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Big Technology Podcast
Meta's AI Agent Plan, Grok's Perversion, Prison Of Financial Mediocrity
00:49:07
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- [00:00]
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Ranjan Roy
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- [01:15]
Alex Wilhelm
Meta is buying AI startup Manus to do what exactly? Grok undresses people and apologizes. Who's responsible and why are so many young people turning to prediction markets and sports betting? Here's a theory that's coming up on a Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition right after this. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition where we break down the news in our traditional cool headed and nuanced format. We have a great show for you today as we kick off 2026. We're going to talk about why Meta is buying the AI agent startup Manus. We're going to talk about Grok. I wouldn't even say going rogue, but basically following the prompts of people on Twitter and bikini. Fine, that's a word. Undressing people and then apologizing afterwards and who's responsible for that. And then we'll also take a look at a great piece called the Prison of Financial Mediocrity and an explanation for why so many people are turning to sports gambling, sports betting and prediction markets. And joining us as always to do it here as we kick off the year is Ranjan Roy of Margins. Ranjan, great to see see you.
- [02:20]
Ranjan Roy
Great to see you. Happy New Year. Where in the world are you?
- [02:23]
Alex Wilhelm
Alex, tell our listeners happy New Year. I am in Peru. It's been a pretty wild couple of weeks in South America. Couple more days here and then back to New York. How about you? How's your Christmas break been?
- [02:35]
Ranjan Roy
It's been great. I'm back in New York finally. I was in, I was at a very nice New England holiday vacation up in Boston, the New Hampshire skiing. So excited to get back to it though.
- [02:48]
Alex Wilhelm
And we both had Meta Ray Bans fails, which we're going to talk about as we go through this Meta segment here. And we'll get to that in a moment. But I think the biggest news over the past week has been that Meta bought the AI startup Manus for more than $2 billion. This according to the Wall Street Journal, Meta Platforms has agreed to buy Manus, a Singapore based company with Chinese founders that conducts deep research and performs other tasks for paying users. The deal is being closed at more than $2 billion. Manus gained a wide following after previewing in March an AI agent capable of producing detailed research reports and building custom websites using AI models developed by companies such as Anthropic and China's Alibaba. The demo followed the release of Deep Seq Made in China AI that rocked Silicon Valley because of its advanced capabilities, coupled with claims by its developer that it was developed with far less computing power than American rivals. I think for those who follow AI closely, we all remember the Manus AI agent as sort of the highlight of this company with like the, the journal kind of winked at as it highlighted the China connection at the beginning of this story. But I'm actually curious to hear your perspective, Ranjan, on this one. What do you think the significance is of Meta, a consumer company, buying Manus, which seems enterprise focused and AI agent focused? What's happening here? Do you have any theory of the case?
- [04:18]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah. So this is very squarely in my world and for longtime listeners. I work at Writer, which is an enterprise AI focused company and, and almost six months ago we were debating because I was saying what is an AI agent is being redefined. It's no longer these kind of blueprints with blocks stitched together, but in reality it's just kind of like defining tools, connectors, giving a prompt and letting the agent go do its thing. And I think this is the year, this was one of my predictions last week. This is a year that that vision of what agentic AI is is going to be realized. The power of it. So I think Manus is, is just another. They definitely had one of the more popular, somewhere between consumer and enterprise. Still more consumer focused. You can get on there for like 30 bucks a month, but still the idea that you, you can do things very quickly and define these workflows that actually start to work. And I think that's going to be the battleground. OpenAI is getting involved with all their enterprise focused hires recently. I think this is going to be one of the biggest parts of 2026 and that's self serving as well. But I think what's interesting is that last point you brought up is that why is Meta buying them? And, and honestly I was racking my head and I don't understand how this gets integrated into the product. The product, it's like this isn't going to be helping consumers, you know, book their flight. That remember when that was what everyone said Agentic would be? This is something different. It is going to be more work and enterprise focus. So that part still leaves me guessing other than Alexander Wang and just went to Mark and said this person's smart. You can buy them for two and a half billion and it's not just paying a researcher a billion dollars.
