Jack Dorsey: Square, Cryptocurrency, and Artificial Intelligence
心理与人性技术与编程AI 与机器学习音乐与艺术历史与文明
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🔑 关键词
ablegoingdondoinglearningintelligenceartificialpodcastcurrencysquaremeaningfocusmoneymachinesystemscreditidentityscaleperspectivedata
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🎙️ 完整对话（1040 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
The following is a conversation with Jack Dorsey,
以下是与杰克·多尔西的对话，
Lex Fridman (00:02.520)
co founder and CEO of Twitter
Twitter 联合创始人兼首席执行官
Lex Fridman (00:05.160)
and founder and CEO of Square.
Square 的创始人兼首席执行官。
Lex Fridman (00:08.760)
Given the happenings at the time related to Twitter leadership
鉴于当时发生的与 Twitter 领导层相关的事件
Lex Fridman (00:12.240)
and the very limited time we had,
而且我们的时间非常有限，
Jack Dorsey (00:13.960)
we decided to focus this conversation on Square
我们决定将这次对话的重点放在 Square
Lex Fridman (00:16.680)
and some broader philosophical topics
以及一些更广泛的哲学话题
Lex Fridman (00:18.880)
and to save an in depth conversation
并保存深入的对话
Lex Fridman (00:20.840)
on engineering and AI at Twitter
Twitter 上的工程和人工智能
Jack Dorsey (00:23.080)
for a second appearance in this podcast.
第二次出现在这个播客中。
Lex Fridman (00:25.840)
This conversation was recorded
这段对话被录音
Jack Dorsey (00:27.320)
before the outbreak of the pandemic.
疫情爆发之前。
Lex Fridman (00:29.480)
For everyone feeling the medical, psychological
对于每个感受到医学、心理
Lex Fridman (00:31.880)
and financial burden of this crisis,
以及这场危机的财务负担，
Lex Fridman (00:33.840)
I'm sending love your way.
我正在用你的方式传递爱。
Jack Dorsey (00:35.520)
Stay strong.
坚强点。
Lex Fridman (00:36.560)
We're in this together.
我们在一起。
Jack Dorsey (00:37.720)
We'll beat this thing.
我们会打败这件事。
Lex Fridman (00:39.840)
As an aside, let me mention
顺便说一句，我要提一下
Jack Dorsey (00:41.480)
that Jack moved $1 billion of Square equity,
杰克转移了 10 亿美元的 Square 股权，
Lex Fridman (00:45.280)
which is 28% of his wealth
Jack Dorsey (00:47.560)
to form an organization that funds COVID 19 relief.
Lex Fridman (00:51.440)
First, as Andrew Yang tweeted,
Jack Dorsey (00:53.840)
this is a spectacular commitment.
Lex Fridman (00:56.280)
And second, it is amazing that it operates transparently
Jack Dorsey (00:59.600)
by posting all its donations to a single Google doc.
Lex Fridman (01:03.360)
To me, true transparency is simple.
Lex Fridman (01:06.160)
And this is as simple as it gets.
Lex Fridman (01:09.360)
This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast.
Jack Dorsey (01:11.840)
If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube,
Lex Fridman (01:13.720)
review it with five stars on Apple Podcast,
Jack Dorsey (01:15.960)
support it on Patreon
Lex Fridman (01:17.080)
or simply connect with me on Twitter
Jack Dorsey (01:18.960)
at Lex Friedman spelled F R I D M A N.
Lex Fridman (01:22.240)
As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now
Lex Fridman (01:24.640)
and never any ads in the middle
Lex Fridman (01:26.080)
that can break the flow of the conversation.
Jack Dorsey (01:28.200)
I hope that works for you
Lex Fridman (01:29.480)
and doesn't hurt the listening experience.
Jack Dorsey (01:32.160)
This show is presented by Masterclass.
Lex Fridman (01:34.800)
Sign up on masterclass.com slash Lex
Jack Dorsey (01:37.880)
to get a discount and to support this podcast.
Lex Fridman (01:40.840)
When I first heard about Masterclass,
Jack Dorsey (01:42.440)
I thought it was too good to be true.
Lex Fridman (01:44.360)
For $180 a year,
Jack Dorsey (01:46.520)
you get an all access pass to watch courses from,
Lex Fridman (01:49.600)
to list some of my favorites,
Jack Dorsey (01:51.360)
Chris Hadfield on space exploration,
Lex Fridman (01:53.680)
Neil deGrasse Tyson on scientific thinking
Lex Fridman (01:55.800)
and communication,
Lex Fridman (01:57.000)
Will Wright, creator of SimCity and Sims,
Jack Dorsey (02:00.000)
both one of my favorite games on game design,
Lex Fridman (02:03.160)
Jane Goodall on conservation,
Jack Dorsey (02:05.520)
Carlos Santana on guitar,
Lex Fridman (02:07.200)
one of my favorite guitar players,
Jack Dorsey (02:08.960)
Gary Kasparov on chess,
Lex Fridman (02:10.760)
Daniel Nagrano on poker and many, many more.
Jack Dorsey (02:13.960)
Chris Hadfield explaining how rockets work
Lex Fridman (02:17.040)
and the experience of being launched into space alone
Jack Dorsey (02:19.520)
is worth the money.
Lex Fridman (02:20.840)
For me, the key is to not be overwhelmed
Jack Dorsey (02:22.640)
by the abundance of choice.
Lex Fridman (02:24.280)
Pick three courses you want to complete,
Jack Dorsey (02:26.400)
watch each all the way through.
Lex Fridman (02:28.240)
It's not that long,
Lex Fridman (02:29.440)
but it's an experience that will stick with you
Lex Fridman (02:31.120)
for a long time.
Jack Dorsey (02:32.880)
It's easily worth the money.
Lex Fridman (02:34.640)
You can watch it on basically any device.
Jack Dorsey (02:37.280)
Once again, sign up on masterclass.com slash Lex
Lex Fridman (02:41.040)
to get a discount and to support this podcast.
Lex Fridman (02:44.440)
And now, here's my conversation with Jack Dorsey.
Lex Fridman (02:48.840)
You've been on several podcasts,
Jack Dorsey (02:50.720)
Joe Rogan, Sam Harris, Rach Roll, others,
Lex Fridman (02:53.520)
excellent conversations,
Lex Fridman (02:55.280)
but I think there's several topics
Lex Fridman (02:57.520)
that you didn't talk about that I think are fascinating
Jack Dorsey (03:00.040)
that I'd love to talk to you about,
Lex Fridman (03:01.780)
sort of machine learning, artificial intelligence,
Jack Dorsey (03:04.160)
both the narrow kind and the general kind
Lex Fridman (03:06.280)
and engineering at scale.
Lex Fridman (03:08.560)
So there's a lot of incredible engineering going on
Lex Fridman (03:11.240)
that you're a part of,
Jack Dorsey (03:12.400)
crypto, cryptocurrency, blockchain, UBI,
Lex Fridman (03:16.240)
all kinds of philosophical questions maybe we'll get to
Jack Dorsey (03:18.640)
about life and death and meaning and beauty.
Lex Fridman (03:21.660)
So you're involved in building some of
Jack Dorsey (03:25.480)
the biggest network systems in the world,
Lex Fridman (03:27.800)
sort of trillions of interactions a day.
Jack Dorsey (03:30.840)
The cool thing about that is the infrastructure,
Lex Fridman (03:33.160)
the engineering at scale.
Jack Dorsey (03:35.080)
You started as a programmer with C building.
Lex Fridman (03:38.600)
Yeah, so.
Jack Dorsey (03:39.420)
I'm a hacker, I'm not really an engineer.
Lex Fridman (03:41.080)
Not a legit software engineer,
Jack Dorsey (03:43.000)
you're a hacker at heart.
Lex Fridman (03:44.360)
But to achieve scale, you have to do some,
Jack Dorsey (03:47.280)
unfortunately, legit large scale engineering.
Lex Fridman (03:49.920)
So how do you make that magic happen?
Jack Dorsey (03:52.800)
Hire people that I can learn from, number one.
Lex Fridman (03:57.540)
I mean, I'm a hacker in the sense that I,
Jack Dorsey (04:00.280)
my approach has always been do whatever it takes
Lex Fridman (04:02.340)
to make it work.
Lex Fridman (04:04.600)
So that I can see and feel the thing
Lex Fridman (04:07.640)
and then learn what needs to come next.
Lex Fridman (04:09.540)
And oftentimes what needs to come next is
Lex Fridman (04:13.260)
a matter of being able to bring it to more people,
Jack Dorsey (04:16.260)
which is scale.
Lex Fridman (04:17.520)
And there's a lot of great people out there
Jack Dorsey (04:21.960)
that either have experience or are extremely fast learners
Lex Fridman (04:27.760)
that we've been lucky enough to find
Lex Fridman (04:30.200)
and work with for years.
Lex Fridman (04:33.680)
But I think a lot of it,
Jack Dorsey (04:35.440)
we benefit a ton from the open source community
Lex Fridman (04:39.560)
and just all the learnings there
Jack Dorsey (04:41.460)
that are laid bare in the open.
Lex Fridman (04:44.480)
All the mistakes, all the success,
Jack Dorsey (04:46.480)
all the problems.
