City Arts & Lectures: Our guest today is Kara Swisher, a journalist who spent over four decades covering the technology sector, starting in the 1980s. Swisher was in college, and as The New York Times reports, that technology was payphones. Since then, she’s been covering the news and personalities of every era of technology for outlets like The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
Swisher is currently the host of two podcasts, On with Kara Swisher and Pivot, co-hosted with venture capitalist Scott Galloway. While Swisher is considered a Silicon Valley insider for her close and long-standing relationships with the industry’s key players, her handling of her subjects is anything but gentle.
Those include everyone from Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg to media scions like Rupert Murdoch. Many of those conversations are featured in her new memoir, Burn Book: A Tech Love Story. On March 7th, 2024, Swisher, typically the interviewer, came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to Sam Altman, an entrepreneur who’s driven some of today’s most significant tech companies, including OpenAI.
Join us now for a conversation with Kara Swisher.
Sam Altman: This is so fun!
Kara Swisher: I know, I’m so excited
Sam Altman: I’ve never done this. This is like a great honor and-
Kara Swisher: All right, let’s see how you do
Sam Altman: … just excited to do it. I, it won’t, this is not gonna be my… I know what I’m good at. This is not gonna be it, but it’s very nice of you.
Kara Swisher: I would say don’t quit your day job, but really you shouldn’t quit your day job.
Sam Altman: Speaking of that-
Kara Swisher: Actually you almost quit your day job, right?
Sam Altman: You, you- I did quit it. I got fired, rehired. I quit, I got rehired again.
Kara Swisher: Yeah, I read about it.
Sam Altman: I mean, I have a lot of questions
Kara Swisher: Actually, I reported it, but go ahead.
Sam Altman: Yeah. You did. We didn’t plan this, but you knew a lot about that whole thing.
Kara Swisher: Yes.
Sam Altman: And I would like to know how.
Kara Swisher: Oh, okay. Well, you know, when it was happening, I’ll tell you the honest truth, some of it was… I had retired from beat reporting, and honestly, I was the best beat reporter in tech, I was. It’s true. And I’d done scoops, I was well known for that, and I haven’t done it for years.
I’ve been writing columns and everything else. But as it was growing, what was happening, I was hearing, people were calling me to tell me what was going on, lots, like pretty much everybody. And one of the things, I know this sounds crazy, but there were all these crazy rumors about what happened, including about your personal life, and a lot of it was anti-gay.
I thought it was anti-gay, and I was like, “That’s not true.” People who I knew who should know better were repeating rumors that were absol- And I checked them out, by the way. And it was bothering me. I was like, “This is not accurate.” And nobody was doing it accurately yet, ’cause it was so confusing at the beginning.
And so I didn’t really have an outlet, ’cause I, Recode is gone and I wasn’t writing on a daily basis like that, and I just decided to start posting stuff on both X and Threads about what was happening. And so everything, every time I’d get a little scooplet, I would post it, and someone would say, “This is what’s happening.”
I’m like, “No, actually, let me clear it up for you.” And so I just started getting into it for the weekend and I just wanted it to be accurate what was going on. I really was irritated by the lack of accuracy, and not among reporters. It just was… ‘Cause now it’s not just reporters working, most of whom are excellent, but it was also other people weighing in, and they didn’t have any knowledge, and it drove me crazy.
And then it was also a little bit fun, because I was like, “She’s still got it.” I was like… I was like, “I do. I still got it.” And I’m not telling you at all who talked to me. I’m not gonna tell you, but everybody.
Sam Altman: I didn’t ask, actually.
Kara Swisher: Yeah. Not you. You were like, “Call you back soon,” and then you didn’t,
Sam Altman: I think I did. I think I called you when it settled.
Kara Swisher: Settled, yeah. Thanks for that.
Sam Altman: Yeah. There are some people who honor confidentiality obligations, some people who don’t.
Kara Swisher: Most people don’t.
Sam Altman: Yeah, well- that’s fine.
Kara Swisher: Which is good for me. Good for my business …
Sam Altman: what’d you think of that whole situation?
Kara Swisher: What did I think? I think a lot of people were trying to play it as if it was a Terminator movie happening. And I’ll tell you two things that were interesting. I thought it was just a power struggle. That’s all. Just a very typical, common power struggle around a company that was really hot, right?
And so you have that element to it, and you have this OpenAI thing and then you have-
Sam Altman: What’s this OpenAI thing?
Kara Swisher: It’s a company I’ve heard of. It’s like- Oh. It’s what I’m hoping to be for you at least the Google of this century and not the Netscape of the century. It could happen.
I, which I covered both. And so you watch companies like that. And so what was interesting about it was that it was portrayed as this great struggle of civilization when it’s, I’m sorry, you’re just a company, right? Of, of many companies. And I’m, not I’ve seen him come and seen him go, but I’ve seen him come and I’ve seen him go.
And, I agree with this. What, don’t you think? Yeah. You, Loopt.
Sam Altman: It’s a company.
Kara Swisher: He and I met at Loopt. Do you remember that?
Sam Altman: Yeah.
Kara Swisher: You were like, what, 12 or 13 or
Sam Altman: 20
Kara Swisher: and that didn’t work out for you. That didn’t work out. Yeah, it was, it’s a mess. And it wasn’t.
Sam Altman: There’s no Recode …
Kara Swisher: it was an interest- I know, that’s true. It was an, no, it definitely wasn’t. But it was an interesting company at the time, but things happen. And so one of the things that I got irritated is it had to be this bigger story than it was. It was a power struggle on a board that’s, really.
And what happened was this board got too small, and it was much more balanced, and then it wasn’t, and then it was completely out of balance, and the people who had power had a certain point of view and had decided to take power. That’s all. I don’t think it was that more, much more complicated than that.
There was this overpinning of the tech decelerationists versus accelerationists. I think that was entirely true in terms of point of view, and they’ve all spoken about it since, so you’ve heard their points of view. But two things happened during it, was there were, again, all these kind of ugly rumors, which I put to rest, essentially.
And then there were this idea, and one of the, on the side against you, Sam, which I thought was interesting. I’d heard this from these groups, and it wasn’t just the people, it wasn’t people close to your board members and people in that… There’s a whole gang of people who are tech decelerationists.
And I, at one point, I had heard someone said, on that side, on the other side, said, “If Kara, if you know, you’ve been a critic of tech.” I’m like, “Yeah, I’ve been a fair critic of tech,” I’d say. They said “if you don’t help stop Sam Altman, humanity is doomed.” And I was like, “What?” “Huh? Really?”
He’s the, you’re like the professor in The Terminator that they have to end up killing, essentially. And I was like, “This is the plot of The Terminator. You know what you’re saying here. You’re just repeating the plot of The Terminator.” And I thought that was a little much. I honestly did.
I didn’t I was like-
Sam Altman: You don’t wanna say which board member said this, though?
Kara Swisher: No, I’m not. No, I’m not. Sam, you’re gonna have to leave it behind, okay? Move along. You won. Be generous with your win. And then, there was, then there was the accelerationists, the Marc Andreessen gang, which is, “If you’re not with us and thinking it’s the best thing ever since sliced bread, you’re a media elite/academic/negative person.
You’re the elite, the man,” or whatever and which really irritates me too because the people doing this who are much too enthusiastic and need to be a little more grounded in the dangers of what’s coming as well as the benefits, which I think you do a pretty good job of.
I just, they irritate me too because this with us or against us thing is so irritating in tech because look, they’ve had a record of some damage. They might wanna stop doing the same thing over and again, but a lot of these people are, adult toddlers, so they have no memory of what they’ve done,
Sam Altman: which people are the adult toddlers?
