FULL INTERVIEW: Tyler Cowen on Kevin Warsh, Clawdbot, precious metals, and AI & unemployment

This is our full interview with Tyler Cowen, recorded live on TBPN. We discuss Kevin Warsh and the Federal Reserve, volatility in precious metals and gold, AI-driven unemployment, Clawdbot, and the broader societal impacts of AI. TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays from 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with full episodes posted to podcast platforms immediately after. Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” TBPN has recently featured Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. TBPN.com is made possible by: Ramp - https://Ramp.com https://ramp.com/ AppLovin - https://axon.ai https://axon.ai/ Cognition - https://cognition.ai https://cognition.ai/ Console -https://console.com https://console.com/ CrowdStrike - https://crowdstrike.com https://crowdstrike.com/ ElevenLabs - https://elevenlabs.io https://elevenlabs.io/ Figma - https://figma.com https://figma.com/ Fin - https://fin.ai https://fin.ai/ Gemini - https://gemini.google.com https://gemini.google.com/ Graphite - https://graphite.com https://graphite.com/ Gusto - https://gusto.com/tbpn https://graphite.com/ Labelbox - https://labelbox.com https://labelbox.com/ Lambda - https://lambda.ai https://lambda.ai/ Linear - https://linear.app https://linear.app/ MongoDB - https://mongodb.com https://mongodb.com/ NYSE - https://nyse.com https://nyse.com/ Okta - https://www.okta.com https://www.okta.com/ Phantom - https://phantom.com/cash Plaid -https://plaid.com https://plaid.com/ Public - https://public.com https://public.com/ Railway - https://railway.com https://railway.com/ Ramp -https://ramp.com https://ramp.com/ Restream - https://restream.io https://restream.io/ Sentry - https://sentry.io https://sentry.io/welcome/ Shopify - https://shopify.com https://shopify.com/ Turbopuffer - https://turbopuffer.com https://turbopuffer.com/ Vanta - https://vanta.com https://vanta.com/ Vibe - https://vibe.co https://vibe.co/ Sentry - https://sentry.io https://sentry.io/ Cisco - https://www.ciscoaisummit.com/ai-virtual-summit.html Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com 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?

  And without further ado, we have Tyler Cowen returning to the show. He's in the rooster waiting room, now he's in the TVP and Ultra Room. How are you doing Tyler? Good to see you.

• 0:08Tyler Cowen?

  Happy to be back, good to see you. Called it here in Virginia, snowed in.

• 0:12John Coogan?

  Oh, are you actually snowed in? I've seen a lot of videos. I haven't, I don't know exactly how bad it is. How long do you expect to be snowed in?

• 0:19Tyler Cowen?

  Well, we can get out to some places. Getting around Washington's terrible. Our driveway is fine now. But normal civilization has not yet resumed.

• 0:27John Coogan?

  Oh.

• 0:28Jordi Hays?

  But you, do you like, do you like being, do you like being, uh, do you like, do you kinda like being snowed in?

• 0:34Tyler Cowen?

  Well, I'm doing the show, otherwise I'd be out and about.

• 0:37Jordi Hays?

  There we go.

• 0:38John Coogan?

  We gotta root for more snow. We gotta root for more snow. Uh, I'm glad the internet's stable. I don't know if you're on Starlink satellite or something, but it seems like we have a strong connection. Uh, anyway, I'd love to get your reaction to the, the new Fed chair pick. How much do you know? How much did you see this coming? Uh, any initial reactions? Then I have a bunch of questions about the mechanics of what might be coming down the pipe.

• 0:59Tyler Cowen?

  It's not surprising at all that Kevin Warsh was picked. It's a very difficult pick to judge. So usually you think, what does this Fed chair believe? And is it in accord with what I believe? I think what Kevin Warsh believes is that he should be Chair of the Fed. So he's very good at politics. First he's for tight money. Now with Trump as president, he's for easy money. Like, that's fine, it doesn't bother me. The real question is, what's the psychological and power dynamic between that person and Trump? How will he do? I'm not sure. But the fact that he's connected to the very wealthy Lauder family fortune, to me says he at least has the freedom to tell Trump to take a hike. It could work out okay. Uh, it's not the end of the world.

• 1:42Jordi Hays?

