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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60KJz1BVTyU
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More human than the rest (7 min read)
Jack Dorsey, the Twitter Co-founder shared some insights about his main fears for the future, his hopes and his views on AI & Crypto.
It is refreshing to see one of the big guys in tech talking about privacy and security, without a bias for his own company. I think Lex really nailed it in this interview. The focus on some of the more philosophical questions about the future, showed that Jack Dorsey is a cool guy and a human like the rest of us.
Curiosities
- He started programming in C;
- Dorsey had a very hard time with Public Speaking and communication in general. He took public speaking lessons as a challenge when he was younger. It Gave him perspective about the power of communication and his own deficiencies. Moreover, it shed a light on “the power of setting his mind to something”.
Lessons when scaling up Twitter’s Engineering Infrastructure
Jack has been through a LOT on Twitter. The social media platform has taken shape during the last 14 years and expanded globally. Moreover it is where the breaking news are posted first and where the political discussion happens. Maintaining a tool that the whole world uses and counts on, is no joke, engineerinwise.
Below I highlighted the main takeaways from the lessons he shared on the podcast:
- Hiring people that you can learn from is crucial;
- “Do whatever it takes to make it work”. He used his “hacker mindset”, without prior formal education on coding, he just found his way through the problem;
- They benefited a lot from the open source community – It is slow and deliberate process;
- Going through all the difficulties helped him see what it takes to build something meaningful;
- Scaling a Business is about how you face problems;
- Don’t face too many problems at once;
- Go deep into possible solutions and problems;
- Form credible and testable hypothesis;
- First principles thinking;
- Look for underlying systems, that emerge with creative problem solving thinking.
You may think he already had plenty on his plate with Twitter. Like all the good Silicon Valley guys, Jack took on even more challenges, he founded Square Payments in 2009.
“Let me just disrupt another market and I will be right with you”
Before Square, people had to go through a credit check to accept payments in their businesses. He knew that entrepreneurs starting out don’t have a lot of access and usually are staking their capital in their initiative, thus their bad credit was a self fulfilling prophecy. A light bulb went on inside his head!
The payments market is a though one. You have big gatekeepers that have stablished the rules long ago. Square took a different approach to enter the market. Jack says that they had Machine Learning methods were implemented in the first year of the company, as they had to partner with VISA and Mastercard and show the big guys they would not compromise their systems. Can you imagine the responsibility behind that?
The Data Science initiative inside Square, which led to AI, wanted/needed to verify people in large scale. According to him, it was a long process. In the beginning, 30% people would get approved. Now 99% of people do.
What they did was genius IMO. They reframed the product, watching at the transaction level, not credit scores. Essentially, lowering the barrier of entry and using the “Trust But Verify” mentality (based on Data Science), which was their biggest differentiator.
What does the future look like?
The currency we use will largely dictate the future.
It is 2020 and the internet requires a native currency such as Bitcoin, according to Jack.
Today they are required to follow banks’ rules, which change from time to time and in every country. That’s where he sees Bitcoin as a great alternative. It has a consistent onboarding system and an organic regulation system. This allows for more innovation and speed.
Crypto
The beautiful thing about crypto is that there is no one person setting the direction, and no one person that can stop it.
Dorsey argues that Bitcoin is organic in nature and adds that the Bitcoin white-paper is the best paper about technology in the last 30 years.
That’s another point for Jack with me. He is not trying to create/promote his own crypto (ahem Zuck and Libra), or tilt the scales in any direction. It is clear that he roots for a better system that solves problems and helps people.
Will Bitcoin take off, despite its problems?
In Jack’s view, the problems with Bitcoin adoption are visible enough that people can speak about them thus he believes they will be solved in the near future. The open source community is large and consensus can take more time, but the discussion is happening already.
He also believes that other technologies will spring adoption forward. One of these technologies are Internet Beaming Satellites. These satellites will remove former constraints and level the playing field in terms of access to the web.
Jack adds that “No one truly understands the ramification of that” when talking about how crypto can influence society. But while worldwide predictions are hard to forecast, he clearly sees how this could change the game in Africa:
“Payments are the number 1 problem to solve in Africa. Corruption, hardships with international transfers and lack of easy ways to pay people makes entrepreneurship hard.” He makes crystal clear to me that creating a resilient global standard will bring a lot of innovation, just by bringing people to the conversation.
Satoshi Nakamoto
Jack Dorsey’s admires the activism and timing behind Bitcoin’s release. He says that using the sudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” was brilliant. He argues that the great benefit of sudonimity over anonymity is that it entices tangibility and empathy on people. According to him, the identity “was meant to stick around and be honored by the users”
He empathizes with Satoshi for not demanding credit over Bitcoin’s authorship. According to him, the joy of doing something good and seeing people use it is better than seeing your name in the headlines.
