Wow, it's so much brighter out here.
>> It is. It's, you know, the future is
bright.
>> There's lens flare in the future.
>> Yeah.
So, welcome everybody to the Oscars of
optimism. That, of course, we're opening
up the summit with the king of
AUTONOMOUS WEAPON SYSTEMS.
>> [laughter]
>> ALL RIGHT. SO,
I'M GOING TO start with the fact that
we're awarding three X prizes this week.
Palmer, congratulations for winning our
wildfire X prize.
>> Thank you so much.
>> [applause]
>> This one's been a long time in in the
works.
>> Let's get Let's get the the the slide up
here. So, Palmer won $2.2 million for
Anduril.
>> As if you needed it.
>> Um a million of
a million of that from Lockheed,
which was kind of interesting.
>> We do a lot of work with Lockheed. We
also compete with them, but we
in the in the defense space, it's you
know, we we we compete with their
fighter jet division and we partner with
them on some of their payloads. And so,
we do a lot of stuff together. But, you
me and you have both been trying to get
this autonomous firefighting stuff going
for a long time.
>> mean, you got this prize announced back
in 2019. It's been a long time.
Anduril's one of our first two products
was an autonomous firefighting tank that
we started building in 2017, finished in
2019.
>> It's insane that we let fires become
conflagrations before we put them out.
>> And it well, and it's and it's kind of
insane that people are saying, "Oh, the
you know, the technology's finally made
it possible." And I don't know, I'm not
going to correct them too often in
public, but it's I mean, this has been
possible for over a decade. It's
>> Yeah. All right.
>> It's just that
it's become politically politically
impossible to ignore the problem now.
>> We'll watch a 1-minute video clip of
what your team achieved. And if you walk
us through it here.
>> Sure. So, you
this was
an example of what we were doing at the
test site where we were
detecting fires, classifying fires. What
you don't really see in here is that you
also need [music] to reject false fires.
That was part of the test as well. So,
you have to know, you know, who's the
guy smoking a cigarette? Who's the guy
What's What's What's a campfire? What's
a road flare? And then what's something
that shows the characteristics of real
fire? That's what you need to flag to
people. That's what you need to flag to
emergency services. Uh and then you need
to match make the type of fire to the
right asset that's in the area. And so,
you want to basically use the most
cost-effective thing that can respond
and get there in time. And if
something's growing faster, you might
need something different. If it's in
woods versus on a brush hill, you might
need something different. And so, you
know, it's it's about detection,
classification, rejection, matchmaking,
and then going and and hitting the
target. And the last thing I'll say is
that with most of what we do,
uh our work with the military,
you'd go through many of these same
steps,
but if you find a target, let's say it
takes you, you know, an hour to an hour
to to get to somebody versus 10 minutes,
it usually doesn't make as much of a
difference. When you're talking about
fire, though, the difference between 10
minutes and an hour response, totally
different tools you're going to need to
respond with. You know,
a bomb is is is a is a bomb whether or
not it takes a day or an hour or a
minute to get there. Uh but when you
when when a fire is is is is
metastasizing, you need to pick the
right thing that can put it out before
it gets too large.
>> Amazing.
>> You know, uh
we're going to be announcing something
in a month's time
uh that you're funding a new X Prize,
and uh it's going to be secret until
then, but we're going to tease it now.
Uh
another $10 million prize. Would you
share share with us what we're going to
do?
>> Sure, you know, uh
the
you know, we we should we should keep
the details secret cuz there's there's
some there's some good twists, but
suffice to say that I'm not I'm not
interested in joining the race to push
AI forward with my money. I think that
the
the artificial intelligence side of
models is is is pretty well covered by
plenty of people. I think we've not been
doing enough understanding biological
intelligence particularly beyond people
and so this is going to be a prize
around understanding how animals think
and making so that we can communicate
with them 10 times better than the
current state of the art for the current
smartest species and not just trained
animals, but wild animals in their own
in their own language.
