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Faster, Please! — The Podcast: Daily Summaries Delivered
by James Pethokoukis
Welcome to Faster, Please! — The Podcast. Several times a month, host Jim Pethokoukis will feature a lively conversation with a fascinating and provocative guest about how to make the world a better place by accelerating scientific discovery, technological innovation, and economic growth.
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- 2 days ago34 min
📈 The business of AI: My interview with technology analyst and investor Azeem Azhar
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world:Artificial intelligence is expected to transform the economy, but what about the AI industry itself? Companies across the AI supply chain are now valued in the trillions of dollars. But do the data and current demand justify such lofty expectations, or are investors getting ahead of reality? And when will the AI economy finally begin to live up to the hype?Today on Faster, Please!—The Podcast, I am joined by Azeem Azhar, a Digital Fellow at Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab, the founder of Exponential View, a research platform focused on helping leaders understand emerging technologies and their impact on society. He is also the author of The Exponential Age and the co-author of The State of the AI Economy, one of the first serious attempts to measure the size and trajectory of the AI economy from the demand side and know what customers are actually paying for.We discuss where the AI economy stands today, why businesses are still struggling to realize AI’s full potential, who stands to capture the greatest gains from the technology, and the roles different countries could play in the “AI Race” between the United States and China.In This Episode:* The AI Economy * AI’s Return on Investment * Will AI Bring an Entrepreneurial Wave? * When AI Hits the Bottom Line * Who Wins the AI Economy? * Europe in the AI Race A lightly edited transcript of our conversation will appear in my Week in Review issue on Saturday. (Another option is using the Substack auto transcript function.)But here are some edited highlights from the chat:On AI’s creation of abundance…It may look like abundance when you’re on the other side before the inflection, but when you’re in it, it really looks like a day-to-day grind where you still have to fight for the things that you care about. The notion of abundance in general, I think, defies the realities of physics. You always need energy to get something done.On why AI adoption has been slower than expected…Companies are going through the similar type of process that Paul David describes around electrification, which is that you can put the light bulbs in the workshop—that is the copilot. But to move to the moving assembly line requires a lot more work and a lot more expertise.On AI’s challenge for businesses…No business was ever about, “Can we summarize an email quicker than before?” The question is: At what point do AI tools meaningfully come in to make those decisions happen more effectively—either at higher quality, at lower cost, or at higher speed?On why AI may not lead to immediate job losses…Companies realize that there was so much tacit knowledge in their workforce that they just let walk out the door. I think CEOs will start to want to understand: What are we losing when we cut an entire function for an LLM?On whether we know who will win the AI race…If you’d asked me two years ago, the winner was OpenAI, and Anthropic was really just playing around doing God knows what. So I don’t think we necessarily know who the biggest winners are. Does Anthropic or OpenAI have a significant role to play in several years time? I’m absolutely sure that will be the case. That doesn’t preclude there being other, bigger winners.On Europe’s AI opportunity…There’s things that states can do, even if they’re smaller states like the UK, because they can clear paths, they can help vertical integration, they can get access to the best specific talent. And this is not all about large language models. It’s also about models that can stimulate physics or models that can discover new materials.On sale everywhere: The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaig
- 1 weeks ago31 min
✨ Data center distortions: My interview with energy policy analyst Shuting Pomerleau
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world:What problem does a data-center moratorium solve, exactly? As these warehouse-sized supercomputers face growing public backlash, they’re blamed for higher electricity bills and strains on the power grid—all while failing to provide enough jobs or tax revenue. But are they actually the problem, or are they exposing problems that have existed for years in America’s electrical grid?Today on Faster, Please!