47: Paul Scherer - A Friend That Brings Us Closer

[00:00] creating like a person that is uniquely incentivized straight belonging and connection in the world we know more people than ever before but at the same time we are like much less meaningfully connected the share of american we have like zero close friends went from like three percent to fifteen percent like half of american adults report being lonely feeling lonely is the equivalent to like smoking 15 cigarettes a day half of america smoking 15 cigarettes a day the world that is like completely isolated is like a world in which humans go extinct i've said explicitly you're building a mutual friend what are you trying to do it goes back to like a lot [00:30] go to our website and it's like what do you mean you don't know what we're doing it's like i've just told you it's like we're building a mutual friend and then you're like yeah but what you actually do is like a mutual friend and then i like usually like add you know some version of what we just talked about and then they're just like oh you're building a mutual friend and i was like yes i've been telling you i think a lot of what we're thinking about and what we're creating starts actually counterintuitively not with the friend part but the mutual part you think you're authentic my suspicion is that everyone is kind of the same in that we all have this like inner [01:00] listen to that voice.

I feel like I always just listen to that voice. And everything I've ever done, every major decision was always just like, I was like, okay, I know that it's like, this is just my voice. And I just like, I have to do it. And I like followed my heart or whatever you want to call it. And maybe that's authenticity. Maybe that's something else. Welcome to Dialectic episode 47 with Paul Scherer. Paul is the founder of Eigen, a new company building a mutual friend for the world. [01:22] That might sound bizarre.

It kind of is. But I was thrilled to sit down with Paul after being introduced to him by a few people I really respect to talk about his crazy vision for a way that AI might actually... [01:36] make us less antisocial and instead bring us together by being somebody that, uh, [01:42] we all know, and who creates social serendipity in our lives. [01:48] Pretty early on, the product's in private beta, and so we weren't able to talk about everything, but we were able to dive a lot into the substance of what it is, the philosophy behind why Paul and his team are working on it, [02:02] in the ways that this introduces just a crazy new range of design problems for teaching, parenting, growing a [02:10] sort of person that we might all know and that could actually make us closer to each other.

Paul is very early on. He is young. I'm sure there are things he doesn't know, but I have to respect his conviction, his point of view. [02:24] And the way [02:25] he is authentically trying to bring something to the world that he thinks it needs. [02:30] I hope you enjoy my conversation with Paul. [02:33] Before we end the episode, I'd like to thank Notion, Dialectics, presenting partner. [02:37] Notion's co-founder, Akshay Kothari, is actually the one who introduced me to Paul. And so I'm thrilled to bring these two worlds together. Notion is a collaborative workspace for your life's work.

And over the last year has totally evolved itself into becoming a platform and a hub for the agents that help you and your team do great work. [02:56] Notion also made a bunch of new announcements on its developer platform recently. I'll link to that in the description. And the way that they're pushing what you can do with agents is really remarkable. And certainly if you haven't used Notion in a while, probably goes far and beyond what you can imagine for what's possible with Notion and with agents. You can learn more at

com slash dialectic. I highly recommend you checking out what is now possible as Notion has built AI in from the ground up. [03:26] Paul Sher. [03:27] Paul Scherer, thank you for having me here. We're in the Eigenoffice. [03:32] pretty specific type of space we have, you've curated for yourself. [03:37] Yeah, it's really nice. We're very happy here. It's like... It's always like... [03:42] I think it's really important. I think a lot of people underestimate the power of space. We've spent a lot of time here. [03:50] you know, [03:51] I think we spend much more time here than at home, so it's got to feel really great.

[03:54] Well, I want to start by talking about this book that I had to hunt down, Momo. [04:00] a book that's referenced in your video. And [04:03] Either it was a good story or seemingly it was very influential to you when you were young. It's a children's book. And in reading some of it, it seems to me that there were a few ideas that really stood out. [04:14] The first is time and playing this idea of past, present and future. Second is presence, obviously an extension of that. [04:21] The third is listening.

[04:22] which obviously relates to presence. And then the fourth is friendship. And so there's this smattering ideas that I think inform a lot of the other stuff we're going to talk about today. Yeah. But I'm curious why, [04:33] What about this book? [04:35] stuck with you. I don't know when you first read it. I assume you were quite young. [04:38] Yeah, my dad read it to me. I was like, I don't know, I was like eight or 10 or something like that. And it's like you read it again in like school and it's like it's kind of like a thing in Germany.

[04:47] I think one of the things that really... [04:51] I think is very true, is just like... They have this concept of time thieves. And I think it's really interesting because the book is from 1973. And so it's like... Why have it felt pretty modern, though? Well, this is the crazy thing. It's like pre-internet... [05:03] pre-social media, pre-real personal computers or anything. It was at a time where there was a bunch of computers, but most people didn't have a computer, right? And so it just feels like... [05:15] Every year since then, it's become more relevant because it just describes so accurately the world we live in.

Everything is just about efficiency, and it's about... [05:25] Um, [05:26] You know, there's no... [05:28] There wouldn't be time for Momo in this world, right? Like, people don't care. It's like, you know, how does this help me, you know, get... [05:34] Um, [05:36] more efficient or more productive or whatever. And I think it's always a sign of great... [05:44] work if it becomes more and more and more relevant over time. And I [05:51] I know. I give it to a lot of people, and a lot of people really resonate with it.

