Ep9. GPT-4o, Astra, Multi Modal, China Tariffs, Tech Earnings | BG2 with Bill Gurley & Brad Gerstner

Open Source bi-weekly convo w/ Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner on all things tech, markets, investing & capitalism. This week, they discuss OpenAI ChatGPT-4o, Astra, Consumer AI, Enterprise AI, China Tariffs, Trade Regulation, the tech markets, and more. Enjoy another episode of Bg2.
Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(00:40) Open AI Launches GPT-4 Omni
(10:29) Chat GPT-4o Benchmarks
(14:11) Voice as the New GUI
(20:01) Breakout Power of ChatGPT
(22:09) Consumer AI vs Enterprise AI Landscape
(27:51) AI Disruption
(35:45) Regulation & Industrial Policy
(43:47) China Tariffs
(53:15) Tech Market Check
Available on Apple, Spotify, www.bg2pod.com
Follow:
Brad Gerstner @altcap x.com/altcap
Bill Gurley @bgurley x.com/bgurley
BG2 Pod @bg2pod x.com/BG2Pod
#BillGurley #BradGerstner #Bg2Pod

[@DarthJabba504]

Please consider improving the audio quality...low hanging fruit that would make a huge difference. Love the podcast overall tho.

[@RonMasas]

“Voice mode” was not released yet, so Bill is probably using the old version 😅

[@alexcampo305]

Lmfao ya

[@MrCybug]

I thought only Google did 'later this year'... Looks like OpenAI does the same

[@ToussaintRoze]

@@alexcampo305😊😊

[@julesharper7209]

Actually Mira Murati said it twice during the demo: "Over the next few weeks".

[@antonioCsilveira]

Or he has early access.

[@Lukas-uc2bu]

Two clarifications. 1. Chat gpt DOES have memory. Its current implementation is a subset of custom instructions (an update we got many months ago). It automatically takes notes that it deems useful regarding information about you that will make the output more personal. While rudimentary, it does surprisingly well. go to settings -> personalization, and turn memory on. You can also manually edit the memories to have control over what you want to share 2. The low latency voice feature is not publicly available yet. What Bill tried was what was previously available.

[@sloth_in_socks]

Maybe he has a sneak peak

[@YJM5858]

Love the pod and your wisdom! I am traveling in China and echo your comments about Chinese people and the madness against China. Sending 1.4 Billion “Thank you”to both of you! Thank you for being logical, fair, wise and honorable.

[@aarond4487]

Bill mentioned at around 7:30 how the ChatGPT voice didn't work like the demo. OpenAI actually hasn't released the new voice features widely yet. The feature he was using was the old/existing voice feature in the app.

[@cyberft]

Great pod outside of the free trade absolutism. The free trade we got was regulatory arbitrage.

[@ralllao7295]

Loved the balance of speech time between you two.

[@joythought]

Love, love, love the book Diamond Age and have been using that as a reference for unlocking personalised education for every child. We really are at that point that AI can fulfil that promise. I would think most universities need to rethink how to survive when the best tutors on the planet are available for free 24/7 and know each child's learning style and interests as well as are motivated to help them achieve their potential.

[@joeslack]

this pod is honestly incredible, getting access to this level of insight is futuristic. thanks for all you do

[@NicholasPalance]

Loving this pod 🙌 please keep it coming!

[@Stumptownc]

Really enjoy this podcast and looking forward to your next episode!

[@alvarovillalbaperez9623]

Today I asked myself: "big time I don't listen to bg2". Now I'm the first view of this video. Chance?

[@jeffossola668]

Welcome!

[@BuleLocky]

Love the pod fellas - pls drop another! Big love from bali!

[@ryok7041]

Thanks for educating people around the world about technology and investing. This is invaluable. ❤

[@a.i.4good911]

Truely Enjoy Listening To You Guys ! Keep the conversation going forward!

[@stoor79]

Appreciate the take on tariffs. Very thought provoking. Thanks!

[@dwrtz]

To answer Bill's question at 20:00 on how OpenAI's desktop app is seeing the other apps you have running: they're relying on the same screen share capability that discord, zoom, etc. use when you want to share your screen in a meeting. You can share individual app windows or entire screens.

[@johnmacri7440]

Love this podcast thanks fellas

[@RAMSARDA-ko9fi]

Awesome pod. Thank you Bill and Brad.

