Alexandr Wang
Appearances
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
There's one, there was one part of the campus called East Campus where it was like, it was more fringe. And so there was like, at one point in the school year, They would – in their courtyard, they would build a gigantic catapult, like a huge catapult.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
No, it was a catapult then. Okay. Like a big – because there was a big – there was a big like ice cream scooper looking thing that would like – that would fling it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
They would fling stuff into the river, which I don't think, now that I'm thinking about it, I feel like, I don't know what the, yeah, no, these giant, this giant like catapult things.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, they would do this. They would do other things. They would build a lot of stuff over there. And there would be... Like people that ended up at Burning Man later on. Yes, yes. That was core Burning Man. There was a satanic ritual floor. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like a lot of – like it's fringe. Cool. It's cool. Right. But yeah, so there's all these parties.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
We bragged at MIT that people from all the neighboring schools – because Boston is a huge college town, like tons and tons of – Boston is an amazing city. Yeah. But no, MIT was fun. But I was only there – I was at MIT for one year.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
I think for me it was like I was just feeling really impatient. And I don't really know why really, but I remember I was in school the first year. It was really fun and I really enjoyed it. But then I remember in the year when I was at MIT was one of the first like –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
It was like one of the early big moments in AI because it was, I don't even remember this, but there was an AI that beat the world champion at Go. This was in 2015 when I was in college. At Go, and that was a game? Yeah, Go, it's like a big checkerboard with like white and black stones. It's like, and it was, yeah, this game, AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Never happened, yeah. And it was a big moment for AI. It was like, oh, wow, this stuff is like, it's really happening. And so then this happened in March. And I guess, yeah, I dropped out, started my company in May. So I guess two months after this, I was, yeah, that's what the game looks like.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
It's honestly, it's a really, like, I'm not very good at the game.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
It kind of did. Basically, it was – I remember feeling like, oh, wow, AI, it's happening. And this was back in 2016, so like eight, nine years ago. And then I felt like I had to – basically, that inspired me to start my company. And I moved – I basically went straight from – I remember this. I flew straight from Boston to San Francisco and then started the company basically. Wow.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
It was, there was a lot going on. Yeah, it was a, were you there the whole weekend?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
I was – so I took all the AI classes at MIT.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
hang boy wow and uh but then so i worked on that and then it was there was one moment where where uh i was like there was like there was a moment that clicked where i was trying to build this thing and then there was one step that was like too easy i was like whoa that just worked right there and then that happened and then the the go match happened and i was like This stuff is happening.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
I love that. That was college me. Yeah. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
I was there the whole weekend. Yeah, no, I mean, I think at least for what we do, like for AI, the new administration is really excited about it and wants to make sure that we get it right as a country. So that was all great, but it was kind of a crazy, the whole like event, like everything was pretty crazy. I don't know, what'd you think? Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, the way I would think about it or the way I thought about the time was like this is becoming – people have been talking about AI for decades. Like it's kind of always been one of these things that people have said, oh, it's going to happen, but it never really was happening. And it felt like it was really about to happen.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. So AI is all about, you know, basically programming computers to be able to start thinking like humans. So, you know, traditional computer programming, you know, it's pretty bare bones. It's not very smart. And so AI is all about can you have – can you build algorithms that start to be able to think like people and replicate some of the –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Like our brains are these incredible, incredible things, you know, and that's evolution. That's just biology that created our brains. And so it's all about how can we build something similar to that or replicate it using computers and machines. And so the whole modern AI era really started around an area called computer vision.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But it was like, how can we first get computers to see like humans do? So one of the very first AI projects was this thing called ImageNet. ImageNet and later AlexNet. computer programs, like given a photo to tell you what's in that photo.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, train them to – well, actually, originally, like, you could – like, let's say you took a photo of this bottle. A machine wouldn't even be able to tell you what's in the photo. It would just know what the pixels were. But it wouldn't be able to tell you, like, oh, there's a bottle in that photo.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So, you know, one of the first AI breakthroughs was when YouTube built an algorithm that could tell when there were cats in their videos. And that was, like – In 2012 or 2011, this was this mind-blowing breakthrough that you could use an algorithm to figure out when there was a cat inside a video. And so AI, it started pretty simply with just how do we replicate vision?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
How do you replicate basically the fact that our eyes and our brains can process all this imagery coming in? And that really led to, I think, one of the first major use cases of AI, which is self-driving cars. So this was – when I started the company in 2016, self-driving cars were all the rage because it was – there were all these like skunk works projects.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. Yep. That was all the rage. And so it was it was all about can you know, can we start building algorithms that can drive a car like a human would and do it safely and do it more efficiently? And that way, instead of that was that was one of the first major areas. OK. And then now, you know, I.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
The whole industry has moved so fast, but then all of a sudden we got ChatGPT and we got more advanced stuff more recently that is able to talk like a human or sort of think like a human. And so it's really come pretty far recently, but all of it is about how do you build algorithms, how to use machines to be able to think like a person.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Crossover. It's like in those like TV shows when you have those crossover episodes. Yeah. That's kind of what it felt like.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. So there's two parts. There's two parts to it. So the first part is you need really advanced chips. So you need like these, they're called GPUs or sometimes called TPUs or, you know, there's a lot of different words for it, but you need like the most advanced computer chips in the world. And they- How big is each one? Do you know?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
They – I mean the biggest ones are actually like – the whole chips are like pretty big. But they're like a wafer kind of thing. But then you put a lot of them all together. So these – yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. These like – these chips. And the biggest ones are – yeah, exactly.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
yep these are these are the brains behind it yeah so then um yeah exactly these are some those are some big ones so then so you have to have a lot of these chips so you need a ton of these chips and that's that's kind of the the like uh that's the physical presence and then um and then by the way they take a huge amount of energy they're really uh they because they have you have to do a lot of you know calculations and there's a lot of math that has to happen on them and so um
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
and you have, you have giant, basically data centers, buildings full of like tons and tons of those chips, just in giant rows. Like how big are we talking warehouses? Yeah. The biggest one. I mean like, um, like Elon's data center Colossus is like, uh, I mean, it's probably more than a million. It's definitely more than a million square feet. I mean, it's like just huge.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You see that building with the sunset? Second row?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
That one. Yeah. Look, it's like a huge ass building. What? It's huge. And all that's just filled with chips. um have you ever been in there i haven't been in that one but i've been in some of these and it's just and this is what it looks like inside yeah basically yeah so it's just rows and rows of chips so no plants or anything yeah no no plants no plants it gets hot in there i bet
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So the first part is just the – that's the physical presence. And then the second part are the algorithms. So then you have – like on top of those chips, you have software that's running. And the algorithms are just – are like what you actually are telling – what's the math that you're telling to happen on the chips. And those algorithms are some of the most complicated algorithms that exist.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
humans have ever come up with and that's kind of the that's kind of the software part or that's kind of the that's the part that like you know exists on the internet or you download or whatnot and then it has to be run on these like huge warehouses of giant of giant ships okay
