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- [00:00]
Alex
A major year for AI gets underway, but OpenAI's most anticipated model is beset by setbacks. TikTok gets a lifeline from Donald Trump and why is everyone manifesting all of a sudden? That's coming up right after this from LinkedIn News.
- [00:15]
Leah Smart
I'm Leah Smart, host of Everyday Better, an award winning podcast dedicated to personal development. Join me every week for captivating stories and research to find more fulfillment in your work and personal life. Listen to Everyday better on the LinkedIn podcast network, out Apple Podcasts or wherever.
- [00:30]
Ranjan
You get your podcasts.
- [00:32]
Leah Smart
Struggling to keep up with customers with agentforce and Salesforce Data Cloud deploy AI agents that know your customers and act on their own. That's because Data Cloud brings all your data to AgentForce, no matter where it lives. Get started@salesforce.com data welcome to Big Technology.
- [00:48]
Alex
Podcast Friday Edition where we break down the news in our traditional cool headed and nuanced format. 2025 is here and so are we. We got plenty of AI news as well as some updates on the TikTok saga. And of course we're going to get into manifesting and why is everybody doing that these days? Ron John is going to give us so much more on manifesting at the end of the show, but first let me welcome him back in for the first time in 2025. Welcome Ranjan.
- [01:13]
Ranjan
Happy 2020 Thrive. Alex.
- [01:17]
Alex
2020 Thrive we're just going to brand it the right way off the bat.
- [01:21]
Ranjan
I saw that on some random Instagram reel and I've been saying that to my wife over and over and she is not, I'm sure she's worried about me.
- [01:28]
Alex
She's are you having good 2025 vibes?
- [01:33]
Ranjan
We're two days, we're three days in right now and it's been quite a three days. I think at least in the world in the news here, it has not been a slow start to the year. So at least for the podcasting world, it keeps it interesting.
- [01:49]
Alex
I'll tell you how I closed out 2024. I jumped out of a plane with meta Ray Bans on and recorded the whole thing first person. And it was pretty because I walked onto this plane. I was skydiving, of course, and the instructors immediately looked and they're like, oh, those are the glasses that can play music. And I said yes. And they're like, oh, and take video because they're like, sell the video package for $150. And I just had these like right on my face. And it's not like a traditional camera that you have to hold. So I ended the year finding one more use cases for this new smart glasses world that we're entering in.
- [02:30]
Ranjan
Well, maybe. Do you know why I'm ready to thrive. Alex, guess what I got for Christmas?
- [02:34]
Alex
No way. Meta Ray Ban.
- [02:36]
Ranjan
I got them. I got them. I. I have not. I'm going skiing next weekend, so that'll be my first real use case. I've been playing around with them. Even my drive home from Boston to New York was taking random video. Actually, do you know what impressed me the most? Actually there are two things. One, the quality of the audio not being in ear but being essentially kind of like speakers to the side of you. I almost like and prefer better to in ear when you're walking around just how like stereo quality. But I don't know. The ambience the audio quality was blew me away. The second thing was it really feels like the most revolutionary part of the product is I started using it more to interact with my iPhone than Siri because we all know Siri is still garbage. And Apple Intelligence was a flop and is currently a flop. And Meta AI is pretty good. It's baseline good. So calling out to Spotify, making phone calls, even sending messages, Starting to use WhatsApp and Facebook messenger more than Apple messages. I started when I'm wearing them, I am using it to interact with my phone more than Siri. So this could almost be kind of a trojan horse for Facebook into your iPhone operating system versus Siri if voice is the interface.
- [04:05]
Alex
And now you see why Tim Cook has tried to kneecap meta, right? These two are obvious competitors and that competition isn't talked about nearly enough. But this is just going to be another area where they're going head to head. And of course we know that Apple has these new AirPods in development that have cameras on them as well. So that's going to be really fascinating to watch the two of them. You know, I'm sure Apple will find find some reason to ban the meta ray ban app or something like that.
- [04:31]
Ranjan
We'll see 2020 thrive.
