Amazon’s “Age of Efficiency,” LLM distribution, AI wearable worries, and more with Elad Gil | E2197
This Week in Startups
Perplexity, Distribution Deals, and Potential Acquisitions
Elad describes Perplexity's growth, distribution dynamics, and how Big Tech might choose deal-based partnerships over internal builds.
Today’s show:
*Amazon’s dropping a LOT of employees for AI and robots… are Jason’s darkest predictions coming true?
Legendary investor Elad Gil joins Jason and Alex for the full show today! Together, they’re digging into the Amazon news, looking back at Jason’s predictions from just last month, and theorizing about just how many people will lose their jobs to computers, and what we’re going to do about it. (Is it possible the US hasn’t been massively hit by job displacement so far because those gigs already moved overseas?)
PLUS… Anthropic’s Dario Amodei responds to criticisms from JCal’s bestie David Sacks, Sesame emerges from stealth to work on AI wearables, and where will people in the future interact with their favorite apps? A headset? Phones? Somewhere else? The great debate continues.
Timestamps:
(00:04:04) Our guest is iconic angel investor Elad Gil! What’s he working on…
(00:04:54) Alexandria AI translates public domain books into all commonly spoken languages… Do people actually prefer AI translations?
(00:09:16) Why compute tends to centralize over time… (It’s because of economies of scale!)
(00:09:29) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST
(00:12:49) So are we building TOO MANY datacenters? Will AI apps eventually run on your phone anyway?
(00:16:39) Jason says “The Age of Efficiency is upon us.”
(00:19:24) When companies trade inference for market share
(00:19:27) Sentry - New users get 3 months free of the Business plan (covers 150k errors). Go to http://sentry.io/twist and use code TWIST
(00:21:57) Why one of the main challenges of adopting AI is buy-in and convincing teams to use it.
(00:25:47) Elad’s robotics questions: (1) What % of winners will be incumbents?
(00:27:50) Jason called the Amazon news last month and we have the receipts!
(00:29:36) Pilot - Visit https://www.pilot.com/twist and get $1,200 off your first yea
(00:45:33) Jason says Adobe and Figma should abandon the UK entirely.
(00:45:55) Time for a Polymarket: The sharps say 80% chance Tesla beats their quarterly earnings
(00:51:02) What is Sesame? They just emerged from stealth, they raised $250M, and they’re working on AI wearables.
(00:53:21) Jason has concerns about AI wearables that are always recording… Does Elad share these concerns?
(01:03:17) The crypto industry is now one of the largest purchasers of US government debt… what does that mean? Who owns who?
(01:08:53) Anthropic responded to JCal’s Bestie David Sacks… Is Dario Amodei a doomer? Fearmongering?
(01:19:12) Why Jason thinks AI companies need to self-regulate
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