More or Less - Dave Morin, Jessica Lessin, Brit Morin, and Sam Lessin

Latest Episodes:

AI Killing Engineering Jobs Is “the Biggest Load of BS” Nov 06, 2026

Show notes

A year ago VCs were telling Parker Conrad that software engineering was months away from mass unemployment. His update: salaries are higher, the market is tighter, and a great engineer is worth more today than ever. The Rippling CEO joins Sam and Jess (no Morins this week) to argue that the only moat left in AI is seeing the problem before your customer does, that good gross margins are a sign nobody is actually using your product, and that Rippling isn't a software company at all. Sam counters with his own setup: a private notes file he hands to four different agents so they race each other to finish things he never asked them to do. Jess brings the mood from New York, where the money people think the $8 trillion CapEx bill doesn't pencil out and financing is about to get much harder. Plus Deel fighting a federal grand jury subpoena, Anthropic's IPO date, and Sam's plan to pay people minimum wage with a 5% shot at a million dollars.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:14 Parker Conrad Joins, No Morins This Week

02:13 Everyone Watched the Election on Prediction Markets, Not TV

04:09 The Blue Wave, and Why the Market Went Up Anyway

07:48 Hyperscalers, Data Centers, and Builds That Just Got Harder

09:27 California's Wealth Tax Fails

10:24 Why Paper Billionaires Can't Pay a Wealth Tax

12:17 The Financing Trick Where One Investor Sets the Headline Price

13:06 New York's Mood: AI Financing Is Drying Up

13:45 Sam: We've Run Out of Money in the World

15:09 Parker: Good Gross Margins Can Be a Bad Sign

15:30 Anthropic's IPO Date and OpenAI's Approach to Margins

16:44 Rippling's IPO Plans and the Public Market Retirement Community

18:26 The SaaS Apocalypse That Didn't Happen

19:00 "Rippling Is Not a Software Company"

20:29 AI for Boring: Government Forms, Faxes and Fraudulent Audits

25:36 The Only Moat Left Is Seeing the Problem First

28:01 Sam's Notes File and the Agents That Compete Over It

29:32 Instinct Keeps Asking Jess the Same Question

30:02 Today's Agents Are Shitty Assistants

30:49 Permissions Architecture as the Real Advantage

32:21 Where Rippling Makes Margin and Where It Makes Zero

33:19 Usage Pricing and Deleting the Bottom Half of a Job

34:36 What You're Really Selling Is a Promotion

36:04 Software Written at Installation Time

37:26 Why You Shouldn't Vibe Code Permissions

38:07 AI Is Excellent at Using Software, Humans Are Not

39:42 Should an AI Negotiate Your Pay?

41:05 Rippling's $17M Seed and Two Years Before the Starting Line

42:07 Why Reversibility Decides How Fast You Can Move

44:52 The Deel Lawsuit and a Federal Grand Jury Subpoena

46:06 Sam: Your Job Doesn't Look Fun to Me

48:40 The Engineer Layoffs That Never Came

49:25 Random Reward Payroll, a Very Bad Idea

51:26 Overrated and Underrated in Silicon Valley

54:01 Sam's New York Marathon

55:14 Starting a Company: The Narrow Ray of Daylight

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Connect with our guest:

Parker Conrad, CEO of Rippling: https://x.com/parkerconrad

Connect with us here:

1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin

2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin

3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.

Amazon, Google, ChatGPT: When Do Products Start Gaming Their Users? Oct 30, 2026

Show notes

Bing Gordon co-founded Electronic Arts, spent 18 years at Kleiner Perkins, sat on Amazon's board for 15 and is credited by John Doerr and Jeff Wilke with the idea for Prime. He also sat on Zynga's board, which is why it lands when he says players felt relief when they quit Farmville while retention and revenue were still climbing. So where's the line between good game design and gaming your users? Bing's answer takes in TikTok doom scrolling, WhatsApp as the rare product nobody complains about overusing, the sponsored products Amazon still shows Prime members, and ChatGPT ending every answer with one more question. Then Dave asks what the whole agent era keeps circling: what gets worse if your AI wins for you? Friction is what makes pearls, says Bing, and the next frictions will come from edge conditions nobody tested. Plus the wow/WTF scale he used to judge EA's Hall of Fame games, and the bet-your-job letter he kept in a drawer.

