Ben Thompson?

  So that, that was sort of the chief motivator. There's a bit where, yes, this is kind of a dorm room speculation piece. Like what happens when AI does literally everything? And it's not AI that we're necessarily controlling. It's like, oh, well, physical world has marginal costs. Well, if the AI decides to go out and get the natural resources and no one has to be involved. And like, at what point is there not even really marginal costs in any sort of meaningful way? Because the AI is building the AI that is building the robots who are building the other robots and all that sort of thing.

• 4:24Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 4:25Ben Thompson?

  And can do literally everything, you know, that, that humans can do, but, but better.

• 4:29Andrew Sharp?

  So build the plane, fly the plane, everything at that point.

• 4:33Ben Thompson?

  Build the excavator, go find, you know, survey the planet or the, or the galaxy to, to find the minerals and whatever it might be. No, exactly. There's a bit like, what, what are we even talking about here? The reason, so whatever, just let, let it fly. It's not a big deal.

• 4:51Andrew Sharp?

  Sure.

• 4:52Ben Thompson?

  At the same time, implicit, I'd say there's three things. Number one, sort of, in this paragraph you read, there is this push that actually we need to address this now because the transition is happening quickly. And so we need to lock in the sort of form of the world that we want when this arrives.

• 5:14Andrew Sharp?

  Right.

• 5:15Ben Thompson?

  So I, I think that like there, there is an, at least an agitation to make significant changes to the way we think about a lot of this stuff.

• 5:23Andrew Sharp?

  And I will say that impulse does make some sense to me. If you forecast seismic change that society is just not equipped to handle. I understand why in broad strokes, you would say, let's put down some guardrails to prevent things from spiraling out of control 10 or 15 years from now.

• 5:44Ben Thompson?

  Right. I mean, that's a whole another discussion that we may have about, uh, how productive is it actually to try to address things ahead of time? There's an awful lot of sort of arrogance and assumptions about one's knowledge of the future.

• 5:59Andrew Sharp?

  One's ability to even do that if you want to. Right. And what do you regulate? What guardrails do you put down when the technology that you're trying to control is effectively in its infancy? Would be the argument against doing something like that.

• 6:12Ben Thompson?

  And you sort of, sort of too, like there are actual stuff happening now in this vein. Like, uh, you have this potential wealth tax on billionaires in California, which, you know, Patel on Twitter is trying to like separate his article from that. But it's like, uh, you don't, this is something I learned a long time ago. You don't get to draw these subtleties. Like, like when it comes to politics, everything is a blunt instrument. And if you're writing an article endorsing a long-term tax on, on capital.

• 6:42Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 6:43Ben Thompson?

  You are sorry in the same boat as the people wanting to impose that fight, even if you disagree with that specifically, right? Like, and you know, again, this is a lesson, I think that comes with age and experience, but, uh, it is just sort of the reality of the matter. More broadly, the sentiment, this is a very San Francisco type of piece. And there is this mindset, I think, amongst AI people. And it goes back to lots of questions we've talked about, like, why did OpenAI start as a nonprofit? And like, and quite like the doomer sort of cults and effective altruists and all these pieces that there's almost a religious aspect to it about what AI is, what it's going to be.

• 7:24Ben Thompson?

  That it's this weird paradox where you have all these people working very hard to build this.

• 7:30Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 7:30Ben Thompson?

  And there's a bit where that almost religious aspect about it is super useful because it's a motivator to build this. But it's married to this viewpoint that I think is unduly pessimistic. And will lead to bad decisions and bad outcomes if it's allowed to sort of proliferate. And so I just feel like someone needs to come out and write a different point of view. Uh, that like, at least raising questions, do we actually know and understand the nature of, of humanity and human nature?

• 8:08Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 8:08Ben Thompson?

  And how does that matter in the context of AI? So it's like, is this an optimistic piece? It is, it is optimistic in certain senses. I think a lot of my AI perspective is a combination of I'm choosing to be optimistic and accepting that the alternative, I think, is not this. I think the alternative is actually much worse.

• 8:31Andrew Sharp?

  What, in what respects? What's the alternative that's much worse?

