Bret Taylor: Why Pre-Training is for Morons & Companies Will Build Their Own Software

20VC with Harry Stebbings | Bret Taylor: Why Pre-Training is for Morons & Companies Will Build Their Own Software | E1209 @20VC | Uploaded October 2024 | Updated October 2024, 19 hours ago.
Bret Taylor is CEO and Co-Founder of Sierra, a conversational AI platform for businesses. Previously, he served as Co-CEO of Salesforce. Prior to Salesforce, Bret founded Quip and was CTO of Facebook. He started his career at Google, where he co-created Google Maps. Bret serves on the board of OpenAI.
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Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro
(06:46) Are We in Peak AI?
(12:48) The Threat of AI Models Replacing Traditional Software
(18:14) AI Services Companies & Their Role in Next-Gen Applications
(29:05) Balancing AGI Pursuit and Product Development
(34:04) Sustainable AI Business Models Amidst Commoditization & High Costs
(41:35) Is There Ever a Stop to the Escalating Costs in AI Development?
(44:36) AI Agents & the Future: The Decision to Build Sierra
(54:38) Unanticipated Challenges in Building Sierra
(55:38) Transitioning from Software Rules to Guardrails
(01:04:37) Content Verification & Trust: Concerns in a Misinformation-Driven Era
(01:08:55) Quick-Fire Round
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In Today’s Discussion with Bret Taylor:

1. The Biggest Misconceptions About AI Today:
Does Bret believe we are in an AI bubble or not?
Why does Bret believe it is BS that companies will all use AI to build their own software?
What does no one realise about the cost of compute today in a world of AI?

2. Foundation Models: The Fastest Depreciating Asset in History?
As a board member of OpenAI, does Bret agree that foundation models are the fastest depreciating asset in history?
Will every application be subsumed by foundation models? What will be standalone?
How does Bret think about the price dumping we are seeing in the foundation model landscape?
Does Bret believe we will continue to see small foundation model companies (Character, Adept, Inflection) be acquired by larger incumbents?

3. The Biggest Opportunity in AI Today: The Death of the Phone + Website:
What does Bret believe are the biggest opportunities in the application layer of AI today?
Why does Bret put forward the case that we will continue to see the role of the phone reduce in consumer lives? How does AI make that happen?
What does Bret mean when he says we are moving from a world of software rules to guardrails?
What does AI mean for the future of websites? How does Bret expect consumers to interact with their favourite brands in 10 years?

4. Bret Taylor: Ask Me Anything: Zuck, Leadership, Fundraising:
Bret has worked with Zuck, Tobi @ Shopify, Marc Benioff and more, what are his biggest lessons from each of them on great leadership?
How did Bret come to choose Peter @ Benchmark to lead his first round? What advice does Bret have to other VCs on how to be a great VC?
Bret is on the board of OpenAI, what have been his biggest lessons from OpenAI on what it takes to be a great board member?
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$Eiso Kant, CTO @Poolside: Raising $600M To Compete in the Race for AGI | E1211 Eiso Kant is the Co-Founder and CTO of Poolside, building next-generation AI for software engineering. Just last week, Poolside announced their $500M Series B valuing the company at $3BN. Prior to Poolside, Eiso founded Athenian, a data-enabled engineering platform. Before that, he built source{d} - the world’s first company dedicated to applying AI to code and software. Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (00:53) What is Poolside? (04:42) Capturing Iterative Thinking in Uncharted Data (08:58) The Biggest Bottleneck in AI Progress: Compute, Data, or Models? (12:49) The Value of Synthetic Data (15:45) Scaling Laws in AI (18:21) Projecting Model Costs Over the Next 12-24 Months (22:10) Future of Model Distillation (29:36) Does Cash Directly Correlate to Compute Access? (31:35) Eiso’s Perspective on Larry Ellison’s $100B Foundation Model Entry Point (36:50) Eiso’s Outlook on Nvidias Dominance and the Future of Compute (38:51) Has Innovation Stalled Awaiting Nvidias Blackwell? (46:06) OpenAI, Anthropic, or X.ai — Which to Buy and Why? (51:00) Comparing Crypto & AI: Decentralization vs. Centralization (55:23) The Decision to Stay Europe-Based (59:01) Work Ethic & Work-Life Balance (01:04:53) Is China 2 Years Behind Than Europe? (01:06:48) Quick-Fire Round In Today’s Episode with Eiso Kant We Discuss: 1. Raising $600M to Compete in the AGI Race: What is Poolside? How does Poolside differentiate from other general-purpose LLMs? How much of Poolside’s latest raise will be spent on compute? How does Eiso feel about large corporates being a large part of startup LLM provider’s funding rounds? Why did Poolside choose to only accept investment from Nvidia? Is $600M really enough to compete with the mega war chests of other LLMs? 2. The Big Questions in AI: Will scaling laws continue? Have we reached a stage of diminishing returns in model performance for LLMs? What is the biggest barrier to the continued improvement in model performance; data, algorithms or compute? To what extent will Nvidia’s Blackwell chip create a step function improvement in performance? What will OpenAI’s GPT5 need to have to be a gamechanger once again? 3. Compute, Chips and Cash: Does Eiso agree with Larry Ellison; “you need $100BN to play the foundation model game”? What does Eiso believe is the minimum entry price? Will we see the continuing monopoly of Nvidia? How does Eiso expect the compute landscape to evolve? Why are Amazon and Google best placed when it comes to reducing cost through their own chip manufacturing? Does Eiso agree with David Cahn @ Sequoia, “you will never train a frontier model on the same data centre twice”? Can the speed of data centre establishment and development keep up with the speed of foundation model development? 4. WTF Happens to The Model Layer: OpenAI and Anthropic… Does Eiso agree we are seeing foundation models become commoditised? What would Eiso do if he were Sam Altman today? Is $6.6BN really enough for OpenAI to compete against Google, Meta etc…? OpenAI at $150BN, Anthropic at $40BN and X.ai at $24BN. Which would Eiso choose to buy and why? Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Eiso Kant on Twitter: https://twitter.com/eisokant Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vchq Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact #20vc #harrystebbings #eisokant #poolside #ai #software #venturecapital #founder #nvidia #openai #anthropic #meta$

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