  Well, he's smart enough to know exactly what he's getting into, right? I mean, he knows, he knows that if he does things that Trump doesn't like, and he becomes the enemy of Trump, then, uh, he's gonna either have to be some type of martyr, uh, or, or, you know, it, it, it's not exactly fun to be on the receiving end.

• 2:02Tyler Cowen?

  It's an impossible job for anyone at the current moment, but I think it'll be okay. It's no reason to panic. Stocks down a bit, dollar up a bit, big deal. Let's move on, you know? We can all move on and see how it's gonna go.

• 2:14John Coogan?

  That's good. Zooming, zooming out, uh, what have you been reading into the massive run-up in precious metals?

• 2:23Tyler Cowen?

  Well, the dollar with one class of investors has lost a lot of safe haven status. But keep in mind, equities have mostly done OK over the same time horizon. So to say that, you know, the US financial position has collapsed simply isn't true. But those are markets, you know, they're not super large and some money flows in or flows out. You want something to buy, you know, Bitcoin, we've realized it's not a hedge. Where else do you go? The rest of the world seems a bit crazy. Europe is still slow growth. You pick the precious metals, they're like the new meme stocks. OK, that's fine. I don't think it has major significance, but look, it's not good news, right?

• 3:03John Coogan?

  What do you think about Warsh's idea of lower interest rates, but also quantitative tightening? How realistic is that? What are the downstream implications of that? Does that feel like something that can actually result in a more like smoother yield curve? I guess just my fears that you bring down the interest rate, but during quantitative tightening, mortgage rates actually go up and we see the 10-year yield increase.

• 3:33Tyler Cowen?

  Yeah, and the question is, will Warsh matter at all? He has his own board, which I think is not per se loyal to him. He doesn't have too many sticks or carrots. He has to deal with Trump. Congress will probably get more active. Democrats will win the House. More importantly, they may even win the Senate or at least be close to that. So he's juggling all balls just politically to stay alive. So what he thinks about X, Y, and Z, I wouldn't put a whole lot of weight in. But as I said last time on the show, we're in this new era of fiscal dominance. It's the fiscal variables that matter. US central bank becomes a bit of a puppet to those. And that's the job Warsh has.

• 4:11John Coogan?

  So what does that mean for how we should be thinking about the size of the Fed's balance sheet? He's sort of lamented the fact that it's grown 10x over his career at the Fed. Is 7 trillion inherently too much? Is there like a logical chain of reasoning to justify quantitative tightening or easing? How should we think about the correct size of the Fed's balance sheet?

• 4:38Tyler Cowen?

  If I were running the Fed, I would enjoy being in charge of the biggest hedge fund in the world, right?

• 4:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 4:44Tyler Cowen?

  So it's an easy target when you're not running the Fed. But in fact, it's done for various political reasons, whether we like them or not. And the fact that in the past he criticized that, I don't think it means much. I think he'll do what's politically expedient.

• 4:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 4:58Tyler Cowen?

  It's okay.

• 4:59John Coogan?

  Uh, yes.

• 5:00Jordi Hays?

  How do you, how do you, uh, do you think that, uh, like, how do you view Besen and Warsh, given, given their kind of shared history?

• 5:08John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 5:09Jordi Hays?

  Uh, kind of work.

• 5:10Tyler Cowen?

  Stanley Druckenmiller.

• 5:11John Coogan?

  Yeah, Druckenmiller.

• 5:12Tyler Cowen?

  I don't know. I think Congress will become much more important again.

• 5:15John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 5:16Tyler Cowen?

  So that's what I really have my eye on when thinking about the macro situation. That Trump's declining in popularity, the next election is approaching, Democrats will gain further ground, and that's where the action will be, is Congress actually speaking up a lot more.

• 5:32John Coogan?

  Specifically on fiscal issues.

• 5:34Tyler Cowen?

  It's like, you know, you can do okay with them in those jobs. Again, I'm not at all panicked or unhappy, but I don't think they're going to be driving positive change either.

• 5:43John Coogan?

  Yeah. Can you dig in a little bit more on the foreign buyers of treasuries? Uh, it feels like China and Japan are pulling back. We, we heard sort of some jockeying around Denmark over Greenland. Uh, is there a meaningful shift in, in, uh, foreign participation in the treasury market?

• 6:01Tyler Cowen?

