Gomez sees AI-driven growth as a defense against scarcity

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 21:54

   Why not just be like, we can do a better OpenAI ourselves, or let's go for sort of the most obvious piece of the pie here? Well, the attractive thing for us was the technical project. Like, that's what was the most exciting. we wanted to train this model of the internet that was really the the objective we we didn't initially know how we were going to monetize that quickly we did decide we want to be b2b like the impact that we want to have is driving this technology into the economy that was a very that was like within the first 12 months decision that we made and i still think that is like the most compelling application of this technology that is like the best impact we can have is by driving growth for the world and driving growth for the global economy.

2. 22:44

   If we can make people more efficient, that in itself is a good. A lot of the issues that I think are very prominent right now have sort of been stewing over the past like 15 years. I'm from Canada. I live in the UK. The same is true for Japan, Korea, much of Europe. There's been a sort of slowdown in growth for these developed democratic economies. when that happens when gdp per capita or like you know pick your metric when that starts to taper off and the pie isn't growing for everyone you start to see like zero-sum thinking start to dominate if the pie isn't growing then my slice isn't growing unless i'm taking it from someone else and vice versa i feel very threatened that someone else is eating into my slice of the pie so you see the emergence of things like xenophobia like that immigrant is taking my

3. 23:45

   opportunity they're taking my my slice of the pie get them out i don't want them this is my pie you see things like you know territorial conquest war is back on the eastern front of europe and people are fighting for land for resources these traits they're not inevitable i think they come out of scarcity and people feeling they need to fight each other to get better off the big promise a lot of people talk about like ai destroying the world and there's all this like you know x risk ea fear it's important that we think about that but i really don't think ai is going to destroy the world it might be like our best shot at saving the world right like restoring this hundred year arc of growth where billions of people their lifespans got longer They were healthier. They were living longer, better lives. Their education got better. Their access to medicine, to technology, their wealth, everything was just improving because the pie was growing. And we were all growing with that pie.

4. 24:55

   But the past 15 years, as that started to stagnate, I think a lot of disturbing political trends have come back in. And so my hope is that by integrating AI into the economy, we can restore growth and carry forward this broader project of liberal democracy and these values that have lifted so many.