[05:55] You are a striver. I don't know if that's a perfect word, but it's probably a representative word, at least of this city, of this industry, of doing startups at all. You're someone who dropped out of high school when you were 17. Do you feel like you're running out of time? [06:10] I used to feel like that more I don't know Um [06:16] I don't... [06:17] I haven't felt like that in a while. I think it's like... [06:20] I think, you know... [06:24] For the first time, I feel like we're doing the thing, and there's no real alternative.

I was doing all these other things, and I'm still restless, but I feel like there's... [06:37] There's no, there's like no way out. [06:39] Like, I couldn't, like... [06:40] go and be like, okay, great. Like, let's, you know, whatever, do anything. Something else is like, this is the thing. And it's like... [06:46] And so you sort of stop feeling like you... [06:49] like you're running out of time because it's like there's no you're you're you're actually playing your game and it's like and that's just the game and the game is like you have to play it and it's like it wouldn't be fun if you wouldn't have to play it.

[07:00] And... [07:01] But before I was feeling like I was playing the game, it was like, yeah, okay, I need to play the game. I need to get to the thing. Exactly. [07:07] Mmm. [07:09] I like that. Yeah, there is a way that... [07:13] It's not quite abundance, but there's something about once you've kind of found the thing, you're like... [07:16] And I'm sure you're antsy in a whole bunch of ways around progressing this thing. Yeah. But it's like, oh, yeah, I'm where I'm supposed to be. [07:24] I call it like, you know, like...

[07:27] I was talking about this with Akshay a while ago, and I was like, it's like short-term paranoia, but like long-term, like, everything is exactly the way it should be. It's like... [07:40] What about listening? It's kind of the anchor, almost this character, this little girl. I don't know if she's a little girl. She's a girl who lives in the village that they go to. And the reason they're initially skeptical, the reason they're so... [07:52] Um, they're able to be so present with her, all these things that she helps people deal with their beef, whatever is, she's just this amazing listener.

Um, yeah. [08:02] And maybe there's an element of this... [08:04] We'll talk more about it. Like, you are someone who certainly has a... [08:09] observational lens on human beings and the way people behave and are going to behave. But I'm curious if there's any thread there that felt resonant. [08:17] I think, like, what's so interesting is, like... [08:20] She's like the polar opposite of the Time Thieves, right? So the reason she... [08:25] It's almost like [08:27] less about [08:29] the listening and more about... [08:31] the [08:32] you know, the presence of, [08:34] But she's like the...

[08:35] manifestation of like presence. Yes. Yeah. And, and she listens so well to, [08:40] because she doesn't look at her phone. She doesn't feel like, oh, I have this meeting 15 minutes from now, and I'm looking at my watch, and I'm like, I should probably need to go. And it's like, she's just there with you 100%. [08:55] And I think that's like, that's the, that is like, that's like so antithetical to the time thieves, because it's like, they're like the manifestation of like, you know, you have to go, there's like, everything needs to be like, and so she's just like fully there.

And I think that's. [09:09] something that is very rare because we all have, you know, so many things that are happening that are like, you know, [09:17] trying to get our attention, trying to pull us in. And also so much like... Not all of this is like bad, right? It's like there's a lot of opportunity, a lot of things that you could be doing at any given point in time. And so to be somewhere... [09:32] really present without thinking about... The best listeners... [09:37] The hard thing about listening is you have to listen instead of thinking about what you're going to say next.

[09:43] Right. [09:45] And that's a really hard thing to do because you have to be truly present without any almost like... [09:50] And he's skin in the game of like... [09:52] I need to achieve this or that or so. It's just like, I need to... [09:56] you know, tell them, you know, like, how great I am, or, like, you know, that's, like, when you don't really listen, but you're just, like, okay, how can I, like... [10:02] can you give me something that I can then like say the thing that I want to say?

Um, and I think that's like, [10:08] really interesting because she's just... [10:10] I wonder if nonchalant is the right word, but she's just there. There's a sense of ease. [10:19] And I think that's really... [10:20] remarkable. [10:22] Um... [10:24] Maybe that last bit, which is... [10:26] friendship we're going to talk a lot more about friendship [10:29] You grew up in a remote place. What does it mean to be a friend? [10:33] The... [10:36] I don't know if there's like one definition that like works for every person. I certainly don't have it.

[10:42] I think there's like... [10:44] a few different themes. I think like Great France [10:48] help you rediscover yourself. [10:51] Um, [10:52] But there are also... [10:53] expansive [10:55] And like, and like surprising and delightful ways. And they add new things. Yes. [10:59] And so there's really these two elements, right? There's like, they ground you in who you are. Yeah. [11:05] but they also like push you and there's like deeper and wider. Right. Right. [11:10] Mm-hmm. [11:11] Maybe first of all, like I briefly just alluded to it, you grew up in a place where

[11:15] as I understand it, that is quite remote, or at the very least quite small, not that far from Frankfurt, but not in the center of things. [11:23] Now you're in San Francisco, you are in the center of things. How has the internet changed your life, and particularly on the dimension of relationships and people? [11:31] Thank you. [11:32] I think every single person... [11:36] you know, bar or [11:41] Samuel... [11:43] And my parents. [11:45] That is in my life. I wouldn't have Matt without the internet. [11:48] I think I was like 19 or 20, probably, you know, I think it was like 20 years old when I met the first venture capitalist.