- [06:10]
Alex Wilhelm
Okay, so I have some thoughts on this. So first of all, the manuscript team doesn't even seem like it's going to be reporting Alexander Wang. It's going to be reporting to Meta's chief operating officer, which is something that the story said in the beginning. In the release Meta said we plan to scale the services, the service to many more businesses. My belief is that is a head fake. I think Meta is making a big consumer agent play. They think the people at Manus know how to do this. They think that over the coming years, like especially if you're right, Ranjan, and that the AI agent stuff will start to work. Consumers are going to want to go to an app that's going to be able to handle that travel booking scenario for them pretty well. And I think Meta is doing something really smart here, which is it realizes that's going to be a competitive edge. It's going to be a differentiator. The people that get the credit cards first are probably going to be the ones that, you know, start to embed that consumer behavior in their AI agent and that's what they're going after. And notice how the statement's very interesting. We plan to scale the service to many more businesses. Maybe they'll do that. But ultimately I think the interesting thing here is what they do, what they didn't say which is that, yes, they might scale it to some more businesses, but ultimately this is a way of them getting into this, this, you know, the space where Apple Intelligence wanted to play. Build the AI platform, build the thing that people want to use that gets things done for them and tell the world that, yeah, this is more enterprise as you come out the gate. Really though, developing the consumer application here and if you own that platform, then you're going to win.
- [07:52]
Ranjan Roy
I love this. Okay, you know what? I'm starting to, I'm starting to feel that a bit more because to me, one of the most kind of like amazing parts of how quickly seeing agentic AI evolve in this way is like it just makes so many basic things I do regularly a lot easier. Like when you receive an email from this one recipient, go research this person, go research this company, send me a slack notification. Like that's all stuff I have fully built into my life, but professionally. So there's so much opportunity around that on the consumer side. But yet you're right, who has, who has the actual like economic incentive to actually push this within their product? OpenAI keeps saying the word. Greg Brockman again tweeted. Enterprise, agentic, AI adoption and scientific research are the two most important trends of the year. So like, so everyone is just leaving consumer agentic to the wayside. And you're right, Apple Intelligence, I mean, we all know. So okay, I like that. And Manus is very, very slick in terms of its ui. It's very user friendly. So if something could be more consumer than enterprise, I think it could definitely be them. I like it.
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Alex Wilhelm
And you need that, you need that specialized knowledge to be able to go do that. I mean Meta have brought this whole superintelligence team aboard and, and like their task is like build the best model. But ultimately this is again going to product. This is how do you productize these things. And I don't think it's any coincidence that this is happening as Fiji Simo, the former head of Facebook app, is sitting inside OpenAI and thinking about how to build an ad platform. And not only that, when you start to research things in OpenAI within ChatGPT, there are new, I don't know if you would call them maybe like cards that will help you do more browsing for things that you might make a purchase decision on. I know for myself personally and I'm sure anyone that used these tools, like tools like ChatGPT to plan, you know, their, their winter breaks, I mean for me going through South America, ChatGPT was super important. It was a pivotal tool. And the one thing that was missing for was for me to just say, all right, that sounds like the right option. Go ahead and book it. And if Meta's models can get to the point where they're helpful in this way, and the agentic side of things can get to the point that they're useful in this way, then all of a sudden Meta's AI effort goes from something that's kind of laughable, something that Yann Lecun, even today in the Financial Times is saying, you know, they fudged the benchmarks in a way for Llama four. They go from that to becoming a player. Now, there's a lot of ifs here, right? I said if a lot of times. Uh, but ultimately it seems to me like if this is what they're doing, it's a sound strategy.
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Ranjan Roy
Yeah. Even more, I think, let's not even talk, but are you actually booking that flight to South America or that tour? Like, if you start to think about it, there's so many elements with shopping, with travel, with anything consumer focused, with health, with, like, personal health, where you're asking these kind of recurring routine questions or have these ongoing conversations, and rather than having to go to ChatGPT and remember to type it in, you're already scrolling Instagram and Facebook and now you just have one additional block that's like, oh, yeah, do you want to pick up where we left off? I actually just found this other article that would be useful for you or this other flight alert that. Do you want me to go book it? So, like, having you already locked into that interface does start to get pretty interesting. And we're going to get into Adam Masseri and what he was talking about, like, AI within the feed. But if this is the direction, I'm starting to find this pretty interesting right now.
- [11:46]
Alex Wilhelm
All right, one more thought about this. You mentioned the agent going proactive and suggesting, hey, remember we were talking about this? What do you think about this? What does that sound like? Isn't that a great ad business waiting to be built? And Meta can definitely build it on the foundation that it has.
- [12:01]
Ranjan Roy
Exactly. And Meta's already stuffed their feeds full of plenty of ads, and everyone is totally okay with it. And it is not slowed down. Even as ad load increases, everyone just uses the product more and more. So if anyone can do it, if it's already native to what that platform they're using versus, I would be horrified the moment ChatGPT says that in the context of a chat, even more so, it seems like that's a good place for for Meta to get involved. Did we just. I I really hope this is a strategy because this is so sound that right. If it's not, I'm going to be disappointed.
- [12:40]
Alex Wilhelm
And weirdly, you're right. Meta is at a better starting point to introduce the business model here. Yeah, like it's, it's detriments are its benefit in some way.
- [12:49]
Ranjan Roy
Yep. I mean everyone is completely used to advertising. Their advertising is good. Let's not take that away. They have made very, very good relevant advertising that's so good. All holiday season, all my cousins and everyone. Now everyone just openly jokes like oh, I'm getting tracked. Haha. Oh we were just talking about that. Now I'm getting tons of ads. We clicked on it once but everyone's good with it. So I think go consumer, become the entire consumer agentic layer. Disrupt every travel and shopping and personal any kind of consumer website.
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Alex Wilhelm
It's an opportunity that is probably what's going to happen. Now the question is what happens to Meta's feeds as we see more and more AI? And you remember not long ago it seemed like they were encouraging Shrimp Jesus and other forms of AI slop in their feed and the type of conversations that they encouraged. Now the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, is coming out and talking a little bit about what will make content stand out in the age of AI. This is from Business Insider. Instagram's head says the aesthetic that helped the app become popular is dead and AI helped kill it. Instagram's top executive thinks AI has made the social media site's carefully curated grid a thing of the past. Unless you're 25, under 25 and use Instagram, you probably think of the app as a feed of square photos. The aesthetic is polished, lots of makeup, skin smoothing, high contrast photography, beautiful landscapes, mosseri wrote. That feed is dead. People largely stopped sharing personal moments to the feed years ago. He said that users kept their friends updated on their personal lives through unpolished shoe shots and unflattering candid shared via direct message. Moeri says the growing ubiquity of AI images meant creators would have to embrace this trend and shy. Oh yeah, embrace the trend of rawness and shy away from curated grids and professional style photography in favor of a more raw aesthetic. Flattering imagery is cheap to produce and boring to consume. People want content that feels real. The social media feeds are starting to fill up with synthetic everything. So what's your reaction to this? Ranjan? It doesn't seem like it's exactly A brand new thing and I don't think it really is AI related.
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Ranjan Roy
This one hit hard and let me explain why. So I worked in direct to consumer fashion and apparel for a number of years at Adore Me. And in 2021, Mark Zuckerberg starts openly saying on earnings calls that reels are the future. More lo fi content could Bas TikTok is the threat and that they're starting to advertise the increase in percentage of reels on your feed. Now we all know what happened. I vividly remember getting into an argument with our creative director and as you can imagine, a traditional fashion creative director being told that highly produced, beautiful imagery is not the future and it's going to be lo fi short form video content. We all know how it played out, but this one just. I was already sending this to former co workers because I was like, I mean, we pushed hard, but it was like that idea that Instagram was one thing and then it became something completely different. Yet everyone uses it more and more and more. Again, Mark Zuckerberg was right. Like, I have to say, there's been a few of these really big strategic moves. I don't know if old timers will remember. The shift from like HTML5 to native mobile apps was like a big bet they made. I honestly think quietly taking this incredibly profitable, engaging engine of photos that are beautiful and square and turning it into a TikTok clone and just doing it and doing it successfully. I think like this is kind of the final it happened. Now no one can argue that this is, this is what Instagram is today.
- [16:53]
Alex Wilhelm
That's right. And the AI, the AI thing is interesting because on one hand, when I read what Mosseri said, I was like, oh yeah, maybe he's exaggerating a bit because there is AI slop out there and like, maybe my nice pictures from my vacation will look better than the shrimp. Jesus. But then you're right, he. There is, there is a lot of truth to it, which is that AI is so good at taking the average of averages and it takes the average of like, you know, when you think about, you know, say, you say, create me a beautiful picture. It takes all these beautiful pictures that have been posted on the Internet and gives you the average of that. So if you put what you think is like a beautiful picture on your feed, it's just gonna look like something that people have seen over and over again. Maybe even before AI, but even more so afterwards. And now I'm really rethinking my vacation. I was really cooking up a nice Post vacation. And I don't know what I'm. I don't know.
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Ranjan Roy
I got.
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Alex Wilhelm
Maybe I got to put a picture of my feet or. Well, not feet. That would be. That'd be weird. Did you buy a lot of my shoes?
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Ranjan Roy
Did you buy a lot of.
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Alex Wilhelm
That was Black Friday 2024. That was one of my great moments. I'm still using those socks. I mean, I would hope so. I bought 24 of them. But Alex, feet picks. No.
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Ranjan Roy
Maybe when we're all in the prison of financial mediocrity, which we'll be talking about. It's the only way to go.
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Alex Wilhelm
I'm starting to regret taking the conversation in this direction.
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Ranjan Roy
Well, no, okay, okay. Let me try to bring it back. AI Slop.