—The Podcast, I am joined by Shuting Pomerleau, the director of energy and environmental policy at the American Action Forum, where she studies electricity markets and energy policy.We discuss New York’s controversial decision to pause construction of large data centers, whether AI is really driving up electricity prices, the economic benefits of data centers, who should pay for expanding the grid, and how states should respond to growing demand for power.In This Episode:* New York’s Data Center Slowdown * Dealing with Demand * What is the Right Step Forward? * Who is Paying Up? * Can Regulation Fend Off Data Center Growth? * Where Do Data Centers Go from Here A lightly edited transcript of our conversation will appear in my Week in Review issue on Saturday. (Another option is using the Substack auto transcript function.)But here are some edited highlights from the chat:On New York’s data center moratorium…My concern is that pausing this will send a very strong signal to investors, data centers and developers, a very chilling signal saying, “you’re not really welcome here.” This is such a fast-moving space. One year is actually a lot of time.On what’s really driving electricity price increases…What has been really driving the electricity increases mostly in the residential sector is the local distribution system—the maintenance, repairs, upgrades that cost a lot of money. It was almost like a coincidence with the AI data center boom and the sentiment against AI. We see that in electricity prices, but if you look into the real price level changes, it’s still quite flat both at the state level and across the country.On the policy challenge of funding AI infrastructure…What is a fair share? That is a question that has always been on my mind. The data centers are not all sitting there across the country doing their own thing separate from the remaining population. They’re providing digital services and great services for us, you and me, using AI. So, what is a fair share? How can they pay exactly how much they use?On the economic benefits of data centers…The opposition to AI data centers is probably one of the biggest pieces of misinformation out there. The right way to look at it is these are businesses that are paying taxes; they’re paying property taxes. If you look at Loudoun County, about 90% of the county’s operating budget comes from data centers.On whether regulation can slow the AI data center boom…I think of the AI data center boom in the United States as a fast-moving train. It’s going to move; it’s going to happen. I think the New York States moratorium, some of the local opposition across the countries may slow down some of the application of development, but not very significantly. I think what will have a material impact on the pace of AI data center development is all the discussion about who’s paying for it.On what needs to happen with data centers…First, permitting reform. It will alleviate the burden off of a lot of people’s minds, and a lot of stakeholders’ minds. Two is, we really need some reform in our grid, in terms of interconnection. I would say interconnection is your keyword, both on the generation side, connecting to generation sources and to large load customers.On sale everywhere: The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe
- 2 weeks ago34 min
My interview with Sebastian Mallaby, author of 'The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence'
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world:If my podcast guest today is correct, the emergence of generative artificial intelligence "heralds a transformation more profound than anything since Homo sapiens acquired the capacity for abstract thought." That's about as pure a distillation of the San Francisco Consensus view on the importance of this technology as it gets.Today on Faster, Please!—The Podcast, I am joined by Sebastian Mallaby, the Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and a widely read columnist for The Washington Post. He is also the author of the new best-selling book The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence. (Spoiler: It’s tremendous book about the man, the company, and the technological revolution. I really liked it.)We discuss The Infinity Machine and the life of Demis Hassabis, including how his original vision for artificial superintelligence compares with the propulsive race unfolding today. We also explore how that competitive acceleration has affected the focus on safety, what role government regulation should play, and why many people may still be underestimating how transformative AI will become.The Quest for “Success” Inside the Mind of Hassabis The Race for Monopoly The Economics of AI Anxiety Governing the AI Race The Biggest Leap Since Abstract Thought A lightly edited transcript of our conversation will appear in my Week in Review issue on Saturday. (Another option is using the Substack auto transcript function.)But here are some edited highlights from the chat:On where AI is heading…You look backwards; you see how fast the progress has been. To merely extrapolate forwards is probably to undersell the speed at which we’ll accelerate in the future because there’s an accelerating phenomenon here where the more advanced you are, the easier it is to get to the next level.On Hassabis’s belief that AI development would look more like the Manhattan Project than a multi-country, multi-company competition …In retrospect, it’s crazy. All one can say is that ex ante, the atmosphere in the community of AI builders when Demis began