E171: DOJ sues Apple, AI arms race, Reddit IPO, Realtor settlement & more

is there a enterprise like sale of robotics tools that have positive ROI for enterprises? And is there a business that's working there and that is scalable? Vertical solutions in labor and automation and productivity gains are probably the best sharp ratio.

something tells me this robotic space, which has been a start over and over and over again. I think this is the time where actually it's going to work. And so I love that hardware and robotics space.

They definitely are in a moment where people are looking at the profitability of these devices the source of their long-term cash flow. And I think they realize that there's not a lot of growth because they haven't entered a bunch of new markets.

I would not financial advice, but I think that Apple is going to be able to manage this and buy the stock. I may buy more of the stock. I think that this will be good for them long term.

I do project and I do expect that much of what is charged on a commission basis, on a percent of home value today, will change to being a fixed fee and a flat fee basis.

Is it going to change the profitability of a realtor? Pretty meaningfully, right?

No buyer would ever voluntarily agree to pay this massive commission. It's not worth it. So it's game over for the realtors if buyers are forced to pay their own brokers commission.

It should be that you get a flat rate, $10,000 at a million, and then you get 10% over a million or something.

at least based on the press coverage, I have yet to see a single smoking gun example coming out of this lawsuit... I'm a little bit doubtful right now that the government's going to be able to win this case

I don't think anything is going to happen here because it's taken them five years to file. There's at least a 50% chance that the administration is going to turn over, which means that this lawsuit changes or goes away entirely.

Google and Apple don't price fix because Android is an open access system. You can put any application you want, any way you want. There are several app stores to put Android apps on your Android device.

these companies will, if you give them an inch, they'll take the mile. And that's exactly what Apple does consistently. They consistently try to squeeze... I think the government's going to win changing three of these.

most of the value will accrue is not necessarily a chip company, but in other businesses and traditional industries that can transform themselves using AIs.

obviously chips are super crowded, lots of incumbents, lots of people going after it. And the foundation models are very crowded as well.

it's looking like Biden has a clear path to victory based on the lowest unemployment of our lifetimes and this roaring stock market records. Yeah, it's an easy Biden victory.

Biden is incredibly unpopular. If you look at his actual polling, he should not win the election... A president with these fundamentals would normally get reelected, but Biden currently is not, his polling is not the polling of a president who's going to get reelected.

when you're at that end stage renal disease, you're getting dialyzed every three days for up to four, five, six hours... So the idea that you could now use this effectively infinite source of seems really compelling.

the idea that you would just talk to a computer or in a chat interface and you wouldn't use an app interface. You would just ask it questions and it would give you answers.

they're pricing in these rate cuts as if they're definitely going to happen... people, I think, are maybe gambling in the sense that they're counting on rate cuts that haven't happened yet.

a lot of people will not list their home or sell it because that 6% might put them underwater.

You're standing on the shoulders of the whole open source movement. All you have to do, like Chamath said, all you got to do is take the latest Mistral model

Not only are you not starting from zero, not only do you have the foundational models that are excellent and available in open source

there's been a realization on how quickly foundational model development is commoditizing and how quickly costs are escalating and how many folks are chasing it.

I would take the top open source projects. I'd find those top contributors, take the top 20 or so open source projects and back them to the tune of significant money, 50 million, 100 million, whatever it takes

I think the point is that I think there is a speculative party going on right now. And I'm not saying that Reddit is part of it, but whenever these things are so mispriced, it just means that people are ready to gamble a little bit.

they're hoping that rates will come down fast enough and occupancy rates will go up fast enough that no one has to foreclose. But if rates don't come down, then you have a real problem... But if rates stay higher longer, then you're going to see some real distress. Including the regional banking system.

he got paid out in full, like 20, 30 million bucks. And by the way, those jobs are not, they don't exist anymore. Like Tucker and him were like the last of that generation to get those huge paydays.

But like this last three or four weeks, I think people have been so excited and rearing to go.

so much of the service and discovery, reading through documents, understanding what they mean and what they say can be automated through AI and LLMs

you have probably the most prolific set of training data that has ever been created in the entire world to make these models kick ass

It's just as hard for Microsoft to get anything through at this point. So probably they're just like, why even deal with the antitrust? They don't really need the assets.

I don't think this is some run around anti-trust.

My take on this is that this was a bailout... This company wasn't going anywhere, and it raised hundreds of millions of dollars.

Powell did say finally, it looks pretty likely we're going to get these three cuts, so we're going to be down to 4.5 to 4.75 on Fed funds by the end of the year. It probably means that we'll get another 50 to 75 basis points to 2025, so people will look out to the end of 2025 and look at a Fed funds rate that's sort of like 3.75 to 4%.

inflation has not come down to the Fed's target of 2%. It's still right around 3%, 3.1%.

I think it's them giving up. This is the most consequential new development in technology and compute in probably 20 years, 30 years. And so to be spending tens of billions of dollars of R&D and to not have enough allocated to this so that you have a legitimate path forward to do it yourself, I think is a little inexcusable actually.

if Apple's doing the right thing, which I'm sure they are, they're probably building their own alternative platform here. They realize it's going to take them some time in the interim. They want to have a stopgap.

even if Google Gemini were great, you'd still want to invest in having your own thing because it's such a strategic technology. Why would you ever outsource it to your main competitor?