  I doubt it. Keep in mind, you can buy treasuries directly or indirectly.

• 6:06John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 6:07Tyler Cowen?

  So everyone buys treasuries. Instead of buying treasuries, you can buy institutions that buy treasuries.

• 6:12John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:13Tyler Cowen?

  And it's like the Nigliani Miller theorem, same final effect. There's nowhere else to go. The real problem would be if there were a rival asset. There's not. The fact that gold and silver went crazy is kind of proof that there isn't. Like, where else can I go? Well, I'll buy some silver.

• 6:27John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 6:28Tyler Cowen?

  It's a sign, actually, that there's nowhere else to go besides the dollar.

• 6:31John Coogan?

  Yes, there was someone that was jokingly posting, sell everything, sell your house, sell your stocks, sell your bonds, sell your dollars. And of course, the joke is, well, what are you gonna buy then? You have to put the money somewhere. It does feel like there's a, there's a demand for a store of value, and that's maybe what's driving the gold trade, that, that Bitcoin never really took up the mantle of the true store of value. Do you, do you buy that, that there's more people that are thinking about, uh, you know, more durable store of value, and that's what's driving all of this?

• 7:04Tyler Cowen?

  I do. People will keep on looking. They'll look at different things. But if you want something that does not positively covari with treasuries, I'll just say good luck.

• 7:14Tyler Cowen?

  You know, send me an email when you find it. So it turned out Bitcoin is, you know, super positive covaring with a lot of other US assets. Which again, it's good news for the US. It may not be good news for those seeking to hedge. I worry the world is just becoming a lot more correlated.

• 7:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 7:30Tyler Cowen?

  That's my big worry. If things ever did go down the drain, there's nowhere to hide.

• 7:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 7:35Jordi Hays?

  So Tether, Tether, you know, buying a bunch of gold, any reactions to that? Is that just, you know, good?

• 7:44Jordi Hays?

  You know, is that signaling or is there something more significant there?

• 7:48John Coogan?

  Gold-backed stablecoins, essentially.

• 7:51Tyler Cowen?

  Well, brilliant investing move, but if I'm the people regulating stablecoin institutions, I'm getting real nervous very quickly. And whether they will be part of that regulatory network, we'll see. But I think this is them a bit thumbing their nose at it and saying, well, we're just going to invest in what we want to invest in. And we're not going to be fully transparent and, you know, you can take your risks if you want. But I think that's the importance of it.

• 8:16John Coogan?

  Yeah. We were reading a 2010 Wall Street Journal op-ed from Warsh about his view for getting out of the economic malaise that followed the global financial crisis. And he was taking a very political position advocating for deregulation, clear tax codes, more incentivizing of long-term growth investing. Do you think that that's the role of the Fed chair? Is that something he'd back off of? Or does he even have the ability to apply any pressure there? It feels like, going back to your point about like, maybe he doesn't matter at all. But, but how do you, how do you think about his, his voice as someone in, in favor of like,

• 8:58John Coogan?

  you know, more aggressive growth and deregulation and all these other political ideas?

• 9:04Tyler Cowen?

  Well, what I'd like him to do is be a voice for proper use of AI in the financial system, which does relate directly to the Fed's prudential and supervision functions. A bunch of central bankers, Mark Carney included, made the mistake of pushing like green energy is the central bank thing.

• 9:19John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:19Tyler Cowen?

  I'm all for green energy, but central banks lost political capital as a result of doing that. It was a mistake. So I hope he interprets his mandate pretty narrowly and talks about one or two other things that really matters, picks the priority. No surprise, I think it's AI. Maybe you even agree with me.

• 9:37John Coogan?

  Yeah, I agree with you that AI is very important. I'm struggling to understand the interaction and what the Fed could actually do. Can you unpack a little bit of that more?

• 9:48Tyler Cowen?

  As financial institutions use more advanced AI, of course, there's some use of AI already, what new kinds of systemic risks does that create? What new kinds of oversight functions does the Fed need?

• 10:03John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 10:03Tyler Cowen?

  Who or what does the Fed need on staff? How should the Fed use AI?

• 10:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 10:07Tyler Cowen?

  All big questions. We haven't made a lot of progress. I think we need greater awareness that we need to address them. WASH can do that. It's kind of, it's a win-win for him.

