Billionaire Game Theory + We Are Not Ready for A.G.I. + Election Betting Markets Get Weird
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So my one of my best friends from high school and my boyfriend .

are the boyfriend.

I don't know if I mentioned this. So they're similar insert, like their personalities are like in the ways is like very pleasing to me at others. Son, i've known my entire life and like my ya birds of a father, ili illian said.

And up until now, this has always been great. But then I found out that they were a similar in a new way of which is they both love going to the naked hot springs. Have you heard of this hot springs as which one? Well, there's one called or O R R.

yes. And there's A A I like of or of california within a few hours drive of sanford go. yes. And so you know, in the spirit of adventurousness and and leaning into new experiences, I decided, okay, I will go to the hot springs.

And so we went to the hot springs in, and I learned two critical things about the hot springs win. One is that there is not internet. The hot springs, there is no cell reception.

There's nothing if there's an emergency you you're calling from a land line. okay? Number two, hot springs water smells like rotten eggs, which I knew but i'd forgotten. And so the experiences says you don't have internet and you're sitting in the rotten eggs and everyone around you is telling you that you're having a great time and that this is a very relaxing thing that you're doing that is very good for you and so is always Better to full forty eight hours getting gas let and and then came home but I will and this is what I hate to a bit. I really do not like uh, not having the internet access.

But you know I just been forty eight hours story and nature and go and hikes everything and I actually I thought I was great for me yeah you yes, I think there is something to this idea of like go start the tree and IT doesn't clear my mind for ten or twenty minutes that's supposed to to fix anything. But then you do if you feel Better. Staring a trees is mystical in the same way.

Well, I am very excited for your next visit to the new hot springs, but you will bring a starlink terminal with, you can watch tiktok, eeg water.

I'm Kevin, a tech at york time. I'm from a former and this is hard fork, just other tech billionaire hedging their bets in the election. What are so RAID of then former OpenAI ready ness achieve? Miles brundage stops by to tell us how is old company is doing at getting ready for super intelligence and whether we should all keep saving for retirement. And finally, the times David happy belly joins us to discuss the rise of the market and whether prediction markets can tell us who is going to win the election. But for some reason kept those involved.

you know I bet that would happen.

All right, Kevin. Well, the moment that we have been building to all year is almost here halloween. That's the one moment and you look great as sexy pocket.

By the way, congrats tions on your outfit this morning, but there's a second big moment that's coming up. And that is, of course, election day. Early voting is already under way across the country. And Kevin, everywhere ago, people are asking the same of thing, which is, if I had a billion dollars, how would I try to influence the result of election? I know you've been wondering ing IT.

Yeah, it's something I think about a lot. As a person who is probably going to a have a billion dollars someday.

it's important to get head of these questions. So last week, we talked a lot about how elan musk s is approaching this chAllenge. This week, we want to talk about what some of the other most prominent tech billionaires are doing, or, as has more often than the case, not doing. Yes.

why do we want to talk about this? Why is this important?

Well, heaven, we live in a country where there is unchecked influence of money on politics. And I would say that's basically the explanation. Why do you want to talk about IT?

Well, so look, we are not just talking about a steel magnate or or someone you made their money, you in in logging or something like donating to a presidential campaigns are people with not only real money and influence, but direct control over some of the the most powerful channels are for people getting their information about the election.

That's right. And so in the event that the aftermath of the election is to mutual and there are are many competing claims on both sides, IT will be important.

How those billionaires choose to moderate the content on those, what they allow, what will they not allowed, what they crack down on, what will they turn a blind I to? These really will be, I think someone was fundamental questions about the afternoon t of the election that's about to up. So with that in mind, let's talk about the story that was on everybody's minds this week, which is what happened at the washington post. So the post, of course, is owned by amazon founder jeff bazas and Kevin do to walk us through what happened at the .

post over last week. yes. So last friday, the editor of the opinion section of the washing post, David shipley, announced in a meeting with the the board at that going forward, the washington post would no longer make endorsements for presidential candidates.

This sort reverse a decades long policy of endorsing presidential candidates is not just the ocean post, most major newspapers in this country and make presidential canada endorsements in election years, including the new york times, whose editorial board endorsed commonly haris for president this year. But basically, people started looking into what was going on behind in the scenes of the washington post. And IT eventually emerged that the editorial board of the washington post had written an endorsement of commonality ris that was supposed to run in the paper.

And we're just sort of waiting for a final sign off and uh IT also emerged that this new policy of non endorsement have come uh not from the opinion editor, not from any one sort involved in the data Operation of the opinion section of of the washington post but from jeff bezos himself ah who was basically making this new policy two weeks before the election to stop the publication of this editorial so that obviously raised a lot of questions about why jeff BIOS was pulling the washington post out of the endorsement game he then followed up with an opinion column of his own explaining his position on this, basically saying the americans don't trust the news media um he said the presidential endorsement basically don't tip the scales of election nobody decides who vote for based on what the washing post royal board says and that what they actually do these endorsements is to create a quote, perception of bias so that made a lot of people very angry, and people inside the paper were very upset. Uh, carl, burn, dinner. Bob, word, word.

The famous water gate reporters called the decision surprising and disappointing. Lots of other current and former washing post h honchos came out and said, this is not what we should be doing. And the readers of the washington post and the subscribers to the washington post were also very upset. A M P S, David full conflict reported on tuesday that more than two hundred and fifty thousand washington post subscribers had cancelled their digital subscriptions. That is roughly ten percent of the entire subscriber base of the washington post.

Alright, so that's what happened. Let's talk a little bit now about the reaction and what we make of IT.

So yes, I actually didn't think there was that much in the bazas I bet that I disagreed with on the principles level I thought was it's a reasonable position to take that newspapers ah you know which are seen as being polarized and biased by a lot of americans should sort of drift away from this kind of unsigned editorial model where there's just kind of the opinion of the paper. I think that does create some confusion on the part of readers. I think the time to announce that policy is not two weeks before election.

right? And also if that's really gonna be your argument shouting, you just take you to its logical conclusion and get rid of your opinion writers, right? It's like if the argument people sharing their opinions in the newspaper is causing readers to lose trust in us, why do you have opinion writers at your newspaper? So there is something a little bit suspicious about that.

I'm not particularly invested in whether newspaper shes an endorsement or not, but I am always really interested in like, how do you billionaire the world? right? What is the calculus of a billionaire trying to navigate through this very tumultuous period that that is going to come? And I think there's like maybe four different ways of of thinking about this editorial.

The first is just like tickets on its own terms. What I know people throw their hands that and say you should do that. Like what what he said in his response is not the real reason that he prevented the post from publishing the editorial.