his company in 2010 was that this was a thing that simply didn’t work. AI could not recognize the photograph of a cat. AI could do nothing. It was deep AI winter. And so, under those conditions, you could assemble the entirety of the world’s strong AI believers in one conference in San Francisco, and it felt like a single community. So, this sort of Singleton scenario where you just have one lab, it was a natural outgrowth of that moment in time.How AI competition has overwhelmed that vision…Before 2022, Demis had the freedom because he was clearly the leader to define what the next project should be. He chose at one point to go and do this protein folding project. …This is kind of AI with a smiley face painted on it. Whereas once the chatbot went viral at the end of 2022, ChatGPT, then everybody had to pile in and build a competitor and there’s a lot less leeway to define your own path. So, I think the agency of the individual was quite strong until 2022 and thereafter the power of the race dynamic takes over.What skeptics, such as many economists, have gotten wrong and right…The number of improvements before even we talk about Mythos and the cyber capabilities of that one, I mean, it’s been an extraordinary ride in what is actually less than four years. So, I don’t take back anything I say about the speed of the advance of the frontier. Now that’s different to the speed of the deployment. There I have a lot of sympathy with the economist.On the difficulty of AI regulation…I’m actually quite optimistic in terms of the ability of a government agency to regulate… People often think of AI as a bunch of code that flies around cyberspace and you really can’t control it. But actually, it’s also a bunch of data centers which are huge physical installations. The government knows precisely where they are. They can’t be moved or hidden.On his superintelligence timeline…<
- Jun 25, 202637 min
✨💪 AI, jobs, and productivity: My chat with economist Erik Brynjolfsson
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world:Will artificial intelligence displace workers or make them more valuable? Probably plenty of both. But how much in either direction, and how fast will all this change happen?Today on Faster, Please!—The Podcast, I am joined by Erik Brynjolfsson, one of the world’s top economists studying how AI is reshaping productivity, jobs, and the American economy.Brynjolfsson is the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, and Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. He is also the co-author, along with Andrew McAfee, of Machine, Platform, Crowd, The Second Machine Age, and the classic Race Against the Machine. He is a co-founder of Workhelix, which helps large companies measure, track, and maximize the return of their AI investments.We explore what the next decade of AI could mean for workers, businesses, and the broader economy, and what the relationship between humans and intelligent machines may look like. We discuss why views from Silicon Valley and the East Coast differ so sharply on AI’s impact, why the technology has produced dramatically different results across companies, and why some firms and departments are already seeing meaningful productivity gains while others have yet to unlock AI’s full potential.In This Episode:* What AI brings to the table * Does AI bring too much? * Moving away from the Valley view * How perspectives are formed * Companies and productivity * AI in the foreseeable future (A lightly edited transcript of our conversation will be appear in my Week in Review issue on Saturday. Another option is using the Substack auto transcript function.)On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe
- Apr 28, 202628 min
✨💪 The future of work in an age of AI: My chat with economist Daniel Rock
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world:Artificial intelligence is undoubtedly poised to change the workplace—the question is, by how much? Key voices in Silicon Valley warn that white-collar jobs will soon be a thing of the past, while others predict more modest economic gains as firms struggle to reorganize workflows. When it comes to the future of work and American business, contradictory forecasts can be difficult to interpret and reconcile.Today on Faster, Please!—The Podcast, Daniel Rock and I attempt to sift through the often-confusing current AI conversation. We cover the distinction between “AI-exposed” fields and those destined for automation, explore the bottlenecks that could slow adoption among businesses, and offer a more realistic outlook for growth.Rock is an assistant professor of operations, information, and decisions at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. There, his research dives into the economics of AI and digital technologies, as well as the future of work. His paper,The Productivity J-Curve: How Intangibles Complement General Purpose Technologies, is worth a read.In This Episode* The trouble with forecasting * The economist’s evaluation * The productivity J-curve * Exposure vs. automation * Growth projection (A lightly edited transcript of our conversation will be appear in my Week in Review issue on Saturday. Another option is using the Substack auto transcript function.)On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe
- Apr 10, 202619 min
🏗️ A hub for hard-tech startups: My chat with 'American Shenzhen' builder Joshua Farahzad
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world:As a college sophomore, Josh Farahzad assembled a group of students from around the country in an attempt to launch a homemade rocket into space. From there, he ditched the traditional route and scoured the country for the perfect place to build a uniquely American mega-project.Disillusioned with the entrepreneurial atmosphere of the Bay Area, he has since broken ground in central Texas. Caldwell County is now home to Proto-Town—a place Farahzad hopes businesses will have the space to engineer and build world-changing hardware.Today on Faster, Please—The Podcast, I chat with Farahzad about his quest to build America’s premier manufacturing town from scratch.In This Episode* Welcome to Proto-Town * The Limits of California * From the Ground Up * The Vision (A lightly edited transcript of our conversation will be appear in my Week in Review issue on Saturday. Another option is using the Substack auto transcript function.)On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe
- Mar 24, 202642 min
✨ The Age of AI, an update: My chat with policy analyst Dean Ball
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world:Anxiety is running rampant about the future of artificial intelligence and its place in society. When technology CEOs warn of an impending white-collar jobpocalypse (or jobageddon, if you prefer), it’s no wonder public pessimism is so widespread. Today on Faster, Please!—The Podcast, I chat with tech policy analyst Dean Ball to help us sift through some of the uncertainty.We talk about recursive self-improvement, the role of AI in everything from medicine to defense, and what to think about the possible growing risk of AI company nationalization.(FYI: Our chat occurred just before the White House released new guidelines for AI federal legislation, about which Ball opined on X/Twitter: “The White House’s proposal for a nationwide AI law is a thoughtful document that will serve as an excellent foundation for the legislative work ahead. I would be happy to see these principles, if translated well into statute, become law.”) Ball is a senior fellow at FAI, the Foundation for American Innovation. He recently served as senior policy advisor for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, as well as strategic advisor for AI at the National Science Foundation. He was previously a research fellow at the Mercatus Center and a policy fellow at Fathom. He’s also the author of the excellent Hyperdimensional Substack newsletter.In This Episode* Public pessimism * Differing narratives * The nationalization risk * Accountability via audit * Productivity projection (A lightly edited transcript of our conversation will be appear in my Week in Review issue on Saturday. Another option is using the Substack auto transcript function.)On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe
- Feb 19, 202634 min
🌎 Storm watch: My chat with climate policy expert Roger Pielke Jr.
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world:Headlines portend rising seas, raging storms, and a planet in crisis. It’s easy to feel like the future is something to fear; however, the key to cooling things down isn’t scaling civilization back. If the world wants to cut back on carbon emissions without sacrificing growth, the answer lies in bold innovation. A sustainable tomorrow requires smart energy investment and long-term thinking today.On this episode of Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I chat with Roger Pielke Jr. about the ever-evolving discussion around climate change. We talk about the benefits of embracing new energy technology and identifying some easy wins.Pielke is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where his research focuses on science and technology policy. He is also a professor emeritus at University of Colorado Boulder, a distinguished fellow at Japan’s Institute of Energy Economics, a research associate with Risk Frontiers in Australia, and an honorary professor at University College London. Pielke has authored and edited several books, including The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell You About Global Warming. He also writes The Honest Broker Substack.In This Episode* The Shale Story * Unknown Unknowns * The Weather Forecast * Alternate History * The Path Forward (A lightly edited transcript of our conversation will be appear in my Week in Review issue on Saturday. Another option is using the Substack auto transcript function.)On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe
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About Faster, Please! — The Podcast
Welcome to Faster, Please! — The Podcast. Several times a month, host Jim Pethokoukis will feature a lively conversation with a fascinating and provocative guest about how to make the world a better place by accelerating scientific discovery, technological innovation, and economic growth.
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