UK policy and culture push startup founders toward the US

Transcript

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

1. 1:20:58

   I've been sort of harping on about the differential number of entrepreneurs coming out of the UK versus coming out of the US, despite the fact that we have similar higher education levels and the same number of universities in the top 10 worldwide. The UK has got the same number as the US do, but we put out only 20% of the number of entrepreneurs. what based on your assessment culturally commercially what do you lay that at the feet of yeah look part of it is some of the great uk entrepreneurs come to the u.s um and so we like and by the way this is not just true the uk it's also true of france and germany and sweden and norway and many other countries right and so i just because the u.s has such a highly evolved advanced entrepreneurial ecosystem um you know it may just be that we're drawing a

2. 1:21:44

   lot of them. And so they don't start companies in the UK because they've left. I think that's part of it. I think part of it is the identity crisis. Here I just know what I hear from my friends who are English or French or German, which is just they feel like their home countries and cultures are just not very supportive of the entire concept. The governments don't necessarily want it. The legal codes are not well set up for it. Look, the UK, there's a great example. So there's a great example of the dichotomy, just like the speech thing. So in the US, this AI thing is kind of the big exciting thing in tech and the US is swarming it. And the Biden administration was threatening to do all these horrible regulatory things, but the new administration is certainly not. They're going to do, I think, really smart things. And so there's going to be an AI tech boom

3. 1:22:28

   in the US that's going to be spectacular. And a lot of that is around startups. Europe, the EU has chosen to basically make all of that illegal, right? And so they passed this thing called the the eu ai act and they you know this guy thierry britain uh it's this kind of crowning achievement to basically make ai startups in the eu illegal so they've they've just decided they just don't want them and then the uk the knees just in case we were going to contribute to this new fledgling industry yeah well the eu you know the eu they have this slogan the eu kind of bureaucrats have this slogan it's just say we're you know we're not going to lead the world in innovation but but but we can lead it in regulation right it's like no right exactly And that's what your reaction is, the appropriate reaction, which is like, no, that's not actually what we're going to.

4. 1:23:12

   Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. Like, if it's not literally happening there, then you're not going to be able to regulate it. And in fact, what's happening is new leading edge AI products from American companies now are actually not being are actually not being released in not even being released in Europe. Right. So like the new Apple AI products. And I actually think the new OpenAI products as well are just not even literally being released in Europe as a result.

5. 1:23:33

   The UK, again, has chosen, the UK has chosen this middle form, which is they sort of made it illegal, right? And so they did this, the last administration did this disastrous AI safety push, which was basically a massive red light, basically saying, don't even bother to try to start AI startups in the UK. So, but it wasn't like as overt a ban as the EU put on, but it was like this massive signal that basically says this is not a safe place to do it.

6. 1:23:55

   And I think the UK is kind of stuck halfway in the middle right now and kind of has to decide which way it wants to go. I, uh, I don't know, man. I, I, I really hope that we can bring ourselves back around. Maybe not like old school colonialist glory. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not hearkening back to the