B (4:15)

I'm going to push back on that. How do you see practical guidance in seeking information is distinct from traditional search? Like wouldn't that be the main or at least a very large component of overall traditional search?

A (4:31)

Okay, good point. Seeking information definitely is search, right? That is without a doubt search. But the fact that practical guidance is number one, like I think there was a a misconception that AI was going to be just like search, redone, a refactoring of search and it's probably led by publishers who are like where's our traffic going? But the fact that practical guidance is number one where you can go to and we're going to talk about it more, but you can go to ChatGPT and say I'm facing this situation, what should I do? Whether that's a work situation and a health situation, a relationship situation, getting fit, which we're going to talk about, that to me is a brand new use case. You just have not had that online at all.

B (5:15)

No, no, no, no. If you think back there Was I remember in the like 2000s or early 2010s media startup days, there was entire. There's one how cast where it was just all short form video that would just ex do how to videos like how to do basically small elements of practical guidance. So, so there was. This was a core component especially like very SEO optimized traffic. Again, every publisher that was trying to like pull in traffic, it was around these how to questions. So. So I think I would still. Hold on.

A (5:52)

Yeah, that's exactly the point I'm making here, which is that this has been a. The belief that that AI is the natural inheritor. Search has been driven in part by people who work in publishing, which, which is a place that the narratives tend to come out of who've said we've done this before and this is search and this is taking search. The difference is you had to create all that content on Howcast. This is a technological solution to practical guidance and that's emergent. That's something that we haven't had previously. It's brand new. And so to me this idea that it's a technology replacement to search comes second to this idea that this is a brand new technology layer on the practical guidance front. And in fact I would say maybe this is controversial, but I think this does a better job than Those Howcast and eHow. I. And no offense to anybody who's worked on those websites before, they are a creation of SEO. They would not exist without Google and they're not very good. Like I don't think anyone, you know, going, giving their, their, you know, coming back to a college, giving the commencement address, somebody super successful, you know, says hey, I want to just thank the people at eHow, you know, problems. And I figured out everything on eHow. No, it was just like it could get you maybe 2/3 of the way to fixing your sink.

B (7:11)

When I look back at all the success I have achieved in my life, I would like to thank eHow, guest, ask Jeeves and all the above.

A (7:21)

Yeah, I think students, students, you may be asking how, but you should be asking eHow.

B (7:30)

We're dating ourselves for any Gen Z listeners here. But there was a time that these websites were large and dominant. So. Okay, so one thing I'll start to kind of, if we dig in further practical, the way they start to distinguish these things I still found a little difficult or problematic. So again, what is the difference between practical guidance and seeking information? Like there's going to be a lot of blurry lines in there. Writing I think is fairly, fairly Consistent. But to me, they had gone another level deeper. So they had those as one categorization. But then to me, going back to your blog post, they had three patterns within messages and asking, doing and expressing. About half of messages, 49% are asking and then expressing. Doing is 40%, expressing is 11%. These fit very neatly into our discussions. Your blog post thinking, doing and companionship. So I think they start. It's kind of amazing that they're starting to see the world in the way that we've been talking about this. Thinking, doing, companionship, or asking, doing and expressing. The only thing for me I want to start kind of like I want to hear your thoughts on the way they define doing is not how I define it. They define doing as getting help in doing some kind of process like getting help drafting text or planning or programming. The way I've been discussing this is, to me, doing is actually going out and doing it. I had a complaint with Delta about Luggage a few weeks ago and I had ChatGPT write the email and tell me where to go, but it didn't send the email. So it's almost there. But it's that to me, that is the real doing. But otherwise I'm glad they're starting to look through this in the same way we are.

A (9:23)

Well, that, that's a great point and I'm going to take it one step further. Right, so this is. These are the tasks that people are coming to generative AI or ChatGPT for. 49% is asking. That would be my thought partner category. 11% is expressing what it OpenAI says is captures uses that are neither doing, asking nor doing usually involves personal affection or exploration and play. To me, that's companion. Obviously now doing should be agent. Right? And you're saying that their categorization of doing is actually much broader than you would use for agent. And I would agree. It seems like some of these things, like using the chatbot for drafting text. Let's just go with your definition. If it's not calling a tool, it's just like normal LLM behavior. So I think that what they're doing in this study is expanding their agent category to encompass more than it really should. And I wonder what's why they're doing that. I think I have an answer. I think what we're seeing in the numbers here is the vast majority of activity within chat. GPT is really thought partner. It is a thought partner tool. And the agentic stuff of course, is super early, but they didn't want maybe the numbers and this is maybe somewhat conspiratorial, but I stand by it. They didn't want the numbers to show how deeply into Thought Partner they are when they just released a product. GPT5 not only released, tuned their product to the agent use case. To me, this explains why there's been so much uproar and disappointment and disconnect between the people who've been using the previous models and the people using GPT5. OpenAI had a thought Partner product and they turned it into an agent product, which is by their definition a minority of the uses and as you look a level deeper, a very small percentage of the uses. And that to me is, I think it's a problem. And that's why I think these companies are going to have to have clarity over which one they're going for. You cannot really do all three. Maybe you can do it in the same product, but you definitely need a switcher.

