... one of them is Test Kitchen.

One of our fundamental beliefs, and I'm sure this is shared, is it's really exciting that the cost of code has gone down to zero.

Like it's just really exciting.

Like it's, that's not in every context, but for the most part in the context that we're living in, the, the actual cost of code is approaching $0.

And so we've been thinking a lot about what does that change about software development and software development process when you don't have to pay any money to develop code? And one of the things is- You can just do it a bunch of times.

So we start out doing it like we do it one version, then you'd redo the whole thing for the next version.

Or you have a, a, a brownfield app, something that's already done, and you're just like, "I need to add a feature." But why wouldn't you just redo the entire thing? It's almost equivalent in time, just adding a feature is just restarting and redoing the whole thing.

Okay.

But in general, there's m- I think it was a 13% increase in jobs for people under 25.

Well, I know that if we, if we had...

What, what I'm finding and seeing this both, you know, seeing it ourselves.

Like I said, we're not hiring, so thank goodness I don't have to deal with this because it's a very hard problem.

But what I'm hearing from a lot of friends whose companies are around the Chicago area and around the Bay Area is they're having a hard time.

Like, they've made the decision to go down a path of AI.

A lot of people are questioning whether this will be a good idea later, but they're down that path now.

Mm.

Because they've got an awful lot of money.

I think there's a lot of things playing into this, which is the United States has an addiction and fascination with Silicon Valley as a place of innovation, excitement, and whatnot.

And for good reason.

I don't say this, it's just some irrational thing that just popped up.

A lot of the United States' prowess post-World War II came directly from innovations around Silicon Valley, from Vannevar Bush on.

And I think that's important, right? Like it's important to acknowledge that that's a real thing.

The world's most, you know, some of the world's most our biggest and best companies came from that area.

20-year-old right now coming home.

But in general, there's m- I think it was a 13% increase in jobs for people under 25.

Well, I know that if we, if we had...

What, what I'm finding and seeing this both, you know, seeing it ourselves, like I said, we're not hiring, so thank goodness I don't have to deal with this because it's a very hard problem.

But what I'm hearing from a lot of friends whose companies are around the Chicago area and around the Bay Area is they're having a hard time...

Like, they've made the decision to go down a path of AI.

A lot of people are questioning whether this will be a good idea later, but they're down that path now, and they're in a position where they talk to people who are more senior, and the people who are more senior are more skeptical of AI and are like, "I don't wanna use it." And then they talk to young people who are like, "I don't know, man.

Sure, whatever.

Hmm.

Because they've got an awful lot of money.

I think there's a lot of things playing into this, which is the United States has an addiction and fascination with Silicon Valley as a place of innovation, excitement, and whatnot.

And for good reason.

I don't say this, it's just some irrational thing that just popped up.

A lot of the United States' prowess post-World War II came directly from innovations around Silicon Valley, from Vannevar Bush on.

And I think that's important, right? Like it's important to acknowledge that that's a real thing.

The world's most, you know, some of the world's most our biggest and best companies came from that area.

on ai because it's kind of an easier thing but i would just say ai is not the threat humans are the threat and yes ai is a force multiplier like like a computer is a force multiplier like software is a force multiplier and so bad guys with a computer are more dangerous than bad guys without a computer i

Harper, why don't you take that first?

Yeah, I mean, I like this question because it seems like there is not a good answer.

We're in a world with so many variables that it's very complex.

Or as I was taught when I was taught media training, this is a very nuanced issue.

And I think that that means that there's so many variables here that it's unclear.

But from where I'm standing, which I think is very...

I think it's very important to point out that neither John or I live in the Bay.

Tie that into an overall framing And give us an idea of what you think the legitimate concerns are, and how do those relate to the AI will kill everyone?

I think about

hilariously QML a lot, like the email program.

And I remember setting up QML back in the day, and I wanted a feature, some feature.

And it was just like, well, just pipe the output to the thing that gives you the feature.

And then after that, you just pipe it to another thing, and you just pipe it to another thing.

And I think that really, that kind of idea, the Unix philosophy, or even just pipes, really influenced my perspective on how to build products.

Because when you think about going back to people, I don't know what people want.

as we, we published this

I think that

if you're coding, you can get pretty far.

Now that doesn't mean that you can't get better, right? Like I think there's a difference between could this do everything I need it to do? And is this the best model in the same way that you have cars, right? Like buying a Toyota Corolla is a completely rational car.

I would probably prefer another car.

But that, but like it does do the thing.

