User-ownership on the internet sounds incredible until you need to figure out how to compensate everyone fairly. Bitcoin rewards hash rate. DeFi rewards liquidity. But how do you measure and reward contributions that aren't so easily quantified? @jessewldn on how AI might solve one of crypto's hardest problems: allocating ownership at scale.

Everything is getting more autonomous. Except us. When @jesseldn went out to raise his newest fund, he built the strategy around one word: autonomy. But getting there was a long and circuitous route. In 2016, @usv invested in Jesse’s company Mediachain. That’s given us the chance to work together for a decade, including his time at @a16zcrypto and now at @variantfund . The through line is a belief that technology should give people more control over their lives. In this week’s episode of The Slow Hunch, we trace that belief back to Jesse’s humble beginnings as an internet pirate and talk about what it will take for AI to fulfill that promise. Jesse is consistently one of the most cogent thinkers I get the chance to speak with, and I think you’ll enjoy our chat. 0:00 Preview 01:15 Variant's new thesis 02:20 Automation ≠ Autonomy 06:50 How piracy shaped Jesse's worldview 09:00 How the internet went from open to closed 15:45 How BTC inspired Jesse’s startup MediaChain 21:00 Why breaking the rules drives innovation 24:00 The Variant founding story 29:30 Why crypto's ownership thesis didn’t fully play out 34:00 Could AI agents deliver on crypto’s original promise? 37:00 Will AI become another walled garden? 39:00 “You can just do things” 46:15 Will AI give us more agency or take it away?

Everything is getting more autonomous. Except us. When @jesseldn went out to raise his newest fund, he built the strategy around one word: autonomy. But getting there was a long and circuitous route. In 2016, @usv invested in Jesse’s company Mediachain. That’s given us the chance to work together for a decade, including his time at @a16zcrypto and now at @variantfund . The through line is a belief that technology should give people more control over their lives. In this week’s episode of The Slow Hunch, we trace that belief back to Jesse’s humble beginnings as an internet pirate and talk about what it will take for AI to fulfill that promise. Jesse is consistently one of the most cogent thinkers I get the chance to speak with, and I think you’ll enjoy our chat. 0:00 Preview 01:15 Variant's new thesis 02:20 Automation ≠ Autonomy 06:50 How piracy shaped Jesse's worldview 09:00 How the internet went from open to closed 15:45 How BTC inspired Jesse’s startup MediaChain 21:00 Why breaking the rules drives innovation 24:00 The Variant founding story 29:30 Why crypto's ownership thesis didn’t fully play out 34:00 Could AI agents deliver on crypto’s original promise? 37:00 Will AI become another walled garden? 39:00 “You can just do things” 46:15 Will AI give us more agency or take it away?

Anthropic calls some AI distillation illicit. But is distillation illegal? This @LawofCodeFM podcast is a deep dive into how courts might rule, with @dbarabander, @sabina_beleuz and @PossibltyResult, who co-authored one of the sharpest papers on the topic. We cover X v. Bright Data, what frontier labs' terms say about outputs, why Anthropic's own fair use arguments could be turned against it and predictions for the future. Timestamps: 0:00 What is distillation? 1:52 Intro 3:01 Why distillation matters 5:44 X v. Bright Data @dbarabander 7:50 Access vs. selling 10:40 Copyright preemption 11:25 Why X doesn't own your posts 13:49 From scraping to distillation 16:12 Who owns AI outputs? 19:38 Is all distillation illicit? 24:10 Anthropic's fair use problem @sabina_beleuz 25:05 Bartz v. Anthropic 26:42 Predictions @sabina_beleuz 28:41 Distilling the distillers 29:21 Selling services, not tokens @PossibltyResult 32:34 Antitrust 37:06 Tech moves exponentially, law sublinearly @PossibltyResult 40:47 Humans, AI and personhood 45:15 Final thoughts Thank you to the presenting sponsor of this episode, @altitude. Nothing in this podcast is legal or investment advice.

as the value of data skyrockets, old ideas around self-custody of personal data and the ability to benefit from it through direct participation in markets will make a comeback its becoming economically interesting and politically important in ways it wasn't before two clear why nows

Anthropic calls some AI distillation illicit. But is distillation illegal? This @LawofCodeFM podcast is a deep dive into how courts might rule, with @dbarabander, @sabina_beleuz and @PossibltyResult, who co-authored one of the sharpest papers on the topic. We cover X v. Bright Data, what frontier labs' terms say about outputs, why Anthropic's own fair use arguments could be turned against it and predictions for the future. Timestamps: 0:00 What is distillation? 1:52 Intro 3:01 Why distillation matters 5:44 X v. Bright Data @dbarabander 7:50 Access vs. selling 10:40 Copyright preemption 11:25 Why X doesn't own your posts 13:49 From scraping to distillation 16:12 Who owns AI outputs? 19:38 Is all distillation illicit? 24:10 Anthropic's fair use problem @sabina_beleuz 25:05 Bartz v. Anthropic 26:42 Predictions @sabina_beleuz 28:41 Distilling the distillers 29:21 Selling services, not tokens @PossibltyResult 32:34 Antitrust 37:06 Tech moves exponentially, law sublinearly @PossibltyResult 40:47 Humans, AI and personhood 45:15 Final thoughts Thank you to the presenting sponsor of this episode, @altitude. Nothing in this podcast is legal or investment advice.