B (11:38)

Yep. Okay. And I like this. I don't think that's even conspiratorial. Actually, I will say I do wonder like, because this was presented as a research paper, as a PDF in that times New Roman font, it just looks like a research paper. You assume there's no marketing hand kind of overseeing it. Whereas if this was produced as a slick PDF from a Google, you would just be like, okay, whatever, this isn't real or it's just marketing. And I actually do wonder how that gets politically divided within an organization like OpenAI because all of the findings really do help push their business case. Like there's again, like as you said, giving that looser definition of agentic with doing makes it seem like they have very distributed use cases and they are moving towards this world of agent. But where in reality, as we're discussing they're not, they also have nearly half of messages come from users aged 18 to 25. So guess what? We're capturing the younger demographic. They have. Demographic gaps are shrinking that now women are using it as much as men, which I kind of found interesting or finding in this.

A (12:58)

In this study.

B (12:59)

Yeah. And. But they were very clear that it was like with using traditionally feminine gendered names. Like they're like we don't actually have data on you don't worry. But we're using just.

A (13:09)

We're going to tell you exactly how people are using our product down to the minute, like tiny little percentage. Okay.

B (13:14)

Exactly, exactly. And then they have like emo. They said emotional companionship are rare. They said only 1.9% of messages are about relationships and 0.4% role play. That's, that's the companionship we're talking about. But you know, like it's one, one.

A (13:33)

Level deeper than companionship, let me tell you.

B (13:35)

One asking for help, the other getting into the role play. Um, but, but, but overall like everything. Oh, they even had like geographical, like lower income countries are starting to use this more. So it's positioning it as this beautiful democratizing force, like bridging the wealth gap between nations. So, so overall like the more I was looking at it, I'm like the greatest form of content marketing you can do is make it look like a research paper and then suddenly just add so much credibility to it.

A (14:07)

Yeah, look, I have no doubt that researchers worked on this, but we cannot. It's just one of those things. When a company releases research, you have to look at it with not. I, I don't think you, you don't believe anything you read. You just have to like read between the lines a little bit and you can, you can get some good data. Like, I'm sure that part of this does really does reflect the way that that chat GPT is being used. Like the idea to me that most of it is this thought partner use case that makes total sense to me. It's totally tracks with what I've been thinking about without, about the bot. But you do have to say there are certain narratives that they want out there. And you're right. If you put it out as this research paper, it does do a better job of advancing those narratives than a thou does Protest too much blog post saying only 1.9% of ChatGPT messages are in the topics of relationship of relationships and personal reflection. In fact, this study, I initially, you know, found out about this study because I think one of our listeners tagged me on Twitter and said, oh hey look, only 1.9% are companions. And I had been sort of beating the drum saying that companion, you know, is, is one of the leading use cases. Maybe I even said it was the number one use case. I might have to revise that after this show. Well, it was an HBR article that seemed to suggest that. And that HBR article was also cited in this OpenAI study. So I think they give some credence to it even though they found something completely different. But I would say after reading the articles that have come out about OpenAI and listening to the podcasts about OpenAI and how people are building relationships with chat GPT and that's unhealthy, I, if, let's just say this. If I was a researcher at Open AI. I would do whatever I could and maybe this is me getting it completely wrong. I'm. I'm open to that. I would do whatever I could to minimize that use case. I would say there's only a small percentage of people that are falling in love with Chat GPT and by the way, let's just do our building relationships with the, with Chat GPT and let's just do the back of the envelope math here because we have 700 million users of Chat GPT and so this would say 1.9% of people have some sort of relationship with them. I think so that would still leave us with 13.3 million people weekly having a relationship style conversation with ChatGPT. Obviously it's not the overriding use case but that's still shit ton of people.

B (16:37)

Oh actually befriended. If you look at it, it's 18 billion messages per week. So I just did. That's 35 million relationships messages right there per week.

A (16:50)

Can we, can we back of the envelope figure out how much it's costing OpenAI to serve these online boyfriend and girlfriends? Well actually they're going to burn 100. Go ahead.

B (17:00)

In the world of. It's also funny because like in the world of GPT5 where you could have a simple non agentic answer that can keep things going, instead it's going to do some like multi dimensional, multi layered thinking that's just burning tokens just to say. That's a great answer. You are so smart.

