Nick Bilton

“Let's take The Boring Company for for a little little storytelling lesson here. Right? So, he was driving to work one day. It was a bunch of traffic. He tweets this is years ago. He tweets, there should be tunnels under the ground where you can, you know, you can drive so that there's no traffic in LA. Next thing you know, he gets to the office at SpaceX, and he's like the tweet's getting a million responses. And he's like, let's start The Boring Company, and and we're gonna build these tunnels. I went to SpaceX for a meeting a a a few months later. And, there was a a dirt patch across the street with one of these big tunnel boring machines. And I said to someone I was meeting with, I was like, what is that? He's like, oh, it's just it's like a little show Elon does to show that he's gonna build these tunnels underground. It's never really gonna happen.”

“And it was like, hey. It's Steve Jobs. And I was like, oh, shit. And so I, like, go outside. I'm trying to take notes on my phone. He was on the phone with me for forty five minutes, an hour. He wouldn't get off. And he was telling me that my story was wrong and this, that, and the other and and so on. And and I remember I went in the next day, and I wrote the story the way I had been told by him. And and I published it. And then afterwards, I was like, wait. I wasn't wrong. And John Markov, who who had been a tech reporter for many, many years at the time said he came over to me and he said one word. He said, no. His three words. He said the real the Steve Jobs reality distortion field.”

“And then there's this kind of shock of like, woah. How'd that happen? I'm a billionaire. And and then there's this, like, I'm a billionaire, and I'm the one that makes the decisions and and screw you. And and it's and they just believe the they believe the story that gets told about them or the story they tell about themselves. I mean, I wrote the book on Twitter, and one of the greatest quotes someone gave me was, the greatest brand sorry. The greatest product that Jack Dorsey ever made was Jack Dorsey. And I think that sums up a lot of these people in Silicon Valley. They they create this product that is themselves, often taken from Steve Jobs.”

“Well, what's fascinating about the storytelling around AI is two things. One is the fear that we're all gonna be killed by AI is actually true. Like, I definitely worry about it, but it's also part of their fundraising. And so, you know, you've got Sam and Elon and all these people out there being like, we're gonna die. We need more money to make sure we don't. And and or, you know, and and the bucket loads of cash come in. It's it's all for them. It's about it's a fundraising mechanism.”

“I'd run away from home. I was a teenager, and I was working at Jack's Burgers in the mall in Florida. And, I feel like this is literally the defining moment of my life, quite honestly, because I walked outside of Jack's Burgers. I was taking the trash out, and there was a homeless guy going through the trash and waiting for the next trash bag to and I literally was like, wow. That could be me if I don't pull my shit together. And I walked back inside, and I was like, you know what? I'm done. I'm going a different direction. And that was it. And I, like, stopped talking to all the kids, most of who are in jail or dead now, that I knew in Florida.”

“So one day, I finally get Michelle McNally to go out for lunch with me. And I sit there, and, I give her my portfolio. And she opens it up, and it was this big orange book. And she flips through. She doesn't say a word. And I'm watching. And she closes the book. And she goes, you're a good photographer. And she's like, you know, you probably be a good war photographer. She goes, but I'm not hiring you to be a war photographer. And I was like, why not? And she goes, because you're not fucked up enough.”

“I think we all have an imposter syndrome. And I've and I've always been of the mentality of, of you you know, the people who do have that are the ones that work harder and that appreciate it more and so on. The ones that feel like, oh, I deserve to be here, they they often don't work harder. They don't push. They're just sort of like, this is this is where I'm meant to be. So I've always every time I've ended up in all these different roles as a director on a documentary for HBO, writing a movie for Martin Scorsese, as a columnist for the New York Times, writing stories that are breaking, you know, changing laws or leading congressional hearings, things like that. Every time I'm like, woah. Like, how did I end up here?”

“I think that the I think it's the first technology in human history that can wipe out human history. I don't believe the no nukes could have done that. There's a world maybe potentially, but, you know, all of the studies that I've read, all the research I've read, state department reports, so on and so forth, you know, you only need a 150 people to survive for society to flourish. Society can come back from that. AI is, in my opinion, the first technology that could literally wipe us off the face of the planet.”

“I had, I had an agent that created the characters, and then I could interview the characters. They're dead. So I'm like What's it like to bury someone alive? Like, what does that feel like? And, like and it's it's looking at, like, it's got the information I have, the interviews I've done, and so on and so forth. And then it's also looking at research online and everything. And so I'm literally having a conversation with a dead person.”

“I heard the story years and years ago from a friend who was at the dinner where Elon Musk and, Larry Page got into the fight. They were at Larry's house. Elon was sleeping on his couch, and and they were talking about AI way before any of us were talking about it. And, Larry Page, had said allegedly to Elon that, you know, robotics are they're the future of this, of humanity. Like, they're so that's the next iteration of evolution. And Elon got really mad. He was like, what do you mean? He's like, well, that's it. It's just evolution. And Elon and him started arguing, and Larry Page accused Elon of being speciesist.”

“So I read this Nietzsche quote. What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you, this life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more. Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him, you are a god and never have I heard anything more divine. And the point that he's trying to make is, you know that you are living the life that you're meant to live if you would be okay living it over innumerable times.”