But I do think that there is an argument in here worth reckoning with, which is, well, why is IT that a the the public has such a low trust in the media in general? And can you restore that trust by sucking opinion out of the journalism? So what do you think about that question?

Look, I think we clearly at the moment where a lot of people mistrust the news media in this country, and I think that we should be honest and reflective about that and ask if whether there's anything we can do as journalists to help store public trust and credibility in our occupation. I don't know that stripping out all of the opinion from the journalism itself is the way to do that. I just don't know if that's effective, but i'm curious what what do you think?

Well, so I I wrote about this this week. There's this great press critic at and why you named j rose. And in the early two thousands, he started writing about this idea that he called the view from nowhere.

And the view from nowhere, he calls IT a bid for trust that advertisers the viewers' of the news producer, and that IT sort of arouse in this country as a response to this two party system, where you would always have two sides sort of pulling against the journalists, like working the raps. And a lot of journalists decided the way that we're going to build trust is we're not going to have any views whatsoever. We're just going to report the facts.

And I think that's a very, you can see, like in the abstract, why that's an appealing idea. But in practice, that didn't really do much to inspire trust in the public, right, because simultaneously there was this huge campaign on the right, in particular, to delegitimize the mainstream news media, right? There's a entire White wind noise machine that does nothing but wake up every day and say, the media lying to you and that has had a very powerful cumulative effect. And for a journalist, simply say, hey, well, i'm not one of those that would have any opinions at all doesn't actually seem like IT IT builds trust.

right? I also think there's like a difference between neutrality and independent journalism of people understanding and appreciating that the journalism, the reading was not produced in khuds with some powerful person or the journalists are not being paid off. I think know what I worry a lot about in the context of trust and media is not the perception of so of bias IT is the perception that we are all kind of like just bought and paid for, right? I think there's now this whole industry of kind of content creators and influences that have started doing some things that look like journalism, but with lots of compromises along the way where they are taking money for a sponsored content or they are doing advance tory als or something. They are not independent voices in the sense that, like, I think we would hope that journalists would be.

And by the way, that reminds me this halloween, you can get twenty five percent off cruise missiles at racy on dock m by using the offer code. Hard for. But anyways, Kevin.

you were saying so look, I think there are a lot of things that are going to need to be done to restore public trust in journalism. But I think that one concern that people have is that journalism is Operated at the wims of of a few very powerful people. And if you are a jeff basis, if you are not helping the case, that journalism is objective and independent by inserting your own preferences into the strategy of the newspaper that you own two weeks before the election.

that is a perfect point. And you know of that, I think ironic to me that before all this happened, the post had been figuring out what I think is a much Better way, a building trust, which is rating everyone around this tag line. Democracy dies in darkness ness.

And it's got a lot of criticism and mock ery over the years. People think it's it's a bit a overrode right. The post are using this during the trump years.

But I think the larger question is, what are the values of this newspaper going to be? Are the journalist s they are going to be allowed to draw conclusions from their own reporting? Are the opinion writers who are paid to have opinions going to be allowed to share those opinions? And all of that right now seems very unsettled?

Yeah, I mean, i'll just say the obvious, which is like this is not going to hurt jeff bazas IT does not cancelling a subscription to the washington post does not affect jeff bazas or his financial life or view of the world one iota. What IT does do is affect the lives of the great journalists to work at the washington post. You are.

Effectively punishing them are by counselling your subscription. I imagine this will lead to some real financial hardship at the post, at least in the short term. And I just think that is like an incredibly short sited protest mechanism in this case. But I do think that IT reflects the the feeling that a lot of people have, which is that they don't want to support something that seems like it's being Operated by, you know, the wims of a billion aire. So because you said there were four things that stuck out to you about this, because what what are the other three?

Well, so that's the sort of, okay, let's just take basics of face value. Is this about trust? And I think you and I agree that, well, okay, you want to make IT about trust, jeff.

This like was not the best way to to go about improving the post standing. But there are three other ways, I think that you can explain why basis would have made a decision like this. One is that he's just hedging his bets in the Normal corporate way.

Um most of the time, most business leaders, when there's an election, they stay out of IT. They don't say anything positive about either candidate because they want to be prepared to work with whoever wins, right? So I think that can explain a little part of IT.

Then there is like a real political aspect of this, which is that a there is a very high chance that trump will retaliate against anyone who attacks him. And there's a very low likelihood that commonly herr's would do the same thing. And that's important for somebody like jack bazas, who has a lot of business before the government.

And also, by the way, this fear of retaliation from trump is not an abstract question. In twenty nineteen, amazon suit, the trump administration blaming trumps animosity toward basis for its loss of a ten billion dollar cloud computing contract. And we know that, that came in part from what the washington post was publishing about Donald trump, right? So this is a ten billion dollar question at least to jet baths.

And so I think that that's really important yeah and come computing is not the only business that business has before the administration. Blue origin, which is this rocket company, has a three point four billion dollar contract with NASA for a lunar lander, which, by the way, we'd love to try blue urge and get in touch. But there's one more reason, and this is something that I don't see get talked about a lot because I think that does not slot as easily into maybe liberal arguments for basis just letting his editorial board do whatever they want. It's not really going too far to say that the bide administration has been trying to break up not just amazon but also matter google. They also in any trust case against apple, this administration has not been friendly to tack, right? So if you are a tim cook as soon arpaia I as zac bera bazas, I do understand why you're looking at the candidates and saying I know know what actually think they believe is of course he's completely incompetent, but I know he will leave me alone or I think I can get him believe me alone and I don't know how to get commute Harris to leave me alone, that IT will serve commute herr's interest not to leave me alone and trump my just a ety doesn't care.

I mean, to me just says that if don't shop does win the election, the tech industry will behave very differently than I did in twenty sixteen. I mean, you remember in twenty 10， trump in the election, there sort of this, you know, panic among the the titans of industry.

There are these advisory councils that trump assembles that people like elon mask a join and then back out of because they can't like stomach the idea of working with donal truck. I do not think we will see nearly as much resistance if trump wins a second term office. And the I think we've seen very clearly now that the s of the tech industry are going to be very obscenely, are going to throw themselves at the mercy of the tropical administration, are basically going to do whatever they can to kerry favor. I don't think they will do nearly as much internals of hand ringing and so searching .

about that well. And so here's why I think that this deserves real scrutiny. The days a header in because something that, uh, I can guarantee you is going to happen is that in the event that common Harris winds or appears to be winning on election night or the morning after, there is going to be a concerted effort on the republic lan side to delegitimize the results of the election.