- [04:33]
Alex
Tim, I do want to say one more thing because we, we did get a comment from a listener. I think it's a valid comment being like, I'm surprised you guys are excited about the Meta Ray bans given Facebook's history of like privacy mess, ups and look, I don't think that we're gonna be excited about a product and therefore negate any concern we have about the way that the company has operated in the past. But I think what becomes clear as you Watch this. And as you use these things, and I'm curious if this was your experience, Ranjan, that you just see that this is going to be a future method of computing and like you can either choose to ignore it or you can give it a shot. And that's what we're trying to do. At least that's what I think.
- [05:13]
Leah Smart
So.
- [05:13]
Ranjan
No, no, no. That, that is a very valid and fair question. And I'll admit, and as someone who, you know, has been very concerned around Facebook's privacy actions over the last now eight years, nine years, when you put them on the idea that I was ever going to put glass something on my face that captures everything in the world around me from Meta Facebook, I never would have thought, but I think it is. And even when you have to allow a lot of permissions on your phone access to always on location access to. I was going back and forth with each. Okay. In that entire user flow. But I think it's almost a testament to call it the Zuckerberg rebrand, but. Or maybe Musk becoming the ultimate bad guy in tech. And like when you have to worry about where is the evil part of big tech. But I definitely thought about it and it's one of those where the trade off of the product is so good and I agreed this is going to be part of the future of computing and I'm excited to be part of that and testing that out early. And maybe that is where Apple will be able to once again kind of step in and become the privacy first example of this if they actually push out some kind of smart glasses. But to that listener, trust me, I, I was feeling a little weird throughout the whole process, but I still went with it.
- [06:46]
Alex
Yeah. And, and look, I think that one of the things that we found is that, or that I think anyone who watches tech has found is that if the products work well, people are willing to. I'm not saying us because our job is to analyze and criticize it when it, when it's called for, but a lot of people will just look past whatever a company does when the product works. And I think you saw that with Apple, I think you're gonna see that with Meta. And that means that this product is gonna be a breakthrough product in my opinion. And if we didn't test it out, we would be negligent in our responsibilities here. So we'll test it out, we'll criticize when it's needed. And before we move to the next section, I'll just say one more thing that I enjoy is the microphone. And if I can figure out a way to pull it up, I'll play the audio of me getting hurled out of a plane from 15,000ft. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
- [07:40]
Ranjan
Okay, that's a. That's a good way to start the year. My way to start the year was just watching Dick Clark or whatever, one of those specials with my family, which is still nice, but.
- [07:53]
Alex
No, that's a great way to kick it in. And one company that's going to struggle its way into 2025 is OpenAI, because just as we were heading to break, there was a great story in the Wall Street Journal about the delays that the company has had with its GPT5 model, which it's calling Orion internally. So we've talked a little bit about this, about how it's delayed, but I think this story is the best one that I've read in terms of sharing the details of what's actually going on within OpenAI, why we haven't seen GPT5 yet and when it might be coming. And I just think this is an important story to talk about because we're really going to go into 2025 with massive stakes for AI, and no one's going to have bigger stakes than OpenAI, and nothing within OpenAI is going to have bigger stakes than GPT5. So we'll talk about that in a moment. Let me at least say what happened. This is from the journal. OpenAI has conducted at least two training runs, each of which entails months of crunching huge amounts of data with the goal of making Orion smarter. Each time, new problems arose and the software fell short of the results researchers were hoping for. A six month training run can cost about a half billion dollars in computing costs alone. So OpenAI has done these two large training runs. They've spent what looks like a billion dollars combined on them, and they're still not getting the results that they want. So, Ranjan, I'm curious what you thought when you heard this news and what you think it means for OpenAI's future and whether it's going to be a bad year in 2025 now that we seem to be on this path.
- [09:33]
Ranjan
All right. I've been thinking about this a lot in terms of what this year is going to mean for the entire generative AI space. And it was actually interesting. I was listening to Casey and your predictions episode last week and it was. He had mentioned, and I think it's correct, that to me, this is the year that AI needs to be productized. It's not going to be and we've talked about this a lot like it's not going to need to be just a power game yet. There's such a disconnect to me between what normal people want, what even enterprise business customers want and what tech companies and VCs are thinking and doing. And that from the tech company VC side, everything is about the next powerful model. It's about AGI, it's about, you know, like massive can we maintain current scaling laws and step changes? And then on the actual normal person side or even business customer side, it's can we just have things that are usable, reliable and work well? And there's this huge disconnect there. And I think to me OpenAI is almost and again it's a research house with a business tacked onto it. So they're always going to be thinking about what is that exponential step change, style advancement we can push and leaving the customers behind. So I think overly but they've also shown to their credit that sometimes they can really get products right. To me, Chachi BT its virality was not because GPT3 was so much better than GPT2, I think that was part of it. But I also think it was a really, really good product and it was a fun product and they did a lot with the UI that actually made it exciting and usable. So I think to me them overly focusing on GPT5 could actually be the thing that hurts them even more because I don't think they're going to create some kind of model that magically solves everything. I think not focusing on the productization enough, it will actually be an even bigger mistake on their part.