A (17:20)

Well, you know, it is interesting because you do get. I really, I mean maybe I should just do a test but I really wonder how this agentic. You know, we talked last week about how GPT5 always asks like, do you want me to do this for you? Like right, your friend at the barbecue where it's like where you said, hey, are you flirting with, with ChatGPT? And it's like, hey, I can be more flirty if you want. Like I do wonder when you get deep into those role plays, like what ChatGPT is actually suggesting as terms of the next step.

B (17:50)

I. Someone for research go out. I just can't. I just. That that scares me too actually. That's where I feel like, yeah, we need, we need, we need that story out there of someone who actually goes down that, that rabbit hole. Alex, I'm not gonna say I'm nominating you.

A (18:10)

I'm not gonna say I'm gonna do it. But I'm also not gonna say I'm not gonna do it if I don't have a story for Next week I may have to desperately start to try to go into a role playing with chat GPT and see what happens. God help us all. There was also another interesting, speaking of stats here, another interesting stat. They say 4, 4.2% of chat GPT messages are, are related to computer programming compared to 33% of work related Claude conversations. It's interesting how they have that cl that qualifier work related cloud conversations. But even still I think what they're saying with this is hey, we've really been working on coding and we have a lot of opportunity here on the coding front given how, how intensely, how intense Claude is used for coding and, and sort of how it's still emerging as a use case for us.

B (19:01)

Yeah, I agree that one jumped out at me and we have been talking about this for months now and I think both of us have agreed that clauds essentially pivot towards coding as a core use case in terms of monetization has actually been a seemingly successful one as they've been just ripping through revenue growth. But yeah, it felt like as the new Codex product came out, this is another one like hey everybody, we have plenty of opportunity here and Claude's already a little bit saturated so, so it definitely again this one felt like one of those very, very convenient statistics that was, that was put out there. I, I'll say though actually no this one and I wasn't surprised by it either because again I feel everyone I speak with, ChatGPT is not the default for coding assistance and coding help. So this made sense.

A (20:00)

That's right. Okay, let's talk a little bit about work versus not work. 30% of consumer usage is work related and approximately 70% is non work. That is interesting to me.

B (20:13)

Yeah, I think, but again how this stuff gets defined I think is, is difficult but, but also I think we've said before that they have to win consumer and they position themselves as they're going to win consumer and they, they are leading in consumer. So I think this also still kind of helps drive that narrative too. That and, and apparently that it's up from 53 to 70% that is non work usage. So they're showing that this is growing in importance. Every day people are using ChatGPT which I again flirting with it while it's telling you how to grill on a Labor Day weekend. Like that's, I'm going to call that non work usage. So, so overall I think that one seems clear to me.

A (20:59)

There's, there's one last part here which I think is worth talking about. Because they, they particularly call out this decision support side of things and I think it's very interesting. So they say a key way that value is created is through decision support. ChatGPT helps improve judgment and productivity, especially in knowledge intensive jobs. And as people discover these and other benefits, usage deepens with with user cohorts increasing their activity over time through improved models and new use case discovery. A couple things on this. First of all, they are saying that this is a way that chatbot productivity is actually, you can't see it in GDP numbers because it's not like a clear activity. But they say that this is actually already making a difference in terms of economic impact. The other side of it is the fact that they're highlighting this and practical guidance so prominently in this study just suggests to me that I don't think we have fully grasped the level with which people already in the year 2025, three years, nearly three years after the release of ChatGPT, we trust these things. We do. We trust it for guidance in our personal relationships, in our work world, everything from our health to how to, you know, write an email inviting people to a party. For instance, I just wrote an email inviting people to a party and I just screenshotted it and dropped it in ChatGPT and said how's my subject line? And it like suggested three different subject lines. I'm not really the, I don't have a lot of experience inviting people to parties, but Chachi PT has a lot of that baked in. And I was like, you know what? Your subject line is better than mine. Copy paste in a way it goes and the RCPs are flowing in. So just the amount of trust people have in these bots is unbelievable already.

B (22:56)

Is that doing right there or is.

A (22:59)

That thinking, well you're the bot's not doing it. I mean maybe the bot is, but I would put that in thought partner.

B (23:04)

Yeah. So that's where. But I'm guessing that would have been, that would have been categorized as doing in the, in the OpenAI context. I also, that is an interesting point around how GDP and traditional economic metrics aren't capturing any of this because they're only going to capture, I guess improves improvements in output. But all this and this happened, I feel like in the early digital days where there's all this discussion around the time spent posting on Facebook or posting on Twitter or all these kind of things actually created very little economic value. And it was more where people were just spending time and energy. And I think that's actually going to be an Interesting. As people just spend more and more and more time with AI chat, what that actually means for overall measurement of economic activity. Because none of it is going to be captured.