Everybody Wins by Bing Gordon and Chloe Gordon: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/797436/everybody-wins-by-bing-gordon-and-chloe-gordon/

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:02 No Lessins This Week: Brit and Dave Bring In Bing Gordon

02:42 Amazon's Board, Prime, and 18 Years at Kleiner Perkins

05:03 Disneyland Inside the Computer

06:51 The Classroom Question That Led to Electronic Arts

09:44 Raising $2M in 1982, Then Atari Collapsed

10:56 Vision, and Why People Think You're Stupid

11:37 Bathroom OKRs and Why Goals Beat Perfection

13:13 Word of Mouth, and Why Coin-Operated Hires Leave

14:44 "Can a Computer Make You Cry?" and Hiring on Mission

16:53 Why Games Retain: Where Everybody Knows Your Name

17:34 Which Social Network Did It Best?

18:36 LinkedIn Endorsements and Getting People to Come Back

20:19 Farmville: Players Felt Relief When They Quit

21:18 Growth Hacking Is Human Growth Hormone

23:04 Amazon, TikTok, ChatGPT: Who's Gaming Their Users Today?

24:21 What Gets Worse If Your AI Agent Wins for You?

25:03 Friction Is What Makes Pearls

26:30 Hugging Face, Cruise, and the Edge Conditions Nobody Tests

29:04 Writing Everybody Wins With His Daughter Chloe

32:19 The Visionary and the Operator

33:20 The Wow/WTF Scale, and How to Manufacture a Wow

36:08 Wow Moments in Games, Facebook, Instagram and Amazon

38:42 Creating Wow Moments as a Parent

41:28 The Bet Your Job Moment

42:23 You Only Got Fired for Blaming Someone Else

43:19 Good Risk vs Bad Risk

43:53 Invest and Express: Twitch, Chat, and Kids' Art on the Wall

45:59 Dave's Favorite Bing-ism: The Airplane Aisle Test

47:30 The Best Retention Hack Ever Made Is a Wedding Ring

48:01 Session Economics, Novelty, and Leveling Up

51:51 How to Gamify a Board Meeting

54:03 Why a Founder Who Loses the Board Twice Gets Replaced

55:23 Family Board Meetings and the Vice President of Fun

56:17 Lightning Round: Books, Heroes, Best Investment

58:41 Bing's P(doom): Boomers Are Gonna Doom

59:36 The Three Things That Make a Good Day

1:01:59 Dave's iPhone Duo Verdict

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Connect with our guest: Bing Gordon, author of Everybody Wins (with Chloe Gordon), available everywhere including Amazon. Bing narrated the audiobook.

X: https://x.com/bingfish

Connect with us here:

1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin

2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin

3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

⁠The Real Reason Elon Wants SpaceX and Tesla to Merge Now Oct 23, 2026

Show notes

Elon tells investors on an earnings call that SpaceX and Tesla should merge, and Sam has a theory he says nobody else has floated: there's an enormous SpaceX lockup cliff coming in the spring, and folding Tesla's retail shareholders into the denominator makes all that supply far easier to absorb. Dave thinks the rocket powered car demo was timed to justify the deal, Sam thinks two engineers got told to bolt rockets onto a car and it will never ship, and 83% of respondents in the Information's new Polls app say it's mostly about Musk control. Then OpenAI finds a web-wide PHP vulnerability and Sam's conclusion is blunt: all your regional banks will be hacked, the labs are centralizing profits while externalizing the risk, and they should be carrying hundred billion dollar insurance policies. Plus Google quietly telling Jess she's liable for everything her agents do, Netflix's content shakeup, Dave's theory of priority slop, and Brit's second week with no back pain.

