Kara Swisher · 46:18
Second.
Scott Galloway · 46:18
Go
Kara Swisher · 46:18
ahead. Because human made media companies are concerned about AI. The Wall Street Journal reports that executive places like The New York Times, News Corp, Conde Ness, and our fear on Vox Media have discussed forming some sort of coalition to deal with issues involving generative AI. I think they should. Barry Diller bet my ear on this issue. He owns Meredith, bet that they have to start suing and copyright and that they should join together, not getting played like they did the last time. They have a lot of regrets, publishers, of how late they were to standing up to big tech platforms that ultimately gutted much of legacy media. What do you think they... I think they should be joining and fighting, like, right now or yesterday.
Scott Galloway · 46:53
So so there's several dimensions to this. The first is what you're talking about, and that is creating a coalition such that... And then building their own generative AI that spots that, okay, you are using our content to inform your LLM, and you're not compensating us, and we're going to sue you. And that's the vision around Adobe's Firefly is they have secured all the IP for every input into their generative AI. I think this is going to be a big unlock and a new source of revenue streams for people like BFT and The New York Times and News Corp that have a ton of content that will be fed into and inform these LLMs. At the same time, I think there's a real upside here, and that is the thing that always kept us back at The New York Times was the newsroom in the sense that the investment you need to make in your newsroom to have that sort of quality journalism has never gotten any scale. It's totally unscalable until now. And what do I mean by that? What I mean is that a great... I think Nicholas Kristof is going to be able to punch out three articles every two weeks, not two, using generative AI to draft stuff, to improve it, to tighten it.
Kara Swisher · 48:02
He'll never do it.
Scott Galloway · 48:03
Oh, I disagree. AI is
Kara Swisher · 48:05
not gonna take his job. I think a lot of reporters will never do it.
Scott Galloway · 48:09
Well, they're gonna they're gonna make less money. Yeah. They're gonna make less money. Because the great reporter who embraces it, if Maureen Dowd gets good at AI, Jesus, watch out. Think I'm encouraging
Kara Swisher · 48:19
them all, and they're all... I can't even tell you how recalcitrant. What's interesting is
Scott Galloway · 48:24
They're gonna shed their skin, and a new generation of writers are gonna come along.
Kara Swisher · 48:27
Yeah. Well, not just writers, but the publishers. What I've been saying to them is like, listen, you better understand this, and you better start suing. And you also have to... Because if they took your business before, they're gonna take your IP this time. Right? This is what's gonna happen. They sort of took your IP by linking to you and controlling the links. Now they're really gonna take everything, like the whole enchilada in that regard.
Scott Galloway · 48:48
But they're gonna be able to punch a... I mean, when I... I've spent a lot of time with this. It spits back plain vanilla stuff, but what it can do is... The mistake was calling it artificial intelligence. They should have called it enhanced intelligence. That is it adds...
Kara Swisher · 49:03
EI. EI.
Scott Galloway · 49:04
EIO. It adds five or 10 IQ points to everything you do. But the thing is, if you're The New York Times newsroom, you start at one thirty. You're just well ahead of where everyone else is. There's nothing that can replace the magic of what those folks bring together, the original thought, the original twist of phrase, the fact checking. But instead of having 1,200 people in their newsroom, I think in five to ten years, they will have eight or 900 because they'll be more productive, and they're gonna be much more profitable. I think that this is gonna be... I think Vox will have 20% fewer employees and more podcasts in about '24
Kara Swisher · 49:41
Well, I would agree. I would agree. Well, we'll see where it goes. It'll be interesting. This whole... It's it's gonna be the story we're gonna be talking about a lot on the next year, I suspect. Okay, Scott. Let's listen to a listener question.
Scott Galloway · 49:54
You've got you've got I can't believe I'm gonna be a mailman. You've got mail.
Kara Swisher · 49:59
The question comes in via email. I'll read it. Hi, Kara and Scott. I'm 28 years old and live and work for a medium sized Midwestern city's local government. I'm a city planner. I'm the youngest in my office by at least six or seven years. My city is home to a state flagship university. It should not be difficult to attract and retain young talent, but it has been. How do small and medium sized local governments attract and retain talented, passionate employees instead of losing out to larger cities in the private sector? Carrie, you've flirted with political office in the past. What say you? Keep up the good work, both of you. I look forward to Tuesday and Friday mornings when Pivot drops. Thanks. Lucas. Oh, Lucas. I think this is a problem for all governments, not just city governments. The national government is keeping and attracting talent, one, because the pay is so bad, and two, because the larger cities will beat out the smaller cities typically, unless people have different reasons for wanting to be in a smaller city. I think the issue is that a lot of people do have a mission driven feeling in tech, and that's how you need to bring in and make them feel like they're actually impacting people. We talked about that recently on the show. So I think the idea is getting them to feel like, okay. You're not gonna make as much money. Maybe you're living in a smaller city, but you're gonna really affect people. And it is it is a strong attractiveness to a lot more people than you think if you can sell it that way, the way you might sell military service or things like that, but you do have to market it in that way. Scott?
