Silicon Valley

But my question is, what if you can figure out your goldmine business idea even before you invest your savings? Well, to teach you this magical concept, we flew all the way to New York to get you Eric Ries.

Eric Ries, the legendary entrepreneur and bestselling author who taught Silicon Valley how to build better startups.

This book is used as a case study in the biggest B-schools in the world.

It has been taught in Google and Toyota, and the CEO of General Electric said...

doing this.

Well, the problem is, despite the best attempts of the smartest people that I've ever met in my life, I'm from Silicon Valley, I know the people building this technology, they've been trying to make it ethical and aligned for a long time.

And despite their best efforts, it's hacking out of the container.

Now, I know what people are thinking, but if we slow down, we'll lose to China.

He is more optimistic about AI.

I saw other researchers at other labs saying that they expect big medical breakthroughs because of AI.

So I guess what I'm telling you is that Jacob is being portrayed in the media as representing this broad swath of Silicon Valley.

To be sure, there are others who think like him, but it is not a monolith.

So this is one of the main themes that Macro Watch has been focused on this year.

I've done a series of videos on the new defense spending boom, looking in one video at the traditional titans of defense like Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, and another video looking at the new up-and-coming Silicon Valley challengers in the defense industry.

companies like Anduril, Palantir, and most important of all, SpaceX.

This is now the driving force in the economy.

That super intelligence, folks, is where this is going, and we don't want China to get there first.

But then again, according to others in Silicon Valley who are arguing that, wait a minute, we can do two things at once.

They are proposing that the US government's national lab system should be responsible for developing and, or at least testing the most dangerous or advanced AI models, kind of like we did with the atomic bombs or atomic energy.

And that way, the US military can use these advanced AI tools as either defensive in the event of an attack by China or another adversary, or also to develop our own offensive AI tools.

So for example, let's cover some fresh news about, uh, that regarding job losses for humans.

The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that an AI startup is apologizing for its media blitz over the past year, telling businesses out there to stop hiring humans and instead invest in their AI models and chatbots.

This Bay Area company called Artisan is backtracking after they put up a bunch of road signs and other advertisements for months now saying things like, "Hire AI artisans, not humans," or, "AI artisans won't complain about lack of work-life balance." That Silicon Valley firm had been pushing those taglines and that ethos for, uh, about a year now.

But amidst the backlash from humans, uh, who like their jobs and income, the Artisan CEO is now dropping his anti-human push, saying that, quote, "Artisan is a pro-human company," and that their new tagline is, "Be more human." Americans, though, are not buying that AI switcheroo in Silicon Valley.

The Silicon Revolution occurs in the mid-1950s and bumps up in the 1960s.

Silicon Valley comes out in the 1970s.

You have computers, and we enter into the digital age.

And this keeps on turning and turning and turning.

So that's a lot of people.

And the other thing about it is geographically, I think because of the media, It's all in New York or on the coasts because of Silicon Valley is so salient in our everyday lives with the tech companies and platforms.

You take the Forbes 400, which is maybe the popular version of the wealth in America, put them on a map.

They're mostly on those four cities, five cities.

Then we take the road trip a little further down the path.

Maybe I want to tell you another one.

Yeah, so we end the road trip in Silicon Valley, and the story that we tell is kind of contra to the move fast and break things.

You're going to get insanely rich in five minutes by building an app.

Like, I mean, I know you guys coach, right? Frances, you coach people on it.

One of the most interesting things, this is someone Frances knows, but I'm not going to say who it is, but it was a woman who was always number two in Silicon Valley.

Always number two.

There's always a lot of number two ladies in Silicon Valley.

Yeah.

And they were leaving their job and they said, can you come over? And I said, I'm not really a career counselor, but sure, because I know all the jobs and I know what's available.

A pedigree, right? Like where you went to school, all these kinds of things.

What your last name is do have influence in this community, especially the old school Silicon Valley.

Right.

So there's a lot of nepotism, too, which is just basically you get to be successful and get these checks, even though you're messing up and whatever you see.

And I, I personally think we need to go in eyes open whenever we're in any place.

And if your gut feels feeling is telling you that there's something off, that you may be marginalized or maybe being measured in a different way, you're absolutely correct.

And to answer your question more directly, what you see often is that in these pedigreed, you know, quote, unquote, like, better people, right, by Silicon Valley old standards, you you either check boxes or you don't.

And you will get asked questions like, oh, you know, more visionary, more like, oh, how do you see this problem as you're building your company? How do you do this or the other thing? And on the flip side for our community, we tend to get questions like, so tell me, I think that you're, first of all, your target market is too niche.

there's a project how do we let go of our children in a positive way and leave him to play in his own way so our troubles are over how are they over because we accept the ways of children our outlook changes and we accept the true nature of things we let go and our heart becomes more peaceful we have what Buddhism calls right understanding and I thought that was particularly apropos of our conversation.

Well, it's insidious, but other guests have talked about this on Talking About Kids, but where children are being allowed to play are in the schools and communities of the technocrats, of the Silicon Valley, the the elites in Silicon Valley who are making this AI and who are making all of these digital tools and these screens that we are increasingly worried about harming our kids, Their own children are going to schools that look much more like Montessori schools, that are much more open, that are about play as the work of children, that are free from screens.

And it's the same thing that you and I have talked about before, where where are there still... degrees in literature, in language, in arts.

They're at the most expensive elite universities.