意外后果：为我们所构建之物承担责任

嗨，我是 Mike Stern，这位是 Tom Hirs Hersen。欢迎来到 General Magic in the soul of tech。我们相信我们正在建造改变世界的东西，在某些方面我们做到了。在其他方面，我们并不理解我们启动了怎样的进程。General Magic 的故事还没有结束。我们仍然生活在它所开启的世界里。今天我们有一位特别嘉宾，Tony Fadell，他既是 General Magic 早期的心脏与灵魂——那时他还是个年轻工程师——也是当今创新和以人为本的创新最重要的推动者之一。很高兴见到 Tony 并采访他。你知道，“神童”这个词也许被用滥了，但在 Tony 身上，它恰如其分。我不确定该用什么词来形容一个神童在几十年后依然保持着同样的才华——在 Tony 身上，不仅是智慧和工程天才，更是一个有远见的人，一个关心人性一面的人。所以很高兴见到你，Tony，接下来 Mike，开始吧。

Hi, this is Mike Stern and this is Tom Hirs Hersen. Welcome to General Magic in the soul of tech. We believed we were building something that would change the world and in some ways we did. In others, we didn't understand what we were setting in motion. The story of general magic isn't over. We're still living inside what it started. We have a special guest today, Tony Fadell, who was both a heart and soul of General Magic in the early days when he was a young engineer and who has remained on the scene as one of the most important enablers of innovative and human-centered innovation today. It's a pleasure to see Tony and interview him. You know, the word prodigy maybe is overused, but in Tony's case, it fits. I'm not sure what the right term is for someone who was a prodigy and decades later maintains that same brilliance and in Tony's case not just intelligence and a wizard at engineering but really a far-sighted human being someone who cares about the human side of things. So a delight to see you Tony and with that Mike fire away.

嗯，Tony，你身上不寻常的一点是，你是当下以及我们当前技术沉浸状态的建筑师之一。对于你帮助发明并带入世界的那些东西——它们本意是让世界变得更好，也确实做到了，但同时也让世界变得更糟——你表达过一些悔意，我想这个词是恰当的。嗯，你现在还是这么看吗？当你投资 AI 公司、推动创新时，会借鉴这些吗？嗯，这一次你想防止什么发生？

Um so um one of Tony one of the unusual things about you is that you're as one of the architects of the present and the present state of our technology immersion. You've expressed some remorse, I think is the appropriate word, for what became of the things that you helped to invent and bring into the world that were intended to change the world for the better and have both done that but also changed it for the worse. Um, is that still where you are now? and is it something you draw on when you invest in AI companies and foster innovation in general? Um, what do you want to prevent from happening this time?

好的。首先，谢谢各位。谢谢。很高兴见到你们，这么多年之后，能像这样谈论这些非常重要的话题，尤其是考虑到我们都是从 35 年前起步的，想想我们走了多远、技术变得多么不可思议，真是疯狂，但负面影响也变得更加真实，我们都在身边经历着。所以具体到你的问题，我明白，也很清楚，我们制造了很多技术，大多数都带来了意想不到的后果。有些人道德伦理可疑，他们可能创造技术来伤害人类或为了利益剥削人类。但大多数情况下，我认识的人、我合作过的人、我参与过的事情，都有很多意想不到的后果，你根本不知道你建造的东西会被用于那种用途。嗯，我们可以谈谈当年的核弹。你知道，哦，是分裂原子。好，太好了。我们要制造能源。我们要做这些伟大的事情，但它也是一颗炸弹。智能手机，尤其是 iPhone，当时根本没有真正的移动社交媒体，有 Facebook，但没有我们今天所知的 Instagram、TikTok。这些东西都是在一个平台上创造出来的，而我有幸参与了这个平台的构建和实现。所以人们创造了这些东西，利用这些设备不可思议的力量，而我们作为平台的创始者，对它们的发展方向没有真正的控制。因此，我不得不理解，我们创造的东西确实会带来意想不到的后果，我们必须尽力去回溯，即使我们不再参与那个项目，我们也要回去，成为理性的声音，把真相带到情况中，看看能否带来改变，至少间接地，如果能直接改变那当然最好。所以我自己也在做这些事情，无论是像你们这样的团体演讲，还是新闻节目、其他播客，以及写文章，来揭示负面影响，以及人们需要做什么，这些领导者需要做什么，以确保他们不会伤害人们。

Okay. Well, first, thanks guys. Thanks. It's great to see, you know, after all these years, you know, it's great to to to be able to to speak like speak like uh we are we are going to about these really important topics, especially given from where we were all started 35 years ago or whatever, which is crazy to think how far we've come and how how incredible technology has become, but also the downsides have become even more real. um and that we're all experiencing around us. So to your question specifically, you know, I understand and and clear that we we make lots of technologies with and for the most part with unintended consequences. Some people with questionable, you know, morality and ethics, they may be creating technology to harm the human race or to exploit the human human race for for profit. But for the most part, the people that I know that I've worked with and the things that I've worked on, you know, there's a lot of unintended consequences that come to come to bear that you had no idea that the things that you're building would be used for that. Um, you know, I we can talk about, you know, the nuclear bomb from back in the day. You know, it was, oh, it's splitting the atom. Okay, great. We're going to make energy. We're going to do these great things, and it's also a bomb. When with with the smartphone, iPhone in particular, there was no such thing as really, you know, there's Facebook, but there was really no mobile, social media, there wasn't, you know, the the Instagram, the Tik Tok that we know it today. These things all were created upon a platform that you know I had to I was lucky enough to be involved in in in building and bringing to life. Um, and so people have created these things and taken advantage of the incredible power these devices have and the us as the originators of the platform have no real control over, you know, where those things are going. And um and so I have had to understand that we do create things with unintended consequences and we have to do our best to try to, you know, go back and even if we're not part of that same project any longer. how how we go back and we actually be the voice of reason be and and kind of bring truth to the situation and try to see if we can bring change if at least indirectly I if we can directly is the obviously the best way and so I you know do things myself you know whether it's speaking to to to to groups like you guys and what you're up to as well as on newscasts and other podcasts and and writing about it as well to um to show the downsides and what people need to be doing and these that these leaders need to be doing to make sure they're not harming people.

你知道，我关注应用商店和那里的平台。我知道他们一直说他们无法对哪些应用被哪些人使用进行年龄限制。我认为这些平台需要承担更多的责任，因为如果你有健康的用户，就意味着你有健康的客户，健康的客户意味着公司的长期价值。所以你想要健康的客户，你才能拥有健康的业务，不仅是今天，而是长期。如果你剥削那些客户，或者他们对为孩子购买技术过于谨慎，他们的孩子最终使用了不同的技术或其他什么，这不符合公司的最佳利益。所以你必须清醒过来，理解有一种整体的、长期的方式来看待这些事情，确保你的公司长期为客户的健康做正确的事情。

You know, I I look at things such as the the app stores and the platforms there. And I know they they keep saying they can't do age gating of of of what apps are used for, you know, for which individuals. You know, I think there's a lot more responsibility that these platforms need to bring to bear um because of the fact that if you have healthy users, that means you have healthy customers and healthy customers means long time long-term value for for the companies. And so you want to have healthy customers, you can have a healthy business, not just today, but long long term. And if you exploit those customers or they're too cautious about buying the technology that they use for their children and their children ends up using a different technology or what have you, it's not it's not in the best interest of the company. So you have to wake up and understand there's a holistic way and a long-term way of looking at these things and and to make sure that your company is doing the right thing long term for the health of its customers.

我想知道你是否考虑过激励这种方式。我的意思是，我们生活在商业世界这种季度文化中，追求盈利，在硅谷有 IPO 退出的想法，有时甚至在 IPO 之前，你知道，大量的

I'm wondering whether you you think of ways to incentivize that. I mean, we live in such a in the business world quarter-to-quarter culture of hitting earnings and in Silicon Valley the idea of the IPO exit and in some cases even before an IPO, you know, tremendous amount

或者在盈利之前。

or before profits.

是的。对。没错。更确切地说。那么，你如何将这种长期观点付诸实践？

Yeah. Right. Exactly. Even more to the point. So do do how do you operationalize that long-term view?

我认为，从意想不到的后果的角度来看，一个有趣的方式是，你说：“哦，我们有一个问题。哦，我们看到了问题，我们和你在一起。”你实际上告诉人们你看到的问题，他们也看到了，并说我们正在解决它。你知道，我们知道像苹果这样的公司在说隐私、隐私、隐私。这绝对是事实。人们希望他们的数据保持私密。他们不想成为产品。所以，这很好。

I think it's you know one is if you look at it from a unintended consequences point of view. I think an interesting way of doing it is that you go oh we have a problem. Oh we see the problem we're here with you. And you actually tell people about the problem that you see that they see as well and say we're addressing it. You know, we know companies like Apple are saying privacy, privacy, privacy. And that's absolutely the case. You know, people want their data to keep their data private. They don't want to be they don't want to be the product. So, that's great.

为什么不对其他应用和类似的东西也做同样的事，说：“我们在这里，我们会给你信息和工具，让你为你和你的家人做出真正好的选择，因为我们知道这些是问题。”而不是把它们掩盖起来说：“哦，你在说什么？这只是轶事证据，还有这个。”就像，不，你仍然可以给他们工具，并让工具非常易于使用和直观，就像这些公司知道如何做的那样，以便让人们控制这些非常强大的设备，掌握在自己和家人手中。我认为这在营销和所有这些东西中一直都很有效。是的，也许有些人会跳起来说：“嗯，你能做到吗？”但归根结底，我们发现，每个人在网络上都应该匿名是行不通的。长期行不通。有些理想主义的东西我们需要有。它行不通。这不是我们可以在全国到处跑，每个人都匿名。他们不能那样。我们有身份证。人们知道谁是谁。有实实在在的东西。是的，在线，而且我们越来越多的人变成在线，对吧？正如我们所见，我们的很多信息比以往任何时候都更多地在网上，我们需要知道谁在使用它，它去了哪里。人们需要知道他们是在和真实的人打交道，尤其是在现在的 AI 世界里。我们不知道谁在冒充谁。所以，这整个事情就像，哦，有暗网，真的很黑暗，就像你不想去那里。但我们不。每个人都匿名。然后我们有另一个东西，我们称之为常规网络。我们认为那是光明网络。哦，有暗网和光明网。不，我们不在光明网络中。我们在灰色网络中。我们在一个不可思议的灰色网络中，我们不知道它是黑暗的还是光明的。一切都混在一起。我们需要达到一个点，我们有光明网络，那些想要被识别的人可以被识别。企业可以被识别。他们知道他们在和谁合作，就像他们在街上和当今物理世界中的其他一切一样。我们需要在数字世界中做同样的事情，这样我们才能开始创建真正的信任关系，这样我们知道我们把数据交到谁手中，反之亦然，特别是因为我们与谁合作变得越来越分散，我们希望能够对我们的应用和我们使用的服务做同样的事情，这样我们才能真正，怎么说，有更强大的联系和更强的信任，因为物理世界正受到数字世界的挑战，数字世界不如物理世界安全，我们清楚地看到它不如物理世界安全，我们需要开始让它们再次同步。

Why don't you do the same thing with these other apps and that stuff, saying, "We're here and we're going to give you the information and the tools to make really good choices for you and your family because we know these are issues." As opposed to brushing them under the rug and going, "Oh, what are you talking about? This anecdotal evidence and there's this." It's like, no, you can still give them the tools and make the tools very easy to use and intuitive just like these companies know how to do to be able to give people control of these very powerful devices in the hands of themselves as well as their families. I think it just plays all day long in marketing and all that stuff. Yes, maybe some people get up in arms and go, "Well, can you do that?" But at the end of the day, we're finding out that this everybody should be anonymous on the web doesn't play. It doesn't play long term. There's certain idealistic things that we need to have. It don't work. It's not like we can run around the country and everyone's anonymous. They can't be that way. We have IDs. People know who people are. There's tangible things. Yes, online and more and more of our person becomes online, right? And a lot of our information is more online than ever as we're seeing, we need to know who's using it, where it's going. And people need to know that they're dealing with real humans, especially in the world of AI now. We don't know who's impersonating whom. So, this whole thing of like, oh, there's the dark web, which is really dark, and like you don't want to go over there. But we don't. Everybody's anonymous. And then we have this other thing which we call the regular web. And we think of that as the light web. Oh, there's the dark web and light. No, we're not in a light web. We're in a gray web. We're in an incredible gray web where we don't know whether it's dark or it's light. Everything's mixed together. And we need to get to a point where we have the light web where people who want to be identified can be identified. Businesses can be identified. They know who they're working with just like they are on the streets and everything else in today's day and age in the physical world. We need to do the same thing in the digital world so that we can start to create real trusted relationships so we know who we're putting our data in the hands of and vice versa, especially because we're becoming more and more decentralized with who we work with and we want to be able to do the same thing with our apps and the services that we use so that we really can, how can I say, have a much stronger connection and stronger trust because the physical world is being challenged by the digital world and the digital world is not as safe and we clearly see that it's not as safe as the physical world and we need to start to get those to sync up again.

我们还有多少时间？你知道，汤姆和我之前谈过，关于某些历史，花了 60 年才让汽车安全。你知道，这花了，这是多代人的努力。嗯，我们还有多少时间？呃，是否需要政府干预才能实现？

How much time have we got? You know, Tom and I have talked before, you know, about the history of certain it took 60 years to get safe cars. You know, it took it was a multigenerational effort. Um, how much time have we got? And uh, does it take government intervention to make that happen?

嗯，我们知道安全汽车之所以成为安全汽车，是因为政府介入了，对吧？达到那个点需要时间，我们看到人们在死亡，你知道，我们说我们对 AI 放手，我们对不同的事情放手。我不认为那是应该的方式。如果我们看看，我们可以随意批评中国，但中国的人们，他们正在制定真正的规则。他们非常清楚在线可以做什么，不可以做什么，并加以打击，这在欧洲也在发生，我知道每个人都说哦欧洲，你知道他们慢，他们不创新，但我看，你知道，这并不意味着有了政府监管你就必须慢或不创新。我们可以在其他国家看到这一点，所以你知道我去过一些不可思议的国家，新加坡，如果你去那里，他们的数字基础设施，他们如何做，如何整合，你可以在 10 分钟内创办企业，获得银行账户和移动账户以及所有这些东西非常简单，这是可以发生的，是的，人们会说哦那是一个国家，你知道一个小民族国家，你知道那是因为他们能做到，或者你去挪威，也是一样，但我不相信那只是，如果我们看看中国，他们也能做到。所以，我认为这只是缺乏政治意愿。你知道，这是允许如此多的金融，你知道，扭曲我们的政治，以至于个人的声音听不到，他们的声音听不到。这些事情发生是因为系统就是这样设置的，如果这样发生，你知道法规无法以任何形式颁布，这就像不平等，我们知道那会走向何方，嗯，它已经朝那个方向去了，而其他国家正在实施它。是的，这是痛苦。它可能是痛苦的，但也需要平衡，嗯，来自这些伤害这些社会的 less afair 行为。所以再次，我认为这只是政治系统的无能，嗯，因为我们已经有的结构性问题，我们随着时间的推移创造的，说公司是人等等。

Well, we know that safe cars only became safe cars because the government got involved, right? It took time to get to that point and we saw people were dying and, you know, we're saying we're hands off on AI, we're hands off on different things. I don't think that that is the way to be. If we look at what you know and we can we can ding China all we want but the people in China are it's they are making real rules. They're making it really clear on what can be done online and not and they crack down on it and that's happening in Europe and I know everyone goes oh Europe and you know they're slow and they're not innovative but I look you know it doesn't mean that with government regulations you have to be slow or not innovative. We can see that in other countries and so you know I've gone to some incredible countries Singapore like if you go there and their digital infrastructure and how they do how they integrate that and how you can start businesses in 10 minutes and and get banking accounts and mobile accounts and all that stuff very simply and it's it can happen yes and people will say oh that's a nation you know a small nation state you know and that's because they can do that or you go to Norway and it's the same thing but I don't believe that that's just if we look at China, they are able to do it as well. So, I think it's just a it's a it's a lack of political will. It's, you know, it's the u ability to to allow so much finance, you know, skew our politics so that the individuals are are are not heard and their voices are not heard. these things are happening because the system is set up for happening and if for happening this way that you know the regulations aren't being able to to be enacted in any way shape or form it's like less afair and we know where that's going to head um and it's already heading that way whereas there's other countries who are who are implementing it. Yeah, it's pain. It can be painful, but it's also needs to be a balance um from from these less afair behaviors that are hurting these com these these these societies. So again, I think it's just an inability of the political system um because of structural problems that we've had that we've created over time saying corporations are people and so on and so forth.

我知道你，嗯，我知道你在言行一致。你能谈谈你支持的公司，以及它们如何为以人为中心、对人类有益的技术愿景做出贡献吗？你知道，Build 在做什么？

I know you um I know you're putting your money where your mouth is. Can you talk a little bit about the companies you're backing and how they're contributing to that vision of human-centered human beneficial technology? You know, what what build is doing?

是的。所以，通过 Build Collective，你知道，我们投资于我们认为有益于社会、有益于个人健康、有益于环境的公司，对吧？我们想，我们非常非常认真地对待这一点。我们不会去追逐资金在哪里，或者你知道下一个伟大的东西是什么。我们不投资游戏。我们不投资媒体技术或销售技术。嗯，你知道，我们做的一件事是我们，我们在清洁农场。我们正在利用塑料，字面上农场使用的塑料，制造清洁农场、农业油、农业燃料和肥料，使用环境中已有的产品、废物，它们与当今的农场完全兼容。所以，在许多情况下，它实际上是一对一的替代，对地球更好，对作物更好，对消费这些作物的客户更好，而且它们总体上生产更好的作物。

Yeah. So, with Build Collective, you know, we invest in companies that we believe are benefiting society, benefiting health of the individual and benefiting the environment, right? And we want to we take that really really seriously. We don't go and just chase wherever the money is or you know what's the next great thing. We don't invest in gaming. We don't invest in media technology or sales technology. Um you know for one thing that we do is we we're we're in clean farms. We're taking um plastic, literally plastic that's used on farms and making clean farms, agricultural oils, agricultural fuels um and fertilizers using products, waste products that are already in the environment and they're fully compatible with today's farms. So it's literally a onetoone replacement in many cases that is better for the planet, better for better for the crops, better for the customers who are are consuming those crops and they make better crops in general.

所以，我们试图确保实现双赢，而且几乎没有负面影响。没有不存在权衡的事情，但我们努力确保负面影响非常小。我们投资核聚变能源，因为我们认为这非常重要。这不是因为 AI，而是因为我们需要更清洁的能源，而不仅仅是因为 AI 需要它们。我们还在做其他事情，比如 AI 加回收。我们使用 AI 技术，不需要庞大的数据中心，只需要一台台式机或服务器电脑来帮助分类回收。我们对 AI 加纺织品也做同样的事情，确保我们制造出好的纺织品，因为 30% 到 40% 的纺织品因为有一个织物错误或其他问题就被扔进焚烧堆，人们不会购买。所以，我们试图优化我们拥有的东西，确保在许多地方消除浪费，而不是制造更多浪费，或者追求那些不一定有益于社会或我们健康的东西。

So it's kind of, you know, we try to make sure we have a win-win and there's very few downsides. There's no such thing as no trade-offs, but we try to make sure that there's very little downsides. We're investing in fusion energy because we think that's really important. That's not because it's AI, because we need cleaner energy sources, not just because AI needs them. We're doing other things like AI plus recycling. So, we use AI technology. It doesn't need a huge data center. It just uses a desktop or a server computer to help sort recycling. We do the same thing with AI plus textiles to make sure we're making good textiles because 30 to 40% of it is thrown on the incinerator pile because it has one fabric error or what have you and people won't buy it. So, we're trying to do things that are optimizing the things we have and making sure we're eliminating waste in many places as opposed to creating more waste or going after things that don't necessarily benefit society or our health.

Tony，也许我过于简化了，但听你说话，看看你现在的职业生涯，我觉得或者至少很容易从 General Magic 那里画一条直线，那里有非常人性化的愿景，到你今天所做的事情，确实把人和环境以及集体利益放在首位。你认为你的职业生涯是那条直线，还是曲折的，而我看到了一些实际上不存在的东西？

You know, Tony, maybe I'm oversimplifying things, but hearing you talk and looking at your career where you are now, it seems to me that or at least it's tempting to draw a straight line from General Magic where there was this very humanistic vision to what you're doing today, which really does put people in the environment and what benefits the collective at the forefront. Do you see your career as that straight line or is it squiggly and I'm seeing something that actually isn't there?

嗯，我认为其中始终有人性元素，因为你总是要为想购买的人创造东西，对吧？他们必须想要参与。我不相信——不，从来没有一个产品，我们为其创造产品的用户就是产品。就像我们不是在卖用户。我们一直说，你必须先付钱，然后购买并使用它。这是一种非常清晰的关系。背后没有那种邪恶的东西。我不知道我们投资过或我参与过的任何东西有那种商业模式。你知道吗？那些商业模式要难得多。你知道，那些你必须——或者人们必须付钱的产品，对吧？尤其是硬件产品。你知道，他们得花钱安装，得尝试。所以对我来说，从 General Magic 开始，我一直非常关注用户，从 General Magic 的失败中，不一定理解客户和理解情况，到确保我们每次都做对并持续做对。所以这绝对是一个线性进展和一条始终连接的道路，整个环境，整个其他社会事物，更广泛的事物，对我来说真正发挥作用是在有了孩子之后。所以当你开始看到技术及其如何影响和塑造他们的生活、环境以及它的走向时，因为这是 2000 年代中期，你知道，气候危机真正首次真正袭来，你知道，随着阿尔·戈尔的《难以忽视的真相》，那种事情。那时我就想，好吧，我们我确保那成为一个更深层的元素。不仅仅是考虑客户，他们需要什么，而是确保你所做的一切都在他们周围创造东西。然后我看到社交媒体在 iPhone 之后立即出现。我想，好吧，我想确保我不做任何类似的事情。所以它变成了一个更完整的愿景，围绕客户，围绕用户，确保不仅用户快乐，而且环境、社会以及所有其他包围客户的事物也都会尝试做正确的事情来支持那个客户。

Well, I think that there was always a human element in it because you always had to create something for people who wanted to purchase it, right? They had to want to engage. I don't believe—no, there's never been a product where the users that we created the product for were the product. Like we weren't selling the users. We've always said you have to put your money up first and you buy it and you use it. It's a very clear relationship. There's not this oh nefarious thing on the back. I don't know of anything that we've ever invested in or I've been involved in which we had any kind of business model like that. And you know what? Those business models are much harder to build. You know, those the ones where you have to or the products where people have to put their money up, right? Especially hardware products. You know, it's money they got to install it, they got to try things. And so for me, I've always been very focused on the user from General Magic from, you know, the debacle that was General Magic and not necessarily understanding the customer and understanding the situation to making sure we did it right every time and continued to get it right. And so that is definitely a linear progression and a path that always linked up where the whole environment where the whole other societal things the broader things came in that came into play for me really when having kids. And so when you start to see the technology and how it affects and shapes their lives, the environment and where it was going because this was like mid 2000s was, you know, when climate the climate crisis was really first really hitting, you know, with Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, those kinds of thing. That's when I just kind of go, okay, we I made sure that that became a much deeper element. Not just think about the customer, what they need, but make sure that whatever you're doing is creating things around them. And then I saw social media come right after the iPhone. I was like, okay, I want to make sure I'm not doing anything like that. So it became a much fuller vision around the customer around the user to make sure that not just the user was happy but the environment and the society and all those other things that envelop that customer were also going to try to do the right thing to support that customer.

我想稍微换个话题。你来自底特律，我记得你是个超级音乐迷。我想我们也是那一代人，你和我都记得手提音响，人们把立体声音响扛在肩上，音乐因此非常社交。带着手提音响，不可能不社交。而 iPod 改变了这一点。它不是第一个改变这一点的产品，但人们体验音乐的方式发生了巨大转变，不再是这种社交活动，而是更个人、更亲密的体验。这种转变在你心中有多大，你知道，文化和人类体验的转变是否在你思考的最前沿？完全不是。你认为这是一个意外后果，还是一个有意为之的意外后果，或者仅仅是你意识到但不在你思考中心的事情？

I want to shift gears a little bit. You're from Detroit and I remember you being a huge music fan. I think we're also of the generation where you and I remember boom boxes and people carrying their stereo on their shoulder and music being very social because of that. Couldn't help but be social with a boom box. And the iPod changed that. It wasn't the first product to change that, but there was a big shift in how people experienced music, not as this social endeavor, but as a more personal, intimate endeavor. How much was that shift in your mind and how much you know the cultural and human experience shift was that at the forefront in your mind? Not at all. Do you see that as an unintended consequence or an intended unintended consequence or simply something you are aware of but not at the center of your thinking?

嗯，我认为你知道索尼很久以前就用 Walkman 开始了那个趋势，你知道他们有 FM 收音机那个和所有那些东西。所以我认为那种把音乐带在身边、拥有个人声音气泡的整个事情很早就开始了，所以你知道你可以说有点像是手机，然后是智能手机，所以对我来说，有 Walkman，然后有 iPod，那有点像是同样的事情，就像它是一个超级充电的 Walkman，就像好吧，它有你想要的一切甚至更多，对吧，所以我认为它沿着同样的血统，所以那从来不是一件事。它只是我们想要更多那样。呃，人们想要那样。现在我知道人们也告诉我哦你只是让世界对每个人都是孤立的体验，你知道因为每个人都戴着耳机。但最终我也看到，尤其是这是早期，你知道在 iPod 的最初几年，人们会走向彼此，看到白色耳机和线，然后说哦那是我们中的另一个。嘿我想和你谈谈，因为你一定是个音乐爱好者。对吧。所以我们看到围绕那创建的社区。我们也看到播客。播客，pod 这个词来自 iPod，对吧？所以有一个完整的社区围绕人们收听，以及我们现在正在做的事情，对吧？是沿着整个血统。所以你你知道，再次，技术是一把双刃剑，它可以团结也可以分裂。只是嗯确保你团结多于分裂。

Well, I think at I think you know Sony started that trend long ago with the Walkman with the you know they had the FM radio one and all that stuff. So I think that whole thing of keeping your music with you and having your own personal sound bubble that started well before and so it was you know you could say there were kind of you know cell phones and then there were smartphones and so to me there was the Walkman and then there was the iPod and that was kind of that same thing was like it's a supercharged Walkman like it's it's like okay it's got everything you want and more right and so I think it's along that same lineage so that was never a you know a thing. It was just like we want more of that. Uh and people want that. Now I you know people also told me oh you you've just made the world isolating experience for everyone you know because everyone's got their headphones on. But at the end of the day I also saw especially this was early days you know in the first years of the iPod people would go up to each other and go saw the white headphones the the wires and they go oh that's another one of us. Hey I want to talk to you because you must be a music lover. Right. And so we saw communities being created around that. We also saw podcasting. Podcasting, the word pod came from iPod, right? And so there was a whole community around people listening and what we're doing right now, right? Is is along that whole lineage. So you you know, again, technology is is is a double-edged sword and it can unite and it can divide. It's just um making sure you unite more than you divide.

我还有一个问题，而且，你知道，我是那个问古怪和愚蠢问题的人。嗯，还有什么新鲜事，对吧？没错。就像，你知道，彗星一直朝同一个方向飞。嗯，我想到模拟与数字。你知道，在 General Magic 之后，我去了 Linear Technology，那是一家模拟半导体公司。

Another question I had, and again, you know, I'm the guy with the off-the-wall and stupid questions. Um, what else is new, right? Exactly. Like, you know, the comet keeps going in the same direction. Um, and I think about analog versus digital. You know, after General Magic, I ended up at Linear Technology, which is a analog semiconductor company.

模拟设备似乎有一种温暖感，而数字设备要么是明亮的光，要么是黑暗。你有没有感觉到，这里有个离奇的部分，模拟设备与数字设备相比，有一种内在的人类体验？数字设备是否有某种内在特质，使其本质上令人上瘾或本质上疏离，或本质上具有任何特定属性？

Analog just seems there's a warmth to it, whereas digital is either a bright shining light or darkness. Do you have a sense, and here's the off-the-wall part, that there's a feel, there's a human experience that's intrinsic with analog devices versus digital devices? Is there something intrinsic to digital that makes it inherently addictive or inherently alienated or inherently anything in particular?

你是指音频方面的具体内容吗？

Are you saying about audio in specifics or

不，我指的是，你知道，使用真空管与使用半导体，以及用这两种不同技术（模拟与数字）制造出的设备类型，以及这如何影响市面上的产品。然后人们与这些产品有什么样的人类体验。

No, I'm talking about, you know, using vacuum tubes as opposed to using semiconductors and the types of devices that are made with those two different types of technology, analog versus digital, and how that influences what products are out there. And then what kind of human experiences people have with those.

你知道，我认为你还必须添加一个维度，那就是模拟、数字便利性和数字连接性。好吧。我认为人们喜欢他们的索尼 Walkman，你知道，当它是磁带播放器时。他们喜欢他们的索尼 Discman，当它是 CD 时，那是数字的。他们喜欢他们的 iPod，因为它是数字便利。但一旦 iPod 变成 iPhone，它变得数字连接，iPhone 的黑洞吸收了所有功能和特性，然后它不再是音乐播放器。它是一个通知引擎和分心引擎，你甚至无法听完一首歌而不收到五个通知。那就是它发生的时候。所以我认为人们想要数字的便利。他们不想要数字的始终连接及其带来的东西。然后有些人更喜欢模拟而不是那个。你可以得到模拟，但我认为那是第二或第三层次的事情，除了便利与连接性。这就是问题所在。我们看到很多人把 iPod 带回来，对吧？iPod 正在回归。有线耳机正在回归。我们看到数字相机复制模拟相机，因为人们不想要一个总是通知你的相机，或者你一拍照就必须立即发布到 Instagram 或 TikTok 或其他什么。我认为这里有一些中间地带，人们喜欢数字的便利和许多功能到一定程度，但一旦它始终连接，它总是这个稳定的流，你知道，你急于把你捕捉或听到的东西发布出去，它打扰你。他们不再想要那个了。他们正在反击，说够了。

You know, I think there's one more dimension you have to add to it, which is there's analog, there's digital convenience, and there's digital connectivity. Okay. I think that people they love their Sony Walkman, you know, when it was a tape player. They loved their Sony Discman when it was a CD, which was digital. They love their iPod because it was digital convenience. But as soon as the iPod turned into an iPhone and it became digitally connected and the black hole of the iPhone sucked in every feature and functionality into it and then it was no longer a music player. It was a notifications engine and a distraction engine and you can't even get through a song without five notifications coming in. That's when it happened. So I think people want the convenience of digital. They don't want the always-on connectivity of digital and what that brings. And then some people prefer analog versus that. And you can get analog, but I think that's a second or third order thing besides the convenience versus connectivity. And that's where the thing is. And we're seeing a lot of people bringing iPods back, right? iPods are coming back. Wired headphones are coming back. We're seeing digital cameras that replicate analog cameras because people don't want a camera that notifies you all the time or that as soon as you take a picture you have to post it right away, you know, to Instagram or TikTok or whatever it is. I think there's something in between here that people like the convenience and a lot of the features that come with digital to a certain point, but once it's always connected and it's always this steady stream of, you know, you're anxious to get whatever it is you're capturing or listening to out and it's interrupting you. They don't want that anymore. They're pushing back going enough is enough.

在 Build 中，你写到了从 Nest 的 CEO 转变为 Google 一部分的经历。你知道，我想知道那次经历教会了你什么关于以人为本的发展理念，而不是构建掠夺性平台，以及将 Nest 的产品愿景融入 Google 世界。是令人失望吗？还是最终感觉还不错？嗯，你知道，再次，你从那次经历中吸取了什么，关于你现在支持的公司？

In Build, you write about the experience of transitioning from being the CEO of Nest to being part of Google. And you know, I'm wondering what that experience taught you about the ethos of human-centered development and not building extractive platforms and in integrating Nest product vision into the Google world. Was it disappointing? Was it something you ended up feeling turned out okay? Um, and you know, and again, what did you draw from that experience in terms of the companies you're supporting now?

嗯，我认为那时和现在非常不同。那是 10 年前。10 年前，11 年前。今天的 Google 与 10、11 年前不同。Google，无论它做了多少正确的事和多少错误的事，它都没有停止赚钱。它只是印钱。它继续印钱。它今天继续印钱。但那时没有挑战。没有威胁。所以就像，‘是的，我们在这里。我们玩得很开心。’你知道，别担心。就像我一直是那个说‘嘿，我们得做得更好。我们得让这个更好。我们得做这个。我们得解决问题。’当你处于一种文化中，一切都很容易，因为钱总是源源不断。就像，‘嘿，别捣乱。没什么大不了的。别担心。一切顺利。’而我说，‘不，我们得解决问题。我们来这里是为了做得更好。’我认为那种文化冲突是一个主要的冲突，那就是我们在 Nest 还在努力起步和创造新事物，而公司的其他部分就像，‘你什么意思？我们做得很好。你们会解决的。哦，是的，我们会帮你那种，你知道，那种事情。’所以字面上就像我们在试图改变地球的方向，而他们只是说，‘嘿，地球运转得很好。他们在做我们需要他们做的事，他们在给我们需要的钱。’所以我认为那真的是摩擦所在。现在今天是一个完全不同的 Google，他们经历了生存危机。你知道，AI 是一个生存危机，即使他们发明了许多许多技术，他们不是受益者。这导致他们想，‘哇，有些东西，你知道，搜索，一切都在改变。’所以现在他们不得不改变那种文化。他们不得不把很多 Google 特质抛在一边，我认为这很好。所以他们现在实际上必须再次真正创新。所以这是一件健康的事情。就像我常说的，没有人会改变自己，无论是个人、公司还是任何事物，除非他们经历过濒死体验。我有种感觉，他们在公司内部经历了一次真正的生存濒死体验，当 OpenAI、Anthropic 等公司正在抢走他们的午餐，争夺最新和最好的用户，他们就像，‘哎呀，我们需要弄清楚这个。’尤其是当他们创造了技术。Google 创造了技术。

Well, I think back then is very different than it is now. So that was 10 years ago. It was 10 years ago, 11 years ago. And Google is a different company today than it was 10, 11 years ago. Google, no matter how much it did things right and how much it did things wrong, it didn't stop making cash. It just printed cash. It continued to print cash. It continues to print cash today. But then there was no challenge. There was no threat. And so it was like, 'Yeah, we're here. We're having a great time.' You know, don't sweat it. Like I was always, you know, I was always the guy who's like, 'Hey, we got to do better. We got to make this better. We got to do this. We got to fix things.' And when you're in a culture where everything was easy because the money was always coming. It was like, 'Hey, don't rock the boat. No big deal. Don't worry about it. Everything's going well.' And I'm like, 'No, we got to fix things. We're here to do this better.' And I think that culture clash was a major one, which was we were at Nest still trying to get off the ground and create a new thing and the rest of the company was like, 'What do you mean? We're doing fine. You guys will get around to it. Oh yeah, we'll help you sort of, you know, those kind of things.' So it was literally like we're a startup trying to change the direction of the planet and they're just like, 'Hey, the planet's going just fine. They're doing what we need them to do and they're giving us the money that we need.' So I think that was really where the rub was. Now today it's a whole different Google, which is they've had an existential crisis. You know, AI is an existential crisis, even though they invented many, many, many of the technologies, they're not the ones benefiting from it. And that led them to like, 'Wow, there's something, you know, search, everything changes.' And so now they've had to change that culture. They've had to leave a lot of the Googliness on the wayside, which I think is great. So that they actually are now having to really innovate again. And so it's a healthy thing. And like I always say, nobody changes themselves, whether that's a person or a company or anything, unless they've had a near-death experience. And something tells me they had a real existential near-death experience inside the company when OpenAI, Anthropic and what have you are just eating their lunch for the latest and the best users and the things they're like, 'Uh-oh, we need to figure this out.' Especially when they created the technology. Google created the technology.

你经历过几次濒死体验，从 General Magic 开始，我猜你会把飞利浦也归入那个类别吗？你知道，当你

You've had several near-death experiences starting with General Magic and I guess would you put Phillips in that category too? You know, when you

嗯，飞利浦几乎基本上从那以后就死了。所以，但是的，我经历过几次，我不得不，我称自己为 Tony 4.0。因为 General Magic 是我从 1.0 到 2.0，然后我在 Apple 时代又经历了一次。你知道，从 Apple 到 Nest 真的。那是我的二到三，现在三到四是最近。所以，是的，我认为我经历过，我认为这就是为什么我能够改变和成长，但我认为大多数人都这样。有些人称之为中年危机。其他人有不同的事情。我不幸或幸运地直接走进了那些濒死体验，你知道，有伤疤证明，但我希望我现在是一个比那时更好的人。

Well, Philips almost basically died since that. So, but yeah, I've had a few and I've had to, I call myself Tony 4.0. Because General Magic was me going from 1.0 to 2.0 and then I had another one in the Apple days. You know, going from Apple to Nest really. That was my two to three and now three to four was just recently. So, yeah, I think I've had and I think that's why I've been able to change and grow and but I think that's what happens with most people. Some people call it midlife crisis. Other people have different things. I've unfortunately or fortunately walked right into those near-death experiences and, you know, have the scars to prove it, but I hope I'm a better person now today than I was back then.

你会把那些经历当作教学工具，用来指导你现在在投资组合公司里辅导的管理团队吗？

Do you use those experiences as teaching tools for the management teams that you're mentoring now in your portfolio companies?

当然。我还为此写了本书，对吧？我把很多那些经历、那些濒死体验以及它们教给我的东西都写进去了。但没错，我一直都在用。你知道，我常跟这些初创公司说：“你长大后想成为什么？”这有点半开玩笑，问的是公司真正想实现什么。但更重要的是领导力，因为他们通常——不是全部，但很大一部分——都很年轻，他们可能被技术或使命蒙蔽，没理解更大的人性因素。或者他们做了我在 General Magic 做过的事，就像“哇，这难道不酷吗？”我会问：“对谁酷？为了什么？为什么？”别为了技术而技术。我们得真正谈谈这如何惠及他人，解决真正的痛点。所以，没错，我们经常提起这些。

Absolutely. I wrote a book about it, right? So, and I put a lot of those things and build about those near-death experiences and what they taught me. But yeah, absolutely all the time. You know, I always say, when I talk to these startups, I go, "So, what is it you want to be when you grow up?" And there's that's one which is it's tongue and cheek about the company. What do they really want to achieve? But then it's really about the leadership because they're usually all, you know, not all of them but a good percentage are pretty young and they, you know, they can be blinded by the technology or blinded by the mission and not understanding the bigger human elements here. Or they did what I did or what we did at General Magic like, yeah, isn't this really cool? I'm like, for whom? For what? Why is this? Stop the technology for technology sake thing. Let's really talk about the how this benefits someone, you know, and solves real pain. So, yeah, we bring those up all the time.

你说过，你合作的公司遍布五大洲。嗯，在管理团队或年轻工程师进入职业、形成他们想实现的愿景方面，比如在印度或泰国，和你个人经历中虽然国际化但以美国为中心的情况相比，有什么不同？你觉得有多大差异？

You know, you're on five continents, I think you said, you know, in terms of the companies that you're working with. Um what's different about management teams or the way young engineers, you know, come to their profession and come to a vision of what they want to accomplish say in India or in Thailand, you know, or compared to the US in your own personal experience which was international but centered in the US? How does it, you know, how different is it?

嗯，我觉得一方面，因为媒体传播得很快，全球瞬间就能传遍。所以，人们会有很多相同的动机，他们读所有文章，如饥似渴地吸收一切。我想成为那样，或者看所有播客。我想成为那样。然后，尤其是 15 年前、20 年前，有一股大浪潮，你必须来硅谷，你必须在那里才能做你的事，那是唯一的地方。而现在，你真正发现的是，他们在本地做，就在他们所在的地方，他们需要拥抱本地拥有的技术和本地人才，来创造他们能创造的东西。但我们也发现存在不匹配，因为他们想做一些难的事情。然而，他们周围的环境没有同样训练有素的工程或设计人才。所以就像他们有远大的梦想，但无法与本地或区域内必要的团队结合起来，让愿景起飞。因此，很多时候，公司的合理规模调整或合理扩张，就是要真正理解在某些地区，他们不需要世界上最前沿的技术。他们只需要采用广泛可用的现代技术并部署它。真的，很有趣，你只需要把可能两三年前或五年前的技术部署到那些还在像美国 1970 年代或 1980 年代那样运营的企业中。那对他们来说仍然很现代。所以我觉得，他们仍然有那种感觉，知道自己想做什么，但有时在那些特定国家、特定城市做这件事的现实，他们必须像我说的一样退一步，真正理解他们试图解决的是什么。嗯，这让我想起，你知道，有些技术太花哨了，让我想起当年的 General Magic，我们就像“看这个酷炫的 PDA”，个人智能通讯器，然后你把它带给这些人，他们会说“我要那个干嘛？为什么？”但这是酷的，然后呢？就像如果你只是说“哦，我要现代化你的销售链，我要现代化 CRM 客户关系管理”，那才是他们需要的。就是那种简单的东西。所以你必须确保阻抗匹配，技术需求与客户实际能采用的东西之间的阻抗匹配。

Well, I think one is, you know, because the media travels everywhere so quick, you know, instantly everywhere on the globe. So, you get a lot of the same motivations and people want to like and they read all the articles and they devour everything. I want to be like that or watch all the podcasts. I want to be like that. I think that you know and then there was this big wave of especially 15 years ago um you and 20 years ago you got to especially 25 you got to come to the valley you got to come to Silicon Valley you got to be there to do your thing in Silicon Valley that's the only place to do it and now what we're you know you really find is they're doing it locally where they're where they're at and they need to um they need to embrace the technology that they have um in locally and the talent they have locally to be able to create what they create. But we also find there's a mismatch because they want to do some hard stuff. However, the environment around them doesn't have the same trained engineering or design talent or what have you. So it's like they have big dreams but then they can't put that together with the teams necessary locally or within the region to get that vision to take off. And so a lot of times a lot of the right sizing or right scaling of the company is about really understanding that in some regions they don't need the world's like the most cutting cutting cutting edge tech. They just have to take the modern tech that's widely available and just deploy it. Like literally, it's very interesting just to see like you just need to deploy the technology that's maybe two or three or five years old into these businesses that are still running like as if they were out of the, you know, in the US out of the 1970s or 1980s. That's like still modern for them. So I think there's, you know, there's still the they have that the feeling of what they want to do and what they but then sometimes there's the reality of doing that in those specific countries in those specific cities that they have to kind of to like I say pull back or and really understand what it is they're trying to solve. Uh it it kind of reminds me of like like you know some of this technology is so wizzy that it reminds me of general magic back in the day where we're like look at this cool PDA thing you know and a personal intelligent communicator and and then you bring it down to these people they're like what do I need that for? Why is it it's but it's the cool now what and it's like if you just say oh I'm going to modernize this in your sales chain and I'm going to modernize CRM customer relationship man like that's what they need you know it's just it's that kind of simple stuff so it's you got to just make sure you you get the impedance miss it's impedance matching uh for for technology needs versus what the customer can actually really adopt.

是的。嗯，在本地，你看到的最令人兴奋的事情是什么？比如本地人才利用现有工具，在坦桑尼亚或其他不发达的地方做出不同的东西，你怎么说？

Yeah. Um what are some of the most exciting things you're seeing at that local, you know, in terms of people local talent bringing tools the available tools to makes to make something different in Tanzania say or someplace that's not a developed a what do you say

是的，他们有一些，你知道，他们都有，疯狂的是，你知道，我住在印度尼西亚，对吧？所以我有点，我搬到了印度尼西亚，我从未去过印度尼西亚，但我搬到了那里，我把家人也搬去了，一切。我想，好吧，我要去，从科技行业度个长假。我落地后，他们有更现代的移动网络和手机，孩子们都在用。我落地时想，这是什么？我觉得他们比美国更早有 4G 覆盖。他们到处都有智能手机，而且很便宜，数据套餐每月相当于 2 美元。你会说：“好吧，托托，我们不在堪萨斯了。”但这绝对不是落后。可能只是需求更多之类的，但很多人有很多技术基础设施。他们只是还没有很多应用，这非常有趣。

yeah and they and they have some you know they all have the the crazy thing is you know I lived in Indonesia right and so I'm kind of I I moved to Indonesia I never had been to Indonesia but I moved there I moved the family there everything and I'm like okay I'm going to go and it's going a long vacation from tech and I land and they have more modern mobile networks and phones and kids are using them. When I land I was like what is this? I like you got faster like I think they had 4G everywhere before the US had 4G everywhere. They had smartphones all over and they were cheap and the this and they had data plans that were like equivalent of $2, you know, a month. You're like, "Okay, Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore." But it definitely is not backwards. You know, it might be just more of the needs and things of that nature, but a lot of them have a lot of the technology infrastructure. They just don't have a lot of the application yet, which is is pretty pretty interesting.

我正想问应用商店及其起源。我们采访过 Steve Jarrett，他谈到了那个，那发生在飞利浦，显然在苹果和安卓上也蓬勃发展。那个想法是如何形成的？你是怎么想的？发展过程是怎样的？

I was going to ask about the app store and the genesis of that. Steve Jarrett, we interviewed, he talked about that and that occurred at Phillips and obviously that blossomed at Apple and with Android as well. How did that idea take shape and just how did you think about it and what was the development of that?

嗯，你知道，我认为如果我们看应用商店，有应用本身。我们从 General Magic 就知道应用，对吧？我们有什么？呃，城市街道，是什么？那个

Um well, you know, I think if we look at the app store, there was the apps themselves. And so we knew about apps from General Magic, right? We had what was it? Uh city street, what was it? The

路灯。

street light.

路灯。是的。地图那个。我们有各种不同的，你知道，我们有航空指南，数字航空指南。

Street light. Yeah. The maps thing. We had all kinds of different, you know, we had the uh airline guide, you know, we had the digital airline guide.

航空指南，对吧？

Airline guide, right?

所以有各种应用，并不全是 General Magic 创建的。有第三方开发者。所以我们早就知道，因为 Mac 上有应用，你知道，所以我们就觉得，好吧，我们得有应用。所以那是在 General Magic。

So there was all kinds of apps and they weren't all created by General Magic. There were a third party developers. So we already knew that there's cuz there was apps on a Mac and there's apps on you know there's so it was just okay we got to have apps. So that was at General Magic.

然后发生的事情是，因为我们当时拥有的东西，我们直接瞄准了企业市场，用 VO 和 Nino 对标飞利浦。我们瞄准的是那些会说“哦对，我需要其他应用”的人。它自带 Microsoft Word 之类的移动版本，但人们想要其他应用。我们就想，“等等，这可以成为一门生意。”而且当时我们已经有电子分发，是通过电话线的电子分发。不是通过 Wi-Fi 的电子分发，因为 Wi-Fi 当时还不存在。于是我们想，“好，我们要利用这一点。”所以我们知道应用了，现在看看，既然我们是联网设备，就让他们下载，并围绕这个建一个商店。那真的全是 Steve 的功劳。他非常用力地推动这件事，我们就去把它实现了。

And then what happened was that, because of what we had, we had gone and targeted the corporate market right at Philips with the VO and the Nino. We were targeting people who were like, "Oh yeah, I need other apps." It came with Microsoft Word and stuff like that, the mobile versions, but people wanted other apps. And we're like, "Wait a second. This could be a business." And because we had electronic distribution right then, and it was electronic distribution via a phone line. It wasn't electronic distribution via Wi-Fi because Wi-Fi didn't even exist yet. It was like, "Okay, we're going to take advantage of that." So we knew apps. Now let's see how we can, now that we're a connected device, let's have them download and create a store around that. And so that was really all of Steve's doing. He was really pushing that really hard, and we went off and we did implement it.

然后还有所有其他问题，当年就是：我们怎么收信用卡，怎么知道那不是假信用卡，信用卡公司怎么会允许我们收款，因为这事太新了。所以我们在 96、97 年打了很多那样的仗。最终，我们今天所知道的应用商店里真正的应用，是在 2008 年出现的，也就是 12 年后。但没错，它一直沿着同一条脉络：既然你可以做分发，不需要 CD 或任何物理介质来做分发。那又是另一件被超级加速的事情，就是现在每个人都能很快下载应用，所以你能得到这些病毒式效应，比如所有人同时下载 Instagram，或者当年的 Twitter，等等。这些社交移动应用就是——每个人都有，因为我们把挡在 General Magic 愿景前面的每一道障碍都推倒了。

And then there were all the other problems, which back in the day were: how do we take credit cards, how do we know that isn't a fake credit card, and how do credit card companies even allow us to take payments, because it was so new. So we fought a lot of those things back in '96, '97. And then ultimately the real apps, as we know app stores today, came out in 2008, so 12 years later. But yeah, it was all along that same lineage of, now that you can do distribution and you don't need CDs or any physical medium to do the distribution. And that was another one of those supercharged things that happened, which was now everyone can download apps very quickly, so you can get these viral effects, like everybody's downloading Instagram at the same time, or Twitter back in the day, or whatever. And these social mobile apps just—everybody had them because we had knocked down every single barrier that stood in the way of General Magic's vision.

我们有 Wi-Fi 和移动连接、移动数据。我们有互联网。我们有电子购物，对吧？我们还有可下载的票券，以及完成所有这些事情所需的信用卡链路。所以我们拥有所有东西，还有设备。所以字面上所有障碍都被打破了，就像你能做的任何事情都会起飞。真正有趣的是——人们总是说——哦，达到 5000 万台销量用了多久，或者我忘了是什么。总有某种关于爬坡曲线的指标。就像，哦，收音机用了这么多年，然后电视用了这么多年，然后是个人电脑，然后就开始越来越快、越来越快。只用了 18 个月，而 Open Claw 只用了四个月就被那么多人采用。人们没有意识到的是，所有那些其他东西都站在巨人的肩膀上，那些巨人一路打破了所有摩擦。所以字面上就是管道打开了，它们在涌流，直接流到你的眼球和指尖，而它们全都被打破了，因为所有那些技术性的东西已经冲破了障碍。所以当然，这只是大家都如此震惊的问题。而我说，我不震惊。这只是意味着我们完成了我们的工作，无论好坏，一把双刃剑，如今基本上任何东西都能无摩擦地流动。

We had Wi-Fi and mobile connectivity, mobile data. We had the internet. We had e-shopping, right? And we had downloadable tickets, and all the credit card links to do all that stuff. So we had all of the things, and the devices too. So literally all the barriers were broken down, and it was just like anything you could do would take off. And what's really interesting—and this is what people always say—oh, the time to 50 million units sold, or I forget what it is. There's some metric of the ramp curve. It's like, oh, radio took this many years, then television took this many years, then the personal computer, and then it starts getting faster and faster and faster. It only took 18 months, and it only took Open Claw four months to get adopted by that many people. The thing people don't realize is all of those other things are standing on the shoulders of all the giants who broke down all of the friction along the way. So it's just literally the pipes are open and they're flooding and they're flowing right to your eyeballs and your fingertips, and they've all been broken because all those technological things have broken through that. And so, of course, it's just a matter of everyone's just so astonished. And I'm like, I'm not astonished. It just means that we've done our job, for better or worse, a double-edged sword, that there's frictionless flow of basically anything nowadays.

嗯，我猜你觉得那更糟。你也看到 AI 会带来这种情况，我们很快就能在手机上运行引擎，对吧？你知道现在前沿模型需要所有大规模算力，而它会变得更民主化、更个性化。

Well, I assume you see that worse. You see that coming with AI, too, that we'll be able to run engines on our phones, right? Fairly soon. You know that needing all the massive compute for the frontier models now, that it's going to get more democratized, more personalized.

它会是一种混合模式。而消费者永远不会为此付费。

It's going to be a hybrid. And consumers are never going to pay for this.

为 token 付费，对，没错。

For tokens, yeah, right.

是的，消费者，你知道，他们甚至不知道助手是什么。如果你跟人说，“嘿，你想要一个助手吗？”他们会说，“当然。”然后你问，“哦，你打算怎么用它？”他们会说，“嗯，我不知道，但我想要一个。我想要这个词。”这有点像，嗯，我老板有个助手。我也想要一个。我记得我第一次接触我认识的大多数初创公司时，它们才三四个或五个人，我不明白为什么需要它们。人们会说，“我们不需要助手。为什么要那个？我们自己就做了。”他们从来没有在助手陪伴下长大。除非你真的有过助手，你知道它意味着什么，你知道该委派什么、如何委派、如何帮助训练助手、助手如何知道事情并说话但不做某些事情，以及知道何时征求你的许可——那并不容易。然后突然之间我们就会有这些 AI 智能体当助手，而人们会知道如何使用它们——不，不，不。这就像我们第一次拿到个人电脑。人们拿到个人电脑，嗯，这挺有意思。我用它做什么？直到我们有了电子表格，即便如此我们还需要电子表格操作员。所以是的，当然会比当年更容易。但要让人们知道助手是什么并信任它以及所有这些其他事情，有很多障碍，心理障碍，而且看看人们——因为这不是人们必须做的正常事情。你可以说 Waymo 是个人助手。它是私人司机。当然。但那和你要信任某人来安排旅行、买东西、报税、监控你的帮助，是完全不同的事情。就像完全是另一回事。

Yeah, consumers, you know, they don't even know what an assistant is. If you talk to people, go, "Hey, would you like an assistant?" They're like, "Sure." And then you go, "Oh, how are you going to use it?" They're like, "Well, I don't know, but I'd like one. I'd like the word." It's kind of like, well, my boss has an assistant. I want one. I remember when I didn't know why I needed most of the startups I know when I first get involved with them when they're three or four or five. People like, "We don't need an assistant. Why do we need that? We just do it ourselves." They never grew up with one. Unless you really have had an assistant and you know what it means and you know what to delegate, how to delegate, how to help train the assistant, how the assistant knows things and says things but doesn't do certain things and knows when to get your permission—that is not easy. And to think that we're all of a sudden going to have these AI agents being assistants and people will know how to use them—no, no, no. It's just like the first time we got personal computers. People got personal computers, well, that's interesting. What do I do with them? And it wasn't until we had a spreadsheet, and even then we needed spreadsheet jockeying. So yes, of course it's going to get easier than that back in the day. But for people to know what an assistant is and to trust it and all these other things, there's lots of barriers, psychological barriers to that, and just see people—because it's not a normal thing that people have to do. You can say a Waymo is a personal assistant. It's a personal driver. Sure. But that's a whole different kind of thing than somebody you're going to trust to do your travel arrangements and buy things and do your taxes and monitor your help. Like it's a whole another thing.

我认为人们是这么想的，而问题是人们不会为此付费。消费者不一定会为此付费。这就是我担心我们会走上下一条路线的地方，也就是广告和其他一切，因为你会得到一个个人助手，但它不会免费。你会再次成为产品，它会拿走你的数据，因为人们不会愿意每月为助手付 30 美元，对吧？它必须被打包进其他服务里。苹果可以做到，因为它有 iCloud，有所有订阅，它可以把它打包进去。

And I think that people think that, and the thing is people aren't going to pay for it. Consumers ain't going to necessarily pay for it. And that's where I'm worried about where we're going to go down the next route, which is ads and everything else, because you're going to get a personal assistant, but it ain't going to be free. You're going to be the product again, and it's going to take your data, because people aren't going to want to pay $30 a month for an assistant, right? It's going to have to be rolled into some other services. Apple could do that because it has iCloud and it has all its subscriptions and it could roll that in.

但谷歌能做到吗？其他公司呢？到了某个时候——我们在 OpenAI 身上也看到了——就会变成：哦，我们得做广告，我们得做这些不同的东西。而 Anthropic 非常明确：你得付费。所以这一整套东西都会来。当然，它可能会下放到你的设备上，但总得有人为它买单。那么买单的是你，还是你就是那个被卖掉的产品？这些都是要过的桥。

But can Google do that? Can others? At some point—and we're seeing this with OpenAI—it's like, oh, we've got to do ads and we have to do these different things. Whereas Anthropic was very clear: you're going to have to pay. So we've got this whole thing coming. Sure, it might go down to your device, but it's going to have to get paid for somehow. And is it going to be you, or are you the product that's going to get sold? All these things are bridges to cross.

是的，消除障碍。你知道，汤姆和我都是改行的律师。我们当时必须做的一件事——我当时是初级律师，但作为起步律师不算年轻。学会怎么用秘书、怎么和秘书协作，是我们入行后要学的最基本的事情之一，因为我们以前从来没有过秘书。我是说，谁有秘书啊？而他们对事情的运转至关重要。是他们运营着律所，不是我们。

Yeah, eliminating obstacles. You know, Tom and I are both recovering lawyers. One of the things we had to do—I was a junior, but not young as a starting lawyer. Learning how to use a secretary, how to work with a secretary, was one of the most fundamental things we had to learn on the job because we'd never had one before. I mean, who has a secretary? And they were so fundamental to making things work. They ran the law firm, not us.

Tony，你认为今天 AI 最引人注目的用途是什么？你认为未来最引人注目的用途又是什么？你设想的图景是怎样的？

Tony, what do you think are the most compelling uses for AI today? And what do you think are the most compelling uses in the future? What do you envision?

哦，我想要更多 AI 老虎机，拜托。这就是我想要的。不。我认为 AI 有很多很棒的事情可以做。比如，当它作为助手时，它能帮上忙。所以当它增强你的能力时，当它是一个超级工具，你用它来问——比方说你问一个从未被回答过的大问题，LLM 无法回答，但它可以通过研究帮你越来越接近，从而破解这个大问题的核心。今天在一家叫 Orianis Biosciences 的公司，我们一直在用——不是我们刚开始用。我们已经超过 10 年了，我们一直在用 AI 帮助设计药物，或者至少是癌症疗法，对吧？我们明确看到，当这些工具掌握在试图解决更大问题的有经验的人手中时，它们的效果令人难以置信。所以这是它们的一个绝佳用途。嗯，我们甚至不必使用巨大的数据中心，因为当时还没有巨大的数据中心这回事。我们，你知道，我们只用大约八台服务器，就能以这种方式完成我们所做的工作，因为我们在特定事物上拥有高度训练的模型。我们并不想做一个万事通。你可以问宇宙中的任何问题，并希望能得到某种答案。所以我看到非常有价值的用途是，它是一个有针对性的专业领域，你能够获得非常好的答案和非常好的结果。我看到的是，很多这样的公司，如果你看看，好吧，现在我们有这个法律领域的，一个法律领域的，还有这个金融领域的，然后所有这些不同的初创公司，它们都是靠这个事实来推销的：嗯，我们做的演示非常好。这有点像你第一次看到真正好的演示时，比如，哦，给我一张看起来像这样的图片，给我一个看起来像这样的视频，或者一首听起来像那样的歌。它们都是非常好的演示，让人们觉得，这太令人兴奋了。我们需要投资它。而且它获得了炒作，你可以在所有这些不同领域用无数种方式演示这项技术，但如果你看看那些真正真正在产出成果的东西，它是在特定领域内的。所以这就是为什么 Anthropic 在软件编码领域起飞了。所以人们会说，"哦天哪，太神奇了，但只有在正确使用时才行。"所以你发现的是，如果你不正确使用它，它创建的代码可能能运行，但它非常脆弱。它非常不像——如果按照人们所说的使用方式去用，没有人能读懂它。所以你仍然需要人在回路中。你可以用那些编码技术来帮你创建所有平凡的代码，但仍然要以可维护和安全的方式架构系统的组合方式。不仅仅是能运行的代码，而是可维护、安全、被理解，并能产生结果，让你可以把你的品牌放在前面，让客户注册并愿意为之付费。这不是今天任何这些工具能创造出来的。它们可以为你的房子创建一个应用，你知道，为你，比如，哦，我需要一个健康仪表盘。好吧，行。但当我们说我们要放一个金融的，你知道，像一个金融助手，你会信任它，而且你永远不会和人类交谈，那不是——由于令人难以置信的幻觉问题，我不认为这东西短期内会实现。嗯，我们处在，就像我说的，药物发现领域，但我们也在一个 AI 医师助理领域，但我们不取代医生。医生仍然必须阅读我们做的所有笔记，必须阅读并签署我们为他们预先写好的所有处方以及所有其他东西。所以，所以有办法做到，但我不知道我们投资的任何公司会把人类从回路中移除。它们增强人类。

Oh, I want more AI slot, please. That's what I want. No. I think there are a lot of great things that AI can be great for. Like, it can help when it is an assistant. So when it supercharges you, so it's when it's a super tool that you use and you're asking—let's say you're asking a big question that's never been answered, the LLM can't answer it, but it can help you get closer and closer with research to be able to crack the nut of this big question you have. Today at a company called Orianis Biosciences, we've been using—not we didn't just start. We over 10 years now we've been using AI to help design drugs or or be at least a therapy for cancer, right? And we see definitively that these tools work incredibly well when they're in the hands of experienced people who are trying to solve a much bigger question. And so that is an incredible use of them. Um, and we don't even have to use huge data centers because there was no such thing as huge data centers. We, you know, we use like eight servers and are able to do the work that we do that way because we have highly trained models on specific things. We're not trying to be a know-it-all. You can ask any question in the universe to and hopefully get some kind of answer. So I see very valuable uses of where it's a targeted specialty that you are able to get um get really good answers and really good results. What I see is a lot of these companies, if you look, okay, now we have this legal one, a legal one, and this finance one, and then all these different startups, they're all being sold on the fact that, well, we're doing really good demos. And it's kind of like when you first got the real good demo of like, you know, oh, give me a picture that looks like this and give me a video that looks like this or a song that looks like that. They're all really good demos of people like, this is so exciting. We need to invest in it. And and it's gotten the hype and there's so many ways you can demo this technology in all these different fields but if you look at the things that are really really producing uh it's it's in domain specific. So that's why Anthropic is taking off with which is software coding. And so people like, "Oh my god, it's a amazing, but only if it's used correctly." And so what you find out is is that if you don't use it correctly, the code it creates may work, but it is so brittle. It is so not like no humans can read it if you use it in the way that you know people are say that they're using it. So you still need humans in the loop. And you can use that those coding technologies to help you create all of the mundane code but still architecture the way the systems put together all that stuff and a way that's maintainable and secure. Not just code that works but maintainable, secure that's understood and that produces results that you can put your brand in front of and that a customer can sign up and wants to pay for it. That is not something that any of these tools can create today. They can create an app for your house, you know, for you like, oh, I need a dashboard for my health. Like, okay, fine. But when we're saying we're going to put a financial, you know, like a financial assistant that you're going to trust and you're never going to talk to a human, that's not that's not where I see this stuff anytime soon happening because of the incredible hallucination issues. Um, and we're in, like I said, the drug discovery one, but we're also in in a um AI uh physician's assistant, but we don't replace the physician. The physician still has to read all the notes that we do, has to read and sign up on all the prescriptions that we pre-write for them and all that other stuff. So, so there are ways of doing it, but I don't know of any of the companies that we invested in take the human out of the loop. They supercharge the human.

你对 AI 最大的担忧是什么？我的意思是，我知道你谈过垃圾进、垃圾出，以及健全数据基础的至关重要性。你还谈过人们不仅会把责任推给 AI，还会停止思考，停止探究，选择投降。

What are your biggest concerns about AI? I mean, I know you've talked about garbage in, garbage out, and the critical importance of a sound data foundation. You've also talked about how people will not just abdicate responsibility to the AI, but stop thinking, stop having an inquiry to surrender.

是的。是的。

Yeah. Yeah.

是的。那是你最大的担忧吗？那会让你害怕吗？

Yeah. Is that your biggest concern? Does that scare you?

绝对会。你知道，我现在看着孩子们这样做。你知道，他们会说，呃，我就糊弄一下。我就随便搞搞。然后我们都经历过，对吧？你必须真正付出努力才能达到真正理解的下一个层次——就像我知道尝试学习第二语言和第三语言是什么感觉，你会说，好吧，你真的必须投入工作，才能真正让你的大脑正确重新布线，看清事物并理解。你知道，当你这样做足够多次，呃，你知道，使用 AI 并把它交出去，你就会继续把你的执行功能委托给它们。然后你在某个时候就有点成为它的受害者。那那在任何方面都不健康。那不会，那不会，呃，把我们带到一个好的地方。

Absolutely. You know, I watch kids doing this now. You know, they're like, uh, I'm going to just fudge it. I'm going to just what have you. And then we've all been there, right? And where you really have to put in the effort to get to that next level of real understanding—like I know what it's like to try to learn a second language and a third language and you're like, okay, you really have to put the work into it to really try to get your brain to rewire properly to see clearly and to understand. And you know, when you do this enough times, uh, you know, and use AI and just like turn it over to it, you're going to just continue to delegate your executive function to them. And then you just kind of become at some point a victim to it. And and that's not that's not healthy in any way, shape, or form. That's not going to that's not going to uh pro, you know, lead us to a good a good place.

所以我担心认知投降。原因是，尤其是在这些新的智能体技术下，人们会说：“我在管理一百个智能体，这些软件智能体，它们为我做各种事情。”而他们的工作只是当质量控制员，或者把某个智能体的输出铲到另一个智能体的输入里。他们真的变成了亚马逊配送工人，箱子来了，放点东西，看一眼，然后下一个。他们震惊到只能想：“我猜我只能信任它，因为我关心数字，我得用更多 token，我得完成更多行代码，我得完成更多功能。”然后发生的是，这些人干脆放弃，说：“我倦怠了，因为我做不到。这不再是一门手艺。它真的只是输入输出，我能多快完成？”每个人都受制于系统运行的速度。这不再是人类能跑的速度，而是系统运行的速度。而且这个速度越来越快。人类只能说：“好吧，我猜我只能做到这样了。”然后他们又造一个工具来帮忙监控情况。然后那个工具又叠上另一个工具。然后不知不觉，没人知道底下在发生什么，对吧？这非常令人担忧，因为我们正在建立人类再也无法运作的系统。

So I worry about the cognitive surrender. The reason being is that what's happening, especially with these new agent technologies, is that people are like, "I'm managing a hundred agents, these software agents, and they're doing all kinds of things for me." And their job is just to be the quality control person, or they're shoveling this output from this agent into the input of this agent. They literally are turning into Amazon distribution workers where bins show up, they put some things, they look at the thing, and they go to the next one. And they just get so shocked that they're like, "I guess I got to just trust it because I'm about numbers and I got to use more tokens and I got to get more lines done and I got to get more features done." And then what happens is these people just kind of give up and they go, "I'm burnt out because I can't. It's not a craft anymore. It's literally just input-output and how fast can I do it?" And everybody is subject to the speed at which the system runs. It's no longer the speed at which humans can run, but the speed at which the system runs. And that speed is getting faster and faster. And humans are like, "Okay, I guess this is all I can do." And they build another tool to help them monitor what's going on. And then that tool gets layered with another tool. And then before you know it, nobody knows what's going on underneath it, right? And that's very worrisome because we're setting up systems where humans just can no longer function.

是的。因为我们已经超越了那个速度。

Yeah. Because we've gone beyond the speed.

你的投资组合公司有做教育的吗？因为你知道，作为前教授，我们在那里看到很多认知放弃，尤其是在大学层面。这真的很可怕。我还在教书的朋友说这真是头疼，真是个问题。你在那个领域有做什么吗？

Are any of your portfolio companies working in education? Because you know that's where we, as an ex-professor, that's where we're seeing a lot of cognitive abdication, especially at the college level. And it's really scary. My friends who are still teaching say it's a real headache, it's a real problem. Are you doing anything in that space?

我一直在找。我还没找到任何我想投资的教育相关项目。我读了《纽约时报》那篇关于斯坦福毕业生的文章，讲那是什么感觉，非常非常有启发性。当然，他可能为了戏剧效果添油加醋了一点，但仍然有根本性的变化在发生。我是 MIT 的驻校设计师并在那里教书，我听到不同的思想流派以及今天的学生如何对待它，这非常有趣，有时令人担忧，但另一方面也令人振奋，因为人们以不同方式用它创造新事物。所以，这又是一把双刃剑，但我担心正在发生的社会变化、结构性变化，既包括人际层面，也包括工作与学生之间，关于大学里实际发生的事。因为我听说从大学获得 AI 创业资金比获得实习还容易，对吧？这很可悲。真的很可悲。这意味着人们会说：“好吧，我要做任何需要做的事来找到工作或别的什么，以推进我的职业生涯。”而那感觉……稍微换个话题，我和 Tom 以及 Tamara 正在写的书，暂定名是《从乔布斯到马斯克》。我们用他们作为 90 年代我们创业时硅谷样貌的化身，那时人们没有被产品化，我们有创造赋能工具的愿景，这些工具会解放创造力、连接人们等等。而马斯克是个恶性自恋者——你可能同意也可能不同意——我认为马斯克是个恶性自恋者，他对财富和权力的追求，连同其他科技寡头，对美国社会和民主极具破坏性。

I have been looking. I have not yet found anything that I wanted to invest in around education. I read that New York Times article about the Stanford grad and what it was like, and that was very, very telling. And of course he could have been embellishing a little bit here and there for dramatic effect, but still there's a fundamental change going on. I'm a designer in residence at MIT and teaching there, and I hear the different schools of thought and how kids, students today, approach that, and it's very interesting and sometimes concerning, but otherwise it's also uplifting about how people are using it in different ways to create new things. So again, it's a double-edged sword, but I worry about the social changes, structural changes that are happening, both interpersonal as well as between the work and the students themselves, about what's actually happening in college now. Because I've heard it's easier to get funded for an AI startup from college than it is to get an internship, right? And that's sad. That's really sad. And that means people are like, "Okay, I'm going to do whatever I need to do to be able to make a job or make whatever it is to further my career." And that doesn't feel... shifting gears a little bit, the working title of the book that Tom and I are working on with Tamara is From Jobs to Musk. And we're using them as avatars for the way the valley was when we started out in the 90s, as a place where people weren't productized and we had a vision of creating empowering tools that would liberate creativity and connect people and all the rest. And Musk is a malignant narcissist—and again you may or may not agree with this—I think Musk is a malignant narcissist whose quest for wealth and power, along with the rest of the tech burlyarchy, has been really destructive to American society and to democracy.

在当前硅谷和更大的科技行业背景下，作为一名人文主义技术专家，你感到有点孤独吗？

Do you feel a little bit alone as a humanistic technologist in the current valley and larger tech industry context?

是的，我感到孤独。没有足够的声音谈论这些事情。我和那些老练的记者聊这些。我和其他业内人士聊，可能听起来很像：“哦，老家伙们都在抱怨新一代，”整个那套。

Yes, I do. There's not enough voices talking about these things. I talk to old grizzled reporters about this stuff. I talk to other people who are in the business, and it might sound a lot like, "Oh, the old guys are all whining about the new generation," the whole thing.

现在的孩子怎么了，对吧？

What's the matter with kids today, right?

是的，是的，是的。但对我来说那不是——我认为那非常不同。我不是在倡导反对 AI 或任何这些东西。我倡导的是，很多有感知的亿万富翁，或者你想怎么称呼他们，很多人在这方面的伦理和道德非常可疑，并且对社会缺乏同理心，而社会远在他们之下，对吧？包括我自己也是如此。就我而言，我们从总统和宇航员以及各种人作为英雄，然后到体育人物和名人，我们把他们当作英雄。那些——我不会说他们可疑，但他们并没有真正影响事情。那些更多只是人们的形象和你投射在他们身上的东西。现在我们有的是掌权的人，他们可以成为英雄，人们想效仿他们，这真的可能造成伤害，而之前那些不会。所以我只是想知道，今天这些孩子的英雄是谁。我认为很多人之所以处于现在的位置，这些有感知的亿万富翁或随便什么，是因为他们成长在一个有某种道德和伦理规范的社会中，他们生活其中，并能在那个环境中创造他们能创造的东西。而摧毁那个，因为技术必须生存和呼吸，必须成为他们想要的一切，不管底下发生什么，我认为他们忘了自己来自哪里。这就是我担心的，因为现在它变成了一个混战。我们在政治体系中看到这一点。我们看到事物的基础被削弱。孩子们不知道他们应该以什么为榜样。

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But to me that's not—I think that's very different. I'm not advocating against AI or any of these things. What I'm advocating is how a lot of the sentient billionaires, or whatever you want to call them, a lot of them have very questionable ethics and morality around this and a lack of empathy for society that is well below them, right? And myself included for that matter. And as far as I'm concerned, we went from presidents and astronauts and various people who were the heroes, and then we went to sports figures and celebrities, and we've gone to that as the heroes. And those were—I wouldn't say they were questionable, but they weren't really affecting things. Those were more just images of people and what you projected in them. Now what we're doing is we have people who are in charge and they can be heroes, and people want to emulate them, and it can be really truly damaging versus the other ones that weren't. And so I just wonder who the heroes are to these kids today. The reason why I think a lot of the people are where they are, these sentient billionaires or whatever, is because they grew up in a society that had a certain morality and ethical norm that they lived with and were able to create what they were able to create in that environment. And destroying that because technology has to live and breathe and has to be everything that they want it to be, regardless of what happens beneath it, I think they forgot where they came from. And that's what's concerning to me because now it just becomes a free-for-all. And we're seeing that with our political system. We're seeing that with just the foundations of things getting kneecapped. And kids don't know what they should be turning to as a model.

而且在很多情况下，他们知道这感觉不对，但他们不知道什么是对的。对吧，这是错的，感觉不对，但什么是对的模型呢？你知道，当现在有各种《财富》500 强的 CEO 向特朗普总统卑躬屈膝，你看到这种双面话术之类的东西，你就会想，你知道，我记得以前连 CEO 都要对员工负责，对吧？过去他们要对 outside world 负责。现在他们甚至不再对员工负责了，这也挺有意思的。我是说，就她心目中的英雄候选人而言，你当然是一个榜样，但你知道，在你扶持的公司里，你有没有看到一些后起之秀，能够对抗你知道，当前在硅谷和其他地方的主导精神，你知道，关于……

And they know in a lot of cases they know it doesn't feel right but they don't know what's right. Right here's what's wrong and it feels wrong but what's the model of what's right? And you know when you have various Fortune 500 CEOs now cowtowing to President Trump and they're seeing this kind of double talk and this kind of stuff you're just like, you know, I remember when even the CEOs were held accountable by their employees, right? It used to be that they were held accountable by the outside world. Now they're not even held accountable by their employees anymore, which is kind of interesting, too. I mean, in terms of her hero candidates, I mean, you're certainly a model, but you know, do you in the companies you're fostering, you know, do you see any up-and-comers who are going to be able to counter, you know, the current, you know, dominant spirit in the valley and elsewhere, you know, about...

我看到一些。我看到一些。我认为不仅仅在硅谷。我在伦敦和巴黎看到一些人。我在旧金山也看到一些人。你知道，我看着 Stripe 的 Collison 兄弟，我觉得，你知道，那些人真的，你知道，他们按自己的节奏走，他们不玩我们在其他一些人身上看到的那套游戏，而且他们属于那一代人。你知道，我是更老的一代，他们是更年轻的一代，他们看起来可以成为非常好的英雄，而且据我所知，他们在做正确的事。所以我认为，外面有非科技兄弟的人在努力做正确的事。我只是希望这样的人更多，而且他们能获得更多曝光。

I see some. I see some. I think it's not just in the valley. I see some people in, you know, London and Paris. I see some people in San Francisco as well. You know, I look at the Collison brothers at Stripe and I think, you know, those guys really, you know, they move to their own beat and they don't play these same games as we see with some of the other ones and they're of that generation. You know, I'm an older generation, they're the younger generation and they seem like they can be really good heroes and they're doing the right thing, from what I can tell. And so I think there are non-tech bros out there who are trying to do the right thing. I just wish there were more of them and they were getting more airplay.

你有没有想过涉足政治？

Do you ever think about getting involved in politics?

我吗？我已经明白我是个非常糟糕的政客。我甚至无法参与，你知道，公司政治和宫廷阴谋。所以对我来说，我记得在 General Magic 的时候，我不得不去特别兴趣小组和委员会做红外数据协议，我就和 Wendell Sander 坐在那个房间里，我咬着舌头想，我们要在这里坐四天，什么也做不成。我想，我太……你知道，因为我觉得你和我，你和 Megan 在 MIT，Megan Smith 在 MIT 一起，对吧？你们现在都是那里的研究员，你知道，你知道她在政府的经历又是，你知道，我们如何把技术带给人们并让他们受益之类的，我只是想知道，你知道，那是不是她更有想象力的事情，你知道。

Do I? I've learned I'm a very bad politician. I couldn't even get involved with, you know, corporate politics and palace intrigue there. So to me, I remember being at General Magic and I had to go to the special interest group and the committee to do IR infrared data protocols and I just sat in that room with Wendell Sander and I was like biting my tongue going, we're going to sit here for the next four days and get nothing done. I'm like, I'm just too much of a... you know, because I think you and me, you and Megan are at MIT, Megan Smith are at MIT together, right? You're both fellows there now, you know, and you know her experience in government was again, you know, how do we bring technology to the people and benefit them and all that and I just wondered, you know, if that was something she's much imagination, you know.

她比我耐心多了。我不知道。我只是不……我希望我能，但我只是没有……不幸的是，至少作为一位杰出且有影响力的思想家，你能倡导什么？什么样的政府干预能驯服并净化社交媒体，比如说？你知道，这是公共卫生问题吗？这是你使用的模型吗，你知道，在……你知道，像 FDA 那样的社交媒体守门人是一个例子。你知道，汽车安全是另一个，你知道，我们是怎么得到安全带和安全气囊的？我是说，应该发生什么？

She's much more patient than I am. I don't know. I just don't... I wish I could but I just don't have it in... Unfortunately, what how can you advocate at least, you know, as a prominent and influential thinker, what kind of government intervention would work to tame and detoxify social media for example? You know, is it a public health problem? Is that the model that you use, you know, in ter, you know, FDA like gatekeepers for social media is one example. You know, car safety is another, you know, how did we get to seat belts and airbags? I mean what what what should what should happen?

嗯，我认为首先我们，你知道，如果我们看看美国各州各自在做什么，有足够多的州在做年龄限制，他们说某些东西会被禁止，某些，你知道，学校政策，你知道，禁止白天使用设备，这类事情。我认为联邦政府必须接手并说：“等等。”你知道，有一种自上而下的方法，但如果你看到全国有足够多的事情在发生，你会说：“等等。也许是我们参与的时候了，你知道，试图制定标准，因为发生的情况是，这些科技公司没有任何明确的指示该往哪里走，所以他们挑挑拣拣，对吧？然后他们仍然可以继续……我认为联邦层面需要有一只更稳的手来说我们要尝试某些事情。我们可能会做错。我始终相信我们会做错，但这并不意味着我们不应该尝试，对吧？我在中国看到这一点。中国正在这样做。我想人们会说：“哦，是中国。”好吧，你猜怎么着？我认为有些事情我们需要这样做。我们，你知道，我们仍然必须有药品标准。我们仍然有，哦，天哪，我希望我们有，你知道，我认为我们正在学习疫苗标准，我们看到一些事情，哦，你想试试那个？好的，我们会尝试那个实验。我不知道它是否会继续有效。所以，我认为我们必须继续说我们要尝试事情，而不是我们永远不会做并陷入分析瘫痪，或者让游说者，你知道，只是压倒一切并说，好吧，既然我们没有完美的解决方案，我们就什么都不做。我只是认为，你知道，那只是每个人都在倡导他们……放弃他们当选就职时该做的责任。那是人们希望他们做的。那就是他们 supposedly 在那里的原因。所以我认为，我认为我们必须，我，你知道，无论是杰利蝾螈，这在事情中变得疯狂，我们有最高法院，有太多结构性问题，甚至在我们能触及 AI 之前，因为即使你得到，比如说有一项法规，系统也不支持它，因为它可以，它可以，你知道，正如我们所见，即使是 30、40、50 年来神圣的一切，罗伊诉韦德案现在也，你知道，以新的方式受到挑战。所以，所以说我们要在这个摇摇欲坠的基础上和流沙上建造任何东西，似乎真的非常非常困难，直到我们在下面放一个新的基础，对吧？如果比萨斜塔倾斜得非常非常厉害，我们需要去处理它。最大的解决方案是人们必须参与。人们必须……我认为我们会看到一批新的政治家，一批来自今天年轻人的新人，他们会说，我们再也受不了了。我们必须生活的环境，对吧，无论是工作环境、社会环境、金融环境、健康环境，这不能再继续下去了。我们有的问题是，我讨厌这么说，是 65 岁以上的选民控制一切。

Well, I think first we, you know, if we look at what the states are doing individually in the US, there's enough states doing age gating, they're saying that certain things are going to be banned, that certain, you know, that school policy, you know, forbids devices during the day, these kinds of things. I think the federal government has to take that up and go, "Wait a second." You know, there's a tops down approach, but if you look at enough things going on across the country and you go, "Wait a second. Maybe it's time that we get involved with, you know, trying to set the standards because what happens is is that these tech companies don't have any clear indication of where to head so that they pick off things, right? And then they can still to go in the I think there has to be a little bit more of a steady hand at the federal level to say we're going to try certain things. And we may get it wrong. I invariably believe we will get it wrong, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't try, right? And I see this with China. China's doing it. I think people go, "Oh, it's China." Well, guess what? I think there are some things where we need to do that stuff. We, you know, we still have to have pharmaceutical standards. We still have, oh, God, I wish we had, you know, I think we're learning the vaccine standards and we're seeing things, oh, you want to try that? Okay, we'll try that experiment. I don't know if it's going to keep working. So, I think we got to keep saying we're going to try things as opposed to we're never going to do it and be analysis paralysis or allow the lobbyists to, you know, to just overrun everything and go, okay, since we don't have a perfect solution, we're not going to do anything. And I just think, you know, that's just everyone's advocating their ad ab abdicating their responsibility from what they were elected in office to do. That's what people want them to do. That's why they were they're supposedly there. So I think that I think we have to I you know there's whether it's gerrymandering which is going crazy in the thing we have the Supreme Court there are so many structural problems before we can even get to AI that because even if you get let's say there's a regulation it the system doesn't uphold that because it's it can it can you know as as we've seen everything that's even been sacred for 30 40 50 years Roe v. Wade has now been, you know, challenged in a new way. And so, so to say that we're going to build anything on top of this crumbling foundation and and and shifting sands just seems really really difficult till we get a a new level of of a new foundation put underneath, right? If the leaning tower of Pisa is leaning very very far, we need to go after it. The the big solution is people have to get involved. People have to I think we're going to see a new set of politicians, a new set of people from this this from the youth today who are going I we cannot take this anymore. The environment we have to live in right whether it's a job environment, the the the the social environment, the financial environment, the health environment, this can no longer stand. The problem that we have, and I hate to say it, is the voters over 65 control everything.

是的，

Yeah,

他们控制一切。我是说，这是真的。我也快到了。所以，别担心。但问题就是他们控制一切。所以，年轻人的声音没有。所以，那些年轻人必须站起来。问题是我们的孩子比以往任何时候都少。

they control everything. I mean, it's true. And I'm almost getting there, too. So, don't worry. But that's the issue is they control everything. And so, the youth voices don't have it. So, those youth has to rise up. And the problem is is we're having fewer kids than ever.

所以那个群体能用来对抗这边正在发生的选区划分不公的那块拼图正变得越来越小。所以这里存在如此严重的不平衡，谁知道它最终会怎样，谁知道它什么时候才能真正有所作为。这是一个跨代际的问题。但在我看来，Tony，你刚才说的部分内容是，生孩子对你来说是一个转折点，让你开始看到这些事情阴暗的一面。那么，这种觉醒的火花，怎样才能更早地在那群更年轻的公民身上被点燃呢？

And so therefore that demographic is getting that piece of the puzzle is getting smaller and smaller to fight the gerrymandering that's happening over here. So like there's such an imbalance here like who knows what it's going to who knows when it's going to actually be able to do. This is a multigenerational issue. But it seems to me Tony that part of what you said was that having kids was an inflection point for you in terms of your perspective on the dark side of these things. And how can that spark occur in that younger set of citizens earlier?

我觉得，是的，我同意，当人们有了家庭，事情就会改变，他们对事物的看法也会改变。我认为那些最激烈反对的人还没有成家，他们甚至在推迟成家，因为他们不知道自己未来的经济环境会怎样，或者他们还住在父母家里，等等。所以是下一代人，而下一代人现在除非真正受到威胁，否则不会行动。我觉得这刚刚开始。所以也许在未来三四年里，当你看到越来越多的公司因为 AI 而“合理精简”——我认为那其实叫过度招聘，他们只是搞错了，并不全是 AI 的锅——我觉得那时候我们才会开始看到真正的反弹，因为人们会说我们再也受不了了。作为我本人，这非常令人沮丧，因为你知道，我相信你们很多人也一样，我们能看到这一切正在发生。我们看到它在我们身边发生。我们看到这些事情发生，我们会说，拜托，大家都得行动起来，而每个人都被社交媒体或别的什么媒体来源麻痹了，对吧？我们得醒醒了。我们得，你知道，干掉这台机器。

I look I think that yes I agree that when people have families things change okay and they change their their viewpoint on things. I think the people who are most up in arms don't have families yet they they're even they're postponing having family because they don't know what the financial environment is going to be for themselves or they're living at home or what have you. So it's that next set and that next set right now until they're really threatened that's when it's going to happen. I think it's just going to get started. So maybe the next 3, four years when you're seeing more and more of these companies right sizing because of AI, which I just believe is called overhiring and they just got it wrong. It's not all AI. Um I think that's when we're going to start to see like some real backlash because people are like we can't take this anymore. It's very frustrating being me because I you know and and I'm sure a lot just like you guys are we can see it all happening. We see it happening around us. We see this stuff happening and we're like, would someone please like come on, we all got to do this and everyone's just lulled by social media, right? Or some other media source. It's like we got to wake up. We got to, you know, kill the machine.

你知道，特朗普时代最具破坏性的影响之一，就是文明的丧失、基本体面的丧失，以及正常社交规范、公平和基本体面的丧失。那么，有没有办法通过技术来激励人们，让他们对彼此更友善、更开放呢？

You know, one of the things, one of the most damaging effects of the Trump era is the loss of civility and and the loss of common decency and the and the loss of the normal norms of social interaction and of fairness and just common decency. Um, are are there ways to inspire people through technology to be kinder and more open to each other?

这是个很好的问题。我认为，让你变得更友善的方式，是利用技术去找到其他人进行面对面的互动。我们一直都知道，面对面的互动越多越好，这正是微软在 90 年代和 2000 年代玩的把戏。微软，那个大恶棍公司，他们派所有销售人员去和他们所有客户一对一见面，那些不喜欢他们的客户。你永远无法恨一个站在你面前的人。这真的很难，除非你真的很邪恶。这很难。我们必须增加彼此之间的互动，你知道，连接就是在那里建立的，信任就是在那里建立的，事情就是在那里发生的。我们越是把技术放在我们之间来进行所有沟通，事情就越容易出问题，因为我们无法读取情绪，我们无法捕捉那些微妙的信号——我看着你的眼睛，我要看看我是否信任你，以及所有那些东西。所以我认为我们需要更多地利用这些技术来把我们聚在一起。我在麻省理工学院见过一些这样的东西。德布·罗伊有一个非常有趣的项目，他已经做了 10 年，把人们聚在一起，收集大量选民的声音。他们如何能被聚在一起，你能真正听到人们的意见，因为他们能被听到，因为他们只是六人一组。但这是六乘以一万个小组，然后它们层层过滤上来，技术是一种放大他们声音的方式，但他们仍然是在小组、小群体中开会来做到这一点，而不是像六万人的体育场那样，谁也听不到任何东西。所以我认为我们需要翻转技术，而不是那种总是喂养你的蜥蜴脑的算法信息流，要换一种方式。而且我认为，你知道，我见过一些实际上能做到这一点的技术。我希望那些技术能帮助那些真正在努力创造这种社区感和社区动员的人，让他们能够做出我们真正需要的改变。通过这种方式，你们会对彼此更友善。你会更友善，因为你会认识你的邻居，看到，是的，他们可能属于左派，我们属于右派，但我们有很多共同点，比如我们的家庭、环境，你知道，而不是只听那些试图给我们洗脑、让我们倒向这一边或那一边的疯狂媒体。

It's a great question. I think the way you are kinder is by using the technology to find other people to have physical interactions with. the more physical interactions we've always known, and this was the Microsoft trick back in the 90s and the 2000s. Microsoft, the big evil corporation, they sent all their salespeople to go one-on-one with all of the customers they had and they didn't have who didn't like them. And they could never, you could never hate a person once it was a person in front of you. It was really hard unless you're really evil. It was hard. And we have to get more and more engagement between us, you know, and that's where where these the connections are made and this is where the trust is built and this is where these things happen. The more we put the the the the you know the technology between us for all the communications, that's when things go ary because we can't read emotions, we can't get the subtle I'm looking you in the eye and I'm going to see if I trust you and and all of those other things. So I think we need more of the using this these technologies to bring us together. I've seen some of this stuff at MIT. Deb Roy is got a really interesting project and he's been working on it for 10 years bringing together people to get the voice of of a large constituent base. Um how they can can be brought together and you can really hear the opinions of people because they they can be um they can be heard because they're only in groups of six. But it's six times 10,000 groups and then they all filter up and technology is a way to get their voices amplified up and and and but they're still meeting in groups in small groups to create this as opposed to a you know a stadium of 60,000 people who could never hear anything. And so I think we need to flip the technology instead of, you know, you know, the the the algorithmic feed that's always feeding your, you know, your lizard brain into a different way. And I think, you know, I've seen some technologies that could actually do that. And I hope that those will aid those people who are really trying to create this sense of community and and and and mobilization of these communities to to to be able to, you know, make the change that we really need. And and through that, you'll be nicer to each other. you know, you'd be kinder because you're going to know your neighbor and see that, yeah, they might be on the left and we're on the right, but we have a lot of things in common like our families, the environment, you know, and not just listen to the, you know, to the to the the the crazy media that's out there that's trying to brainwash us basically to to go to one side or the other.

按合同规定，一旦我们开播，我就必须说脏话。所以，呃，但就像你说的，面对面、亲自相处真的难得多。我不是在开玩笑。我的意思是，我发现那些人与人之间面对面的互动，你知道，没有政治极化。面对面交流的核心有一种文明，而你知道，在键盘后面，可能毫无底线。所以关键是

I'm required to use profanity contractually once we're out. So, uh, but to your point, it's really much harder to be an in person, face to face. And I don't mean that in a cheeky way. I mean, I find that those interactions person to person with people, you know, there is no political polarization. There's a kind of civility that in person has at its core that, you know, behind a keyboard there can be no limits. So the point is really

我只是，我，我听说过，你知道，我在看一个播客，他们说当每个人上网时，他们就相当于一个 12 岁的孩子。一个 12 岁的孩子想说什么就说什么。他们以为自己有自主权。他们确实有，但他们从不需要考虑别人的观点。他们从不需要想，你知道，哦，等一下，设身处地为别人想想。每个人都只想把自己那点东西喷出去。然后媒体和算法，你知道，放大了那些 12 岁孩子的情绪，然后这就是所有人得到的。所以这就像，你知道，得关掉这台机器，因为机器就坐在那里，喂养我们的蜥蜴脑。而人们更愿意愤怒。这更令人满足，因为它是如此本能、如此即时。就像，是的，我就爱发怒。就像这样。它没有任何好处，但天哪，它让人一时感觉很好。

just I I I heard that, you know, I was watching this one podcast and they said when everybody goes on the internet, they're the equivalent of being a 12-year-old. A 12-year-old says whatever they want. They think they have agency. They do, but they never have to consider anybody else's point of view. They never have to think about, you know, like, you know, oh, wait a second. Put them put yourself in their shoes. Just everybody wants to blast out whatever it is. And then the the media and the algorithms, you know, amplify the those 12-year-old feelings and then that's what everybody gets going. And then so it's just it's it's like, you know, got to turn off the machine cuz the machine is just sitting there getting our lizard brains. And people much rather rage. It's it's just so much more fulfilling because it's so visceral and it's so immediate. Like, yeah, I love to just rage. It's like this. It doesn't do any good, but man, it feels good for a little bit.

你知道，人们问我，你的习惯是什么，对吧？我在数字设备方面的习惯是什么？然后我对孩子和数字设备的看法是什么？

You know, people ask me what what are your habits, right? What are my habits around digital devices? And then what are my, you know, my thoughts about kids and digital devices?

但对我个人来说，我会把它们放下。我确保它们永远不会出现在餐桌上。我确保它们永远不会在谈话中，永远不会在那里分散我的注意力。第一件事就是，当你和人在一起时，就和人在一起。不要，不要只是这样。它会立刻告诉你，哦，你没那么重要。就像，如果你这样做足够多次，它不会，你不会建立连接。你只会建立不信任。

But for me personally, I put them down. I make sure they're never at the table. I make sure they're never in the convers they're never there to distract me. That's the first thing is when you're with people, be with people. Don't don't just go this. It it tells you it it tells instantly like, oh, you're not as important. And it's like if you do that enough times, it's not it's not going to it you're not going to build connection. You're only going to build distrust.

所以，第一件事是，当有人当面坐在你面前时，你需要投入。停下来。把那些东西收起来。第二件事是，不要一直盯着它们。你知道，你可能在工作，但不要被它们分心。不要把手机放在床边。晚上把它放到另一个房间。所以这里有很多摩擦。这就像你每晚都想在床边放一瓶酒。嗯，你可能想把它放到另一个房间，就像我们通常做的那样。所以我们必须学会这类事情。

So, first thing is when a person's in front of you personally, you need to be engaged. Stop. Put those away. Second thing is don't be on them all the time. You know, you might be doing work, but don't be distracted by them. Don't put them next to your bed. Put them in another room at night. So there's a lot of friction. It's like you want to put a bottle of alcohol next to your bed every night. Well, you might want to put it in the other room, like where we normally do it. So we have to learn these kinds of things.

我出去散步。我锻炼时不听音乐。散步时，也许有时候会听，看情况。但我尽量确保让我的大脑得到休息。这不只是睡觉的时候。你必须让大脑休息，你必须能够思考和反思。

I go out for walks. I don't use music when I'm working out. When I go for walks, maybe sometimes, depends. But I try to make sure I'm letting my mind get a rest. And that's not just when you sleep. You've got to give your mind a rest and you've got to be able to think and reflect.

我认为我们需要——这就回到我关于更多工具的观点——我们需要更多工具，帮助我们理解自己的数字消费模式，就像我们对待实体食物消费模式那样。我们需要重量，你知道，需要秤。我们需要知道什么是健康的。我们需要营养标签。在数字层面，什么健康？什么不健康？就像我们对待食物一样。我们需要所有这些不同的东西。政府可以参与进来。应用商店也需要参与进来，这样我们才能做出更好的选择。

And I think we need — and this is to my point about more tools — we need more tools that help us understand our digital consumption patterns, like we do for our physical food consumption patterns. We need weights, you know, scales for that. We need to know what's healthy. We need nutritional facts. What's healthy? What's not, digitally? Just like we do with food. We need all of these different things. The government can get involved. The app stores need to get involved, and that allows us to make better choices.

但我们确实需要退后一步，你需要明白——就像你不能一天十次从冰箱里拿东西吃——你必须明白，你的智能手机就是一个冰箱，里面可能有好的食物，也有坏的食物。你应该一天只吃几次健康食品，而不是全是垃圾食品。把垃圾食品扔掉。所以第一件事就是，你知道，成为你想看到的改变。

But we do need to pull back, and you need to understand — just like you can't eat out of the refrigerator 10 times a day — you've got to make sure that you understand that this is a refrigerator and it can have good and bad food inside it, your smartphone. And you should only be eating healthy food a few times a day, not all the junk food. Get rid of the junk food. So the first thing is, you know, be the change you want to see.

听起来像是给你公司布置的一项任务。

Sounds like an assignment for your company.

哦，也许吧。显然，这挺不错的。

Oh, maybe. Obviously, it's kind of great.

对我来说，这比政治好。在政治里——就这么说吧。

That's better than politics for me. In politics — let's put it that way.

嗯，这就是我们在公关那边常说的，当有人说，为什么 Magic App 没有这个功能？简·安德森会说，这对开发者来说是个绝妙的机会。所以就是这样。

Well, that's what we used to say on the PR side when someone would say, why doesn't Magic App have this feature in it? Jane Anderson would say, wonderful opportunity for a developer. So there you go.

是的，没错。绝妙的机会。

Yeah, exactly. Wonderful opportunity.

我知道我们得放你走了，但只是想非常感谢你和我们在一起，进行这场对话。

I know we have to let you go, but just wanted to thank you so much for being with us and having a conversation.

嗯，谢谢你们。见到你们总是很高兴。

Well, thank you guys. It was always good to see you guys.

感谢收听 General Magic 和 Soul of Tech 播客。请关注我们的 Substack，获取更多访谈和文章，网址是 spellboundproductions.substack.com。

Thank you for listening to General Magic and the Soul of Tech podcast. Tune in to our Substack for more interviews and articles at spellboundproductions.substack.com.