[@gazmendqose8732]

This pod crushing the talking heads in MSM finance channels. The future of journalism 👌🔥

[@alishaheedmohammad]

And all in podcast. Really prefer this over all in

[@MP3Fitness24]

Great stuff! Appreciate your insights on new tech!

[@mrapp8918]

What a great pod this is. Thx guys! ⚡️🧠💰

[@EcomCarl]

The integration of voice, text, and vision in AI models is a game changer, particularly in education where it can tailor learning experiences to individual needs. It's exciting to think about how this technology will continue to transform industries and foster economic development globally. 🌐

[@maliciousinferno]

I love how Brad attempts to have the banter that comes natural to JCal 😅 This pod is great in it's own special way!

[@spartaleonidas540]

Who is jcal

[@michaelholmes8848]

I get motion sickness watching Bill.

[@alexandertosa4993]

Great show!

[@aaronrey2658]

Excellent Talk

[@outsidersmv4867]

When I heard Brad say “there has never been more engagement between DC and Silicon Valley,” following Bill’s comments on US Gov’t prospective funding for AI, I instantly thought of Bill’s talk, “2,851 Miles”

[@jasonchen-alienroid]

Highly recommend a book called "Importance of Living" by Lin Yutang, written in 1937. It's a book on philosophy but also as a bridge to explain Chinese culture (in large includes other Asian countries), tldr; it doesn't matter what happens to the chinese govt, the culture will survive (as all the previous dynasties). Chinese are as predictable as they are 2000 years ago.

[@slytherben]

I read Lin Yutang’s The Wisdom of India and China when I was a teen. Changed my life.

[@abhis9353]

I liked this good balanced approach and not openai or perplexity fanboyism

[@sucim]

you are behind the curve, voice recognition was solved two years ago (open sourced by openai). There is engineering challenges with interrupting etc but that has nothing to do with ai

[@ReasonableHuman1]

Awesome!

[@sehanpunchihewa2945]

The GOATs are back at it!!!

[@darkerisbetter8699]

51:00 - I think the "Free Trade" argument is no so clear-cut. (1) Near-shoring and friend-shoring are extremely beneficial. It's not about making everything in the USA. Rather, we want to see our allies grow faster than China. (2) Manufacturing benefits from agglomeration (e.g. Shenzen); our density of manufacturing is poor right now, but could be improved/sped-up through industrial policy. (3) Higher labor costs in the USA should incentivize building extremely efficient factories with high levels of automation. At sufficient scale, we might be even more competitive than labor-intensive manufacturing. It's almost undisputed that energy independence (primarily through fracking) has been beneficial for the USA. I see manufacturing through a similar lens. Some amount of industrial policy hedges us against the worst possible outcomes.

[@scientificapproach6578]

Good thoughts, maybe it's different this time. I do like the idea of building our close allies before China. The EV Tariff of a 100% seemed little excessive, since it was already at 25%.

[@joythought]

💯. Building hubs is hard. Every government and it's dog has wanted to build its own silicon valley in its area. Shenzhen for robotics has been a notable achievement in China.

[@brandonreed09]

OpenAI focused on the consumer so they could use them as data collectors for multimodal training data.

[@Austin6403]

Pushing back at the point Bill makes about Google being the only one with all these assets at 17:25, MSFT owns more than half of the things that were listed.

[@mgf503]

Superb commentary, again. Like your big bro pod, please keep it up, and go all in.

[@ryanbaggs3568]

Can we make some merch? I need a new gym hoodie…. (Love the pod btw)

[@prval5989]

What’s the song at the intro ?

[@Trufflepizza]

I love you guys but for the love of god Bill please get some better audio equipment like Brad 🙏🏼

[@RonMasas]

ChatGPT has memory and actions… are you actually using the product???

[@simpleedge]

😂 Yeah. Although, It doesn’t really have native actions yet. There are some custom GPTs that do things but it’s not native OpenAI. I think the first step was them getting it into a desktop app…then they’ll be able to use the computer (learn how to do a task and then execute independently in the future)

[@RonMasas]

@@simpleedge I agree, I was talking about GPTs/plugins and the fact that from a technical standpoint it’s already there. The desktop app is huge in terms of the access it gives them for future integrations.

[@MinhungShih]

curious why Bill decided to become Zillow board member

[@archietkachoff7427]

+1

[@oopskapootz7276]

There are videos about this. He deeply admires Rich Barton (former Benchmark investor but, most importantly, founder of Zillow, Glassdoor, Expedia). Rich Barton always builds business that are democratizing something that was previously restricted or unavailable to the messes.

