Sam Altman: Tech's New Political Advisor

welcome to the ai chat podcast today on the podcast we're talking about a trend in ai and politics that we've been seeing play out over the last year i would say but really getting stronger in the last number of months and the big news i want to break and talk about today is the fact that sam altman was just named as the co-chair of the new mayor of san francisco uh the mayor elected daniel lurry he just got added to his transition team now there's a lot of interesting things i want to break down here um because you know typically i'm not like you know there's not like politics on this podcast in a big way san francisco is an interesting place i'm not really waning on what candidates better anything i just want to talk about some of the things that they've done who opposes them who agrees with them and the reason why we talk about san francisco in particular and the politics there probably more than anywhere else is because this is where a large majority of all the ai companies are coming out of and all the biggest ones uh have a headquarters there so it really plays directly into it and then having someone like sam altman as the co-chair there i think there's some big implications for ai and what we might see in it in the future so you know the politics you know have to listen to this podcast i'm honestly not uh super opinionated on any candidates or anything i'm just talking about it as i see it uh from an outsider's sort of perspective okay so this is really interesting daniel leary had a really contentious kind of run um and before we get into that i did want to mention that if you want a newsletter about different ai tools uh you can go over to my website aibox.ai scroll to the bottom and put your email in every single day we send out a daily newsletter with the top three ai stories that we're seeing that are really interesting this isn't super long i put you know three little blurbs in there and links usually to where you click on the article or to tweet about what people are talking about it try to make it really short and digestible um if you're interested go check it out it's a great newsletter where you can get really in-depth info and uh try to make this thing actually useful okay so let's get into what is going on with uh with this mayor dan leary so get a pretty um a pretty solid run from right here was pretty contentious um he had some you know a lot of people were for him some people were against him in case you don't know who daniel leary is uh he is 47 years old uh he is a democrat um as you know everyone california is uh he is you know if you look at his like about section or whatever it says he's an american heir and philanthropist who is the mayor of san francisco okay pretty much who he is is the heir to the levi you know levi jeans levi strauss so he's the heir to the levi fortune from levi jeans i think he self-funded his campaign to a large degree which some people thought was cool some people complained about you know this rich guy that didn't actually build levi strauss just air spending his money they inherited so you know you can imagine that i was controversial on both sides um he beat london breed who i don't know seemed unpopular i could be wrong um out of san francisco i think specifically with san francisco's rampant issues with um crime and drugs and poverty um i think that's probably why london breed uh got elected or got booted out i for one you know with my own ai startup have looked at a lot of different places to base my startup out of right now we're based out of fiends arizona which is you know the next state over from california lastly why i'm not in san francisco i've been there for a lot of meetings and with a young family and young kids it just wasn't a safe or good environment uh for me uh yeah that's my own choice and driving there for meetings and seeing smash windows and needles on the sidewalk uh and poop and stuff like that wasn't what i was looking for so i know there's a lot of incredible talent there's a lot of good in that city and i really hope it makes a bit of a comeback but you know i think it's uncontroversial to say a lot of big companies a lot of people complained about it so hopefully we are flipping over a new leaf with daniel leary but some people don't think so in any case um it's gonna be interesting to see what happens so that's a little about who he is now um he's pulling on sam altman because i think he really wants to build and bridge a connection between the tech industry i think especially with all these ai companies and sam obviously is kind of like the he's the king of tech and definitely the king of ai at the moment with opening everything they've been doing so sam altman you know replied to kind of give a note on this he said i'm excited to help the city i love where opening i has started and again it's next chapter with mayor elect leary set into this new role um what's interesting is leary he invested i think about nine million dollars to fund his campaign that's just his own you know money or his inherited money um he's going to be taking office january 8th and at that point i think people are really going to be looking closely at what is happening with uh the public safety crisis um and a lot of stuff that's going a ton of money millions into the city and he has been very very vocal about criticizing um san francisco and kind of the some of the issues that the city of san francisco faces saying we need to refund the police not defund the police uh he's got like a huge post all about it um he said the da's office must you know prosecute the fullest level of the law so you know very prominent people are quite fired up about this um and uh yeah mark running off is one of the big ones elon musk also closed uh x's office in downtown san francisco and the left um but he does have xai's office still there i think it moved into opening eyes old office so i don't know if he did that just gotta be funny or if xai probably stay in san francisco long term so a lot of great talent there i guess that's to be determined in any case with all of the drama with all these tech people um there's a lot that have left that are going to miami or austin because of the issues that they're saying and a lot of times on the way out you see like elon musk and everyone else putting these big condemnations out on the city of san francisco and uh how it's kind of difficult so the new mayor's job right now in attracting these young professionals to the city especially