Name: AI CEO Alexandr Wang | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #563
Uploaded: 2025-02-18T14:00:32.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'AI CEO Alexandr Wang | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #563' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-02-18. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'AI CEO Alexandr Wang | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #563' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-02-18. Transcript available.

AI CEO Alexandr Wang | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #563

i want to let you know we've restocked all your favorites on the merch site
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today's guest is from los alamos new mexico he's a leader in the world of
business and technology
he's an entrepreneur he started scale ai a company recently valued at 14
billion dollars
he started it when he was only 19 and at 24 he became the youngest self-made
billionaire
in the world we talk about his company the future of ai and the role it plays
in our human existence
this was super educational for me i hope it is for you i'm grateful for his
time
today's guest is mr alexander wang
alexander wang man thanks for hanging out bro yeah thanks for having me yeah
good to see you dude
last time was at the inauguration yeah what'd you think of that like what were
your thoughts after
you left um because you and i ended up we like left out of there and then went
got lunch together
which was kind of crazy it was uh there was a lot going on yeah it was a were
you there the whole
weekend no i just got there uh the day the morning of the inauguration yeah
were you there the whole
weekend i was there the whole weekend yeah no i mean i think at least for what
we do like for ai
the uh the new administration is really excited about it and wants to make sure
that we we get it right as
a country so um that was all great but it was kind of a crazy the whole like
event like everything was
pretty crazy i don't know what'd you think i mean when i saw conor mcgregor
show up that's when i was like
shit is where are we it that's what like the most bizarre i mean you were there
sam altman was there
i was just like it was like whoa what happened here um and part of that's
because alex brusiewicz
you know totally yeah i mean it's all because of him that we all went but just
the fact that he would
bring these people together it kind of makes you question crossover it's like
uh it's like in in
those like tv shows when you have those crossover episodes yeah that's kind of
what oh yeah when
like the harlem globetrotters and it would be like them versus like um the care
bears or whatever
would show up exactly yeah like this yeah this seems um yeah some cross-pollination
um yeah what
did you think when connor showed up was that strange to see him like was there
somebody you
thought that was strange like unique to see there for you uh well yeah i mean
you connor like the
the the paul's i don't know the whole the whole thing was pretty uh pretty
crazy i see sam all the
time and i see uh i see some of the tech people all the time i mean it was
funny crossover and it was
obviously like so many people flew in to be able to go to like the outdoor
inauguration right yeah and
so i mean there were so many people in the city we ran into them obviously but
like there's so many
people in dc uh who were just around for the inauguration so it was uh yeah i
didn't even think
about that all there was a couple hundred thousand people probably just got
kind of displaced in a way
and suddenly they're just in bars or whatever just like buying like there was
like people i saw walking
just adult onesies and shit that said trump are on the best crazy shit yeah um
yeah thanks for coming
in man i'm excited to learn about ai i know that that's a world that you're in
you're in the tech
universe um and you you're from new mexico right yeah and so when you grew up
there did you have like
a strong sense of like science and technology was that like part of your world
like did your parents
like lead you into that like what was just some of your youth like there yeah
so uh both my parents
are physicists and there's a damn i grew up in this town called los alamos
where there's a there's a
there's a national lab there um did you watch oppenheimer yeah yeah so the so
all the new mexico
shots in oppenheimer that's exactly where i grew up oh damn so it was like
originally where all the
scientists came together and and did all the work in the atomic bomb and there's
still this huge lab
that's basically the everybody i knew effectively like their parents worked at
the lab or or some affiliate with
the lab it's like nukeville over there huh nukeville yeah that's that is it
scary like that it was you
know it at a level of mystery like is your prom like last night under the stars
or something like
there's a there's this one museum well the funny thing is like first you hear
you hear this you
learn the story of the atomic bomb and the manhattan project like basically
every year growing up
because there's always like a day or a few days where you know there's a
substitute teacher and they just
they just play the videos so you're just like an alcoholic or something yeah
yeah uh a recreational
user will use that term that's crazy that that just like every year you guys
have like yeah just like
blast it thursdays or whatever and it's just yeah you're just learning you're
learning again about
the manhattan project and then there's a little there's a little museum in town
uh which is like you
walk through and there's like a a life-size replica of the nukes um so it's it's
pretty wild yeah and
where did they drop the atomic bombs on they dropped them on asia right hiroshima
they yeah they dropped
them uh on uh in in japan yeah hiroshima and nagasaki is it is it crazy being
like semi-asian part asian