Lex Fridman (04:48.640)
It's a very slow moving process usually open source,
Lex Fridman (04:53.420)
but it's very deliberate.
Lex Fridman (04:54.600)
And you get to see because of the pace,
Jack Dorsey (04:58.520)
you get to see what it takes
Lex Fridman (05:00.280)
to really build something meaningful.
Lex Fridman (05:02.600)
So I learned most of everything I learned about hacking
Lex Fridman (05:06.680)
and programming and engineering has been due to open source
Lex Fridman (05:11.000)
and the generosity that people have given
Lex Fridman (05:19.720)
to give up their time, sacrifice their time
Jack Dorsey (05:21.640)
without any expectation in return,
Lex Fridman (05:24.440)
other than being a part of something
Jack Dorsey (05:27.320)
much larger than themselves, which I think is great.
Lex Fridman (05:29.800)
Open source movement is amazing.
Lex Fridman (05:31.400)
But if you just look at the scale,
Lex Fridman (05:33.520)
like Square has to take care of,
Jack Dorsey (05:35.660)
is this fundamentally a software problem
Lex Fridman (05:38.720)
or a hardware problem?
Jack Dorsey (05:39.760)
You mentioned hiring a bunch of people,
Lex Fridman (05:41.900)
but it's not, maybe from my perspective,
Jack Dorsey (05:45.880)
not often talked about how incredible that is
Lex Fridman (05:48.920)
to sort of have a system that doesn't go down often,
Jack Dorsey (05:52.160)
that is secure, is able to take care
Lex Fridman (05:54.500)
of all these transactions.
Jack Dorsey (05:55.960)
Like maybe I'm also a hacker at heart
Lex Fridman (05:58.800)
and it's incredible to me that that kind of scale
Jack Dorsey (06:01.100)
could be achieved.
Lex Fridman (06:02.200)
Is there some insight, some lessons,
Jack Dorsey (06:06.380)
some interesting tidbits that you can say
Lex Fridman (06:10.080)
how to make that scale happen?
Lex Fridman (06:12.280)
Is it the hardware fundamentally challenge?
Lex Fridman (06:14.240)
Is it a software challenge?
Jack Dorsey (06:19.200)
Is it a social challenge of building large teams
Lex Fridman (06:23.800)
of engineers that work together, that kind of thing?
Lex Fridman (06:25.520)
Like what's the interesting challenges there?
Lex Fridman (06:28.560)
By the way, you're the best dressed hacker I've met.
Jack Dorsey (06:31.040)
I think the. Thank you.
Lex Fridman (06:34.120)
If the enumeration you just went through,
Jack Dorsey (06:36.000)
I don't think there's one.
Lex Fridman (06:37.360)
You have to kind of focus on all
Lex Fridman (06:39.760)
and the ability to focus on all that
Lex Fridman (06:43.120)
really comes down to how you face problems
Lex Fridman (06:47.040)
and whether you can break them down into parts
Lex Fridman (06:51.000)
that you can focus on.
Jack Dorsey (06:53.600)
Because I think the biggest mistake is trying to solve
Lex Fridman (06:58.200)
or address too many at once
Jack Dorsey (07:02.300)
or not going deep enough with the questions
Lex Fridman (07:05.200)
or not being critical of the answers you find
Jack Dorsey (07:08.660)
or not taking the time to form credible hypotheses
Lex Fridman (07:15.720)
that you can actually test and you can see the results of.
Lex Fridman (07:19.480)
So all of those fall in the face of ultimately
Lex Fridman (07:25.520)
critical thinking skills, problem solving skills.
Lex Fridman (07:27.880)
And if there's one skill I want to improve every day,
Lex Fridman (07:30.720)
it's that that's what contributes to the learning
Lex Fridman (07:34.960)
and the only way we can evolve any of these things
Lex Fridman (07:38.800)
is learning what it's currently doing
Lex Fridman (07:41.440)
and how to take it to the next step.
Lex Fridman (07:44.320)
And questioning assumptions,
Jack Dorsey (07:45.540)
the first principles kind of thinking,
Lex Fridman (07:47.200)
seems like a fundamental to this whole process.
Jack Dorsey (07:50.640)
Yeah, but if you get too overextended into,
Lex Fridman (07:53.260)
well, this is a hardware issue,
Jack Dorsey (07:54.960)
you miss all the software solutions.
Lex Fridman (07:56.940)
And vice versa, if you focus too much on the software,
Jack Dorsey (08:01.940)
there are hardware solutions that can 10X the thing.
Lex Fridman (08:06.700)
So I try to resist the categories of thinking
Lex Fridman (08:13.420)
and look for the underlying systems
Lex Fridman (08:16.080)
that make all these things work.
Lex Fridman (08:18.100)
But those only emerge when you have a skill
Lex Fridman (08:22.540)
around creative thinking, problem solving,
Lex Fridman (08:27.180)
and being able to ask critical questions
Lex Fridman (08:33.620)
and having the patience to go deep.
Lex Fridman (08:36.420)
So one of the amazing things,
Lex Fridman (08:38.460)
if we look at the mission of Square,
Jack Dorsey (08:40.580)
is to increase people's access to the economy.
Lex Fridman (08:45.020)
Maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong,
Jack Dorsey (08:46.840)
that's from my perspective.
Lex Fridman (08:47.900)
So from the perspective of merchants,
Jack Dorsey (08:49.560)
peer to peer payments, even crypto, cryptocurrency,
Lex Fridman (08:52.780)
digital cryptocurrency, what do you see as the major ways
Lex Fridman (08:56.140)
that our society can increase participation in the economy?
Lex Fridman (08:59.460)
So if we look at today and the next 10 years,
Jack Dorsey (09:01.420)
next 20 years, you go into Africa, maybe in Africa
Lex Fridman (09:04.380)
and all kinds of other places outside of the North America.
Jack Dorsey (09:09.380)
If there was one word that I think represents
Lex Fridman (09:13.980)
what we're trying to do at Square, it is that word access.
Jack Dorsey (09:19.100)
One of the things we found is that
Lex Fridman (09:21.820)
we weren't expecting this at all.
Jack Dorsey (09:23.500)
When we started, we thought we were just building
Lex Fridman (09:25.300)
a piece of hardware to enable people
Jack Dorsey (09:29.140)
to plug it into their phone and swipe a credit card.
Lex Fridman (09:32.100)
And then as we talked with people
Jack Dorsey (09:34.420)
who actually tried to accept credit cards in the past,
Lex Fridman (09:37.660)
we found a consistent theme, which many of them
Jack Dorsey (09:40.460)
weren't even enabled, not enabled,
Lex Fridman (09:44.100)
but allowed to process credit cards.
Lex Fridman (09:46.580)
And we dug a little bit deeper, again, asking that question.
Lex Fridman (09:50.580)
And we found that a lot of them would go to banks
Jack Dorsey (09:54.300)
or these merchant acquirers.
Lex Fridman (09:57.260)
And waiting for them was a credit check
Lex Fridman (10:01.000)
and looking at a FICA score.
Lex Fridman (10:03.220)
And many of the businesses that we talked to
Lex Fridman (10:07.700)
and many small businesses,
Lex Fridman (10:09.580)
they don't have good credit or a credit history.
Jack Dorsey (10:15.220)
They're entrepreneurs who are just getting started,
Lex Fridman (10:17.780)
taking a lot of personal risk, financial risk.
Lex Fridman (10:21.300)
And it just felt ridiculous to us
Lex Fridman (10:24.060)
that for the job of being able to accept money from people,
Jack Dorsey (10:31.980)
you had to get your credit checked.
Lex Fridman (10:33.700)
And as we dug deeper, we realized that
Jack Dorsey (10:36.500)
that wasn't the intention of the financial industry,
Lex Fridman (10:38.540)
but it's the only tool they had available to them
Jack Dorsey (10:42.220)
to understand authenticity, intent,
Lex Fridman (10:46.400)
predictor of future behavior.
Lex Fridman (10:49.140)
So that's the first thing we actually looked at.
Lex Fridman (10:50.820)
And that's where the, you know, we built the hardware,
Lex Fridman (10:52.620)
but the software really came in terms of risk modeling.
Lex Fridman (10:57.460)
And that's when we started down the path
Jack Dorsey (11:00.700)
that eventually leads to AI.
Lex Fridman (11:03.040)
We started with a very strong data science discipline
Jack Dorsey (11:08.580)
because we knew that our business
Lex Fridman (11:10.260)
was not necessarily about making hardware.
Jack Dorsey (11:13.860)
It was more about enabling more people
Lex Fridman (11:17.080)
to come into the system.
Lex Fridman (11:18.620)
So the fundamental challenge there is,
Lex Fridman (11:21.220)
so to enable more people to come into the system,
Jack Dorsey (11:23.420)
you have to lower the barrier of checking
Lex Fridman (11:26.780)
that that person will be a legitimate vendor.
Lex Fridman (11:30.500)
Is that the fundamental problem?
Lex Fridman (11:31.740)
Yeah, and a different mindset.
Jack Dorsey (11:33.980)
I think a lot of the financial industry had a mindset
Lex Fridman (11:36.340)
of kind of distrust and just constantly looking
Jack Dorsey (11:41.340)
for opportunities to prove why people shouldn't get
Lex Fridman (11:46.340)
into the system, whereas we took on a mindset of trust
Lex Fridman (11:50.340)
and then verify, verify, verify, verify, verify.
Lex Fridman (11:52.980)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (11:53.820)
So we moved, you know, when we entered the space,
Lex Fridman (12:00.100)
only about 30 to 40% of the people who applied
Jack Dorsey (12:03.260)
to accept credit cards would actually get through the system.
Lex Fridman (12:05.860)
We took that knowledge, we took it to the next level.
Jack Dorsey (12:08.700)
If we applied to accept credit cards,
Lex Fridman (12:11.540)
we'd actually get through the system.
Jack Dorsey (12:13.180)
We took that number to 99%.
Lex Fridman (12:15.620)
And that's because we reframed the problem,
Jack Dorsey (12:19.100)
we built credible models, and we had this mindset of,
Lex Fridman (12:25.540)
we're going to watch not at the merchant level,
Lex Fridman (12:28.420)
but we're gonna watch at the transaction level.
Lex Fridman (12:30.740)
So come in, perform some transactions,
Lex Fridman (12:35.020)
and as long as you're doing things
Lex Fridman (12:36.620)
with integrity, credible, and don't look suspicious,
Jack Dorsey (12:40.460)
we'll continue to serve you.
Lex Fridman (12:43.300)
If we see any interestingness in how you use our system,
Jack Dorsey (12:47.620)
that will be bubbled up to people to review,
Lex Fridman (12:50.780)
to figure out if there's something nefarious going on,
Lex Fridman (12:53.460)
and that's when we might ask you to leave.
Lex Fridman (12:56.020)
So the change in the mindset led to the technology
Jack Dorsey (13:01.020)
that we needed to enable more people to get through,
Lex Fridman (13:06.460)
and to enable more people to access the system.
Lex Fridman (13:08.900)
What role does machine learning play into that,
Lex Fridman (13:11.780)
in that context of, you said,
Jack Dorsey (13:15.340)
first of all, it's a beautiful shift.
Lex Fridman (13:17.580)
Anytime you shift your viewpoint into seeing
Jack Dorsey (13:20.500)
that people are fundamentally good,
Lex Fridman (13:24.020)
and then you just have to verify
Lex Fridman (13:25.860)
and catch the ones who are not,
Lex Fridman (13:27.660)
as opposed to assuming everybody's bad,
Jack Dorsey (13:30.300)
this is a beautiful thing.
Lex Fridman (13:31.580)
So what role does the, to you,
Jack Dorsey (13:35.940)
throughout the history of the company,
Lex Fridman (13:37.300)
has machine learning played in doing that verification?
Jack Dorsey (13:40.500)
It was immediate.
Lex Fridman (13:41.820)
I mean, we weren't calling it machine learning,
Lex Fridman (13:43.420)
but it was data science.
Lex Fridman (13:45.260)
And then as the industry evolved,
Jack Dorsey (13:47.600)
machine learning became more of the nomenclature,
Lex Fridman (13:50.020)
and as that evolved, it became more sophisticated
Jack Dorsey (13:54.820)
with deep learning, and as that continues to evolve,
Lex Fridman (13:58.740)
it'll be another thing.
Lex Fridman (13:59.940)
But they're all in the same vein.
Lex Fridman (14:02.180)
But we built that discipline up
Jack Dorsey (14:04.420)
within the first year of the company,
Lex Fridman (14:06.940)
because we also had, we had to partner with a bank,
Jack Dorsey (14:11.940)
we had to partner with Visa and MasterCard,
Lex Fridman (14:14.340)
and we had to show that,
Jack Dorsey (14:16.160)
by bringing more people into the system,
Lex Fridman (14:19.260)
that we could do so in a responsible way,
Jack Dorsey (14:21.460)
that would not compromise their systems,
Lex Fridman (14:23.700)
and that they would trust us.
Lex Fridman (14:25.260)
How do you convince this upstart company
Lex Fridman (14:27.820)
with some cool machine learning tricks
Lex Fridman (14:30.620)
is able to deliver on this trustworthy set of merchants?
Lex Fridman (14:35.700)
We staged it out in tiers.
Jack Dorsey (14:37.900)
We had a bucket of 500 people using it,
Lex Fridman (14:41.300)
and then we showed results,
Lex Fridman (14:43.040)
and then 1,000, and then 10,000, then 50,000,
Lex Fridman (14:45.700)
and then the constraint was lifted.
Lex Fridman (14:49.940)
So again, it's kind of getting something tangible out there.
Lex Fridman (14:54.180)
I want to show what we can do rather than talk about it.
Lex Fridman (14:58.220)
And that put a lot of pressure on us
Lex Fridman (15:00.180)
to do the right things.
Lex Fridman (15:02.900)
And it also created a culture of accountability,
Lex Fridman (15:07.300)
of a little bit more transparency,
Lex Fridman (15:10.760)
and I think incentivized all of our early folks
Lex Fridman (15:15.980)
and the company in the right way.
Lex Fridman (15:18.140)
So what does the future look like
Lex Fridman (15:19.900)
in terms of increasing people's access?
Jack Dorsey (15:21.920)
Or if you look at IoT, Internet of Things,
Lex Fridman (15:25.420)
there's more and more intelligent devices.
Jack Dorsey (15:27.260)
You can see there's some people even talking
Lex Fridman (15:29.620)
about our personal data as a thing
Jack Dorsey (15:32.220)
that we could monetize more explicitly versus implicitly.
Lex Fridman (15:35.940)
Sort of everything can become part of the economy.
Lex Fridman (15:38.460)
Do you see, so what does the future of Square look like
Lex Fridman (15:41.420)
in sort of giving people access in all kinds of ways
Lex Fridman (15:45.620)
to being part of the economy as merchants and as consumers?
Lex Fridman (15:49.240)
I believe that the currency we use
Jack Dorsey (15:52.500)
is a huge part of the answer.
Lex Fridman (15:55.740)
And I believe that the internet deserves
Lex Fridman (15:58.980)
and requires a native currency.
Lex Fridman (16:01.780)
And that's why I'm such a huge believer in Bitcoin
Jack Dorsey (16:07.260)
because it just,
Lex Fridman (16:11.480)
our biggest problem as a company right now
Jack Dorsey (16:13.540)
is we cannot act like an internet company.
Lex Fridman (16:16.380)
Open a new market,
Jack Dorsey (16:17.300)
we have to have a partnership with a local bank.
Lex Fridman (16:20.020)
We have to pay attention
Jack Dorsey (16:21.180)
to different regulatory onboarding environments.
Lex Fridman (16:25.860)
And a digital currency like Bitcoin
Jack Dorsey (16:29.980)
takes a bunch of that away
Lex Fridman (16:31.660)
where we can potentially launch a product
Jack Dorsey (16:35.260)
in every single market around the world
Lex Fridman (16:38.660)
because they're all using the same currency.
Lex Fridman (16:41.180)
And we have consistent understanding of regulation
Lex Fridman (16:46.180)
and onboarding and what that means.
Lex Fridman (16:49.560)
So I think the internet continuing to be accessible
Lex Fridman (16:54.460)
to people is number one.
Lex Fridman (16:57.480)
And then I think currency is number two.
Lex Fridman (17:01.720)
And it will just allow for a lot more innovation,
Jack Dorsey (17:04.320)
a lot more speed in terms of what we can build
Lex Fridman (17:07.800)
and others can build.
Lex Fridman (17:09.160)
And it's just really exciting.
Lex Fridman (17:11.860)
So, I mean, I wanna be able to see that
Lex Fridman (17:13.760)
and feel that in my lifetime.
Lex Fridman (17:16.240)
So in this aspect and in other aspects,
Jack Dorsey (17:19.000)
you have a deep interest in cryptocurrency
Lex Fridman (17:22.040)
and distributed ledger tech in general.
Jack Dorsey (17:24.040)
I talked to Vitalik Buterin yesterday on this podcast.
Lex Fridman (17:27.760)
He says hi, by the way.
Jack Dorsey (17:29.040)
Hey.
Lex Fridman (17:29.880)
He's a brilliant, brilliant person.
Jack Dorsey (17:33.960)
Talked a lot about Bitcoin and Ethereum, of course.
Lex Fridman (17:36.160)
So can you maybe linger on this point?
Lex Fridman (17:38.560)
What do you find appealing about Bitcoin,
Lex Fridman (17:42.400)
about digital currency?
Lex Fridman (17:43.720)
Where do you see it going in the next 10, 20 years?
Lex Fridman (17:46.960)
And what are some of the challenges with respect to Square
Lex Fridman (17:50.740)
but also just bigger for our globally, for our world,
Lex Fridman (17:55.320)
for the way we think about money?
Jack Dorsey (17:59.360)
I think the most beautiful thing about it
Lex Fridman (18:01.560)
is there's no one person setting the direction.
Lex Fridman (18:05.880)
And there's no one person on the other side
Lex Fridman (18:07.760)
that can stop it.
Lex Fridman (18:08.600)
So we have something that is pretty organic in nature
Lex Fridman (18:15.160)
and very principled in its original design.
Lex Fridman (18:19.600)
And I think the Bitcoin white paper
Lex Fridman (18:22.400)
is one of the most seminal works of computer science
Jack Dorsey (18:24.660)
in the last 20, 30 years.
Lex Fridman (18:28.480)
It's poetry.
Jack Dorsey (18:30.020)
I mean, it really is.
Lex Fridman (18:30.860)
Yeah, it's a pretty cool technology.
Jack Dorsey (18:32.180)
That's not often talked about.
Lex Fridman (18:33.640)
There's so much hype around digital currency
Jack Dorsey (18:36.940)
about the financial impacts of it.
Lex Fridman (18:38.580)
But the actual technology is quite beautiful
Jack Dorsey (18:40.520)
from a computer science perspective.
Lex Fridman (18:42.200)
Yeah, and the underlying principles behind it
Jack Dorsey (18:44.320)
that went into it, even to the point
Lex Fridman (18:46.000)
of releasing it under a pseudonym.
Jack Dorsey (18:48.660)
I think that's a very, very powerful statement.
Lex Fridman (18:51.320)
The timing of when it was released is powerful.
Jack Dorsey (18:54.200)
It was a total activist move.
Lex Fridman (18:58.180)
I mean, it's moving the world forward
Jack Dorsey (19:00.560)
in a way that I think is extremely noble and honorable
Lex Fridman (19:05.560)
and enables everyone to be part of the story,
Jack Dorsey (19:08.920)
which is also really cool.
Lex Fridman (19:10.400)
So you asked a question around 10 years and 20 years.
Jack Dorsey (19:13.880)
I mean, I think the amazing thing is no one knows.
Lex Fridman (19:17.840)
And it can emerge.
Lex Fridman (19:19.040)
And every person that comes into the ecosystem,
Lex Fridman (19:22.200)
whether they be a developer or someone who uses it,
Jack Dorsey (19:27.680)
can change its direction in small and large ways.
Lex Fridman (19:31.840)
And that's what I think it should be,
Jack Dorsey (19:33.160)
because that's what the internet has shown is possible.
Lex Fridman (19:36.080)
Now, there's complications with that, of course.
Lex Fridman (19:38.360)
And there's certainly companies that own large parts
Lex Fridman (19:42.480)
of the internet and can direct it more than others.
Lex Fridman (19:44.440)
And there's not equal access
Lex Fridman (19:47.880)
to every single person in the world just yet.
Lex Fridman (19:50.160)
But all those problems are visible enough
Lex Fridman (19:53.320)
to speak about them.
Lex Fridman (19:54.640)
And to me, that gives confidence that they're solvable
Lex Fridman (19:57.560)
in a relatively short timeframe.
Jack Dorsey (20:00.720)
I think the world should be able to do that.
Lex Fridman (20:02.760)
I think the world changes a lot as we get these satellites
Jack Dorsey (20:08.200)
projecting the internet down to earth,
Lex Fridman (20:11.560)
because it just removes a bunch of the former constraints
Lex Fridman (20:15.240)
and really levels the playing field.
Lex Fridman (20:18.280)
But a global currency,
Jack Dorsey (20:20.480)
which a native currency for the internet is a proxy for,
Lex Fridman (20:24.920)
is a very powerful concept.
Lex Fridman (20:27.040)
And I don't think any one person on this planet
Lex Fridman (20:29.080)
truly understands the ramifications of that.
Jack Dorsey (20:31.560)
I think there's a lot of positives to it.
Lex Fridman (20:34.120)
There's some negatives as well.
Jack Dorsey (20:35.880)
But...
Lex Fridman (20:36.720)
Do you think it's possible, sorry to interrupt,
Lex Fridman (20:37.560)
do you think it's possible that this kind of digital currency
Lex Fridman (20:40.840)
would redefine the nature of money,
Lex Fridman (20:43.440)
so become the main currency of the world,
Lex Fridman (20:46.400)
as opposed to being tied to fiat currency
Jack Dorsey (20:49.080)
of different nations and sort of really push
Lex Fridman (20:51.960)
the decentralization of control of money?
Jack Dorsey (20:54.880)
Definitely, but I think the bigger ramification
Lex Fridman (20:58.160)
is how it affects how society works.
Lex Fridman (21:02.280)
And I think there are many positive ramifications
Lex Fridman (21:06.240)
outside of just money.
Jack Dorsey (21:07.600)
Outside of just money.
Lex Fridman (21:08.800)
Money is a foundational layer that enables so much more.
Jack Dorsey (21:12.160)
I was meeting with an entrepreneur in Ethiopia,
Lex Fridman (21:14.920)
and payments is probably the number one problem to solve
Jack Dorsey (21:19.840)
across the continent,
Lex Fridman (21:21.840)
both in terms of moving money across borders
Jack Dorsey (21:24.680)
between nations on the continent,
Lex Fridman (21:26.680)
or the amount of corruption within the current system.
Lex Fridman (21:33.720)
But the lack of easy ways to pay people
Lex Fridman (21:39.280)
makes starting anything really difficult.
Jack Dorsey (21:42.440)
I met an entrepreneur who started the Lyft slash Uber
Lex Fridman (21:47.120)
of Ethiopia, and one of the biggest problems she has
Jack Dorsey (21:49.840)
is that it's not easy for her riders to pay the company,
Lex Fridman (21:54.760)
it's not easy for her to pay the drivers.
Lex Fridman (21:57.800)
And that definitely has stunted her growth
Lex Fridman (22:00.800)
and made everything more challenging.
Lex Fridman (22:02.400)
So the fact that she even has to think about payments
Lex Fridman (22:07.160)
instead of thinking about the best rider experience
Lex Fridman (22:10.280)
and the best driver experience is pretty telling.
Lex Fridman (22:15.080)
So I think as we get a more durable, resilient
Lex Fridman (22:20.080)
and global standard, we see a lot more innovation everywhere.
Lex Fridman (22:26.400)
And I think there's no better case study for this
Jack Dorsey (22:29.080)
than the various countries within Africa
Lex Fridman (22:32.080)
and their entrepreneurs who are trying to start things
Jack Dorsey (22:35.080)
within health or sustainability or transportation
Lex Fridman (22:38.800)
or a lot of the companies that we've seen here.
Lex Fridman (22:42.520)
So the majority of companies I met in November
Lex Fridman (22:47.280)
when I spent a month on the continent were payments oriented.
Jack Dorsey (22:52.400)
You mentioned, and this is a small tangent,
Lex Fridman (22:54.280)
you mentioned the anonymous launch of Bitcoin
Jack Dorsey (22:58.320)
is a sort of profound philosophical statement.
Lex Fridman (23:00.720)
Pseudonymous.
Lex Fridman (23:02.040)
What's that even mean?
Lex Fridman (23:03.640)
There's a pseudonym.
Jack Dorsey (23:04.480)
First of all, let me ask.
Lex Fridman (23:05.320)
There's an identity tied to it.
Jack Dorsey (23:06.480)
It's not just anonymous, it's Nakamoto.
Lex Fridman (23:10.080)
So Nakamoto might represent one person or multiple people.
Lex Fridman (23:13.440)
But let me ask, are you Satoshi Nakamoto?
Lex Fridman (23:15.840)
Just checking, catch you off guard.
Lex Fridman (23:17.520)
And if I were, would I tell you?
Lex Fridman (23:18.520)
Yeah, that's true.
Jack Dorsey (23:19.640)
Maybe you slip.
Lex Fridman (23:21.120)
A pseudonym is constructed identity.
Jack Dorsey (23:25.120)
Anonymity is just kind of this random,
Lex Fridman (23:28.040)
like drop something off and leave.
Jack Dorsey (23:32.080)
There's no intention to build an identity around it.
Lex Fridman (23:34.480)
And while the identity being built was a short time window,
Jack Dorsey (23:39.480)
it was meant to stick around, I think, and to be known.
Lex Fridman (23:44.840)
And it's being honored in how the community
Jack Dorsey (23:50.040)
thinks about building it,
Lex Fridman (23:50.880)
like the concept of Satoshi's, for instance,
Jack Dorsey (23:55.400)
is one such example.
Lex Fridman (23:56.920)
But I think it was smart not to do it anonymous,
Jack Dorsey (24:01.400)
not to do it as a real identity,
Lex Fridman (24:03.760)
but to do it as pseudonym,
Jack Dorsey (24:05.120)
because I think it builds tangibility
Lex Fridman (24:07.600)
and a little bit of empathy that this was a human
Jack Dorsey (24:13.400)
or a set of humans behind it.
Lex Fridman (24:14.680)
And there's this natural identity that I can imagine.
Lex Fridman (24:19.680)
But there is also a sacrifice of ego.
Lex Fridman (24:22.440)
That's a pretty powerful thing
Jack Dorsey (24:23.680)
from your perspective. Yeah, which is beautiful.
Lex Fridman (24:25.360)
Would you do, sort of philosophically,
Jack Dorsey (24:28.760)
to ask you the question,
Lex Fridman (24:29.800)
would you do all the same things you're doing now
Lex Fridman (24:32.920)
if your name wasn't attached to it?
Lex Fridman (24:35.000)
Sort of, if you had to sacrifice the ego,
Jack Dorsey (24:39.320)
put another way, is your ego deeply tied
Lex Fridman (24:41.960)
in the decisions you've been making?
Jack Dorsey (24:44.920)
I hope not.