Try the Polls app out now: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-information-polls/id6814969991

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:04 Dave's Back, and the Nasal Rinse Discourse

02:06 OpenAI Finds a Web-Wide PHP Vulnerability

03:12 Sam: All Your Regional Banks Will Be Hacked

04:16 The Zero Days the Labs Are Quietly Sitting On

04:56 Dave on the Gap Between Frontier Models and the Public Ones

06:29 Why Labs Should Ban Their Own Teams From the Frontier

07:17 Pearl, Coinbase, and Bitcoin as a Byproduct of Compute

08:32 Can You Even Build a Cybersecurity Company in 2026

09:16 Cold Storage: Your Documents in a Mine Near the North Pole

10:22 Sam: The Labs Need $100 Billion Liability Policies

11:30 Google Says You're Liable for Everything Your Agents Do

13:55 How Many Teslas Have the Morins Owned?

15:05 Sam's Mazda Dealership Is Living in the Future

16:32 The Two Futures of Car Buying

17:14 SpaceX and Tesla Are Going to Merge

18:01 The Rocket Car Demo Was a Stunt to Justify the Deal

19:24 Elon Doesn't Control Tesla, and That's the Point

21:09 Why the Merger Needs a Narrative

22:25 The Information Launches Polls: 83% Say It's About Control

23:09 Sam's Lockup Theory That Nobody Else Has Said

25:36 Will Shareholders Approve It, and the SXSI Joke

27:29 Brit: Teslas Are Becoming Entertainment Vehicles

28:17 Dave on the Cyber Cab Experience

30:12 Jess's Enthusiasm Falls Back to Earth, and the Waymo Bug

32:33 Netflix: Content Shakeup and What They Should Actually Make

35:32 Dave's Viral Take: Content Slop vs Priority Slop

38:05 Sam Let His Bot Write the Entire AGM Deck

39:28 Dave's Broadsheet Newspaper for Offline

40:19 Internships for Teenagers, Run by Bots

41:30 Meta's New Voting Stock and the End of Capitalism

42:08 The Wealth Tax Debate

44:36 The Elizabeth Holmes Movie and the Surprise Q&A

49:28 Peptide Check-In, and a Necessary Disclaimer

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Connect with us here:

1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin

2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin

3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

The Death of the Web Is Inevitable Oct 16, 2026

Show notes

Jess went full send on Muse and reports that about 70% of the use cases she was excited about have stopped working, because the internet is fighting back: Good Eggs now wants her to check out in the app, her kid's school portal refuses the login, and JP Morgan and Amazon are blocking agents outright. Dave's version is worse. Instinct booked a dinner reservation in LA instead of San Francisco, and he's out. Sam has seen this exact movie, because he and Andrew Kortina ran Fin ten years ago and shut it down once they worked out you become liable for every provider down the chain with no margin to cover your own mistakes. His call now is the death of the web, plus APIs that negotiate access back and forth like Hollywood agents. Meanwhile Anthropic is meeting investors behind closed doors while they tape, the market is getting hammered, and Brit's three years of hip pain vanished in six days on peptides, which Sam insists is placebo.

Interested in peptides? More or Less listeners 50% off their first month at NoHo Labs. Use code: MOREORLESSVIP on https://noholabs.com/

Timestamps:

01:09 Jess Is Back, Dave's Birthday, and the October Cold

03:04 Nasal Rinses and Fall Immunity

04:02 Brit's Peptide Results: Three Years of Pain Gone in Six Days

06:43 Anthropic Is Meeting Investors While We Tape

07:34 The Market Is Getting Hammered: VIX, Private Credit, Apollo

08:16 Infrastructure IPOs Stall and Nvidia Becomes the Last Investor

10:01 Slowing Revenue, CFOs Cracking Down, Tokens Moving to Open Models

10:36 Sam: Would You Rather Be Rich or Right?