when we have this big ai boom and a lot of money that can be made there he's got to convince them that this is a safe place a good place to come um and maybe it's less important for families because maybe there's a lot of people that don't have families like young in their career that can be attractive but like i for one know if i was ever gonna move there with my family they'd have to do a lot on the crime and safety side because i just heard you know horror stories and seen first hand uh some stuff so you know i think there's definitely something that could be done very quickly but it's up to know if they want to do so the new mayor wants sam altman to help lead the effort in attracting those young people um he previously called sam allman one of the quote one of the most important figures on the planet so i think he really understands the importance of ai the importance of tech importance of everything that's kind of coming in the ecosystem right there he said in a recent interview that he did over on the information so he's quite vocal about this um and a lot of people are kind of talking about you know are talking about this issue and he you know obviously think sam allman's important so there's someone else that's going to be joining um sam allman kind of from the tech side as well ned siegel he's twitter's former cfo he left twitter when it was purchased by elon he left with the former ceo pegol uh argwal um or per agar wall um and today he's on a bunch of different uh he's on the board of a bunch of different companies including beyond me ring central and also luri has a non-profit called tipping point which is interesting to talk a little bit about that but he's also on that board so that probably seems like where he's coming so in regards to tipping point this is the non-profit that um daniel luri is currently the or lies the ceo i think he'll probably be stepping back a bit but with this non-profit um it spent the last 20 years fighting poverty in the bay area now i i don't know you can i'm sure a lot of people disagree with me i have such a hard time with non-profits because i i want them to be successful i want this like the causes that they espouse i think are so important and i want them to have the solutions sometimes it feels like non-profits i'm not saying this is the case with tipping point community but i just feel like a lot of them get donation money and they run a company it's like they're running a company and if they really solve the problem then there won't really be a use for them so i don't know what do you do right it's kind of the catch-22 thing so in any case 20 years of fighting poverty um they've invested 440 million dollars into 200 organizations and this sounds amazing i don't want to mention because i'm all about cherry and giving and whatever it just feels like in the bay area the homeless crisis and the drug crisis which is obviously i think a really big part of the poverty there you know i just think that those issues um we've seen some studies that say you know there's billions of dollars unaccounted for um and lots of goes to ngos and other organizations that don't seem to have actually solved the problem so in any case i hope that he does good things here i don't want to you know just crap talk a potentially great charity but it doesn't seem like this this issue in san francisco has been helped i'm pretty sure if i look at a crime and poverty statistic it would be trending upwards to the right um so you know that's uh i think that might be some criticism that he gets on this charity and i could be completely wrong so this is not my opinion i've just seen some yeah i've seen some things so just bringing that up all right he has the charity um he also yeah i think you know in addition to kind of these new these new tech executives that are kind of brought in the reason i bring this up is because this seems like a really big trend we're seeing not just on a you know like a mayor race in a city level which obviously san francisco is like the most important city in tech and an ai so that's why i bring san francisco up i'm not gonna be doing this you know podcast about the mayor of like colorado or something uh boulder colorado for example but i think this is important in san francisco but we're seeing this exact same thing play out on a national stage right we have uh donald trump who's recently announced elon musk is gonna advise him in the white house um to drive efficiency in government so it seems like these tech companies and these tech kind of uh these tech giants these guys have started a lot in tech are coming in and become advisors national and kind of uh settlement on like more local level so what i did find interesting though because i expect like this trend will continue right you can expect that there's a big tech guy uh in any city boulder colorado they you can expect that um they may be pulled in uh to help with you know some of the local government so i think there's a lot that ai can do for government i've spoken to people on this podcast that are working in government non-partisan people working with you know republican and democrat on whatever you know improving government efficiency uh in their administrations using ai tools so i think there's a lot that can be done there but one thing that's really interesting both with elon musk and with sam altman um they won't like they're gonna be essentially advisors they're not like they don't have a cabinet seats or you know place in the cabinet so they're essentially advisors and they don't need to divest from the financial interest i mean sam i'm gonna keep running open at elon musk is gonna keep running like 100 companies um they'll give you know advice and advisory stuff but it's not like they need to be i don't think they need to be confirmed by like in elon musk's case i don't think they're gonna like need to confirm in congress or anything like that just kind of outside of the government advisor and i think sam altman's gonna play the same role so and i mean this is interesting too because obviously elon musk and al trump are the republican side and uh when you have uh you have daniel lurry and um sam altman they're on the democrat side so you're seeing on both sides of the spectrum um uh in different sizes national or local so i just think this is a trend we're gonna see a lot more of so one thing that i do find interesting is that other than obviously running open ai which is one of the biggest uh you know leading ai companies in the world or is the