• 8:36Ben Thompson?

  Well, to take this piece specifically, there is this idea that again, AI becomes so good that it's basically a zero marginal cost capability for not just digital goods, which I, we've talked a ton about zero marginal cost in terms of digital, but also physical goods. So like, and again, like, where do you get the AI to give you a massage or be a physio, for example, right?

• 9:00Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 9:00Ben Thompson?

  To take something that like, it seems like a very sort of human, uh, sort of endeavor. And well, be- Because the, again, the AI figures out how to make better AI.

• 9:11Andrew Sharp?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:12Ben Thompson?

  The better AI figures out how to make better robots. It uses those robots to make even better robots.

• 9:18Andrew Sharp?

  Right. And so just to unpack this, because I'm new to the dorm room and I don't spend very much time in San Francisco, talking about what the world's gonna look like in the 22nd century.

• 9:28Ben Thompson?

  But that's the take off. It says in this paragraph, like when the take off or the transition happens. That's the transition they're talking about.

• 9:34Andrew Sharp?

  But logically speaking, it becomes zero marginal cost because you have a robot that can go get the resources you need and put it all together. Put, if you're talking about a product, for instance, it goes and gets the materials. It assembles the materials. It walks the materials to the store.

• 9:54Ben Thompson?

  Mining, it does the transportation. Yeah, like humans are just totally out, totally out of the loop. At the end of the day, this is kind of like our Netflix discussion, right? What is this one scarce resource?

• 10:04Andrew Sharp?

  Time and attention.

• 10:05Ben Thompson?

  Right? And, uh, and, and this is the removal of time, time and attention is a human concept, a capability that's limited by getting someone to sort of do something. This is like, what if that's totally removed?

• 10:16Andrew Sharp?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:17Ben Thompson?

  And that's sort of what this is referring to. And I, my core sort of pushback, even beyond all the human stuff and whatnot, is throw me in with the doomers, right? Like if the AI is actually this good,

• 10:34Andrew Sharp?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:34Ben Thompson?

  to the extent you don't need a human in the loop for literally anything.

• 10:39Andrew Sharp?

  Why do we think we'll control it?

• 10:41Ben Thompson?

  Worth keeping control of this AI, right?

• 10:44Andrew Sharp?

  That is a fair question. If we get to that point 150 years from now, we're probably screwed in that scenario regardless.

• 10:51Ben Thompson?

  Right. And in this scenario, somehow we still have like the property laws and the governance and the taxation rules from 2025. Somehow those all stay the same.

• 11:02Andrew Sharp?

  Right.

• 11:03Ben Thompson?

  But, and so we gotta like pass the right law like now or start thinking about it for this fantastical future. Like there, it's just like, there's a weird set of assumptions that are carried forward. Well, everything else is so drastically changing, we can barely imagine what that world might be. And if that, if that world arrives, I think everything is going to change.

• 11:26Andrew Sharp?

  Lot of upheaval.

• 11:26Ben Thompson?

  So like, let's, let's relax a little bit here, right?

• 11:29Andrew Sharp?

  There will be time to pass new laws because the governments as we know them will not exist in that world.

• 11:35Ben Thompson?

  No, the AIs will pass their own laws because that's what, that's what they'll like.

• 11:39Andrew Sharp?

  I just hope they're nice to us at that point, you know?

• 11:41Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, like, I, yeah, like, I, I could buy the doomer point of view. I, I just don't, this, this is like a weird middle ground. It's like, this isn't gonna happen. There's, there's, it's just some weird, weird thoughts here, weird assumptions.

• 11:54Andrew Sharp?

  Yes, fair enough. And what I enjoyed about your piece on Monday, it was, it was an optimistic way to start the year is you wrote about, the headline was AI and the human condition. And you wrote about how the vision put forth by Dark, Darkesh or Darkesh doesn't necessarily account for the good aspects of the human condition.

• 12:18Ben Thompson?

  This is the part that, this is where I was getting worked up on the group chats.

• 12:21Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 12:22Ben Thompson?