This is not really even a prediction. They're doing IT now. They have been doing IT all here. And we saw this in twenty and twenty and IT LED to violence in january six. There's a very real possibility that, that could happen again. And while i'm not somebody who believes that social networks are the root of all evil and the cause of all of our problems, they are part of how americans understand their politics and and the news.

And so IT matters what people like sooner patri and mark ZARA berg, uh, decide they are going to allow people to say that matters if they are going to uh, append notes and warnings, directing people to high quality information about the actual election results. IT matters if they are gonna turn a blind eye or threw neglect, failed to realize that militias, or rather violent groups, are organizing on their platforms. So this is where I hope that a huge degree of attention turns right in the aftermath of the election because while you know what is a billionaire, think about Donald trump is a somewhat abstract question with like little impact in the days before the election. IT actually could be hugely consequently in the days afterward.

I think that's right. I mean, what do you make of the kind of wave of CEO sucking up to trump in the days before the like? As you mentioned, we we've got jeff f bezos.

We've got mark za berg. We ve got but also people like tim cook, you know, Donald p has been claiming he's called him and sell these nice things. Trump is not always totally faithful to the sort of exact wording of these conversations, but what do you make of this or last minute scramble to get entrust good Graces?

I think that if you're the CEO of a big business, you spend a lot of time every month talking to people that you secretly think suck. You know, I think that you are constantly being forced to have uncomfortable conversations to try to negotiate for Better positions with people who might openly despise you, right? Like there's a lot of just diplomacy and politics in being a CEO these days.

And one of the things that actually drew me to touch coverage in the first place was that starting in the twenty times as these platforms started to grow bigger and bigger, all the sudden the CEO of a business started to look a lot more like a head of state, right? They're governing hundreds of millions or even billions of people on their platforms. And so they have to navigate the world, not as just somebody is trying to like return value to shareholders.

That is someone who has to maintain good relations with the actual heads of states in governments all around the world. And you know, there's a lot of horrible world leaders, but in countries where you want your business to be. So fortunately, this is just part of that job.

You know, I want to say one more thing about billionaire and, uh, authoritarian leaders. I was reading on threads this week, uh uh, uh a thread that was posted by JoNathan villa, this editor of the and he was telling the story of the russian billionaire named Michael Carter. gov.

Ski, i'm not familiar. So he became an oil billionaire after the soviet union dissolved. And among other things, did he found at the civil society organization named open russia to promote democracy and human rights.

And two years after he found at IT lamor, putin, who had by then become the authoritarian leader of russia, had him arrested and charged with fraud. d. His businesses fell part.

He was sentenced to nine meters in prison. He eventually got out. And today he lives in exile in london.

And last was writing that the whole point of this for putin was to show the class of people with enough money and power to threaten him that he could destroy their lives. They got the message quickly. And so the oligarch class became as quartiers, rather than potential rivals. And if you look at what's happened over the past few years come in, it's that a lot of those oligarchs and billionaire, you from the past decade or two, sucking up of ladder mir putin, they've died under mysterious circumstances. This is a really dark thing.

And i'm not trying to be glib about IT, but I am just pointing out that we have a history uh in in the sort of authoritarian or fascist movements of when that leader takes control and as they consolidate control, as they shadow democratic norms, as the rule of law is broken, no one wants that being more vulnerable than these billion's, the people who have the money and the power to incredibly chAllenge someone like a lady. mr. Putin, and as I said in my column, I suspect that some of those oligarchs in russia wish that they had resisted then, instead of the state of affairs they find today, which is that they just have to submit a lami or poon forever.

Yeah, I think it's a really good point. IT IT speaks as something that i've been feeling, which is just of the the game theory of the decision to support down trump release, to refrain from criticizing Donald trump or endorsing commoter as if you are A A billionaire tech leader. I think what they are fAiling to include in their game theory calculation is just as the scenario you describe, where they suck up to trump, he wins.

They get some benefit out of IT for a while and then down the line, IT becomes a liability for them. I think that is not something they are factors into their calculations at all. Yeah, anything is really important to note.

I did you when we cut back, we've got miles to go before I I sleep specifically miles bondage. I don't know if .

I H that's a good v one. Yes, see.

v two has when we come back, we bought reward miles that we work with, interview with miles former, leave OpenAI.

Okay, let's keep going on the miles thing, many, the miles. I would walk a thousand miles if I could just see you tonight.

I walk a thousand miles so I could just see you tonight. But I don't interview one miles on this broadcast. There are twenty six miles in the marathon, but only one on the hard for podcast still here, ready for the break.

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Well, casey, it's another day ending in why. So another high ranking a leader has left OpenAI.

Kevin, this hasn't happens as yesterday .

ah I pRobing what happened again till tomorrow. But this is a one that I actually thought we should talk about because this was not some junior employee. This was miles branded who was the senior advisor on reading at OpenAI has been at the company for six years. Uh, miles announced last week that he was leaving the company to focus on independent AI policy research and advocacy. So this is not just one of many senior leaders who have left OpenAI this year, but is someone who's directly in charge of this thing called a readiness.

yeah, which is an effort at the company to ensure that as IT builds ever more powerful forms of artificial intelligence, it's able to release those safely, make sure that society captures the benefits and that they mitigate any risk.

But as you know, Kevin, the real story of this team and its predecessors at open eye has been one of real chaos over the past couple of years, right? This team is continually reorganized that keeps getting different names. People keep quitting, IT some of them and started their own AI companies.

And so we've had a lot of questions about what is that actually like inside this company right now? How is IT changing and how does that impact OpenAI efforts to try to build safe to protogenes? Yeah and the .

announcement that miles made that he was leaving OpenAI attracted a lot of attention. He's ve been a very vocal and prominent person calling attention to some of the risks these systems um but he also in the process of leaving said that he does not believe that OpenAI or any other frontier A I lab is ready for agi and that he also does not believe that society at large is ready for agi and that caught a lot of people by surprise yeah when somebody who .

has been working on this project so hard for so long is saying that uh openly IT does raise questions about what they're seeing that the rest of us can because we don't want there.

So we asked miles to talk with us this week about his decision to leave OpenAI and why he is choosing to pursue an independent research path but also about some of the things that he saw an experienced while at the company that made him feel like neither OpenAI or the world at large is ready for what's coming.

Now something to know about miles is that while he's left OpenAI, OpenAI has offered to support his new efforts financially. And so I think that does affect the nature of what he can tell us that I may prevent him from telling a certain things that we wish he would. So you may hear a little bit of hesitation in his voice during that interview, but I still think IT is worth IT to try to get as much information as we can about what he learned while he worked that company for last six years.