>> Amazing. [applause and cheering]
>> And I think that there's actually a lot
that we're going to be able to learn. I
mean, if you look at large language
models, they're kind of this, you know,
they're they're they're based on
humanity's way of thinking and
communicating distilled and I think that
there's plenty to learn from all of the
other species that are on this planet
and I wouldn't be surprised if it has
applications for AI particularly AI
where you need to be
more efficient, you know, more power
efficient, more time efficient,
you know,
a different point of view, two heads are
better than one, whichever whatever
metaphor you want to use.
>> Love it. Love it. All right, I'm going
to kick off the first official question
here.
P-doom, you're in the AI industry, the
defense industry, what's your P-doom?
>> I'm just not worried
about AI dooming
the I guess I'm not worried about AI
doing the killing. I'm very very worried
about evil people
>> Yes.
>> using moderately competent AI to do evil
things.
>> Exactly.
>> And I am s-
kind of frustrated by a lot of people
who are new to the dooming hobby.
It's It's It's sort It's sort of like
how we had to deal with
the war in Ukraine happens and all of a
sudden all these people who have had the
dumbest opinions you've ever heard about
the military for their whole life
and people who believed we lived at the
end of history that we had moved past
conflict that we lived in a world where
you could just write a nasty letter in
the UN forgetting that that only works
if it's backed up by credible threat of
violence and then all of a sudden they
change their minds. You're seeing this
with AI. People who have not thought
about this problem for more than
a couple years or maybe even just a
couple months
are saying oh my god this is the biggest
threat to humanity. These are people who
have spent almost no time actually
analyzing what the largest threats to
humanity are. They haven't spoken to any
of the experts in this area. They
certainly weren't buying freeze-dried
food and building prepper bunkers, you
know, like like like like me and many of
my my my buddies who who have who have
indulged fantasies about what doom could
look like and also thought realistically
about it. And so yeah, the AI doom is
way down the list for me. I'm I'm I'm
I'm a big optimist. I think it's going
to massively reduce the cost of resource
extraction, processing, transformation.
You're going to see every part of
society become subject to the same
economies of scale and efficiency that
automated industries that automated
without AI have seen. So think like
agriculture or or textiles. You can buy
2 weeks of calories for less than 1 hour
of federal minimum wage labor. That's
crazy.
>> Let's give it up for
Palmer here. You're going to see that
for everything.
>> David [applause]
>> So I I got a really
um
pressing question on my mind. I'm kind
of a feeds and feeds and ships and AI
foundation models guy.
And so when you're putting systems in
the field, weapons in the field, uh
you can you can put the intelligence
inside it and it this has always been a
big problem for the Air Force, like if
we're going to start flying drones
instead of pilots, who's going to
unleash the weapons and how's that
decision going to get made? And the the
downside of transmitting it back to
headquarters is you have latency.
Uh the upside is you have a lot more
compute. Uh what you can put locally in
a device, in a robot in the field, in a
plane is limited, but it's really really
fast. So what's your philosophy on like,
you know, I think a lot of people would
say, well, are we going to have
self-contained decision-making weapons
wandering around enemy territories or
are we going to have like are we going
to have you know, control at the
headquarters?
>> Yeah, more or less. The the real concern
isn't so much the latency or or the
speed of computation. The problem is
that if you rely on
you know, a central a central location
to do your compute, you now need to have
command and control that has a good
high-bandwidth communication back and
forth between you and potentially
thousands or tens of thousands of active
assets. And if your enemy jams your
communications or intercepts your
communications or hacks your
communications, you're done.
Uh or worse, they just skip targeting
all the stuff in the field and they go
for the place where it's all being
controlled. You know, we saw we saw this
I there was a there was a there there
was there was this documentary that
George Lucas was working on and and the
Trade Federation, they had they had
their central AI command and control
blown up and that was how the Battle of
Naboo actually resolved was all all the
battle droids lost
>> Oh yeah, they all fell over.
>> That's right, they all fell over. And so
I think that that's that that's the
practical reality that's driving the
need to have autonomy living not back
home, but forward. There's other areas
like you go underwater, you can't talk
to things. And sometimes you could talk
to things, but you don't want to. Having
radio emissions actually exposes you
necessarily. And so what what you
for better or for worse, you're going to
need this. I actually don't think it's
as much of a shift as people think.