[@hooligan1364]

Pod up!

[@JasonPiepmeier]

Mustafa and Inflection team will be interesting addition to Microsoft. Pi had a lot of personality and potential, so look for MSFT to compete against OpenAI and Google with its own ‘Her’ type AI

[@TheDominator303]

Hello, Google is not the only one with all the assets you listed. Another small player named Microsoft has all those same assets except KZbin. Although the Photos integration is novel and maybe unique for Googles market position as well. Not sure how you monetize the photos integration though.

[@SpencerHsu]

I love the conversations, but the first thing AI should do is remove the words you know from brad😂

[@Sssanbo]

AI needs to think a bit harder with that muffled brassy voice. Great discussion as usual , these 2 get straight into it and stay on it straight to the end .

[@ElliottRosenthal88]

❤

[@willowdesk]

How do you possibly use chatgpt for anything important knowing it hallucinates so much?

[@nicholas5396]

Hope your son checked the references on gpt answered. It really really really good at convincing you it knows what it's talking about.

[@amassa96]

When rates drop, won't earnings start to trend up? If you truly believed that rates were going down soon, wouldn't now be a good buy for the S&P?

[@brianbook9454]

Enjoy the podcast. Should the rich & powerful pay their fair share in taxes? This would enable more Americans to flourish.

[@8u1x1]

At 57:06 kzbin.info/www/bejne/pXm8oIZ4nt2Xhqs chart seems to have a typo for CY 20 data labels

[@MikeWoot65]

RIP to the birth rate once this thing is integrated into a life-like bot

[@brandonreed09]

Maybe that's why they grew children in Man of Steel, instead of natural births.

[@arleneallen8809]

Agreed on the tariffs nonsense. On a related subject, I do wonder about the price disparity between Chinese and American EVs. Of the three major components of manufacturing - labor, materials and energy, one can argue their labor is much cheaper. However, modern robotics removes a lot of that formerly largest component. The differential in energy and materials is not that great. How can they make cars at 1/3 the cost of ours and yet GM and Ford pay double the retail price to make the vehicle? Tesla makes money with extreme innovation and value engineering from beginning to end, but their margins are currently nothing to write about. $12,000 cars that go 250 miles? Doesn't pass my sniff test, but there simply isn't enough data, as far as I know, to explain the disparity. No doubt $12,000 cars will remove GM from the earth. No doubt. I'm on the fence as to whether I care.

[@mogolshan3385]

Perplexity has $20M future ARR that means last month revenue was $1.5M and their valuation is $1B ... in cases like this, you should disclose that you're an investor

[@Jmsbnny]

AI will need crypto payment rails to make financial transactions

[@joythought]

AI voices can replicate anyone. We are going to need crypto keys to identify ourselves to everybody whenever we communicate. Not the point you were trying to make but I think crypto tech is needed for a whole lot of issues created by AI.

[@JaredFarrer]

You know what this teaches me fools are a lot easier to talk outta there money than any one man with some sense

[@vindham4594]

Bill’s wondering why won’t we pay $15 to a Mexico then $40 in Ireland is a classic thinking that migrated practically the entire semiconductor industry out of USA to Asia, leaving no skills left in USA to know how to build chips - a bit of a longer therm view will help bring balance

[@educateme7286]

Anti China is not equal to deglobalization. America can always be supportive in importing goods and incentivizing production in vibrant democracies like India and still be pro globalization

[@maliciousinferno]

Bill, i love you man but you need a better microphone, this was a tough listen.

[@caseyosborne3148]

Candid feedback; Bill Gurley thinks he can define llm saying it relates to language & think he came away with an insight

[@NotaUserIam]

If you want the US to compete head to head with China you’d have to subsidize the entire industry. I don’t agree with you on this one though I don’t think it’s enough of a tariff to make a meaningful difference

[@plunkett20]

You guys mentioned Grok/Xai 0 times. Hmmm...

[@swaggitypigfig8413]

Why do they *have* to mention it?

[@mariojohnson4695]

Well $40.00 per hour pays the bills and $15.00 doesn’t , and while you’re at it, a little equity helps too. Having said that, I wasn’t for Biden putting tariffs on Chinese EV’s, let the markets determine the winners and the losers in this market.

[@krisvette5874]

Yep the demo wasn't representative of the reality.