Maybe I was 21. And it's like. [11:58] I didn't know what that was or there was like no, you know, there's like the, this world that did not like exist in my, in my like world, I didn't know about it. And so I, [12:12] And neither, you know, did, like, anyone in my, like... Like, there's no one that I met that was, like, oh, here... You weren't one step removed from it, right? Yes. And so... [12:23] um... [12:24] Without the Internet, I think... [12:26] I definitely wouldn't be here. [12:28] And then all of these relationships, or so many of these relationships, are first or second order effective, just like meeting people on Twitter.

Honestly, Twitter. It's like, I met, a while ago I met one of the founders of Twitter. It was very, you know... [12:43] transformative, like, you know, so it's like a bit like Meteor here, because it's like, not even here, it was just almost a spiritual experience of like, this person, so... [12:52] in such a profound way, like changed and shaped my life. [12:56] In such a big way that I don't even know if I could recognize me as a person. [13:02] without that thing. Mm-hmm. [13:05] I've had a similar experience with that website in particular.

Um, [13:09] What about [13:11] Twitter. Well, maybe first of all, were you as a kid or growing up, especially before you started to tap into this, were you a social kid? Were you lonely? [13:21] I wasn't very... I was like Marmite, always. People either really... [13:28] I always made friends with some teachers. And so some teachers always really, really liked me. And then some really hated me. And then I always had trouble with people my age. It was kind of difficult, usually. The older I got, the easier it became directionally.

[13:45] But it was never... Kindergarten, it was easier. It was like... [13:49] I was never fully, fully lonely, but there was like... [13:53] I was also, I was never popular, but I was, I really deeply wanted to be popular. [13:59] Um, [13:59] and but i was not at all and and you know reflecting on me as i i it was it was very obvious that i wasn't popular i was like i i there's a lot of like social strategies that i did not know about and i was like if i i think there's like there's a lot of reasons of why i wasn't popular um it was uh it was it was always like um like that and then yeah the older the older i got the more easy it became and then you just said i left um

[14:25] school and you know it's like sort of you start I always was like hanging out with like older people um and then it's just started working and so like immediately everyone there was like 30 plus and so that just became my what about twitter or what about the internet [14:39] allowed you to find... [14:42] whatever. [14:44] Because the next thing I want to talk about, maybe to turn the corner on it, is like... [14:49] in what ways the internet has failed us as this connective tissue, but I'm first interested in the ways that it's actually, like why was Twitter for you at that time, why did it work and what did you find there that was good?

[15:01] I mean, I was on Twitter... [15:04] a lot more. [15:05] during... [15:07] you know, the height of the pandemic where everyone was on Twitter and it was like kind of the greatest place on earth because like all these cool people had nothing to do other than being on Twitter. That and go about us, right? Yeah, exactly. [15:19] Um, [15:20] Thank you. [15:20] And so that was really great. And I actually went on Twitter... It was actually the wildest thing. I was like, at the time, I... [15:28] started like a like a tech block and i was like i'm gonna write about like you know like these tech gadgets or software things that i really liked and i wrote like two articles and i was like oh well no one is reading this like how am i gonna get this like to promote this and then i was like maybe i'm just gonna tweet about it and so i created a twitter account and i you know it was like um [15:51] It was like, yeah, I created my Twitter account.

It's 2021 or something. I don't remember. And... [15:58] you started just like sharing this article and it's like kept going what did you write about these articles like really just like yubi keys and like one password there's like the most reviewing them yeah it was the most obnoxious thing in the world and that is not the most obnoxious thing in the world it's obscure but it's definitely not secure it's not if not it's you're right some people might think what you're doing now is obnoxious we'll get to that but you guys yeah to be honest yeah it's obscure it was an obscure obsession for like this like uh kid to like write [16:28] really great.

Anyway, so I wrote this and I'm trying to promote [16:32] the blog. And within like five days, I was like, fuck the blog. Like, this is really cool. And I actually started like meeting people there. And it was like, there was this like, there's like, I remember there was this guy from, um, [16:44] from Ghana, actually, who's like, I think he now has like 20 or 30,000 followers on Twitter or something. And we like, we like somehow like met and we had like, I had like 200 followers and he had like 300 or something.

And we just like DM'd and then we like, it'd be like this whole thing. And I spent 12 hours a day on Twitter. And I have like 20,000 tweets and replies from that three month period or something. And I was just like, I would like send emails. [17:06] 600 replies a day to tweets. All of a sudden, the first tweet had over 1,000 likes or something, the biggest rush. Then all of a sudden, there would be all these entrepreneurs. I remember there was the COO of ClickUp or something, liking and commenting on my marketing.

I was a 17-year-old kid. I had no experience whatsoever. I was like, here's how you should market yourself. [17:29] The COO of ClickUp was like, that's really great advice. That's a lot about Twitter, honestly. [17:36] that does say a lot about Twitter. You know, deeply researched. You know, it's like... And then, yeah, I think people start [17:46] You're DMing, and I actually, I sold this, like, I had this, like, digital product that I sold, which was called the Twitter DM Mastery. And for a while... It's like a course? [17:55] Exactly.

For a while, I was the self-proclaimed king of DMs. I think for the first... [18:04] 5,000 followers. I DM'd every single follower. I, like, manually would be like, hey, like, I'd, like, thanks for it. Like, I appreciate the support, whatever. [18:12] And that's how I met a lot of the people. Yeah. And... [18:17] And then I wrote like a book about this, which actually is like, I actually still think it's probably like a lot of people should read this because it's just like, it's very like, I mean, book is a strong word.