And so I think that if you are, if you have a GPU that can run, like you have, you know, we have a spark, right? We have one of these sparks and it can has 128 gig of Ram.

We can run some of these bigger models slow, just so slow, but you run it.

I can't argue against

Yep.

Anthropic wants us to think that they are the engine.

They want us to think that if you use Claude, it's Claude, and it's different than OpenAI, and Kimi, and GLM, and all these things.

Um, what we have found, and I think everyone kind of has a similar experience, is like a lot of people prefer the vibe of Claude, which I think is related to the prompting, um, and the system prompts and whatnot, and they think OpenAI is kind of boring.

But OpenAI is just as effective.

The models are very good.

As, you know, like Sol is incredible.

Gets you there, yeah.

Yep.

Anthropic wants us to think that they are the engine.

They want us to think that if you use Claude, it's Claude, and it's different than OpenAI, and Kimi, and GLM, and all these things.

Um, what we have found, and I think everyone kind of has a similar experience, is like a lot of people prefer the vibe of Claude, which I think is related to the prompting, um, and the system prompts and whatnot, and they think OpenAI is kind of boring.

But OpenAI is just as effective.

The models are very good.

As, you know, like Sol is incredible.

Gets you there, yeah.

I can't argue against

that point.

He makes a good point.

So I think there's two points there, right? One is it's communism.

Great.

Who cares? The other one is that this might cause issues for, I mean, it's a communist country.

What would you expect them to do? You can't own property.

was widely thought that the reason fable was pulled was because katie missouris was uh the person uh that uh anthropic and of course uh katie missouris was associated uh with chris krebs and uh obama white house and uh it was political now whether that's true i don't know um and you know and i i understand the argument that this stuff is so dangerous some and honestly if you if you thought if you say you thought you stipulated the government has the technical ability to do this which is not clear but let's say they did maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea that they would vet these models to make sure that they were safe before they were widely used i'm not worried about uh good guys i'm not worried about us using them i'm worried about bad guys using them should we should you not worry about that harper

I mean, if I were graduating with a computer science degree right now, I don't know.

I think there's something I've observed, and I think this is kind of funny.

I think we forget about capitalism when we have these conversations, because as the CEO of a company, if someone comes to me and says, I'm a mid-level employee, you have to pay me 250K a year, or someone comes to me and says, I'm a new grad, you have to pay me 120K a year.

And with Claude Code or whatever their equivalent, why would I ever hire the middle career person? I think that the younger, I think the class of 2026 is not going to get jobs because there's just not, it's like a pretty hard job market in general.

But I have more hope for the people who are just graduating, who are going to enter factory jobs of technology than I do of people who are getting laid off as a mid-career person.

Now they can get a job, it's just not going to pay the same.

And I think this is going to have a really somewhat catastrophic, impact on our knowledge worker communities, our dual income communities, suburbs in general.

So what we...

That's a good point

... to really be, if the US really wants to have a f- a...

Well, let me say it differently.

I find it very interesting that China has followed the rule or the, the kind of pattern that the US followed in the past of releasing what amounts to a free technology to the world, and the US is, uh, with open models, et cetera, and the US has been reliant on closed models.

And so if you talk to entrepreneurs outside the US, a lot of them are relying on these open Chinese models.

They're not relying on closed US models.

And if we're...

Um...

That's a good point

... to really be, if the US really wants to have a f- a...

Well, let me say it differently.

I find it very interesting that China has followed the rule or the, the kind of pattern that the US followed in the past of releasing what amounts to a free technology to the world, and the US is, uh, with open models, et cetera, and the US has been reliant on closed models.

And so if you talk to entrepreneurs outside the US, a lot of them are relying on these open Chinese models.

They're not relying on closed US models.

And if we're...

Um...

He has an AI, uh, company, but I think you probably still have to grapple with this kind of thing too, right?

I mean, I kind of love it.

We...

I think we have a little bit of, like, I say we as the team, like we talk about this a lot of, of what happens when you get frustrated with it.

How do you emote towards it? Um, and there's this, this other thing that I don't see talked about a bunch, which when we start to have...

when all these interfaces come to fruition and we have a chatbox in every single interface, whether it's Google or Excel spreadsheet or an email client, you're going to get bad news and you're going to emote into the chatbox because it seems so similar to language.

And you're going to say something like, "Oh, man, what a bummer." And then suddenly, it's going to respond back to you as an LLM, but it's going to start being a therapist.

But, but, Harper, would, would punishment be a good mechanism of further training and tuning?