Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel mindsets, per Samo Burja

Samo Burja, president of the political risk consultancy Bismarck Analysis, shared his thoughts about Tesla CEO Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and tech investor Peter Thiel on the inaugural episode of the Live Players podcast released this week. Burja describes “live players” as people who step away from norms, improvise, and think from first principles, saying such individuals are instrumental to preventing societal stagnation.

Burja said that upon hearing the common wisdom, Altman’s response might be “yes, and” while Thiel’s would be “no, but.” As for Musk, Burja laughed, “I don’t think Elon’s even listening.” 

Altman, he said, will “see where the enthusiasm and energy lies, and it’s like, ‘Okay can we harness this and even further develop it, even grow this and push it somewhere real.’ He sees cryptocurrencies, and he’s like, what about…a coin for the world that changes the world economic system to prepare for the post-scarcity future.”

He cited Worldcoin, which Altman cofounded a few years ago. The idea behind the startup is that people will be able to prove their personhood in an online world that could be soon be overrun by AI bots. They’ll do this by scanning their irises using a shiny metallic orb. When you’re scanned, verified, and onboarded, you’re given some proprietary crypto tokens, also called Worldcoins. Later the system could become a way to implement universal basic income, an idea that might gain traction if AI leads to large-scale unemployment. Worldcoin, perhaps not surprisingly, has sparked widespread privacy concerns.

As for Musk, Burja continued, “Elon’s perspective is so first-principles driven that while he does recognize what is popular and not and can work with it, his decisions…