The Latest in AI: Job Loss, Elon & Sam Altman Chip Race & the "AI Bubble" w/ Brian Elliott (Blitzy), Emad Mostaque & Dave Blundin | EP #197

Emad Mostaque (0:00)

AI is useful. People pay for it because it has economic value.

Peter Diamandis (0:05)

AI is not a bubble.

Dave Blundin (0:07)

Nothing's going to change the world more than what's going on right now. It is definitely not a bubble. It's not even vaguely likable.

Emad Mostaque (0:13)

AI until a few months ago, it was like having a very smart goldfish memory buddy next to you that you had to oversee all the time. Now, it's the set it and forget it, and it can use millions of tokens, millions of lines of code.

Peter Diamandis (0:25)

Gemini overtakes ChatGPT in the US, so this is based on iOS sales. GROK5 could reach AGI first.

Emad Mostaque (0:32)

It's going to be a crazy couple of years now with this, and there's just not enough energy, compute infrastructure, anything.

Peter Diamandis (0:39)

As a CEO and entrepreneur, do you worry about getting access to the compute you need?

Brian Elliott (0:43)

You really want to be a player where everybody else wins when you win.

Peter Diamandis (0:48)

There will be some kind of a breakthrough on compute. Is it going to be from quantum? Is it going to be from?

SPEAKER_5 (0:55)

Now that's the Moonshot, ladies and gentlemen.

Peter Diamandis (1:00)

Everybody, welcome to Moonshots, another episode of WTF Just Happened in Tech. I'm here with my Moonshot mates, Dave Blundin, the CEO and head of Link Exponential Ventures. Emad Mostaque, the head of Intelligent Internet. My dear friend, Emad, you're in where today? You're in London? Yep, in London. Nice. And Brian Elliott, who you guys met on a previous podcast, Brian is the CEO of Blitzy. So a lot to discuss as always. If you are ready to plug in, guys, start taking notes, start listening. This is the world that is transforming how we live our lives. Before we begin with anything else, I want to talk about the wake up call for colleges and universities. It's pretty extraordinary. So this is a chart that is just out about how Americans perceive the value of college. And if you take a look at this graphic, and I will sort of look at it for everybody here, people who say it's very important have dropped from 75% in 2010 to 35%.

Wrong direction if you are a college or university. Not too important on the other end has gone from 5% up to 24%. So for me, universities have a problem. Dave, we've been talking about this for a while.

Dave Blundin (2:23)

Yeah.

Peter Diamandis (2:24)

Yeah, your thoughts?

Dave Blundin (2:25)

I couldn't believe, I knew this was happening, but these numbers blew my mind. I immediately sent it off to David Siegel, the founder of Two Sigma, because we're going to go meet with Sally Kornbluth, the president of MIT, in a few weeks. Like, holy crap, this is a really, really big deal. And Peter, you've been saying it for a long time, the cost of tuition goes through the roof. The perceived value of the education has been plummeting, not because it's worth less in any fundamental way, but what you can learn has grown so quickly, and it hasn't made it into the curriculum. And remember, Peter, we had that meeting with the head of, I don't want to name names, one of the top guys at MIT. Yeah, I remember it. We can build a nuclear reactor on campus faster than we will ever change this curriculum.

Peter Diamandis (3:07)

Oh my God. It's like, you know, the problem with if you're in a credit university is you're not iterating your curriculum fast enough.

And it just becomes irrelevant before you graduate. So tuition is up 180% since 2005 You know, room and board in a private university today is a quarter of a million dollars. And you're saddled with debt and you don't make it back because you're not getting the jobs. It's crazy. You know, Brian, you're closer to college than I was, and I am right now. How do you think about this?

Brian Elliott (3:41)

I mean, college has been a credentialing program for a long time, right? And so it was the act of getting into MIT that was actually impressive. It was less to do with what MIT could specifically teach you, because their curriculum is taught all over the world. And so the beginning of this has been dropouts of MIT. Yeah, totally for free. Dropouts get funded incredibly fast. And so what's the point of staying for that extra few years? Right. And so there's this unbundling right now that's happening between the credentialing that you can get just from getting in or from going to Y Combinator or from having a portfolio site that's really good. There's other ways to get credential that just weren't possible before. And that's kind of compounded with this big curriculum, like dynamic problem of...