- [18:23]
Alex Wilhelm
Please do.
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Ranjan Roy
What I think is interesting about this is like. And you actually made the point right there when we. Everyone says AI Slop. You think shrimp Jesus, you think six fingered baby. You think like crappy content. But in reality, AI Slop has become to me that average of beautiful. That it's like what everything expects it to be. Engaging, beautiful, highly produced. And he actually made the point too that he said flattering image is cheap to produce and boring to consume. He said that like it's the. And this isn't just like AI, you know, like mid journey image diffusion models. This is Apple making every photo run through 10 layers of processing and like color correction. So even that, that, that kind of AI also has contributed to this. But so to me it's really interesting because it's like AI Slop is actually beautiful, boring, generic imagery that everyone has taken versus what is. What's engaging is something that's just real, raw, unfiltered. Not going to talk about feed picks, but something along those lines.
- [19:40]
Alex Wilhelm
Well, there was a thing, there was a line in the, in the story where he talked about untied shoes or something like that. That's shoe shots and unflattering candidates. That's what I was going for. I apologize about bringing up feet, but, but, but.
- [19:55]
Ranjan Roy
Okay, so then you get into the question of like, is AI generated content good for these feeds? Because I. One thing I'll admit, actually, I have a great Facebook story. I. And you know you love my Facebook story sometimes because I don't go on it often. And actually, and as we get into our meta Ray Ban stories from the holidays, I was home in Lexington, Mass. Where I'm from. Over Thanksgiving, my drone got caught in the top of a tree at the elementary school park area where I grew up. So I kind of considered It. God. Over Christmas break, someone from my high school I had not Talked to in 20 years sent me a message that someone had posted in a Lexington, Mass. Residence group. Hey, found your drone. Does anyone recognize this person? And it's a photo of me. They'd taken the SD card out and pulled the photos. So someone randomly posting to this town Facebook group, someone from my high school I haven't Talked to in 20 years sending me that message. And I got my drone back. So even my wife was like, you have to say something nice for Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook for this one.
- [21:09]
Alex Wilhelm
I think that is a beautiful story.
- [21:11]
Ranjan Roy
It is, right? I was like, this is one of those. Remember the promise of social media, what it was supposed to be? I thought that was pretty amazing, but it made me go on Facebook a number of times, which I don't normally do, while I was waiting for confirmation, organizing around this drone. And it reminded me what's actually on my Facebook feed as a non heavy user. And my God, there that, that shrimp Jesus version of AI Slop is. It's there. It's alive. It's. It's just raging in there right now.
- [21:48]
Alex Wilhelm
Yeah, well, you know, you've definitely answered a question for me, which is what happens when you lose your drone in a tree? I thought maybe you call the fire department like you would for a stranded cat, but I'm glad you didn't do that. I'm glad you use social media. I would cover the thing.
- [22:01]
Ranjan Roy
I was, I was actually wondering about it. But like, as per Reddit, fire departments are not very friendly about that. And if you're devoting resources and the cost to, like, there's actually lots of debates, the cost to the taxpayer versus the cost of a drone. So I was like, I'm not gonna, not gonna do that. Just hope for the best. And it worked.
- [22:23]
Alex Wilhelm
Well, I mean, in, in the defense of people that do call the fire department, I mean, they do have a truck with a ladder on the back. So, you know, it's like sort of, well, what do you expect? But anyway, let's talk briefly before we go to break about our meta Ray Ban stories. So I'll tell you one. So you and I are both big fans of the meta Ray Ban stories. It turns out that they're not very good in the cold. I had brought my pair with me to Ecuador, where I was for a good chunk of the end of December trying to climb up Cotopaxi, which is Fairly big volcano, 19,350ft, and we were a couple hundred feet Underneath the summit. And I was like, all right, time to break these things out. I'm gonna film this all. First person on the way up and I break them out the case, put them on, turn them on. They were fully charged when we were on our way up and the battery was totally empty. I know you had a similar experience here too, with your.
- [23:16]
Ranjan Roy
And I, I, I, I will say I was only at 2,7 43ft in altitude at the summit of Mount Sunapee in New Hampshire, but I was very excited. I was going to take my son. It was the first time at the top of the mountain, had my Ray Bans fully charged. Even check the battery before getting on the lift, get up top, start taking video, get about five seconds of video. And the battery died too. So I was like, pretty unhappy. I had prepared for that with the Ray Ban. So if anyone's listening and knows about cold weather effect on Ray Ban, I mean, I guess it should be pretty, I don't know, it's standard. But if there's, if there's any way to prevent this and still get these shots, let us know.