- [11:54]
Alex
I think this is going to be a debate between you and I for the entire year because if you don't have GPT4 and you stopped at GPT2, chatgpt sucks. So it is those advances that have powered the better products. That being said, I'll give you this in the story, there's a nice little tidbit. I call it the Runjon call out. They say as Arai installed, OpenAI started developing other projects and applications including the slimmed down versions of GPT4 and Sora, it's AI generated AI video generator. So yes, they realized that they needed to put the computing towards more practical things in the short run. So that was good. However, I think there are some pretty concerning details in this story about AI's ability to progress beyond the productization that are important to cover. And so to me the key call out here was the Limitations of data. Right, so this is from the story to make Orion smarter. Orion, by the way, again, GPT5, OpenAI needs to make it larger. That means it needs even more data, but there isn't enough. So the solution was to create it from scratch. It hired people to write fresh software code, solve math problems for Orion. And these workers, who are software engineers and mathematicians, also shared the explanations of their work to Orion. However, GPT4 was trained on an estimated 13 trillion tokens. And this is what it's going to take to get there in human scale. A 'Thousand people writing 5,000 words a day could take months to produce a billion tokens. So it does really seem like this data wall really is here. And this is the last part I'll read about the data. Once the training began, OpenAI researchers discovered a problem with the data. It wasn't as diversified as they thought, potentially limiting how much Orion would learn. So this is really coming to the fore right now that there's a real data wall in AI and you can legitimately sit PhD and mathematicians down all day long and they could basically do nothing but write content for these models. And they will not get anywhere near the amount of knowledge into them as has already been baked in unless they sit there and write for years.
- [14:16]
Ranjan
See, this is what I don't understand though. Why would I want a PhD or an engineer to write fresh software code or solve math problems for the input data if I am not a coder or a mathematician? Is the assumption here that a mathematician helping model solve math problems will eventually help me do some kind of business process better or just some kind of normal task with AI? Or help Apple intelligence find your flight in your mailbox better?
- [14:59]
Alex
I'll take my best shot at this because this is what OpenAI told investors I believe that it was aiming for because there are internal expectations for GPT5. And this all was in context as they were raising their massive largest VC round ever in history. This is from the journal story. GPT5 is supposed to unlock new scientific discoveries as well as accomplish routine human tasks like booking appointments or flights. Researchers hope it will make fewer mistakes than today's AI, or at least acknowledge doubt. Something of a challenge for the current models which can produce errors with apparent confidence known as hallucinations. So basically I think what OpenAI is saying is that it has the. This is internally and to investors. I believe what it's saying is we have the capability to make these models step change smarter and as they get smarter they'll be able to handle more tasks because they're just going to be a much more brilliant model than the ones we have today. But the problem is, if you don't get there, then all that promise goes away. And we come back to the big problem that we've been discussing up until this point, which is like, where do you go from here? Because you're not going to be able to raise again if you're not going to be able to achieve what you've been telling investors.
- [16:19]
Ranjan
Well, here's where I think the big disconnect is. All right, this is my 2020 Thrive 2025 thesis here. It's that this disconnect is really could be a fatal one for OpenAI. Because again, on one hand, that question right there, it's like, even simple things like booking appointments, current models are not perfect, and that's making people not actually use them. To me, the model becoming exponentially better is not the problem. It's. There's really simple things you can do on the product side to actually build systems and simple products to allow for these kind of tasks to be solved. But that's not what they sold investors on. They have to come up with this almost mythical or magical next model and this thing. So they have to keep working on that so they can't actually solve the problems that customers want solved while pleasing investors. So now that we're thinking more about this, that does put them in a pretty bad situation because they have to do both. And doing both is always going to be more difficult.