Lex Fridman (24:45.760)
I mean, I believe I would certainly attempt
Jack Dorsey (24:49.240)
to do the things without my name having
Lex Fridman (24:51.440)
to be attached with it.
Lex Fridman (24:53.400)
But it's hard to do that in a corporation, legally.
Lex Fridman (25:01.200)
That's the issue.
Jack Dorsey (25:02.600)
If I were to do more open source things,
Lex Fridman (25:05.200)
then absolutely, I don't need my particular identity,
Jack Dorsey (25:10.680)
my real identity associated with it.
Lex Fridman (25:12.600)
But I think the appreciation that comes
Jack Dorsey (25:17.640)
from doing something good and being able to see it
Lex Fridman (25:21.000)
and see people use it is pretty overwhelming and powerful,
Jack Dorsey (25:26.800)
more so than maybe seeing your name in the headlines.
Lex Fridman (25:29.920)
Let's talk about artificial intelligence a little bit,
Jack Dorsey (25:33.240)
if we could.
Lex Fridman (25:34.840)
70 years ago, Alan Turing formulated the Turing test.
Jack Dorsey (25:38.000)
To me, natural language is one of the most interesting
Lex Fridman (25:41.240)
spaces of problems that are tackled
Jack Dorsey (25:44.440)
by artificial intelligence.
Lex Fridman (25:45.600)
It's the canonical problem of what it means
Jack Dorsey (25:47.440)
to be intelligent.
Lex Fridman (25:48.520)
He formulated it as the Turing test.
Jack Dorsey (25:50.720)
Let me ask sort of the broad question,
Lex Fridman (25:53.320)
how hard do you think is it to pass the Turing test
Lex Fridman (25:56.440)
in the space of language?
Lex Fridman (25:58.600)
Just from a very practical standpoint,
Jack Dorsey (26:00.240)
I think where we are now and for at least years out
Lex Fridman (26:07.080)
is one where the artificial intelligence,
Jack Dorsey (26:11.600)
machine learning, the deep learning models
Lex Fridman (26:13.800)
can bubble up interestingness very, very quickly
Lex Fridman (26:17.280)
and pair that with human discretion around severity,
Lex Fridman (26:22.280)
around depth, around nuance and meaning.
Jack Dorsey (26:27.760)
I think for me, the chasm across for general intelligence
Lex Fridman (26:33.120)
is to be able to explain why and the meaning
Jack Dorsey (26:38.400)
behind something.
Lex Fridman (26:40.160)
Behind a decision.
Jack Dorsey (26:42.000)
Behind a decision or a set of data.
Lex Fridman (26:45.800)
So the explainability part is kind of essential
Jack Dorsey (26:48.720)
to be able to explain the meaning behind something.
Lex Fridman (26:52.080)
To explain using natural language
Lex Fridman (26:54.320)
why the decisions were made, that kind of thing.
Lex Fridman (26:56.600)
Yeah, I mean I think that's one of our biggest risks
Jack Dorsey (26:58.880)
in artificial intelligence going forward
Lex Fridman (27:01.240)
is we are building a lot of black boxes
Jack Dorsey (27:03.560)
that can't necessarily explain why they made a decision
Lex Fridman (27:06.840)
or what criteria they used to make the decision.
Lex Fridman (27:09.480)
And we're trusting them more and more
Lex Fridman (27:11.160)
from lending decisions to content recommendation
Jack Dorsey (27:14.720)
to driving to health.
Lex Fridman (27:18.120)
Like a lot of us have watches that tell us
Jack Dorsey (27:20.880)
to understand how they're deciding that.
Lex Fridman (27:23.120)
I mean that one's pretty simple.
Lex Fridman (27:25.360)
But you can imagine how complex they get.
Lex Fridman (27:28.240)
And being able to explain the reasoning behind
Jack Dorsey (27:32.080)
some of those recommendations seems to be an essential part.
Lex Fridman (27:34.960)
Although it's hard.
Jack Dorsey (27:35.800)
Which is a very hard problem because sometimes
Lex Fridman (27:37.840)
even we can't explain why we make decisions.
Jack Dorsey (27:40.880)
That's what I was, I think we're being sometimes
Lex Fridman (27:42.720)
a little bit unfair to artificial intelligence systems
Jack Dorsey (27:45.720)
because we're not very good at some of these things.
Lex Fridman (27:48.280)
So do you think, apologize for the ridiculous
Jack Dorsey (27:52.600)
romanticized question, but on that line of thought,
Lex Fridman (27:55.840)
do you think we'll ever be able to build a system
Lex Fridman (28:00.280)
like in the movie Her that you could fall in love with?
Lex Fridman (28:03.200)
So have that kind of deep connection with.
Lex Fridman (28:06.360)
Hasn't that already happened?
Lex Fridman (28:07.440)
Hasn't someone in Japan fallen in love with his AI?
Jack Dorsey (28:13.280)
There's always going to be somebody
Lex Fridman (28:14.840)
that does that kind of thing.
Jack Dorsey (28:15.960)
I mean at a much larger scale of actually building
Lex Fridman (28:19.280)
relationships, of being deeper connections.
Jack Dorsey (28:21.640)
It doesn't have to be love, but it's just deeper connections
Lex Fridman (28:24.120)
with artificial intelligence systems.
Lex Fridman (28:26.560)
So you mentioned explainability.
Lex Fridman (28:27.400)
That's less a function of the artificial intelligence
Lex Fridman (28:29.800)
and more a function of the individual
Lex Fridman (28:32.240)
and how they find meaning and where they find meaning.
Lex Fridman (28:34.680)
Do you think we humans can find meaning in technology
Lex Fridman (28:37.400)
in this kind of way?
Jack Dorsey (28:38.240)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%, 100%.
Lex Fridman (28:40.600)
And I don't necessarily think it's a negative.
Lex Fridman (28:43.220)
But it's constantly going to evolve.
Lex Fridman (28:50.180)
So I don't know, but meaning is something
Jack Dorsey (28:54.460)
that's entirely subjective.
Lex Fridman (28:56.240)
And I don't think it's going to be a function
Jack Dorsey (28:59.340)
of finding the magic algorithm
Lex Fridman (29:02.380)
that enables everyone to love it.
Lex Fridman (29:07.420)
But maybe, I don't know.
Lex Fridman (29:09.100)
That question really gets at the difference
Jack Dorsey (29:10.820)
between human and machine.
Lex Fridman (29:12.700)
So you had a little bit of an exchange with Elon Musk.
Jack Dorsey (29:17.340)
Basically, I mean it's a trivial version of that,
Lex Fridman (29:20.140)
but I think there's a more fundamental question
Jack Dorsey (29:22.060)
of is it possible to tell the difference
Lex Fridman (29:24.220)
between a bot and a human?
Lex Fridman (29:27.260)
And do you think it's, if we look into the future,
Lex Fridman (29:31.420)
10, 20 years out, do you think it would be possible
Jack Dorsey (29:34.060)
or is it even necessary to tell the difference
Lex Fridman (29:36.340)
in the digital space between a human and a robot?
Jack Dorsey (29:40.380)
Can we have fulfilling relationships with each
Lex Fridman (29:42.700)
or do we need to tell the difference between them?
Jack Dorsey (29:46.200)
I think it's certainly useful in certain problem domains
Lex Fridman (29:49.340)
to be able to tell the difference.
Jack Dorsey (29:52.460)
I think in others it might not be as useful.
Lex Fridman (29:56.500)
Do you think it's possible for us today
Lex Fridman (29:58.180)
to tell that difference?
Lex Fridman (30:00.020)
Is the reverse the meta of the Turing test?
Jack Dorsey (30:02.860)
Well, what's interesting is I think the technology
Lex Fridman (30:07.060)
to create is moving much faster
Jack Dorsey (30:10.660)
than the technology to detect, generally.
Lex Fridman (30:13.500)
You think so?
Lex Fridman (30:14.340)
So if you look at adversarial machine learning,
Lex Fridman (30:17.220)
there's a lot of systems that try
Jack Dorsey (30:18.660)
to fool machine learning systems.
Lex Fridman (30:21.220)
And at least for me, the hope is that the technology
Jack Dorsey (30:23.940)
to defend will always be right there, at least.
Lex Fridman (30:28.940)
Your sense is that...
Jack Dorsey (30:30.900)
I don't know if they'll be right there.
Lex Fridman (30:31.980)
I mean, it's a race, right?
Lex Fridman (30:34.140)
So the detection technologies have to be two
Lex Fridman (30:38.340)
or 10 steps ahead of the creation technologies.
Jack Dorsey (30:42.100)
This is a problem that I think the financial industry
Lex Fridman (30:44.180)
will face more and more because a lot of our risk models,
Jack Dorsey (30:48.460)
for instance, are built around identity.
Lex Fridman (30:50.780)
Payments ultimately comes down to identity.
Lex Fridman (30:53.420)
And you can imagine a world where all this conversation
Lex Fridman (30:57.620)
around deep fakes goes towards the direction
Jack Dorsey (31:00.940)
of a driver's license or passports or state identities.
Lex Fridman (31:06.380)
And people construct identities in order
Jack Dorsey (31:09.260)
to get through a system such as ours
Lex Fridman (31:11.900)
to start accepting credit cards or into the cash app.
