Why OpenAI Should Buy Off the World’s Top Mathematicians | E32

Lon Harris (0:00)

OpenAI said an internal model has now resolved more than 100 long-standing open problems across mathematics.

Richard Socher (0:06)

I find it kind of funny that the mathematicians say stop solving our problems too fast.

Jake Loosararian (0:10)

It's awesome that we're able to solve this using brute force.

Jason Calacanis (0:13)

Pick 1%.

How many important mathematicians are there in the world? We're hiring the top 50 to work full-time for us for the next five years. You get $100 million each. Stop with the charade here, just stop the charade. Thanks to our friends at PayPal, the exclusive sponsor of This Week in AI. Pay zero processing fees on your first 100,000 ineligible PayPal payment volume. Find out more at paypal.launch.co.

All right, everybody, welcome back to This Week in AI. It is a big week for AI news. Every week now is the equivalent of about 6 to 12 weeks worth of news every week. We're here digesting literally a docket of 20 stories with three incredible experts and the amazing newsreader, Lon Harris.

Lon Harris (1:02)

How are you doing, Lon? Doing pretty good. Doing pretty good. How about you?

Jason Calacanis (1:05)

Given that intro, we need to get to work. Explain who's on the pod and let's get to our first story, ASAP.

Lon Harris (1:12)

My pleasure. So first up, we've got a first time guest here on This Week in AI. It's Guy Pigeon. He's the founder and CEO of Tessl. They're an agent enablement platform for AI software development.

Next, we've got a returning buddy, co-founder and CEO of u.com and Recursive Superintelligence. His new book is The Eureka Machine. I have a copy right here. He's kind enough to send it along. Richard Socher. Finally, we've got another returning favorite, co-founder and CEO of Gecko Robotics. They build robots in AI to inspect and monitor critical industrial infrastructure. Jake Loosararian, thank you so much for joining us. Amazing panel today.

Jason Calacanis (1:49)

Yeah, Gecko, you've been on the pod how many times now? My Lord, this week in startups, all in everything. You've been on like five, ten times.

Jake Loosararian (1:59)

We got a beautiful friendship here. We do.

Jason Calacanis (2:01)

Well, it's even more than that. You bring it with deep industry knowledge and you're candid. When you're trying to form a podcast, like we're doing here in this week in AI year zero, you're looking for those guests who can be super candid and have deep knowledge. Basically, they're dangerous. You have enough knowledge and you could say something that could just completely go off the rails or inform our audience and you're great at that, Jake.

Lon, story number one.

Lon Harris (2:30)

Let's get to work. Let's kick it off.

Guy Podjarny (2:32)

I'm not entirely sure if that was a compliment or the ass.

Jason Calacanis (2:36)

I think it's a compliment. Yes, he's built for broadcasting. I think Jake's built for broadcasting. We're going to find out about you guys.

Jake Loosararian (2:41)

Dangerous is a great word.

Jason Calacanis (2:43)

Dangerous is good. You do have to be thoughtful.

Lon Harris (2:46)

We like it.

Jason Calacanis (2:47)

The good news is we don't do this one live. We tape it.

If you make a mistake and you say something completely off the rails, we can help you out there. But first story there, Lon.

Lon Harris (2:57)

All right. Sure. We'll start it off. Shopify and Meta announced a partnership yesterday, enabling Meta's personal AI agent, Muse, to browse Shopify-powered stores and complete purchases through Shop Pay. Shopify CEO Tobias Lucier called it an easy and delightful way to shop and check out with Muse, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted that shoppers will find more and shops will sell more as well. Meta's chief AI officer Alexander Wang said the goal is giving Muse users a wide range of stores and products to choose from. Amazon, of course, recently moved to block Muse from shopping on its site entirely, arguing that the agent hides its identity and may collect customer credentials. Without permission, Deutsche Bank analysts called the deal a sign that AI platforms are choosing to work within Shopify's infrastructure rather than around it. Both stocks jumped Monday with Shopify up 7.3 percent and Meta up over 11 percent. So Guy, you're the first timer. You're the new guy on the block. We'll go to you first.

So what do you think of this competitive approach? Shopify reaching out its hand and shaking with Meta, with Muse and Amazon backing away.

Who do you think is the smart strategy and what do you make of this landscape?

Guy Podjarny (4:06)

I think it's all about the business model that you are protecting. So I think for Shopify, really what they want to do is they want to get a lot of stores online and those stores just want to sell stuff on it. And what Shopify wants and what they benefit from is the shared logistics infrastructure behind the scenes, which makes more stores come to them. And so there's no reason really for them to block anything. While Amazon, they sell everything through them. And so they want to control the interface. They want their recommendations. If Muse shops it, nobody sees ads, nobody sees...