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DW D.A. Wallach On This Week in Startups

“If I look at my monthly credit card bill, all the expensive stuff is basically physical stuff. It's my rent. It's healthcare. It's school. It's a babysitter. It's a car. AI is here and it can solve a bunch of business problems for business people. But can it actually solve the problems that are material to an average person's life? Unfortunately, the real problems in the average person's life are today largely problems that require public policy.”

This Week in Startups · Startups & Venture · November 2026

“If I look at my monthly credit card bill, all the expensive stuff is basically physical stuff. It's my rent. It's healthcare. It's school. It's a babysitter. It's a car. AI is here and it can solve a bunch of business problems for business people. But can it actually solve the problems that are material to an average person's life? Unfortunately, the real problems in the average person's life are today largely problems that require public policy.” — D.A. Wallach, This Week in Startups

Context

The panel was debating how to turn around the public's negative view of AI and data centers. Wallach says the costs that squeeze ordinary people are physical, not digital, so AI's benefits to business may not reach them.

Transcript

This Week in Startups Around 18:01 into the episode
D.A. Wallach

…a net exporter? And I wonder, like, you need that positive science fiction view of the world before you can actually have this conversation because there needs to be enough domestic demand and will for us to be producers of tokens to change this data center narrative, which is absolutely essential.

Jason Calacanis

…more than six. 15,000 companies, including major names like Harvey, Ramp, and Ryder. Prove to your customers that you're ready for business. Learn more at vanta.com slash twist and get $1,000 off. That's vanta.com slash twist for $1,000 off. DA, what do you think? This is an interesting narrative.

D.A. Wallach

I think there's the digital domain and then there's the physical real world, right? And if I look at my monthly credit card bill or my bank statement, all the expensive stuff is basically physical stuff. It's my rent. It's healthcare. It's school. It's a babysitter. It's all that kind of stuff. It's a car. And there's this interesting moment we're at right now where it's like AI is here and it can solve a bunch of business problems for business people. But the question is, can it actually solve these problems that are material to an average person's life? And as I was just hearing you guys talk about this, what occurs to me is like, unfortunately, the real problems that need to be solved in the average person's life are today largely problems that require public policy. And so I actually think the way that AI can be most helpful would be if it helps us as a society to be less partisan and more constructive in our politics. And I don't know that AI had anything to do with the election results yesterday, but just imagine that everyone going to the polling booth is going to be using their AI assistant to help them understand what they're voting on and what would actually be good for them. I mean, fundamentally, the importance of…

Jason Calacanis

And there's multiple types of intelligence as well. You have artistic emotional, but pure IQ. You have all three.

D.A. Wallach

Keep it coming. Keep it coming, and I like that. But here's what I would say. When I get the ballot, okay, it's impossible for me to manage this thing. Okay. It's like a hundred decisions. It's so complicated. I never heard any of these people. I get one sentence on each of them. So of course I…

Jason Calacanis

Yeah, you need to have the meat layer between the AI that's. Yeah, you

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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