Kara Swisher: Yeah, you’re good at this. You’re good at this. I will, and I will tell you, unlike, say, some tech people I cover who try to sparse their words, I think that techno-optimist thing that Marc Andreessen did was terrible. I thought it was a terrible.
Sam Altman: Why?
Kara Swisher: Because I get it you’re either – it essentially was “you’re either with us or against us, and what we’re against is the elites,” and this and that. And coming from one of the richest people in the world talking about elites, honestly, really? Really? Did something happen to your jet this morning that you couldn’t get on it properly?
It was just, it was not to be concerned about things. And so what they’d like to paint, and I think it’s really happening with an unfortunate group of tech people of which, Elon, Mark, all the rest of them, I think they have to decide that they have-
Sam Altman: I’m gonna ask some questions about Elon later.
Kara Swisher: Yes. Okay, good. I figured. I’d like to know what you think what’s happening. I hear- All right. I hear he has some issues with you.
Sam Altman: And this is fun.
Kara Swisher: I know. At one point, I was like did Sam turn you down for a date or something?” Like, when I was reading that thing, I was like, “This is… What’s going on with you, dude?” That’s another story. But that’s a longer story. But I do think there is an happy medium between, and not, it’s not a medium, it’s that there are massive dangers. There’s also massive dangers of being concentrated in a small group of people and a small group of companies without any guardrails.
And I think since what we’ve seen what’s happened without guardrails previously, and these technologies are, it’s clearly one of those inflection points, we really do have to be a little more thoughtful on everything we do. And that’s all I was asking for, and it reminds me of the debate Mark Cuban has gone onto, to X to argue about DEI, which he’s doing a great job of, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
And when he started doing it, I texted him, I’m like, “Godspeed.” “You’re not coming back,” ’cause you’re like, you’re going in there with DEI. And he’s doing a great job explaining, for example, why he likes it and why it’s good for his companies. And, the responses he’s getting from someone like Elon, instead of having a really good debate about a difficult issue which isn’t that difficult really and he’s getting, “You’re a moron. You’re ugly. Boobs.” That’s the de- level of debate coming back at you when you’re being thoughtful. And so I would prefer to deal with thoughtful people, that’s all.
Sam Altman: Speaking of that – what’s the best thing about the tech industry? That obviously… Lots of criticism, but you clearly like it.
Kara Swisher: Yes, I do. It says a love story. It’s the little, it’s the little writing. This is burn book. At the top it’s bigger, and there’s fire in the glasses, I was gonna put little Elons in here, how like… it was too expensive. So it would be so funny. You don’t remember this ’cause you were 12, again. But there used to be, there used to be a rumor that in ICE Magazine they had dirty pictures, and you’d sit there as a kid trying to find the dir- anyway, there’s nothing else. It was like trying to convince you to buy the liquor.
Wait I’m off, off thing. What was your question? Why do I love it? Oh, okay. Because I, when I came to tech, as you’ll read in this book, I really did think it had possibilities of being great, and I’ve talked about this Star Trek vision. I grew up with Star Trek, and there was a vision in the show, science fiction really does inform a lot of how we feel, and so H.G. Wells, I always loved The Time Machine, and I love the idea of it, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. All these different journey, even the one where you go into the body. I can’t remember the name of that, where they went, the little tiny capsule went into the human body. What is it?
Yes, Fantastic Voyage. So I always loved that kind of stuff, and particularly the idea of possibility, right? That you could do all kinds of things, and Star Trek was like that, and I’ve talked about this in the book, again, is, which is, it was like a United Benetton people who go do great things and try to get along, and it’s diverse, and they all get along.
And they have struggles, but they always manage to turn the bad people good, or come out with a good solution, or everyone gets along, and it’s a happy vision of what technology can do, like discovery, right? And then there’s the contrast which is Star Wars, which is a dark vision of the future where evil does prevail, where the bad guys use technology for bad things, obviously the Death Star.
And it is a very… And I’ve talked to George Lucas about this when I interviewed him. It’s a very dark allegory of what this world is of fascism and everything else, that it can, that the winners don’t always win. And interestingly, while I was writing this book, I found an interview I did with Steve Jobs that he didn’t even remember, where he talked about wanting Star Wars.
I’m in that camp of wanting that vision of it, where more people are helped, that we’re more safe, that we’re better. And a lot of what’s happened, which is the first line of the book, is, “So it was capitalism after all.” It was just about the money, and they had promised something different.
At least this group of people that I started with had promised more.
Sam Altman: And you think that’s what fundamentally went wrong if you zoom all the way out and say-
Kara Swisher: No, I think fundamentally they lied to themselves. One of the things when you’re a reporter that you have to think about, usually when you start and you’re younger, you think, “Okay, what are they lying to me about? What thing did they, are not telling the truth? What’s the spin?” Whatever. And I think the, a more sophisticated reporter thinks about what they’re lying to themselves about in order to get through the day, right? What are, what’s the lie they tell themselves every morning about themselves? What do they need for people to know about them in the world?
And I think one of the things that happened very early in tech is they fell in love with the image of it as being different. “We’re different. We’re California. We’re like, we wear, hoodies is what we’re wearing. We are, we eat burritos,” that kind of thing. And actually, when I go back, which I’m like, burritos are delicious.
Sam Altman: Delicious.
Kara Swisher: Of course you eat them, right? Yeah, exactly. I had one today. It was fantastic. It was this vision of the fut- they wanted to be different and iconoclastic, and almost to a weird point. Google took it to an extreme, “Here’s our primary colors. Here’s our pogo sticks. Here’s our jumpy houses in our home.” That, they would take it to extreme. But they were cosplaying a lot of childlike behavior when it was really childish. And one of the things that they did, and I actually went back and found a lot of stories. I wrote a lot about this, like why they had to have certain costumes, and why they had to have certain visions of themselves.
And I did one whole story in the Journal, which again, I had forgotten about ’cause I’ve written so many, which was 10 things tech people tell… These new tech people, ’cause they were very- it was very exciting. They were not like bankers or insurance people or airline people. “10 things they tell you that aren’t true,” and one of them was “we’re here to change the world.”
And I don’t think it was true for a very small amount of people, but really it was about making money. And once they started making money, that was the, it was the driving force. Nothing wrong with it, but I would’ve – you know, you don’t have a, you don’t have a banker going, “What I’m here to do is world peace.”
And you’d be like, “Come on, stop it.” Or an insurance person, “what I wanna do is I want everybody to feel like they’re living in a Taylor Swift concert. I just feel everyone wants to feel good together,” and you just don’t believe it from those people. They’re here to make things.
Sam Altman: Any of the characters throughout your three decades, or almost three decades, doing this that you think really have stayed genuine to wanting to change the world?
Kara Swisher: Either they’re honest about what they’re doing, I don’t think… it never came out of Steve Jobs’ mouth, … he knew it was marketing. He wasn’t doing it like when he’d say, “Think different.” He was talking about his products. I don’t think he was trying to, like… It was all marketing, and he was aware of what he was doing.
He had a damn thing called the reality distortion field which he did have. It really was strong. But he wasn’t… if anyone, I actually think he believed there was a marriage of art and science, that you could find better things through creativity. He did believe that. I genuinely… He genuinely did.
But that was the extent of it and you can’t, I’m trying to think. Who real- Steve, I would say did. I think a lot of people have been very thoughtful. There’s lots of different people, but they knew what they did. Reed Hastings, he knows what he’s making. He’s making a movie service really, pretty much, and he didn’t act like it was, that he was building the UN or something like that, or I think you’re very good that way. I think I really enjoy talking to you. Most of the people that I think are good are either, one, adults, which means you can talk to them without having to plumb their, the depths of their emotional traumas from childhood, which is exhausting. Or or they have gotten therapy, I don’t know, or they know what they’re doing. They’re , “This is what I’m here to do. I’m not here to save you.” And I think too many of people in tech get a savior complex, and then it turns into a an autocrat complex. It moves into that. Savior complex always moves to a very dark place. It tends to.
