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Footage Credits & Sources
1. Elon Musk Footage
Source: The Economist (YouTube)
Link:
2. Sam Altman Interview
Source: Fortune Magazine (YouTube)
Link:
3. Donald Trump Footage
Source: New York Post (YouTube)
Link:
4. Australian Government Website hack Clip
Source: Firstpost (YouTube)
Link:
Is AI a bubble, or are we underestimating how much it can change? That’s the question I kept coming back to in San Francisco. Young companies are attracting extraordinary valuations, while I’m still trying to see how the promised productivity gains are reaching the wider economy.
I put that scepticism to Akshay Kothari of Notion, Vijay Krishnan of Turing, and Ricursive Intelligence’s Azalia Mirhoseini and Anna Goldie. We discuss where the money is coming from, how much of it is moving between AI companies, and what businesses and individuals will actually pay for. They make the case for capabilities that are already useful, smaller teams doing more, and benefits that take time to spread. We also get into chips, human work, AI risks and what India should build.
The technology can be powerful and the prices can still be wrong. I wanted to understand how to tell the difference.
Timestamp:
00:00 Introduction
02:46 Meet Akshay Kothari and Azalia Mirhoseini
05:21 AlphaChip: AI That Designs Computer Chips
12:11 Cheaper Models, More Compute and Custom Chips
17:28 What Notion Does and How AI Changes Work
20:12 Vijay Krishnan and the People Teaching AI
29:18 Understanding the AI Industry From Scratch
32:43 Why Inference Companies Get High Valuations
37:09 The Gap Between AI Capability and Adoption
41:48 Is the AI Investment Boom a Bubble?
46:04 What Happens When AI Can Improve Itself?
53:00 The Changing Work of Training AI
56:35 Why Silicon Valley and China Lead the Race
1:00:38 Where Would You Build an AI Business?
1:07:23 AI Agents and the Productivity Debate
1:17:40 Are We Losing Our Own Thinking Skills?
1:24:23 Meet Anna Goldie
1:30:21 The $100 Million Business Question
1:34:48 What Google Got Right—and What It Missed
1:37:18 AI Chips and NVIDIA’s Advantage
1:39:59 AI Shares, Secondaries and the Wealth Boom
1:42:54 Can Countries and Companies Own Their AI?
1:45:07 Open Models, Scaling Laws and Local AI
1:52:07 AI Risks, Security and Human Control
2:01:05 What Should India Build in AI?
2:07:10 Are AI Safety Warnings Sincere?
2:09:04 How Would You Spend Your Last Month?
2:14:41 What Comes After the Smartphone?
2:17:48 The Future of Social Media and Entertainment
2:21:45 Will AI Replace the Apps We Use?
2:25:51 Final Ideas: Product Design and Better Learning
Akshay Kothari-Co founder and COO, Notion
Linkedin:
Vijay Krishnan-Founder and CTO, Turing-
Anna Goldie-Co founder and CEO, Ricursive Intelligence
Linkedin:
Azalia Mirhoseini
Co founder and CTO, Ricursive Intelligence
Linkedin:
Nikhil Kamath-Co-founder of Zerodha and Gruhas
Host of ‘WTF is’ & ‘People By WTF’ Podcast
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#WTFiswithnikhilkamath #PeopleByWTF #WTFOnline
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20mins into the conversation and I couldn't relate to things. Went to the internet, asked a bunch of questions to understand the concepts better, created a mental map of different layers these guys are talking about and suddenly I now know who owns what layer in this podcast and now their questions and discussions make absolute sense to me. I started the podcast again from the beginning so that I don't miss anything. Thanks for teaching me something new.
Anna is so articulate with her explanations on things, but she diplomatic at many areas, also she skipped few questions! Gonna watch/ read other blogs of her
Best format, thanks for brining it back , please stick to this
OK, let’s consider that ai has increased the productivity, but if people will have no jobs then who will pay for the things that are created by these highly productive companies?
Nikhil asked some great questions, but nobody seemed able to give a straight answer. It made the podcast pretty painful to listen to.
It is the free dollar that has allowed innovation to happen..once de-dollarization happens people won't have money for innovation in west and that is the right reason I believe
Anna literally changed the whole vibe of the podcast, It became watchable
Nikhil asked the same question of where to invest to Elon. He asked this here. He is an investor by heart and does this. Nothing against it. I personally learnt a lot. But if he's thinking as a hedge against negative impacts of AI on his business, by all means, he must invest diversified in all stacks of AI. If something good out of all works, he would be surviving well. But this conversation, was not done in a pure manner, there is his economic side involved. Doing something without thinking of personal Gains matters. You would make better Gains doing it without the agenda.
This scares me, all these smartest of the lot, unanimously saying that this is very powerful tech and can do miracles, makes me nervous as a marginal human. But Sir Issac Newton also lost his whole wealth in South Sea company. I hope Charlie Munger was alive, to hear his opinion on this.
AI gains are not coming in productivity, may be every human who needs to adapt AI has agency costs. Charlie would say, you show me the incentive and I would show you the behavior.
All smart guys who participated here are saying, autonomous AI is the end, and it scares me to death.
is it just me? it is so uncomfortable to watch the turing guy
People with fake accent. I have Iranian colleagues and that accent is neither Iranian or American.
Product Design school suggestion is great.
live like life is fleeting, ephemeral.
pls stop bringing up boomers such as the Turing founder
One of the most intelligent podcast ever by WTF keep it up
if you are not passionate about it, don't do it.
brilliant people who are collaborative.
Fools all the way down.
function of you.
World class podcast!
Nikhil – You can be a bit more prepared, the follow-up questions were a bit vague.
Anaa is like female version of Elon Musk
Amazing amazing podcast for people in AI space
show notes?
She means ASIC chips 😅😅
❤
if intelligence is a commodity then what is greatness
Nikhil don't do these ai podcasts because they are too confusing
Make simpler podcasts which everyone can understand
Cause nobody knows these fancy ai terms
Once Anna comes into the interview becomes awesome and rocking 😊 what a communication and clear thoughts she has.. need a seperate podcast with her 😊
They are spending way too much to achieve too little its gonna burst bad worst than all the previous bubbles combined its gonna be epic failure 😂
WTF! I was just thinking about Nikhil, to search his channel. What he has posted recently as I checked his channel 2 months ago. How before typing the channel name this video just showed up
2:50 what was her reaction 🤣
these companies & AI industry are creating a HOLE in our socitey .. if everything is automate then what we will do ? you create that vaccine but we will not have jobs no money so who will get this vaccine manybe Agents can get that Vaccine and save themsleves ?
To Nikhil's question on why we cant go big on tech in India – "In India, we judge people by what they know rather than what they can imagine". The unknowns of imagination lead you to do unprecedented things. Building things based on what you know will only lead to familiar outcomes. Hope this makes sense 🙂. From a business perspective, India is caught up between the Chinese and American model of investment. We talk like Americans and invest like Chinese. Private investment is negligible for big dreams that may not give an outcome for 2 decades. We want the familiar. To quote a Maruti ad, India always wants to know "Kitna mileage deti hai". The question to ask is "Agar mileage nahi bhi degi magar mazza kitna aayega? "
All this is good! Only thing that I am not sure if AI starts re-innovating and self-improving the models, to NIkhil's question of to what direction and to what goal – if everything is done by AI – then what do these researchers and data crunchers do? And why do even enterprises ask them to remodel every 9 months – AI does it itself right?
No idea where are we headed at in next 5-10 years but I guess in a race to capture AI race and intelligence – hopefully they wont start implementing some mankind destructing vaccines/medicines in order to arrive early in market