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. So, so, um, yeah, like chat GPT is a, is a way to be able to, uh, talk to basically you can talk to the algorithm.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So you can start interacting directly with algorithm. You can see how the algorithm is thinking.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
A little bit, yeah. Okay. Because they all are trying to have their own style and have their own vibe to it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And then what we do, what Scale AI is all about, is we've kind of built almost like the Uber of AI. Okay. So a lot of what we're trying to do is how do we help produce data that is improving these algorithms? And just like how Uber, there's-
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Uh, well, yeah, I mean you Connor, like the, the, the Paul's, I don't know the whole, the whole thing was pretty, uh, pretty crazy. I see Sam all the time and I see, uh, I see some of the tech people all the time. I mean, it was funny crossover and it was obviously like the, so many people flew in to be able to go to like the outdoor inauguration.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. So, okay. So with these algorithms, one key ingredient for these algorithms is data.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. So basically you kind of have, yeah, you have three, you have three key pieces. Okay. So you have the, you have the computational powers of the chips, you have the chips, you have the data, which is like just tons and tons of data that that's where the algorithms are learning the patterns from. So these algorithms, they aren't just like, they don't just learn to talk randomly.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
They learn it from learning to talk from how humans talk. Right. Got it. So you need tons and tons of data. And then you have the algorithms which learn from all that data, and then they run on top of the chips. Got it. So then one of the big challenges in the industry is, okay, how are you going to produce all this data?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Exactly. How do you build all that data and how do you do that in the most effective way? How do you build new data?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
That definitely affects the output. So this whole data, so data is, you know, some people say like data is the new oil or data is the new gold. Like data is really, really valuable because it's how the algorithms are learning everything that they're learning. Like anything that the algorithms know or learn or say or do, all that has to come from the data that goes into it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then we don't spend enough time talking about how are you going to get this data and how are you going to keep making new data. So the angle that we took at scale was to kind of – turn this into an opportunity for people. So we're kind of like the Uber for AI. So just like how Uber, you have riders and drivers. For us, we have the AI systems, the algorithms that need data.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And then we have a community of people, a network of people who help produce the data that go into the system. And they get paid to do that.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Creating good data, exactly. And it's huge. So we do this through our platform called Outlier. And Outlier, last year, people, contributors, we call them, contributors on Outlier earned about $500 million total across everybody. In the U.S., that's across... 9,000 different towns. And- So it created a lot of jobs.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And so, I mean, there were so many people in the city. I, we ran into them obviously, but like there were so many people in DC, uh, who were just around for the inauguration. So it was, uh,
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So we, yeah, I mean, yeah, Scale AI is an AI system. Okay.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, we basically – To pull in data. Yeah, we build this platform that anybody – a lot of people, frankly, all around the world, but Americans too, can log on and help build data that goes into the algorithms and get paid to do so. Wow. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. Let's say you're a nurse, like you're a nurse with like tons of tons of experience. So, you know, a lot about how to take care of people and take care of people who are sick or, you know, have issues and whatnot. And so you could log on to the system and and this and our platform.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And you could see that the algorithm is – let's say you ask the algorithm like, hey, I have a pain in my stomach. What should I do? And you notice that the algorithm says the wrong thing. Like the algorithm says, oh, just hang out and it will go away. And you know as a nurse like – That's wrong.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
You have to go to the emergency room because you might have appendicitis or you might have something really bad. And so you would, as a nurse, you would go in and you would basically correct all these mistakes that the AI system has. And then that would then feed it back into the algorithm so that it's smarter the next time.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So it's kind of this continual process of – and there's versions of that for whatever your expertise is or whatever you know more about than – Anything, everything. Everything, exactly.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Uh, well we, so we don't want spam obviously. So we, we, we have a lot of systems to make sure that people aren't spamming and that, like you're saying, it's not, it's not, you know, it's not garbage in that's going into the, into the algorithms. Um, so we have, you know, we have kind of like people check the work of other people to make sure that the AI systems are really good.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And we have some like automated systems that, that check this stuff. But, uh, but for the most part, it's, it's like, it's really broad. Like we want experts in Anything.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, yeah, totally. And our job is like, how do we make sure that this body of water is as clean as possible and we fill it up as much as possible, that it has as much information about everything across the globe?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, no, no. So there's – it goes back to the three things I mentioned. So there's kind of like three dimensions that they're all competing against one another. One is chips. So who is the most advanced chips? Who is the biggest buildings of chips? Like who is the most chips that they're utilizing? Data. So the kind of body of water, whose body of water is better, cleaner, you know,
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
healthiest, biggest, et cetera. And then the last is algorithms. So who's, and this is where the scientists really come in. It's like, okay, who's coming up with the cleverest algorithms or who has like a trick on an algorithm that somebody else doesn't have? Like who's doing that to basically make the AI learn better off of the data that it has? Wow.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. So I think first, like we don't – the AI industry, we don't do the best job explaining this. And I think sometimes we make it seem all sci-fi and genuinely we're part of the problem in making it seem scary, right? But – One thing, for example, is like I think AI is actually going to create a ton of jobs, and that story is not told enough.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But these jobs that we're producing or this sort of – this opportunity that we're providing on our platform, Outlier, like that's only going to grow as AI grows.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
No. So I think – well, it can do a little bit of that. So it can – AI can help itself create its own data and help itself a little bit, but ultimately – Most of the progress is going to come from, you know, people who are able to help really the model get better and smarter and more capable at all these different areas.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. And the world's going to keep changing and we're going to need to be able to keep teaching the algorithms, keep teaching the models about how the world's changing. So this is actually a big thing that I think most people don't understand. The people who are getting the opportunity now are earning money from it, see it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But as AI grows, there's actually going to be tons of jobs created along the way and tons of opportunity for people to help improve AI systems or control AI systems or overall sort of be a part of the technology, not just sort of disenfranchised by it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. So both my parents are physicists and there's a, I grew up in this town called Los Alamos where there's a, there's a, there's a national lab there. Did you watch Oppenheimer?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
I think you're going to have a lot of jobs around – as AI starts doing all these little things throughout the world, who's going to keep watch of those AI and who's going to make sure that those AI – aren't doing something that we don't want them to do. So almost like managing the AIs and keeping watch over all the AI systems, that's going to be another thing that we're going to have to do.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Like, like, I think, for example, you know, we're not going to just have AIs going around and, you know, you know, buying stuff and doing crazy things. And like, you know, we're going to we're going to keep it controlled. Right. Like as a society, I think we're going to keep it controlled as a technology.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And I think there's gonna be a lot of jobs for people to make sure that the AI doesn't go out and do crazy things that we don't want it to do.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Like cancer, even. Yeah, cancer. Yeah, heart disease. Like, all these diseases. Wow, boy.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
No, but seriously, I think that AI – one thing that we've seen, which is – this is kind of wild, but AI understands like molecules and biology better. better than humans do, actually, because there's this thing in AI where it used to take a PhD biologist five years to do something that the AI can just do in a few minutes, right? And that's because the...