It was like, [18:26] 20 pages or something. A great PDF. Yes. On DMing. On DMing people. It was like a whole scheme. Anyways, so I did that, and then I think that's just how I met Ariel. [18:40] That's how I met Caleb. [18:42] who then like all of these things later turned into, you know, working with different kinds of companies and all that. Many of us have had positive experiences, um, [18:51] whether they be Twitter or elsewhere. And there's a romantic idea about the way the internet used to be or what it was meant to be.

It should be the best... [18:59] connective tissue in the history of the world. And yet many people feel [19:03] The opposite. You've talked about [19:05] What happened when we conflated or combined social and media? What is social and what is media? [19:11] In this context, at least. I think in this context... [19:15] You know, media is like, you know, maybe could be defined as like popular content, which is like, right, if you scroll on Instagram, it's actually not about your friends, right? It's like, it's about... [19:28] It's about popular content or popular people.

So it could be a reel that is going viral from a random account, but you don't know that account. Neither do your friends. [19:38] It could be a celebrity, but it's... And social is much more about your social graph, like who are the people that you know. And I think if you sort of... A lot of the... [19:50] And interaction paradigms of these platforms are originally used to be much more social, which is like it's all about sharing a story with your friend or – [20:01] posting something and all your friends are going to see it.

But actually now, it's become much more media, which there are reasons for that. [20:10] And it's all about incentives. They didn't do that... [20:14] Instagram wasn't there being like, "That wouldn't be cool if we were really evil and we made it all about that." They were just like, "Well, that just works." It's really hard to get a lot of people to share content, for example. One of the issues is that [20:30] your friends are probably much worse at creating engaging content than someone who's really good at creating engaging content. Right, right, right.

It's not a totally common experience, but I think... [20:39] across different boxes, whether it be Twitter or Instagram or other modern things or forums in the past or what IRC or whatever. Um, [20:47] Thank you. [20:48] I think one of the things that is wrong is the notion that you should only use the internet with people you already know in real life. Because to your earlier point, like... [20:56] social doesn't necessarily mean people you already know. [21:00] Yes, that's true. Can you talk a little bit about that distinction? In theory...

[21:07] In my view of the internet, it's almost actually that like, or at least what I always felt was so amazing about Twitter is that it wasn't about... [21:14] who you knew, [21:15] Um, [21:17] It wasn't just about what you were interested in. It was about [21:20] Getting to know people by way of what you were interested in. [21:23] Yeah, I think that's... [21:26] I think that's true. [21:29] And really, you know, there's like this like discovery aspect of like, and I think for better and for worse, right? There's like, I always say there's like, there's on the internet, there's like enthusiasts for everything.

So, so like if you live in this like place with a thousand people or even, you know, like a medium sized city or whatever, you know, [21:49] there might not be someone who's absolutely obsessed with, I don't know, plants. There may be. I mean, this might be a more common obsession. But on the internet, there's millions of people who are. And so there's definitely... [22:03] an aspect of like feeling like belongingness in that because you're [22:07] You have so much... [22:08] more reach, [22:10] and find the other weirdos you can find the other weirdos [22:14] That creates a very long tail.

That sort of then is one of the reasons that we as a group have much... Because we're able to go into much more of these individualist pursuits. Because there's so much... [22:31] The tail is just so much longer than it would be in a city. That's not intuitively antisocial to me. [22:39] Like, in theory, it should lead to the long tail of a million... Like, let a million communities bloom of weird niches. Totally. I think the... These aren't, like, mutually exclusive, but the problem is, like, you're... [22:51] the things that you consume shift towards a more, at least locally, [22:56] isolating people [22:58] view, right?

Because your Twitter feed is like filled with people that are [23:03] obsessed with plants, right? But they might not at all be in your local, like, actual, like, in-person, like, proximity. Yeah. And... [23:12] And so all the people you interact with in person on a day-to-day have their own isolated feet of these types of people. [23:20] And then you have much less of a bridging experience where you could like... [23:28] go to your office and [23:30] and there'd be this thing that everyone knows about. Like the Global Village. [23:35] water cooler or [23:36] Talking about reality TV or...

Yeah, exactly. Like, it's like... Moon landing. Moon landing or, you know, even just like headlines or something or like memes. The most like mainstream seeming, you know, meme or like headline or whatever is actually not that mainstream anymore. Right? Right. Where you'd be like, oh, wow, like SNL adopted this thing. Everyone must know about this. And you go to your office. You're like, oh, wow, did you see this thing? And like people are like, what are you talking about? Right. And that's like the problem, right? You can do it in San Francisco a little bit with Twitter.

Yeah. [24:06] is do you think personalization of everything is just fundamentally inevitable? [24:12] Really, that's what this is about, right? It's like what technology has gotten really, really good at. [24:16] where they're guarding our attention, is personalized, is just tuning it, [24:20] to being exactly Paul shaped. [24:22] And that is causing this context collapse that you're pointing at. Yes. [24:28] I don't know if anything is inevitable like that. [24:31] I think it's definitely, there's a good reason for it, and it's not... [24:36] it's not like completely bad, right? There's like great, [24:39] things about stuff being personalized to you.

I think... I ultimately do think that people... [24:45] are craving [24:47] like social, right? It's like you don't want... [24:51] In some cases you do, but in many cases you actually don't want... [24:56] the take or recommendation or whatever that's personalized just for you. You also don't want the monocultural average take of the world [25:04] You want the take from the people that you care about. [25:07] Right. Right. [25:09] Thank you. [25:11] Um, [25:12] I want to talk a little bit about what you are making, but before we quite get there, [25:17] you have this view that like much of what we were just discussing, um, [25:23] there's all these tailwinds.

We are more isolated. People are more alone. Derek Thompson's gone crazy on this. People aren't having kids, all this stuff. And it seems like your instinct is that [25:33] This is, as many people believe, this is driven by technology. [25:39] you have used some variation of the phrasing. The world needs this, um, in terms of what you're doing. Um, um, [25:46] And there are two maybe cuts on what... [25:48] interesting views or unique views you have, um, [25:51] I think they are... [25:52] One being, [25:54] thinking about friendship in a slightly new way.

And then the other is this idea that AI as it currently stands is pretty antisocial. [26:01] And I think those two things go together. Maybe one strange cut on this is... [26:06] that opens the door is like... [26:09] We all talk about AI. [26:11] as like crypto or VR or whatever. Um, [26:15] The one person I've noticed who doesn't talk about it like that is Kevin Kelly. Kevin, former editor of Wired Magazine and a bunch of other things. Kevin talks about AIs. [26:24] which is a subtle but important difference. And it does point at maybe this future of a world where there are, [26:31] Many of us are talking to AIs of some kind.

And it seems like your core view is that [26:38] Based on how everything is going, um... [26:42] we are going to be talking to AIs alone in our rooms. [26:47] First of all, [26:49] Thank you. [26:49] What would you say to the people who are still skeptical of the notion of... You seem pretty convinced that we're all going to be talking to AIs. Or AI, or whatever. A lot of the people in our direct... [27:00] Um... [27:01] proximity, I'm already talking to AI all day. Like every single one of our engineers.

Maybe they would say I'm using Claude. [27:10] Yes, but we are already communicating with it. And Samuel sometimes swears at it and is like, what are you doing? It's just like, why are you going to make... Samuel's one of your first employees. There's a bit of a difference... [27:23] in the... [27:25] interaction paradigm from like... [27:28] you know, software in terms of like, I always like, I always ask people whether or not they say thank you to like, [27:33] Are you like someone who says thank you? I don't always say thank you.

[27:36] I'd say thank you probably less than I used to. [27:39] But I try to every once in a while. Yeah, just to make sure we're on the good books. When it does a really good job. Yeah, it inevitably takes over the world. It goes extra mile. And we can just like, we'll be on the good books. Can you say thank you? [27:50] I sometimes do. I try to, yeah. But that's like a ridiculous... [27:56] bang, right? Or like, who's like, were you ever like Google something and you're like, oh, thank you.

So I think that's true. And I think the other thing that's true is that fundamentally, it's interesting to think about this in the context, for example, of like a lot of education software or products, because [28:13] previously it was really, really difficult to build, for example, products for like [28:18] you know, the basic, like, you came through, like, eight, basically, like, young, young, young children, just as much as it was really hard to build for, like, elderly people. And it's, it's interesting, because the, because when you build software, you know, [28:30] with like a you know graphical user interface and you just you have to like learn a new interaction paradigm you can make them like skew more fake and skew more in like some way right like make it like feel really comfortable and like you know make it like okay this looks like you know your your rolodex looked like and you know in reality and like so it's like a contact thing but at the end of the day there's like there's like a barrier of like did you have to kind of overcome of like okay this is like if i give like my grandma the phone she's like kind of scared because it's like

[29:00] and it's like, it doesn't feel real. And... [29:04] And I think what's really interesting... [29:06] is that the... [29:09] I. speak. [29:12] human language. [29:14] And so the interaction paradigm is the exact same that we all have been learning ever since we were born. [29:22] in interacting with other people. There's like, you know, you can build a trust in that it can understand your intent and it can like, you know, relate and... [29:31] And I think that... [29:33] really changes a lot of things where it's like, it's like, will my grandpa ever fully adopt...

[29:39] internet technologies. I don't know. But I actually think it's not... [29:44] unlikely that he'll like [29:46] eventually adopt a lot of AI products because it might be embedded in his world in such a way where he doesn't actually have to reflect that much on whether or not it's that or that. [29:57] He's more human-shaped. [29:58] In a way that almost necessary, like it's almost necessary that we anthropomorphize it. [30:04] Maybe not necessary, but it's almost inevitable that we anthropomorphize it. [30:09] We already kind of anamorphosed it because we talked...

[30:12] languages with chatGBT and... [30:17] And he has a voice. [30:21] All of these things are very niche, and they're not... There's a small minority that is currently feeling like that, but the GBT4-0 thing of how many people got... [30:32] I don't know that that's a small minority. But I think it's largely a small minority. There's this stat. A lot of people are doing it, but yes. There's a stat which I'm sure you've seen of all these dots of millions of people. And there's all these gray dots. And there's a few green dots, which are people that use AI for free.

And it's like... [30:55] 2% of the world or something. I don't know. We are very, very early in this. And I think it's easy to forget that when you are around people who are like, we are in this industry and in this industry. [31:07] very specific place where [31:11] Everyone is somehow billions of dollars deep into really believing that this is everything today. And I think it's probably not, but it's going to be so much more in like... [31:22] 10 years from now, but stuff just takes time usually to like...

[31:25] become meaningful. I always have this thing where [31:30] Um... [31:31] People just right now on Twitter... [31:34] There's a different take on Twitter trending every couple of weeks. And right now, it seems to be that product is dead. It's been automated away. Anthropics got this. Right? It's like... [31:45] there's, you know, it's commoditized to build great products, yet I've actually, like, tell me all the great products that have come out since JVT dropped. I don't know that there's a single new product in my life other than... [31:55] the LLM itself and then for enterprises like ClotCode.

But other than that, these two things, there's not a single product that has come out that has changed, you know, my life or my mom's life. Right. And I think that's like, it's still just as hard to innovate on product. It might be easier to build once you have a great idea or all of these things are somewhere too. You can build a [32:22] And that's why it takes time because like figuring out what it looks like to build a great product is like, you know, still really hard and – [32:29] I don't know.

I think it's just [32:32] sort of these consumer builders, you know, that are going to build the, you know, five to 10 products that are going to, like, maybe come out of this and that real people are going to, like, use in, you know, for the product, by the way, not necessarily because it's an AI or not an AI or because it's like this or that model, but because it's a great experience. I think there are, like... [32:52] They're just like being started right now. [32:55] Thank you. [32:56] People are talking to AI friends, whether it's the 4.0 thing, my boyfriend is AI, it's replica.

And again, to the earlier point, like most people probably see that as strange or bad or evil or whatever. Your cut on it is that it's critically, it's antisocial. Like most of these products actually incentivize you to spend more and more time talking to the AI. Which is, by the way, it's like, that's not like a... [33:19] Like Zach went on a podcast. [33:22] And he was like, it was like a year ago or something. And he literally said... [33:29] Humans have a capacity for five friends, five girls' friends. [33:33] The average American only has two.

We're going to build the other three. [33:36] He literally said that, but that's what he wants to do. [33:40] His best case is for you to spend your Friday night talking to this thing. [33:46] That's what he likes. Or what his organization that he's running is like, trying to create in the world. You are... [33:57] I think there is some question of what you are actually making. And I want to litigate that a little bit today, acknowledging that you're not ready to share totally everything. You have said explicitly you're building a mutual friend.

Yeah. But you are building an AI friend. [34:11] In some dimension, I want to talk about it, but what are you trying to do? [34:17] I think we are trying for you to spend your Friday night with other people, right? And we're trying for you to... [34:26] I want people to feel like they could belong. [34:31] Okay. [34:32] Let's go one click deeper. What are you making? [34:36] We're building a mutual friend that is like where I think – [34:41] a lot of what we're thinking about and what we're creating starts actually...

[34:47] counterintuitively not with the friend part, but the mutual part, right? Which is the network, which is, it's actually, you know, we, you know, we have like, right now we're like four engineers and like three of them are working on the network piece. Yes. Right. Which is partially because it's very hard. The friend piece is like something that is very hard to split up and there's, but it's also because it's really, really, really important that at the core of everything we do, the, [35:13] The network, it sits in the network.

We have this product principle shared from day zero. It's like every time we build something, we build it in a way where it's built globally, where it is built on top of the network, where it's shared between... [35:29] all of the people that you know are that like are our sort of users and [35:34] And I think that's, like, you know, a really big difference. And then obviously there is, like... [35:39] the, [35:40] you know, the friend piece of the mutual friend, which is, you know, I just think that, you know, in lots of ways...

[35:47] the most... [35:48] intuitive, intuitive, [35:50] Thank you. [35:51] a natural way of interacting with this like incredibly powerful network that we're building is like an extra person and like someone who we just all know in common because that, [36:04] There's, again, you know, as we previously said, there's a lot of, like, interaction paradigms and norms already established of, like, how that would look like. And, like, you know, if I share something with you and you tell it to someone else, it's like, there's, like, norms that are established that are, you know, either, you know, codified or even just implicitly clear to most human beings.

Yeah. [36:26] It goes back to the point you were making about your dad. You know how to interact with a person. Exactly. On some level. Exactly. As a UI metaphor or whatever. No, you do. It's like you don't really have to learn it. And I think it's actually kind of interesting because a lot of people are... [36:39] And still, you know, we went out, we, you know, we did the second announcement and we're like, we're building a mutual friend. And then everyone's like, well, what are you doing? And I was like, we're building a mutual friend.

People, I think, still have like a hard time. [36:51] accepting maybe the... [36:54] Which is totally fair because they haven't seen it. And I think it's like, in a lot of ways, it's like a Waymo product where... [37:02] Everyone I've ever told about Waymo that isn't maybe from San Francisco, if I tell my mom about Waymo, she's really scared. [37:07] He's like, this is the most crazy thing ever. And then you just like, you're like, force her to take away more. And he's like, I don't want to do this. And like 10 seconds to the ride, it's like, it's the most normal thing in the world.

But it's like, of course, it's like, [37:19] a spiritual experience of some level, if you like understand it, it's like, that's kind of a crazy, you know, feat of achievement. We have like self-driving cars and it's like, [37:26] No one, it's like, I find it's crazy that people don't talk about it. Cause it's like, I grew up in like this world where self-driving cars were like this like crazy thing that maybe one day that wouldn't be like insane. And it's so hard. And now we just have self-driving cars. And by the way, five minutes, 30 seconds is your first Waymo ride.

You're like looking at your phone, you forget that. Yeah, exactly. But that's the thing, right? It's like, it's so, it's just makes sense. And I think in a lot of ways, it's like, maybe that's the struggle that people have is they haven't interacted with it yet. [37:56] There's something that kind of clicks for a lot of people once they... [38:00] first interact with it, of like, oh, no, you're actually... It is just a mutual friend. It's just... Everything is just like... Because people... [38:08] like, [38:09] I think if you go to our website and you open this letter that we wrote...