  So in this world where the AIs do everything, right? Like, everyone's going to have everything that they want. Because again, it's sort of zero marginal cost. If you're a rich person in this weird scenario where we still have normal property laws and all these sorts of pieces and people own the AI and control the AI. Why would you not have all the AIs you control, give everyone everything?

• 12:48Andrew Sharp?

  Say she ain't the needs of the people who might otherwise.

• 12:50Ben Thompson?

  It doesn't cost you anything. Right? No, exactly. Right? So, uh, so in this world, life sounds pretty grand. Everything's taken care of. So why, why would we care about inequality? Because everyone has everything. Just because on paper, this, everything's owned by Elon Musk or, or whatever it might be. Or he, his 47 gazillion heirs.

• 13:13Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 13:13Ben Thompson?

  Uh, the. Which, by the way, there's a long history of, of like, apparently like irrevocable trusts are going to guarantee that like heirs don't waste all the money or do whatever. Um, again, weird holdover this particular legal aspect is gonna last for, uh, until that time.

• 13:31Andrew Sharp?

  Heirs are pretty good at restoring equality, historically speaking.

• 13:35Ben Thompson?

  Right. Uh, so, so in this sort of, it, it, but no, the AI is gonna run the trust. It's gonna be fine. Um, anyhow, we worry about inequality in this world. There's no materialistic reason to be worried about inequality because everyone has everything, right? But we worry because like-

• 13:56Andrew Sharp?

  Property in that world would still be a driver of angst and frustration among the underclass.

• 14:03Ben Thompson?

  Put a pin in that. I want to come back to, I want to come back to that. I want to go back to that. Um, so in this world, uh, the reason to worry about inequality is just because humans don't like it. They don't like knowing that someone else has way more than they do. And I think this is one of the challenges of technology today.

• 14:20Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 14:21Ben Thompson?

  We, the whole Instagram feed, this even goes back to TV. You get visions of a world that's not yours. And it's not like, you're not comparing yourself to, what, what's the phrase? Uh, the, the Jones on the street or whatever it is, right? Like, uh, keeping up with the, keeping up with the Jones. Is it Jones?

• 14:38Andrew Sharp?

  Keeping up with the Jones is.

• 14:41Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, Jones is, okay.

• 14:42Andrew Sharp?

  Yep.

• 14:42Ben Thompson?

  Right? Like now it's keeping up with the Kardashians, right? Or, or sort of whatever.

• 14:46Andrew Sharp?

  Keeping up, I will say, the point on Instagram resonated because as a Formula One fan, I follow a lot of the drivers and a lot of the wags and I have access through Instagram to a life full of private jets and unbelievably luxurious vacation spots throughout Europe. And I consume those posts and I do feel poorer than I actually am when I'm sitting there, understanding what an F1 life looks like. And so, yeah, we have more access to the ultra wealthy these days and it makes everybody pretty frustrated.

• 15:24Ben Thompson?

  Right. And a huge number of people pretending to be ultra wealthy.

• 15:27Andrew Sharp?

  That's true too. It's important to keep that in mind as you're consuming Instagram content.

• 15:32Ben Thompson?

  Right. Uh, so, uh, but, but so implicit in this, that in a world of total abundance, we still have to worry about inequality.

• 15:45Ben Thompson?

  One of the assumptions being carried forward is a negative view of human nature. That human nature is envious, that it's not satisfied with what it has, even if on an objective level, what it has is pretty remarkable. Yeah. And you see this, again, and by the way, I think this is a valid, I think this is a truth, right? People today, life's amazing, right? Like even from a, the consumer surplus generated by technology in particular, access to everything, anywhere, all the world's information, we watch any game, I could watch all your Washington Wizards with Trey Young if I wanted to, which I will not want to. Me neither. Right, like you, uh, I have the same phone as the richest person in the world. Yeah.

• 16:29Ben Thompson?

  Because that's the nature of technology, it brings everything up, right? And yet, people feel unhappier than ever, right? About their relative economic position, they're elected communists in New York City because, uh, you know, it's just not fair that people can have more than I do, right? Sure. Or whatever it might be. And, and, and so you have this, that human condition is a real thing. It's driving politics all over the world, it's not just New York City right now. Right. Yeah. The question though is, why do you only carry forward the worst part of humanity? Mm-hmm. The best part of humanity. There's good parts. Historically speaking. What about the best parts? What about the good parts, right? Yeah, so tell me more about the good parts of humanity. Well, the good parts of humanity are, number one, I like, humans, I think, like other humans, right?