Lex Fridman (31:15.940)
And those technologies seem to be moving very, very quickly.
Lex Fridman (31:19.700)
Our ability to detect them, I think,
Jack Dorsey (31:22.820)
is probably lagging at this point,
Lex Fridman (31:25.060)
but certainly with more focus, we can get ahead of it.
Lex Fridman (31:29.820)
But this is gonna touch everything.
Lex Fridman (31:33.980)
So I think it's like security.
Jack Dorsey (31:38.500)
We're never going to be able
Lex Fridman (31:39.780)
to build a perfect detection system.
Jack Dorsey (31:42.940)
We're only going to be able to...
Lex Fridman (31:45.620)
What we should be focused on is the speed of evolving it
Lex Fridman (31:50.540)
and being able to take signals that show correctness
Lex Fridman (31:55.540)
or errors as quickly as possible
Lex Fridman (31:58.260)
and move and to be able to build that
Lex Fridman (32:01.500)
into our newer models or the self learning models.
Lex Fridman (32:04.940)
Do you have other worries?
Lex Fridman (32:06.020)
Like some people, like Elon and others,
Jack Dorsey (32:07.900)
have worries of existential threats
Lex Fridman (32:10.340)
of artificial intelligence,
Lex Fridman (32:11.620)
of artificial general intelligence?
Lex Fridman (32:13.700)
Or if you think more narrowly about threats
Lex Fridman (32:17.060)
and concerns about more narrow artificial intelligence,
Lex Fridman (32:20.300)
like what are your thoughts in this domain?
Lex Fridman (32:23.780)
Do you have concerns or are you more optimistic?
Lex Fridman (32:26.580)
I think Yuval in his book,
Jack Dorsey (32:29.100)
21 Lessons for the 21st Century,
Lex Fridman (32:31.980)
his last chapter is around meditation.
Lex Fridman (32:34.940)
And you look at the title of the chapter
Lex Fridman (32:37.140)
and you're like, oh, it's all meditation.
Lex Fridman (32:39.700)
But what was interesting about that chapter
Lex Fridman (32:42.660)
is he believes that kids being born today,
Jack Dorsey (32:48.740)
growing up today, Google has a stronger sense
Lex Fridman (32:53.740)
of their preferences than they do,
Jack Dorsey (32:57.300)
which you can easily imagine.
Lex Fridman (32:59.260)
I can easily imagine today that Google probably knows
Jack Dorsey (33:04.420)
my preferences more than my mother does.
Lex Fridman (33:08.300)
Maybe not me per se, but for someone growing up
Jack Dorsey (33:12.500)
only knowing the internet,
Lex Fridman (33:13.340)
only knowing what Google is capable of,
Jack Dorsey (33:16.500)
or Facebook or Twitter or Square or any of these things,
Lex Fridman (33:20.060)
the self awareness is being offloaded to other systems
Lex Fridman (33:25.580)
and particularly these algorithms.
Lex Fridman (33:28.180)
And his concern is that we lose that self awareness
Jack Dorsey (33:32.220)
because the self awareness is now outside of us
Lex Fridman (33:35.220)
and it's doing such a better job
Jack Dorsey (33:37.060)
at helping us direct our decisions around,
Lex Fridman (33:41.380)
should I stand, should I walk today?
Lex Fridman (33:43.700)
What doctor should I choose?
Lex Fridman (33:45.300)
Who should I date?
Jack Dorsey (33:46.620)
All these things we're now seeing play out very quickly.
Lex Fridman (33:50.420)
So he sees meditation as a tool to build that self awareness
Lex Fridman (33:54.780)
and to bring the focus back on,
Lex Fridman (33:56.860)
why do I make these decisions?
Lex Fridman (33:58.500)
Why do I react in this way?
Lex Fridman (34:00.100)
Why did I have this thought?
Lex Fridman (34:02.740)
Where did that come from?
Lex Fridman (34:04.140)
That's a way to regain control.
Jack Dorsey (34:07.140)
Or awareness, maybe not control, but awareness
Lex Fridman (34:10.140)
so that you can be aware that yes, I am,
Jack Dorsey (34:13.300)
I am, I am, I am, I am.
Lex Fridman (34:15.500)
Yes, I am offloading this decision to this algorithm
Jack Dorsey (34:19.780)
that I don't fully understand
Lex Fridman (34:21.660)
and can't tell me why it's doing the things it's doing
Jack Dorsey (34:24.580)
because it's so complex.
Lex Fridman (34:26.740)
That's not to say that the algorithm can't be a good thing.
Lex Fridman (34:29.060)
And to me recommender systems,
Lex Fridman (34:31.340)
the best of what they can do is to help guide you
Jack Dorsey (34:34.940)
on a journey of learning new ideas of learning period.
Lex Fridman (34:39.700)
It can be a great thing, but do you know you're doing that?
Lex Fridman (34:41.860)
Are you aware that you're inviting it to do that to you?
Lex Fridman (34:45.540)
I think that's the risk he identifies, right?
Jack Dorsey (34:50.100)
That's perfectly okay.
Lex Fridman (34:51.700)
But are you aware that you have that invitation
Lex Fridman (34:55.700)
and it's being acted upon?
Lex Fridman (34:58.460)
And so that's a concern you're kind of highlighting
Jack Dorsey (35:02.460)
that without a lack of awareness,
Lex Fridman (35:04.660)
you can just be like floating at sea.
Lex Fridman (35:06.300)
So awareness is key in the future
Lex Fridman (35:08.900)
of these artificial intelligence systems.
Jack Dorsey (35:10.860)
Yeah, the movie WALLY.
Lex Fridman (35:12.460)
WALLY.
Jack Dorsey (35:13.300)
Which I think is one of Pixar's best movies
Lex Fridman (35:15.340)
besides RATATOUILLI.
Jack Dorsey (35:19.340)
RATATOUILLI was incredible.
Lex Fridman (35:20.660)
You had me until RATATOUILLI, okay.
Jack Dorsey (35:22.220)
RATATOUILLI was incredible.
Lex Fridman (35:26.180)
All right, we've come to the first point
Jack Dorsey (35:28.140)
where we disagree, okay.
Lex Fridman (35:29.140)
It's the entrepreneurial story in the form of a rat.
Jack Dorsey (35:35.780)
I just remember just the soundtrack was really good, so.
Lex Fridman (35:38.660)
Excellent.
Lex Fridman (35:41.020)
What are your thoughts, sticking on artificial intelligence
Lex Fridman (35:43.780)
a little bit, about the displacement of jobs?
Jack Dorsey (35:45.980)
That's another perspective that candidates
Lex Fridman (35:48.220)
like Andrew Yang talk about.
Jack Dorsey (35:50.180)
Yang gang forever.
Lex Fridman (35:53.100)
Yang gang.
Lex Fridman (35:54.100)
So he unfortunately, speaking of Yang gang,
Lex Fridman (35:56.300)
has recently dropped out.
Jack Dorsey (35:57.580)
I know, it was very disappointing and depressing.
Lex Fridman (36:00.180)
Yeah, but on the positive side,
Jack Dorsey (36:02.180)
he's I think launching a podcast, so.
Lex Fridman (36:05.300)
Really, cool.
Jack Dorsey (36:06.180)
Yeah, he just announced that.
Lex Fridman (36:07.940)
I'm sure he'll try to talk you into trying
Jack Dorsey (36:09.900)
to come on to the podcast.
Lex Fridman (36:11.060)
I will talk to him.
Jack Dorsey (36:12.060)
So. About RATATOUILLI.
Lex Fridman (36:14.580)
Yeah, maybe he'll be more welcoming
Jack Dorsey (36:16.100)
of the RATATOUILLI argument.
Lex Fridman (36:18.220)
What are your thoughts on his concerns
Jack Dorsey (36:20.260)
of the displacement of jobs, of automations,
Lex Fridman (36:22.180)
of the, of course there's positive impacts
Jack Dorsey (36:24.940)
that could come from automation and AI,
Lex Fridman (36:26.660)
but there could also be negative impacts.
Lex Fridman (36:29.300)
And within that framework, what are your thoughts
Lex Fridman (36:31.500)
about universal basic income?
Lex Fridman (36:33.420)
So these interesting new ideas
Lex Fridman (36:36.020)
of how we can empower people in the economy.
Jack Dorsey (36:40.380)
I think he was 100% right on almost every dimension.
Lex Fridman (36:46.660)
We see this in Square's business.
Jack Dorsey (36:48.660)
I mean, he identified truck drivers.
Lex Fridman (36:52.180)
I'm from Missouri.
Lex Fridman (36:54.180)
And he certainly pointed to the concern
Lex Fridman (37:00.540)
and the issue that people from where I'm from
Jack Dorsey (37:04.340)
feel every single day that is often invisible
Lex Fridman (37:07.700)
and not talked about enough.
Jack Dorsey (37:09.500)
You know, the next big one is cashiers.
Lex Fridman (37:12.020)
This is where it pertains to Square's business.
Jack Dorsey (37:15.700)
We are seeing more and more of the point of sale
Lex Fridman (37:19.740)
move to the individual customer's hand
Jack Dorsey (37:22.940)
in the form of their phone and apps
Lex Fridman (37:24.500)
and preorder and order ahead.