[38:13] And you just take it very literally. [38:15] I think it's just like, you're just like- You are being quite literal. Yeah. It's funny, Samuel, on your team here, I spoke to him and he said- [38:23] In some sense, this is actually a fairly small step, or at least a medium step, technology-wise. But it's a very big step, idea-wise. [38:31] And I think that maybe is getting at part of this. I think it's also worth establishing... [38:36] One of the things you said to me early on is like, what would happen if a person could be friends with a million people?

Yeah. [38:41] which obviously isn't possible for a human being. I also think one of the things that was interesting to me is that most of the AI products we have built are... [38:52] trying to do human work better or faster or cheaper. You are explicitly building something that, [38:59] a person, a human being couldn't do. [39:02] Yeah. [39:02] And it's one person. [39:05] Yeah. [39:06] I have talked to this person. [39:09] This person will have a name. [39:12] Um... [39:13] Why is it critical... [39:15] that it is one person. [39:18] With a personality.

[39:20] It just comes back to... Again... [39:24] The mutual part is more important than the friend part. It basically comes down to the question or the debate, or it's an interesting thought of how much more or less flexible is personality as an interface than graphical user interfaces. [39:42] I think it's going to take people a second to grok that. I mean, really, how much more... Inside of what you're saying is how much more flexible is interacting with a person than a graphical user. Exactly, right? Where you have... [40:00] consumer networks are very unbundled right now, right?

Like there's like all these different consumer network products, pretty much all of mainstream consumer products. You're talking about Twitter, Instagram. Yes, but even like Yelp, [40:14] like Google Maps, um, way, right. These are all like consumer networks, basically every single mainstream consumer, uh, [40:23] piece of software that is on your phone right now is networked. [40:28] is based on top of the network, except for ChatGPT. The only non-networked [40:36] sort of mainstream scale product. And... [40:42] But if you look into the networks of all these different apps, there's a lot of overlap between all of the Yelp users and all of the Twitter users and all these users.

But there's a lot of specificity in the user interface of the app that makes it very obvious that Yelp couldn't also be Twitter. I see. And... [41:02] I don't know, or it's at least not obvious to me that the same thing is true for personality. I think there's [41:08] There's a few cuts that you're going to have to make, which is like... [41:14] I think you don't want your mutual friend to be your assistant. [41:17] It's like very, very importantly. And that's like one big separation. And also, I think it's worth establishing.

[41:23] In some sense, ChatGBT, if you were to personify it, or Claude, is a mutual friend in that we are all quote-unquote friends with Claude. [41:31] But Claude doesn't know we're friends. Exactly. That's the part I think maybe that might not be obvious to people. Actually, I would push back because I don't think Claude is a friend. Claude is a servant. It's like an assistant. Claude's someone we all know. But you lose a lot of the – he's a mutual assistant, right? And I think you lose a lot of the important parts of like a friend the second it becomes an assistant.

Interesting. That's where there's a big differentiation. And I think a lot of things that people are building are in the assistant. Like a therapist would be an assistant, right? [42:01] You wouldn't want service provider. Exactly. You wouldn't want your friend to be your therapist. Why do I want an AI friend? [42:08] I think you want, I don't know that you need an AI friend. I think you need an AI mutual friend, which is like, you want the network, right? The network is very powerful, which is like, what are all of the people, you know, that you care about thinking about, talking about, doing, you know, or have done in the past, or, you know, like, it's, again, it's like much less about the friend and much more about the mutual.

You are building a social network in a sense, [42:34] that is inside of this person we all know. [42:38] Is that fair? I don't like the word social network because I think it's like there's too much loaded there. [42:45] I think we're building a network of people that just all know this person. [42:54] like an extra person that has a really, you know, that knows a lot of people and has a really great, you know, social cognition ability of like reasoning over, you know, [43:03] the world's social graph. - One of the things I said to you early on, when I was trying to understand this, was it's like a little bit like, [43:11] the 100 person village and there's an innkeeper who knows everyone.

[43:16] I'd love to talk a little bit about what goes into making this person who knows everyone [43:21] Good for the world. [43:22] The first would be, you've told me one of your core governing constraints is [43:28] whether or not a real person would do this. And if a real person wouldn't do this, we're not going to do this. Say more about that. I think it's like an interesting, it goes back to like a lot of the like simplicity of, [43:40] You just go to our website and like, what, like, it's like, what do you mean?

You don't know what we're doing. It's like, I just told you, it's like, we're building a mutual friend. And, and, [43:48] And then you're like, yeah, but what are you actually doing? He's like a mutual friend. And then I usually add some version of what we just talked about. And then I end up being like, oh, you're building a mutual friend. And I was like, yes, I've been telling you. And I think part of... [44:04] that Constrained is exactly like that, which is the best products, [44:10] or whatever you want to call it, sort of a product of.

[44:16] Um... [44:17] constraints. [44:18] And of like limiting yourself in certain ways. [44:22] And... [44:23] And I think... [44:24] in both that constraining way, but also at the same time of like, you can sort of lean on to this idea that, well, if you don't quite know what, [44:33] what the answer to any product problem that you might have in your head is. You just think about what would I do, right? If I was like... [44:43] if someone was really mean to me, how would I react? And it's just like you sort of think about that, and it's really helpful because you just – [44:52] It's really that simple, I think, because that paradigm has already been established.

And so it's very intuitive for people. They don't have to learn anything new. They just have to realize that... [45:06] You know, it's the same. A lot of your design or a lot of your product philosophy is very intuitive. Yeah. [45:13] Um, maybe... [45:14] in part due to things like this, maybe at one... [45:17] thing we're distinguishing would be [45:19] You are building a person, but you're not trying to build another human. [45:22] Exactly. What is the difference? [45:25] It's a big question. What's personhood and being a human? I think there's like...

[45:33] What something we've learned over time is is that, you know, honesty is really important. [45:38] in building, you know, a person like that. We're... [45:42] There's distinct things. [45:45] that are actually true, which is, for example, [45:49] Um... [45:51] you know, this person has thoughts. [45:53] Thank you. [45:54] Like I can show you the thoughts. I can show you the thinking traces. They may be much less sophisticated than human thoughts, but they're thoughts, right? He's like thinking these things at some level. This person's like opinions and some resemblance of emotions and all of these things that are like real things [46:11] he can like [46:13] Read things on the internet.

[46:16] consume content, you know, come up... Like, all of these things are real, right? They're actually happening. It's not a lie. But... [46:24] He doesn't have a body, right? So he can't go... [46:27] places or he wasn't like born from, you know, parents that are just like that, like that, like, because that would just be a lie. Right. So I could like, I could like, you could, you could like program it and you could be like, you're a parent, you know, Bob is your dad. And. [46:44] And, you know, and then here's how you feel about it.

But they wouldn't be true. They would be made up, right? So if you're talking to him and he was, like, telling you about it, it would be a lie. Right. [46:53] But if he talks to you about his... [46:57] thoughts and feelings and opinions about anything, be it another person that you know, or something that's happening in the world, it's not a lie. It's actually what he's thinking about it. And so I think honesty is really important, because if you... [47:13] If you're really radical about that, I think you actually, you can gain a lot of trust.

[47:20] it doesn't become this like, you know, entertainment product or this, you know, [47:24] character I like thing where you're like sort of trying to, you know, imagine that this would be real. And, but it, but it, but, [47:33] But it can be, you know, actually it can be the same level of fidelity because he just knows so many people. One of the things that I think is like really important and like building a relationship with any person or – [47:45] uh, you know, whatever you, you know, end up wanting to call it, I think, um, probably maybe the word hasn't been invented.

You would, we're not using the name. It, it has a name. It will have a name. You will refer to it by its name. Yes. [47:57] Um, and as well, maybe also, I think like, just to keep, I want to make sure like, there's a bunch of interesting philosophical stuff, but I want to ground it enough without, uh, [48:08] people being able to see it. What is interacting with this like? What do you talk to it about [48:14] What is a mutual friend? Why do we need a mutual friend? At the very high level...

[48:20] I think we are all... [48:23] Thank you. [48:23] We know more people than ever before. [48:26] So like a hundred years ago, the average person would maybe know like a hundred people, maybe 200, whatever. Right now, the average person knows around 600 people. Knowing me, like people that you could like place on the graph, right? Not people that you like are best friends with, but like, you're just like, I know this person. I could, you could have like context on them. And, but at the same time, we are like much less meaningfully connected, right?

[48:51] And it's like every like pointer is like, you know, I have this like list of like facts, which is like really stupid. But it's like every every pointer, the share of American like zero close friends went from like 3% to 15%, right? 15% of Americans have zero close friends. [49:07] um close friends american men sorry um like half of american adults report being lonely [49:12] Half of American, 50%, right? And by the way, like, you know, feeling lonely is the equivalent to like smoking 15 cigarettes a day. [49:21] So it's like half of America smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

The share of Americans who say most people can be trusted has like halved. [49:28] since like 1970s, right? [49:32] it's like we're around like 30%. [49:35] of Americans think that most people, uh, uh, you know, can't be trusted. Um, fertility rates are going down, right? People don't, you know, go to like church, like, um, and, and by the way, listen to somebody, listen to this is like, yes, why is this all happening? Technology. [49:50] And your contention is that... There are many reasons this is happening, right? There are, like, cultural reasons, there are, like, it's, like, technology, there's, like, so many different factors.

But at the end of the day, it's, like, this is, like, two pages with, like, about, like, [50:02] you know, like suicide rates, religion, it's like, it's like hundreds of like pieces of data that all point towards this like same thing, which is like, [50:09] Isolation. Yes. Right. Like we're not hanging out anymore. We even though we know more people than ever before, we feel like much less meaningfully connected to to each one of them. You know, in a world, by the way, that's like completely isolated is like a world in which humans go extinct.

[50:26] there's like no humans, right? If we don't at all hang out because we're, you know, we're not in relationships, we're not having kids, whatever. But like, it's also not really worth being a human in a world that's like, [50:36] completely isolated because we're just like there's no social connection we're very very deeply social animals this is not a warm fuzzy feeling kind of thing of oh wouldn't it be nice if we all felt like kind of like a bit more warm and like connected it's like [50:49] It's real. It's existential.

Yeah. And I think... [50:53] Um, [50:54] You know, this isn't like... [50:56] we're building this like cute little pet thing. It's existential. And I think if, if people aren't taking this, like these like hundreds of like studies and like count, like, like, like measures more seriously, we're, [51:08] We're going to have, like, serious issues as, like, a society. I mean, it's like these fertility rates issues are so exponential that, like, it's like people underestimate this. Like, Seoul in Korea, we talked about this yesterday, has, like, 0.5 fertility rate. What this means in practice is that every generation is 33% smaller than the last one, which means Seoul is, like,