A (24:02)

Yeah.

B (24:02)

Other than your, other than your better converting subject lines to get people to the party. That'll be, that's right.

A (24:09)

Certainly that will be captured. Yes. And drink served. But what do you think about this idea that people trusted already? I mean for all the, and is it trustworthy? Go ahead.

B (24:21)

Okay, two separate questions there. I think. Do people trust it? Yes. I mean, undoubtedly everyone. I think that we definitely have crossed the inflection point of all my normie friends using ChatGPT regularly or using some kind of chatbot, Gemini, Claude, whatever in day to day personal life and just asking it questions. Is it trustworthy? I think, I don't know. It's still tough because like hallucination, I still very clearly get hallucinations on factual information if, if the quality of information around the query is not good. So it's certainly not trustworthy around more niche topics or things where there's kind of like conflicting information out there because it shouldn't be trustworthy. That's not how an LLM is meant to work. So I think that could be more of a problem going forward. But still right now everyone's in the kind of honeymoon phase. What about you?

A (25:24)

That's right. I, I, I do think it is very interesting. I can't tell you whether it's good or bad that so many people trust it. I don't know yet. I don't think we have enough data. I have found it to be trustworthy to a certain extent. For instance, like in situations where I've been sick, I've said give me a, you know, a day to day of where my health is going to be on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of this week. And it's been pretty accurate and it's been able to sort of help me figure out what to do, how to, how to plan things, you know, when to take it easy, when not to. And that's just one small use case I've found it to be. Obviously it hallucinates, but it gets stuff right so often that I found myself trusting it more and more. And it also goes back to this Matthew Prince thing, the CEO of Cloudflare that came on a couple weeks ago and he said people used to click out to the links, now they trust the bot so much they don't even care about the footnotes anymore. I think we're getting to that point.

B (26:26)

Yeah. And I think also is the web dead? Is the web in secular decline for any long time? Listener will know. This is something we've debated regularly. I think just so much of the web actually became less trustworthy or just overly SEO optimized or just unusable that people are actually just excited that there's something that cleanly gives you an answer that at least seemingly or is fairly accurate. So people are just excited about that.

A (26:57)

But yes, but the one tragedy here is that EHOW is relied upon less. So I expect us to produce a generation of less capable leaders because of this.

B (27:08)

Let's bring it back.

A (27:08)

Yow.com Yehow maybe they should merge with Chat GPT. By the way, one last thing, the usage numbers which they included in this report with some really like kind of key data points in terms of how people have used ChatGPT. It is fascinating. So we talked on the show a lot in 2023, 2024 about like, where's the growth of Chat GPT? Is ChatGPT flatlining? And you actually see that getting into mid 2024, it had not reached 200 million users after people said it, you know, hit 100 million early 2023, which you look at the data and it's not quite clear that it did at least weekly users. But then around mid 2024 you see a spike. So it crosses 200 million users in around July 2024. It goes up to 300 million in around January 2024. This year it's on track to hit 800 million weekly users by the end of the year, maybe even more, maybe 900 million. That is astonishing growth. And I have never seen this in any product ever before. And to be honest, not even close.

B (28:23)

No, I agree. And again, you see it, I think like with a lot of technology, when it really is in front of you day to day, in front of not just early adopters, but you know, even the iPhone. I remember I stood in line for the first iPhone and I was made fun of it. My work by people are like, why are you standing in line for a phone? It was a solid like five or six years before you saw it just ubiquitous. And this has become a lot, lot faster where it's just fully immersed in everyone, my parents, pop culture, it's just out there. So I'll, I'll give. And it's a testament to just how revolutionary the actual products are.

A (29:07)

That's right. Yeah, it's in South Park.

B (29:09)

So it's in south park, which was canceled.

A (29:11)

There we go. Yeah, south park was canceled.

B (29:14)

This.

A (29:15)

No, no, it was canceled.

B (29:16)

They removed that. They did not air their new episode. And they said that. They said that, that they did not have it done, which is just odd.

A (29:29)

That never happens. Yes. Okay.

B (29:31)

No, I mean, yeah.

A (29:32)

Anyways, we'll talk, we'll talk about more media weirdness after the break. And if you enjoy data about the chatbots, we have more coming your way as we get into the numbers that Anthropic shared this week. It seems like it's AI usage data week here on Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition. And we'll do more of it right after this. You're used to hearing my voice on the world, bringing you interviews from around the globe.

B (30:00)

And you hear me reporting environment and climate news. I'm Carolyn Beeler.

A (30:05)

And I'm Marco Wurman. We're now with you, hosting the World Together. More global journalism with a fresh new sound.

B (30:11)

Listen to the world on your local public radio station and wherever you find your podcasts.