Yeah and I think the trend that we've observed over the past year or two is that as these get more powerful, as they get more agents, as they start to be able to do things like use computers, the urgency coming out of the big AI companies of people saying you guys don't understand this stuff is all happening much sooner than you think has only increased. And I think this is an issue that is often taken less seriously by people outside the industry than people who are inside are working on this technology.

Yes, even though I could have some real effect in your life, including when you might be able to retire, which something happen I think about conn.

Do you think about i'm so tired.

Kevin.

And as always, we should disclose that the new york times is suing OpenAI and microsoft for copyright infringement.

Here guys rapped up already.

else not my my area, right? Let's bring in mile branded ge.

Mild brunt is welcome.

Hard work. Yeah, thanks for having me.

So I want to start with why you recently chose to leave OpenAI and pursue your own research into agi readiness. But I want to start by having you define A G I. Ready ness for us? What is IT that you do?

Yeah so basically, i'm a researcher and I try to understand, you know where's AI as a technology heading and what are the impacts going to be? And are we ready for those impacts in terms of how do we address the safety issues, how do we address economic issues?

So tell us about what you actually did on this agi ready ness team. You think some thoughts about, you know, what might happen if A, I developed certain capabilities, you put IT in some sort of document. And then what happens, does IT get handed over to the product team, like to open the eye, make changes that the things that IT was doing based .

on the kind of work that are with. So first, we kind of were involved in the teaming and kind of like adversarial testing to make sure that that these models are are safe and start to working with external experts. So kind of built up this function of like how do we kind of get experts and disinformation and bias and so forth, and kind of give them early access to these technologies, do a bunch of analysis and kind of published to the world so people can be like, okay, this is, this is what they did, these are the known risks and so forth. And did a bunch yourself on that, also publish a lot of ideas about how to govern A I and you know the idea of like, for example, computing power, that kind of actual physical AI chips as like a convenient point of leverage because you know, they are countable, they are physical and so forth. So you know, published lot of ideas and you know did a lot of internal stuff.

So you had what I think to many people would seem like A A dream job for someone who has an interest in agi readiness, are working at open a eye leading up their age reader team and efforts and and policy research. Um why do you live? Yeah so yeah.

I want to be clear. I did have a great time. I open the I and I feel like my team and I got accomplish a lot. But basically the reasons I decided you were brief.

So one is that I wasn't able to work on all the stuff that I I wanted to, which I was often kind of cross cutting industry issues and not just what do we do internally to only I, but also what regulation should exist and and so forth. It's easier to kind of think about that on outside. You know not uh not kind of be distracted by all the day to day internally.

Second reasons, I want to be independent and less bias so I didn't want to kind of have my views uh rightly, wrongly dismissed as you know this is just a corporate know hey guy know what not um and then the third is that I felt like I was kind of reaching a point where I had done much of what I set out to do uh internally in terms of kind of saying, okay, like here here the trend lines. Here, here the chAllenges, these are the different pillars of what that means to be ready for for A G I. And so forth.

As a eli externally outside the walls of up. I have a lot of people I even thinking about that. And like there's a lot more to be said and done.

We've also heard a pattern of people leaving OpenAI in the past year with concerns about the the companies. Are commercial emphasis kind of overtaking the the safety mission? Was that part of your decision here is that you feel like OpenAI specifically was not going about things in a safe way.

So IT wasn't so much about opening specifically, although obviously like my perspective on what the gaps are in the industry or inform my my experiences that open. I but i'm pretty confident that there is no other lab that is totally on top of things. And you if you read what what people are saying, you they are not saying that they're on top of things. So that that kind of crazy situation of like really fast progress plus the people who know the most saying that we're not ready is kind of, uh, kind of my focus.

What does IT mean to be ready for A G. I? And how has your answer to that question may be change over the past few years if IT has?

yeah. So I think that over the next few years, there will likely be, you know, A I systems that are built to that. You know, what do you call agi or not? Like the train lines, clearly, towards systems that can basically do anything a can do remotely on a computer, you know, can Operate the mouse and keyboard.

Can you even look like a human and a video chat over? I think people should be thinking about what that means. Governments should be thinking about what that means in terms of sectors attack and education to invest in and know what is even the point of education in a world in which some of the jobs that are kind of remaining and yeah, they're going to be new ones, to be clear, are not saying you all jobs. They are going to disappear, but it'll be disruptive and people need to think ahead about what does this mean in terms of, you know, the purpose of education is that training people to be good citizens as IT about having people understand in the world if it's not preparing for jobs. This can be really hard to you skate where the puck is going yeah.

As you look across the landscape of the big labs that are building foundation models, how would you grade the industry to date on safety building A I systems? How do you think it's doing?

I think it's hard to grade the industry and isolation from, you know what what what incentive are being set by a policymaker. So I think a lot of company is that are kind of doing their best within the environment that they're in, which is kind of very cut their competition and relatively little guidance other than know some voluntary commitments that they may that are you know often somewhat vae as well as like some and a regulation looming on the horizon in the E U. But the details are R T, B, T.

So I think that you know there is a good work happening and there's uh you know there's more transparency than there was a couple of years ago in terms of here is here is the tests that we did and here are the evaluation of these risks. Uh, but I would say it's also clear if you kind of read do you know what these companies are saying that in some areas they're flowing behind, they're not solving all the problem that they know about. And I think that's a sign that this is kind of in summer spects out of control.

competitive situation, having trouble example.

yeah. So I mean, just as one example, pollution ation is the term for basically A I M making stuff up. And this is not a common on open.

I is the industry standard, I would say, is to kind of systems that often make stuff up and then there's kind of little fine print at the bottom that says a lot can make mistakes or chat G, B, can make mistakes. And no, it's clearly assign that. There's not much that is forcing these companies .

to to play IT safe, right? And you mention there is also this cut for a competition. What is that doing to the effort to build A I.

uh, so IT is definitely complicating IT. Uh, so I think there is a there are multiple dimensions along which companies are competing. So it's not just trying to get to market faster.

It's also people want to work at a company that you know ships and that kind of get so out on the market. So there's kind of competing for talent. Um and then you know they do consider safety, but it's not always the focus.

But put either way, like they keep pushing forward the frontier. And I feel like your perspective is what we're not exactly sure how to safely advance the frontier. So physic, there's a disconnect there.

I agree. That's why i'm going to kind of focus on making the situation Better.

Yeah, do you think part of readiness for powerful AI involves slowing down A I progress? Like are you one of the people who thinks maybe we should put a pause the development of these systems as part of ready? This to me is like, well, yes, it's onna. Be easier to get ready for something momentous if you have more .

time yeah so my position is that you would be premature to slam the breaks, but we should be installing breaks. And right now there are no breaks. So that means things like knowing where the computer is, knowing you know what the what the state of the art of the capabilities is, thinking through different policy proposals, like, for example, a publisher paper called computing power and the governance of ai.