biggest leading ai company in the world sam altman also is very famous because he ran um y combinator the most famous uh you know tech startup he ran from 2014 to 2019 and some are speculating that he's gonna actually help uh essentially lurry make some friends at y combinator because one of lurry's biggest critics and also i think one of the most vocal uh tech people that are political tech people in silicon valley is gary tan who's the current ceo of y combinator very vocal about all the issues and you know very vocal and supporting candidates i don't believe he was um yeah i think the tech crunch says that gary tan has given san francisco's new mayor a less than warm embrace okay so what exactly did gary tan say about this um gary tan said uh in a tweet back in october he said i can't believe how many lurry shows are reaching out to silence me my friends i don't need a thing from the city if lurry wins i will watch his admin like a hawk and will be relentless and he'll be held accountable by me all my friends the city demands great governance to be honest it doesn't seem like gary tan is necessarily saying like anything in particular is horrible he's just saying if this guy wins i mean yeah he's critical sure but he's saying if he wins we're gonna be watching him we want great governance and if lurry is great at governing and does a great job i don't think that gary can't have an issue there so i don't know i think that's kind of interesting um yeah i don't know gary doesn't seem to be a fan he's responding in some tweets that uh he doesn't like the ads that um he doesn't like the ads that daniel's running so daniel i guess he was running like he's running google ads that are like attacking his opponents and it's interesting he's running millions of dollars but it's all just like his own you know inherited wealth that doesn't so anyways um i believe it was uh uh i believe there was like a google ad against um one of the opponents but anyways gary can't only san francisco self a rich self-funded mayoral candidates by millions of dollars of ads with his inheritance wealth to claim you know the other guy isn't actually that rich the worst thing is it's probably gonna work hats off to san francisco politics actually there's a screenshot of a google ad which is learn more about mark feral the guy he's running against don't trust him he's you know whatever okay so hello politics it's always the same kind of but i think this is interesting so one thing that's interesting a lot of people have uh kind of funny is that gary tan he sits on the non-profit called grow sf and grow sf actually did endorse lori uh in this mayor race so you know um he might be cool of them but organizations he worked with are endorsing so you know i'm not sure if that makes him upset or whatever but that's that's the way it is um tan is taking a really big role in politics in san francisco i think that's uh you know i think that's pretty obvious i wouldn't be surprised if at some point he steps away from y com later and decides to uh you know run for mayor of san francisco or something else of that nature seems so political right now a lot of people speculating that lurry is going essentially to try to win over gary tan obviously um they're quite connected um and also a bunch of other tech entrepreneurs who to say the least you know tech says that tech entrepreneurs um have grown skeptical of san francisco's leadership i think that's you know that's probably a lot of people probably have uh sam allman is probably going to try to use this as leverage to get a little bit of a leg up in politics right um he's got a ton of lawsuits right now and so it's pretty tricky if you look at a lot of the um if you look at a lot of like the comments and even when um even when daniel lurry made like his announcement about a bunch of other people that are going to be joining his transition team one of the top comments says so the sam outman a man whose company is drowning in lawsuits due to mass coffee infringement amongst other violations is the right person for this what a ridiculous joke thanks for telling san francisco you don't care about laws fairness or actual accountability okay i'm saying i agree with that i'm saying that's the top comment so obviously he's getting criticism for it and to be fair i think all ai founders probably have a lot of that same criticism of uh you know if the training foundation models a lot of them are you know taking data they're probably not supposed to or whatever it's for a legal area that this lawsuit's ongoing in any case this is a fascinating conversation um i don't do a lot of deep dive discussion politics isn't something that i'm like invested they don't have an emotional attachment so i feel pretty comfortable just trying to read off what i'm seeing and share a little bit of information it's gonna be interesting my hope for san francisco is that it can make a big turnaround it can clean up the crime it can solve a lot of the uh the issues and if daniel is a guy for that i will be super supportive if not i think you can expect to see people like gary tan very loud and vocal about that i think you know everyone kind of wants the best for san francisco uh in the ai ecosystem so i have no ill wishes for daniel lurry congratulations on the win and i really hope that he's able to uh help make a big turnaround where others fail i think it's fairly obvious what needs to be done there um it just depends on if he's able to do it so hopefully someone can put a good word in because like there is a lot of um there's a lot of people in san francisco a lot of big tech guys i mean you can think about y'all in podcasts you have i think both jason calicanus democrat moved away from san francisco to um texas for a lot of the you know a lot of the same reasons that we've a lot of people criticized but i'm sure he loves it you have uh people like um there's a lot of other people on both sides of the aisle i think they love san francisco so i think we'll hear a lot of commentary about this this race and it's gonna be a point of discussion in all the ai circles over the next number of years so hope that was insightful and useful if you enjoyed the episode today i would really appreciate it if you could leave a review wherever you are listening to this podcast hope you have a fantastic rest of your day and make sure to sign up for the ai box newsletter if you want to get interesting news hit bits three of them every single day thanks so much for tuning in and i will catch you next time