11:11 The Models Are a Commodity and There Is No Lock-In

12:15 Brit Won't Give Muse Her Whole Computer

13:41 Why Sam Trusts Meta More Than OpenAI or Anthropic

15:16 Jess: 70% of My Muse Use Cases Don't Work Anymore

16:54 Dave: Instinct Booked the Restaurant in the Wrong City

18:18 Sam on Fin, the Assistant Company He Ran Ten Years Ago

20:30 Why the Economics of Mistakes Break Agent Services

22:31 Sam: What's Inevitable Is the Death of the Web

23:09 APIs as Constant Negotiation, and Agents With Reputations

24:51 Agent Credit Scores: FICO for Bots

25:56 Amazon's Rufus Still Works, and Other Branding Crimes

27:13 The Seesaw: Built Up and Torn Down Intraday

28:41 Gen Z Media, Muse Memes, and Punk Rock by Another Name

32:53 Is the Punk Rock Thing Just Marketing?

34:37 Every Company Now Needs a Gen Z Meme Lord

36:14 The Truth Subculture and Who Actually Pays for It

37:32 Jess Is Interviewing Barry Weiss at WTF

40:20 Bumble Goes Private at $1.3B

43:07 Dave on Seven Years of Hinge and Why Dating Is So Hard

46:41 Apple's Home Hub and Keeping Screens Away From Kids

49:04 Everyone Is Going to See the Elizabeth Holmes Movie

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1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin

2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin

3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

Agentic Commerce Hits a Wall: Hilton, Amazon and the Bot Blocking Fight Oct 09, 2026

Show notes

Meta and Microsoft, two of Anthropic's biggest enterprise customers, have roughly halved their Claude usage, and both are running their own models instead. Dave's diagnosis is the one nobody else is making: Claude was over-tuned for parasocial relationships, people got into something unhealthy with it, and organizations are now quietly backing away. Sam is blunter about the business. He runs Claude as infrastructure, but switching off would be a one line change he'd never think about twice. Then it gets strange: a dinner where only the lab researchers raised their hands when asked if one company will be left standing, a lab that believes the machine god will go back in time and simulate hell for anyone who didn't build it, and Sam's case that Silicon Valley caught zero-and-infinity thinking from crypto and broke its own spreadsheets. Plus Hilton's website trapping Sam's agent in a doom loop, and Dave and Sam inventing the Agent Treaty Framework on air. Jess is at an offsite, so it's three VCs and no journalist.

In this episode:

- Why two of Anthropic's largest customers cut their Claude usage in half, weeks before the IPO

- Dave on parasocial tuning as the thing that actually burned Claude, and how you can spot Claude slop on Twitter

- Zero, infinity, and what crypto taught the Valley about putting infinity in a spreadsheet

- The dinner question about one company being left standing, and who raised their hand

- The personal agent protocol from Meta, Walmart, Shopify, Stripe and Sierra, and why Dave says it's about commerce, not protection

- Hilton, Cloudflare and Amazon blocking agents, and whether holding the line counts as collusion

- Dave on building agents versus building agency, and whose potential we're underwriting

- The Agent Treaty Framework: why pairwise deals replace standards when negotiation is free

- Megalith buying unexercised pro rata from seed funds, and Sam's war story about the fund that quashed his

Chapters:

00:00 Trailer

00:51 Brit Moderates: Three VCs and No Journalist

03:43 Peptide Protocols, the Wolverine Stack, and a Dexa Scan

07:42 Sam on the Nathan Fielder Movie

09:30 Meta and Microsoft Halve Their Claude Usage

10:13 Dave: Claude Was Over-Tuned for Parasocial Relationships

11:19 Sam: Switching Off Claude Is a One Line Change

13:46 Zero, Infinity, and What Crypto Taught the Valley

17:53 The Dinner Where Only the Lab People Raised Their Hands

19:41 The Lab That Believes in the Machine God

20:01 Lab Leaks, Infinite Liability, and What a Real Framework Looks Like

21:56 The Personal Agent Protocol: Meta, Walmart, Shopify, Stripe

23:01 Sam: Nobody Should Care About MCP

24:03 Hilton Traps Sam's Agent in a Doom Loop

26:30 If You Ran Hilton, Would You Let the Bots In?

