E111: Microsoft to invest $10B in OpenAI, generative AI hype, America's over-classification problem

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:00)
Is anybody else seeing a half-a-second lag with J. Cal?
Like a second lag?

**Jason Calacanis** (0:04)
Test, test, test, one, two, one, two.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:05)
From the way his mouth moves?

**David Sacks** (0:07)
Well, that always happens.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:09)
Oh, God, here it comes.

**David Friedberg** (0:10)
His mouth never stops moving.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:12)
Relax, Sacks. Relax, Sacks.

**David Sacks** (0:16)
Are we going? Are we recording?

**David Friedberg** (0:17)
Are you ready to go?

**David Sacks** (0:18)
Don't lose this. A plus material.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:21)
Go to the hot sacks? All right, let's go.

**David Sacks** (0:23)
This is Chappelle at the punch line. Let's go.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:25)
Let's go. All right, everybody, welcome to episode 111 of the world's greatest podcasts, according to Slate, the podcast that shall not be mentioned by the press apparently.

**David Sacks** (0:55)
What do you mean? They just did a profile on us.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:57)
Well, they did. This is the conundrum.
It's so much of a phenomenon that we're the number one business and the number one tech podcast in the world hands down, that the press has a hard time giving us any oxygen because they want to hate us. They want to cover it.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:17)
You're saying they take the ideas but not the...

**Jason Calacanis** (1:20)
They don't want to cite it.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:21)
They don't want to cite it.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:22)
They don't want to cite it. But anyway, shout out to Slate.

**David Friedberg** (1:25)
What I thought was interesting was the guy pointed out that we don't want to subject ourselves to independent journalists asking us independent questions.
Therefore, we go direct and that's the thing nowadays. When everyone says they want to go direct, it's because they don't want to be subject to independent journalists.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:41)
One might ask themselves why subjects don't want to go direct.

**David Sacks** (1:44)
Yeah, exactly.

**David Friedberg** (1:45)
You mean don't want to go to journalists?

**Jason Calacanis** (1:47)
Yeah, because there's a specific reason why principles, the subject of stories, do not want to have the press interpret what they're saying because they don't feel they're getting a fair shake. They feel like the words are being twisted.

**David Friedberg** (1:59)
The challenge is that then we avoid independent scrutiny of our points of view and our decisions.

**David Sacks** (2:03)
No, we don't. They're constantly writing hit pieces about us. The question is when we want to present our side of it, do we need to go through their filter or not? Why would you go through their filter when it's always going to be a hit piece?
They have a class hatred of basically of technology entrepreneurs and investors.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:25)
I think it's just you, Sacks.

**David Sacks** (2:28)
You're right, J. Cal, they don't hate you because you genuflect to their political biases. You see, if you do what SBF did, which is basically agree with all of their biases, then yes, they'll treat you better. That's the deal. That's how it works.

**David Friedberg** (2:44)
When you say they, you're referring to specific large media outlets, right, Sacks?

**Jason Calacanis** (2:48)
I'm on the left. He's not referring to Fox or Tucker.

**David Sacks** (2:51)
No, but you can name one.
I'll trade you, I'll tell you what, I'll trade you Fox for MSNBC and CNN and the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Atlantic Magazine and on and on and on. You get a lot of mileage out of being able to name Fox. The fact of the matter is-

**Jason Calacanis** (3:05)
Megan Kelly.

**David Sacks** (3:07)
That's a podcast or she's independent now.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:09)
That's true.

**David Sacks** (3:09)
You can name one. I mean, literally one outlet that is not part of this, you know, mainstream media. And they all think the same way.
There are very small differences in the way they think.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:21)
It's all about clicks. It's all about clicks at this point. And it's all about advocacy journalism.
And advocacy. It's that combination.

**David Sacks** (3:29)
What you're calling advocacy is bias and activism. It's activism.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:33)
That's what I'm talking about. Activism journalism. Yes.

**David Friedberg** (3:36)
I think Draymond also highlights a really important point, which is, you know, he started his podcast. It's become one of the most popular forms of sports media. And he can speak directly without the filtering and, you know, classification that's done by the journalist. And it seems to be a really powerful trend. The audience really wants to hear direct and they want to hear unfiltered raw.
Points of view, and maybe there's still a role for, I think, the journalism separate from that, which is to then scrutinize and analyze and question and it's not journalism.