- [17:28]
Alex
And mythical and magical really is, I think, the right characterization here because the story also is like, well, what is GPT 5 like? When are they going to call it GPT 5? Because we've had GPT 44001. We're getting lots of different names. We're not getting five. Right. And they went from two to three to four pretty quickly. Here's what the Journal says. There are no set criteria for determining when a model has become smart enough to be designated GPT5. OpenAI can test its LLMs in areas like math and coding, but it's really up to company executives to decide whether the model is smart enough to be called GPT5, based in large part on gut feelings or, and this is my favorite line in the whole story, as many technologists say, vibes.
- [18:10]
Ranjan
I imagine if they went, the iPhone stopped going like 16, 15, 14, just because it's not really a step change anymore. It's just a slightly better camera. And they started just completely 010 max.
- [18:25]
Alex
Well, they do. They've done that for us but you know, everybody gets excited for 15 and 16. They don't get excited for like these.
- [18:32]
Ranjan
Yeah, Apple's still going for it, but maybe open. I just call it GPT5. Even if it's not much better, that should be enough just like AGI, you know.
- [18:42]
Alex
Yeah. What I'll say is the longer they wait, the worse this is going to get for them because now everybody's going to expecting them to release like legitimately the creator in their model and it's just not going to happen.
- [18:54]
Ranjan
Yeah, yeah, no, that's what I agree as well. Like if four oh they called five and again you say multimodal significantly cheaper per token for the same or higher quality. So like we're create that actually that's interesting. And then I'm waiting for six but already I've gotten kind of lost because once you go 4040 mini all these other things then you start having higher expectations for when that next big number comes. So I agree with that one more.
- [19:30]
Alex
Bit here because we've brought up Apple. So this is again from the story. Researchers at Apple recently released a paper that argues that reasoning models including versions of O1 were more than likely mimicking mimicking the data they saw in training rather than actually solving new problems. The Apple researchers said that they found catastrophic performance drops if questions were changed to include irrelevant details like tweaking a math problem about kiwis to note that some form of the fruits were smaller than others. So this is the first I would say mainstream knockdown of reasoning as a methodology. And we've talked in the past here about how like maybe reasoning can be the next step change. But it is interesting to see this research come out of Apple. Maybe it's Apple just saying like you know, we're not the best so let's take on the best. But it is pretty bold statement to say that actually reasoning is effectively, you know, bs. What did you make of that study?
- [20:29]
Ranjan
I. I was wondering yet where again Apple intelligence still not good. And again I, I take knocks at Apple. I probably spent more at the Apple store over the Christmas season and my mother has an Apple watch, my wife has an Apple watch now like there's more spent at the Apple store than any other electronics retailer. But with Apple intelligence they are not doing great. They have promised a lot, they have over promised but on the other hand they have the least invested in having to win this game. I think out of the big like Google has to win at generative AI for them to maintain dominance. Apple does not Necessarily, it surprised me that they're pushing so hard because they don't have to. They could have sat back even longer and waited for the technology to be ready and good and then released a big hype to Apple Intelligence product. So I think it does make sense to me for them to kind of knock things down and kneecap the promises of OpenAI and others and Microsoft and whoever else and say, guys, this isn't going to happen anytime soon and it actually only helps them.
- [21:49]
Alex
Right. Okay, let's, let's just end this segment like again, tackling the bigger picture, which is, I'm saying that this is a pretty important year for the AI field. I'm calling it a crucible year. I think that if the field cannot deliver on some of these bold promises, whether that's on research or productization, it's going to be a very, very tough couple years following. Like, this is like really like if 22 was, we figured out what chat GPT was, 23 was experimentation, maybe 24 was continued experimentation and more proofs of concept. 20, 25, we got it. We got to. This has got to work. It's that important of a year. What do you think?
- [22:28]
Ranjan
I like crucible year. Crucible year. I also my prediction, I think we might get some players that we have not been thinking about as much. Like, I think we say the same names over and over again, but especially, and maybe that could be, I mean, anthropic or perplexity becoming even bigger than we have been talking about. But I think like, it's the idea that it's OpenAI and the Fang Big or big tech. I think we might start seeing different names popping up, the ones who could actually solve the customer problem better.