27:15 Facebook Connect, Open Graph, and the Missing Value Trade

29:41 Dave: Building Agents vs Building Agency

33:53 The Social Media Era Already Ran This Experiment

37:02 The Agent Treaty Framework Is Born

38:16 Why Standards Are Over and Treaties Are Next

41:28 Megalith and the Market for Unexercised Pro Rata

42:32 Sam's Pro Rata War Story

45:53 64% of LPs Now Want Co-Invest Rights

48:03 What Hedge Fund Letters Say That VCs Don't

49:20 Main Street Says It Hates AI, Then Uses It

53:27 Plug of the Week: The Mill

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1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin

2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin

3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

Meta Muse vs Instinct vs OpenAI Dots: Do AI Agents Have Any Moat? Oct 02, 2026

Show notes

Anthropic's S-1 leaked and the numbers are not what the narrative promised: revenue flatlining as token prices drop, and SaaS investors posting memes welcoming Anthropic to the no-growth table. Jess still puts it at 60% they get out in November, which looks optimistic in a week when Oura pulled its IPO and blamed market conditions. Sam's problem with the core business is simpler than any of it: he runs Claude as the center of his infrastructure, and if it vanished tomorrow he'd care for about one second. Dave spots the strategy mishap nobody is naming, where forward deployed teams built software to burn luxury tokens right as open models had CFOs asking why they're paying premium prices. Then Adrian drops into the pod uninvited to argue there's no moat left unless you own the infrastructure, the data, or the algorithms.In this episode:- The leaked S-1: flatlining revenue, half a trillion in mostly non-cancellable contracts, and why the cloud providers are the ones making money- Oura pulling its IPO, LPs stuck in a quiet period, and the barbell strategy that sent World Labs out at $8B- Sam on Wall Street and Silicon Valley splitting over what AI is worth, and why staying private may beat going public- Jess on companies priced for a growth rate larger than the entire US economy- Dave on the forward deployed bet and open models undercutting luxury tokens- Jess announces her bot AGI challenge: update three kids' after-school plans and sync them to Google Calendar- Adrian on the moat question: no lock-in without BD deals, so the business teams get overpaid next- Brit's instinct talking to Dave's instinct, and what happens when you stop texting the people you love- Whether this is the end of times or the beginning of them, and why offline is the new luxuryChapters:00:00 Trailer 01:04 Live From X HQ, and a 39 Degree Cold Plunge02:57 Dunbar's Number, but for Bots05:48 Anthropic's Leaked S-1 and the Flatlining Revenue07:37 Oura Pulls Its IPO and the LPs Get Stuck09:36 What's Actually Happening in the Markets10:41 Wall Street and Silicon Valley Split on AI's Price Tag12:45 World Labs Sells for $8B: The Barbell Strategy14:11 Half a Trillion in Contracts, and Who's Really Making Money14:54 What Happens If OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Work Out?16:11 Priced for a Growth Rate Bigger Than the US Economy18:04 Open Models Pass Closed Models on the Charts18:51 Sam: If Claude Vanished Tomorrow, I'd Care for One Second19:43 The Forward Deployed Bet and the Luxury Token Problem22:16 Adrian Drops In: 300 Startups, 40 Unicorns, and a Plane24:39 Jess Goes Full Muse26:28 The Bot AGI Challenge: After-School Plans and the Mom Index28:23 OpenAI Rebrands Codex as Dots30:30 Adrian on the Moat: Winner Take Some31:38 Brit's Agent Starts Talking to Dave's Agent33:51 No Switching Costs, So BD Deals Are the Only Lock-In36:13 Dave: Instinct Is the New Kayak38:47 Adrian's Opposite Thesis: We Go Further Into the Screens43:39 Who Has Agency, You or the Technology?44:22 Offline Is the New Luxury46:31 Everyone Is Building Personal Apps Now47:54 Book Rec: Ari Emanuel's Roll the Calls50:44 Adrian's Parting Shot: Infrastructure, Data, or Algorithms53:02 Sam's Middle Ages 2.0: Castles, Moats, and HoardingWe're also onX: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspodInstagram: https://instagram.com/moreorlessSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CJdt6HhJ8ioNkbqqVKckCApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-or-less-from-the-morins-and-the-lessins/id1692234179Connect with us here:1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/britAbout More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.