We talked about one idea which has have a computer reserve, kind like the federal reserve, where you kind of like put more computer, less computer onto the market to kind of speed up or slow things down. I don't know that the right idea, maybe it's taxes, maybe we don't actually do any of these things, but we think them through and be ready to do them if things are going too fast. But right now, I think the debate is pretty simpler stic.

And it's kind of on one end is like go away faster and the other is slam the brakes. And I think know the truth is we don't really know there are trade off. So we need to think through you know what what is happening, what are the benefits of know going faster.

So I mean, one thing that we find when we talk about whatever we talk about A G I or powerful ai on the show is that there is a certain segment of people who just think this is all science fiction, right, that are not convinced that AI is approaching human level intelligence that don't see the usefulness of ChatGPT or other tools in their life. We think this is basically marketing hype coming out of the big A I labs. What do you think is is the issue in understanding there what these people not seeing that you see?

I it's hard for me to say I am very interested and Better understand this gap between you know what people in industry think and and what people outside industry think and obvious ly their exceptions. But generally people who are in industry at the frontier labs think things are going very quickly. And you know some of them are very excited about that.

Some are very concerned. But there's no dispute that you know significant progress has been made towards A G I and that there will be much more progress than the next year to. I feel quite confident that is not just type.

Certainly, some people are trying to hit me know their new new start up and so forth. But there are a lots of people formally at these companies, that is myself, who have no one I have to, to hype things. And that is notable and curious.

Miles, a lot of what you've spent your career and your time at OpenAI thinking about is how institutions can get ready for more powerful. A, I like companies, governments, but I also curious what you think individual people can do to get ready. Like I college last week talking with bunch of college students, and they were all sort of asking the question of, like, what should I do?

Like, what should I study? What kind of career should I pursue? What skills should I be developing now that will have value in the A G. I world? What should individuals do?

So I say at least three things. One is just try out these systems. I think if you haven't used, know the latest version, you know gam ChatGPT car and you you know you're out of date and you I say that someone who no longer is, you know, in industry is not not just happy.

That's like, genuinely, this is going to transform the world. And you need to know what I what I can do and what I can do. The second is thinking about what IT means for your career.

And I think that means look at the kind of train lines of, like, for example, opening a publish blog post on a system called a one a. And yeah, look, look at what I can do. Look at some of these examples of where things are headed and what does that mean for your career? Uh you know should you be thinking about kind of a more future proof uh path um this proof .

available whether the books are sold um and .

then the third I would say is like protecting yourself and your loved ones from things like deep fakes and so forth. Again, like knowing what the day of the art of the technology is, is key to that so that you don't get duped by you know A A A phone call that sounds like you're grama and it's not so like knowing what's possible is important in order to you .

not a duped yeah people have specific questions like should I keep saving for retirement if we're going to have powerful A I in a couple years that render you know all money irrelevant? Um should I be planning for my kids to go to college? Should I be lobbying my my congress person to do some particular thing about A I like like what are a sort of practical action steps here? If you are a person who believes, as I think many people in the industry do, that this technology is going to keep getting Better. And what does that mean for our individual choices and planning?

Yeah, it's hard to say. I mean, even the the people who know the most about A I have a lot of uncertainty about you know how quickly it's going to go. I think most people who know what their time, I degree and IT, we will go pretty quickly.

And like what does that mean for society is not something they can even necessarily be predicted, is partly a policy and societal question. Like do we want to establish al norms around protecting certain jobs? And you saying only humans can do this.

And or do we want to know, will we get greater benefits from A I if we want to say that, oh, actually A I can write prescriptions and I can give legal advice. And so for you, IT doesn't need a lot to agree or whatever. So I think IT is basic possible to fully predict, but I do think people should save money.

And I don't think that like so you are you .

are satirical persons. I think the retirement will come for most people sooner than they think in the sense .

that you know and I .

think like some good news cast A T know we're all here to be talking about retirement and when you know a here, but yeah, I think that IT will be technologically possible if you know, and and politically possible if if kind of policymakers, their job to have a huge economic baLance tee and for people to basically retire early and uh, you know, have a high city of living. That being said, you you might have more kind of robot Butlers if you you know, have some savings from before then then if you did in. And I think there will always be things that people want to buy and always, you know, there will be a demand for, like, well, I want to have food serve to me by a human and you not a robot and so I do think.

yes so I think .

money will still yeah thing would be my guess.

Do do you want to share your thoughts on how society would work in a world where A I can do everything of economic value like how are people's needs to taken care of the government provides or are robots do everything for us?

I think what is probably going to happen um you know I mean that we're all here and safe and healthy and so forth is that there will be a much larger economy, uh, that A I will you know each year over the next you know a few years, GDP growth will significantly increase.

And you know if we do the right thing in terms of taxation and you know having a robust safety net, whether looks like basic income or something else that people be able to share in that baLance tee, and people will be able to choose to just kind of take that you basic income and you live pretty comfortable lives. You know the kinds of lives that a lot of people work very hard and you work very long hours to live today. So I don't know know how to play up. I think .

they'll be technologically possible. What what else have you done personally in your life as a result of having internalized your beliefs about A I progress like how is how are you making choices differently in your data day life than someone who maybe is not uh attuned to A I progress the .

way you are um I mean besides spending basically all day everyday thinking about not much. Uh, I think we have a pretty Normal life and you have cats and watch T V. And so fourth, but yeah in first of work hours as the same thing.

It's so interesting to me because I always feel like this. This is the signal that I keep looking for from the A I labs that i'm not seeing is like when people start actually behaving differently at the labs based on their beliefs .

about A I like like when OpenAI get rid of their .

for a one k match, yes. Or like some like, you know, when people are are behaving as if this is imminent rather than just saying it's imminent. And I don't know what that would look like, but IT just strikes me that even the people who are the best plugged into what this technologies is capable love still have some cognitive dissents when IT comes to, like arranging their own lives based on that.

Well, we do know the same. Altman built a doomsters. Er, so that gives us one signal, I guess. Yes, have you been to the dome? Banker.

I have not.

The room. The shame. Have you been?

No, would love to go. Would love to go. We podcast from the domes day. But up to imagine I Better a great acoustic iconic. You know.

you can offer a thought on that if you want. Like, like, why is IT that people at these labs who understand and are are bedding on this technology getting so much Better so soon? Why is that that they wake up and go to work every day like the rest of us and don't seem to be making radical choices in anticipation of those changes.