- [24:07]
Alex Wilhelm
Some praise for Meta, some criticism for Meta, but altogether, you know, hey, look, they're, they're in the arena, right? They're, they're doing things. They're building AI, they have social feeds, they have the smart device that we both tend to like. Okay, small flaw, but you know what, but that is, that is the Meta picture.
- [24:26]
Ranjan Roy
Think about this. This is the first time in a long time we have devoted the first half at least of the show to Meta and AI. So I think if nothing else, they're back in the arena, as you said, 20, 26. Maybe there's going to be something big.
- [24:47]
Alex Wilhelm
I think so. I think there's a chance for them. Absolutely. All right. So, I mean, there better be something big given the amount of money that they're spending. But we'll talk about it through the year. All right, on the other side of this break, we're going to talk about Nvidia's deal to license Grok, the. Not the Elon Musk Grok, the chip Grok, license its AI technology. Bring over. Their CEO will also discuss. We are going to have a double Grok, I guess. Second segment, we'll discuss Elon Musk's Grok going bad. And then finally, the prison of financial mediocrity, which Ranjan and I are both excited to speak about. We'll do that right after this.
- [25:20]
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Ranjan Roy
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- [26:32]
Alex Wilhelm
We'Re back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition. All right, briefly, Ranjan, interesting story here. Nvidia License this is from the Wall Street Journal. Nvidia licenses Grox AI technology as demand for cutting chip Cutting edge chips grows Nvidia has forged a licensing deal with the chip startup Grok for its AI inference technology, a sign of growing demand for cutting edge AI chip. Under the deal, Grox CEO and founder Jonathan Ross will be joining Nvidia along with its president and some of the startup staff. Actually, it's 90% of the startup staff. I guess this is still not an acquisition. Grok's language processing unit chips are built for inference, the everyday process that occurs when consumers or businesses ask trained AI models to provide answers, make predictions or draw conclusions on new data. Ranjan, what do you think the significance is of this? If we don't, it's an acqui higher position, right? That's what it is. Do you, do you think this is Nvidia recognizing that Grok basically because it does provide inference services for AI models, could over time be a very big threat and they'd much rather have it on the inside than otherwise?
- [27:41]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah, I think. And I'm glad you said Aqua hire position because I was trying to remember what that phrase was. But I think to start when I was reading about this deal like now the first thing I ever do in any of these in news items is try to figure out is it actually an acquisition? And this one was one of those funky ones. Whereas Manus was a straightforward old school acquisition, they actually acquired the company. Here we have lots of quirks around to who is joining how, what is licensed, what is not, what's intellectual property, what's not. I think as you said, this is a as it's talent and technology. It's like the entire chip. It's the language processing unit, it's if Nvidia. They just have to stay ahead of whatever competition Google and their TPUs are coming like. So I think it makes sense from that standpoint. Is it like, do you think it was just to avoid antitrust that they structured in this way or.
- [28:45]
Alex Wilhelm
Absolutely. There's no other explanation.
- [28:48]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah. I mean it's so funny how everyone just says that like everyone, even people who are very strongly like for antitrust enforcement, even people who are hate Lena Khan, everyone just casually is like oh yeah, then everyone's just doing that to end around antitrust. But yeah, I think it makes sense to me from like a strategic standpoint in terms of the actual chip technology and having some kind of differentiated innovation versus like what you're typically working on.
- [29:22]
Alex Wilhelm
So I mean just listen to the details of the deal. So Grok was valued last at 6.9 billion in a $750 million September round. This was a $20 billion aqua higher position. This is from Axios. Most Gro shareholders will receive per share distributions tied to the $20 billion valuation. 85% will be paid upfront, 10% paid mid year and the remainder at the end of 2026. Around 90% of Grok employees are said to be joining Nvidia and they will be paid cash for all their vested shares. Their unvested shares will be paid out at the $20 billion valuation. That's an acquisition in everything. It's, it's effectively everything but in. And they calling it, to call it a non exclusive licensing agreement is it's, it's an in. I feel like it's an insult to the intelligence of the people reading and.
- [30:14]
Ranjan Roy
Sharing about the lawyers who came up with that one. And I mean, and again I'm saying that in jest because I think it's actually like in reality what also happened is here's a promising alternative technology infrastructure to Nvidia's core business and they've taken it out. Like does that mean they're going to now use this and compete against Google and maybe. Or they just took out a promising technology and for 20 billion and it's actually well worth it for them because they're, I mean market cap alone increase on the, on the news of the acquisition was more than that. Even though I never liked that barometer. Still, it's not a bad deal for them in any way.