Sam Altman: To rewind a couple minutes, what do you lie to yourself about to get through the days?
Kara Swisher: Oh, nice. Well done. Wow. That I’m not as old as I am. That’s interesting question. I don’t think I lie to myself a lot. I don’t. Don’t do that.
Sam Altman: But if you had to, for the sake of your closest thousand friends.
Kara Swisher: I really, I think I’m pretty self-actualized. I really, honestly believe that. I just, I’m trying to think. What do I… Jeff, what do I lie to myself about? Oh Mom. Oh, Mom, let’s not get into that. That she’s gonna – my mother’s gonna change, that’s what I lie to myself about. She’s not gonna change, Sam.
Sam Altman: Probably not.
Kara Swisher: Oh, definitely not. Yeah. I have hopes, we all have hopes that things would be different. That… i’ll tell you what I lie to myself about, that it was okay that my dad died, that I’m okay.
It’s not okay, and it wasn’t okay. And but I think I helped solve that by having a lot of kids and family and friends and stuff like that. So I think “I’m okay” is one of my things. And I have done it for so long, I actually am okay. You know what I mean? And I suspect if I went into therapy, there’d probably be a hurt little kid.
Yeah, we’d be about right. See? That’s pretty honest.
Sam Altman: That’s very honest. What’s the trick to being a good journalist?
Kara Swisher: Oh, so big. Not be… People would say I’m cynical, but I’m not, actually. I think being cynical, I think, is a disease. It’s different to be skeptical. I think you should be skeptical and-
Sam Altman: I don’t think you’re cynical. Plenty of other things, but not that.
Kara Swisher: Thank you. I wanna hear what that is. I’m… You need to be curious. You have to be 100% curious. You have to be interesting and interested, both, because I think there’s a charm part of your job. A- as… I don’t wanna use the term seduction, ’cause that’s weird, and, it is.
But it is. It’s a, it’s charm offensive kinda thing. I think you have to be fair. I’ve learned that from Walt Mossberg. The fairness element is critical. I think you have to- curiosity is not just that, but you have to learn a lot of stuff. You have to really know what you’re talking about. I think a lot of journalists don’t do the homework.
That drives me crazy. You have to strive to be accurate. The thing that gets me most angry is not disagreeing with someone, it’s lack of accuracy. Just, I hate lack of accuracy. I think you have to see things with fresh eyes, and not… I think I learned a lot of this from Walt, is he would do all the reporting, and then he’d decide whether he likes it or not, and he had a point of view.
And I do think journalists have a point of view, and shouldn’t hide their point of view, right? And not be scared into, this whole fair and balance, which is a load of horsesh*t . I’m not supposed to curse, but there it is. But this, one of the things I like right now is Christiane Amanpour, who I really like.
I’m a huge admirer, and she’s a friend. She said, “Be truthful, not neutral,” and I thought that really encapsulated my philosophy, too. And the other thing is work harder. Everyone was like, “Why are you so good?” I said, “I work harder than you. I just do.” And I think you really have to work hard, and you owe it to your readers, you owe it to your subjects.
And then you should be able to look at patterns. I think not enough reporters do that. The way I figured out a lot of the Opening Eye thing that weekend is I knew all their personalities, and I figured what they were up to, so I could guess. I could guess what was happening, and then I would follow it up.
Sam Altman: How do you predict what tech or what people are gonna do? I think that’s something you’ve done on your-
Kara Swisher: Yes, I do it a lot Yeah. I actually … it is, it’s through years of experience of knowing people.
Sam Altman: It’s the same thing on patterns?
Kara Swisher: Patterns. It’s like I wanted to be, I think I wrote this in the book, I really wanted to serve in the military, and what I wanted to do was intelligence, military intelligence.
And I wanted to be a spy essentially. And I think one, it was more an analyst. I could have been a CIA analyst or whatever. And one of the things… I still might be. I might be a CIA agent, and now this is the best con ever in history. But-
Sam Altman: I can believe it …
Kara Swisher: I know I am. Maybe I’m not. Who knows?
Who’s to say? But see, I’m tricking you right now. This is a little psyop as our friend Elon would say, whatever the f*ck that is. Everything’s a psyop. What’s wrong with him? So-
Sam Altman: What do you think? That,
Kara Swisher: We’ll get to that in a second. We don’t have a long enough time but it’s extensive and it starts and begins with him as a, his character.
But but you got me on a thing. I wanted to be in intelligence… So I figure things out and so I’m like, whenever I would figure out a scoop, people would like, “How did you get that scoop?” I’m like I figured this person wanted to do this, and this is who they’d go to, and this is who they’d thing, and here’s the list of things they could do. No, they don’t like that, ’cause I know. I’ve talked to them about it.”
And I did it, I think the best one I did it on most recently was a column I did in The New York Times, which I’ve talked about, which I did in… which I said, “If Trump loses the election,” and I was talking about his behavior on Twitter and how he should be taken off because he breaks the rules.
And I said, “If he wins the election, he’s gonna get on Twitter and everywhere else, and he’s gonna say the election was stolen, and he’s gonna say it was a lie, and people took it from him. And then he’s gonna make it go up and down the right-wing ecosystem, and then he’s gonna ask his followers to do something about it in the real world.”
And I wrote this, and I said, “This is what’s gonna happen, and then they’re gonna try to stop the presidency from being shifted to Biden,” and that’s what I said. “This is what’s gonna happen.” Or not Biden, whoever it was. And I wrote this in 2019. And at the time when I wrote it, both Twitter, I was naming Twitter and Facebook as the prime problems here.
They– executives called me and said, “How dare you say that?” And I said, “I think you’re now becoming handmaidens to sedition, is what you’re doing, and I think you’re in big trouble in a couple of, when this goes down.” And it was right. And so that was me just like thinking, “Okay, this is how Trump behaves.
This is what he, this is the natural thing, election lies. This is how it works in the right-wing ecosystem, and this is the result.”
Sam Altman: Is that ever a good strategy when company executives call you to complain about a story?
Kara Swisher: No, they do, though. It’s shocking. Like-
Sam Altman: But they think it might- Work
Kara Swisher: … work. Yeah. One of the things is, “You’re so mean to me.” Then I’m like, “You’re an idiot.” “What are you, two?” They think, … the only one that I felt sorry for was the Google guys, and I’ve talked about this, when they were trying to buy Yahoo or control Yahoo, and I thought 97% of the search market was too much.
I don’t know. That was unreasonable of me to think, but I had written about the Microsoft trial and they didn’t even have that much. And so I said at least… and they, and Google was so was real cute about it, like that they was, “No, we’re really good, we should have it ’cause we’re good stewards.”
And I was like, “I don’t care who it is. 97% is too much.” And 60% is too much. And so he– I said, “At least Microsoft knew they were thugs.” This was my line in the story, which- stop pretending what you’re doing is not totally trying to dominate you wacky Borg people. And so I said something like that.
Microsoft knew they were thugs. They called me all hurt, one of them.
Sam Altman: Microsoft did?
Kara Swisher: No Microsoft- The- … knew they were thugs. Microsoft… No they were like, “Yeah, we’re thugs. That’s right.”
Sam Altman: I think they’re nice.
Kara Swisher: “You got it.” The Google guys, I can’t remember… I, it’s gotta be Larry Page, ’cause it’s something he would say.