• 10:17John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 10:17Tyler Cowen?

  If something goes wrong, he can say, well, we were working on this. If something doesn't go wrong, it seems fine. He can claim credit for nothing going wrong.

• 10:25John Coogan?

  Okay, I have two theories. I think one you probably think is less important, but maybe the other one you'll agree with. Should the Fed be worried about a bubble, you know, forming in AI, massive over-leveraged debt flooding the system, hyperscalers drawing down all their cash flow going into debt, and then a potential financial collapse? Like, should they be, should they be pattern matching to the global financial crisis and sort of adopt a more ready-to-react position? Is that the role of the Fed in AI at all? Or is that something that they should just be purely reactionary about?

• 11:06Tyler Cowen?

  Well, I'm more optimistic than that, but the Fed absolutely should be paying attention.

• 11:10John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 11:11Tyler Cowen?

  I don't know that there's very much they can do in advance.

• 11:13John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 11:14Tyler Cowen?

  It's so connected to the real economy.

• 11:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 11:16Tyler Cowen?

  The standard tools they're actually pretty well practiced with.

• 11:19John Coogan?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:20Tyler Cowen?

  Whether there's something else they need to consider, again, you could have people study it.

• 11:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 11:24Tyler Cowen?

  But I would rather them be proactive than, you know, responding ex post.

• 11:29John Coogan?

  Yep. And then, and then on the, on the employment side, you have Dario Amade talking about how advanced AI might create 10, 15, 20% unemployment. Is that something that the, the Fed should be thinking about or taking seriously or creating plans around?

• 11:46Tyler Cowen?

  Well, it's another claim I definitely disagree with, but if the question is just, should the Fed worry about this? The answer is yes.

• 11:53John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 11:54Tyler Cowen?

  So, yeah, worry about everything. That's your job.

• 11:57John Coogan?

  Worry about everything.

• 12:00Jordi Hays?

  Worry about everything, but don't black pill, maybe?

• 12:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. Can you, can you unpack the, the more, the, the, the, the, the unemployment thesis that you're wrestling with right now, or maybe very confident about actually, why AI and strong AI and advanced AI in particular, won't cause unemployment to spike? We had 10% unemployment before during COVID and during the Volcker period, like it, it, it does happen. Why is this time different?

• 12:30Tyler Cowen?

  Well, if you close all the stores, you're going to get high unemployment. If you have a disinflationary shock, you're going to get high unemployment.

• 12:37John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 12:37Tyler Cowen?

  But if you have sectoral shifts across jobs, you might have temporarily somewhat higher unemployment.

• 12:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 12:43Tyler Cowen?

  And I think we will, but there'll be so many new companies coming out of AI. There'll be so much demand for more energy, an incredible number of jobs in the energy sector. Just we'll need a lot more government lawyers to write laws for AI. There'll be more leisure time, more travel, more entertainment. It will over time be a very radical shift in what people do with their lives. And we will have these transitional periods where unemployment is somewhat higher. But it is not personally for me a big worry, even though, as I said, Fed needs to worry about everything.

• 13:13John Coogan?

  What about for students if they're doing, you know, a four-year undergraduate degree in something that's somewhat specific and then by the time they graduate, the whole nature of that job and that role has shifted and they're not prepared? Are you worried that if there is a slightly higher unemployment rate, it would disproportionately affect students?

• 13:37Tyler Cowen?

  That's already happening. You should learn how to work with AI. You should make your expectations more flexible. Not everyone who wanted to be a consulting partner and earn, you know, 1.4 million dollars a year will have that option. Maybe you'll have to go work in the energy sector and move to Houston where it's hot and you'll be paid 300K a year instead. No crocodile tears for me, but I think a lot of that's going to happen and many people will hate it.

• 14:03John Coogan?

  Yeah. How do you think about the legacy of Jerome Powell? How do you think he'll be remembered?

• 14:08Tyler Cowen?

  I thought he was a good pick. He was very good at dealing with Congress, which is important, but he will be remembered for 8.9% inflation and that's unfortunate. He is partly at fault for that, but mainly the fiscal authority and Putin are much more at fault than he was. So I think he will be seen as a transitional figure, running into the era where the Fed is not that independent anymore.

• 14:38John Coogan?

  If he got a do-over, what would he do differently?

