YouSaid · the spoken record

Keith Rabois

lines on the record: 143
first: 2019-01-05
most recent: 2019-01-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Been talked about before that, yeah. You see occasional academic journals. I mean, this is what I used to do for a living as a lawyer, as an antitrust litigator. And the problem you have, and I've thought about this a lot and debated it with some of my colleagues on the right, is coming up with a neutral principle, a principle that would apply to tech companies, but that wouldn't completely undermine all of antitrust history. And it's very difficult to find. I can think of a few, but it's not easy at all. And at least if I were in government, I'd want a neutral principle that I could defend as would work for every industry.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The administration is going to be in the hands of mostly people who buy the Borkian view of antitrust policy, which is unique consumer harm. If Trump were to lose and the Democrats to win, then I think you could see ahead of the FTC or ahead of the Antitrust Division that really tries to rewrite American antitrust doctrine.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think the regulation certainly out of Europe will continue to increase because they have a different history of antitrust regulation where it's more of a policy and politics decision. Secondly, I think that until 2020”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it may change, but the fundamental principle of consumer harm is pretty deeply embedded in antitrust philosophy in the United States, and it's very difficult, if not impossible, to show consumer harm. Yeah, these are, well, they're free products for the most part. It's hard to show raising prices and monopoly profits. Secondly, Amazon tends to have a fairly low price, but not below marginal cost. So it's been traditionally very difficult in the United States to show anti-consumer behavior when that's true. Same thing with Google and Facebook. So exactly.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“they understand the views about why they should be opposed to what the left wants to do, but they have a scarce time in their life and have scarce political capital. They're like, why would I defend Google? Why would I use my capital for that?”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the employee base views and the contributions, the political contributions of these companies. So they're not very excited about defending from the left the regulation. I mean, I talk to my friends all the time on the right”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Peter on the board. They're pretty careful. They listen to Joel Kaplan, who's getting a lot of coverage. I think Google's a lot less careful. About their perception of Washington. And there's an interesting problem that these tech companies, the major tech companies, particularly Facebook and Google, to some extent Amazon may have, which is the left wants to regulate tech companies because the left doesn't like accumulated power, traditional left view. And the right who should be the natural defender of not using the government and regulation to interfere in private businesses actually feels that these companies are monocultures of liberalism and doesn't really want to lift a finger to defend these companies that are sort of left-wing institutions. So the tech companies kind of have this fundamental problem, which is their natural ideological defenders don't really like the culture.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think Facebook is generally played some of their political cards pretty well. They're pretty deaf about using their connections through Peter.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so show me a study in some way that there was more confusion, more misrepresentation, more misunderstandings than at any time in any other election. But I actually think that's impossible to prove. I mean, because it's actually factually wrong. Like the average American was pretty manipulated by a lot of media. And actually, it wasn't that well educated. I mean, until like 1960, 70s, 80s, even the idea of going to college was the sort of the preserve of the elite. Now everybody debates whether everybody should go to college for free.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but there were, I actually would argue that in 2016, the average voter knew more about society and life than in any time in American history. If you think about how much the average American do in 1906.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not really, but here's why the one study I've been waiting for someone to show me is a survey of some type, and you can debate the methodology that put aside the exact methodology for a second, that the voters in 2016 Some net way were less informed.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it's Classic American history. That's the reason why we teach American history is not just for obscure facts. It's so that the debates and principles can apply to today's world. Don't see why there should be a rule that says you have to publish under your own name I think if you buy ads, there's a legitimate paradigm that's been established that only some people can buy ads.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, one of the rules around publishing a book this country was founded on anonymous or pseudonymous pamphlets. So if you could call”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was not wary enough about the agenda of certain other countries, Russia particularly, but also you can argue China. And then tech companies in some ways were following the lead of their government. I mean, Obama famously ridiculed Mitt Romney for calling out Russia as a potential threat. Right. And so why Facebook should be more prescient than Obama about the threat of Russia to me makes no sense? I think Obama was wrong”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think influencing elections is something every government in history has tried to do. Right. So I think the biggest issue was the American government.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But look at the difference. Say, it was interesting, the sort of pushback of Alice Walker at The New York Times, just even mentioning a book, and The New York Times responding versus Facebook and being used by the, you know, without explaining that these are Russians that are trying to influence the election. You know what I mean? Until lately, that wasn't the case.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know, but I'm just saying, it puts them in. But if I publish a book, I can buy ads for the book. I can run an ad in the New York Times for my book.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I understand that advertising wasn't quite. Yeah, the advertising was a small component. It's the content. But the content, like if those people are allowed to publish a book in the United States, why can't they share the content on Facebook?”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then you should absolutely be able to buy the same out of Facebook. So I think they were negligent in some of that. Now, that said, a lot of the complaints, because the total expense, was around.