And and he, and they, he’s… “we’re nice people. We’re not thugs.” And I was like “Yeah, but you are. I’m sorry. That’s what you’re doing is thuggish, at the very least.” “We’re nice pe-” He kept saying, “We’re nice people. You know us. Don’t you like us?” And I thought, “What do you f*ckin’ care what I care, think…”
Sorry. What do you care what I think of you? And and I was like, ” one of the things I know from history,” and I quoted poetry to them to try to make them understand it, which they didn’t, the “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” poem, Yeats, where I said, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem, there’s a beast.
There’s a beast. It’s coming. There’s a bad person coming to run Google someday if you have this much power,” which they didn’t get. And I said, “There’s a bad person coming because they always come for powerful technology. It’s never not happened.” And they were like, “But we’re not like that.” I’m like, “I’m not talking about you narcissistic person.”
“I’m talking about what happens when power concentrates in smaller ways with powerful weapons.” And I just, they were, like, perplexed that I didn’t like them and, or whatever, that I wasn’t nice to them. And I was always like, that one I felt, “Oh, okay. I don’t like you. I don’t know what to say. Get a dog.” I don’t know. I didn’t know what to say. So yes, people call all the time. Jobs used to call Mossberg all the time, Walt, when he was mad about a review, or Gates did. They all did. It was “Get over it. Whatever. I don’t know.” But they did.
Sam Altman: What do you think about the state of tech journalism now relative to when Jobs was calling Mossberg, right?
Kara Swisher: I think it’s much better. I think it’s really good. I think there’s amazing people doing all kinds of innovative stuff. Before, most people worked for a publication, and then you had the blogs like us, TechCrunch, and stuff like that. I think it’s evolved fairly nicely. I know some people think it’s a little too mean, but that’s ’cause of Twitter, right?
That’s ’cause everyone has to get on there and dunk. But I think a lot of the journalism is quite good, like excellent and interesting. I think, a friend of mine, Casey Newton who used to live in-
Sam Altman: He’s great
Kara Swisher: … he’s great. He’s in my, he used to live in my cottage in San Francisco. Now he got his own place ’cause he’s doing so well with Platformer.
You’re welcome, Casey. And he doing amazing things, like Jessica Lessin and The Information. There’s all these innovative… And Puck, I think, is really good. They’re not doing as much tech. I’m, they probably will add it. I think they’re doing a little tech stuff. They should be adding a tech person at some point.
I think a lot of it’s really good and strong and a little bolder, and it’s a little fairer. Before, it got a little snarky, but now I think it’s-
Sam Altman: I agree … I think it- I think it is pretty good
Kara Swisher: … it’s strong. It’s very strong. I think the problem is the business of journalism or media is tough because of you. No, not you. Not you. I don’t blame you. But I think the decimation of advertising and then digital advertising being dominated by Meta and … I’m gonna call them their names: Facebook and Google.
Sam Altman: But you do call it X, interestingly …
Kara Swisher: I don’t. I try not to.
Sam Altman: Oh, you did here.
Kara Swisher: I did say Twitter. Okay. I switch it back and forth. Oh, good. I should call it Phyllis or something just to drive him crazy. “I was on Phyllis the other day.” That would that would drive him crazy, wouldn’t it? Phyllis.
Sam Altman: Can we talk about him now? Oh, is this a good, okay time?
Kara Swisher: Whatever. When you want. It’s your stage.
Sam Altman: I think everyone can see it’s not really, but I’m happy. It’s nice of you to say that.
You can come run OpenAI for the day
Kara Swisher: yeah… aren’t you the man of the hour? Okay. All right.
Sam Altman: No.
Kara Swisher: Yes.
Sam Altman: Elon. What do you think?
Kara Swisher: What do I think? What part?
Sam Altman: He’s suing me right now.
Kara Swisher: I heard that. What do you think? What do I think of that lawsuit?
Sam Altman: My stage.
Kara Swisher: It’s a, it’s a- Okay. What do I think of that lawsuit? I think he is an open wound, and we have to feel it every day. I think it’s really… I think that lawsuit is nonsense. I’ve said it. I’ve talked to a dozen lawyers, by the way, before I began to put-
Sam Altman: What do they think about it?
Kara Swisher: They think it’s nonsense. It’s not a contract.
It’s a, it’s an open wound of a past hurt that he had. He made a mistake. He… No, even worse than that. He was the first person to talk to me about AGI. You were the second, maybe. I forget. There was a couple. Reid was another one. But Elon was the absolute first to discuss it at length, and including the dangers of it, by the way.
He was very concerned. And what he was particularly concerned with wasn’t so much The Terminator ending, ’cause he kept shifting his version of that. First they were, it was gonna kill us, then we, it was gonna treat us like a house cat, and then we were an anthill. He had all his different metaphors.
“Oh, it’s just an anthill and we’re building a highway. That’s how they feel.” And you’re like, “Okay, but those are not gonna kill us.” Not really. They don’t know why. But he was really interesting about it, as ’cause you spent time with him. And I think he was early to it, and he funded with…
he did the funding and everything else. And he, as usual, ’cause he can’t help himself because he has a God complex. He thinks he’s Ready Player One in the video game of life. That’s what I think he thinks. Someone, Ben Mezrich, made that point to me. That he made a power play, as he always does.
It’s a very common tactic of his, if you watch a lot of things. And he wanted full control. And again, that same thing just happened with you at OpenAI. He wanted control. He tried to get it, and if he couldn’t get it, he stamped his feet and left. And he took away your money. He didn’t realize you had Reid Hoffman in the corner with a lot of money, right? Oh there’s a lot of rich people that could help fund you. And he thought he was the reason it exists, when in fact, he’s, all the things he’s done, as good a businessperson as he is, and how and I would say visionary on certain subjects-
Sam Altman: For sure
Kara Swisher: about space. He’s had a lot of help.
Sam Altman: I miss the old Elon. He really has been… exceptional.
Kara Swisher: – Yes, I miss the old Elon … you and I both. So does Reid Hoffman. He was really interesting. That said, he did it with a lot of people, right? There’s a lot of, like Gwen Shotwell at SpaceX, all kinds of people at Tesla.
But he did his typical foot stamping. And I saw the jackass thing he said. This guy questioned something, and then he walked out of the room. But that’s the disease he has now, is that. It’s really weird. It’s really strange. And there were flashes of it before. There were, no question, and there were flashes of that…
One of the things that drives me crazy is, I don’t look at Twitter anymore ’cause it’s exhausting. But it’s ” you didn’t know he was bad.” I was like, “He wasn’t. I’m telling you, he was, he had flashes of problems.” He had problems at the factories, no question, but so did Travis Kalanick, so did, Kleiner Perkins, so did lots of companies.
Google had some issues. They had all kinds of lawsuits. I get it. I get it. I understand that. But he wasn’t, he had a level of real, there, at the time he was coming up, and I met him when he did Zip2. That’s when I met him, way back when his first company really, and then he did X.com, and they merged with PayPal, and he was the only person among all those people who really was, they all did interesting things, but he, and especially Reid Hoffman, but he started doing space and cars and significant things when everyone else was doing, and I use this example on this tour, of a digital dry cleaning service.
You’d have someone really smart come to you and “Wait, Kara, digital dry cleaning.” And I’m like, “Get the f*ck out of my house.” Yeah. Get, I don’t wanna hear it. Oh, sorry, I cursed again. Not, I’m not that sorry. I’m not sorry at all.
Sam Altman: We were told not to curse on stage.
Kara Swisher: – Yes, but it’s too late now. So it’s out of the bag. So he was really visionary, and it was really something to see ’cause it was cool
Sam Altman: Yeah, I grew up with him as an absolute hero.