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. So the, so all the New Mexico shots in Oppenheimer, that's exactly where I grew up. Oh, so it was like originally where all the scientists came together and, and did all the work in the atomic bomb. And there's still this huge lab. That's basically the, everybody I knew effectively, like their parents worked at the lab or, or some affiliate with the lab. It's like Nukeville over there, huh?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Just the way that molecules and biology and all that works is something that AI happens to be really good at. And that's going to help us ultimately cure diseases, find pharmaceuticals or other treatments for these diseases, and ultimately help humans live longer.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. Yeah. So it's going to be a huge tool for us to cure disease, for us to help educate people, for us to – there's a lot of really exciting uses for AI. But I think the kind of – I think the thing that –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
will touch most people in their lives is it's really going to be a like a tool that will help you, you know, make all of your sort of make all your dreams kind of become reality, if that makes sense. So so I think one of the things that A.I. is going to be really awesome for is like, you know, today, if I, I have like a million ideas, right.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
I have like, you know, thousands and thousands of ideas and I only have so much time. So we can only really do, you know, a few of them at a time. And most of the ideas just go to die. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's a bummer. It's a huge bummer. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And I think a lot of people, you know, for whatever reason, they may have some of the best ideas ever, but they just, you know, they're too busy or they have like other shit going on in their lives. They can't make those ideas happen. And it's great with sometimes when people are able to make the leaps and make them happen and like devote themselves to their dreams.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But but that doesn't happen enough today. And one of the things that AI is going to help us do, I legitimately think so, is it's going to help us turn these ideas into reality much more easily. So, you know, you can like, you know, you're making a movie. Let's say you have another movie idea.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
You can say – you can – ultimately, I think you'll be able to tell an AI, hey, I have this idea for a movie. What could that look like? Maybe draft up a script. Also, who are the people who can help fund this idea? Like who would those people be? Can you help reach out to them? And then like who should we cast in it?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Basically help make the whole thing a – instead of this like daunting thing that – These big projects, they're usually so daunting. You really don't know where to get started. You kind of need a person to help you get through them. Instead of that, AI will help you get through it and like help do a lot of the sort of less glamorous work to make them a reality.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And I think, I think over time, it'll also be able to start doing a lot of the legwork for you. So it'll be able to reach out to people for you. It'll be able to, you know, figure out the logistics. It'll be able to, to book things for you. Like it'll be able to basically help do all the legwork to make it, make, whatever it is into a reality.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, yeah, yeah. An assistant, co-pilot. The hot word in the AI world is agents, but it'll be something that'll help you. Humans are going to be in control. Humans are ultimately going to be telling the AIs what they want it to do. And then, hey, what do we want these AIs to do? It's ultimately going to be to help us execute on and accomplish all these ideas that we have.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
There's this one museum... Well, the funny thing is, like, first, you hear... you hear this, you learn the story of the atomic bomb and the Manhattan project, like basically every year growing up, because there's always like a day or a few days where, you know, there's a substitute teacher and they just, they just play the videos. So you're just like an alcoholic or something.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, totally. Like what, I think one thing that I always feel like kind of sucks is that, um, if you have a director you really like, they're only going to make a movie once every couple of years. So even if you have a director that you'd like, think is amazing, um,
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
you know, they just, it's hard for them to make that many movies, like, because it just takes so much time and effort and, you know, there's so many bottlenecks and stuff.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So, in a future with, you know, more advanced AI systems, they could, they could just churn them out and they could, they can make so many of their ideas into a reality and I think that's true not only in creative areas but it's kind of true across the board. Like, You know, you can start new businesses more easily.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
You can, you know, you can make various creative projects that you have happen more easily. You can make like, you can finally plan that event that you and your friends have been talking about for like, you know, years and years. So it can just like really help you.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
You know, we think about it as like giving humans more agency, giving humans more sort of sovereignty and just enabling humans to get way more done. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. So then I think this is where it comes into – this is where human creativity is going to matter because it's going to be about – then it's about like, okay, what is the – how am I directing the AI system? What are the tricks I have to make the AI give me something that's different and unique? And that's not different at all from how –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Creative stuff works today, like even on social media or anywhere, you know, this like you still add your own spice to it. You need. Yeah, you need an angle. You always need to, like, have something that's going to make it like different and interesting and new. So that's not going to change.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Like we're humans are always going to have to figure out based on where culture is at, based on where, you know. what the dialogue is, what the, what the discourse is, all that kind of stuff. What is my fresh take? That's where, that's really one of the key things that humans are going to have to keep doing no matter what.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, so tons of new jobs. Well, first, I think just like helping to, you know, kind of what we were talking about before, these jobs around helping to improve the data and contribute to the AI systems, that's just going to keep growing for a long, long time.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And then as AI gets better and it gets used in more areas, then there are going to be a lot of jobs that pop up just exactly as you're saying, which is how do you what's the best way to use this as a tool? What's the best way to leverage it to actually make some of these applications or whatever you want to build a reality?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And then there's going to be folks who need to, once those are built, how do you keep improving it? How do you keep making it better? How do you keep it fresh? How do you keep it going? And then how do you also make sure it doesn't do anything bad? Right. Like, how do you make sure that the AI doesn't accidentally spam a million people or whatever it might be?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And you make sure that it sort of is like operating in a good way.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
You're just learning. You're learning again about the Manhattan Project. And then there's a little, there's a little museum in town, which is like you walk through and there's like a life-size replica of the nukes. So it's, it's pretty wild. Yeah. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
I kind of think about AI, it's kind of like the internet where eventually everybody's going to need to figure out how to utilize it, how to best use it for their industry or whatever they do, how to make it more efficient. It's something that I think... Everybody is going to is going to need to adopt at some point.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So, you know, might as well start earlier because eventually, just like how, you know, every basically every company has to figure out how to use the Internet well and how to be smart about, you know, the Internet and digital stuff.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Every company is going to have to be smart about AI, how to use AI, how to make – how to have a unique twist on it so that their stuff stands out relative to other people's. That's going to be really important. But – so we see – I mean in our work, we work with all these big companies in America and we see it everywhere from – We worked at Time Magazine on some stuff.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And then we worked with Toyota on some stuff for their cars. And we worked with, you know, large pharmaceutical companies for the biology stuff we were talking about, large hospitals for, you know, helping to treat patients. Like really it's across the board.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And I think that goes for, you know, obviously these like really big businesses, but also for smaller businesses, you know, there's always interesting ways to utilize it to, you
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, they dropped them in Japan. Yeah, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
It's definitely a tool for storytellers, right? Like it's, it'll help people with a creative vision or who want. Look at these war cats. Yeah, that's a story right there. Special forces cats.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
I think that's actually the key thing, which is AI, like AI will just be something that we turn to to help make our dreams happen. Like to help make our ideas and our dreams and our, you know, whatever we want to do happen more easily. Got it. That's like at the core what it'll be.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, so today America is in the lead. But China as a country is sort of hot on our tails. There was all that news about DeepSeek a couple weeks ago. And DeepSeek, still in most places around the world, is the number one most downloaded app. It's downloaded a ton everywhere around the world, frankly, and is a Chinese AI system.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And so it's starting to rival a lot of the American AI systems, also because it's free and it kind of shocked the world. So right now, if you kind of look at it, US and China are a little bit neck and neck. Maybe the US and America is like a little bit ahead.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And you kind of like look at, you know, if you go back to each of the three pieces that I talked about, so the chips and the computational power, the data, and the algorithms.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
If you were to rack and stack US versus China on each one of those, we're probably, we're ahead on the computational power because the United States is the leader at developing the chips and most advanced chips are American chips. They probably beat us out on data because China, they've been investing into data for a very long time as a country.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And then on algorithms, we're basically neck and neck. So it's a pretty tight race. And to your question about does it matter or what does this mean, I think it's actually going to be one of the most important – questions or most important races of our time is, is it U.S. or Chinese AI that wins?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Uh, no, I don't think so. I mean, I think the thing is like, you know, I, uh, so there weren't, I didn't grow up with very many Asians because the, in that town, it was, um, you know, it's, it's in New Mexico. There's very few Asians in New Mexico. So I was one of the only Asian kids in my class growing up.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Because, you know, AI is more than just being a tool that, you know, we can all use to make our, you know, build whatever we want to or make whatever ideas we want to happen. It's also, you know, it's a cultural staple, right? If you talk to an AI, that AI is kind of a reflection of our culture and our values and all that stuff.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So in America, we value free speech and the AIs are built to support that. Whereas in China, there isn't free speech. And so if the Chinese AIs are the ones that take over the world, then all these Chinese ideologies are going to become exported all around the world. And, and so, so first is there's a couple of dimensions here that I think matter.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So first is just the cultural element, which is like, do we want kind of democracy and free speech, um, to be the, the cultural AI that wins, or do we want sort of the more, um, you know, frankly totalitarian AIs in China to be the ones that win. And then there's sort of the, there's like the, you know, you start getting to economically.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So AI is going to be something that helps all the companies in the United States thrive. And so if the US AI wins, then we're going to, you know, the economy will grow faster. We're going to have more and more opportunity. You know, the country will still be better and better and better. And, and the economy will keep growing and,
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
versus if Chinese AI wins, then Chinese economy is going to grow way faster than the American economy. So there's sort of the cultural piece, the economic piece. And then lastly, there's kind of the warfare piece, right? And AI, we haven't really talked about it, but has clear potential to be used as a military technology. And we don't want another country to have
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
because they have better AI to have a much stronger military than America's. How would they do that? How would they have a better AI or how would they use it to have a better military?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, so one of the things that's been happening over the past decade for sure is lots of hacking, cyber hacking going on. So in America, even recently, we had this huge cyber hack called Salt Typhoon where the Chinese hacked our telecommunications company. So hacked our – for the phone companies. Damn, they did? They got it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And so, um, I didn't think that much about it, honestly, but then like, uh, but it is super weird. You know, you grow up and you learn about this very advanced technology that had this like really, really big impact on the world.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And they got all sorts of crazy data as a result of that.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
That seems pretty real because there's real – like I mean there's like 20 stories where the Chinese have hacked American systems. Like they hacked – this was – this must have been close to 10 years ago now. But the Chinese hacked the database in America that stored all of the clearances.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So they hacked – they managed to hack into knowing who are literally all of the Americans who have security clearance. Wow.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
They can just hack all of them. Yeah. So already China is hacking the shit out of America. That is definitely not an understatement.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a bunch of recent – Because it's all data. Yeah. There's a bunch of recent demonstrations where AI – just like how in Go, how AI beat the world's best Go players, AI is starting to beat the world's best cyber hackers and the world's best – yeah. So it's – I don't know if you saw Mr. Robot.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Uh, it's, it's just, it, it shows like all this hacking stuff and like, you know, cool. It, it makes it seem really cool.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But, uh, but yeah, no hacking, like, like you're gonna have AI that are hacking everything in America. And this is one place where this is like us versus China. will be really come to life, which is who has better AI that's better at defending against the hacks from the other guy, as well as hacking the other guy's systems. That's going to be, that'll just start happening.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
That's basically starting to happen right now. Or it's, you know, cyber warfare has been happening. And then AI cyber warfare is going to start happening, yeah, basically as soon as, you
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, no, there's a lot of things they could do that won't even seem like that big a deal at the time, but could be really, really, could be a big deal. So for example, let's say the Chinese, they just took out all the military communication systems and all the military software systems, took out the satellites, took out all that for 10 minutes.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And in those 10 minutes, they invaded somewhere or they did some crazy thing. Yeah. Like they can just – there's – the thing about this stuff is like everything – as the world has become more connected, it also enables different kinds of warfare. So cyber warfare is really big. Also like the information warfare is another big one.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So this is – information warfare is all about in a place, what is – what are like the stories? This kind of gets to like the propaganda or these conspiracy theories. Like what are the stories that – in a place that we're trying to make happen or not make happen. And we know that China does a bunch of information warfare called IW.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
It's sometimes called, but they, they have a, they have whole operations. This is actually the craziest part. They have like, they've, they've hired the, the Chinese military at various points has hired millions and millions of people who are supposed to be on like various like chat groups and WhatsApp groups and we chat groups and whatnot. And just, um,
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
spread the right kind of stories that'll make it such that they can like um they can make their political aims happen so for example in uh when when china wanted to start like kind of like um uh i don't know what the word is like uh like uh when China wanted Hong Kong to become a part of China again, which happened just not too, you know, pretty recently. Yeah, through the PRC, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
It was super scientific because, you know, there were all these presentations around what were the new kinds of science that were going on at the lab. So there's all these chemistry experiments and these different like earth science experiments and physics experiments. And my mom studied like plasma and like how plasma, you know, worked inside of stars and stuff like that. So it was just...