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's talk about that. So there are some laws that apply to purchase the purchase of ads by foreign entities that have been the law of the United States for a while. And Facebook, like any other media, should observe those laws. So if you can't buy a TV ad, if you're a Russian entity, you shouldn't be allowed to buy an ad on Facebook. It should be consistent across channels. But if you can buy a TV ad.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All humans, and certainly all Americans, they really shouldn't be censoring content unless it's libelless, obscene. That's about it pornographic. Yeah, maybe directly inciting violence, which is the standard from the Supreme Court in 1969.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think their communication strategy has been intellectually bankrupt. I think they've been incredibly defensive. They should be framing some of these debates instead of waiting for the expose and then reacting to it. I think they've struggled with Whether they really want to embrace a sense or ship role or not, which is a complicated topic, I think, for example, if you take their mission seriously, which is to serve”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. It's a reasonable fraction of stuff I may click through. But fundamentally, my go-to constellation is Twitter.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I actually don't think Facebook has nearly as much impact as people think. Like, for example, Google's pretty influential. It's hard to live without Google. I don't find it hard to live without Facebook. It doesn't perform a utilitarian function for me. Twitter does perform a utilitarian function. It's like my newspaper. It's like my New York Times when I was growing up on Sundays. I would sit at my table, have a bagel and consume the New York Times. Now I wake up in the morning. I don't have a bagel anymore, but I have eggs instead. But I also read Twitter all morning. And then I click through on the links that are interesting.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's fair, but compared to what? I mean, again, the printing, as Tyler Cowan has written. I don't know any criticism of Facebook that wouldn't have been written about the printing press. When the printing press first was there was. Yes, but the printing press was obviously one of the most important things in the history of the human race. And it created revolutions like before religious sects could control the dissemination of ideas and after the printing press, they couldn't. And so there were lots of new religions and they created revolutions. That's exactly what social platforms are doing. They're creating revolutions. But the printing press was clearly a press.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lack of gate meaning, what about you've got it, Keith? You can't utterly dismiss some of their sloppy management at Facebook over and over again. There's instances of not being gatekeepers being problematic.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The media cannot stop ideas from spreading anymore. And I think that frustrates a lot of people in the media. And they kind of want to put the genie back in the bottle. And you see that in a lot of the coverage. It's either explicit or implicit. But Naval was the first one was the first one to really point this out in a blog post he wrote in 2012, I believe, he basically predicted this whole trend that the media would push back on the lack of gatekeeping that they've historically performed.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The media had massive gatekeeping obligations. And impact. So if CBS News didn't want to cover your story. There really wasn't a way to communicate directly with the American people. Or, you know, even when I started in Silicon Valley in 2000. Basically, if the New York Times Wall Street Journal, Faust Company, Wired, or maybe one or two other publications wouldn't write about you, there was nothing you could do. That's changed with the proliferation of Twitter or Reddit, Facebook. There's so many channels to communicate your ideas that the role of the media has been eviscerated.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's jealousy truthfully. I actually think a lot of journalists are jealous of tech. They have colleagues that have comparable people that went to school with them at Harvard, Yale, et cetera, that went into tech companies that are same age on that and make a lot more money. Secondly, the biggest issue is gatekeeping. It's the removal of the gatekeeper role. So when I was growing up, which isn't that long ago”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they can complain about, you can target on this way or that way, and they find nefarious examples of such, allegedly. I would posit that anything you've seen on Facebook in terms of targeted ads can be done on steroids, i.e. more targeted with more data that's more personally sensitive using Direct Mail. And Direct Mail has been around, at least since the 1940s. But I don't read the New York Times writing expos ⁇ s on direct mail.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, which I think in some sense is also a little unfair. I think some things Facebook has done are unique to Facebook, and that's a legitimate topic to discuss and criticize. I think a lot of things Facebook has done are actually things other technology companies or other non-technology companies have done. And the media has been fairly inconsistent in singling out Facebook. So, for example, let's take a classic example. People talk about using certain data to target ads on Facebook.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not just centuries, but like eons. And so to me, like when you talk about an ethical debate, the question is, are we doing things better than we used to, better than other humans, better than 100 years ago, better than a thousand years ago? And the answer to most of those questions is yes, yes, and yes. And so yes, people can improve. Yes, Silicon Valley can improve. But if you compare it on any benchmark and yardstick to humans in history, it's usually pretty damn good. So we can talk about this very specifically on any of these topics, but I don't start with the premise that Silicon Valley should be so bulletproof and so perfect or it's fair to criticize Silicon Valley.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, on stage. And as he was talking, it occurred to me that basically what was happening was the technology companies were becoming so important that they were really more like the Navy. And when you're the Navy, you have to act like the Navy. You can't act like the pirate anymore. And that transformation probably lagged a bit, especially at some companies like Uber, but maybe even across Silicon Valley. To me, humans are humans. Like if you read Shakespeare, there's nothing that's happening in Silicon Valley that you can't find in Shakespeare because human have always been humans. Or if you read sapiens, you get a feel for this too, going back, you know.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, but it's actually quite relevant, which is, I mean, I actually think I coined this in terms of the change. I did an interview with Travis about five years ago.