Midjourney, the company that taught computers to dream up images, just built a machine that scans the inside of your body. Founder David Holz pulled the cover off it at a members only club in a rough stretch of downtown San Francisco this week, and Ashlee Vance and Kylie Robison were two of the only journalists in the room. What they saw was a full body ultrasound scanner that lowers you into a pool of water, images your insides in about a minute, and throws off terabytes of data per scan. It is one of eight products the self funded AI company plans to ship, including a luxury spa to house the machines and, according to chatter at the party, a brain computer interface. In this episode of Core Memory they break down exactly what they saw, why the $40 billion dream might be the easy part, and what happens when a profitable AI startup decides to reinvent the annual physical.
From there the conversation turns to the biggest fight in AI right now. The U.S. government banned Anthropic's newest model, the first time Washington has ever pulled an American AI model offline, and Ashlee was inside Anthropic as it happened. He walks through the leaks, the politics, and why the precedent should worry every other lab. The two also get into Google DeepMind's strange and brilliant partnership with EVE Online to train world models, Noam Shazeer leaving Google for OpenAI, the quiet death of the "scaling has hit a wall" narrative, and Snap's new $2,200 smart glasses that might be too big and too late.
It is not all AI. Ashlee tells the story of nearly walking off with one of Rafael Nadal's rackets at Larry Ellison's compound, the two compare notes on Bryan Johnson's skincare routine, and Ashlee goes fishing with a robot that kills fish using a centuries old Japanese method to make better sushi.
LINKS AND COMPANIES DISCUSSED
Midjourney: https://www.midjourney.com
Butterfly Network: https://www.butterflynetwork.com
Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com
Google DeepMind: https://deepmind.google
EVE Online: https://www.eveonline.com
Snap Specs: https://www.spectacles.com
Shinkei Systems: https://www.shinkei.systems
Redwood Materials: https://www.redwoodmaterials.com
ABOUT THE HOSTS
Ashlee Vance is a best selling author and journalist who has spent two decades covering science and technology for Bloomberg Businessweek, The New York Times, and The Economist. He wrote the definitive biography "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future" and "When the Heavens Went on Sale," created the Emmy nominated show Hello World, and produced the documentary Wild Wild Space. He is the founder of Core Memory.
Kylie Robison covers the business of artificial intelligence and the companies racing to build it, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI. She previously reported on Big Tech and AI at Wired, The Verge, Fortune, and Business Insider.
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Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:38 Inside Midjourney's Secret MRI Machine
15:42 What Does Brian Johnson's Skin Really Look Like?
21:14 The First AI Model America Ever Banned
36:26 Why Is DeepMind Obsessed With a 20-Year-Old Space Game?
45:47 The Transformer Inventor Just Switched Sides
49:36 Whatever Happened to "Scaling Hit a Wall"?
52:26 Who on Earth Is Buying $2,200 Smart Glasses?
1:00:34 Dating in San Francisco, COVID Shots, and the World Cup
1:05:32 The Time Ashlee Nearly Pocketed Rafael Nadal's Racket
1:16:21 A Robot That Kills Fish the Japanese Way
1:19:31 Is Ashlee Turning Republican? Plus Where Batteries Go to Die