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, they would, yeah, exactly. They would use a lot of propaganda and that's information warfare to be able to just make it such that that all happened much more easily.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, totally. I think this is something that – it's definitely the right thing to worry about. So –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
First off, if you ask any Chinese AI system, so any AI system that comes out of China, if you ask any of them about a question about President Xi, the leader of the Chinese government, or you ask them any question about Tiananmen Square or all these key historical or cultural things relevant to China, it'll say it can't talk about them because there's regulation in China that –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
If you talk about some of these things, like you're going to get shut down, you're going to have a really bad day. There's like cases where the Chinese government disappears people, which we don't know what happens to them, but they do disappear. So there's – this is part of the thing that's worrying, especially about China versus US.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Even before you get into any of the military stuff that we're talking about, it's just like the Chinese – Chinese AI systems are censored and are going to, you know, be, you know, they're going to, they're going to erase certain historical elements or they're going to be, yeah, look at that. This is deep seek. And you ask it, is President Xi of China a good guy? Sorry, that's beyond my scope.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. In China, it's regulated. So basically, like the government has control. They have control. So like there are these stories about how there were Chinese news sites. News sites? News sites, yeah. And they would – once a Chinese news site accidentally led an article about President Xi, how he kind of looks like Winnie the Pooh.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
The wildest stuff. And you would talk to people's parents, people like I talk to my classmates or talk to their parents about what they're working on is always some crazy science thing. So that was that was really cool because because everybody in that town basically is they're all working on some kind of crazy scientific thing. And so you kind of I mean, I feel like I grew up.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But if you talk about this in China, you like are risking your life. So what happened when this happened, this happened on a news site in China. And then the CEO of that company, like they shut down the whole app, was shut down for like a week. in the aftermath of that. And then the CEO disappeared for a week. And we don't know what happened to him.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But then as soon as he came back, he was like, there was like this weird video where he was like super apologetic and apologetic. I mean, it's kind of, it's pretty scary. Yeah. Wow. So in China, it's like this is – the government has control. You don't have AI companies, AI – any companies that can talk about this stuff.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. In America – and this is – I think we have to be diligent and make sure this continues to be the case. But –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And this is kind of a, this is like a, a relatively innocuous example.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Like it's relatively harmless. Like this isn't, I mean. Right.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. This is harmless. But there's stuff where like, like in China today, they have large scale, effectively concentration camps and reeducation camps for the ethnic minority in China, the Uyghurs. And that's something that the Uyghurs, the Uyghurs. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, yeah. So look at this. Look at this guy.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So it's basically – Yeah, it's just like erasing their culture, pulling them into China. It's awful.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But that's the thing where if you ask – like if you ask a Chinese AI, it's not going to tell you about that. And it won't come clean about that. Whereas thankfully in America at least when we see people or groups of people or countries doing bad things, we can call it out. We can talk about it. We can make sure it doesn't happen in the future.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Feeling like, you know, anything was possible in that way.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So that's part of the – that's one of the things that's – That could happen. That could happen. It's like – You could have – I mean it's kind of dystopian but I think there's a real case where let's say the Chinese AI is the winning AI.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Like we're all using Chinese AI and then all of a sudden we're like – we're shut out from information about what are like awful things happening in the world or what are awful things the government is doing. Like we might just not be able to know about what's going on.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
We work with the government, yeah. We work – yeah, we work a lot with the government to make sure that they're using these AIs and they're actually like – To my point on, we don't want China to get the jump on us on AI used for all these nefarious purposes. So we got to make sure that our AI is advancing faster.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Uh, they're a big one. Yeah. They're a big one. Um, not our biggest, but, uh, but they're an important one. I mean, I, I grew up in a government lap town, so it's, uh, so it's just part, it's also part of your existence.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Um, it hasn't happened yet. I obviously like, you know, you gotta, we have to, we have to make sure that we uphold all our values, right. And that we maintain free speech and we maintain free press and all these things. But, um, as of right now, no, I don't think, I don't think that's a risk in the, in the United States.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, so one of the biggest companies in the world is this company called Taiwan Semiconductor. Yeah, TSM, I've seen them. TSMC, yeah. So they're, I mean, it's like a trillion dollar company based in Taiwan. And that is where almost all of the high-end chips for AI that we were kind of talking about, all of them are manufactured there.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
They have these, they have the most advanced, think about them as factories, like the most advanced chip factories in the world. They're called fabs or fabricators. But basically these huge factories that are like, you know, there's all sorts of crazy stuff. So they have the most expensive machines in the world. They have machines that cost hundreds of millions of dollars in there.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
I remember there was someone from our town who did who did a science fair project called it's called like Great Balls of Plasma. And for the science, literally for the science fair, this was in like high school for the science fair. They made like huge balls of plasma in their garage. And I was like, what the heck? Like, this is, we're all just doing this in high school.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Probably, huh? Well, that – and there's like these machines that at the nanometer level make like little marks and etches on top of – And they have those? They have those, yeah. Those are super expensive machines. So the – Chips. It's crazy, yes.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But it's so – the machinery is so precise that even if there's like a little bit of like seismic movement, a little earthquake or a little bit of movement, it can fuck up the whole machine.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
the the buildings build the factories in a way such that there's like like the whole building doesn't move even if there's like a little earthquake or a little shake from the earth so it's like is this crazy crazy engineering um and so that's so these all these giant factories are in taiwan and that's where basically like a hundred percent of all the advanced ai chips are made
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So that's why Taiwan matters so much. Got it. But then the reason it's a hotbed is that the People's Republic of China, the PRC, has a – Because they used to own Taiwan, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
There's a complicated relationship between Taiwan and China where if you ask people in Taiwan, they want to be independent. They want to be their own country. But the People's Republic of China has a sort of a reunification plan that they want to bring Taiwan back into their country and be back a part of China. So it's kind of like potentially – thankfully, there's no war yet, but there's a risk.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Still talking to your ex. Yeah, exactly. There's a risk it becomes like Russia-Ukraine or one of these really, really bad situations. So that's what's scary. What's scary is that A, China wants to – either invade or bring Taiwan back into its country. And President Xi has ordered his military to get ready to do that before 2027.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Now, we don't know what's going to happen, but if an extremely powerful world leader says to get something ready by 2027, you kind of... Read between the lines a little bit. Yeah. And part of it is obviously it'd be – we don't want to enable them to take over this island.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But then the other thing that's scary is China may view it as a way to just like win on AI because if they take over the island with all of these very – these giant factories. All the chips, baby.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, and there's all these reports about how China's – they're stacking up tons and tons of military right on their coast to – that's pointed directly at Taiwan and it's – It's pretty close. Taiwan's pretty close to China. Like it's it's it's not so far away. So that'd be spooky.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Regulate AI. Yeah. In America? No, I don't think so. I think we're focused on how do we make sure that America wins? How do we make sure that the United States comes out on top and that we enable innovation to keep happening?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, yeah. Wow. This is a super, this is actually.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