Kara Swisher: Cool! It was super cool! And but he had an element of dank memes. He had an element of juvenile humor. He had an, always a penis joke, always a boob. But I live with Scott Galloway, so what do I know?
So I was used to that, and it was about, I’d say, 7% of his personality. And now he something happened during… When he did that first Thai diver thing, calling him a pedo, I was like, “That’s a weird thing to accuse someone of.” It was over the top, and I thought, “That’s strange.”
And of course now “I was kidding.” Everything’s “I’m kidding,” but it’s all the same malevolent bull crap. And that happened, and then during COVID, we had an interview, which would always be interesting and challenging, and he’s always a challenging person. But he threatened to leave the interview because I had challenged him on the COVID protocols that they were putting in place at the beginning of COVID.
And I was like we don’t know what’s gonna happen, right? We don’t know what’s gonna happen, so maybe safety is the best move immediately.” And he started going on, it was really odd, about the man and the deep state, like all this stuff. And then he was like, “And you know I’ve read all the studies, so I know what’s gonna happen.”
And I was like, “Really?” And he’s “Oh yeah, only maybe there’ll be 100 deaths.” That’s what he said. It was crazy. And I was like, “How do you… You don’t know.” I’m sorry, I would never make a… I don’t, I, what do you think, you’re Marie Curie or something? You don’t know what you’re talking about.
And he was like, “I read every study. I stayed up all night and read every study.” It was that kind of thing. And you’re like “Hey, slow it down, dude.” And he was insistent, and he threatened to leave the interview, which he had never done. That is not, was not his nature to do that, not with me at least.
And I know he stamps out of things. I know he does that. But it was really strange. It was very strange. And then it got more and more. And then once he got Twitter and I thought he would actually do a good job initially. I thought, “Oh, here’s someone who’s gonna shake things up. He has lots of money. He loves it,” this and that. And then when his very first thing, two things he did, was accuse Yoel Roth, who’s the loveliest man on the planet, of being a again, pedophile. I was like, “Listen, QAnon, you need to stop with this,” “calling everyone a pedophile ’cause it’s a terrible thing to do.”
Also, Yoel’s a gay man. Same thing, it was very… There was an anti-gay element to it. There was an anti-trans element. It was… And he, as everyone knows, he has a trans child which was heinous then. Then it’s really heinous. And then with the Paul Pelosi thing, that was it for me. That was, I’m out. This is ridiculous.
Where he tweeted, as owner of Twitter, that maybe Paul Pelosi, who had gotten beaten up, largely by someone who was radicalized online and also had mental challenges that he was possibly part… He tweeted a story about it being a gay love triangle or something, like a prostitution ring. I could not believe that.
That was so astonishing and hateful. I don’t know who that I was like, it was shocking ’cause out of it, I’d never heard… I never really knew his politics. I never really, he never really talked about it. He kinda liked Obama, as I recall. And then he started ranting at one point with me about Biden not inviting him for the car thing.
Sam Altman: I did think that was…
Kara Swisher: I did, but come on. So what? He really took it to an– he’s still angry about it, right? It was but welcome to politics. It’s not a union shop. He couldn’t. Really, grow up. I get why he didn’t, and there’s… I told the Biden administration, there’s someone there, and I said, “You didn’t invite him?
He’s the pioneer. He really should get the credit for it.” And they’re like, “They’re non-union. We can’t.” And I’m sorry. Grow up. Grow up and accept it. And by the way, you’re the richest man in the world, so somehow you can be comforted by you’re rich and everything else. So what do you care if you missed one thing, I don’t know. It felt really… It, something happened. I don’t know what happened. I don’t. Do you?
Sam Altman: No.
Kara Swisher: No. But I think his suit against you is going to go away, I suspect. But he’ll keep suing — he’s suing everybody, the CHDC, the… Everywhere. There’s a lawsuit. Disney, he’s obsessed with Bob Iger.
He’s just… it’s like someone doing this with a lot of money, who has a lot of money, and I don’t think it’s gonna end well. I really don’t. I don’t. If I had to predict. It feels very Howard Hughes to me.
Sam Altman: I genuinely hope for the best for him, in spite of everything, I think-
Kara Swisher: I don’t know. What do you think will help? I don’t know. There’s a lot of enablers around him who are incredibly unpleasant people, who are in it for the money. You saw that Journal story that was about the drug use, which is fine. I it should be noted, it should absolutely be noted, but the big story about that was how much money people around him are making from him on the board, and therefore are not responsible, and therefore will let him do whatever he wants, which sometimes isn’t in his interest.
And again, he’s a grown man, so this is the way it’s gonna go. But it feels dark to me. It feels like a very dark story. And the ugliness, just this week, it’s something else. As someone who needs attention I, he needed to sue you ’cause he needs attention. “I did it. I was the first. I…” That’s what those emails read and the whole lawsuit felt like, ” I’m the first boy.”
That’s what he feels like, like he’s, that we’re in Succession. “I’m the first boy.” I was like, “Okay. You’re the first boy, you got it. You know how that ended. Tom got the job.” Tom. Right here, there’s Tom, right here.
Sam Altman: I actually never watched Succession, I don’t know what that means but… I hope it’s a good thing…
Kara Swisher: Succession. I did a podcast on it. You should listen to it.
Sam Altman: All right.
Kara Swisher: It was great.
Sam Altman: Before we go to audience questions-
Kara Swisher: I love that you don’t know Succession. Really?
Sam Altman: I don’t really watch TV at all.
Kara Swisher: Oh, my God.
Sam Altman: I watch TikTok and stuff, but I-
Kara Swisher: You do? Oh, you young people.
Sam Altman: I’d like to talk a little bit about AI before we go to audience questions.
Kara Swisher: Who?
Sam Altman: AI. You ever heard of that?
Kara Swisher: AI, oh yes. AI, yes, the thing you’re working on. Okay. I thought you said Ahab. I’m like, “We just talked about the white whale and Elon.” Oh my God, I shouldn’t say that. Geez. I wasn’t doing that, but it worked, so yeah.
Sam Altman: I’m gonna leave that one alone.
Kara Swisher: Yeah, please. I didn’t… I tend not to make personal… statements. I don’t.
Sam Altman: I appreciate that.
Kara Swisher: But you look good. I have to say.
Sam Altman: Thank you.
Kara Swisher: There’s nothing going on between us. We’re both gay.
Sam Altman: I wish.
Kara Swisher: No, you don’t. You really don’t. What are you talking about? You just got married. Congratulations.
Sam Altman: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. What do you think about AI? What do you think about this relative to other sort of tech-
Kara Swisher: Oh, I think it’s the biggest. I think, there’s a lot of… When crypto came out, I was like, “Currency, okay.” I think it was important, and I think it was interesting, blockchain, and it is.
But it was “Money is digital. Okay.” I get it. I get it, right? It’s already… who sees their money anymore, right? I’ve, I haven’t seen my money in years. But that was interesting. But it was smaller. I felt like that was smaller, and interesting.
But and it sort of captured people here because, ooh, the man. Let’s get away from the man again. I don’t know what happened. The father-son relationships among these people is really interesting to contemplate. But it’s true, though, in a lot of cases, actually.
Sam Altman: You wanna say anything about that?
Kara Swisher: Oh, Larry Ellison, for example, I think motivated. His mom left. His dad, he didn’t know his dad. Steve being adopted. I think it motivates. And not everybody. Look, Brian Chesky’s got the loveliest family in America. They’re lovely, right? So I don’t think it… he’s a great guy. He has great character, ’cause I think because of his family.