A (30:23)

And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition. All right, so first half, we talked all about this fascinating data from OpenAI. I feel like that could have been an entire show on its own. Really fascinating stuff. I do love it when these companies publish the data, even if we have to question some of their motives. It's always very interesting to get a picture of where things are going. And we have more data from Anthropic. So Anthropic released its economic index report this week. They say uneven geographic and enterprise AI adoption. A couple interesting stats right off the top. In the US alone, Anthropic says 40% of employers report using AI at work, up from 20% in 2023 two years ago. Such rapid adoption reflects how useful this technology already is for a wide range of application. Its deployability on existing digital infrastructure and its ease of use by typing and speaking without specialized training. Rapid improvement of frontier AI likely reinforces fast adoption along each of these dimensions. Here's a little history lesson they give us. Historically, new technologies took decades to reach widespread adoptions. Adoption electricity took 30 years. The first mass market personal computers reached early adopters in 81, but did not reach the majority of US homes for another 20 years. Even the rapidly adopted Internet took around five years to hit adoption rate that AI has reached in just two years. So Ranjan, turning it to you, what are we supposed to what, what should we make of the rapid adoption of AI? Is it just the nature of the fact that it is so easy to use, as Anthropic is suggesting here? And does that mean we're we're like the, you know, we should be more skeptical because it's been adopted so widespread and we're still trying to sort of find out what the ROI is. Or is it just a bull. Bullish sign because there's been such enthusiastic adoption that it's just going to get crazier from here?

B (32:20)

Yeah, it's the right question because like the moment you're like, this is bigger than electricity. And I think wasn't it Sundar who said like the biggest thing since 5?

A (32:29)

I was in the room for that. I was in the room. I was talking on an NBC show. I think Kara Swisher was hosting it and he said it, it was bigger. AI would be bigger than electricity and bigger than fire. And everyone's like, so this Sundar guy, he's on drugs. But it turns out that, you know, if you said it now, we'd have to at least take that seriously.

B (32:47)

Bigger than fire. I think so, yeah. The speed of it. I, I really was trying to think through like, what would be the corollary. Is it electricity took? Because electricity is a very like heavy infrastructure type of innovation, so to actually diffuse it across houses that are just people is going to take longer. I don't know. Like, if you think about viral apps, could TikTok be somewhat comparable even in terms of scale and speed? Yeah, I don't know. It sounds exciting. It sounds big. That to me still though this like millennia, like looking at the context of like innovations over centuries and millennia, I'm still not there. I'm like, you know what people are. People are flirting with chat GPT a lot more. But is it that revolutionary just yet? We still have to wait and see.

A (33:42)

I'll say this, if I was running again, these studies are marketing in some way. They're also helpful and informative. But we can't separate the two. If I was running the publication of one of these at a company whose product was taking off this way, would I compare it to electricity and fire? I mean, hell yeah. That my job was marketing. I think I would if I'm. But I'm looking at it now. Am I going to say it as an impartial observer that it is? No, I'm not. But I do think that the, the fast adoption rate is definitely notable and I think we'll probably have answers about what this technology will actually do sooner rather than later. Given the investment and given the attention and we have seen we so so anthropic didn't just give us some of this data about enterprise use by the way, I think 43, 40% of enterprise use, maybe that's on API side of things. We know that many more people are using chat GPT within their organizations, but here's like some interesting data on what cloud is being used for. So coding is still number one use case at 36%. But educational tasks have surged from 9.3% to 12.4% and scientific tasks are now 6 point. They went from 6.3% to 7.2%. This is an interesting thing for you, Ranjan. Users are entrusting Claude with more autonomy. Directive conversations where users delegate complex delegate complete tasks to Claude have jumped from 29, 27% to 39%. We're seeing an increased program creation, encoding and a reduction in debugging, suggesting that users might be able to achieve more of their goals in a single exchange. So Claude being used for education, science and more complete tasks. Go do this Claude. And then people trust it.

B (35:29)

Yeah, actually. And again, as we've discussed, those all very neatly fit into anthropic strategic objectives. So as we get into these, it's like we know anthropic is pushing Claude into more coding more kind of like educational scientific use cases. And very conveniently I will say I was just looking. They presented this research not in that academic PDF format, but actually as a blog post. So my one call out to Anthropic, just make it a PDF that looks like an academic paper and we'll, we'll trust it more. But, but overall it's. All of this stuff I think is interesting. I think it's, it feels correct. Again, I, I don't know anyone who's using Claude that much in terms of the thought partner side of it, other than my, my co host of Margins John. He's been using, he's been, he's like a clod head for thought partnership through and through. But, but overall, yeah, I don't know anyone else who's, who's using it. So this, this all seems to add up.

A (36:35)

I unfortunately have some news to report to you here, which is that there is a big group that seems to be using it for thought partnership and that is the U.S. government. The city that or a region that had the most CLAUDE adoption per capita is Washington dc. So US government seems like it's being run by Claude, which frankly might be an improvement.

B (37:03)

I don't know what that says about Claude right now.

A (37:07)

Claude cancel Jimmy Kimmel.

B (37:08)

Yeah. Claude is testifying, going to be pulled up in front of Congress and has to answer some questions. Yeah, I wonder though See, this is where the data gets kind of just questionable. Like the way they define per capita usage, I actually looked, they had a formula around like total usage relative to overall population. And I mean if you just have a couple of big federal contracts that are using CLAUDE and DC is a smaller population density area relative to like, you know, and most other cities, that would skew that data completely. So I don't know that one. That one seems not the most easy to understand.

A (37:54)

Let's get to one headline that I think was pretty interesting that sort of got the most attention here and that is Automation tasks are surpassing augmentation for Claude. They, sorry, anthropic says 77% of business uses involve automation compared to about 50% of Claude users. And you look at the chart that they put put together and automation was actually a, was actually much less for 41% automation compared to 55% augmentation. I think this is in their V1 today automation has, has passed augmentation 49 automation 47 augmentation. So this idea that. Are people trying to augment or automate work. The study seems to suggest that automation is taking priority. However, I will just say that oftentimes you can automate work tasks and then free somebody else, free someone up to do something else. Is that an augmentation task? No, it's probably in the data scene as automation, but it's actually, it's actually the, the same thing as an augmentation. If you guys.

B (39:03)

Yeah, I think. No, no, no, I, I agree. Like again, what does, what is the definition of automation here? Because in reality I'm assuming it's mostly coding because like CLAUDE has some connectors that allow you to do stuff with other systems. I've tried them, they're not great right now. So I cannot imagine that at any kind of scale usage, like people are building these like complex agentic workflows using it. So, so I, I'm curious how they define that directive. I think overall, as listeners can feel like when all these numbers just so neatly fit into the existing strategic narrative of these companies, I have a hard time just, you know, taking it at full face value.

A (39:51)

Yeah, and by the way, that's what we're here for. Like we want to provide nuance in these conversations, we want to read it, we want to attack it with some perspective as impartial outsiders that you wouldn't get necessarily from someone who's just trying to push the company line. So I think overall, just to wrap this up, we both say this is interesting data, I believe, and it is just a data point, I would say, and not the be all end all.

B (40:19)

And you also get incredible recommendations like put your findings into an academic style PDF paper and it will increase the credibility.

A (40:28)

I mean the marketing agency of Roy and Cantroy is. We're just doing work.

B (40:31)

That's one of the core offerings right there. Make your research look more.

A (40:34)

Put it in a PDF.

B (40:35)

Yep, put it in a PDF.

A (40:38)

Listen, it's. These are non obvious things. Okay, we're running out of time. We have two more things to talk about. So briefly, meta has the $799 glasses. We talked about it last week. I don't think we have to go into it too much detail this week, but we now know the the the truth here. Very interesting dichotomy. During this Meta event, reviewers gushing over the glasses Meta on stage unable to get them to work. Now sometimes that's because the wi fi in an event space gets jammed. But it was very interesting to see this happening to me. Big question here is that there's going to be a display on these cameras. Let's see. German says that over time Meta might allow people to offload some functionality to their eyewear that would normally be on their phone. So could this be a replacement for the phone? The display basically lets you have a viewfinder. You see what your your photos are gonna look like before you snap them. There's also live captions, live captions, features that displays spoken words in real time, including translation, similar to closed captions on TV. That's cool. You can message, you can talk on WhatsApp. There's going to be a music app powered by Spotify. Instagram will initially only support direct messages, but Meta plans to add reels and viewing later this year because that's apparently what you have to do on your glasses is sit back and watch a reel. I'm kind of sounding like a hater. I'm interested to use this technology. We both like the Ray Ban metas. I just to me the idea of putting a screen in front of my eyes in a world that I'm already sucked in by computing too much is not very appealing.

B (42:23)

Okay, so this is where I am incredibly excited about this. I talked about it last week, but even from and we'll get into the failed demo. But overall this is exactly what I was hoping for. So for reference I have the Meta Ray Bans taking photos asking very simple questions to Meta AI. Otherwise it doesn't get them walking around New York. I love it. I also actually have snap spectacles. Not like the AR Spectacles, I'd been part of the developer program and had been testing them. So having an augmented reality screen, they're like big and bulky and they're definitely a developer product as opposed to anything kind of consumer already I saw the potential and even like walking around, there's different games you can play with it, you can have different information feeds. So it's still very clunky, the Snap version, but still you could see where the, the Promises is. So to me, this is gonna happen. This is the direction, I think the screen again, if you're watching reels while crossing the street, that's not good. If you have like a light bit of information to. In the 20 degree field of view in the far right of your lens, that shows you a text message so you don't pull out your phone or stare at it as you're walking, which everyone in New York see that he does. I think that's great. So I, I think like that slightly augmented layer of computing, though, if it's done well, this could be massive.

A (43:57)

I remain skeptical, but I'm willing to try them and see what happens. I just again, like, I want to get offline more, honestly.

B (44:07)

No, but come on, this is it. But there is the reality and there's the kind of like the hope and, and to me, and maybe it's New York City more than other cities, but actually I was just, I mean, in Paris and like same people are just. They have their phones out as they're walking around and, and I think anything. And I actually loved that. And I am not the biggest fan of Meta or its leadership for many years, but like I loved Andrew Bosworth talking about. This is about keeping your phone in your pocket. That's what, that's exactly how I've seen this whole interface of computing for a long time. And they are, they're winning. They're winning right now and they're, they're moving in the right direction as well.

A (44:53)

They said the same thing about the Apple watch. And I'm sure you've been with people who you're having a conversation with and their wrist buzzes and they look at it and it's some dumb notification and it ruins the train of conversation there. So, yeah, I will reserve judgment here. Am I looking forward to using them? Hell yes. Am I nervous? Also? Yes, also.

B (45:13)

And the social normalcy of like, if you're in a conversation with someone and you see their eyeballs kind of like moving to the right and not looking at you, are they, are they just like Scrolling reels right there. That's. It'll add some interesting dynamics to human interaction.

A (45:33)

I'm not going to remember all the parodies of Google Glass. It's like, I'm on a date and I'm, like, looking up things to say. Now especially, could you imagine you're, like, on a date like this? There will be a parody of this. Someone's on a date and they have meta AI turned on, and it's teaching them how to be, like, smooth talker.

B (45:50)

Hey, you know what? If it helps those who cannot talk smoothly, is that a bad thing, Alex?

A (45:56)

Yes. If it be yourself. Blow that date now. Well, she wasn't right for you anyway.

B (46:03)

You become dependent on it.

A (46:05)

Yep, that's right.

B (46:06)

Just stays chat GPT. She'll always be there for you.

A (46:10)

Could you imagine a relationship where someone's, like, super smooth in, like, outdoor environments, but, like, the second you go for a swim, they're just, like, a total dud because they can't wear their glasses.

B (46:22)

On the beach?

A (46:22)

There's gonna be a movie, I'm telling you.

B (46:25)

Yeah, and we'll make it on vo.

A (46:28)

Yeah. All right. So they. They did talk about the why the demo failed. Apparently Zuck said, hey, meta start live AI. It activated everybody's AI in the room and effectively DDoS the servers. All of the servers were. All the traffic was also routed to the company's servers in Iceland, apparently. So that's why it broke. All right, I'm not going to kill them on. On not being able to demo live.

B (46:53)

I'm so happy we talked about this last week, how there's been no live demos. Apple destroyed what is a live demo, and I loved it. Honestly, like, not trying to give them too much credit here, but I was like, I. Like a slightly wonky demo is awesome. Is like, that's what the world wants right now. It's been so long. I actually think it's going to give a lot more credibility among developers that this is real and it's wonky and it didn't work on stage right now, but they're at least showing what is real rather than Apple. Everyone has lost all faith in. In terms of, like, what's real and what's not true.

A (47:33)

All right, we got five minutes left. I want to touch on the Jimmy Kimmel thing. I wish we had much more time for this segment. Basically, what happened this morning was you and I were texting and asking each other whether we should weigh in on Kimball. Not to speak for both of us. I think we both believe that it's ridiculous that the government pushed Kimmel off air, even if it's temporary. If you're going to take yourself serious, if you're going to be taken seriously, you have to be willing to, you know, to be confident enough to take ridicule. Goes for the left and the right. It's just my perspective, not speaking for Anjan here. And when you start to go after comedians, even if you don't think they're funny, which I know the government, US Government doesn't think Jimmy Kimmel is very funny, you look weak. And to me, I think that that is, that is what's happening here. It's. You've seen obviously a lot of people speaking out from every political angle, basically saying this is ridiculous. So I don't think we have much to add on that front. I think what is interesting here is the question of can you be canceled in the traditional way in 2025? Because let's say you were to leave a network like Colbert is going to, and maybe Kimmel will after this. You saw the opportunity to form an independent media agency. And you could look at a list of a long line of people who've done this. Shane Gillis after he was canceled by SNL before joining the cast, but also Tucker Carlson, Megan, Megan Kelly, even Bill Maher after he was canceled, although he ended up back on hbo. So maybe Bill isn't like the perfect example, but you could end up basically going independent, not being dependent on any, any company, and you could do better that way. So, you know, obviously, like, without getting too much into the details of like the, the whole thing before, I'm just kind of curious, like, what you think this actually means for Kimmel and whether this is as impactful as it was previously.