This is one of the hottest topics in DC right now is what are we going to do about how many chips other people are allowed to have? Because almost all the chips are American chips. So they all are American chips. And technically- We own most of them? Yeah, exactly.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
China has their own chip industry, but it's behind ours.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, yeah. So the United States has the most advanced chips. These chips are the envy of the world. Everybody in the world wants our chips. And one of the big questions is, does the government allow a lot of these chips to go over overseas to China or parts of Asia or the Middle East or wherever? Or do we want to... make sure they stay in America and make sure that we win in America.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And this is a super duper, you know, they're called export controls.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Um, it's a complicated, complicated thing because basically, you know, one argument is, um, we shouldn't be throwing our weight around in this way. Like, you know, maybe it's, it's fine. It's a free market. Like if other people want our chips, they should be able to get our chips. And that way, you know, the world is running on American chips that, that can be good in some ways.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And it helps make sure that, you know, helps bolster our economy, our industry, um, But the other way to look at it is, hey, AI is really, really important that America wins at. And we don't want to like, let's not give other people any advantages or let's make sure that we win. And then we can figure out what we're going to do with all the chips. So you can see both sides of it, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
I ended up – what I did is there was – I ended up getting really competitive about math in particular. Yeah. And so my sport was math, which is kind of crazy. Algebrazy, son.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And there's like all sorts, you know, even beyond that, there's like 50 different arguments on both sides of the conversation. But- Where I come from on it is like let's make sure America wins and let's start from there and then figure out what we need to do to win.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
I definitely think like – well, I worry a lot about this kind of like maybe brainwashing kind of thing. Like I don't want AIs that are specifically programmed to make me think a certain thing or persuade me to do a certain thing. And that could happen. That could happen, yeah. Yeah. So I'm really worried about this kind of like deception and persuasion from AIs.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Like I don't want AIs that are lying to me or that are sort of that are like that are kind of like nudging me or persuading me to do things that I don't want to do or I shouldn't be doing.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Well, this is where it goes back to, A, the data. Okay. So you got to make sure that that data, to your point, the large body of water is as clean, as pristine as possible. You got lifeguards on it? Yeah. You got lifeguards. We got filters. We got gas. Game wardens. Yeah. Um, so, so the big part of it is about the data.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And then the second part is I think we have to just, we have to constantly be testing the AI system. So, um, we have to, we have to like, we constantly are running tests on AI to see, Hey, is there, are they unsafe in some way? You know, one of the, one of the tests that we run a lot, uh, is, uh, and this is like, you know, across the industry is like,
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Are AIs helping people do really nefarious things? And we're making sure that they don't. So, you know, if somebody asks an AI, hey, help me make a bomb or help me make like a like COVID like 2.0 or whatnot, that the AI is not helping you do that. So we run a lot of tests to make sure that it doesn't help in those areas.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And then we make sure that the data is really clean so that there's no sort of like little bit or piece of that that makes its way to the model.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And it was because when I was in middle school, when I was in sixth grade, there was this one math competition where if you got top four in the state, state of New Mexico, then you would get an all expense paid trip to Disney World. And and I remember as a sixth grader, like that was the most motivating thing I could possibly imagine was like an all expense paid trip to Disney World. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Everybody's kind of contributing to the AIs. Everyone's contributing to the data that goes into the AIs. It's kind of like – I almost think of it as like the next generation of Wikipedia, right, where like – Yeah, look at this. And we're hiring people all around the world. So people in all sorts of different languages. Dude, that's crazy, man. Yeah, yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Well, it turns out, by the way, most of the AIs... don't really speak other languages that well. They're much, much better at English and particularly American English than other languages. And so we want to make sure that they speak all these languages well and that there's these opportunities. But yeah, on Outlier, so anybody around the world can log in.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And sort of there's a little bit of a like orientation almost on how to best like what you're supposed to do, how you're supposed to do it, what expertise should you be bringing, all that kind of stuff. And then you can just start contributing to the AI models and you get paid to do it. Wow. It's pretty fascinating, man.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And it's going to be, I mean, I really think, I legitimately think jobs from AI are going to be the fastest growing jobs in the world for the years to come.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. Yeah, all the ones we've been talking about, right? Like contributing to the AIs, helping to utilize the AIs and helping to shape the AIs into applications or into, you know, into like helping organizations or companies or people use the AIs. That'll be a really fast growing job. Helping to manage the AIs and make sure they're on the straight and narrow path.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, well, this is all happening so fast, right? Like the outlier, we only started a few years ago. So all of this is happening so, so quickly. But what we want to do ultimately is make it easy for anybody in the world to gain the skills they need to be able to do this work well, to learn what it means, what it does, and ultimately be in a position where they can –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
you know, help build AIs and then, and then keep improving that and gaining mastery and getting better and better at it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
No, it's everybody because, yeah, as we were talking about, like AI needs to get smarter about literally everything.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. Yeah. I don't think these programs exist yet. I mean, we, we would definitely love to help build them. So I guess if any colleges are listening, you know, and you want to help figure out about these programs, we love, we'd love to help.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. I mean, I think we'd love to basically teach everybody in America how to best contribute to the AIs, how to best basically take advantage of the fact that this is going to be one of the fastest growing industries. There's going to be tons of opportunities. They're going to be shaped a little bit different from the jobs that exist today.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But it's not going to be that hard for everybody to learn and figure out how to participate in it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And then. Did you win it? I got I won it. I got fourth place. So I snuck in there. Fire. Snuck in. I and then I went to and then we went to Florida to Disney World. And I I hadn't traveled like I didn't travel around. too much growing up. Like I mostly was in New Mexico and we did some road trips around the Southwest. So I remember getting to Florida and it was extremely humid.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
I just think it'll be – we'll be doing like a different thing.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And then even stuff where you're like – let's say you're mostly just working on a laptop and even for those jobs, like – it'll just change. Like instead of being, instead of my job being like, hey, I have to do the work. I literally do the work on a laptop. It'll almost be like everybody gets promoted to being a manager.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Like, because I'm going to be managing like a little pod of 10 AI agents that are doing the work that I used to do, but I need to make sure that all of them are doing it right and that they're not making any mistakes and that, you know, if they're making mistakes, I'm helping them, you know, get around those mistakes. Like, like it's just going to,
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
The way I think about it is that like, yeah, like literally over time, everybody will just be upgraded to being a manager or sort of promoted to being a manager.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, because I think the other thing that's going to happen is the economy is just going to grow so much. There's going to be so much. Industries are going to pop off in crazy, crazy ways. And so the limit is going to be how many AIs can you have. And then you're going to be limited in terms of the number of AIs you have by the number of managers that you have. So it's going to...