But different people. I don’t, it doesn’t always track, but sometimes it does. But AI, I think it’s the… there’s a lot of trends that come along. And I think this is… I was trying to put it… Someone was asking me where it’s– the iPhone and the mobile phone was critical.
It was a big moment. But I think this is much bigger. I think probably it’s like the internet, like the creation of the internet. It’s one of those big moments. I think it’s even more important than say, you can pick a bunch: graphical user interface, the laptop, different things as you go along.
And I do think this is a huge, important shift, and it’s gonna affect so much more of the world. And every industry is going to be impacted by this. And I kept trying to come up with metaphors. It’s like the explosion of the, a supernova of the internet.
It’s now going to be everywhere around us in a way that had not happened. And one of the themes of the book is everything that can be digitized will be digitized. Now it really will. Everything. And I think the imaginative possibilities, when the iPhone first came out, you wouldn’t have imagined Uber.
You wouldn’t have imagined- … you just wouldn’t have, right? Some of it you might have.
Sam Altman: Yeah, I always think that’s the most interesting, is what, the new things that can happen that you just couldn’t think about before. Not doing this thing a little bit more efficiently- … but you just couldn’t have imagined Uber.
Kara Swisher: Some of them you can. I remember really liking mobile phones, and I used to stand in front of editors, I’m like, “You’re not gonna have that phone at your desk. It’s not gonna be there. It’s gonna be gone.” And they’d be like, “Get away from me, Kara Swisher,” young Kara Swisher. Or I would stand in front of the Teletype machine at the Washington Post, and I’m like, “What is this here for? It needs to go, because computers will have it. It’ll be on the worldwide web,” and so in this case, I don’t know. I could imagine some things. I could pick one or two things, but what’s the AI of insurance, of cars, autonomous vehicles, be used for? It’ll be used for healthcare.
I just interviewed Reed Jobs, Steve Jobs’ son, today on, on my podcast, and he’s doing all this investment, not in AI necessarily, although it’s adjacent for sure, but cancer research, drug discovery. You’ve talked about these things. You could imagine all these things of where it could go.
You could also imagine very easily as well you should be doing, and as should our government, as should all the leaders in this area, of dangerous stuff, really truly dangerous stuff, and the uses of it. We should try to imagine every possible thing an autocrat could do with this, and it’s massive, right?
And I go to the heart of the book, which is the quote by Paul Virilio, which is ” when you invent the ship, you invent the shipwreck. When you invent the plane, you invent the plane crash.” And too much of our world with this technology, at least in this era, has been shipwrecks. Too many shipwrecks.
Why don’t we have a lighthouse? Too many plane crashes. Why don’t we have radar? I just… or electrocute. When you invent electricity, you invent electrocution. Why are all the wires on the ground electrocuting us? And every technology does sort itself out eventually. They really tend to do that.
In New York, when they first had the trolleys, it would run over people, all the time, and then they figured out, they put it, they elevated it, which had its own set of challenges, because then it made the city less beautiful and all kinds of problems. But I just feel like there’s not enough…
I think if there’s a theme of the book, it’s lack of accountability and lack of forethought of where we’re going. But I also don’t think you can imagine what’s gonna happen. I’m not sure. I can guess. I can guess. And you can guess jobs, and you can guess areas. If I was a legal associate, I’d worry. I’d worry. So something like that, just off the top of my head.
Sam Altman: Okay, audience questions.
Kara Swisher: Thank you, Sam hi. Oh, wow. Whoa. Ah, what a crowd. This is fantastic All right. Questions? Where, how are we doing them?
City Arts & Lectures: This, this first question’s in the orchestra on your right.
Audience Member 1: Maybe to just continue the AI discussion, as a consumer of media through my phone primarily, you just saw the videos released by Sora. Great work by the way, Sam. In an era where you consume all this media and you have had smartphones the last, 10, 15 years, the gold standard of being able to tell a story is to back it up with video or media of some sort. In the age of AI, how are we supposed to, as consumers, consume media, and do you worry about that further eroding the trust in institutions and media entities and stuff like that? And I guess, how, where do you see this going forward?
Kara Swisher: I think it’s just gonna get better. At the end of this book, I talk about that. It’s not … everyone’s like, “Ooh, that AI video doesn’t look too…” Remember the Will Smith eating the spaghetti thing, and then now it’s better.
It’s still a little weird, but it’s better, and there’s … They find all kinds of weird… This stuff is only gonna get better. It just really is. Early internet was really bad, like super bad, and everyone’s like… When I started it, all the other reporters were like, “What you covering? CB radio?” I’m like, “No, it’s gonna ruin your whole life.” And they thought it was silly, and they didn’t understand where it was going, and I was like, “You don’t see. What is here is not what’s gonna be there.” It’s looking at a phone when it was in the suitcase or the Gordon Gekko thing and not imagining it would be small and discreet or this that kind of thing.
So I think story, it will start to really get good at it. Now, the issue is it’s just not creative enough yet. It only is inputted of what’s inputted, but it does come up with some rather beautiful and interesting things, and it’s interesting if people’s tastes will change in what they like to look at.
You can also have some very bad outcomes. Just recently when this book started selling, all of a sudden on Amazon, all these fake, there’s been stories about it, fake Kara Swisher books with fake Kara Swishers, all of whom look super femmy. You gotta go look at them. They’re hysterically funny.
My mom is thrilled of them, but they’re really creepy. But they’re all these really bad books, and I… they were all so badly written, and they took all my stuff and mashed it up in a bad way, and it happened to Savannah Guthrie. They had a workbook with her book on faith that she just has that isn’t hers, and people will think it’s hers, but it was immediately– they were generating dozens and dozens of these, and it was just probably a button, a chat.
I’m sure you know about this problem. Do you?
Sam Altman: Not this particular one… But many others.
Kara Swisher: But it’s a big one. Okay, but deal with it tomorrow. So I wrote Andy Jassy, and I’m like, “Dude, what are you doing with my IP here? What’s going on?” “Why are you copying me? Why are you selling them? Why are they near my book? Why are you mashing them together, buy this and buy this? That’s not me. FYI, you know me. I don’t wear big, long, tangy earrings.” And of course at- I’m sure at Amazon it was like, “Oh f*ck it’s Kara.” “Oh, no, that’s who got copied.” You know what I mean? But they only copy the popular books.
And I’m sure they scrambled the jets, but it, they should have anticipated that problem. And long story, I think people are gonna get used to and see this as entertainment. But this is the, the horse is out of the barn. TikTok is entertainment. I’m sorry to tell you, it’s entertainment, and it is taking the place of entertainment.
Now, there’ll still be long storytelling. There’ll still be all kinds of ways, but media has been far too slow to embrace this stuff. They’ve just watched it grow and bemoaned it, and they didn’t participate in it, right? They didn’t participate. I know Tyler Perry recently saw Sora. Was it Sora they saw?
And he’s decided not to invest $800 million in this new facility. Now, I think he’s being a little bit too early. I don’t think he’s, it’s gonna solve every problem of his today. But certainly 10 years from now, 100%, they’re not gonna need all these workers. They’re not gonna need all these things. But I think it’ll be interesting to see if consumers, what consumers like.
That’ll be, young consumers especially, what they… None of this is about any of you. It’s not. Sorry. From, for all intents and purposes, from a digital point of view, you’re all corpses. I’m sorry. But, it’s not for you. But it’ll be interesting to see if people, how they consume things and where, and media’s been super resistant to where.
And I’ll tell you one story which I’ve told about my son, Louie. He was, I was doing a thing for Frontline, and I don’t do a lot of these, but I said I’m gonna do this ’cause I like Frontline. And he called me when I was doing it, doing the taping, and he said, “What are you doing?” I said, “Oh, I’m taping Frontline, Louie.”