I think it's because A I is this super general purpose technology that kind of pervades everything, and it's unlike this, what it's like, this robot marching down the street that's gonna ill us. You put, you know, say, and bags in front your door to protect yourself, whatever. It's something that you being deployed on the internet and it's all over. So there's not really that much to do to kind of prepare for other than to understand IT, to talk about IT, to kind of push for policymakers to set good garden.

I guess that leads to the sort of last question I want to ask you, which is just like if you could snap your fingers and let's say two things, if you could make one thing happen, pass a law, set up a new governing body or something, shut down A I lap, if you could do one thing to increase our society y's readiness for A I, what would you be? And then the second question is, like, if you could convince everyone in the world of one idea about ai to make them Better equipped to handle what's coming, what would they be so think you would do an idea that you would kind of inception into people's brains.

It's really hard to to answer the first one. I think there's a lot of things that need to happen. So I kind of pick something that is a pretty broad umbrella over in during the biden ministration, there was this executive order past that you know started to gather information about where the big data centers, where the big models are.

You doing a good job on safety and so forth is currently vulnerable. IT might be on done in the in the triumph administration, for example. And you know even without that, they're likely going to be legal chAllenges because IT in books, this this thing called the defense production act and that somewhat contested.

So I if I had a magic wand, I would have congress pass a version of that, that not only kind of puts on on really solid legal foundation, because there's a law that is past that kind, allows the government to be on top of these things. And I would thrown in some additional components, like long term solid funding for the A I safety institute is basically the the A I brain of the U. S. Government, the one part where there is a critical mass of technical experts who know what's going on of testing these systems, putting all of that on a solid foundation rather than having to be at the wings of, you know, the next election that would make me very happy. And there be a lot to do after .

that but that if you could start and then the one sort of butter sticker that you that you could convince ce everyone in .

the world with the wave of part. Um I think the main thing is that A I is a real thing and not science fiction like there are literally systems today that you can use for free to solve interesting reasoning, your puzzles and to give feedback on papers and to draft emails and to solve ela problems as well as you know a lot of legal students and that's crazy and that wasn't true five years ago. So just appreciating the weirdness of the situation and the fact that anyone who knows what they're talking about agrees that we have not stopped this progress and we should think .

about that yeah well, i'll tell you what i'm doing to improve my AI ready, this guys learning march arts. I think that in this world i'm gona need to be able to defeat any laptop and hand to hand combat. And I like my odds. I like the chances. So i'll keep you post on how that feeling.

Have you seen the boston dynamics robots? I don't think you you would do well against.

Look, I actually have and i've been studying where you can kick them to knock them over and i'm going na say more on an unsecured microphone but lets her say.

I know things well miles, thank you so much for coming on um I don't necessarily feel more ready for A G I as result this conversation but I at least know where the gap in my reads are.

I was born ready for a you going going to work all this? Yeah you've been ready for .

early retirement for about ten years now. You know.

when I was a little boy, I knew I wanted to retire only.

right? Thanks for coming miles.

Yeah.

thanks so much for having .

when we come back I segment, you're Polly gonna to listen to.

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Well, because we've talked about how rich people preparing for the election. But how about people who are trying to get rich by betting on the election?

Yeah the sort of the average joes out there, Kevin, just average internet users who are hoping to pass the time by making little, but it's sweet cash.

yes. So today we're talking about bedding markets for the election in predict.

Talk about so .

we have talked about prediction markets on this show before I went to a big prediction markets conference. We talked about IT last year. And these are these sort of markets where people can go on and bet on real world events, you know, celebrity things of that nature, but also more serious things like presidential elections.

And I would say that one of the break out stories of the twenty four U. S. Presidential election has been the rise of these prediction markets for election.

Yes, of course, everyone in this country and many people around the world are obsessed, rightly so, with what is going to happen U. S. Presidential election. And everyone is looking for someone who can just say to them definitively, here is what is going to happen. And while I don't know if these markets are doing that, they certainly are making some people feel that way.

Yes, this is sort of become one way that political followers are attempting to hand cap. The race is literally by looking at the bets that people are making on these platforms. Elon mosque has been a big proponent of prediction markets and in particular has been posting a lot of screen shots of poly market, which is one of the big prediction markets websites where a lot of this gaming is going on.

Oh, I thought that was a place where you can meet a rapper.

There are different apps OK. But I thought we should talk about this today because as people are getting ready for the election next week, as people are trying to figure out who is going to win, I would say this is a place where a lot of election anxiety has gone to serve. Sit in the days in week's leading up to the election. And I think they raised a lot of really interesting questions about how faithfully they are tracking the polls and the places where their diverging yeah.

And while these markets have a lot of big fans and backyard and boosters, there's also been some reporting recently that um these platforms also serve scrutiny and that they might not be providing quite as accurate and assessment of either candidates odds of winning as as maybe you might imagine from just looking at the raw numbers. yes.

So as usual, when we are talking on the show about some sort of complicated financial scheme involving in cypher to currency and bedding, we are going to talk today with our friend and colleague, David F. I. Beli of the new york times, he and my colleague and in griffith h recently wrote about these election bedding platforms and these rise in popularity they are seeing during this election season.

It's a rare chance to talk to David about a crypto story before the person involved goes to prison.

Yes, let's bring IT. David ari family, welcome back.

hard work. Thanks so much for having me.

So let's talk about betting markets in the election. I would say this has been one of the biggest changes in this election cycle is that all everyone is talking about this prediction market. So can you just have help us understand how this happened?

Yeah, so came out of nowhere sort of I mean, is suddenly, at least for my perspective, you know, everybody that i've followed on twitter, every crypto person that I was interested in was tweet out the odds on this website called Polly market. And that seemed to show that you trump had had this massive lead over kala Harris. And it's really kind of blown up and become sort of the way a lot of people on the internet of understanding the state of the race.

Yeah, I did some researching the betting markets and prediction markets last year. I was writing about manifold, which we talked about on the show. And I was surprised to learn that around the world betting on elections is is legal and and you happens in a lot of countries, including the U.

K. Where it's spent legal for many years. But this is not in legal in the U. S.

correct? yeah. And I mean its its legality is still the subject of a lot of dispute in the U. S. On a small elections betting platform.

Actually recently one a lawsuit against the government agency allowing IT for the time being to offer for these bedding markets. But that suit hasn't been totally resolved yet. And so they're still sort of a legal cloud over this type of betting.

And if you're new to the world of these prediction markets, why do people who follow them closely believe that they offer some sort of information that you can find other places?

The argument is basically that markets aggregate a lot of information that the people who are placing bets are doing. So because they i've digested the polls, they've thought about recent news stories now they've thought about historical context, and basically they proceed all that information and made a bed.

