No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
00:29:17 · Glenn Fogel, Elad Gil
It's so much more complex than I believe many other people who look at this industry from afar and work secondly. This is something really people don't understand. This is the regulatory framework around the world. Dealing with travel is a very highly regulated now it's not a bank. Okay. Got it. And it's not an air claim, you know, airlines such that, or it's, you know, not drug discount, but it is very regulated. And it's complex and you've gotta meet it. And if you wanna be murky of record in travel, you gotta adhere to a whole bunch of rules, etcetera. And by the way, around the world, much more than The US, around the world, those regulations are increasing. Or not saying so exponentially, but let's say they're increasing. That too is something that if you're big at scale, you can afford to deal with that. And if you think you're just gonna come in and do this business and knock away these very big players, I'd say you should really understand what the business is before you decide to commit your capital. [00:30:19] S1: So I guess if you reflect on life or you reflect on things looking forward because, I mean, you've had an incredible run. Right? And the run is by no means over. You know? You still have so much [00:30:30] S0: stuff you're working on and doing. In fact, I think we're just a good start. No. See, this is I tell you, mate. [00:30:35] S1: Yeah. Is the most [00:30:35] S0: exciting time ever, ever because of the ability to build these new things.
00:30:35 · Glenn Fogel, Elad Gil
[00:30:35] S0: exciting time ever, ever because of the ability to build these new things. [00:30:41] S1: Yeah. I agree. I mean, I think this is a transformative moment- Totally. In terms of just technology and the world and society and everything else. And, you know, it's so exciting to be in the middle of all this. And obviously, you all are playing a really prominent role in one aspect of that or a key aspect. You know, you joined Priceline to your point when it was in the hundreds of millions. The stock is now, you know, dollars 130,000,000,000 plus company. It was 180,000,000,000 earlier in the year. I'm sure it'll go back there over time given, you know, all the things we're working on. Fingers crossed. [00:31:06] S0: If we do what we're supposed to do. [00:31:08] S1: How do you think about just like what you hope to accomplish more broadly in life? Or what is the right measure of a person or, you know, of an outcome or of the next few years? Or I'm just sort of curious because, you know, we chatted very briefly earlier, and I felt like you're somebody who's thought deeply about more than just, you know, how will I drive bookings forward? Although, obviously, you think about that quite a bit. I'm just sort of curious, like, you know, what is the right measure in general that you're measuring yourself against or how are you thinking about the next couple of years?
00:31:41 · Glenn Fogel
[00:31:41] S0: Yeah. Well, look, I'm very blessed. I've been very lucky in my life that I'm in a business where I could pretty much do what I'd like to do. And sometimes people ask me, why do you continue to do what you're doing? And I said, because I think part of this is doing something good. And, yeah, we're not curing cancer. I know that. But I think that travel is a very important thing for a lot of people. It really adds to their their lives. You know, we can do it better. Look. Our mission is to make it easier for everybody to experience the world, and I believe that does improve everybody. It improves the world by getting people to travel more, experience other cultures, other people, etcetera. And if we can do it right and make it easier, that's great. I wanna be part. I wanna help do that. I do believe that's adding something. And, that's part of the everybody needs to understand, I believe. Why are you doing what you're doing? You only get one life. You get one life now. Sometimes people don't have choices at all. That's the only job they have. They need to afford to be able to support their family. I got that. Believe that. I know that. But for people who have a little bit of ability to choose, I'd say choose wisely. Choose wisely because you will not get that time back. And some people have different ideas on what will they believe their life should be and that whatever it is, it's long term for going that path. That's great. My biggest fear too much is people who've taken paths that in the end, they're middle aged or later, and they're a little bit wistful about, gee, I wonder if I had done it next. And I'll be perfectly honest and well, hope not to many of my law school classmates, I hope, but I fear that too many of them, they chose going to law school because that was just kind of like a path. Then they became lawyers just because, you know, that's normally what you do when you come out of law school, couple of lawyers. I didn't, but many people did. And then it paid really well and it was easy in their comfort zone. And then later in life, it was kind of like, gee, what did I do? And that's when I think everybody should really think hard about making sure you choose wisely.
00:33:57 · Elad Gil
[00:33:57] S1: You know, one thing we've talked about quite a bit is the AI impact on jobs. And, you know, there's this claim jobs apocalypse and all these other things coming. Would love to hear your views on that and how you think about that.
00:34:08 · Glenn Fogel
[00:34:08] S0: So it is really interesting. I mean, we take it in terms of the general sense of technology being job replacement. That's something that happened forever. We well, look at the way the agrarian societies went more towards urbanization as technology passed, industrial revolution. We can go through anything like that. And so we know that happened. The issue that's really interesting though is the speed of the change. So if you look right now where we are, I've seen it happen over my time just this company. So at the beginning of the company, we were dealing at booking.com or we acquired booking.com. They were doing hotel reservations in over 40 languages, which meant all the content, All the scripts, everything was in 40 languages, and this customer service, 40 languages, all that. It's wonderful. And there were a lot of people involved with that because all the translation is now in the oh, it's it's, like, 2005. All the translations are being done by human beings. There's no machine translation at all at the time. And all those customer service human beings, we had to have people in all these 40 different languages and that. That was a big deal. Now now we have machine translations. All those jobs are gone. There's nobody doing anything. That's those all those jobs disappear. So what happened to those people? Where did they go? What are the tops are they now taking? What are they doing in sec? So that's an example where we see that happen in real time. And now we have the issue not only of Apple, now the fear of, well, will I get a job coming out of university because all the jobs seem to be gone because what was necessary was an analyst at a financial department, a bank, or a corporation's job was not being done through basically AI. So the job started, what's going on, how's it going affect? Now we know also the other side, that new jobs aren't gonna be created. We all know that also by history. We're looking at the problem of this, the speed of job, well, disappearance and new job creation. Those rates are not happening probably the same rate. And the second thing is, what about the people who are not able to make that change? So I think well, I always think about the typical person I think about is a 50 year old truck driver.
00:36:26 · Glenn Fogel, Elad Gil
And when the person who was making a very nice living and felt very good about himself because he or she is driving an 18 wheeler across The US and getting responsible, helping contribute to a good job there. And now all of sudden, that's completely automated. Mhmm. You're out of a job. What are we gonna how are we gonna retrain that pro? What's that person? That person's gonna feel really bad. And we've seen in society how these type of forced dislocations have caused problems in the past when you look at that. And I'm concerned that there's not enough thought being done about how are we going to deal with these changes if they happen too quickly or not. Society is whole, absolutely. It's always benefit from technology and creating and being able to do more things. But we have to how are we gonna deal with the flip side, the cost that come with it. [00:37:18] S1: Do have a do have a specific viewpoint or proposal in terms of what we should be doing there?