Scott Galloway · 51:25
Look, this all started, what, forty years ago now when Thatcher and Reagan went on the screed against government. And in Israel, the people who command the most respect in the military in The UK used to be government officials. In The US, it's entrepreneurs. And we used to have a lot more respect for our government officials. I think that at a local level, we need to come up with federal programs that maybe do student debt relief if you go into local government, and offer just more opportunity and make it more attractive for the best and brightest to go into those fields. Because what happens is when you cut the funding, when you underpay these individuals, it creates a self fulfilling prophecy. That is you go into the DMV and you think, this is not a great experience. I feel worse about paying taxes, and I want a politician who's gonna cut government services. And it's really too bad because I think there's a thirst out there amongst young people who want purpose and meaning in their work. And when you work in social services, I remember in New York State, and you pay really high taxes in Manhattan. You pay 13% state and city taxes. And my son was speech delayed. And the story ends well. He's now, heads list, doing great. But he was speech delayed. Because it was our first child, we were freaked out. And New York State has this incredible service that you sign up for, and a speech therapist and occupational therapist come to your house twice. And it's this incredibly well educated, lovely young person who can immediately establish rapport with your child, demonstrate incredible skills, and makes the whole house feel better about government
Kara Swisher · 53:06
Mhmm.
Scott Galloway · 53:06
About your child, about the situation you're in. I remember she was kinda there more for us than for the kid. Like, oh, this is... This happens everywhere. Your son's gonna be... I mean, she was just... I thought to myself, you know what? I don't mind paying the 13%. Government's job isn't to lower taxes, it's to make it worth it. And there are really a lot of great programs that do make it worth it. So the question is, how do we make that a really attractive job? Because all of these individuals I met, these occupational and speech therapists, they had a lot of options. But they wanted to do something in the agency of something bigger and more meaningful. So it's up to us, I think, as voters to say, we want our government officials to make good money. We want them to have good pensions. Now, should cops be making two and a half times their last year a salary, and they are in cahoots with each other, and we have MTA conductors making $280 a year. Mean, granted, there's some places that are just out of control, but on the whole, the people at the ground level and state government, we need to move it back to being an aspirational position to tell
Kara Swisher · 54:05
them that want to go. That's exactly right. Well, Lucas, thank you for your excellent question. We... That is the way to do it. Aspirational. There are a lot of mission driven people in tech, and they do not necessarily wanna make as much money if they can really impact people, and you have to show that impact. Anyway, if you've got a question of your own that you'd like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551 Alright, Scott. One more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.
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— Predictions segment begins —
Kara Swisher · 56:10
Okay, Scott. We're gonna do predictions. But just as we record this, the supreme court has struck down... Essentially, has struck down, affirmative action, ruling colleges can... These two colleges in the case, this is UNC and Harvard, can no longer use race as a factor in their college admissions. Very testy supreme court on this one. They've been sort of doing a lot of more liberal things, and now here it is. This is what we were waiting for. They are ending racial preferences in college admissions, essentially. Justice Roberts wrote for the conservative members, liberals dissenting. There was a real back and forth between justices Clarence Thomas and Jackson and, one liberal, one obviously conservative. And he's been a longtime opponent, judge Thomas, of affirmative action, and he read his concurring opinion immediately. He spent his time engaging with judge Jackson, the only other black justice besides Clarence Thomas. He said in Jackson's view, quote, almost all of my life's outcomes may be unhesitatingly ascribed to race. I don't think she said that. But, and then judge Jackson wrote back because she's a much better thinker and writer and justice, essentially. With let them eat cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces that color blindness for all by legal fiat, but deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. That's a drop the mic kind of line.
Scott Galloway · 57:32
Yeah, that was powerful.
Kara Swisher · 57:33
Anyway, this is what's happened, and so I suspect there's going to be a really interesting prediction that this is not over, and and it'll be interesting to see the repercussions going forward. I am not an expert in this area by any means, but certainly a big decision in a in a term of very big decisions around voting rights, etcetera. So go ahead, Scott. Go ahead and make your prediction.
Scott Galloway · 57:59
So my prediction is the IPO market is gonna come roaring back in Q3 and Q4. The VIX, which is sort of a fear gauge, is at a multi year low below 20. There's a ton of money on the sidelines. A lot of companies that were sort of pre IPO have used the last two years to kind of get in fighting shape and cut some costs. The Cava, the recent quick serve restaurant Cava doubled on its opening. I think q three and q four, we're gonna see... I think I can just feel, Kara, the animal spirits coming back into the market inspired by AI. Interesting. In q three and q four, we're gonna see some of the champagne and cocaine. Not that you should do any of those things.
Kara Swisher · 58:38
No. Not abuse them.
Scott Galloway · 58:40
Anyways, the IPO market's ripping... Absolutely ripping back, and I just can't help it on the affirmative action thing. I'm a huge believer in affirmative action, but I think it should be economically based, not race or gender based.
Kara Swisher · 58:52
Yeah. Alright.
Scott Galloway · 58:52
Which by the way would have almost the exact same impact that race based affirmative action happens, but it wouldn't create... Anyway, it's a longer conversation.
Kara Swisher · 59:02
Yeah. We'll maybe talk about it next week. Really, it's a big decision. Big It's We'll see. The Post has some charts showing that in every state that has banned affirmative action, white people are overrepresented, Black people are underrepresented. Most other people are in parody, but it's... We know the effects. We understand the effects of what happens. Anyway, we'll see. We'll talk about it. Okay, Scott. That's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more pivot. Please read us out.
— Predictions segment ends —
Scott Galloway · 59:33
Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Nishat Kerouwat, Travis Larchuk, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertaut engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mia Silverio, and Gatti McBain. Make sure you're following the show wherever you listen podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Fox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Kara Swisher, your intellect, your bravery, or your humor, that's my drug of choice, baby. If I'm addicted to you, so be it.
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