- [23:09]
Alex
Oh, okay, now you're going customer problem. You know, that makes me think in a different way that I was going to go right before I was thinking maybe it's going to be safe super.
- [23:18]
Ranjan
Intelligence, but I'm team customer, you're team superintelligence.
- [23:25]
Alex
That really does describe the dichotomy here pretty well.
- [23:27]
Ranjan
Yeah, just make it work, make it work. That's all I want.
- [23:34]
Alex
We've been talking about whether this was going to be the year that OpenAI was going to declare AGI and free itself from the constraints of Microsoft and sharing its technology with Microsoft. But also over the new year, we actually got some really interesting information. There's a pretty specific definition. This is according to the information that OpenAI and Microsoft have for when it's okay to declare AGI. And that is when OpenAI develops AI systems that can generate at least 100 billion in profits. And given that OpenAI is going the opposite way, it doesn't seem like it's going to be able to declare AGI, at least according that, to that definition, anytime soon. So does it, does that sort of solve our worry here that OpenAI could basically just go out and say AGI and just keep the tech to itself?
- [24:23]
Ranjan
Well, I, this definition, it confused me even more because I would have thought the definition would be something more on the scientific or theoretical side rather than the, the like business side. So it's. Yeah, this confused me even more, which is good for OpenAI because the more confusing it is then the easier it is. Or actually no, I guess in this case it would be even harder for them because it's such a kind of like clear yardstick for them to have to achieve.
- [24:59]
Alex
Can I say that maybe it was clarifying? You know, remember we talked a lot about how like this talk of AGI could just be like really clever branding and all this, like the world is going to end because of AI actually really served the interests of the research houses who wanted to sell this to like your typical SaaS company or your middling accounting firm who could maybe use it to build, move data from one spreadsheet to another. Because in the contract, right, saying AGI is just at 100 billion, doesn't that like kind of explicitly say, oh yeah, these promises of like magical AI, it's really just about the business?
- [25:36]
Ranjan
Yeah, no, no, that's where. And actually now that I think about it, it really is actually Microsoft being pretty savvy in this because at the point that it has done that, then obviously Microsoft has already been able to reap whatever benefits for themselves and then happy to let things go off on their own. But. But again then Google's ad engine or Facebook's ad engine or like these, these technologies, are they AGI then as well, is anything that is the iPhone, hardware, AGI? Like it's such a weird thing for me, maybe 8 maybe because maybe like super intelligence or artificial general intelligence actually would not be a profitable thing, you know, like, and still actually work in the way that we have been promised by research houses it would. So this actually when this being coming out finally was even more odd and shocking to what is it already a very odd and shocking story?
- [26:39]
Alex
I think it's a scientific term co opted by businesses that told us they were about the science, but now we really know that they're about the business. And it's clarifying and refreshing in some ways to know that, yes, AGI is just about making 100 billion. It's not about necessarily propelling the next scientific discovery, it's making that 100 billion.
- [27:00]
Ranjan
I like your cynicism, Alex. I like it.
- [27:03]
Alex
The fact that it's a science in this situation.
- [27:07]
Ranjan
I know, I know. No, but I'm with you. I'm with you. You know what? I agree. I would rather just get it out there. It's kind of, again, like we've said, don't call it open. I just don't call it like some mythical AGI. That's a scientific concept. It's literally like a target on a profit margin or profit. It's a profit target.
- [27:30]
Alex
Yes. And by the way, I think going to your previous point, going by this definition, yes, Meta's ad platform has been AGI for decades at this point, and maybe even TikTok.
- [27:45]
Leah Smart
I'm Jessi Hempel, host of hello Monday. In my 20s, I knew what I wanted for my career. But from where I am now, in the middle of my life, nothing feels ascertained. Work's changing, we're changing, and there's no guidebook for how to make sense of any of it. So every Monday, I bring you conversations with people who are thinking deeply about work and where it fits into our lives. We talk about making career pivots, about purpose and how to discern it, about where happiness fits into the mix and how to ask for more money. Come join us in the hello Monday community. Let's figure out the future together. Listen to hello Monday with Jesse Hempel wherever you get your podcasts struggling to meet the increasing demands of your customers? With Agentforce and Salesforce Data Cloud, you can deploy AI agents that free up your team's time to focus more on building customer relationships and less on repetitive low value tasks. That's because Data Cloud brings all your customer data to AgentForce no matter where it lives, resulting in agents that deeply understand your customer and act without assistance. This is what AI was meant to be. Get started@salesforce.com data TikTok right now is.