I there's a lot of people who look at
this and say, "Oh my god, Pandora's Box
is being opened. You're going to have
weapons that are making their own kill
decisions." And they don't recognize the
reality, which is that that's been the
case for decades. You look at the You
look at the You look at the Aegis system
on destroyers. It has a fully autonomous
mode. You can flip a button and it will
shoot down anything that comes within
whatever range you programmed it with
without any human confirmation. You look
at SeaWiz and SeaRAM for shooting down
incoming missiles, incoming incoming
artillery fire, incoming missiles, or
incoming speedboats.
Same thing. You can put them in fully
autonomous modes. And I mean, it Going
back to into Vietnam, we had missiles
that you could launch from an aircraft.
They flew over the horizon, tried to
identify the right radio emitters that
they believed corresponded with a
surface-to-air missile launch site, and
then struck them without any The person
had to decide, "I'm going to send it in
this area. They're going to look for
this signal, and I know that there's
this probability they're going to get it
right." That decision is going to remain
with people. But, autonomous weapons are
widely widely There's a whole other talk
we're not going to have today, but I
will I I do have a rant about this where
actually autonomous weapons have existed
for thousands of years. If you look at
Defined as kind of weapons that can
execute the intent of what you
programmed to do independent from the
operator to the engineer. You look at,
for example, pitfall traps that allow
people to walk over them, but then
capture the commander on his horse when
he walks by and it's heavier. You look
at certain poison traps that would that
would kill people who had who had
certain characteristics, not kill people
who had other characteristics, or not
kill animals.
You look
many types of landmines and sea mines
and even even torpedoes. And so,
it depends on on your exact definition.
But, even going into myth where people
are creating golems that can you go out
and fight on their fight on their behalf
or or defend you defend their city.
I I guess my argument is we've had
autonomous weapons for a very very long
time. It's just a new set of technology
that's that's making them better.
>> So, technical question on that. The
foundation models that go into those
those remote systems
>> Or the pit traps.
>> Yeah, well so that that
right right now the open source models
are all Chinese. So, I'm pretty sure
you're not going to be putting Chinese
models into remote weapons. Are you
going to build Anduril foundation models
or how how are you going to get AI in
those devices?
>> I mean, we've been doing it since 2017.
So, we're way ahead of everybody. We're
we're a decade beyond that question.
Um
I think that we also don't the
foundation models that people are
building are not the types of models you
want to be doing this. They're non that
they're largely non-deterministic.
They're non-auditable. It it's it's a
very different category. The thing that
we are building, unfortunately, has very
few consumer applications.
>> Mhm.
>> And vice versa.
Um there of course are LLM use cases for
defense that make a lot of sense, but
it's not guiding my missile or or
classifying radar your radar radar radar
feeds. I mean, and we we're also we
can't build models that ingest text and
then spit out text. I need to process
raw data radar data feeds. I need to
process sonar data from passive
listening stations on submarines. That's
it's it's pretty highly specialized. And
I I will take some credit here.
Uh all these people who are talking
about how AI is going to change
everything
they are mostly uh
recent converts.
Anduril Industries, you might notice the
acronym is AI. Um so, and that that was
not that was not a mistake.
>> Okay.
>> Alex, jump in.
>> Yeah,
I think maybe dovetailing on our
discussion of driving bench, we're now
in an era when it's possible to take
frontier models, drop them into a
robotic embodiment, and get pretty
stunning results. So, I'd love to ask
you a question maybe about the scaling
hypothesis as it applies to autonomous
weapon systems or autonomous systems in
general. If you have to extrapolate out,
is there a Moore's law? Is there an
experience curve for what as obviously
the capabilities of underlying frontier
models, whether they're from Frontier
Labs proper or from AI,
as as those progress,
do we see any equivalent of a Moore's
law for the autonomous systems
themselves? And and maybe the the second
half of the question would be, do you
think ultimately we achieve some sort of
convergency? Anduril it makes a variety
of embodiments in a variety of different
form factors. Do you see ultimately some
general purpose category killer robot
that is equivalently the generalist
robotic embodiment just like we now have
generalist models that are capable of
doing substantially any task?
>> No, I don't think so on the defense
side. I think that for manufacturing and
for hospitality and medicine, you might
see this because you get economies of
scale that uh that that that that that
are really that are really material for
those types of businesses and you know,
a humanoid robot may not be the optimal
form for a burger griller and it may not
be the optimal form for a firefighter.
It may not be the optimal form for a for
a nurse [laughter] or an assembly
technician.
>> I see you're smiling.
>> But even if it's not optimal, the fact
that it is shared with humanity in its
form makes it a really really good form
factor. And now I can make one robot
that does all of these things and I I
would probably rather have a let's say
robot that's 5% slower or or you know,
less reliable than the optimal burger
flipping robot if I can share
commonality with that with that nurse.
In defense, that's not really the case
because you are in this constant race to
not just barely beat your adversary, but
to massively overpower them. To try and
make it where you know, the goal is is
to just barely win a conflict on the
margins. It is to fight unfair, to have
overwhelming threat of violence
underpinning whatever diplomatic
overtures or negotiations you have. And
and and everyone was always pushing the
limits. So, if if if I if I have a jet
that has a reliable 5% every time edge
over the enemy, that's worth paying a
lot of money for, right? Like I I I and
and I I I think the the
the loss in performance you would see
through lack of specialization probably
makes it non-viable. Like to to to go to
the to the extreme like a you know, I
build robot submarines and those have a
specialized form that needs to dive to
6,000 m depth and and sit on the bottom
of the ocean for months at a time. And
then I have other stuff that's on the
surface and and you know, they're
robotic systems that you know, roll up a
hill and and they loiter and then I have
other things that are you know, aerial
vehicles that are doing very specialized
tasks and I just can't imagine a
convergence that would make sense.
Unless you're telling me that we're
going to get some cool like like
humanoids that have like you know,
on-board fusion reactors and they can
dive to 6,000 ft depth.
>> So, Palmer, why aren't why aren't you
building those? I mean, if anybody, you
should
>> [laughter]
>> Look, you could potentially build such a
thing, but then very quickly you realize
that specialization would allow you to
build something even better. You say,
"Okay, I've built something that can
dive to the bottom of the ocean and fly
to the moon." Man, it could get to the
moon a lot faster if it didn't have to
also dive to the bottom of the ocean.
So, I think I think defense is going to
be this one where kind of like a
you know, you you look at for example
the difference between cars where
everything has shared platforms within a
manufacturer you know, manufacturer and
they also share a lot of the same
standards
and the interfaces.
I think that you compare that with like
a motorsport where it's all completely
different and it's continuously pushing
forward. I I think the defense side is
probably always going to be this this
weird branch of exotic highly
specialized robotic systems.
>> You know, Palmer, I expected if anybody
was going to be building humanoid
robots, it would be you.
>> No, no, no.
>> just you you said you said absolutely
not.
>> I've I've opted out because um I because
I believe in them. If I didn't believe
that humanoid robotics had such a
powerful future, then I would probably
build them. But I want Anduril to build
things that wouldn't exist otherwise.
That's what I generally want to do.
Correct. All the other people are
already doing a great job. Like I I I
want to use their robots.
>> And and and do things with them. Like I
think humanoids are going to be an
incredible general artificial
intelligence interface between AI and
remote systems and a lot of legacy
platforms that were designed for a
person to you know pull the lever, push
the button, read the screen. Like we're
going to be able to take all those and
automate them without replacing them
entirely. So, you have a lot of things
like
radar systems that cost millions, tens
of millions, even hundreds of millions
of dollars.
Uh nobody wants to man them during a hot
conflict cuz they're the first thing
that's going to go. But if I can put
humanoid robots in them, I've now been
able to automate them without that. So,
yeah, I'm not going to build humanoids.