- [30:59]
Alex Wilhelm
I think it should be blocked. I think Grok is a promising company as an independent company. I just spoke with the company CFO at Web Summit. I mean people can watch that interview on YouTube. You know, I did that a couple months ago also. Funny story from the big technology standpoint. We were supposed to have Jonathan Ross on the show in late December and the night before the recording he canceled. And I was like, I've never seen that happen before. Why is that? And now I understand.
- [31:26]
Ranjan Roy
Now you know, now you know.
- [31:29]
Alex Wilhelm
But listeners do not despair. We have a great January coming up. We have the founders of Core Weave who are going to be on on Wednesday. We have the CEO of Mistral coming up. The, the week after that most likely and then a string of promise. Well, promises to be really fun conversations from Davos coming up. All right, let's talk about Grok, the other Grok. Let's go Grok to Grok. Here he is from Bloomberg. This is a pretty disturbing story. Grok posts sexual images of minors after lapses in safeguards. And Elon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot said lapses in safeguards led to the generation of sexualized images of minors that had posted to social media site X. Grok created images of minors in minimal clothing in response to user prompts over the past few days, violating its own acceptable use policy which prohibits the sexualization of children. The offending images were taken down. The chatbot said we've invented, we've identified lapses in safeguards and are urgently fixing them. Grok posted on Friday adding that child sexual abuse material is illegal and prohibited. This is something that I just sort of, I had seen the discussion of come across my X feed over, over the past couple days where people were just like basically at messaging Grok and asking it to, you know, remove users clothing and, and it's part of a growing trend of, of a problem. Uh, the, the Internet Watch foundation, this according again to Bloomberg Story, a nonprofit that identifies child sexual abuse material online reported a 400% increase in AI generated imagery in the first six months of 2025. Ranjan, I wanted to bring this story up a because I think it's important to cover but also I think you in the past have talked about how worrying it is when these bots that are very powerful do have the vulnerabilities that allow them to be manipulated and sort of what that means for the safety of AI overall. So what's your thought here?
- [33:31]
Ranjan Roy
It's a tough one because to me this does not appear to be a vulnerability of the system. And in reality, given the creator of Grok and the overall kind of like vibe of X as this kind of weird frat house is, Andrew Tate light, whatever it's becoming more and more every day. Like to me this isn't some kind of like, you know, like red teaming vulnerability. This is probably at the very core of how GROK thinks of images and people probably were doing this who were building it as they were actually like training this out. It just feels like this is just very in line with everything else. Grok was supposed to be the non PC woke AI that just, you know, like tells it like it is and is funny and sarcastic and witty and all that. So to me it actually feels like this is more feature than bug. And it's also just like it's kind of horrifying more I'm going to say as a testament, at least to who I follow. It wasn't coming across my feed any images, which was good. But then I saw a conversation around it and then of course went to the GROK Media tab where it shows all the media that Grok's generating on the actual like core GROK account and then constantly started getting it, getting bikinified pictures. Most of them appeared to be like OnlyFans models and it was just total like engagement bait, which, whatever. That's I guess, okay. I mean, I think it, that's fine. But then actually the first image that came across my feed was Zoran Mamdani's wife getting bikini fied at the inauguration. Which again, like that is not great. That's pretty like gross and just, you know, not, not good. But then imagine you're like any female out there posting anything, just trying to be engaged in the conversation in some way and then you're just getting bikini fied left and right. So like, and that's, I think it's terrible. Generous.
- [35:40]
Alex Wilhelm
Yeah, yeah, that's like any, any version of using AI to undress people against their will to me is. But I wonder who's, who's responsible here. I mean, obviously there's responsibility from the user, but also if you're releasing something at scale that does this, it's also your responsibility.
- [35:57]
Ranjan Roy
Well, of course, I mean there's a reason this isn't happening on, on other platforms. And again, it kind of goes back. Do you have this, like this is Grok, the anti woke PC one is like what was the, what happened? I think it was Bard at the time or was it Gemini that was doing like Revolutionary War soldiers or there was like going in the Woke direction. Do you not remember what stuff that was?
- [36:26]
Alex Wilhelm
Google. Google AI. It was either Gemini or Bard. Yeah, it was like creating like Black Nazis.
- [36:31]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. So like that stuff is awkward. But then again, to me the biggest question is like, is this something that people, those creating Grok were like playing around with themselves, thought it was funny. Like, I mean, was the model specifically trained in some way to actually do this better than other models? There's a good chance it was. So yeah, I think like the platform, I mean this is going to get ugly. This is, this is going to. In terms of all the things that can go wrong with AI this year, we already saw it. This is where it's going to start. And you know this, the industry has to kind of come together and come up with some kind of just, I'm going to say the word best practices around this, but just agree this is how we want to approach this because otherwise it's just going to keep happening.