- [29:05]
Alex
In a really interesting place. We're going to cover this story right now. So over the New Year, Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to pause the TikTok shutdown. And it's going to be pretty interesting because there is a clause in this TikTok ban, which was passed bipartisanly by the US Congress that allows the President to lift the ban if his administration determines the site is no longer under Chinese control. So basically, all the President has to Do. It's basically the same thing like we talked about of OpenAI declaring AGI, except this point, there's no dollar figure attached to it. All the President has to do is just say, yeah, it's not really under Chinese control anymore and that congressional law is effectively nullified. And so now Trump is asking the Supreme Court, give me, give me one more Day from January 19th to January 20th. So I can say, and this is. I'm just reading between the lines here, so I can say that, that TikTok has fulfilled its obligation to divest and then this entire TikTok drama is over potentially for good. What do you think?
- [30:17]
Ranjan
I. I, like, again, we're going to be talking about manifesting and essentially we are saying that, you know, actually now AGI has a more specific definition, but with TikTok, it could literally be Trump saying, yes, I believe that TikTok ByteDance has divested TikTok, and that's all it takes. So, and if anyone could do that, I think Trump certainly, if simply saying something could be more important than the actual kind of underlying facts and matter. I think Trump is pretty good at that. So I would actually, that would be my favorite way for this to end. I think that would be the most incredible way where ByteDance in no way divests TikTok. But on January 20, Trump says, I believe that ByteDance has divested TikTok. This is no longer a relevant matter.
- [31:15]
Alex
I'm fairly certain that's what's going to happen. I mean, not only does Trump have the backing and has he grown closer to Jeff Yass, who's a financier who has a large percentage of ByteDance ownership, but he also knows that TikTok is something that young people use. And he had a surge in youth support in the 2024 election. And I think that, like, he's won the election that happened and he's just going to keep it around. He's just going to go up there and he's going to say, Nobody divests like TikTok. They did the best divestment ever. You'll never see a better divestment than tikt. And that's it. Game over.
- [31:57]
Ranjan
One thing I saw that was at least interesting was imagine if he. And we only have 16 days for this to happen at the last minute. It's actually let's. They do need to divest and Elon Musk will now buy TikTok or Xai will become the owner of TikTok. That would be interesting.
- [32:18]
Alex
It could happen. And I think one of the things that we, we're going to talk about actually how the Internet has changed with Ryan Broderick on Wednesday. So everyone should stay tuned for that. It's a really fun episode. But one of the ways that Twitter has changed is that it's become effectively TikTok. I mean, you scroll through Twitter now and it's just like a collection of, for you, tweets that want you to click into a short form video and then get lost in the feed. Like that is effectively TikTok. And so would the two work well together? Yes. So I do think that's one possibility. But again, to me, the most likely possibility is that Trump takes office. First of all, that the Supreme Court agrees with Trump. He takes office and he says, yep, looks good to me. This Project Texas or whatever they've done to wall off their data is just good enough. And we don't hear about a TikTok ban at least for another four years.
- [33:10]
Ranjan
This is going to be the most fascinating story in the next two weeks. I think there's, there's going to be a lot of twists and turns on the TikTok band. I don't think it's going to be straightforward. I think maybe we will end up with the amazing greatest divestment ever from ByteDance, even with no divestment. But I think in terms working, there's going to be plenty of drama leading up to the inauguration. And the fact of the timing, again, this almost couldn't have been written better by the script writers to have it on the 19th with the inauguration, the 20th.
- [33:46]
Alex
Let me ask you this. So if you are a, let's say you're a creator, or if you are a business that has a presence on TikTok, what do you do over these next two weeks? Do you just give up or do you continue posting as usual, hoping that your business will continue to operate just fine on TikTok moving forward?