uh yeah yeah my uh my parents uh are chinese oh nice man is it crazy being asian
and then having
that happen to asian people with the bond like is that a weird thing there it's
nothing uh no i don't
think so i mean i think the thing is like you know i uh so there weren't i didn't
grow up with very many
asians because the in that town it was um you know it's it's in new mexico
there's very few asians in
new mexico so i was one of the only asian kids in my class growing up and so um
i didn't think that
much about it honestly but then like uh but it is super weird you know you grow
up and you learn about
this very advanced technology that had this like really really big impact on
the world and i think
that shaped yeah it's like the scientific john jones over there really he's a
new mexican isn't he he's
he lives in albuquerque yeah he does i think he does yeah oh sweet man yeah
yeah oh yeah that so
you so you're there there's this there's this energy always there of this
creation and so probably the
possibility of creation maybe was always in the air i'm just wondering like how
did you get formed
kind of you know like what's your origin story kind of it was super scientific
because because
you know there was always these there were all these like presentations around
what were the
new kinds of science that were going on at the lab so there's all these
chemistry experiments and
these different like earth science experiments and uh physics experiments um
and my mom studied like
plasma and like how plasma you know worked inside of stars and stuff like that
so it was just the
wildest stuff and you would talk to people's parent people you like i talked to
my classmates or i talked
to their parents about what they're working on is always some crazy science
thing so that was wow
that was really cool because because everybody in that town basically is they're
all working on some
kind of crazy scientific thing and so you kind of i mean i feel like i grew up
feeling like you know
anything was possible in that way like yeah because the rest of us in other
communities shitty
communities or whatever we're just making that volcano or whatever you know
what i'm saying we're doing
like grassroots level bullshit you know um dang that's got to be wild so every
you see somebody just
sneaking behind an alley and buying a bit of uranium and shit like that in your
neighborhood that's got
to be kind of unique i remember there's someone from our town who did uh who
did a science fair project
called um it's called like great balls of plasma and for the science literally
for the science fair this was in like high
school for the science fair they made like huge balls of plasma in their garage
and i was like what the
like this is we're all just doing this in high school damn so did you feel
competitive or did you just
feel like hyper capable like did you feel like kind of advanced just in your
studies like when you were
young like did you in class you're like some of this stuff's kind of coming
easy to me i ended up what what i did
is um there was uh i ended up getting really competitive about math in
particular yeah and
so uh so my sport was math which is kind of crazy that algebra easy son i know
i feel you
and it was because when i was in middle school when i was in sixth grade there
was this one math
competition where if you if you got top four in the state state of new mexico
then you would get an
all expense paid trip to disney world and uh and i remember as a sixth grader
like that was the most
motivating thing i could possibly imagine was like an all expense paid trip to
disney world yeah um and
then uh did you win it i got i won it i got fourth place so i snuck in there
fire uh snuck in i uh and
then i went to and then we went to florida to disney world and i uh i hadn't
traveled or like i didn't
travel around too much growing up like i mostly was in new mexico and we did
some road trips around the southwest so i
remember getting to florida and it was extremely humid it was like i never felt
what humidity felt like when i land in florida i was like oh this feels bad and
then i
like yeah it definitely does yeah it's funny because i grew up in humid dude
like you would
like you try to shake somebody's hand you couldn't even land it because it was
just not enough viscose
just too much lube in a handshake you'd sit there for 10 minutes trying to land
a handshake you know
everybody was always dripping you know all the time people you always thought
they were scared or
something or they were kind of geeked up off a gas station dope or something
but people were just it was
humid yeah you get really humid over there so then i became so then i became a
mathlete uh that was
like a big part of my identity was being a mathlete and i would and you have to
wear a vest like what
do you guys do is there an out is there a uniform for that or well you you need
a you have a calculator
okay so everyone had their favorite calculator okay you got that draco on you
baby i feel you keep
strapped yeah you stay strapped at that thing and then uh but uh but outside of
that not really i mean
like everyone had their favorite like is pencil you know your pencil your
calculator that was your gear
and uh but yeah no i i was i was like a a nationally ranked mathlete for uh for
middle school
high school that was my that was my jam yeah and is it what's that's math
circle like is there
wow that's crazy dude so you go to what are there competitions you go to with
there's competitions
yeah there's like there's like state level competitions there's national level
competitions
there's like these summer camps math camp i went to math camp a bunch of times
um where you where you
convene with like-minded mathletes okay wow wizards in the park uh a couple
dudes fighting over a common
denominator in the lobby that's crazy bro but then you're but just like any
other sport like you're
like it's competitive you know you gotta like you gotta win and uh and so so
you're chummy with
ever