Lewis Goodall

And Isaiah said, well, why are you doing it?

And why are you doing it?

And he couldn't almost quite answer.

And I think it was basically because he said, well, we're pushing the frontiers of human knowledge and so on.

But that is the bit that really fascinates me, that clearly is beyond commercial imperative, right?

Because it does seem that they are motivated by something deeper within them that's almost quasi-religious, it seemed to me.

Do you think, is that broadly right?

Is that always true with great corporate power, though?

I mean, if you're talking about the great oil tycoons, the great oil companies of the 1950s or the early 20th century, they had huge power.

They still do.

We don't elect them.

They're responsible to their accountable to their shareholders.

Is it not always true of great corporate power that to some extent it resists the kind of democratic inputs that normal political democracy does?

And also, it seems to me, and I'm so struck repeatedly in terms of the way it's talked about in politics.

I mean, it's kind of, I suppose, always true with some technological and corporate power, but like the asymmetry of knowledge.

between what these companies are doing and the political sphere.

I mean, you know, when I speak to British politicians, American politicians, they don't have a clue, right?

Most of them, but with maybe a few exceptions, they are, it is operating almost on a different plane of reality from the political plane.

And the amount of money they're paying for talent is so astronomic.

States, even the US federal government, whatever, they don't and can't compete for that sort of quality of person.