- [34:09]
Ranjan
Well, there is a, there's a good Wall Street Journal article. We'll get into more. But I think overall it was, it was saying that creators are not as worried as they were when the initial ban was announced. Meaning that people seem to be thinking it's here to stay. I think traditional businesses are definitely not worried because TikTok has never become a massive place for larger ad budgets. It's definitely grown. Well, it's grown in a big way and it's become an increasingly important part. But still it's small relative to the Facebook. Facebook Blue is still a huge destination for all digital ad budgets. Instagram is you know, a huge part of that as well. And TikTok is still above the snaps and Pinterests of the world. But even like connected TV like Hulu and stuff like that have grown in importance relative to TikTok. So I think it's, it's not the same big ad budget spend for big brands, so agencies and stuff aren't going to be too worried about it. Like it wouldn't completely derail any of any larger brands. I think smaller creators have to be a bit worried if that's where your entire following is. But that's the risk of any platform. Like if your following's there for people who left X, if they're, if they built a following there for years at a certain point, if you have to leave it, then that's a risk you're always need to take with a platform.
- [35:43]
Alex
Yep. I mean, the last thing I'll say about this is it will be interesting to me. You said it's going to be very crucial two weeks on the story. It's gonna be the biggest story. I agree. It would be interesting to me if we see some leaked information about why the House and Senate in the US wanted to ban this app in the first place. Like, you do remember that this just came up as like a groundswell of senators and members of the House. They looked at some intelligence and they said, oh, now we have to ban this now. And then it very quickly moved and then Biden signed it and we never really heard exactly what they had seen to make them want to do this. So if they feel that right now what happens as we predict does happen, that the ban is effectively shot down through a declaration of divestment from the executive branch. I wonder if we're going to see some of the things that they saw and if that may reanimate the conversation.
- [36:42]
Ranjan
Okay, that would make this even more interesting because yes, I agree. And I had wondered about that. I do believe the national security risk, more so than the like, you know, the mental health risk and stuff, I don't think is significantly different than an Instagram or Snap or any of any other social platform and even YouTube shorts, I think is just as much if not more of a problem. I think to me it's always been the idea that it is still a very connected company to the Chinese government, which is currently an adversary, and it controls the entire national culture and essentially psyche of an entire generation with a black box algorithm. That doesn't seem too crazy to me to be something that should be looked at a bit more Carefully. And if there were things that actually came out that are not public that made that more concerning enough for them to sign the ban so quickly, for that to be leaked after the ban is overturned would be. Would be fun and interesting.
- [37:49]
Alex
I would say. Stay tuned. I wouldn't be surprised if it happens. By the way, interesting timing. Facebook today. Oh, no, sorry. This week just replaced Nick Clegg, who was running their policy team with Joel Kaplan, who is their most prominent Republican. I mean, saying the most prominent Republican at Facebook is kind of funny. It's like, you know, you don't find many of those there. But Clegg is out. Joel Kaplan, who's a Republican, is in. And I wonder if he's going to try to be like, all right, Trump, please actually do let this company get banned. And maybe they influence the process as well. I don't think they're very happy with the amount of attention that TikTok has taken and the challenge that it presents. Although they've done a good job fending it off with. With reels to some extent.
- [38:36]
Ranjan
I always do wonder with. Mark Zuckerberg is like the most incredibly cutthroat competitor there is. Do you think he. Because reels has worked incredibly. Threads, they at least say is working incredibly. But. But I don't know exactly how much I buy.
- [38:57]
Alex
I don't believe that. Reels, yes. Threads, no, no.
- [39:00]
Ranjan
But reels, I mean, reels definitely, they transformed, like through pure product execution. They transformed that into a very viable, if not like, better TikTok. So. Or at least TikTok for older people like myself and all my friends, all they do now is share reels with each other. And even my mom is sharing reels from Facebook. So that short form video, I wonder, do you think there's any part of his competitive spirit that's like, I don't want a regulatory solution. I just want to crush these products with these competitors with pure product chops.
- [39:38]
Alex
Yeah, I think that's. There's definitely some of that there. But also, like, given the threat that TikTok poses, and I think that threat has been neutralized to some extent, I think they'll probably take whatever help that they can get. So. Because, you know, like you mentioned, a lot of culture is starting on TikTok, including this manifesting thing.
