Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on designing AGI-pilled products, model economics, and 19th-century vitalism
Dario Amodei joins John Collison to talk about Anthropic's growth to ~$5 billion in ARR, how AI models show capitalistic impulses, predictions for an agentic future, the economics of model businesses, and the 19th-century concept of vitalism.Full episode transcript on Substack: https://cheekypint.substack.com/p/a-cheeky-pint-with-anthropic-ceoTimestamps(00:00) Intro(00:50) Working with your sibling(01:43) Building Anthropic with 7 cofounders(02:52) ~$5 billion in ARR and vertical applications of products(07:18) Developing a platform-first company(10:08) Working with the DoD(11:11) Proving skeptics wrong about revenue projections(13:13) Capitalistic impulses of AI models(15:43) AI market structure and players(16:56) AI models as standalone P&Ls(20:48) The data wall and styles of learning(22:20) AI talent wars(26:04) Pitching Anthropic’s API business to investors(27:49) Cloud providers vs. AI labs(29:05) AI customization and Claude for enterprise(33:01) Dwarkesh’s take on limitations(36:12) 19th-century notion of vitalism(37:27) AI in medicine, customer service, and taxes(40:59) How to solve for hallucinations(42:41) The double-standard for AI mistakes(44:14) Evolving from researcher to CEO(46:59) Designing AGI-pilled products(47:57) AI-native UIs(50:09) Model progress and building products(52:22) Open-source models(54:43) Keeping Anthropic AGI-pilled(57:11) AI advancements vs. safety regulations(01:02:04) How Dario uses AI
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Serial entrepreneur Pieter Levels on building in public and living as a digital nomad
Pieter Levels joins John Collison to discuss building successful online businesses as a digital nomad, thoughts on European accelerationism, and Pieter’s unconventional methods and philosophy as a bootstrapped founder making over $3 million per year.Full episode transcripthttps://cheekypint.transistor.fm/4/transcriptTimestamps(00:00) Intro(00:37) Pieter’s resume(01:33) Trying to make money online as a 12 year old(02:43) Being one of the first YouTube creators(03:18) Who should indie hack(04:31) What Pieter hates about VC-backed businesses(07:51) Who is digital nomading for?(09:15) Learning from @patio11(10:17) 125k tweets and the brand of @levelsio(10:59) Getting referrals from ChatGPT(11:43) What Pieter automates with AI(13:02) Investing and home country bias(15:05) Hacking thermostats(15:57) EU acceleration movement(18:34) Entrepreneurship in the EU(19:26) Pieter's reflections on Stripe’s API(21:21) Looking 5 years into the future
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The Bot Company founder and CEO Kyle Vogt on home robots and why he’ll never sell another company
The Bot Company founder and CEO Kyle Vogt—who also cofounded Twitch and Cruise—joins John Collison to talk about applying AI to home robots, the similarities between robotics and self-driving, and why the next $100 billion company will have fewer than 100 people.Full episode transcripthttps://cheekypint.transistor.fm/3/transcriptTimestamps(00:00) Intro(00:38) The Bot Company pitch(02:05) Single-task vs. multi-task robots(04:27) What is the Turing test for robotics?(05:52) Why this time is different for home robots(08:42) The last mile in robotics and self-driving(09:47) Viral demos and hype cycles(10:38) Commercializing frontier tech(13:06) Self-driving CapEx(14:15) Regulatory hurdles(16:18) Tesla vs. Waymo(19:21) Why Kyle regrets selling Cruise(21:39) The next $100 billion company
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OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman on the scaling hypothesis and refactoring as a killer AI use case
Greg Brockman—OpenAI cofounder and Stripe's first engineer—joins John Collison to talk about research-driven product development, an early moment he thought OpenAI was doomed, S curves in AI advancement, and energy bottlenecks.Full episode transcript:https://cheekypint.transistor.fm/1/transcriptTimestamps(00:00) Intro(02:51) Was OpenAI the first company to take the scaling hypothesis seriously? (04:53) Lessons from Dota about deep learning (08:08) What is a good new Turing test?(08:57) Personalization in AI (09:57) Research-driven product development(10:26) An early moment OpenAI felt doomed (15:01) OS limits on AI product development(17:59) When will AI make novel advancements in math or science?(20:03) Energy bottlenecks(22:30) S curves in AI advancement (24:00) AI coding (26:25) Refactoring as a killer AI use case(27:26) How OpenAI decides what products to built(28:53) Growing up in North Dakota(30:17) How far away is AGI?
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Meta CFO Susan Li on headcount vs. GPU allocation, “free cash flow” hats, and almost becoming a PM
Susan Li of Meta—the youngest chief financial officer of a Fortune 100 company—joins John Collison to talk about capital allocation, managing investors, and how Mark Zuckerberg has changed over the 17 years of working together.Full episode transcripthttps://cheekypint.transistor.fm/2/transcriptTimestamps(00:00) Intro(01:20) Early education and career(02:15) Lessons from Michael Grimes at Morgan Stanley(03:12) Leadership traits and succession planning at Meta(06:05) Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership and culture of feedback(09:06) Financial forecasting and capital allocation(14:18) ROI on Meta’s portfolio of bets(15:05) Investor sentiment in 2022(17:49) The story behind the “free cash flow” hats(18:58) CapEx trends in the AI era(21:48) A memorable earnings call(24:16) Challenges of allocating compute vs headcount budgets (26:55) AI’s impact on productivity and operations
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