- [37:25]
Alex Wilhelm
From a legal standpoint, do you think that if some, if somebody, let's say, undresses someone else, like with a prompt? Sick thing is people are doing this with prompts in public, you know, do they have any liability here? Is it the AI engine that made the image? Is it the platform that distributed it?
- [37:46]
Ranjan Roy
See, this is where my bet on where this is going to go. Now all of every large AI institution has said that the end content that's being created is original and that's why it's not copyrighted, it's fair use, it's remixed, at which point it is your, the platform has created the content and is as liable as the user. Now remember always in the past, the section 230, the way out for any of these platforms was we're just a platform that's neutral, the user is creating the content, whereas now they from a copyright perspective have to say that the platform or the engine is creating the content as much as the user. So I think this, this comes to a head in a big way very soon. I mean, if not from this incident.
- [38:40]
Alex Wilhelm
Itself, without a doubt. I definitely expect to see lawsuits here and frankly, they're warranted. All right, let's, let's talk about this. This last story here. This from a substacker slash Twitter user called Systemic Long short. It's called the prison of financial mediocrity. I'll just bit of it because it's really fascinating and it definitely was something else that percolated on my ex feed over the past couple days. The person writes, I'm absolutely betting the house that long Degeneracy is the prev prevalent socioeconomic theme of the coming century. It is why people above the age of 40 will recommend you get a better better at your job and increase your salary, while everybody else seems to be ignoring exactly that and desperately clawing at something, anything that can give them a shot at outrageous success. The implicit deal used to be show up, work hard, stay loyal, and you'll be rewarded. Companies offered pensions, tension. Tenure meant something. Your house appreciated while you slept. The system you worked. The system worked if you trusted in it. That deal is dead. Staying at one company for 20 years is now a career liability, not an asset. Wages grew 8% while housing costs doubled and debt payments for the young increased 33%. The the math does not support patience anymore. With the advent of AI, the economic impact they are going to have, I think and the yeah, the economic impact it's going to have, I think it's only going to get worse. Why grind 20 years towards a promotion that might not exist in 10? And because of this, because of the fact that you're not being rewarded with patient by being patient, by trusting in the system. This person says that basically we're seeing the rise of things like prediction markets, sports betting, I'd probably add day trading, you know, the, the meme stocks. Here are some numbers on prediction markets. Poly Market and Kalshi did 10 billion plus in volume in November 2025 alone. Combined annual volume approaching 40 billion in 2020. This was essentially zero. Sports betting, legal sports betting revenue went from 248 million in 2017 to 248 million in 2017 to 13.7 billion in 2024. Gen Z and millennials account for 76% of betting activity. So basically what this person is saying is the be patient, get better at your job, get a better salary, invest, play. The long game is gone. And therefore people are just turning to these get Rick, get rich quick schemes and what, you know, they call it like, you know, degens degeneracy in terms of like well you Better take your shots now to try to 100x because waiting 30 years to 10x is maybe not the best move or just 10 years to 10x. I don't know. What do you think about this Ron John? Any truth to it?
- [41:28]
Ranjan Roy
I. I will say there's like those pieces that you wish you had written, this was one of them and again, I don't know, it was like a post on X. Is it a post, is it a tweet, is it a newsletter? But whatever it was, I loved it. I actually like and again it's all pretty dark and depressing but again the idea like he keeps saying long degeneracy and which we've seen is, is a pretty good trade in recent times. And, and I think it the, the, the discussion around the effect of social media is in there and going back to the earlier, the earlier conversation around the feed, maybe in a way the unfiltered shoe picks will be help solve this because in reality what's happening is you'd say the piece says that my take is that social media and our higher order needs have conditioned people that are positioned well below the financial upper class to feel like they are already at a loss. And if you think about it, the very core of social media as it exists today is that there's someone or lots of people out there with more stuff that's better than you, that are taking better vacations than you, that are doing everything else better than you. So that that kind of like itch is cannot be satiated. That's the whole model of it. But then here's these, all these other avenues and alternatives to try to achieve that vision. Whether it's prediction markets, sports betting, crypto, whatever else it's origin, I mean trading options, all these things have become much more accessible. We call it kind of democratized financial markets, but in reality they're just to me ways for these systems to get rich at the expense of people wanting to try to like catch up.
- [43:25]
Alex Wilhelm
And this was a particularly haunting passage for me. The same people who can't imagine grinding at one company will absolutely grind for months learning crypto trading. They pour hours into understanding prediction markets to understand the very economy they believe wholeheartedly to be rigged. The same person who dismisses traditional investing as an inside game will bet their rent money on Meme Coin. Why? Because the casino is the only place they feel agency, the only place where their decisions might actually unlock the next tier on a timeline that matters.