Uh this is also why Anduril is not
building like small quadcopter attack
drones. Too many other companies doing a
great job. There's a there's a lot of
a lot of areas. And and we're not going
to do space launch. Like we do space
products. We have a lot we operate a lot
of our own satellites and a lot of our
own sensors in space. Uh but I don't
want to be a launch provider. That's for
all the other billionaires to
>> Yeah, yeah, let let them handle that.
That's fantastic. Salim,
um you know, when you're operating
Anduril Industries, you're uh
decentralizing defense, right? The
Pentagon and ministries of defense
globally have been the most centralized
entity in the history of humanity.
Uh you're sitting on the edge dealing
with that. Uh
you must have a massive immune system
problem where people inside the entity
are going, "Nah, we've done that before.
We can do it better." They either try
and suck you in or they try and spit you
out. How are you navigating that
interface because you're doing it in a
way that I've never seen anybody succeed
do it.
>> I think that this is a problem that's
very, very hard at the beginning.
>> Oh, I said the wrong thing.
>> [laughter]
>> Wow.
>> No idea what the
>> Well, until someone gets on the intercom
and tells us to
>> Someone won a million dollars.
Congratulations.
>> Um what were we talking about? What what
what what was it?
Seriously, I knew the intercom was going
to come on.
What were we talking about again?
>> Centralization of Pentagon versus
decentralized government.
>> I'm going to I'm going to keep talking
till somebody tells me that I can't. Um
So, we've gotten through this a bit. I
think early on there was that concern
that Anduril was not going to be able to
get through that. Our Our hardest
problem raising money
>> Skippy, would you please shut this down?
>> [laughter]
>> I've been through enough of these to to
know how it's going to work.
>> There we go.
>> I imagine.
>> One of our early problems was that our
investors said, "Palmer, you potential
investors." They said, "Look, we believe
that you'll be able to build things that
work. We believe you'll be able to build
products that are great, but we don't
believe the government is capable of
actually purchasing them at scale." Cuz
I mean, you talk you talk about
centralization, you know about the
issues. For people who don't, uh until
just a few years ago, you had about 80%
of MDAPs, major defense acquisition
programs. So, the basically anything
that that that matters, uh 80% of MDAPs
went to five companies, and that's it.
And I mean, you've seen incredible
consolidation, centralization. Anduril
has been successful because we use we're
we're we're less of a contractor and
more of a product company. We use our
own money to build products, then we
sell them, and we've gotten to the point
now where people in government have done
very, very well betting on Anduril, and
then miraculously we finish on schedule,
we finish on time, and then the next
program manager says, "I know how I can
make my job easy. I just I just give the
contract to Anduril."
>> Got it.
>> So, it it's got to take guts to enter
the defense industry, right? The most
incestuous,
you know, self-licking ice cream cone on
the planet.
>> Yeah.
>> And and and what insanity,
you know, gave you the balls to do that?
>> The insanity was the reason that I got
into it.
Uh the first page of our pitch deck said
Anduril will save taxpayers hundreds of
billions of dollars a year by making
tens of billions of dollars a year. The
idea being we're not just making
products that we're selling, but we are
displacing the systems that cost
needlessly 10 times what they should.
And
Yeah, thank you.
>> [applause]
>> And so, it does seem crazy, but, you
know,
I don't I I I can't put myself on the
same pedestal as him, but one of my
mentors and idols growing up and then
also early in my career was John
Carmack, the founder of id Software.
>> John is great.
>> John is incredible. And for people who
don't know, he's basically the inventor
of the modern modern 3D game engine,
first-person shooters, also started a
rocket company that competed in the
>> He he was competing in the X Prize, and
I I remember
>> And he was one of the, if not the only
one to be doing reusable
>> Exactly, he was doing vertical takeoff,
vertical landing.
>> else was even trying to do. He did it.
>> I remember there's this this name on the
side of his vehicles, Armadillo
Aerospace.
How do you pronounce that thing? I
thought you'd only know. That's right.
He was using So, yeah, he was using uh
he was using uh he was building his own
sensor fusion algorithms. He was
processing them on modern, you know, or
on you know, commercial-style graphics
card hardware using his game programming
experience. Anyway, the point is it was
called Armadillo Aerospace. That's
right. And the thing and yeah, they were
doing vertical takeoff and landing long
before SpaceX was
was was was I mean, doing anything.