And if you have enough people doing that and doing IT in an intelligent way, then you end up with a prediction of the that could be more reliable than any of those of individual matrix. That's the theory. I mean, whether these sorts of prediction markets actually have a Better chance of forecasting the election than a traditional poll, that's not clear yet. It's something that academics are still studying. yeah.

So let's talk about poly market because you recently wrote a story about this one particular prediction markets company tells about Polly market.

So Polly market is a betting platform founded by a twenty six year old. And why you drop out was founded back in in twenty twenty. It's been around for a few years and IT has become the most popular of these betting markets.

It's not the original one. Um you you may have heard of predict IT, which was around for a long time, but it's become the sort of most used, most cited kind of elections betting market in this cycle. And that's for a couple of reasons.

One is that unlike other betting markets, IT does not cap the amount of money that you couldn't gamble. So if you want to bet thirty million dollars that trump l in the election, you can do that on policy market on predicted your captain eight hundred and fifty dollars. And also, I think it's just no sort of market itself successfully.

You know, IT has a kind of charismatic Young founder who's gone around about preaching the benefits of prediction markets. And so it's really become a kind of internet phenomenon in this race, and it's been trumpeted by elon mosque, by trump himself. And a lot of people are paying attention to IT.

And it's a crypto prediction market. And is the reason that you are covering IT as the crypto reporter is because your bets are made in crypt al currency, right?

Yeah, you place bets in in U. S, D, C, which is a stable coin. The identities of the people who are placing the bets are not exactly public, but you can see the sort of anonymous accounts that they are placing the bets from. There's a level of transparency that's that's lacking on some of these other platforms, which you know allows outside groups kind of exam in bedding patterns and know something that has excited a lot of people .

in the research community about IT and how much money has been on the so far on market.

The figure as of a week ago for the um um the you know the outcome of the electoral college contest was in in the region of one hundred million dollars. It's probably gone up since then.

Do you have a set like how much of that is coming from americans betting on the american presidential election or .

how much of IT is foreigners? So officially Polly market is banned in the U S. Um was hit with a fine by the commodity res trading commission a couple of years ago and is part of that settlement IT agreed not to offer these products to people based in the U.

S. But look, I spoke with a former employee, the company, who said that I was an open secret in the office that people could use VPN to place bets. If you look at you know the topics of some of the markets that the website offers, its stuff that americans are very interested in, you go on their discord is full of tips about how to evade the ban on american users.

It's clear that people in the united states are are using this platform. How many of them how much money comes from them? That's not clear .

that your story says that a Polly markets told you that they use industry leading compliance measures to prevent american customers from bedding. And I think it's funny that those measures don't include stopping americans from talking about how to evade those measures in their own discord.

Be fair to Polly market. They also told us that they have hired some sort of compound, clean up their discord and go in some of those posts. And yet, a couple of days before the story came out, I was still able to find plenty, plenty of examples of people talking about IT.

So right now I go into polymer dot com. I see the top election prediction market, who will win the presidential election? Uh, has Donald trump.

I had sixty six percent to common. Haris s, thirty four percent. That is obviously a much wider spread than any of the traditional polls that i've seen at least. Um why is that such a big spread? Yeah this sort of .

diversions from the polls, which basically show that it's a dead heat between the two candidates. One of the things that that got me interested in Polly market in which is sort of catapulted IT to a new level of attention in this election cycle and this sort of dubious thing about what's going on is that Polly market has now revealed that a series of large bets by a single person were at least partially responsible for swing the odds so far in trump s direction.

We don't know exactly who that person is, but we know that they bet somewhere in the region of thirty million dollars on a trump Victory and that they are french and that they have a treating background. And this also have raised the spector of, could this be some sort of effort to IP late? The market, Polly market has come out and said, no, you know, this is someone who just really believes that trump s is gonna win and is making a Better based on that. So help me understand .

this because the sort of thing that you will hear and that I heard when I was reporting on prediction markets is that this kind of market manipulation of prediction markets is hard to do because essentially, if you do think that these, uh, odds on Polly market are out of, couldn't you just make money betting .

on the other side? Yeah and that's part of what the company and its backers have said in in response that if these odds were really so skill, then you would see people placing Harris bats and you would reach some kind of equal liberum.

And they might be right or just could be that like polymer doesn't have a large enough user based or like a rational enough user base or there are issues structurally that are preventing that sort of equalizing effect from happening, and we just don't know yet. I mean, if trump wins the election in a huge landside, I think a lot of people point to Polly market and say they were kind of ahead of the curve on this. And it's also possible that this french guy has some bit of information about what's going to happen that we don't have, that he knows about the october surprise about coma Harris that's coming down the pike. You know that's sort of how people theorised prediction markets should work um and what should make them good forecasting mechanisms.

Well, I would find that very disturbing. Ever since the lousianner purchase. I've said to france, you stay out of our politics, and for them to get IT involved in this way, I find really, really disturbing also.

How many french people live in half thirty million dollars? You know, the little basically like caffeine and then out of people. So that seems strange to me, but not to the point you're making. Game is like let's let's think about its okay. So the people that are betting on the market r let's face IT, probably mostly americans who have figured out a way to use a VPN to make a bet. And I just believe that the group that sort of self selects there are they actually just want to influence the election by creating the appearance that Donald trump is running away with the game. So I find IT very hard to believe that what we're seeing on Polly market is a more accurate representation of the race than the actual polls that are being done across the country by, you know, experiences pollsters.

I guess one thing that's been striking to me about polish market odds is that until recently, the odds were basically the same as the polls. I mean, they showed that IT was an incredibly close race with about a fifty, fifty chance on, on, on each side.

And so at that point you sort of onder like, well, what new information are we actually getting from this that we don't get from traditional sources? And then at the point where there is a big swing, we discovered that that's because one guy and france bet a ton of money. And you know, again, IT IT raises some questions. And you know, we will see what happens on november fifth. But I think, you know, the concerns, cases raising our totally develop.

I think this is a real concern because we know that the perception of elections in the days and weeks leading up to those elections matters for things like donations and volunteer support and just general turnout. But I also think there's another win, which IT may matter, which is that IT is now setting up the expectation that there is going to be this lobster truck Victory, at least among the people who believe in prediction markets. And so if the race is not called right away, or if IT is closer of common, Harris is deemed the Victor. I think that does lay the groundwork for some deferred ous attempts to serve deny the results.