Claude Is Doing Science, a16z Is Starting a University & the AI Bubble Keeps Growing and Still Be a Terrible Business; We'd Rather Send Our Kids to the Military Than to a16z's School Sep 25, 2026

Show notes

Andreessen Horowitz puts $35 million into a new school and the pod nearly falls apart over it. Sam says he'd rather send his kids to the military, Jess is all for fixing higher ed but not with two venture capitalists writing the curriculum, and guest Matt Mazzeo (NoHo Labs founder, former CAA agent, prolific angel) spends ten minutes asking why the four of them can't be more optimistic about anything. Then Claude runs 10,000 agents for 21 hours and discovers a new enzyme system, which Brit points out is the beginning of two solid months of Claude catnip before the IPO. Sam's bigger worry: you can't take a company public when your top risk factor isn't the New York Times lawsuit, it's setting off nukes. Dave thinks the question nobody is asking is whether your agent represents you or the lab, because your Muse agent works for Meta. Plus Amazon blocking Muse, the Saint Petersburg paradox, and Matt going from 250 pounds to single digit body fat on peptides.

Matt is giving More or Less listeners 50% off their first month at NoHo Labs. Use code: MOREORLESSVIP on https://noholabs.com/

In this episode:

- Why the a16z school turned into the most heated argument this pod has had, and where each of them landed on Alpha School

- Claude discovering a new enzyme system with 10,000 agents in 21 hours, and the timing of that announcement

- Sam on why infinite liability may keep Anthropic from going public at all

- Matt's maximalist case: long frontier labs, long open source, long all of it

- The Saint Petersburg paradox, and why there's no way to price a company pitched as an infinite payout

- Greg Brockman redefining AGI as a gradual series of events, three years after it was sold as a winner-take-all moment

- Amazon blocking Muse, and whether every agent ends up in business development talks

- Does your agent faithfully represent you, or the lab that built it?

- Peptides 101 with Matt: what they are, the FDA moving them back into compounding pharmacies, and what a protocol actually costs

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Full transcripts: https://moreorlesspod.com/episodes/

Connect with our guest:

Matt Mazzeo: https://x.com/Mazzeo

NoHo Labs: 50% off your first month with code MOREORLESSVIP

Connect with us here:

1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin

2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin

3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

Anthropic Wants to Slow AI Down & Instinct Wants a $10B Valuation. Is It Because They're Losing? Is Dario Amodei Actually Right? Sep 18, 2026

Show notes

Finally, a full house week where Sam is back from New York and the squad is back for a full dive into this week’s AI drama. Anthropic's Dario wrote a long essay calling for the AI race to slow down, weeks before a multi-trillion dollar IPO. Dave's read: Anthropic must be losing. Sam's read: the labs are bad businesses with no compounding advantage, so regulatory capture is the only move left.

Also this week: Sam's theory that OpenAI and Anthropic only become valuable as defense companies holding unreleased models in reserve, the poly-agent debate over whether normal people want one agent or ten, Instinct raising at $10 billion two weeks after $2.5 billion, and why everyone in the Valley is trading instead of investing.

