(Preview) Doom Debates Go Mainstream, AI Religion and the Economic Future, Several Vectors of the China Question

Andrew Sharp (0:00)

Hello, and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp, and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, how you doing?

Ben Thompson (0:20)

Just happy to be with you here at the end of the world, Andrew.

Andrew Sharp (0:24)

One of our last pods before the sky falls on all of us. Here we go, or the Skynet, I should say, falls on all of us.

Ben Thompson (0:32)

The Skynet falls. There you go. That's a good one. No, I thought, well, we still have time.

Andrew Sharp (0:37)

Get some takes off, you know?

Ben Thompson (0:39)

Well, we always want to get some takes off, but we, I, conceived of Sharp Tech. You were this brilliant host, my favorite podcast, Greatest of All Talk, and the sort of normie newbie take to Greatest of All Talk was, you know, the person doesn't know anything about podcasting. They like Ben Gulliver, right? He's very funny, very cutting, you know, sounds like he knows stuff, attends a lot of games. The podcast Sophisticate appreciates Andrew Sharp.

Not only surprisingly good takes, which you wouldn't expect, but also the ability to set Ben up, sort of be the foil, be made fun of, all these sorts of things.

Andrew Sharp (1:18)

Draw out his bizarre tendencies, sure.

Ben Thompson (1:21)

Absolutely, and I'm like, I want that. This is actually, this is not a joke. I'm like, Andrew is amazing at hosting. And you know what? I like cooking. I like being on someone else's podcast. So my next podcast is not me hosting, it's me permanent guesting. So that is, I think people probably know that, that's sort of the broad origin story.

Andrew Sharp (1:45)

Permanent guest here on Sharp Tech. Exactly, yes.

Ben Thompson (1:49)

But before we go.

Andrew Sharp (1:50)

Okay.

Ben Thompson (1:52)

I want to put the host jacket back on.

Oh boy. For a day.

So I did not write a big article this week. I wrote a response, sort of initial response to Dario Amodei's Pacing the Frontier piece. There is an aspect of all week, I feel like I've already written about all of this. I think if you've been listening to Sharp Tech, you were very early to almost all the arguments that have been going on this week. We've discussed almost all of them from some angle or another. Probably the most pertinent I've written is Anthropics Alignment where they both believe it and also everything's great for them. It's just an amazing magic trick that they get to pull off. So we will get to that. I will be incapable of keeping my mouth shut for most of the podcast. But I say the official article for this Chuck E. Post bundle this week is you, Some of All Fears. S-O-M-E, great title.

Andrew Sharp (2:46)

How did you come up with it? I was sitting on a plane coming back from a weekend in Arizona, reading all the do-mers on Twitter, and I knew that I was going to write about it. And so rather than write about it on the plane, I thought of potential titles on the plane, came up with Some of All Fears. There we go.

Ben Thompson (3:05)

It's great. I love it.

Well, give me the overview. I think like you really frame this as this is by someone who kind of knows about tech normie perspective. But I don't think that's it.

Andrew Sharp (3:18)

OK.

Ben Thompson (3:18)

What I think it is, is someone who pays attention to tech who does not live in San Francisco. That's my high level takeaway. Is that a way to frame it?

Andrew Sharp (3:28)

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. It's sort of a misnomer to call myself a normie at this point because I'm immersed in this world every week with the podcast.

So, I'm familiar with all the characters. I'm familiar with the terminology.

Ben Thompson (3:42)

All the preparation, everything is Andrew. That is, the host job is more difficult than it appears. Right.

Andrew Sharp (3:48)

So, I'm surveying the news and trying to keep track of everything. And I'll be honest, I was moved to write this article because...

Ben Thompson (3:57)

Which, by the way, is coming out the same time as the podcast. So, the links to the show notes, I would encourage you to go read it. I thought it was really good.

Doesn't mean I stand by everything in it. Yeah, Andrew is his own voice. Thank you for that clarification. Which gives me trouble, by the way, sometimes.

Andrew Sharp (4:12)

Well, so, I was moved to write this because I was away with my wife. It was our 10-year wedding anniversary. And so, we were at a resort in Arizona. Thank you so much. We had a delightful weekend. And Saturday afternoon, I got a text message from a friend who sent a link to a long New York Times op-ed. The headline of the op-ed was, This is Really Bad. And it was like 3,000 words of AI doomerism. And my friend, who's a smart guy, he works in the Defense Industrial Complex in DC and is very accomplished and is not a Rube, per se.