SWL Week in Review - The Whole Point is You Can't Measure the ROI on AI

From:

sam lessin <s@wlessin.com>

To:

Hidden Recipient <hidden@emailshot.io>

Date:

6/5/2026, 5:10 PM

MORE OR LESS POD

The SpaceX IPO cultural moment — Storing value in ‘stories’ vs. the broad-based ‘financial’ story, the real capabilities of agents, why startups should be making movie trailers not pitch decks - lack of ROI is the defensibility… "The narrative gap in AI is crazy.”, “Is Taylor Swift jumping the shark?"

HOT TAKES

Narrative Asset Swap (BTC vs. SpaceX) Tsunami — It is funny to watch my narrative asset portfolio get smoked ahead of SpaceX IPO (the mega-narrative asset) — Warren Buffet didn’t anticipate that the ‘tide would go out’ not because of the moon, but because of a big Tsunami coming. I should have thought of this, after all — the thing I have said forever is that the only thing that replaces a story, is a BETTER story (this already happened with crypto to AI… for power, etc) — but now it comes for retail.

The Numerology Consumer Use Case for AI — speaking of …. A good guy / friend texted me some numbers a dream told him I should pay attention to — I didn’t know what to do with the numbers, but my claude with access to a huge amount of personal data sorted out what the numbers meant… finally an AI case for consumers.

Let’s hope for Anthropic and OpenAI’s sake no one ever figures out the ROI on AI - The Illegibility is The Moat — This feels important to tease out… Anthropic costs 10x the open source models to use, and for all the stuff no one knows how to think about ROI … which is exactly why they can change what they want. If the market was efficient (and if it ever really is) then the margin on multiplying big numbers will snap to zero… so actually the fact that people can’t really benchmark a given task / know where to spend based on curve / probability of ‘right’ outcome AND value of incremental rightness is precisely what keeps AI possibly profitable. Let’s hope for Anthropic and OpenAI’s sake no one ever figures out the ROI on AI — Fll’er up

The SpaceX IPO is a Cultural Moment More Than Financial — Do we store value in stories of cults, or do we store value in the ultimate broad global consensus narrative of DCFs… SpaceX is going to be the test — the broad rotation to cults, etc. regionalization and fictionalization / de-globalization says SpaceX valuation will be just fine (and that the global DCF narrative is nothing more than lowest common denominator reserve price on an asset) — but we will see.

GDP really is a broken metric… Fun looking back on my 2014 column about why it is, and why we should be focusing on increasing power-use-per-person — everyone deserves their own blackhole’s worth of energy… energymaxxing.

Slow Instagram got Hacked… Hilariously … I know this was stressful for many… but I really get a lot of joy out of Slow’s Instagram account being taken over by a random person in a turban. I am only annoyed he made our account private AND hasn’t posted anything interesting in days! Hacking is a great way to get a job as a social media manager… but once you have the job to keep it you gotta perform!

The Multiplying Big Numbers Market … talked about this market for matrix multiplication on CNBC which was fun… the full CNBC segment — you really have to think about the question of if calculating is a defensible market, or is multiplication the ultimate globally liquid commodity (depends on if you trust the calculating AND/OR the cost of validation!)

Putting AI In Orbit & Planetary Defense — no one seems to be registering that for a sci-fi driven narrative… putting your brain on the OUTSIDE of your scull doesn’t seem to be too smart… that was clearly an evolutionary dead end… better to make the Boring Company a defense co and burry compute underground — It does seem like in this moment the key is to just do things that move a lot of atoms some way, and the use case will emerge!

Bernie Doesn’t Get that AI Companies Already Pay 50% To The Public, My 2020 Version Was Better — Bernie is reasonably good at the social media game… but to what end? What he seems to be asking for is that companies pay 75% not 50% — that said, in classic Sam form — I did actually propose this first (though as a trade between taxe rate vs. equity.

5000 Years Ago, Only 5% of Men Were Reproducing — we do have a problem with the birth rate…. And it does seem like women will mostly keep reproducing but a lot of men will not — interesting that this happened before pretty clearly… Monogamy is great for society / ultimate way to keep lots of roving angry men from doing angry disconnected men things… BUT maybe not our truly base state… we do need new religion if we like the 1990s version of the world.

Who To Blame For The Enhanced Games — clearly this totally sucked / didn’t deliver. Is it an FDA fail (not allowed to use really good drugs) OR a games fail (didn’t have the balls to really full send it) — anyway, real credit to the Olympics.

I do think that our era of ‘multiplying big numbers’ does hold as an analogy to the era of electrification / there are lessons to learn from it… in terms of the long period of education for consumers on what to do with power, the fact that we mostly still just use it to heat and cool things… and the reality that while usage expanded 34x per capita from inception to 1970s… cost also declined by… 34x

AI’s threat to the US consumer economy — I keep coming back to this — you don’t need to erase all the jobs — you just need to kick out / fire the upper-middle-manager class (maybe like 5-10% of Americans) who have disposable income BUT aren’t so rich that they just save / spend very low percent of income/ wealth — that or figure out ways to get very rich people to buy more stuff / have MORE demands authentically (oh, trying that… with foundation farms, also my $100K docs — any category where you would pay more than you CAN pay for more quality).

Founder’s Fund Understood The Marketing Assignment — a bunch of pretty famous people in startup world doing highly produced game of Mafia… yes, this is exactly the type of post-modern VC advertising that is pitch perfect. Again, high quality video is winning.

Red Pearled — thanks Stanford seniors… this was a fun gift to get, and I really get a kick out of having people that appreciate special moments around.

Why Aren’t Non-Profits Racking H100s — the Vatican is talking about AI, but what they should be doing is building tax-free data centers… They have the real estate footprint, the tax structure advantage, etc… Monks used to sit around copying books — now we can have monk machines multiplying numbers… same thing new era. Plus who doesn’t want their calculations blessed?

Best,
Sam

P.S. Alex Karp can dead hang for 5:30 —… really? I want to see it because that is wildly impressive if actually not a psyop … although someone has pointed out to me that apparently he only weighs 90 pounds (which makes it slightly more plausible)

P.P.S. Dan Sullivan vs. Dan Sullivan — also awesomely entertaining… between this, karp, founders fund, etc. I think we are finally entering a post trump media era of power. Between stuff like this and Spencer Pratt MAGA better up their marketing strategy because they are for the first time looking a bit outclassed / loosing the iron grip on best social media strategy.

P.P.P.S Here is a crazy one — the guy who created Heated Rivalry was a director on Shorsey and Letterkenny (in order the two best TV shows ever mades, and the greatest expression of modern male psyche)

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