And he goes, “Oh, I love Frontline.” And I was like, “What?” I was like, “Huh?” And he goes, “No, I watch every one. I love this one and this one.” I put him on speakerphone ’cause I was like, “Oh, these poor people. It’s a young person. It’s in the wild loving Frontline.” 21, 20 years, I think he was 20 at the time.
And he went on and on about it, right? And I was like, “This is great.” He really knew the content. He loved it. There’s a real trope about kids not being able to understand. They love long form. They love substantive stuff. It’s a lie that kids just wanna sit there and watch stupid things. It’s when they said I wanted to watch the boob tube when I was a kid, right?
It’s not true. He goes on and on about it, and these people are thrilled. And I said, “Wow, Louie, I didn’t know you watched PBS.” And he said, “I don’t watch PBS.” And I said, “Oh.” I go, “Where do you watch it?” He goes, “I watch it on Reddit and YouTube, and this is how I watch, and I watch in these pieces.” And I thought that was great, and there was a real struggle early to get that stuff on there, and I don’t know why it took so long for media to get there.
Media should start embracing this stuff and figuring it out, like right away, like immediately, and not bemoaning it. All right do you like it? Do you … It’s interesting.
Sam Altman: Frontline?
Kara Swisher: Yeah. No, not Frontline. Okay. No, you don’t watch TV. We got that. You- No … okay. What do you do?
Sam Altman: Do I like what? I work all the time.
Kara Swisher: You work all the time. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. You’re a busy guy. Yeah. Okay. All right. What do you do for fun?
Sam Altman: I walk around our ranch and with no cellphone. It’s very nice. That really is what I do …
Kara Swisher: where did you come from?
Sam Altman: What do you mean?
Kara Swisher: I don’t know. You’re like a, you’re like an old man in a weird way.
Sam Altman: That’s true.
Kara Swisher: Yeah. Anyway, sorry.
City Arts & Lectures: This next question’s coming from the center of the balcony.
Kara Swisher: Ooh, high up there.
Audience Member 2: Thank you to you both. Kara, you wrote a book mostly about the great mostly men heroes of our current history. I wonder if you could speak to, maybe both of you, to the impact of AI and these future technologies to the people not in this room- … to the people not in Silicon Valley, to the people that maybe don’t give a f*ck about technology. Not to curse, as we’re not allowed to. But yeah, to the people who, who’ve never opened ChatGPT and don’t see AI impacting their way of life anytime soon, and what that will mean for kind of the rest of the world as this technology moves forward.
Kara Swisher: I think everyone’s gonna be affected by it. I don’t think there is anyone that’s not gonna be affected by it. I’ll tell you, it’s gonna be affecting white-collar workers more than anybody. Now, before, when we had some shift in technology, whether it was mechanization of farming or manufacturing, it affected blue-collar workers for the most part. And one of the things I have a real hard time with is we ultimately figured it out and different jobs shifted.
It used to be seven in 10 people worked in farming 100 and some years ago, and now it’s one or a third of one person. I think every single person’s gonna be affected, every business, and it’s going to cause efficiencies. And so companies cannot resist being efficient. They’re gonna wanna cut costs. That’s what they do.
And so you have to really think about what… There’s not an industry I can think of that’s not gonna be affected by this in some fashion. I think probably work, plumbers, no. Lots of stuff that are, that is actually physical, probably not. Construction, maybe how we build things, but not physically.- You know, you can see… I don’t really-
Sam Altman: We’ll have good robots at some point.
Kara Swisher: Yes, we’ll have good robots to do that. That’s right, yeah. But I do think that you have to imagine that anything that can be digitized will be… so everyone will be affected by it. It’s not just people in this room. You cannot… Just like saying nobody’s affected by social media, nobody’s affected by…
If you don’t understand what happened with social media and the radicalization of and separation and polarization, it’s not the only reason, but it’s sure is… If I had to pick three things that have caused polarization in this country, I would say gerrymandering, Fox News, and social media. That’s what I would say.
And I don’t… It’s just the way it is. And so it has affected everyone. And what happened was a lot of people in that era, in the era we’re in, had an information desert, and now they have an information flood, and it’s flooded with crap. And so the same thing is gonna happen here. So what jobs?
I, it, they’re all of them. I can’t think of one area. What do you think?
Sam Altman: I think it will impact lots of jobs, just like computers and- … previous technological revolutions have impacted lots of jobs. I think it will create unbelievable prosperity for the world, or at least it can. We’ll have to get like the social
Kara Swisher: When you say that, when you say, ’cause you guys all say that, what does that mean?
What does that mean?
Sam Altman: If the cost of intelligence comes down by a factor of a thousand or a million- … or a billion, and everybody can have kinda stuff that would only be available to the very richest people or the very, the most privileged people in society right now, great medical advice, great legal advice, great education, something that’s reading all of your emails so you don’t have to wake up and deal with your inbox every day.
The best possible chief of staff saying, “Here’s what you should work on. Here’s this information. Here’s some new ideas.” If that’s very widely available, if we have AI that’s helping us discover new science, say, “Here’s a new way you can cure diseases. Here’s a new way to make clean energy-”
Kara Swisher: Ideas. You’re talking about ideas, right?
Sam Altman: And maybe even ideas that we on our own can’t come up with. Like- … may- maybe we can go… I am a believer I would guess you are, too, that scientific progress is not the only but certainly the most significant driver of sustainable economic growth. Scientific progress and the sort of social institutions that allow that to happen. And if we can have way more of that because we get these new amazing tools that make us smarter, that will be a good thing. That will raise standards of living significantly.
Kara Swisher: Yeah, it could. It could. But it also could be like that Matt Damon and Jodie Foster movie where the rich people are living up there and the poor people are living down here.
So I think if it doesn’t get applied to climate change or really big issues, and if it gets only controlled by certain companies, big companies, their priority is to shareholders. I don’t begrudge that at all but they don’t have a priority toward the society at large. It also doesn’t have an element of accountability to everybody making decisions, and one of the problems of the previous age, which you’ll read about in this book a lot, actually, is that, I would be in discussions…
Say, Mark Zuckerberg used to call me. Doesn’t anymore. Sorry. He knows, have my number. Actually, I don’t want him to call me now. But he can, but probably not. I don’t… no, definitely not. So he was always talking about “community,” and “we’re doing this together,” and we’re this and that.
And I was always like “Mark, you do control everything with your stock, right? You can’t be fired. So how is it a community when the head of it…”
Sam Altman: I should’ve learned that lesson.
Kara Swisher: What? What? What?
Sam Altman: I should’ve called him before I sold my company.
Kara Swisher: Yeah. You should’ve called him before.
Yeah. You could definitely could be, could’ve been fired, and you were.
But he kept talking about community as if he wasn’t the king, and that’s what the king does. “I love the peasants. We’re all together,” and you’re just not. You’re just not. And by the way, how did we get to be peasants since we invented the… we paid for the internet.
It just was this… And it’s our data that you’re eating. Soylent Green is people. That, which- do you now need to explain that, too?
Sam Altman: I know that one.
Kara Swisher: Okay, good. Okay. And it’s not the drink. It’s not the drink. One time when one of the Soylent people was like, I go, Soylent Green is people.” They’re like, “What?”
And I was like, “Oh, God.” It’s a movie, Charlton Heston, you should watch it. It’s not about food. So I do think that every, every single job will be affected. It will affect everybody, and it could affect them in very frightening ways if used by bad people. And again, to reiterate what I told the Google founders, bad people’s coming.