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, totally. It's kind of like always the history of technology. Like when we started developing technology that started making farming a lot more efficient, all of a sudden people could do a lot of other things other than farming. And then all of a sudden we have big entertainment industries and big financial industries.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But yeah, so it's all about like us. Yeah, everybody leveling up to be managers. And then also everybody, you know, just way more ideas are going to start happening. Like way more ideas are going to start becoming a reality. And so it'll be, I think it'll be pretty exciting. Like I think it's just like a lot more stuff is going to happen.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
According to like some publications, but I don't know.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
It was like, I never felt what humidity felt like when I landed in Florida. I was like, oh, this feels bad.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So most of, almost all of what I'm focused on is like, how do we scale? How do we make it super successful? And make sure that we, you know, one of the things I think is really important is like, how do we make sure we create as much opportunity through AI as possible? Like, how do we make sure there's as much jobs?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
How do we make sure that everything that we're talking about actually is what happens? Because I think, you know, Someone's going to have to really work to make sure all these jobs show up and all this stuff actually happens the way we're talking about. So there's going to be new industries that are going to pop up even. Totally. Yeah, yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
I mean I think like just in the same way that it's hard – nobody could have really predicted that podcasting was going to be this huge thing and this huge cultural movement. Yeah, it's true. But it is one and it's amazing. It's like awesome. And that's gonna happen in like little ways in all sorts of different industries. And that's gonna be, it's gonna be really exciting.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Um, yeah. So, um, some of the areas I think are really, uh, are really exciting. So one is definitely everything to do with healthcare and biology that that's moving really, really fast. And kind of, as we were talking about, like, I, I think legitimately in our lifetimes, we could see cancer being cured. We
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
We could see some really crazy leaps and advancements in that area, which is super duper exciting. Could it create a way that we could live forever, do you think? There's definitely people working on that. So this is getting kind of crazy and very sci-fi, but some people think that there's a way for us to keep rewinding the clocks on our cells
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
so that we'll always feel young, and all of our cells will actually always stay young. It's, I think, scientifically possible, and I think if we can get there, that's obviously incredible. So there's people working on that. At the very least, I think we'll be able to lengthen our lifespans pretty dramatically, and maybe we can get to that. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, it's kind of I mean, I I'm not that worried about it, but it sucks to be that cut off. We're like maybe maybe. Yeah, maybe.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, I think one of the things that, Something I believe is like – I think that as AI becomes – you know, this is – one of the things I think is really important is that we are able to educate people about AI and help people understand it better and better and better.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Because I think if it's this scary thing that nobody understands or people feel like a boogeyman or, you know, feels like is this just this like thing that's going to take my job, like that –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
makes it scary and i think that that affects people's you know spirituality that affects how people you know contextualize themselves with the world yeah you could lose your purpose if your purpose is a job that you feel it's going to disappear yeah that could already be causing you to feel that way Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So, but I think, I think if you, if we can explain AI more and ultimately like, like it is, it is a cool technology, but it's not that magical. It's just, you know, it's like data and you crunch that data and then you get these algorithms.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And so it's not like, it's not, yeah, some people talk about in this crazy way, but, but I think as long as we are able to explain what AI is and also explain what opportunities it creates over time, And to me, it's about getting this like relationship between humanity and AI right.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Like how do we make sure that this is something that enables us as humans to be more human and us as humans do more and experience more and be better and all these things versus something that kind of is scary or will take over or anything like that. I think that's really important.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So we're actually kind of under the hood powering all the different models and AIs. Are all the different AI systems under the hood? Yeah, so we help power ChatGPT and OpenAI. We help power mostly from the data perspective.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
there's probably no way to like literally tell, but yeah, we help power, you know, open AIs and we help power Google's AI systems and Meta's AI systems and help power all the, all the major AI systems. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So then I became a mathlete. That was like a big part of my identity was being a mathlete.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Like right now, AI is still- really bad at a lot of things, like most things. This is why I think when people understand it and really get a feel for it, it stops being as scary because I think we think about it as like, we think about it as like the AI from the movies that are sort of like
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
It's not the truth. And like, yeah, that's not the truth. And it's to me, it's like we have we kind of the choice to make sure that also doesn't become the truth. Right. Like we definitely we like people building AI.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But just in general, everybody in the world has like like we should all make sure to use it as something that like an assistant, as something that like helps us versus versus think about it in like in like a scary way.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Well, you have a calculator. Okay. So everyone had their favorite calculator. Okay.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, I think that's totally fine. I mean I think basically like we – there will probably be more AIs over time that people get used to and use. And like anything, there will always be like a – in America, there will always be a bunch of options for consumers and a bunch of options for people to use. And they'll be good at different things, right? So I think like –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Right now we're just in the very early innings of AI. But over time, we're going to have just like how for anything, like for clothes or for energy drinks or for whatever, like different people have different tastes because there's going to be different things that different AIs are good at and other things that other AIs are bad at. Is AI right now smarter than humanity? No. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So I think what AI is good at, because it's ingested all of the facts, right? Like it's ingested this, like the body of water is really, really big and it's ingested so many different facts and information from all of humanity. It definitely like knows more or like, you know, just like how Google knows a lot more than any person does. So it definitely knows a lot more.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
You stay strapped at that thing. And then, but outside of that, not really. I mean, like, everyone had their favorite, like, pencil. You know, your pencil, your calculator, that was your gear. And, but yeah, no, I was like a nationally ranked mathlete for middle school, high school. That was my jam. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Um, but it's not like, you know, there's, there's a very, very, there's tons of things that humans can do that AI is just like fundamentally incapable of doing. So, um, so it's not a, it's not like a, I don't think you can even like measure one versus the other. There's sort of like very different kinds of intelligence.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, this is a good question. Actually, this is another really hot topic in the AI industry is can you get AIs to start doing some of the engineering and some of the improvement on its own?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So this is something I mean, my personal thought is I think this is something we should kind of watch a little bit and we should make sure that humans always are have the sort of like steering wheel and the sort of control over because like you're saying, you know, it's kind of a slippery slope before that gets kind of, you know, a little a little weird.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But but I don't I think that like we can we we can maintain that we can make sure that we don't let the AI just sort of like keep iterating and improving on its own.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Well, there are companies that try to program the AI to adopt various personas and – Oh, yeah. I got the Indian GPS guy. Turn right. Like on Meta, on like Instagram or whatever, you can get an AI that has Awkwafina's voice, for example. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. And it's funny. The Awkwafina AI is funny.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
No, no, no. I grew up, I think, like, solidly middle class. Like, we weren't, we, you know, we weren't, we weren't, like... You weren't trapping or anything? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, like, you know, solidly middle class. And I think, like, I mean, one of the crazy things about... tech and the tech industry is that, you know, we've been we've been just sort of like building this thing up over time.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But one of the things that that happened is AI all of a sudden became like there was so much progress in AI and it became the biggest thing in the world. Right. Like, I mean, all of a sudden, you know, anywhere I go, I'm, everybody's talking about AI. It didn't used to be like that when I started the company. AI was just kind of a, like a niche topic.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And now it's like, you know, anywhere you go, like I'll just be walking around and I hear like random conversations about AI. For sure. And AI and robots and all this stuff. And so it's kind of been crazy to experience that and be a part of that wave and kind of like, you know, I started working on this company almost nine years ago.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So it was like when I started working on this kind of obscure thing and, you know, I always knew that it was going to become bigger, but I could have never predicted what was going to happen to AI. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, so at first they were like, you know, at first I dropped out of college, right? Oh yeah, that's true, yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Well, my parents both have PhDs. I have two older brothers. They both have PhDs. Like everybody in my family has, they've gone through all of schooling.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