>> Yeah. No, before it existed, for sure.
>> And but anyway, the the point is he he
I I he ended up becoming the CTO of
Oculus VR. I managed to poach him away
from Id, but after he left, he went to
work on AI actually even before I did.
And so he started he started his own
company to work on on on AGI. And
and I said why why are you why are you
doing this?
>> You know, that the odds of you
succeeding and to be clear, I still
believe AI was going somewhere, but he
said, "I'm going to start a company
that's just going all in on the end
state. Like I'm not trying to
incrementally get there. It's just all
in on AGI." And the point that he made
was, "Palmer, even if I've got a 1%
chance of succeeding, which maybe is an
overestimation, but suppose I have a 1%
chance of succeeding, and suppose that I
could pull it off,
the the risk-adjusted
outcome kind of demands that I do it.
And that was how I felt about defense.
If there was a 1% chance that I could
help solve this problem, then it was one
that would be massively impactful to
work on versus, let's say, starting
another gaming company, getting into
space launch,
you know, building a car company, which
it it all of the billionaires, they end
up doing the same thing. You don't have
enough people getting into defense or or
putting on a bat suit. It's just it's
just cars and rockets and and they just
go in circles like that for for for
>> So, you know, when I interviewed you on
the on the Moonshots podcast last time,
you mentioned that you're part of a
billionaire's boys club chat.
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> [clears throat]
>> Oh, yeah.
>> Are they working on anything worthwhile
at this point? I mean, I gave I gave
them for saying like, "God, you got
all this capital. Solve the world's
biggest problems."
>> I think the B boys are doing a lot
better now than we were a few years ago.
>> Okay.
>> Um
>> They're they're stepping up.
>> And and for people you think we're
talking about is I I was giving a lot of
people a hard time, especially some
retired B boys. And uh I was telling
them what are you what are you doing?
You have cuz money is one of the
resources they have. But one of the
resources people don't talk about,
especially for the retired B boys, is
that they have credibility, which would
allow them to gather people around them,
teams around them, and capital. Like
they could and it's just sitting there
underutilized if they're doing nothing.
They have the credibility in that people
trust them as a leader to be able to
lead an organization like that.
They could have the same ideas and the
same words as somebody who's equally
smart or smarter and they'll still do
better for that. And so my point to them
is you have a responsibility not only as
someone who's who's got a lot of capital
yourself, but who's got this
underutilized resource of the ability to
do more.
If if you're not doing that, then are
you really like what are you even doing?
Anyone can sit on a boat. Few people can
start another multi-billion dollar
company that does something that
matters.
>> [applause]
>> And the good news is most of them I
think I I I think a lot of people have
have gotten the itch to to solve some of
these problems that are out there.
Nihilism is is is on is on the down.
>> [laughter]
>> Yeah, that's an interesting point.
Although
Like I said, I think most of the B boys
I think they seem like they keep pretty
busy.
I don't I don't I don't have a problem
with B boys who don't do enough. Like to
some people they mis- mistake what I
what I say like oh Palmer wants other
billionaires to work on defense or
energy or or biology.
You like
my point is not that people need to
distract themselves by doing more
things. A lot of people can only do one
thing.
You know, and that was what I did for a
long time.
It's what I hate is the people who are
not doing anything. That's that that is
that is like a repulsive to me.
>> So maybe message to the audience, you
get to join the B boys slack group or
whatever this is,
Telegram, if you're doing something new
and differentiated.
>> The group actually got shut down and uh
we've been we've been talking about now
that we need to do a B boys 2.0.
Um but I think I think people post
>> some B girls as well.
>> I think people posted the wrong memes a
few too many times.
>> Boom.
>> I I look uh there there was there was a
time where there were no there were no B
girls and then there was this Business
Insider article uh whining about it and
uh the the reality is like it's just
like me and some guys.
>> Like you know, it's not like there's
this isn't like the Illuminati
conference.
>> [laughter]
>> You know, it's like they're they're like
oh, there's a group and you know, but no
women have been invited. I'm like I it's
not that no women have been invited.
It's just like me and some some of my
boys. But
>> [laughter]
>> uh but actually there there was a there
was a there was a there was a girl in it
by the end. So, uh we need Yeah, we need
to we need to restart that. We need to
restart that group.
>> So, you're in Facebook commercials now.
>> Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
>> Yeah, so so the new Meta VR is out, uh
how does it compare against your vision
of what you wanted to achieve? Is it
Yeah.
>> Look, it does a lot of the things that
uh it's not exactly what I would make
were I the guy who's waving the magic
wand and and and and you got lots of
magic wands spinning the CAD, but
uh
look, the new Meta VR glasses are a lot
closer in a lot of ways. Uh so, I've
long been a believer that you need to
decouple the compute and the battery
from the head. You should it should not
be that and and I'm not even saying the
head totally, it's more of the front.
So, uh before Oculus Quest. So,
Oculus Quest was the last thing that I
worked on before they fired me. And uh
the prototypes at the time were
a prototype series code named Santa Cruz
and uh we were sure actually showing
that publicly before they fired me. And
uh Santa Cruz had the battery and
compute on the back of the head and then
the light, you know, the part on the
soft tissue on the front of your head
was kept as light as possible. And then
at some point after they got rid of me,
they they jammed it all into one big
giant lump in the front and they ruined
the ergonomics. They forgot why you need
a top strap. Uh,
but you know, it it it it bothers
>> Serve them right.
>> It bothers me most Look, it bothers me
mostly at this point because uh
the Oculus Rift CV1, which was the first
modern consumer VR headset, it got the
ergonomics more or less perfect in 2016
and you know, we we were showing it off
in 2015 and literally nobody has done as
good of as it and it's been over a
decade. Every single person screws it
up, even Apple. And I I I just I don't I
can't comprehend it. How how could it be
that the ergonomic design led by a
19-year-old kid with no experience is
better than anything that anyone has
come up with since. Anyway, the new Meta
VR glasses are the closest thing.
And they're very lightweight. They've
off-boarded the computer. They've
off-boarded the batteries. They have
really high-quality pass-through.
Um they they It has a feature that I
invented for CV1 called Transformo
Fabric, which they do not call it.
The basically using uh fabric uh a a a
a soft flexible fab black black
light-absorbing matte fabric to one
minimize reflections, but two uh
basically seal the cavity between and
around the lenses. That means that you
can move them uh and the fabric just
stretches to meet where the lenses are
for different interpupillary distances
rather than having like sliding
mechanical interfaces and plastic and
they brought Transformo Fabric back for
the first time since my my era. So, I'm
I'm I'm a huge fan and uh you know, it's
it's a third of the price of Apple's
product and uh somewhat higher higher
pixel density. I I think that's pretty
extraordinary. Oh, and and and 1/8 the
weight.
>> Yeah. Amazing.
>> Pretty amazing. Pretty good.
>> Let's close on Let's close on this.
We've got, you know, 1,500
entrepreneurs, moonshot visionaries, and
tens of thousands watching on the live
stream.
Uh
what's your advice?
What, you know, what did you learn in
high school that made you succeed at the
speed you did?
We were talking about this on the plane
right back.
>> I I was really lucky to uh I guess maybe
not lucky. I did it. Uh but
>> Well, you are you are lucky.
>> That's right.
>> I am [laughter] lucky.
>> It's in the name.
>> I started an online community called
ModRetro when I was 14 or 15. Uh it was
an internet forum for people who were
modifying vintage game consoles and
computers, building handheld units,
improving the performance in a variety
of ways. We had a few thousand active
members.
And uh and a whole team of volunteer
moderators and administrators with with
me me at me at the top of it for some
reason.
And uh I learned a lot of valuable
lessons about how you can build an
organization, how you market an
organization, how you get people to
believe in what you're doing. I learned
a lot about dealing with the types of
problems you deal with when you're
running a company, you know.
>> With humans.
