Gerstner says Google made a mistake letting OpenAI go first despite having the technology and capabilities.
“And to relinquish that spot by letting OpenAI go first, when you had the technology, you had the supercompute, you had the capabilities to release that product, I think was a mistake.”
Gerstner would rename OpenAI to ChatGPT and focus entirely on consumer rather than enterprise business.
“On the consumer side, which is where I get a lot more excited about OpenAI, is I say, You are the verb. I would rename the company ChatGPT.”
Gerstner argues high valuations force you to double that number, so $100B becomes $200B, distorting strategy.
“it forces the business strategy to fit that outcome. And worse yet, Dara, not only do you have to get to that number, you have to double that number.”
Gerstner says smart Silicon Valley companies use open source as defensive weapon, starting with Google's Android.
“Something happened over the past, I'd say fifteen years, where some of the smartest companies in Silicon Valley have developed a new strategic play, where they use open source as a defensive weapon rather than as an offensive weapon. That's my terminology. Of the first to do it was Google with Android”
Gerstner explains nine units of risk means 4.5 billion directionally long on 5 billion portfolio.
“So let's say that you're managing $5,000,000,000 of public equities. Nine units of risk would be that you have 4,500,000,000 of that risk directionally long the market.”
Gerstner argues AI policy and energy policy must be integrated at national level.
“you cannot have a strategic AI policy at a national level without a strategic energy policy at a at a national level. They're really tight at the hip.”
Gerstner warns believing China only wins through theft or subsidies prevents US self-improvement.
“if we have this view that the only reason China's competitive or winning is because they're they're stealing or they're subsidized, I think what that view does is it allows us to dilute ourselves into believing we don't need to get better ourselves.”
Gerstner argues OpenAI's global expansion mirrors Google's early 2000s strategy of competing worldwide without government permission.
“This is what Google did in the early two thousand. Right? And by the way, Google didn't have to go to Washington to get a permission or to get a license.”
Gerstner argues focusing on slowing China distracts from accelerating US competitiveness.
“And I think by if we focus too much on how do we slow down China, we take the eye off the ball on how to accelerate our own race.”
Gerstner notes OpenAI has not built data centers while Microsoft, Oracle, CoreWeave, and SoftBank are building them.
“I haven't heard them break ground on any data center. I hear Microsoft building data centers, Oracle building data centers, CoreWeb building data centers, SoftBank building data centers.”
Gerstner notes OpenAI has not broken ground on any $50 billion data centers despite earlier expectations.
“Well, a year ago, people thought that they were gonna go build all these data centers that were gonna cost $50,000,000,000 a pop. I haven't heard them break ground on any data center.”
Gerstner argues US should focus on running fastest race rather than restricting China's chip access.
“The US wins when the world runs on American technology, and I think we need to focus on running the fastest race we can possibly run.”