I spoke with Emily Sands, Stripe’s head of AI, about the new payments protocol it launched with OpenAI earlier this week. We’ve gotten used to companies like Stripe finding ways to remove the friction from online buying. But I wanted to ask Sands about what this might mean down the road. It feels like the beginning of a new internet economy built around automation instead of advertising. Sands, who has a PhD in economics, responded:
“With my economist hat on, I am actually imagining a world where global GDP goes up because the people with the most resources suddenly have slackened the most expensive part of spending for them, which is using their time. And you actually start to expand consumption by quite a bit in a way that’s very stimulating for the economy.”
Listen to the whole interview here, which includes a cameo from OpenAI executive Michelle Fradin.
