Ep9. GPT-4o, Astra, Multi Modal, China Tariffs, Tech Earnings | BG2 with Bill Gurley & Brad Gerstner

**Bill Gurley** (0:00)
This is classic, you know, freshman economics. If someone's better at doing something than us, we should let them do it, we should buy it from them, and we should send them what we're good at.
Like, this is just, you know, de-globalization, highly inflationary, and we'll make our companies less competitive, not more.

**Brad Gerstner** (0:30)
Hey, man, great to see you. That was fun to take some of your money in Vegas this past weekend.

**Bill Gurley** (0:36)
I can't believe you're bringing that up.

**Brad Gerstner** (0:40)
So last night, I'm sitting on the back porch. I'm helping Lincoln study for his macro e-contest today. Hopefully did pretty well on it. I mean, I have to say as a dad, this is one of my favorite things, just watching kids gain that agency, like really get hungry and curious. And so he was asking questions about the IMF and the World Bank, and I didn't know the precise answer to him. So I just opened up ChatGPT, and I just found myself, ChatGPT literally became almost like a teacher who was sitting at the table, non-intrusive, answering questions for us, keeping the conversation flowing.
And I found myself, we never opened Google a single time, Bill, and it really unlocked a lot of learning, and led to this 45-minute conversation back and forth that we had.
And doing that and then watching some of the things this week, it really reminded me that unlocking education, right? Both for kids like my kid, but also kids around the world who all basically have equal access to this incredible tutor on these mobile devices. I think it's hard to imagine the amount of human potential and kind of global economic impact that we'll have over time, knowing we're in the very early innings of this.

**Bill Gurley** (1:59)
I think it's a really good point. We talk about what can AI do and what can it not do. And I think there's a lot of fair conversations on both sides. But one thing that seems glaringly obvious is this teacher element. And Salkan, who's present in some of the demos this week, has been leaning into this heavily. He's someone we should definitely pay attention to.
But they look real. And we talked about the models are infinitely patient, which humans struggle with.
And I even tweeted when I was watching one of the demos, it reminded me of there's a great Neil Stevenson book called The Diamond Age, and the subtitle of the book is A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. And the narrative, the hero heroine of this book gets a little tablet, and the tablet teaches her throughout the course of the book. And it's some really elegant writing, and it's very prophetic for what we saw this week.

**Brad Gerstner** (2:57)
Well, let's talk a little bit about what we saw this week, because it was all about consumer. And you know, in our first eight episodes, Bill, you must have brought up the movie Her five or ten times in its relationship to AI. So you must have felt vindicated this week when Sam Altman, you know, after the demos began, tweeted her not to be upstage. Then Google yesterday, you know, at their IO event showed off Astra, their version of her, albeit a little recorded and maybe a little bit more clunky.
So I made a little mashup for you. Yeah, maybe just as a bit of a demo to get us started here. So maybe Benny will fire it up for us.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:42)
Good morning, Theodore.

**Bill Gurley** (3:43)
Good morning.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:44)
You have a meeting in five minutes.

**Brad Gerstner** (3:45)
You want to try getting out of bed?

**Bill Gurley** (3:48)
You're too funny.

**Brad Gerstner** (3:50)
Theodore, I saw in your emails that you'd gone through a breakup recently.

**Bill Gurley** (3:54)
You're kind of nosy.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:55)
Am I?

**Bill Gurley** (3:56)
You'll get used to it. Like when I talk to her, I feel like she's with me.

**SPEAKER_4** (4:02)
I want to learn everything about everything.

**Brad Gerstner** (4:06)
I want to discover myself.

**Bill Gurley** (4:08)
I want that for you too.

**Brad Gerstner** (4:11)
Keep going.

**SPEAKER_3** (4:12)
Hey, ChatGPT, how are you doing?

**SPEAKER_4** (4:14)
I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for asking.
How about you?

**SPEAKER_3** (4:18)
Pretty good.

**SPEAKER_4** (4:18)
What's up? So my friend Barrett here, he's been having trouble sleeping lately. And I want you to tell him a bedtime story about robots and love.
Oh, a bedtime story about robots and love? I got you covered. Gather round, Barrett. Once upon a time, in a world not too different from ours, there was a robot named Byte.