Larry Ellison

Channels with Peter Kafka · Larry Ellison’s Media Ambitions & Kevin Roose on AI’s Biggest Gamble

• Why Does a Ten Percent Chance of Catastrophe Make Kevin an Optimist in San Francisco?

  Kevin usually puts the probability that it all goes super bad at about ten percent. In most of the world that sounds crazy. In the city he is describing, the same ten percent makes him an optimist, because he knows people at fifty, sixty, and seventy percent, and someone at ninety-nine point nine percent. He says people still have agency, are not in the recursive self-improvement loop yet, and still could slow things down, pass some regulations, and coordinate to pace the frontier.

  ▶ at 59:16 Share Transcript

• Why Is Kevin Launching Machine Gods After Leaving the New York Times?

  The new podcast with NPR is called Machine Gods. It begins the week of October 19th and will cover the week's news plus interviews with people in the industry. NPR reaches people who would not choose a tech podcast.

  Hard Fork was owned by the New York Times. The people who built Hard Fork wanted to build something for themselves. They have started a company, made hires, and are going to spin up a little media company.

  ▶ at 53:41 Share Transcript

• Why Were Believers in a Human-level System Treated as Fringe Weirdos in San Francisco?

  Ten years ago, when the book starts, there was no such thing as real AI. In 2016 the leading chatbots were very bad, and the voice assistants of that time did almost nothing valuable. Systems now solve century-old problems in math and science, build entire software programs, and pass graduate-level courses. The people who believed in AGI, a system that can do everything the human mind can, were fringe weirdos in San Francisco. Peers in academia and industry had mostly ostracized them. The progress was not a surprise to the people building the technology.

  ▶ at 24:02 Share Transcript

• How Did Larry Ellison Drop From Richest to Eighth?

  Oracle's value shot up last fall during an AI boomlet and made Larry Ellison briefly the richest man in the world. The fortune has been cut in half, so he is now eighth. Larry Ellison still put tens of billions of dollars into the Paramount and Warner Brothers deal, now called Skydance.

  ▶ at 17:29 Share Transcript

• Why Is a Direct pro-Israel Tilt of TikTok Hard to Pin on Oracle's 15% Stake?

  Oracle owns 15% of TikTok. The stake is no larger than the stake held by Silver Lake or by Andreessen Horowitz. ByteDance keeps a huge stake. Oracle is extremely defensive about any suggestion that Oracle influences the algorithm. Tom Dotan says it would be pretty difficult to move the algorithm so that it directly surfaces pro-Israel content.

  Larry is close to Netanyahu. The day after the deal was signed, Netanyahu told influencers that social media is the number one tool and that TikTok is the most important thing to pay attention to. Larry is close to people who believe TikTok is a valuable weapon in propaganda wars Israel is focused on.

  ▶ at 15:36 Share Transcript

• Why Does Oracle Want to Host the TikTok Algorithm?

  Peter Kafka says Oracle sells technology to other technology companies, which is a way for Oracle to be involved with TikTok. Tom Dotan then says Oracle's cloud computing business hosts TikTok's algorithm and is responsible for the security of the algorithm, and calls that a good business to have a piece of. When TikTok in the US came up during the first Trump administration, Microsoft wanted a piece of TikTok. For a time, Walmart and Oracle were going to own TikTok together. Tom Dotan says there are legitimate business reasons to want a piece of TikTok.

  ▶ at 11:39 Share Transcript

• Why Can David Ellison Spend Larry Ellison's Money on Media?

  David Ellison wanted to combine traditional media companies and scale them to compete with Netflix, Amazon, or YouTube. David Ellison had the money to try because of his father. Redbird is involved and the deal uses a huge amount of debt, but the money is Larry's.

  The piece suggests Larry Ellison did not spend much time raising his first two children and tried to make up for it by bankrolling them in Hollywood. Annapurna Studios made well-respected movies and was a financial disaster. Larry Ellison is now doing the same bankrolling for David Ellison. Larry Ellison is not a media person, and Larry Ellison has conflicted feelings about how involved he was with his children.

  ▶ at 10:00 Share Transcript

• Why Don't Larry Ellison's Media Buys Form One Plan?

  A grand plan would be easier to understand. People like the Murdochs buy with the intent to control vast media empires, and Elon Musk bought Twitter in part to use it politically. Larry is close to Elon, and Oracle holds a 15% stake in TikTok, so the purchases can look like one project. The reporting found interests and politics, and Tom Dotan says he does not see a project spanning administrations or generations.

  ▶ at 5:45 Share Transcript

• How Does Peter Kafka Describe the Media Empire Larry Ellison Bought for David Ellison?

  Peter Kafka opens the episode by calling Larry Ellison an 82-year-old billionaire and one of the 10 richest men in the world. Larry Ellison bought his son, David Ellison, a media empire. The companies were once called Paramount and Warner Brothers. Peter Kafka says they are now called Skydance.

  Peter Kafka also calls Larry Ellison the eighth richest man in the world, tight with Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and connected to both TikTok and a traditional media conglomerate. He says the public does not know that much about Larry Ellison.

  ▶ at 1:46 Share Transcript