I absolutely again, and i've said this few times over past two weeks, but I just think it's important to keep pointing out to people there is an effort underway to delegitimize the results of the election. And one of the things that you're going to see in the aftermath of the election, should Harris appear to be winning as people pointing to the market and any other they can, that made IT seem like trump was going to win IT and say, you can't possibly have one look at what Polly market was telling us.

right? Yeah, this is something you know, people are are always looking for something to blame after their side, losers in election. I think the market could be blamed by whoever whichever side losses the there .

are some other exciting betting markets on the market, including you know whether Taylor swift will get engaged this year. There was a market on who the HBO documentary would identify as the person behind the toshio commodo. You know, we could probably spend up some hard fork markets.

We have hard fork markets are manifold, but we always forget to resolve them. So now people are just matter us.

Well, on that point though, David, like are there a notable cases where a Polly market prediction market a something surprising?

So the example that Polly market has sort of promoted, as you know, a time that the service proved its value was that as soon as the the first presidential debate over the summer happened, you know, the odds of biden dropping out, you know, swan, kind of heavily in that direction. But of course, at the same time, every pundit and the universe was talking about how that was, you know, potentially on the cards. I think I think it's true that maybe polar market sort of anticipated that, that really was gonna en a bit earlier than like the public discourse did. But he was still directionally kind of the same .

yeah and not like that is the case where I am perfectly willing to believe that these prediction markets might help you learn something five percent faster than if you are you know not paying attention to IT. Um but in most cases, that five percent advantage doesn't really matter. It's kind of boring. And unless you're some sort of like financial analyst, I don't think that matters out with your life.

Part of IT also happening here. It's about the sort of financialization of everything, you know. Why can we that on every little thing that happens, let let's sort of markets sort of dictate our behavior and even more spheres of life than they already do. And you know to people who are big supporters of cyp da, that's a utopia and vision of the future, but not everyone feels that way.

Yeah so one other thing we should talk about with respective Polly market is this issue and this concern of wash trading. Uh some crypto research firms have recently looked into this. And according to fortune, which publish an article this this week, a significant amount of the trading volume on Polly markets presidential bedding market consists of potential wash trading. So David, what is wash trading and why is that happen on polymer?

So wash training is when you know trades happen back and forth that are essentially artificial. No, it's sort of and effort create the illusion of trading activity. And that can be helpful to a platform because that makes the platform seem more popular.

IT can be helpful to the people sort of facilitating the war strating, if they're going to get some sort of benefit from IT. So in the cyp to world, sometimes if you're like a really active user on a platform of that platform creates a token leader on, you might get like preference, you know, as you try to accumulate the supply of that token. So now we've reported that Polly market has explored the possibility of of launching a token.

Others have reported that as well. And so you know the company doesn't really make any money right now. And so it's it's looking for ways to generate revenue.

That's a paul pal. I was surprised by that. Why don't they just charge a small fee on these transactions?

Um I think partly IT has to do with the legal gray area around this sort of thing at the point where you not only have traders who you're using VPN to get around the G O blocking and trade from the U. S, but you're also from that activity, then you're potentially in more legal hot water.

So the platform is not taking a cut of every bet made on the platform the way that like a sports book at a casino wood, but they are benefiting from a lot of pipe and cussion around the platform as potentially an important signal of who's going to win the election.

And they're about to raise another fifty million dollars from VS. And you know they're burning through that sort start up capital the way that lots of tech companies do and sort of figuring that eventually some point down the line.

you'll figure out a way to make money. Have they considered selling A T shirt that just as Polly amis on IT.

you know, shame coplin, the CEO has made jokes about the fact that he should have started a sex podcast instead of a betting website itself. But yeah, maybe, maybe you guys should get together with him and we.

to shame, call us.

What do we know about the politics of polymer itself?

The politics of you will because you .

know they have uh taken money from Peter teals founder fund was was an investor in theirs a people on the left have used that to say that maybe they are so secretly and kohut with the republicans did you find anything in you're reporting about the the politics of poly market, the company? So we reported.

like everybody else has, that you know one of teals firms is backing Polly market. Shane did not speak with us for the story, but after IT came out, he posted a long tweet about the story in which he said, you, there's nothing to this. You know, the partner founders fun, who backed us, you know, wasn't a different person than til and that know this is a ridiculous claim about the platform. He was photographic, though, at the r nca. Like socializing with danny trump junior and in that photo I think got a lot attraction for a while but he since also been photographed you know with his ARM over tim wala shoulder at some fundraiser so you know to me looks more like a guy who just is really good at networking and you know enjoys being around famous and powerful people and you know, trying to kind of use their star power to promote his venture more than he does like some sort of right wing conspiracy.

Well, i'll tell you what I told Kevin, which is that if cma herr's wins, this is will be the last segment we're doing on prediction markets on the show because we've done at two of them now. And i'm still not convinced that they're telling us anything we couldn't already .

find out from other means. Well, I think they do reflect this sincere belief among at least a lot of tech people that you can get Better information by making a market around right, that people will will have Better research behind their views if they have money, find those views. And that if you want to look at the way things are going in the world and find out what's happening in the world, you shouldn't look at what people say. You should look at what they beat on.

I think that is true in the case of the stock market, where you have some of the smartest people, the world, and that sums of money, who are trying to absolutely maximize their return. I think IT is less true in on these rinky link platforms with a group of self selected nerds who are betting relatively small sums of money on relatively few events that I don't actually think you can get that much information from.

No, I think that's fair. I also think like we know that markets can be distorted and manipulated and also just like full of bad information, right? People who bet on sports are not always betting on who they think is going to win the game, right? Maybe their betting on their favorite team or their favorite.

Are you say you've met sport scamps to aren't totally rational?

Yes, people are not rational actors in these markets. People are not even rational actors in the stock market, right? Like, look at the game stop.

That was a case in which, you know, a bunch of people decided to sort of behave irrationally together and push the Price of the stock up. So I just look around and I don't see a lot of markets that look extremely rational to me. no.

But what I do see, ka vin, is americans becoming degenerate gamblers. And I do think that that is a piece of this story as well. You know, I read a piece in the landsat this week.

IT is a journal of public health, and IT had a paper projecting the consumers globally will lose around seven hundred billion dollars on gambling losses by twenty twenty eight. So I think prediction markets will probably be a pretty small part of that relativist swords gamble, for example. But I do think we should take note of just how many different aspects of american life gambling is creeping into because as always, with gambling, IT is usually the house that wins. Another consumer on this case sounds .

like the polar market is not even like the house is not even really making any money.

Yeah, let's just say i've seen smarter houses out there. My David, I predict your time minutes come to an end with one hundred percent certainty. Yeah.

i'll take the other side of that. I want to have one for another half.

I didn't me. He could never come back. I just member this segment. okay? Yeah.

i'm a place, a bet that i'm staying on for a couple more seconds.

I think I. David capability, thank you as always for coming on.

Thanks so much.

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