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's fair. I mean, people come to Silicon Valley. No, but people do come to Silicon Valley with a mission, and mission is to improve some element of society that's probably broken or inaccessible. And I think that's what's powered the best companies in the history of Silicon Valley forever. So I believe that that's true, and that's the missionary zeal. It's a bit like the old Steve Jobs quote of the pirates.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm like working here to Factory. It's one of the reasons why I escaped exactly. All right. So we talk about innovations going, but how do you assess this here? Let's talk about some of the ethical issues, like with Facebook and with Khashoggi and the investment by the Saudis. Do you think that this group of people is equipped with all these exciting things that are ahead to deal with it? How do you assess sort of the ethical health of Silicon Valley right now?”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, they are more than people realize. I think this is the thesis at Koslow that we've had for a while Kosovo Ventures, we've been funding replacing human judgment with AI, not the manual labor. But those jobs that allegedly entail human judgment are a lot more like manufacturing than people realize. I mean, I was a lawyer. A lot of what lawyers do is working here at a factory. It's one of the reasons why I escaped. Right, right.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. And then more people will be able to consume it. Diagnostics. There's all kinds of things that are higher level jobs that are seen. But there's still, to me, they're like manufacturing. They're like working in a factory, some of these things.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they use AI to draft the patent filings with some human labor, but the customers delighted because instead of going to a patent firm and paying an exorbitant cost patent filing and waiting three to four weeks, we can do it in one to two weeks for a third of the cost”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Components under the hood that are powered by AI, but the product looks like a normal product just costs a lot less and works a lot faster. So, for example, on a Y Combinator, we funded a company that does patent filings by AI.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's no reason you couldn't replace a lot of what lawyers do with AI. So I actually want to fund some people doing that. I'm looking into various ways to do that. But I don't know the end purchaser of the legal services needs to know whether it was a human or a machine creating the brief. Right. But I want a brief that's not drafted by a human or that the ratio of drafting of a human to computer is 99 to 1 or something or one to 99. So I think there's going to be a lot of technology.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everybody talks about AI, right? So that's the other topic, you know, the hyped up topic. The way I think about AI is maybe a little bit different, which is I actually believe in AI and I believe there's a lot of innovation that's already happened and still accelerating. However, to me, the end goal is that the customer, the normal person on the street, doesn't even know that the technology is powered by AI. So for example, I was a lawyer.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Non autonomous cars take up, like just look at the parking implications. I've read studies that between 20 and 40 percent of real estate in a city can be allocated to parking. That's like crazy. Think about how much housing you can build or what else you could do with that real estate if you didn't need as many parking spots. Right.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was interesting years ago, if you remember when Larry and Sergei from Google were going to put ski lifts in San Francisco. Do you remember that crazy scheme? At the time, I was like, that's actually the way we're going to get around. We're not going to have cars. We're going to get around by these whatever they are, vertical lift and takeoff. Ski loops were fine. I was always like, this is actually how it has to be in cities. Cars have to leave cities.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I actually funded one company that's still a quasi-stealth mode, so I won't talk too much about it, but that's reinventing the idea of a city and predicated on the idea that transportation is completely archaic and is really built on the 18th century or 19th century. And we'll have something live later, maybe this year even.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's interesting. Whenever I gave a speech two years ago and I said, someday owning a car is like owning a horse. You'll have it at your ranch and you'll drive it around. It'll be an entertainment versus a real transportation. I agree with that.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, gas was absolutely more dangerous once the technology electricity got to a certain predictability. That's why nobody uses gas anymore for most things. So I absolutely really reject the idea that new technology should be perfect, that that's not the milestone. The milestone is it better than what we do every day. And if that's the case, then autonomous driving is going to happen sooner rather than later. I don't think humans will stop driving for a while. But there's probably a point even in my lifetime where humans are not allowed to drive.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, all the time. And you can read a great book, Historical Fiction by Graham Moore, about Tesla versus Edison and Westinghouse. It was an awesome part of American history. But if the framework had been, is electricity. Perfectly safe, we never would have had electric lights. And so I think what technology”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I actually think it's sooner rather than later. One of the reasons why Humans are just not very good at this. And so if your baseline, it depends a little bit, and we'll talk about this vis-a-vis other policy issues, but it depends whether your baseline is. Absolute perfection, or your baseline is how many humans die every day. And to me, if the technology is better than human driving and people die less frequently, we should deploy it as fast as possible, where some people would say, well, you have to prove it's perfect. And the same, we had this debate, if you like, to read old school history around electricity. Electricity at first was a fairly dangerous technology.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that's it right machine. It's almost surely doable. The questions are really what's the cost going to be? What are the trade-offs in terms of sound and noise disruption? It's a little bit like the Concorde was built on technology really from the 1950s to 60s. And no one's really rethought the Concord. Since then. It's a disaster, right? Well, it wasn't. It's fairly advanced for the 1970s. It just wasn't perfect for the 80s, 90s, and let alone the 2000s. And so really 40, 50 year old technology, which is an eternity in the tech world. So I think there's going to be some innovation there, but we haven't funded any yet. We have funded autonomous driving startups and the kind of sensors and core technology components that would be very critical in deploying driverless or autonomous.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT