- The tech and political worlds are merging,
and there's pretty much nothing
we can do about it at this point.
(intense electronic music)
In January, many executives in the tech industry
came out strongly against President Trump's immigration ban.
That news was followed by Y Combinator announcing
the American Civil Liberties Union
would join its accelerator for tech startups.
Meanwhile, everyday employees in the tech industry
are increasingly becoming involved
in social and political activism of sorts,
whether it's staging walk-outs or rallies
at their tech companies or showing up in solidarity
at public protest, but this isn't the first time
tech has gotten involved in politics.
Tech leaders have spoken out against things
like SOPA and PRISM as well as policies
that affect the LGBTQ community.
But something feels different this time around.
Today we're chatting with Sam Altman,
president of Y Combinator,
about the intersection of tech and politics.
- [Man] Sam Altman is the president of Y Combinator,
a startup accelerator in Silicon Valley
that has churned out startups like Airbnb,
Stripe, Dropbox, and Flexport.
In the last couple of years, YC has expanded
its mission to focus on things
like basic income and universal healthcare.
- Why are the worlds of tech and politics
increasingly colliding these days?
- I think tech has just expanded so much,
and it's the way that so many of us consume news
and information, there was sort of
the unavoidable collision with the world of politics.
- And I've seen, you're very active on the internet,
obviously, and on your blog you've posted things
about basic income, universal healthcare.
What's driving you to get involved in that sort of area?
- I think I've been incredibly fortunate in my career
and I'm in a place where I can work on things
that I think are really important to the future.
And I think that as technology continues to create
more wealth, but concentrate it, we have an obligation
to figure out how to address that problem.
So we will create huge amounts of wealth
in the tech industry, but if we don't figure out
how to include everybody in that and figure out
new societal systems as AI eliminates jobs or whatever
else happens, then I think we'll have totally failed.
And I think that I'm very lucky
that I have a platform where people listen to me
and I can try to advance these ideas I care about.
- So how many projects right now do you have
in addition to your core role at Y Combinator?
- YC Research sort of funds five different projects.
Open AI, we're trying to develop superhuman AI
and have that be maximally beneficial for people
as a whole, basic income, universal healthcare,
a group where we're looking at new cities,
because I think the cost of housing is one of the biggest
problems that we're trying to face as a society.
I think young people are just getting completely screwed
by that system and we need to think about ways
to make housing as affordable as possible.
And then the fifth one is Alan K's group,
which we call HARK, which is new ways
to do education and communication,
actually would have been great for this election,
how can you get more empathy into people's minds?
- Y Combinator recently accepted the American
Civil Liberties Union into the startup accelerator.
After that announcement came out, people had some
concerns about YC's relationship with Peter Thiel,
who of course backed President Trump's campaign.
- President Trump.
Doesn't sound any less crazy.
- (laughs)I know, yeah.
Or some people have been saying 45,
or the man in the room. - I think that might be
a good strategy, I'm not totally sure.
- Yeah, so Thiel backed 45's campaign.
But do you want to set the record straight
and just say, what is Thiel's involvement with YC,
what involvement he might have with the ACLU?
- Yeah, no involvement at all with the ACLU.
Part time partners are pretty non-involved.
So he advises startups when they ask for it,
but he's busy with a lot of other things.
- Do you think the ACLU would ask him?
- I don't know, I mean, the ACLU defends
a lot of free speech, but they haven't so far,
I don't expect that they will,
and I hope we'll be able to help them
with whatever they ask for.
Our model with any startup, profit or nonprofit,
we funded 30-something nonprofits,
and the model is always, startup tell us
what they need help with, and we try to help.
So if that's fundraising, we'll try to help with that,
if it's technology, a device, partnerships, whatever it is.
And in this particular case there was a ton
of excitement, so many of our companies said
we want to give these free services to the ACLU,
and the community really rallied together
in a way that was nice.
- After the election, we've just seen a lot of people
in the tech industry speaking up,
either against Trump or some of his executive orders,
especially relating to immigration.
- Yeah.
- Do you see yourself as an activist...
at this point?
- I guess so, I'm not,
yeah, I mean, I was not planning to be this involved,
it has become a very busy second job.
But I really care about it.
I do think there's a lot tech can do,
but trying to figure out the right few things to focus on,
that's not yet clear to me.
But I think it's super important we figure that out,
and I think, to say something positive,
the entire tech community feels engaged and wants
to figure this out, and wants to do the right thing.
So I think that there is a lot of potential
energy looking for the right thing to do.
- What are some or your top priorities,
maybe, in terms of, in thinking about how
you could be an activist of sorts?
What are those types of priorities, or what are the few
things that you're thinking about right now?
- The things that scare me the most about Trump,
one, I think he will be terrible
for the rights of Americans that don't look like him.
At a minimum, he'll be a terrible example,
and he'll probably also try to enact
policies that I think are really bad.
I'd love to see the court system step up
and defend the country, but I think protecting
the rule of law and equality of all citizens,
I think that's a super important area
for us to defend, I think trying to engage with everybody,
one thing I really don't like about some
of tech's response is this whole,
people that supported Trump are the devil,
and we hate them, and we're gonna go,
they're not part of the future.
I think, I hope, tech proved that it could drive us apart,
I hope tech can bring us together.
And I think without that we will have this,
even if we win the next election, which I really hope we do,
I think we will continue to have this very divided country.
I mean, if Hillary had won, you and I would be very happy
and there'd be some version of this somewhere else
where people were talking about the end of the world.
- Right. (laughs)
- And so I think trying to come back together
is like, we disagree but we have this shared country.
And we need to find a way to not all
be trying to root for the demise of the other half,
feels really important.
- So what I do here at TechCrunch,
a lot of my coverage is around diversity and inclusion.
And to me, that conversation has definitely broadened
in light of Trump, and it's kind of made me question,
okay, what should I be prioritizing right now?
Is there something that's more important?
Do you have this idea, or do you ever feel
spread thin, in a way, like there are now so many things
that need a lot of attention that you might
not really know where to begin?
- Yeah, I've had that same experience,
which is I had this set of things I thought
were really important, and now there's some new
things that seem a whole lot more important.
And I think one important meta point
is to be, this thing happened that we didn't expect,
and it seems like it could be really bad,
and being willing to sort of reallocate focus
and time and priorities, I think the meta point
is it's important to focus and it's important
to be willing to redirect that focus.
So not do too many things, and be willing to do
very different things than I was thinking
I was gonna do in October of last year.
- Right. - The other thing
that I worry about a lot with, let's say 45, is,
I hope this is a misguided worry,
but I do worry a lot about a war.
And I think he's a little bit unstable.
And there are a lot of things that I think I can at least
come up with some path of how tech can help,
and that one it just feels like we're powerless on.
- Right.
- Did you see that report about Cambridge Analytica
and how the Trump campaign used them to sort of
perfectly tailor messaging, advertising,
to each individual person based off of their Facebook likes
and their preferences, so we basically,
one of the things technology does is instead of having
to create a message that applies to a broad set
of people, you can create 350 million messages,
and so there is this way in which
this was the election of the algorithm.
And tech can, I think,
that kind of was this emergent
behavior we weren't all ready for.
But tech can get really focused on that now.
And I think the industry has a lot of power
to create empathy, bring people together.
- So given all that we've discussed,
and considering that we're both in this tech world,
in the startup world,
where does that leave the startup ecosystem,
or in terms of opportunities
for innovation and real impact, how do you,
- To end on a positive note, the tech industry
is incredibly powerful, and we feel fairly united
in this concern, and so I think there is an enormous amount
we can do if we can agree on what to do,
and coordinate in how we do it.
But I think, I mean, it is not just people
in Silicon Valley that spend all day on their phones
looking at Facebook and Twitter and Instagram,
SnapChat, everything else.
And so...
I think there is really a lot that's possible.
One of the crazier ideas I have,
everyone talks about the merge, the singularity,
when we, humans and computers become the same thing.
And I think there is an important argument
that that's already behind us.
I'm uncomfortable right now because my phone
is over on that table. (Megan chuckling)
But I, that phone controls my life.
And that tells me what I should think,
and it tells me when to go to my meeting,
and when to go here, and if I don't have it,
although it's not technically part of my body,
I feel physically uncomfortable,
it's like something is missing that's really important.
And I don't think I'm in a minority there.
And so there is this way in which the industry
has a lot of power to create empathy,
bring people together, and spread
these ideas that we believe in.
- Thanks so much for your time, Sam.
- Thank you. - I really appreciate it.
- [Man] Catch Bullish on Wednesdays,
here at TechCrunch.com.
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