B (49:32)

Taking the second question first, is this as impactful as it would have been in the past? No, I don't think it is at all. In fact, I mean, that playbook of they canceled me subscribe to my substack is something that like so many people have perfected in terms of monetizing so well. And in reality, like from a distribution standpoint, late night TV is such a weird format that the more I like, I hadn't spent a lot of time in a long, like, reminding myself how nexstar and Sinclair and the whole affiliate model works with these networks. But again, these. No one is watching this stuff live anymore. So the value comes out in the clips afterwards. There's still value in the platform to an extent, but in reality, Jimmy Kimmel is the brand. Stephen Colbert is the brand like the Late Night show to or the Tonight Show. Like, these things are no longer the brand anymore. So to me, like, you can get canceled. And if, especially if you make that a central part of your they're coming for me in the mainstream media. Even Karen Natia, I'm not sure to pronounce it from the Washington Post. Yeah, like, again, like, she had an entire substack post about, like, they canceled me. They're trying to silence me. Subscribe to my subsk now. So, like, it's become such an almost like frustrating playbook, but a successful one, that if Kimmel wanted to, he could go all in blue sky, subscribe to my substack and like, be just as influential. I'd be curious, though, if someone like him wants to play that game. I don't think he does, but I don't know. What about you?

A (51:19)

I think he could do it. Obviously, it's like, worked. Conan o' Brien is a great example of a comedian who wasn't canceled but left and I think has just as much influence, if not more with his podcast now than and obviously much more control than he did previously. This is again, us just like, you know, there have been some people who've been like, well, he had bad ratings anyway and he wasn't profitable. I don't think that was the scenario. But I think the overriding story of, like, if you're somebody in his position, what are you facing now and how impactful is this? That that is for us a pertinent question. And there was this great line on cnn. Jeff Jarvis, God bless him, was there and he's told the panel the only good news I see, and I hate to say this to my friends at cnn, is that mass media are dying. And it is sort of this thing where, like, if you're an entertainer or in a position like that, it just today it makes much more sense to own your audience. And maybe this idea that you would have a comedian anchoring a network's evening coverage is just going to go away.

B (52:21)

Yeah, I, I think and Jeff has been saying that since 20, 2010, so he's probably not.

A (52:28)

I mean, he's obviously he got it wrong. He doesn't seem like the trend is counterfactual to his argument.

B (52:33)

I'll give him he got it right. But in, in truth, though, he was going viral because he was on cnn. Like, I think this is where there's still there's power and platform to have those kind of secondary. I agree. Like, if only 129,000 people are viewing live between ages of 18 to 45. Jimmy Kimmel. Yeah, but the influence he has is that actually doesn't denigrate it at all. It means that we all see clips on Instagram or TikTok and YouTube all day long. But in terms of the business model advertisers are paying to be shown alongside that live viewing part of it for the actual TV show, which is dead. I mean, it's completely dead. So. So I do think we. It's a good reminder. We need to rethink that overall business model. I think none of that has anything to do with why he was suspended. And it is terrifying and it's going to get uglier and darker, I think, before it gets better. But, but overall I think I'm not, I'm not pouring one out for the Sinclair Medias of the world.

A (53:42)

Right. Okay, I know you have to go. One last thought and then I'll end. This is, you know, the next generation of Jimmy Kimmels are not going to look like this generation, like the next comedian is not going to have this aspiration to go host the Tonight show, the Late show on a television network. They are the Jimmy Kimmel Show. They are going to be just. It shows how quickly we've changed. They're going to be digital native. They are going to have a YouTube channel, they're going to have a podcast. They're going to be the owners of their content and not be subject to this stuff. So I think it's unfortunate what happened, but I also think that it's, it's looking forward. The government's power to do this type of stuff is going to be much, much more limited because they don't have the ability to like go to a YouTube and say yank Jimmy Kimmel.

B (54:26)

Yeah, and just like both of us who own our own audience, not yet channels and content. Yeah, yeah, but just cancel us so we can go on tour saying we got canceled. Subscribe.

A (54:39)

All right. Get us in the Discord. Join the Discord. Become a paid subscriber. Join the Discord Revolt, Overthrow Ron, John and I and we will get working on the next iteration of eHow. So thank you all for listening. Thank you, Ranjan. Always great to talk to you, Ranjan. Thank you again.

B (54:53)

See you next week.

A (54:55)

All right, everybody. Next week I believe we're going to have Inon Costika, the co founder of Wiz, talking about AI and cybersecurity. So we will see you next time on big technology podcast.