Jack Dorsey (37:27.260)
We're seeing more kiosks.
Lex Fridman (37:29.620)
We're seeing more things like Amazon Go.
Lex Fridman (37:32.300)
And the number of workers as a cashier in retail is immense.
Lex Fridman (37:40.340)
And, you know, there's no real answers
Jack Dorsey (37:43.620)
on how they transform their skills
Lex Fridman (37:47.940)
and work into something else.
Lex Fridman (37:51.140)
And I think that does lead to a lot
Lex Fridman (37:53.100)
of really negative ramifications.
Lex Fridman (37:56.140)
And the important point that he brought up
Lex Fridman (37:59.020)
around universal basic income
Jack Dorsey (38:01.460)
is given that the shift is going to come
Lex Fridman (38:04.900)
and given it is going to take time
Jack Dorsey (38:07.540)
to set people up with new skills and new careers,
Lex Fridman (38:14.860)
they need to have a floor to be able to survive.
Lex Fridman (38:17.700)
And this $1,000 a month is such a floor.
Lex Fridman (38:22.620)
It's not going to incentivize you to quit your job
Jack Dorsey (38:25.100)
because it's not enough,
Lex Fridman (38:26.620)
but it will enable you to not have to worry
Jack Dorsey (38:30.220)
as much about just getting on day to day
Lex Fridman (38:35.860)
so that you can focus on what am I going to do now
Lex Fridman (38:39.860)
and what am I going to, what skills do I need to acquire?
Lex Fridman (38:44.860)
And I think, you know, a lot of people point
Jack Dorsey (38:48.740)
to the fact that, you know, during the industrial age,
Lex Fridman (38:53.260)
we had the same concerns around automation,
Jack Dorsey (38:55.780)
factory lines and everything worked out okay.
Lex Fridman (38:59.220)
But the biggest change is just the velocity
Lex Fridman (39:04.340)
and the centralization of a lot of the things
Lex Fridman (39:08.060)
that make this work, which is the data
Lex Fridman (39:11.820)
and the algorithms that work on this data.
Lex Fridman (39:14.900)
I think that the second biggest scary thing
Jack Dorsey (39:18.900)
is just how around AI is just who actually owns the data
Lex Fridman (39:24.820)
and who can operate on it.
Lex Fridman (39:26.300)
And are we able to share the insights from the data
Lex Fridman (39:32.940)
so that we can also build algorithms that help our needs
Lex Fridman (39:36.380)
or help our business or whatnot?
Lex Fridman (39:39.140)
So that's where I think regulation could play
Jack Dorsey (39:43.500)
a strong and positive part.
Lex Fridman (39:46.540)
First, looking at the primitives of AI
Lex Fridman (39:50.460)
and the tools we use to build these services
Lex Fridman (39:52.660)
that will ultimately touch every single aspect
Jack Dorsey (39:54.820)
of the human experience.
Lex Fridman (39:56.540)
And then where data is owned and how it's shared.
Lex Fridman (40:05.980)
So those are the answers that as a society, as a world,
Lex Fridman (40:10.540)
we need to have better answers around,
Jack Dorsey (40:12.460)
which we're currently not.
Lex Fridman (40:13.860)
They're just way too centralized
Jack Dorsey (40:15.380)
into a few very, very large companies.
Lex Fridman (40:19.580)
But I think it was spot on with identifying the problem
Lex Fridman (40:23.260)
and proposing solutions that would actually work.
Lex Fridman (40:26.780)
At least that we learned from that you could expand
Jack Dorsey (40:29.300)
or evolve, but I mean, I think UBI is well past its due.
Lex Fridman (40:38.380)
I mean, it was certainly trumpeted by Martin Luther King
Lex Fridman (40:41.620)
and even before him as well.
Lex Fridman (40:44.820)
And like you said, the exact $1,000 mark
Jack Dorsey (40:48.060)
might not be the correct one,
Lex Fridman (40:50.260)
but you should take the steps to try to implement
Jack Dorsey (40:54.020)
these solutions and see what works.
Lex Fridman (40:56.260)
100%.
Lex Fridman (40:57.500)
So I think you and I eat similar diets,
Lex Fridman (40:59.380)
and at least I was.
Jack Dorsey (41:01.740)
The first time I've heard this.
Lex Fridman (41:04.180)
Yeah, so I was doing it before.
Jack Dorsey (41:05.380)
First time anyone has said that to me, in this case anyway.
Lex Fridman (41:08.620)
Yeah, but it's becoming more and more cool.
Lex Fridman (41:12.140)
But I was doing it before it was cool.
Lex Fridman (41:13.700)
So intermittent fasting and fasting in general,
Jack Dorsey (41:16.300)
I really enjoy, I love food,
Lex Fridman (41:18.700)
but I enjoy the, I also love suffering because I'm Russian.
Lex Fridman (41:23.060)
So fasting kind of makes you appreciate the,
Lex Fridman (41:29.580)
makes you appreciate what it is to be human somehow.
Lex Fridman (41:33.540)
But I have, outside the philosophical stuff,
Lex Fridman (41:36.660)
I have a more specific question.
Jack Dorsey (41:37.900)
It also helps me as a programmer and a deep thinker,
Lex Fridman (41:41.980)
like from the scientific perspective,
Jack Dorsey (41:43.940)
to sit there for many hours and focus deeply.
Lex Fridman (41:46.900)
Maybe you were a hacker before you were CEO.
Lex Fridman (41:50.900)
What have you learned about diet, lifestyle,
Lex Fridman (41:55.020)
mindset that helps you maximize mental performance,
Jack Dorsey (41:57.940)
to be able to focus for,
Lex Fridman (42:00.220)
to think deeply in this world of distractions?
Jack Dorsey (42:03.980)
I think I just took it for granted for too long.
Lex Fridman (42:08.380)
Which aspect?
Jack Dorsey (42:09.660)
Just the social structure of we eat three meals a day
Lex Fridman (42:13.460)
and there's snacks in between.
Lex Fridman (42:15.140)
And I just never really asked the question, why?
Lex Fridman (42:18.980)
Oh, by the way, in case people don't know,
Jack Dorsey (42:20.780)
I think a lot of people know,
Lex Fridman (42:22.100)
but you at least, you famously eat once a day.
Lex Fridman (42:26.100)
You still eat once a day?
Lex Fridman (42:27.620)
Yep, I eat dinner.
Lex Fridman (42:29.620)
By the way, what made you decide to eat once a day?
Lex Fridman (42:32.060)
Like, cause to me that was a huge revolution
Jack Dorsey (42:33.980)
that you don't have to eat breakfast.
Lex Fridman (42:35.420)
That was like, I felt like I was a rebel.
Jack Dorsey (42:37.380)
Like I abandoned my parents or something
Lex Fridman (42:39.900)
and became an anarchist.
Jack Dorsey (42:41.100)
When you first, like the first week you start doing it,
Lex Fridman (42:43.500)
it feels that you kind of like have a superpower.
Jack Dorsey (42:45.860)
Then you realize it's not really a superpower.
Lex Fridman (42:47.660)
But it, I think you realize,
Jack Dorsey (42:50.100)
at least I realized like it just how much is,
Lex Fridman (42:53.060)
how much our mind dictates what we're possible of.
Lex Fridman (42:59.780)
And sometimes we have structures around us
Lex Fridman (43:02.260)
that incentivize like, this three meal a day thing,
Jack Dorsey (43:05.340)
which was purely social structure
Lex Fridman (43:09.700)
versus necessity for our health and for our bodies.
Lex Fridman (43:14.180)
And I did it just, I started doing it
Lex Fridman (43:17.500)
because I played a lot with my diet when I was a kid
Lex Fridman (43:21.540)
and I was vegan for two years
Lex Fridman (43:23.340)
and just went all over the place just because I,
Jack Dorsey (43:28.260)
you know, health is the most precious thing we have
Lex Fridman (43:31.180)
and none of us really understand it.
Lex Fridman (43:33.900)
So being able to ask the question through experiments
Lex Fridman (43:37.980)
that I can perform on myself
Lex Fridman (43:39.460)
and learn about is compelling to me.
Lex Fridman (43:44.140)
And I heard this one guy on a podcast, Wim Hof,
Jack Dorsey (43:47.580)
who's famous for doing ice baths and holding his breath
Lex Fridman (43:50.900)
and all these things.
Jack Dorsey (43:54.660)
He said he only eats one meal a day.
Lex Fridman (43:56.580)
I'm like, wow, that sounds super challenging
Lex Fridman (43:59.180)
and uncomfortable.
Lex Fridman (44:00.700)
I'm gonna do it.
Lex Fridman (44:02.020)
So I just, I learn the most when I make myself,
Lex Fridman (44:06.260)
I wouldn't say suffer,
Lex Fridman (44:07.460)
but when I make myself feel uncomfortable
Lex Fridman (44:10.420)
because everything comes to bear in those moments
Lex Fridman (44:14.140)
and you really learn what you're about or what you're not.
Lex Fridman (44:21.020)
So I've been doing that my whole life.
Jack Dorsey (44:23.940)
Like when I was a kid, I could not,
Lex Fridman (44:25.780)
like I was, I could not speak.
Jack Dorsey (44:27.620)
Like I had to go to a speech therapist
Lex Fridman (44:29.140)
and it made me extremely shy.
Lex Fridman (44:31.940)
And then one day I realized I can't keep doing this
Lex Fridman (44:34.860)
and I signed up for the speech club.
Lex Fridman (44:39.740)
And it was the most uncomfortable thing
Lex Fridman (44:45.060)
I could imagine doing, getting a topic on a note card,
Jack Dorsey (44:49.540)
having five minutes to write a speech
Lex Fridman (44:51.500)
about whatever that topic is,
Jack Dorsey (44:53.580)
not being able to use the note card while speaking
Lex Fridman (44:56.620)
and speaking for five minutes about that topic.
Jack Dorsey (44:59.420)
So, but it just, it puts so much,
Lex Fridman (45:03.940)
it gave me so much perspective
Jack Dorsey (45:06.220)
around the power of communication,
Lex Fridman (45:08.500)
around my own deficiencies
Lex Fridman (45:10.020)
and around if I set my mind to do something, I'll do it.
Lex Fridman (45:14.140)
So it gave me a lot more confidence.
Lex Fridman (45:16.420)
So I see fasting in the same light.
Lex Fridman (45:18.900)
This is something that was interesting,
Jack Dorsey (45:21.460)
challenging, uncomfortable,
Lex Fridman (45:23.860)
and has given me so much learning and benefit as a result.
Lex Fridman (45:30.220)
And it will lead to other things that I'll experiment with
Lex Fridman (45:32.620)
and play with, but yeah,
Jack Dorsey (45:35.820)
it does feel a little bit like a superpower sometimes.
Lex Fridman (45:39.820)
The most boring superpower one can imagine.
Jack Dorsey (45:42.700)
Now it's quite incredible.
Lex Fridman (45:44.060)
The clarity of mind is pretty interesting.
Jack Dorsey (45:47.660)
Speaking of suffering,
Lex Fridman (45:49.700)
you kind of talk about facing difficult ideas.
Jack Dorsey (45:53.060)
You meditate, you think about the broad context of life,
Lex Fridman (45:58.940)
of our societies.
Jack Dorsey (46:00.300)
Let me ask, sort of apologize again
Lex Fridman (46:02.500)
for the romanticized question,
Lex Fridman (46:03.700)
but do you ponder your own mortality?
Lex Fridman (46:06.500)
Do you think about death,
Jack Dorsey (46:09.940)
about the finiteness of human existence
Lex Fridman (46:13.780)
when you meditate, when you think about it?
Lex Fridman (46:15.420)
And if you do, what,
Lex Fridman (46:18.020)
how do you make sense of it, that this thing ends?
Jack Dorsey (46:22.460)
Well, I don't try to make sense of it.
Lex Fridman (46:23.740)
I do think about it every day.
Jack Dorsey (46:25.500)
I mean, it's a daily, multiple times a day.
Lex Fridman (46:29.060)
Are you afraid of death?
Jack Dorsey (46:30.540)
No, I'm not afraid of it.
Lex Fridman (46:32.380)
I think it's a transformation, I don't know to what,
Lex Fridman (46:36.300)
but it's also a tool
Lex Fridman (46:39.260)
to feel the importance of every moment.
Lex Fridman (46:44.620)
So I just use it as a reminder, like I have an hour.
Lex Fridman (46:48.620)
Is this really what I'm going to spend the hour doing?
Jack Dorsey (46:52.300)
Like I only have so many more sunsets and sunrises to watch.
Lex Fridman (46:55.460)
Like I'm not going to get up for it.
Jack Dorsey (46:58.300)
I'm not going to make sure that I try to see it.
Lex Fridman (47:02.060)
So it just puts a lot into perspective
Lex Fridman (47:06.660)
and it helps me prioritize.
Lex Fridman (47:09.060)
I think it's, I don't see it as something that's like
Jack Dorsey (47:13.780)
that I dread or is dreadful.
Lex Fridman (47:15.500)
It's a tool that is available
Jack Dorsey (47:18.060)
to every single person to use every day
Lex Fridman (47:19.660)
because it shows how precious life is.
Lex Fridman (47:21.780)
And there's reminders every single day,
Lex Fridman (47:24.540)
whether it be your own health or a friend or a coworker
Jack Dorsey (47:27.940)
or something you see in the news.
Lex Fridman (47:30.620)
So to me it's just a question
Jack Dorsey (47:32.380)
of what we do with our daily reminder.
Lex Fridman (47:34.820)
And for me, it's am I really focused on what matters?
Lex Fridman (47:40.180)
And sometimes that might be work,
Lex Fridman (47:42.220)
sometimes that might be friendships or family
Jack Dorsey (47:45.180)
or relationships or whatnot,
Lex Fridman (47:47.020)
but it's the ultimate clarifier in that sense.
Lex Fridman (47:51.300)
So on the question of what matters,
Lex Fridman (47:53.620)
another ridiculously big question of
Jack Dorsey (47:57.060)
once you try to make sense of it,
Lex Fridman (47:58.460)
what do you think is the meaning of it all,
Lex Fridman (48:00.700)
the meaning of life?
Lex Fridman (48:02.020)
What gives you purpose, happiness, meaning?
Jack Dorsey (48:07.660)
A lot does.
Lex Fridman (48:08.500)
I mean, just being able to be aware
Jack Dorsey (48:14.340)
of the fact that I'm alive is pretty meaningful.
Lex Fridman (48:20.060)
The connections I feel with individuals,
Jack Dorsey (48:23.060)
whether they're people I just meet
Lex Fridman (48:25.060)
or long lasting friendships or my family is meaningful.
Jack Dorsey (48:30.900)
Seeing people use something that I helped build
Lex Fridman (48:33.740)
is really meaningful and powerful to me.
Lex Fridman (48:38.820)
But that sense of, I mean,
Lex Fridman (48:40.300)
I think ultimately it comes down to a sense of connection
Lex Fridman (48:43.460)
and just feeling like I am bigger,
Lex Fridman (48:47.220)
I am part of something that's bigger than myself
Lex Fridman (48:49.940)
and like I can feel it directly
Lex Fridman (48:52.180)
in small ways or large ways,
Jack Dorsey (48:54.020)
however it manifests is probably it.
Lex Fridman (48:59.700)
Last question.
Lex Fridman (49:00.700)
Do you think we're living in a simulation?
Lex Fridman (49:05.900)
I don't know.
Jack Dorsey (49:06.740)
It's a pretty fun one if we are,
Lex Fridman (49:09.060)
but also crazy and random and wrought with tons of problems.
Lex Fridman (49:15.580)
But yeah.
Lex Fridman (49:17.260)
Would you have it any other way?
Jack Dorsey (49:19.420)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (49:20.260)
I mean, I just think it's taken us way too long
Jack Dorsey (49:24.580)
as a planet to realize we're all in this together
Lex Fridman (49:27.180)
and we all are connected in very significant ways.
Jack Dorsey (49:34.100)
I think we hide our connectivity very well through ego,
Lex Fridman (49:38.940)
through whatever it is of the day.
Lex Fridman (49:42.060)
But that is the one thing I would wanna work
Lex Fridman (49:46.260)
towards changing and that's how I would have it another way.
Jack Dorsey (49:51.540)
Cause if we can't do that,
Lex Fridman (49:52.900)
then how are we gonna connect to all the other simulations?
Jack Dorsey (49:55.620)
Cause that's the next step is like
Lex Fridman (49:57.380)
what's happening in the other simulation.
Jack Dorsey (49:58.860)
Escaping this one and yeah.
Lex Fridman (50:03.380)
Spanning across the multiple simulations
Lex Fridman (50:05.500)
and sharing in and on the fun.
Lex Fridman (50:07.380)
I don't think there's a better way to end it.
Jack Dorsey (50:09.940)
Jack, thank you so much for all the work you do.
Lex Fridman (50:12.060)
There's probably other ways that we've ended this
Lex Fridman (50:13.940)
and other simulations that may have been better.
Lex Fridman (50:16.620)
We'll have to wait and see.
Jack Dorsey (50:18.740)
Thanks so much for talking today.
Lex Fridman (50:19.900)
Thank you.
Jack Dorsey (50:21.620)
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jack Dorsey
Lex Fridman (50:24.180)
and thank you to our sponsor, Masterclass.
Jack Dorsey (50:26.980)
Please consider supporting this podcast
Lex Fridman (50:29.180)
by signing up to Masterclass at masterclass.com slash Lex.
Jack Dorsey (50:34.700)
If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe on YouTube,
Lex Fridman (50:37.100)
review it with five stars on Apple Podcast,
Jack Dorsey (50:39.420)
support on Patreon or simply connect with me on Twitter
Lex Fridman (50:42.700)
at Lex Friedman.
Lex Fridman (50:45.180)
And now let me leave you with some words
Lex Fridman (50:47.180)
about Bitcoin from Paul Graham.
Jack Dorsey (50:50.540)
I'm very intrigued by Bitcoin.
Lex Fridman (50:52.580)
It has all the signs of a paradigm shift.
Jack Dorsey (50:55.100)
Hackers love it, yet it is described as a toy,
Lex Fridman (50:58.900)
just like microcomputers.
Jack Dorsey (51:01.020)
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
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