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Yesterday OpenAI announced a major effort for what they call 'Superalignment' to align superintelligent AI with human intent and values. The company is dedicating 20% of its compute resources to the project and its being led by their chief scientist and co-founder. Before that on the Brief: Over the weekend, Google updated its policies to basically say that it's allowed to train AI on any public data we put online. At the same time, platforms like Twitter and Reddit are racing to keep other companies away from the data created on them. On today's Brief, NLW looks at how the rise of AI models are leading companies to cut off access to their data and create fewer commons and more walled gardens. ABOUT THE AI BREAKDOWN The AI Breakdown helps you understand the most important news and discussions in AI.    Subscribe to The AI Breakdown newsletter: https://theaibreakdown.beehiiv.com/subscribe   Subscribe to The AI Breakdown on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAIBreakdown   Join the community: bit.ly/aibreakdown   Learn more: http://breakdown.network/

My guest this week is Turner Novak, a partner at Gelt VC. Many of the largest companies in the world today are consumer social companies, so Turner and I discuss the past, present, and future of those businesses. When executed right, they are often the fastest-growing companies in history, and the rise of TikTok and some other companies we discuss makes it clear that there may always be more room at the top. The network effects that support these companies make them unique beasts to analyze, and Turner’s writing has been among my favorite content on the topic. Please enjoy our detailed conversation on this important are of public and private markets.   This week’s episode is sponsored by Bottomless. Bottomless is a smart coffee subscription which automatically re-orders coffee for you based on your consumption habits.  Bottomless is offering one month and your second bag of coffee for free at bottomless.com/patrick.   For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes (2:18) – (First question) – History of consumer social companies (3:28 – The importance of quality growth over rate of growth (4:43) – Importance of friends and identity in a social network (6:21) – Major markers he analyzes in new social networks (7:59) – The meteoric rise of TikTok and how it compares to other social networks             (8:08) – The Rise of TikTok and Understanding Its Parent Company, ByteDance (13:38) – How TikTok deals with user friction (17:28) – Why TikTok copies is a waste (21:08) – Advising companies to build a media arm in this environment (24:18) – Business models beyond advertising for social networks (30:44) – His thoughts on Pinduoduo and the opportunity for a similar company in the US (37:36) – What Snapchat is doing (43:51) – How social eCommerce could be a competitor to an Amazon (46:31) – His review of Zynn             (46:36) - Attack of the Clones: TikTok’s Rival Kuaishou Lands in the US (52:22) – The geopolitical battle of social networks (53:36) – Creating social commerce companies (54:27) – Fantasy draft portfolio (59:18) – Kindest thing anyone has done for him   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag

James Hong (@jhong) is the creator of Hot or Not? He sits down to tell us how the silly website went from 42 friends, to 2 million page views per day within a week. I love his philosophy of running it like an "internet laundromat" - collecting nickels & quarters from the machine (up to $20,000 per night!) Great guy, great energy, checkout the episode. - shaan (@shaanvp on twitter)  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Behind the screen: content moderation in the shadows of social media author Sarah T Roberts joins Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel to discuss the business and dark side of content moderation while pondering future solutions.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My guest this week is Bill Gurley, a general partner at Benchmark Capital and one my favorite investment thinkers. As you’ll hear, despite enormous success through his career, Bill is clearly still in love with business and investing. Where many might discuss past glories, I’ve been incredibly impressed with how both Bill and his partners emphasize the current portfolio and market landscape. I’m thankful to have had the chance to speak with him in this format. I hope you enjoy our conversation. For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes 1:13 - (First Question) – The idea of increasing returns             1:21 – Competiting Technologies, Increasing Returns, and Lock-in By Historical Events             2:07 – Complex Systems Theory – Santa Fe Institute 4:35 – Markers that could be a sign of network effect in a company 6:27 – The opportunities for companies to capture network effect 8:46 – Are there certain teams/leaders that are more conducive to leading a network effect company 11:55 – Liquidity quality 13:35 – How important is the revenue model at the beginning 15:59 – Fascination with Nextdoor             17:56 – Paradox of Choice 18:39 – Finding opportunities 20:17 – Potential marketplaces and assets that could be commoditized             20:20 – All Markets Are Not Created Equal: 10 Factors To Consider When Evaluating Digital Marketplaces 21:39 – Usage yield on the world’s assets 23:50 – Has technology changed the world of value investing 26:28 – Hyper niche marketplaces 27:52 – Challenges of labor marketplaces 30:12 – User generated content businesses 32:44 – People who are capable of building UGC businesses 33:16 – His interest in Discord 34:31 – Factors of a healthy marketplace 37:57 – Fools’ gold in marketplace businesses 39:04 – How influx of cash is impacting the marketplace business landscape             40:43 – All Revenue is Not Created Equal: The Keys to the 10X Revenue Club 43:20 – How does the influx of money into the space impact him 46:44 – Spending money to attack top brands 50:32 – Regulatory capture 53:36 – His thoughts on the IPO market 57:49 – How did he realize this was his passion 1:00:42 – Qualifying his passion 1:01:52 – Favorite thing about working with entrepreneurs 102:48 – Honing your craft 1:04:33 – Making yourself a good mentor 1:05:56 – Kindest thing anyone has done for him   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.  Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag

Alex and PJ chase down the strangest tips from our Weird Ads hotline, and at the bottom of the rabbit hole they find the Mother of All AdWords Scams. Futher Reading David Segal's story on locksmiths The Ringfinders website Form to give feedback on specific ads Google's statement on our episode:  Our goal is to provide a great experience for the users, advertisers, and publishers that interact with our advertising products everyday. An important part of this work is listening to reactions—good, bad, and in-between—from our users about their experiences online. We appreciate this very much; it helps us make AdWords better. Bad ads are an industry-wide issue and we fight them with considerable fire-power: we’ve invested in best-in-class technology and built a global team of more than 1,000 googlers specifically dedicated to this effort. While this work has produced positive results—we disabled 780 million ads for violating our policies in 2015 alone—we understand this is an ongoing challenge for everyone and we’ll continue to battle it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices