Schmidt Out of Luck — EP 73 Ashlee Vance And Kylie Robison

About this episode

Ashlee and Kylie discuss the latest happenings in Silicon Valley, including an interview with Alexandr Wang and the implications of AI developments.

We are back with another episode of Ashlee and Kylie gossiping about the latest in Silicon Valley. First, a re-cap of our Alexandr Wang interview — his first real sit-down in eleven months — and what it actually revealed about Meta’s AI play. Wang seemed nervous hashing out the strategy in the studio, and we both keep circling the same puzzle: Meta has endless compute and top talent in Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, so why does the model still feel underwhelming? We get into Eric Schmidt getting booed off a commencement stage at the University of Arizona, which becomes a longer conversation about the generational fury aimed at AI. Everyone Kylie’s age seems to hate it, but is it due to misinformation or legitimate anger about jobs and data centers? Ashlee admits he’s more confused by this moment than anything he’s covered in tech: the predicted Wall Street collapse hasn’t come, the models keep getting better, and the valuations still make no sense. Then, the news that broke minutes before we hit record: OpenAI won the Musk lawsuit on statute-of-limitations grounds. We dig into whether OpenAI’s shift from open-source nonprofit to for-profit was an original sin or just the only way…

People in this episode

Hosts: Ashlee Vance, Kylie Robison

Topics covered

• Silicon Valley gossip
• AI strategy
• Meta's AI
• generational views on AI
• OpenAI lawsuit
• Musk news

Keywords

• Silicon Valley
• AI
• Meta
• OpenAI
• Eric Schmidt
• generational anger
• Musk
• xAI
• Alexandr Wang

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Meta, OpenAI, Musk, xAI

Places: University of Arizona

More episodes of Core Memory

• The Space Race Is So Back — EP 76 Ashlee Vance And Kylie Robison · June 10, 2026 · 1h 23m
• Redwood Materials Has Built A Recyling Empire · June 9, 2026 · 1h 8m
• Can You Reverse Decades of Drinking Damage? Perhaps. - EP 75 Jacob Kimmel Is Back · June 2, 2026 · 2h 0m
• The Startup Trying to Save Us From AI Bioweapons- EP 74 Hannu Rajaniemi · May 27, 2026 · 1h 48m
• The Freshman Who Took Down Stanford's President And Its Perfect Image - EP 72 Theo Baker · May 20, 2026 · 1h 27m
• Meta's AI Chief On AI Beef, New Models And Life With Zuck - EP 71 Alex Wang · May 13, 2026 · 1h 23m