The AI Wealth Gap: Why 40x Deflation Changes Everything w/ Dave Blundin, Salim Ismail, Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross | EP #208

Peter Diamandis (0:00)

So, the number one concern globally is cost of living. And tied very closely to that is unemployment. Will I get a job? And then the third concern is poverty and social inequities. And we talk about a future abundance, we talk about demonetization, but this is the reality of what people are feeling.

SPEAKER_2 (0:19)

This is a story about preparing for the worst, maybe the worst thing any of us can imagine.

SPEAKER_3 (0:25)

The wealth isn't going to go to the people who are doing the work, or the people who get unemployed, it's going to go to making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Dave Blundin (0:33)

You got a third of your income going into your phone and your data plan, and all that money funnels out of the country and lands in, like you said, Silicon Valley and Boston. Then you add AI as a layer on top of that, and the gap is going to get really, really wide. So that's the reality of a huge fraction of the world's population, though.

Peter Diamandis (0:52)

The question is, how do we help people believe in a hopeful and compelling future? Because if they don't believe, it's a hopeful and compelling future.

Dave Blundin (1:02)

Now that's the Moonshot, ladies and gentlemen.

Peter Diamandis (1:07)

Hey, everybody. Welcome to our episode on WTF Just Happened in Tech. Here with my Moonshot mates, Dave Blundin. Hey, Dave. Salim Ismail. Good morning, Salim. And Alex Wissner-Gross. So, guys, it's been quite a week. You've been in Brazil, Salim. Just back?

Salim Ismail (1:26)

Yeah, I was just back from three days in Brazil. Turns out we have a massive viewership and listenership there demanding that we be able to convert translate this into Portuguese. So we should look at that.

Peter Diamandis (1:36)

Okay, we'll do that. I just got back from Milan and Madrid, right? The middle of Europe talking about AI and we'll talk about it. But there's a lot of concern and angst about how far they're falling behind. And we've got a subject to discover on this episode as well on that. Dave, how's your week been?

Dave Blundin (1:57)

Phenomenal. I get to hang out with Alex face to face, which is a rare treat. And we brainstormed a ton of things going on. Can't wait to talk about them today.

Peter Diamandis (2:06)

Awesome.

Salim Ismail (2:07)

I have a general complaint.

Peter Diamandis (2:08)

What's that?

Salim Ismail (2:09)

You know, over the last few weeks since we recorded, there's so much stuff been happening. I need an Alex, Dave and Peter AI next to me that just real time helps me interpret the stories. We should maybe think about creating a GT.

Dave Blundin (2:22)

Good news. It's in the queue, Salim. We're working on it. I budgeted it and we're doing it.

Peter Diamandis (2:28)

All right. All right, Alex. If this is the physical Alex or the AI Alex, I have no idea. But how are you doing, pal?

Alexander Wissner-Gross (2:36)

What's the difference?

Peter Diamandis (2:39)

Probably nothing.

Alexander Wissner-Gross (2:41)

Half the world's convinced I'm an AI already.

Peter Diamandis (2:45)

Well, we'll figure that out soon enough. Everybody, this is the news that's worth listening to. Hopefully, the news that helps you keep up with how fast things are moving and keeps a positive vision of the potential in your mind. As we say every week, I know we all spend at least 20 hours independently and together getting ready. So let's jump in.

Let's open up with the hyperscalers news about Anthropic, Google OpenAI. Still going on. In fact, this week in particular, a lot of news about Anthropic, which hasn't hit our WTF episodes in the recent past. Here we go. Anthropic overtakes OpenAI in Enterprise LLM API market share. All right, over to you, Alex. What's the significance here? We see this chart. OpenAI is dropping, Anthropic is rising. What does it mean?

Alexander Wissner-Gross (3:39)

I think the central question, Peter, is whether code generation is the critical path to recursive self-improvement. Code generation is the critical path, then one can expect amazing outcomes from Anthropic, which is quite publicly focused at strategy on code generation, perhaps to the exclusion of other modalities like, say, video generation like we see from OpenAI with Sora. On the other hand, if code generation turns out to be missing some special sauce needed for super intelligence, broad super intelligence and recursive self-improvement, maybe this trend won't last. But I think that's sort of the core question here.

Dave Blundin (4:16)

Well, I have a completely firm opinion on this. I'd love to... I don't want to lead the witness, but I could throw it out there first, Alex, or you can tell me. So what is the answer? Is the LLM scaling recursive self-improvement loop enough to crack to the Singularity and Infinite Intelligence or not? What's your guess?