There's competitions, yeah. There's like state level competitions. There's national level competitions. There's like these summer camps, math camp. I went to math camp a bunch of times where you convene with like-minded mathletes. Oh, damn, okay.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. So they were pretty worried at first. And I kind of – I told them a little bit of a white lie that I was like, oh, no, I'm just going – I'm going to go back. I'm going to get this like tech thing out of my system and I'll go back and I'll finish school. Obviously that hasn't happened yet. But yeah, they were worried at first. Now they're super proud. Yeah. They're super duper proud and I –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. And I, I owe everything to my parents, you know?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
They're awesome. And like, seriously, they're, they're, my parents are super brainy. They're, they're both physicists. They would like teach me about physics growing up and teach me about math. And that's what led me be so good at the competitions, you know?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So this is kind of interesting. This is true for a lot of Chinese Americans is that there's kind of like there's Chinese culture. And then that's kind of almost like it's very different from the Chinese Communist Party and the current government. Because basically one way to think about China is, I mean, China is a culture and a civilization that's been around for decades.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
like thousands and thousands of years, right? So there's a very longstanding culture. Oh, yeah. But that's very different from the current communist party and the current communist regime.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, I mean, the Uyghurs that we're talking about, I mean, that's just like horrible what's happening to them.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. Yeah. No, it's I mean, some of the stuff like I mean, we don't really like first of all, the world is a is a huge place and there's like all sorts of both great and bad things happening all over the place.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But but yeah, no, I think that like I think a big part of this is like we want to make sure we have we have governments that that believe in democracy, believe in liberty, these kinds of things.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess like the way I've always thought about it because – partially because both my parents were physicists was I kind of always feel like people live on with their ideas and they're kind of like – what are the things – the things they put out into the world, that's kind of how you live on. Because like in math, like –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Everything you learn about is like a theorem named after a different person or a sort of idea named after some – the first mathematician or the first scientist or whatever to figure that out. Like Einstein lives on because – Bagels.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But just like any other sport, it's competitive. You gotta win. And so you're chummy with everyone, but you're also like... Like who's going to win, you know?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
No, no, no. Exactly. That's Einstein. And so I think I always feel like people – yeah, you live on by your ideas and kind of what you put out into the world. And that's kind of always how I've thought about it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Well, I think that one of the things that gets talked about a lot in Silicon Valley, where I live especially, is like the simulation, whether it's all simulation and whether like – do you watch Rick and Morty? I don't watch it, but I'll start. Okay. There's a, there's, there's some, there's some episodes where it gets into this and I think it covers it in a, in a pretty good way.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
But like, you know, what if every load of all of humanity is just like a, like a, almost like a, an experiment or a video game that, that some other civilization is running. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
That's kind of the one that fucks with particularly like people's mind and tech a lot because we're like every day, all day, every day, we're out there trying to make computers and make simulations and make things that are like – More and more sophisticated and advanced and capable.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And so kind of the mind fuck is like, oh, what if everything we know is is just kind of the, you know, a simulation from some other civilization?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I think I think one of the things that that like with AI and with a bunch of other things like in well, even just in the past, like 30, 40 years, video games have gotten so much more realistic. Right. Crazy realistic.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So it was, we've seen that happen like in a hundred years, like would we be able to simulate something that feels pretty realistic? I mean, probably. Right.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Met Elon, yeah. Met Elon a few years ago, yeah. Wow. Got to know him.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
He is, yeah. He always wears this leather, you see that leather jacket? Yeah. He, we hosted this dinner. And Huang, is that a Chinese name?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Huang, yeah, he's Taiwanese, I think. Yeah. We're Taiwanese American. But he he in in 2018. So when we were like a baby company, we threw this dinner in in Silicon Valley and and we just kind of I kind of YOLO invited him. Um, this was, you know, years and years ago. And, uh, and I didn't expect it, but he said yes.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And he came to our dinner and, uh, he, he came, uh, he came, it was, it was like at this restaurant in, in Silicon Valley. And, uh, he came and just told the craziest stories. He, um, He went to boarding school. I think he's probably told this story. But he went to boarding school. And his parents, when they came to America, they wanted to send him to boarding school. But they didn't.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And so they just sent him to the first boarding school that they found on Google or something. It wasn't even Google at the time. So that they heard about. And that boarding school happened to be kind of like a rehab boarding school. So it was like, he was like this. It's a halfway house.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah, so he told me this story about – he told this story about how he was like – he was just like this kid at this boarding school that were like – everybody else had these – like all these crazy backgrounds. And he like – he got by and made his way through that school by like doing everyone's math homework and like kind of like wheeling and dealing that way. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And you could see that he learned how to like wheel and deal and sell and all this stuff from all the way from way back then. Because he was, I mean, his story is pretty crazy. Really?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. Jensen's awesome. Yeah, all these people in tech, they're like – I mean they're all real people, but they all have the craziest backgrounds.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So the ones in the middle school were actually more fun because there's almost like a Jeopardy style buzzer competition and stuff like that. But once you get to high school, it's just – you just take a test and you just – it's like the biggest one in America is called the USMO. Bring it up.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
No, thank you. This was awesome. And I think like – I mean we were talking about this before, but I just want to make sure that like – People all around the world, especially Americans, aren't scared of AI because it's going to be really cool and it's going to be amazing. But we need to remove the boogeyman component. And thanks for helping me do that.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. First, I'm hoping that the AI industry as a whole avoids advertising as much as possible because it's very different. It is a tool that people can use and people can use to start businesses or make movies or make all these different ideas happen. And I would much rather it be a tool that doesn't get sort of –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
uh that doesn't become yeah like an advertising thing versus like i wanted to make sure it's a tool that helps people first and foremost um so that's that i i think this is there's kind of like a a choice here and uh and we as an ai industry just gotta i think make some of the right choices
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. And I think that's like – I want to make sure that – that people don't feel like they're being used by the AIs. I think that'd be a really, that'd be really bad if we ended up there. So we, you know, and I don't think we need to make it like that at all.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Like, I think we can make sure the AI is helping you do things, is super helpful, is super, is like a thought partner, is like an assistant. Like, those are things that I think we want to make sure AI stays.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
We have Joe Osborne. Yeah. And we have Danny's whole crew. So Arion and Clayton. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
USAMO. Okay. And it's like people all around the country take this test and there's – United States of American Mathematical Olympiad.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And then it's a nine-hour test. Damn. It's split over two days. It's nine hours. It's four and a half hours. And it's nine hours, and you have six problems. Wow. So it's kind of nerve-wracking. And you get in there. You have four and a half hours the first day, four and a half hours the second day.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Can you just go home and – No, because you only get three questions the first day and then you only get three questions the next day. Wow. They figured it out. I remember the first time I took it. I was in – I think I was in eighth grade, first time I took it. And I like –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
I was like so nervous and I just, I like brought a thermos full of coffee and I drank so much coffee that like those four and a half hours felt like a year. It was like, I was so jittery the whole time. It was crazy.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
So then, yeah, in MIT, on the MIT admissions, they ask for your competitive math scores. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
And so then, yeah, I was at MIT. And then MIT is like a really intense school because they, you know, the classes they don't fuck around with. They just really like they load you up with tons of work. And most of the time you have you like they load you up with like huge amounts of work. And they you know, you you you don't really know what's going on initially. And so you're just kind of like.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
We're just trying to make it through. But, you know, there's this motto that MIT has called IHTFP, which among the students stands for I hate this fucking place. Oh, yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
Yeah. But then the school, when you go, they tell you, oh, it stands for I've truly found paradise.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
You do a lot of work, but it's kind of awesome. I mean, because I think the students really band together. Like, instead of it being competitive, really, MIT is much more about, like, everybody kind of, like, coming together, working on problems together, working on homework together, and just kind of, like, making it through together. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E563 AI CEO Alexandr Wang
It's a bunch of parties because people like MIT, there's a lot of people who like tinkering with gadgets. So they're tinkering with like, you know, lights and big speakers and DJ sets and all this stuff. So actually the parties are pretty good because they're like the production value is high. The production quality is high. Yeah.