They’re coming and they’re here, and they know they, they will take advantage. Every technology is a tool or a weapon, and they’re often both, and that’s my greatest worry, and it will also create jobs. That, I do believe that… ’cause every single one of these technological shifts that people bemoaned, if you look at history, there was a lot of problems and a lot of social upheaval, but often it was more prosperity.
That’s the hope, but so far the record is mixed for technology people. Next question. There’s a hand right here.
City Arts & Lectures: This next question’s in the center orchestra.
Audience Member 3: Hi, Kara. I’m just curious if you had any cyclical thoughts about dot-com era as we’re thinking about AI, the hype and how it’s impacting the market- and if you’re seeing any of the same trends, especially with the Gemini tentative release last week.
Kara Swisher: Yeah, I know. It was… Honestly, it just got… The anti-woke people lost their minds. It’ll get fixed. I’m sorry. It’s not that… I’m not that “Oh, my God, I can’t believe they made a mistake.” But I think it’s really interesting ’cause when they had too many white guys and CEOs, they didn’t mind that, right?
That was okay. They just their minds ’cause they had a pope who was a person of color. Oh, no. Oh, God. I think that I never thought the dot-com era was… I thought there was a little bit of overhype, but I always thought the direction was upward. I never… I think there was just a little overinvestment, like there was a lot of overinvestment and there were a lot of stupid ideas, which is typical of these things.
But I never… When the first dot-com bust happened, I visited someone in Hollywood and I think it’s in the book, and they said, “Ugh, Kara, I’m glad that’s over.” This is 2001. And I was like, “Over?” I was like, “You are so stupid.” “It is not over.” I was like, “Are you kidding? Just wait. They’re coming back. They’re coming for you.”
And it was just, you need the regrouping. I think that happens a lot, right? It’s happened six or seven times in these kind of things. I think the question of who survives, you don’t know who’s gonna be big. MySpace didn’t make it, but Facebook did pretty well. There was another one that was…I for- what was the one? You remember that.
Sam Altman: Friendster.
Kara Swisher: Friendster, yes. They almost
sold to Google and they didn’t. That was a mistake. They should’ve. But there was a whole bunch of different that’s that don’t survive and it may not be OpenAI. I hope they’re the Google and not the Netscape. But I think there’s gonna be overinvestment. There’s obviously a crazy thing. You’re raising 7 trillion dollars.
Sam Altman: No. I mean, you believe everything you’re reading?
Kara Swisher: I believe you’re probably raising 7 trillion dollars.
Sam Altman: You think so?
Kara Swisher: Are you? Don’t ask a question with a question.
Sam Altman: I’m the interviewer!
Kara Swisher: I know! But I’m asking you: are you raising 7 trillion dollars?
Sam Altman: Uhh – No.
Kara Swisher: Ok, 6 trillion dollars?
Sam Altman: What is this? It’ll be expensive.
Kara Swisher: A lot of money. It’ll be expensive to do this so — and I think it’s probably a great sexy number to say but this is gonna cost a lot of money so it’s gonna cost a lot of money going forward. So I don’t think it’s too…Nvidia maybe but maybe not. I don’t know. There’s gonna be other Nvidias — that’s correct. Just like now there’s other Teslas right, and so he’s going to suffer for that. But he isn’t gonna suffer. It’s just the way every industry is like that. So no, I don’t think this is a hype. I think this is the real deal and they are the significant companies. I’m looking forward to the significant AI companies around climate change tech. That’s what I’d like to see a whole lot more of.
City Arts & Lectures: This next question comes from the balcony on your left.
Audience Member 4: Hi thank you both for tonight’s amazing discussion. So I’m optimistic about how AI will change K-12 education for the better, but the AI education optimism I’ve observed has been, “Yay, we have new tutor bot!” There have been very few examples that master the balance between human, the necessary connection, and AI for personalization, optimization, etc. Whether it’s K-12 education, healthcare — these industries that require, at least I hope, a human touch, human connection and are largely service based industries — what do you foresee revolution with AI will look like, what do you hope it will look like, and what advise do you have for those building in this space?
Kara Swisher: Again, some of the stuff you’ve seen is crude and early. We’re really early here.You don’t know what’s gonna happen. I think in teaching as the pandemic has shown us, the human touch matters a great deal, right, in terms of teaching kids. Now that said, some things the pandemic revealed accelerated rather quickly: commerce, work-from-home. That all accelerated very quickly because it worked, right? It worked better. In this case, the educational things is the availability of knowledge everywhere. That really is something. It is trapped in places and isn’t surface. Now obviously there’s big issues around copyright, which you’re dealing with. How’s that going?
Sam Altman: Fine.
Kara Swisher: He’s gonna have to pay them. Like with YouTube. He’s gonna pay them, eventually.They’re not gonna think it’s enough, he’s going to think it’s too much. Oh, well. Here we are. It’ll be fine. I do think with education, there is some…ability to swiftly change things and get knowledge to people and data. It just seems like it’s perfect for this in terms of education. I don’t think you’re gonna have robot teachers. Do you?
Sam Altman: I think we’ve seen this in several industries now. Education is one great example where we figure out pretty quickly what the AI is really good at, what you really need a human for. People are very focused on other humans. That is deeply wired and I think about the great teachers I had. There’s some part of things that ChatGPT can do but mostly like, “ I cared about that person. I could tell they like me. I could tell they cared about me.” It was super inspirational. And what we’re seeing in this industry and others is: the world kinda figures out where you want the AI to do something and where you need the human to do something and I think that’s just not going to be so hard.
Kara Swisher: Yeah, I don’t think there will be robot teachers. We’re already doing it with computers. People are already responding to computers like Claude. I bet you robot teachers might be better than the way we do it. It’s so screen focused in such a non-creative way. Again, I’m not creative enough. I couldn’t have guessed so many things. But I can tell you education certainly needs reformation, especially for the least among us. They’re the most denied of textbooks, everything.
Sam Altman: It’ll get a lot better. I think this tool can help people learn better and help teachers teach better but everybody’s got their stories about the few teachers that changed their lives. I certainly have mine.
Kara Swisher: Right. First, I hope it doesn’t gonna get politicized ‘cause teaching has got politicized in a way that’s really heinous. And that it doesn’t get — as usual — rich people get the best choice bits and poor people don’t. There’s got to be a way to think about this that is very generous to everybody. You have to think — are we going to live in a scarcity world or we going to live in an abundance world? And I think there is a possibility, at least in education, where it could be quite a lot of abundance. There also could be a lot of huge amounts of misinformation and bad stuff that gets out there among the people. I wish the press, and I never wrote one of these, would stop writing about kids cheating on tests using it. It’s so dumb. I’m sorry, kids have cheated since the beginning of time. That’s not the story. Just stop! That’s enough with those stories. That’ll be up to entrepreneurs to do. That’ll be up to entrepreneurs to figure out not me.
Sam Altman: I know we’re over time. I was nervous to do this because Kara is the most legendary tech interviewer ever…
Kara Swisher: Can I ask you a question? What do you think of the lawsuit?
Sam Altman: I mean…
Kara Swisher: Did you call him?
Sam Altman: I texted him.
Kara Swisher: What did you say? You know what you said.
Sam Altman: No, I don’t.
Kara Swisher: WTF?
Sam Altman: It was like a little bit nicer than that. I don’t remember. The spirit of that.
Kara Swisher: And what the response?
Sam Altman: We sent some emojis back and forth.
Kara Swisher: Really? And then everyone had ketamine and it was okay. Allegedly.
Sam Altman: This was a real honor.
Kara Swisher: This was fun. Thank you, Sam, for doing this.
Sam Altman: Thank you, Kara Swisher.