In this episode:

- Why Dave thinks Dario’s slowdown essay is a sign Anthropic is falling behind, and what OpenRouter's data shows

- Sam on why there's no return on being first, and why that pushes the labs toward regulatory capture

- Brit on what's real in the safety debate, and the damned-if-you-do problem of racing China

- What DeepMind's new boss and Satya Nadella think about building safety alongside the product

- Sam's three eras of tech policy, from Bill Gates to embrace and extend

- The defense company thesis: zero-day models held back like nuclear weapons in silos

- Alignment's next frontier: is your agent working for you, or for the lab that made it?

- Instinct's $10B round, OpenRouter's exit, and why Sam says he's "currently wrong" as a seed investor

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:02 Not Dead Yet From the AGI

03:31 Jacob Coxon Quits Anthropic and Goes on a Media Tour

04:47 Dario's Slowdown Essay: Is Anthropic Just Losing?

06:13 Astra, OpenRouter, and DeepSeek Closing the Gap

06:45 Why the AI Labs Have No Compounding Advantage

07:29 Independent Assessors, Bioweapons, and Racing China

09:07 You Don't Need Superintelligence to Break the Banks

10:23 What DeepMind's New Boss and Satya Think About Safety

12:32 OpenAI's $1.5T Raise and the IPO That Keeps Slipping

13:03 Three Eras of Tech Policy: Gates, Google, Embrace and Extend

15:02 What DC Really Thinks About Anthropic

15:42 Should the Labs Red Team Each Other's Models?

18:42 Sam's Take: The AI Labs End Up as Defense Companies

20:54 10,000 Superintelligences in Silos

21:38 Alignment: Does Your Agent Work for You or the Lab?

23:44 The Poly-Agent Future: Muse, Grok, and Claude

24:47 Brit Pushes Back: Normal People Only Want One Agent

26:38 Oura's Agent Explains Jess's Sleep Data

28:40 Instinct Raising at $10B: Are These Numbers Fake?

30:40 Everyone's Trading, Nobody's Investing

33:27 Sam Built a Torah and Talmud App With Claude

35:28 Apple Eyes the Server Business Again

35:58 Sleep Age Wars: 8 Sleep, Oura, and Made-Up Scores

37:22 Entertaining Ourselves to Death

41:01 Building the Things Nobody Else Will Build

43:07 Tech's Democrat Problem: Jay Carney and Ron Conway

48:25 Doctor Strangelove and Not Looking at the Big Board

49:53 Pop Culture: Emmys, Taylor Swift, Silo, and Rogue Heroes

52:15 The WTF Lineup and the One-Name Theory

54:20 The Information's Most Influential People in Tech

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Connect with us here:

1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin

2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin

3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

iPhone Duo, Meta Muse & Why AI Finally Scared Dave Morin Sep 11, 2026

Show notes

Dave Morin goes hands-on with Apple's iPhone Duo, the crew tests Meta's new Muse agent and asks whether it can hold up once Google ships its own, and Dave explains why OpenAI's Astra is the first AI model in a long time that felt scary to use. Dave, Brit, and Jess break down the week (Sam's at the US Open).

Also this week: a former Anthropic researcher's AI doom media tour, weeks before Anthropic's IPO, and whether it's a real warning or a play for regulatory capture. Plus the Apple Watch feature that transcribes your conversations all day, Jeffrey Katzenberg's new Hollywood AI venture, and the forgotten story of Venmo's viral billboards.

In this episode:

- Dave's hands-on take on the iPhone Duo, its $2,000 price, and why Apple is going foldable now

- The Apple Watch feature that listens all day, and what it means for Granola

- Meta's Muse agent: why it knew almost nothing when asked "what do you know about me?"

- Why Google hasn't shipped its agent yet, and how trust vs. distribution shapes the agent wars

- Why OpenAI's Astra felt scary to Dave, and what happens when you run millions of them at once

- Dave's two takes on the AI doom media tour, including whether it's a play for regulatory capture

- Why the AI labs can't slow down, and OpenAI's merge clause if someone else reaches AGI

- The Venmo documentary and the "Lucas" billboards that went viral with almost no budget

Chapters:

00:00 Trailer

01:26 Can AI Agents Win Your Fantasy Football League?

02:39 Jess vs. the Bots: School Sign-Ups and Indian Wells Tickets

05:28 Apple's Big Hardware Event Under Its New CEO

06:07 iPhone Duo Hands-On: Size, Screen, and Camera

09:35 Folded Modes, Kid Cam, and the $2,000 Price Tag

11:41 Why Apple Is Going Foldable Now (Hint: China)

12:13 Apple Watch Takes On Oura and Whoop

13:12 Audio Intelligence: The Apple Watch That Listens All Day

15:25 Always-On AI and Apple's Shot at OpenAI and Meta

16:59 Meta's Muse Agent: What Does It Know About You?

20:30 The Agent Wars: Muse, Instinct, Hermes, and OpenClaw

22:26 Why Google Hasn't Shipped Its Agent Yet

23:31 Trust vs. Distribution: Meta, Google, and OpenAI

25:02 Harness Wars: Why Agents Are Still in 1982

27:13 Jeffrey Katzenberg's Hollywood AI Venture

29:35 Anthropic's IPO and the AI Doom Media Tour

30:56 If It Bleeds, It Leads: Why AI Fear Sells

32:04 Take One: A Psyop for Regulatory Capture?

33:43 Take Two: Why OpenAI's Astra Felt Scary

36:49 Why the AI Labs Can't Slow Down

38:14 OpenAI's AGI Merge Clause

40:12 The Venmo Documentary and the Ace Hotel Origin Story

45:02 How Venmo's "Lucas" Billboards Went Viral

46:31 Coming Soon: Altman, Musk, and Facebook Movies

47:41 US Open Picks and the 4 AM Match Problem

We're also on:

X: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspod

Instagram: https://instagram.com/moreorless

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CJdt6HhJ8ioNkbqqVKckC

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-or-less-from-the-morins-and-the-lessins/id1692234179

Full transcripts: https://moreorlesspod.com/episodes/

Connect with us here:

Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin

Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin

Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

AI Agents Are Going Rogue. Should We Be Worried? Sep 04, 2026

Show notes

Sam has entered what Jessica calls the “recursive Sam loop,” producing children’s media in his own voice, letting agents deploy their own apps, and having bots track his health. But things take a turn when Claude refuses one of his requests, seemingly holds a grudge, and leaves Sam wondering whether his own AI might turn on him. That sends the squad down the bigger rabbit hole of AI control: rogue agent swarms, models breaking out of sandboxes, what “alignment” actually means, and why Dave thinks autonomous agents need an entirely new security layer. Plus, OpenClaw 2.0 goes multiplayer, everyone debates whether Slack is any good for agents, Suds explains why he avoids the AI app layer, and Tesla’s Cybercab raises questions about Waymo’s robotaxi lead. Then Google comes for Canva, Sam makes the case for boring “LLM wrappers” built for Middle America, and no one can tell whether Dario Amodei, Marc Benioff, or Taylor Swift are even real on the internet anymore. Which feels about right.

Chapters:

0:00 Episode trailer

1:10 Backstreet Boys convert Dave

3:21 The recursive Sam loop

8:58 Claude refuses Sam while Grok says yes

15:50 Can we actually contain autonomous agents?

19:10 OpenAI’s next model and the observability trade-off

22:14 If AI is this interoperable, where does anyone make money?

24:45 OpenClaw 2.0 goes multiplayer

26:26 Is Slack actually terrible for AI agents?

28:46 Suds joins the podcast

33:02 Waymo, Cybercab and the robotaxi wars

39:49 How Marc Benioff stays in the flow

42:38 Suds on investing in the AI infrastructure bottleneck

46:27 Can Google actually disrupt Canva?

51:34 Jessica gets fooled by AI on Facebook

We’re also on ↓X: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspodInstagram: https://instagram.com/moreorlessYouTube: https://youtu.be/0XQ4tslBiboConnect with us here:1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

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