Why does Gen Z hate AI?
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
4.2 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 May 2026
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Today’s show:
AI is the villain of the 2026 commencement cycle, with business luminaries — including Eric Schmidt — booed for discussing or praising the technology. As students graduate into a job market forcibly reshaped by AI, increasingly negative public polling on the potential impacts of artificial intelligence on society is clearly not missing the mark.
Jason and Alex then discussed The Information’s reporting that Anthropic and OpenAI earn nearly 90% of all startup AI revenue, a Stanford student’s viral essay regarding their time at the university in a post-ChatGPT world, Flock Safety’s impressive (and worrying) web of cameras, and the upcoming Mark II AI bookmark. The episode closes with questions from our live audience!
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Timestamps:
0:00 TWiST All-Stars summer lineup announcement
2:43 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin. You can check it out at https://Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!
5:08 Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona commencement
8:57 Why Gen Z feels "double-crossed" by AI leaders
10:10 Deel - Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back to building. Visit https://deel.com/twist to learn more.
15:22 Is this AI's Vietnam moment? The anti-war parallel
18:04 Theo Baker's NYT essay on Stanford's AI cheating culture
19:24 Sentry - New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to https://sentry.io/twist and use the code TWIST
22:30 Why Jason says everyone should start a company
28:59 Anthropic + OpenAI capture 89% of AI startup revenue
30:17 Vanta: Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist
31:57 Are token sales a duopoly? Negative gross margins debate
35:17 Risk of building app-layer startups on top of foundation models
38:22 Inside Tracker bounty update: AI sidebar + Annotated.com
41:18 Mark II: the $159 AI bookmark Alex wants
49:31 Flock Safety solves Austin shooting via Manor PD
53:39 DeFlock map and the geography of surveillance in Texas
1:03:42 Noti Gang: AI for filing patents
1:05:45 Noti Gang: Running AI models locally on Mac Studios
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Young people have been told their jobs are going away. |
| 0:03.7 | It might not be that they're scared. |
| 0:05.2 | They feel like they've been double crossed. |
| 0:07.2 | That Google and Eric Schmidt representing Google has bad intent. |
| 0:11.5 | They know that the horses left the barn. |
| 0:13.5 | And they understand that there just aren't going to be the number of jobs for them. |
| 0:17.6 | Suddenly they're trying to get an apartment, pay for their own health care. |
| 0:20.0 | This really just highlights the gap between business excitement about AI and the average consumer. |
| 0:26.2 | A lot of them did their degrees in the age of chat. GBT. These people have had chat GPD for two |
| 0:31.3 | years. They've been using it. They understand it really well, I think. This week in startups is |
| 0:36.8 | brought to you by Vanta. |
| 0:38.7 | Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal breaker for startups to win new business. |
| 0:43.1 | Vanta makes it easy for companies to get a SOC2 report fast. |
| 0:46.8 | Get $1,000 off for a limited time at vanta.com slash twist. |
| 0:51.5 | Sentry. |
| 0:52.0 | Your team should be focused on shipping features, not chasing down bugs. |
| 0:56.1 | New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to century.io slash twist and use the code twist. |
| 1:03.2 | And deal. |
| 1:04.1 | Founders scale faster on deal. |
| 1:06.4 | Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone, anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back |
| 1:12.1 | to building. Visit deal.com slash twist to learn more. Hey everybody. May. Oh my God, it's May. |
| 1:18.8 | 18th, 2026. Ski season long behind us, summer. Long gone. Right around the corner. My lord, |
... |
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