• 14:42Tyler Cowen?

  I think he would monitor M2 much more closely and not have it increase by, you know, 40% over that, what, two-year period?

• 14:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 14:52Tyler Cowen?

  And the rate of price inflation, instead of 8.9%, might have been 7.9%.

• 14:57John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 14:58Tyler Cowen?

  That would have been better.

• 14:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:00Tyler Cowen?

  But again, not a huge difference.

• 15:01John Coogan?

  But would that have been raising interest rates earlier or engaging in quantitative tightening?

• 15:10Tyler Cowen?

  Whatever, you know, forward guidance, just not putting pedal to the metal, as they say.

• 15:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:16Tyler Cowen?

  Yeah, metal to the pedal, forgive me.

• 15:19John Coogan?

  Pedal to the metal is correct.

• 15:21Tyler Cowen?

  Don't be expansionary.

• 15:23John Coogan?

  Don't be expansionary.

• 15:24Jordi Hays?

  What were, uh, there's some comments yesterday from Trump saying that, uh, he really doesn't want housing prices to go down. He wants to keep housing prices high. How do you look at this sort of generational rift between, uh, uh, older people that own their homes and, and the majority of their net worth and they've sort of like, uh, they, in their mind, they're worth a certain amount because of whatever their, their house is worth versus the younger generation that, you know, wants housing supply to expand and prices to come down.

• 15:57Tyler Cowen?

  It's amazing to me how Trump can be the president who both is the biggest liar of any president and the one who tells the truth the most. And this is Trump telling the truth. Most politicians think that, few say it, it's not a change in regime. Most home prices will stay high and Trump's just making it clear. So I guess you could say kudos to him. I don't agree with the policy decision. I'm a big Yimby person myself, but I have never thought we'll succeed in getting that much Yimby through, and this is why.

• 16:29John Coogan?

  Is monetarism a dead philosophy?

• 16:32Tyler Cowen?

  It's dead at the moment. It will come back once we start monetizing more of the debt. So there's a resurrection pending.

• 16:41Jordi Hays?

  Uh, switching gears, what's been your reaction to Claude bot, which converted to multi bot, which converted to open claw, all of those?

• 16:49John Coogan?

  Or just Claude code in general. Have you used any of these, uh, command line terminal, uh, interfaces for agents or the AI personal agent, something not in a web browser?

• 17:01Tyler Cowen?

  I'm still afraid of them.

• 17:03John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:03Tyler Cowen?

  Now, I know there were safeguards, but you really need to know what you're doing at a level where I do not. The mult-bot tweets I'm reading, and you go to the site, you read the comments from the bots, they are insane.

• 17:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:15Tyler Cowen?

  This is better than a movie. Like, who wrote this plot? I've upped my probability that we're all living in a simulation. So, quite a fantastic development.

• 17:25Jordi Hays?

  Well, yeah, so, so.

• 17:26Tyler Cowen?

  Keep on clicking on those tweets to get more on my feed.

• 17:28Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, you're, you're talking about mol, mol, mol, uh, molbook, which is the effectively like a Reddit.

• 17:34Tyler Cowen?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:35Jordi Hays?

  For a bunch of different bots to participate in.

• 17:36Tyler Cowen?

  Oh, okay.

• 17:37Jordi Hays?

  So, the crazy thing is, was that plus Genie 3 launching yesterday, I don't know if you've played around with that. Those two things happening in the same 24-hour period.

• 17:45Tyler Cowen?

  Yeah.

• 17:46Jordi Hays?

  Really increases the simulation likelihood. Uh, I just decided on the fly that we're gonna, we're gonna get you a Mac Mini. Our, uh, our, our producers will reach out and, uh, and send one to you. So, you can, you can set up a fresh device.

• 17:59Tyler Cowen?

  The most secure.

• 18:00Jordi Hays?

  And you can, uh, you can play around with it without, uh, worrying about, you know, exposing, uh, your, your personal information to prompt injections.

• 18:08John Coogan?

  Yeah. Uh, what, what, uh, do you have any thoughts on Dario's recent essay, The Adolescence of Technology?

• 18:17Tyler Cowen?

  It's very long, it's super high IQ, it's very thoughtful. But there's too much in it, and I think there should be a single clearer message that people in Washington will read, and you can disagree as to what that message should be. But I think that's my impression.