• 17:12Ben Thompson?

  Like, I mean, we, we have a, a friend of ours that is very passionate about this in terms of music, it's like, finds like AI music very impressive, zero desire to listen. It's like, you know, there's the, uh, the analogy I make is, um, uh, I like a good Japanese whiskey, uh, Yamazaki is, I was into that before it got super popular and sold out everywhere, so I'm bitter that it became very popular. Yeah. Uh, it's much harder to, now it's like all blends, you can't like get a proper, the, the 12 year because they had so much demand, they started blending stuff, uh, you know. One standing corrected. Yeah, great Japanese whiskey grievance there. Well, Japanese whiskies are incredible, they're also not the best in the world in my estimation. And the reason is, I think a 12 year Yamazaki is basically perfect.

• 17:59Ben Thompson?

  And there's an aspect of the perfection that...

• 18:04Andrew Sharp?

  Leaves you wanting.

• 18:05Ben Thompson?

  It's not a 10 out of 10. Yes.

• 18:06Andrew Sharp?

  Interesting.

• 18:07Ben Thompson?

  There's a bit where like you have, you know, an incredible Scotch and there's just something interesting about it. That's not, it doesn't like follow you, follow the formula. It's not quite right, right? And that is part of what makes it appealing. It's part of why maybe my favorite whiskey, someone else actually doesn't like it because there's like, no, everyone who likes whiskey likes Yamazaki, okay? It's, it's a perfect whiskey.

• 18:36Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 18:36Ben Thompson?

  But the fact that it's perfect is also why it's not the best, right?

• 18:41Andrew Sharp?

  Too optimized. Yeah.

• 18:43Ben Thompson?

  And, and I, I do think there, this is just sort of a, there's a flattening of this perspective of the AI is going to make everything very, when you say, oh, well, the AI is so amazing, it can make personalized versions for everyone. And I don't know, this, it sounds, this is why I hate venturing into the dorm room for like, like sort of analysis, but this is, there is sort of a core assumption here that, uh, we do have preferences and differences that makes us unique and matters. That's why I invoked like, like sex in here. Like what's the most like base example I could have where I think people are going to prefer humans over robots, right? Like there's something beyond just a physical sensation. You want a sort of actual connection.

• 19:26Andrew Sharp?

  Emotional connection.

• 19:26Ben Thompson?

  And by the way, do you want a connection with just literally anyone? No, ideally you want it with like one specific person.

• 19:34Andrew Sharp?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:34Ben Thompson?

  And, and like, there's just a, and this is why these discussions are frustrating to me in a certain respect. Cause it's like, this is something we all know, but because it's like, you can't like articulate it in a spreadsheet or whatever. It just sort of gets flushed away and dismissed in these discussions. And we end up in the scenario where, yeah, people are envious. We have to worry about inequality, even if they have everything. And I'm like, well, what if we have everything and people still want something else? They still want something different or special and unique. That seems like that's going to matter too.

• 20:05Andrew Sharp?

  Right. And that will lead to jobs for people providing those special and unique experiences somewhere in the future.

• 20:12Ben Thompson?

  Maybe, maybe we have to steer away from this next part, but that one a little bit. Um, but that's a, that's a different discussion for a different podcast.

• 20:18Andrew Sharp?

  The oldest profession there is. There will still be a market.

• 20:22Ben Thompson?

  That's why I was hesitant to, like, that was such a good example to invoke in the article. I'm like, people could draw some connections here. That's going to be a little weird. Um, but the, uh, but, but I think this applies to a great many things.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  All right, and that is the end of the free preview. If you'd like to hear more from Ben and I, there are links to subscribe in the show notes, or you can also go to sharptech.fm. Either option will get you access to a personalized feed that has all the shows we do every week, plus lots more great content from Stratechery and the Stratechery Plus bundle. Check it out, and if you've got feedback, please email us at [email protected].