- [44:01]
Ranjan Roy
I'm glad you read that that passage because to me that was Actually like the biggest issue here is I loved that idea around the casino is the only place one feels agency because in reality it's where you have the least agency I would say relative to many of these other. Oh, the stock market is rigged, it's an insider's game versus I mean come on, like crypto, Poly Market, all of these. But the entire messaging of the Poly Markets and coinbases and draftkings of the world is one of agency. Like that's the every marketing campaign at the very core of crypto. The message is this is your way out. And like I also think the whole housing crisis slash, I mean factors into your. There's no large assets anyone owns anymore like you know, other than real estate. So you're your flat screen tv, your whatever other big stuff is in your house, maybe a car I guess. But other that's a depreciating asset anyways. Like people don't own stuff. They see everyone else has a better life than them. And then here's all these other ways to try to get ahead and actually try to realize that there's, there's no doubt why this is actually happening the way it is.
- [45:16]
Alex Wilhelm
Right. And the problem is that you know, with these alternative areas like the casino, like sports betting, like the prediction market, you're probably going to lose. You will lose and I mean you will. So then, yeah so then what is the, what is the solution here? Because you know, is the answer that actually the traditional path works a lot better than people expect and they should just do that or is there the. Is the answer that there are no answers? Because the answer isn't the degeneracy.
- [45:45]
Ranjan Roy
I, I see, I've written, I wrote about Robin Hood in this a long time ago. Like to me and this is, we spoke about this with prediction markets. I actually got some like comments around what I was saying that I, I'm still pro prediction market but I had to clarify that I'm anti the way Kalshi and Poly Market are approaching. It is if it's here is this kind of like asset class that you can engage in that is interesting and like don't bet too much on it and maybe you might make some money or you might not but that's not the point of it. It's just an interesting place to do like engage. I think they're amazing for that. But like that's never been the messaging and then you see it in the way that what products are promoted with Robinhood, it's not index investing, it's options because it's short dated options. It's where the platform will make the most money are the products that are pushed. It's I think. Did you see what did Polymarket call a parlay? They had like a combined. They made this. I got a. It was basically a parlay gambler's nose where you have like two outcomes tied to each other to get increasingly like dramatic odds basically now they're doing this these within prediction markets as well. So like that's where you make more money because more people lose. So I think that's the. It has to get regulated is the only way the way casinos always were. Sports betting was for a long time. I don't think it will but I don't there's no other real solution here.
- [47:25]
Alex Wilhelm
Yeah I mean well wait. I mean we've definitely ended on it on a depressing note here I think I will just walk away take some pictures of poorly framed photos and throw them up on Instagram and see if the likes pour in. That's you know the way I'll feel better about myself this week.
- [47:42]
Ranjan Roy
Unfiltered shoe picks will save the next generation because then people won't feel the need to have to try to get that next vacation and go on to Polymarket and lever up long some random contract because they're just going to see our ugly sneakers and let's keep it at sneakers covered feet and then. And then from there we saved the male loneliness epidemic.
- [48:08]
Alex Wilhelm
This is the only way to preserve our societal values and our belief in future of democracy is good.
- [48:13]
Ranjan Roy
Post ugly shoe picks.
- [48:16]
Alex Wilhelm
Get out there people.
- [48:17]
Ranjan Roy
Do your part. Do your part. After after a 20 hour hike of Cotopaxi, here's how ugly these shoes. Don't. Don't. Post the picture of the sunrise that is unparalleled and majestic. Post the beat up shoes afterwards.
- [48:33]
Alex Wilhelm
Nasty shoes. Nasty shoes. And that alone will will take us into the future. That alone will help us create a great 2026 together.
- [48:41]
Ranjan Roy
Let's do it. New Year's resolution.
- [48:44]
Alex Wilhelm
I am inspired. I am inspired. May the feed flow with ugly images and our culture and country be saved again. All right Ranchon, great to be back doing this until 2026. Thanks again for coming on.
- [48:56]
Ranjan Roy
See you next week.
- [48:57]
Alex Wilhelm
See you next week. All right everybody, thank you for listening and we'll see you next time on big technology podcast.
- [49:04]
Ranjan Roy
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Alex Wilhelm
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Ranjan Roy
We've all been there.
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Alex Wilhelm
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Ranjan Roy
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Alex Wilhelm
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- [49:34]
Ranjan Roy
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Alex Wilhelm
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Alex Wilhelm
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Alex Wilhelm
To bet against the market and who.
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Ranjan Roy
Is as relevant today as it's ever been.
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Alex Wilhelm
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