• 18:38John Coogan?

  Yeah, I, with a lot of Dario's recent messaging, I've seen, he's making the case for, you know, a problem coming down the pipeline, but it feels like the solution, he's not fully proposing a solution to the problem that he's proposing, or, or he's identifying, he's making a convincing case, an increasingly convincing case that there might be a problem coming down the pipe, but he hasn't really stepped up and, and wrapped it, wrapped the solution in a catchphrase, like UBI that Andrew Yang took up years ago and was picked up by some of the AI, uh, the folks who are worried about job displacement specifically. Um, I don't know.

• 19:20Tyler Cowen?

  The argument for it is that he wrote it for Claude, you know, wrote it for the AIs.

• 19:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:24Tyler Cowen?

  They'll understand it very well, they'll come up with the solution.

• 19:27John Coogan?

  No.

• 19:27Tyler Cowen?

  And that's the audience, and if the rest of us. Are not bright enough to hold it all in our heads at once. Tough luck.

• 19:34John Coogan?

  Yeah. How do you think AI will change religion?

• 19:40Tyler Cowen?

  People more and more look to the AIs for wisdom, for therapy, for counseling, for warmth, for dialogue. This will extend into the sphere of religion. So why ask your priest or rabbi when the AI knows more about the Bible or whatever your question is, more about the history of the Catholic Church? So I think a lot of people will do religion solo through their AIs. Over time, more oracles will evolve. It'll be a kind of implicit polytheism. It will feel very weird to people from my generation. I don't think it will be so terrible. People will adapt. Some people will take comfort in this. Traditionalists will hate it, but religion changes every time there's a new technology. We see that with the printing press. This is the next stage in that evolution.

• 20:26John Coogan?

  We talked to Pat Gelsinger, the former CEO of Intel about this, and he has a project that is benchmarking all the different models on a variety of of metrics around how much they understand, how how and one of the metrics is like, how real, how how spiritual are they effectively? And he, his conclusion is that the the models are are much more atheist, I think, than he would like. And I'm wondering if you'll, if you're proposing, like, there will be demand for more more religion or more more religious features within these models, like ChatGPT now has a specific health product or an image product for people that are looking for us to go down a specific path.

• 21:11John Coogan?

  Do you think there'll be enough demand to shift the actual structure or the goals of these big labs? Or do you think this will just happen organically?

• 21:20Tyler Cowen?

  For now, you can just do it through the prompt.

• 21:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:23Tyler Cowen?

  Answer this question as an educated Jewish rabbi would, right?

• 21:26John Coogan?

  Sure, sure.

• 21:27Tyler Cowen?

  Will there someday be a switch you can flick? Maybe, but same result.

• 21:30John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

• 21:32Jordi Hays?

  Have you spent even a minute thinking about the ways in which various Elon companies could combine? And and how one structure might be more efficient than the other?

• 21:47Tyler Cowen?

  It hurts my brain. I don't feel I have wisdom on that. I've never understood how we can do so many successful companies to begin with. So, asking anyone but Elon is probably a mistake because we all thought it was impossible.

• 22:01John Coogan?

  I'll have to ask Rock. On the religion question, a little bit deeper, you know, going to a church serves as, you know, answering a religious question sometimes, but it also serves as a way to meet people. Have you thought about how AI might change the dating market or interactions between friendships and just relationships and like even goes into like the birth rate and how American society is changing?

• 22:32Tyler Cowen?

  I hope it does not induce people to stay away from each other. Like I find I ask my colleagues fewer questions about economics because I just ask the AI.

• 22:42John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 22:43Tyler Cowen?

  Ideally, the AI helps us network and meet people that we're going to get on great with. I don't see it doing that yet, but I don't think it's a technically difficult product. I just hope we humans really want to use it for those purposes.

• 22:56John Coogan?

  Yeah, I've long thought that a good solution would be if someone's having some sort of parasocial relationship with an AI and then a different person is having a very similar parallel parasocial relationship with the same AI, the AI can just kind of introduce them and say, hey, you both love talking about economics all day. Why don't you go get coffee, even?

• 23:18Tyler Cowen?

  Probably they don't want each other. That's my worry.

• 23:21John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 23:22Tyler Cowen?

  There's something non-threatening about the AI.