>> Well, I mean, you you have you have two
It's a tale as old as time. You've got
two people.
They're both brilliant. They're both
very good at what they do.
And they hate each other. And they
disagree over something. You need to
somehow mediate the conflict or separate
them in a way that allows you to get the
value that that allows both of them to
contribute value to the greater project,
uh but not have them hate you, not have
them lose faith in the broader thing,
but also you not not kill each other.
Sometimes that means you need to
reconcile things between the two.
Sometimes it means that you need to put
one guy over here and one guy over here.
And sometimes you need to make sure that
they don't know that that's what you're
doing as you do it. That's just
[laughter] I'm not saying that's the key
to running a successful business is the
management of the two problem,
but it's
Yeah, and then and once you make it a
three-body problem, now I'm out.
>> [laughter]
>> But uh but but it's it's that and a
hundred things like it that I learned
running Mod Retro that I was able to
take into starting Oculus, to carry
forward into what I'm doing in my other
companies. And uh that that's why I'm a
I'm a strong believer that the the the
kids should should should get a job. And
I I I also had a job starting when I was
14, so I learned how the real world
works, too. But I I So, I'm a huge fan
of people doing things at a scale that's
larger than just themselves. In other
words,
don't just do a project, do a project
with someone else. Do a project with
other people. Build in the open, learn
the the the the good parts of that, the
bad parts of that. It it it's been
extremely useful to me. And
>> Has building changed in the age of AI?
What advice do you have? Again, you
know, we've been saying on the pod for a
while now, you know, forget about grad
school, you know, even college is a is a
maybe. You didn't go to college. You
know, and high schoolers should what?
Find a a purpose they care about and use
AI to go and code it. What's your your
closing advice here on that?
>> You know, one of the reasons I have not
been as upset as some people about uh
Now, it's funny. There's something on
the screen. It's like it's to not talk
about
>> [laughter]
>> Just wanted to make sure you saw that.
>> I I I did. We're not going to talk about
Don't think about it. All right,
company. All right, great. Great.
>> [laughter]
>> The uh
There's the There's a lot of people who
who who love their craft and they love
what they do. And uh and and they are
rightfully mourning uh the end of, for
example, coding things by hand top to
bottom, start to finish as anything but
like a craft endeavor. Um and and I and
I understand that. It's it's the same
way that a lot of artists felt when the
camera was invented. They They whined
and complained about how it ruined art
and it made it so that anybody could
push a button. And and you know, the
these things are always painful for the
people who are masters of their craft.
Um I already got screwed in that way a
long time ago. When you're a founder,
you don't get to actually work in any of
the tech anyway. All the other people
get to have all the fun. And so, you
know, I I like electrical engineering. I
like optical engineering. I like
mechanical engineering. I don't get to
do any of it cuz the job of a founder is
to
hire people to to displace them. And and
and to do what they thought they could
do or what they like they do like doing
better. The job, I've said many times to
people, if you want to work on
technology
work for somebody else. If you want to
work on nonstop start a
company.
And so and so what I would say to people
is AI doesn't actually change the
part of the job very much.
You're still on the hook legally. You're
still on the hook for all the
interpersonal stuff. And you could you
you can delegate some of it, but at the
end of the day it's your call, it's your
decision. It's the same thing for
fundraising. It's the same thing for
general product architecture. And when
people make the wrong decisions, it's
your choice
as to when you need to overrule them,
override them, replace them. I don't see
AI replacing that part of it anytime
soon. Not because it couldn't, but
because the gains everywhere else are so
much larger that I think we've got a
good 10 years of speed running
all of the other parts of the business
before they before they come to that.
So, look, AI changes a lot, but I I I'm
telling you there's a lot of people you
are in for a rude awakening if you are
like a hobbyist coder or a hobbyist
engineer and you think you're going to
start a company and you think you're
going to be doing all that stuff? No,
you're going to learn a hard lesson. It
Being a founder was was always like AI
took your job. It's just that other
people took it.
>> Yeah.
Ladies and gentlemen, let's give it up
for Palmer Luckey.
>> [music]