AI
Jack sees that the next hard obstacle in AI is creating systems that explain the meaning behind data and their decisions. According to him, is hard to expect that from a computer, as even we fail to understand the meaning and reason behind our decisions. So.. do as I say, not as I do?
While we all strive to see the day where AI will be in fact intelligent and conversational, he says, and I agree, that it will be always useful in some spaces to know when you are interacting with a bot or a human.
They need to be 2-10 steps ahead.
Specially because the technology to create (deepfakes, for example) is faster than the tech to detect, he forecasts that the financial industry will face problems related to identity sooner rather than later.
If deep fakes go to a direction of drivers license and passports, this could be hard to detect with current systems (even at Square).
Yikes!
Like security, we can’t build a perfect system, you can only create a system that identifies systems and errors as quickly as possible
Does it feel too much like the start of a horror movie?
Anyway, this was another moment where Jacks puts his companies on the frontline of the battles of our era. I could see in his facial expression that he must have spent some time thinking about this. Brave of him to point fingers at himself and show that he is trying to do his best.
Concerns about privacy and Big Tech
He cites Yuval Harrari’s book “21 lessons for the 21 century” (on my TO READ list) – Kids being born today will be known by Google their whole life. FANG companies will know more about them, than themselves. He fears that our self awareness is being offloaded to these systems and this will be more common each year.
He is concerned that we might lose our self awareness to these algorithms. In a complex problem space like this one, Jack takes the humane route and says he believes that, even in difficult times like these, meditation is one powerful tool to reflect and strengthen our self awareness. This is the only part where I felt Lex could have gone deeper. I would love to know more about how Jack meditates. I’m one of the guys who tried all the apps, took Transcendental Meditation classes and love reading about the subject.
AI and the displacement of jobs
Dorsey sees firsthand in Square’s business the proof of job displacement. “The point of sale is moving from the counter to the customers hand (phones)” he adds. It is clear to him that more quiosques, amazon go and apps mean taking retail workers jobs.
He says that it will come a time for lots of people to jump into new careers. At this time UBI (Universal Basic Income) will give these people a floor to setup new skills and adapt to the new market.
The second biggest scary thing for him is who owns the data and who can operate on it. He hopes regulation can play a strong and positive part here too. Jack states that regulation can also help with “how the systems and Machine Learning are used” and “how data is shared and used”.
Favorite Movie?
Ratatouille is the entrepreneurial journey in the form of a rat.
His superpower?
He famously eats one meal a day, dinner. According to him, he played around a lot with his meal structure when he was younger. Before that he says that
he “took for granted the social structure – we eat 3 meals a day with snacks in between”. He says he started with his single meal days, after he heard that Wim Hof, the Ice Man, does that too.
Here are some of his quotes, that helped me understand the mind of the guy behind the tweets:
The first week feels like you have a superpower.
I feel hungry just thinking about it ahahaha. That’s also a part of the interview where I wish Lex had asked more about his routines and habits. If this guy plays around with eating, I imagine he tried other cool productivity hacks too.
This showed me how much our mind dictates what we are possible of.
Lex Friedman, who shares his meal schedule, says “Fasting makes you appreciate being human” and helps him as a programmer to sit down and think deeply. I like how the two of them seek challenges within themselves, even with so many out there.
Health is the most precious thing we have and we don’t really understand it.
Amem brotha
I learn the most when I make myself feel uncomfortable.
Yep yep. Cold showers help me do that too.
Death and Finiteness of the human existence
He says he thinks about death daily. Calls it a practice to put things in perspective” and a “tool to feel the importance of every moment”. By reflecting on how precious life is, he is able to better prioritize his life.
How does he find meaning in life?
Feeling part of something bigger than myself
Besides being part of something bigger than himself, like Twitter big, meaning comes to Jack in the form of:
- Family
- Friends
- People using stuff that he built
I don’t know if you were expecting more of him on this part. Sounds like your average Joe, right? In my view, that is what makes Jack Dorsey an inspiration. The convergence of a simple guy with a tech billionaire. A guy who could be drinking and chilling in some paradise beach, is fighting hard to put more people in the game. A guy that gets a huge kick out of CREATING and bringing VALUE. Lastly, a guy that still pushes his comfort boundaries, even though he could literally remove 99.9% of them, for the sake of learning and improving himself.
Your Turn
I hope this post will inspire you next time you reflect on your businesses or the future. Remembering that Jack is a human being that didn’t quit, shows us that hard work, not necessarily some trait that you are born with, is what will lead us to success.