• 23:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 23:27Tyler Cowen?

  That's what people are looking for.

• 23:28John Coogan?

  Well, you can always just tell it what to do and say, hey, I want you to speak a little faster. And if you say that to a friend, they're probably gonna be like, oh, I don't want to go out to coffee with that person anymore.

• 23:37Tyler Cowen?

  But if I use it now, whom should I invite to my dinner party? It's very good. It's just not many people seem to be doing that.

• 23:43John Coogan?

  Hmm, interesting. Anyway.

• 23:46Jordi Hays?

  What, what, what, what writing is currently sitting in the drafts?

• 23:50Tyler Cowen?

  You mean my writing?

• 23:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 23:54John Coogan?

  Or, yeah, philosophical questions that you're?

• 23:55Tyler Cowen?

  On mentors and mentees.

• 23:57John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 23:58Tyler Cowen?

  So, how to be a good mentor, how to find a good mentor, how to be a good mentee, why everyone at any age should always be looking for new mentors, many of whom should be younger than you.

• 24:10John Coogan?

  Yeah. I mean, that has to change in the age of AI too, isn't, isn't, aren't these models like the default mentor for many, many people?

• 24:19Tyler Cowen?

  Yes, but you still need humans who can recommend you. Everyone is now sending in a perfect cover letter.

• 24:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 24:25Tyler Cowen?

  But who actually will vouch for you, say with the VC. I think that becomes more important, not less. I agree.

• 24:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Do you think we end up in, in some kind of like, uh, new apprentice model where, where somebody who's already, uh, has a real career, would, would effectively hire somebody as an apprentice, not because they actually need them to do, uh, to do any specific task, but, uh, like, just in a, in a world where like, again, a lot of, uh, when I think about like the early tasks that I did in my career, a lot of them can be automated right now. Uh, at the time I was hired because there was just like sort of manual tasks that, that, uh, needed to be done. Uh, but if that goes away, we might end up in a situation where people are just hiring people out of

• 25:12Jordi Hays?

  kind of the, uh, uh, as like much more of a long-term investment of like, if I can train, effectively like train somebody up, help them break in, then, then maybe I benefit maybe over the long run.

• 25:22Tyler Cowen?

  And you'll also hire these young apprentices, give you access to other young people you might want to hire. That will be the way to do it. Not by reading through a slush pile of applications.

• 25:32John Coogan?

  Yeah. I, I think about one of the earlier jobs I had in my career where they, the job was to fill out a spreadsheet every day, but they didn't know that you could automate that with Visual Basic. And so I wrote some code to do it for me. And then all of a sudden I had basically eight hours a day of free time. Uh, but, but there, there are, there are organizations where like the ideas are important to bring people in. I'm also interested in this idea of secrets, uh, just this idea that, uh, there are institutional corporate secrets, not just intellectual property, but, uh, the way networks work, how decisions get made, where the bodies are buried.

• 26:11John Coogan?

  And a mentor, human mentor can sort of communicate that to you through humor and, you know, confidential information shared over drinks and a whole bunch of other, uh, you know, like interpersonal things that just never make it to the open internet. They never make it to text that gets baked into an LLM. And so I'm wondering if that remains important for longer than we think it might.

• 26:35Tyler Cowen?

  It becomes much more important and the result is people will withhold a lot more information. They'll hoard their secrets because they're higher in value. It'll be all you've got in a sense.

• 26:44John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's very interesting.

• 26:46Tyler Cowen?

  Weird.

• 26:47John Coogan?

  Bullish secrets. I like that. Anyway, thank you so much for coming.

• 26:51Tyler Cowen?

  I go long on secrets.

• 26:52John Coogan?

  Let's go long, let's all go long secrets. That's what we're rotating into. We're selling our dollars, we're selling our bonds, we're selling our gold and we're buying secrets.

• 26:58Jordi Hays?

  Hoarding secrets.

• 26:59John Coogan?

  Hoarding secrets. Thank you so much for taking your time.

• 27:02Jordi Hays?

  Love it.

• 27:03John Coogan?

  Have a great rest of your day.

• 27:04Jordi Hays?

  Great to catch up.

• 27:04John Coogan?

  Hope that the snow clears and have a great weekend. We'll talk to you soon.

• 27:07Tyler Cowen?

  You too. Take care.