[@LiguoKong]

AI gf is so close

[@maliciousinferno]

Bro there's like 100 of them already

[@jdarst100]

This guys voice is a duplicate of Ralph Nader

[@claypool7897]

Dont u think us car companies would just shut down? China has cheap to slave level labor (cobalt in the congo) better Access to resources and the government behind them

[@WegatYouuk]

these guys need to up their game, bad sound , now no pod for 3 weeks.

[@geremietipsword6244]

I'm fully in on free trade camp however you have to have partners in trade who aren't abusing the relationship. Somehow when China comes up people like this never discuss that Chinese companies are continuously involved in industrial espionage and IP theft with the government's blessing. Not only that but China subsidizes industries that dump product in the market. Why is this never part of the discussion. These tariff actions are responses to these actions. The mind wanders when you see investors like this no reflect on that nuance and you think about what investments they have tied to China or a fear of the Chinese government of arbitrarily blocking their investments in the future for their criticism. Just the utter lack of nuance and pretending like China is some virtuous actor becomes quite suspect.

[@byroncrowell1127]

Human prosperity includes more than materialist concerns. You guys are ignoring the domestic human costs we incurred by outsourcing everything from 1995-2016. Econ 101 did not predict fentanyl, obesity, suicide and the breakdown in national cohesion that resulted from viewing our fellow citizens of simple economic cogs who should simply lump it as China was given our manufacturing base. There is more to a civilization than debits and credits.

[@cj2103m]

These men are cold blooded capitalists. Human wellbeing and its abstract effects do not compute for them.

[@stefan-t--]

the only confusing part about this podcast, and its only downside is that its censored - you guys are both billionaires, why are you censoring yourselves? lol

[@aminbusiness3139]

Probably because they’re on the boards of public companies

[@davidh.65]

This was hard to listen to. Feels like Bill/Brad haven't even been paying that close of attention to AI developments... got multiple things wrong on voice, memory etc

[@tommckee5671]

These bros are clueless about the impact of outsourcing has had on the American workers.

[@DesmondMiles333]

yes outsourcing has led to company thick profit margins and stock price mooning which in turn led to the rise of wealth gap b/w ppl who own assets vs who dont. this then led to rise of protectionism and populism after 2016 when trump got elected. but there will come a time when ppl will bored of these policies, a time when we will have high double digits inflation and double digits rates with severe unemployment. and then world will move back to more globalized, less protectionism and populism. its a cycle.

[@bobbyaxelrod5959]

Vehemently disagree on the China topic. You cannot put this issue down to an oversimplified Econ 101 class lecture.

[@NebraskaSXHC]

Who are these insane people that want to talk to things? Jesus Christ if everyone is walking around talking to their smart assistant just kill me now.

[@rogerstarkey5390]

The same people who send manual texts while driving?

[@brandonreed09]

The guys that want to be Tony Stark with Jarvis.

[@joythought]

Absolutely everyone. When mobile phones came in we used to think people walking around with these bricks in their hand were wankers. Soon enough we were all doing it.

[@spartaleonidas540]

“Hell is other people”

[@golfinguru11]

Hey Bill, let us raise your tax rate to 60% and we’ll axe the tariffs. The free trader owners love globalization because they reap all the rewards. Signed, the American people.

[@spartaleonidas540]

Buffett at least has taken that position

[@golfinguru11]

@@spartaleonidas540 Most ethical people have. Unfortunately, Silicon Valley is a bastion of amorality, devoid of humanity, which makes sense considering they want to replace and/or merge us with robots.

[@volcon]

Another great one, thanks for doing it

[@marriagepartnersministry5942]

old Sloppy Joe is barely aware hes the president

[@ryok7041]

I don’t like my husband listen to flirty voices all the time even it’s a robot.

[@SnakesGaming2016]

brads hairline holding on for dear life

[@lightichigo]

China take is cringe ngl

[@user-el2of8li5h]

Gurley and Gerstner are utterly clueless on the China tariffs. This isn't about adding cost to companies at the same starting line. Chinese companies are given a massive artificial lead with the goal of putting foreign companies out of business, because non-Chinese companies haven't been given this artificial lead. If Gurley and Gerstner can get the Chinese to stop artificially supporting their companies, then we can talk.

[@Eternalspring22]

ROFLMAO, professional investors criticizing the government getting into AI. Have you ever!?!! Perhaps you, the private investors, should take deep breath, oh wait, it’s your money that is lighting AI on fire. The only way government can regulate this effectively by peeing full participant in it. Though one would have to wonder if professional investors did not express an opinion that they are the gods of investing and nobody can light a candle next to them. Par for the course.