- [40:00]
Ranjan
Oh, yes. So the same way Donald Trump might be manifesting the divestiture of a TikTok from ByteDance. I was reading a Wall Street Journal article about the TikTok ban, and it started in the lead. It mentioned an account hot high Priestess, a girl named Sarah Pearl, a creator who primarily monetizes on TikTok. And her whole thing is about manifestation. And now manifestation is the idea that positive thinking and visualization can bring people closer to their goals. Manifestation began in the 19th century New Thought movement and does have a kernel of truth to it. Our thoughts can in part shape our reality. This is all from Business Insider. The latest trend had gained traction since the height of the pandemic, but modern manifesting remains a broad term covering a range of practices. It can cover meditating and journaling as part of a spiritual practice, as well as posting memes about achieving great fortune. So I started going down the Sarah Pearl rabbit hole and watched a few hot high priestess TikToks and again, it's a new year, we're doing New Year's resolutions. Maybe manifesting could be part of it. And I saw things where you do things like you whisper out loud the name of your crush or who you want the boy you want to text back and things like this. So it was all kind of like this is what I assume is very tick tocky. But then my favorite part was she equated manifesting with not just posting but actually becoming one with the algorithm. She said, I view manifesting almost like the for you page where you put your attention is where your life will end up going. If people dwell on negative content, that's what they will be fed. But if they like videos with a positive outlook, TikTok may give them more. And that was the most odd, fascinating and depressing thing I think I've ever read where someone is now, New age thinking is basically saying to become one with the algorithm and live your life like a for you page and let feed the algorithm positively rather than negatively. And this is where culture is heading into 2025.
- [42:26]
Alex
Yes, I think this is so spot on and it really is true. If you hover on good content on the for you feed, you'll get more good content. If you hover on divisive content, you'll get more divisive. If you hover on stuff that makes you feel bad, you'll feel worse. If you hover on stuff that makes you feel adventurous, you'll go do dumb things like jump out of a plane with a meta ray ban on. But I I really do think that that there is truth to this and I love that she's made it so accessible to the masses who are obviously catching her on tick tock. So I'm all about it. I mean I'm manifesting. Yeah, good Vibes. I'm gonna have a 2020 thrive in 2025. And I'm all about this. So I can sense some skepticism in your, in your tone here, Ron John. And I think you should direct your algorithmic energy in a more meaningful way.
- [43:21]
Ranjan
I literally. This is where, this is why this was such a. Again, I don't know, I don't know how I feel about this, Alex, because it's great.
- [43:29]
Alex
Just admit it, it's great.
- [43:30]
Ranjan
Well, no, because the more I thought about it, I'm like, holy shit. This is, this is correct. This is, this actually is like, like actually capturing the spir. Every new age thing or even a lot of religious things over the, like over centuries into the modern day equivalent. But. And then I'm picturing a bunch of people sitting around like eyes closed, just trying to manifest positivity into the algorithm. For likes, I guess, or for engagement or for just better content, more followers. But yes, this is manifesting for the algorithm. The, the algorithm controls us all, the beautiful algorithm of life. And all we can do is stay on the positive to get more positivity. Thank you, hot high priestess. As we go into 2025, I, I.
- [44:25]
Alex
Am so on board. And yeah, I think this stuff, I think manifesting works. It's not the be all, end all, but if you sort of start to channel that good energy generally like it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. So I don't know, I'm feeling, I'm feeling the vibe and I might need to create a vision board for my 2020 Thrive Thoughts this year.
- [44:50]
Ranjan
Long time listeners are wondering what happened to Alex and Ron John over New Year's.
- [44:55]
Alex
Look, we had some time off and it obviously, you know, worked in some ways, in other ways set us back. But anyway, we're happy to be back.
- [45:03]
Ranjan
We're happy to be back. We're thinking positive thoughts and podcasting only brings out the positive vibes.
- [45:10]
Alex
Yes. And we're so happy that you're all here and that you're manifesting your year together with us. And speaking of manifesting, all the five star reviews that came through in 2024 really did lead to such a great group of guests at the end of the year, including Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, Matt Garman, CEO of aws, and we have plenty more coming this year, some really, really great guests in January. So if you want to help us get more, get more top tier guests and help get the show in front of more people, which will ensure that we can keep doing this five star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify will go a long way. And I promise you, we didn't do the whole manifesting segment just so I could set that up. But again, thank you for being here. And Ranjan, great to be back on the line with you. Happy 2025. Here we go.
- [45:59]
Ranjan
Here we go. See you next week.
- [46:02]
Alex
See you next week. All right, everybody, thank you for listening. And we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.