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- [00:00]
Alex
Elon Musk attempts to stop OpenAI from going for profit as he builds his own massive models. Artists leaked OpenAI's Sora video generation tool in a protest. Australia banned social media for kids. And Temu has a happy Black Friday. That's coming up right after this.
- [00:19]
Gianna Prudenti
Hey, I'm Gianna Prudenti.
- [00:20]
Jamae Jackson Gadsden
And I'm Jamae Jackson Gadsden. We're the hosts of let's Talk offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart podcasts.
- [00:26]
Gianna Prudenti
There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in.
- [00:29]
Jamae Jackson Gadsden
Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.
- [00:32]
Gianna Prudenti
And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do. Like negotiation expert Mori Tahari Poor.
- [00:37]
Ranjan Roy
If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it.
- [00:41]
Alex
Sort of eases us a little bit.
- [00:43]
Gianna Prudenti
Listen to let's Talk offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:49]
Alex
Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition. We're coming to you on a Sunday during a holiday weekend and we're thrilled to be speaking about all the news with you because there's so of it. Elon Musk is going on the offensive again against OpenAI. We'll also talk about Sora's leak from artists and actually whether the videos look good or not. And also, Australia has been social media for kids under 16. And of course, Black Friday is a moment of change in the e commerce industry now that Temu and Shein are on the scene and really gaining favor among Gen Z. Joining us as always to break down the news is Ranjan Roy of Margins. Ranjan, great to see you. How you doing?
- [01:26]
Ranjan Roy
Good to see you on a Sunday, obviously, Friday was shopping on Temu the entire day for me, so.
- [01:35]
Alex
That's right. And I was also hooked to Amazon, so we are definitely showing the generational differences. Me, an old man shopping on Amazon. As usual. You a Gen Z whippersnapper on Temu.
- [01:48]
Ranjan Roy
The American consumer is back. That's all that matters.
- [01:50]
Alex
Alex, but you did actually go to some brick and mortar shops during Black Friday, didn't you?
- [01:56]
Ranjan Roy
I did. I actually, I was in the suburbs of Boston and I went to the Burlington Mall and I can say it was completely packed. It was more packed than I've seen it in years. So I think at every level, whether it's online, whether it's at the physical store, the American consumer is definitely back.
- [02:15]
Alex
And we're driving a Rivian R1S adventure, the new SUV from Rivian, test driving it and hopefully we'll have something on YouTube to show for it coming soon. And of course, you have to stop at malls to charge. And we stopped at Woodbury Commons, which is the big outlet north of New York. And we'd like to, you know, get out of the car while it's charging on the supercharger because it still takes like 40 minutes. That also was packed. And the Nike store had a line and couldn't even get in there. So we ended up wandering into the Puma store. And you know, you have to do this every now and again.
- [02:54]
Ranjan Roy
What did you buy at the Puma store, Alex?
- [02:55]
Alex
When your socks are all mixed and matched and they've got holes in them and they're and I'm ashamed to admit that's the situation of my sock drawer right now. You got to just go full refresh on a Black Friday weekend. And so I walked out of the Puma store with four packs of, six packs of socks. So 24 new pairs of socks. I got to say, Puma socks are the best. And I've never felt better.
- [03:19]
Ranjan Roy
Well.
- [03:22]
Alex
I can't believe I say it on the show, but then again, I'm proud of the purchase.
- [03:26]
Ranjan Roy
This is the technology news I need to hear.
- [03:28]
Alex
Alex, are we saying though, that the American consumer is back? Is that the takeaway here?
- [03:33]
Ranjan Roy
I think that's the takeaway. I think your sock purchase will Significantly contribute to Q4 GDP and put us all on the right path to a bright 2025.
- [03:44]
Alex
All right, everybody. So seems like the market could be heading.
- [03:47]
Ranjan Roy
You're welcome.
- [03:48]
Alex
In a good direction. Thanks, of course, to my crazy. Anyway, I'm not even going to go into this anymore. I can't believe we're talking.
- [03:55]
Ranjan Roy
Let's move on to, let's move on.
- [03:57]
Alex
To our main story, which is that Elon Musk is asking a federal court to stop Open AI from converting into a fully for profit business. This is according to CNBC attorneys representing Musk, his startup Xai and others filed for a preliminary injunction against OpenAI on Friday to stop OpenAI from going for profit, which it's trying to do after its latest funding rounding and requiring investors to refrain from funding its competitors, including XAI and others. Now, Musk, of course, did put money in the original funding of OpenAI. He was involved in starting it with that nonprofit mission. And maybe he's within its rights, within his rights to stop it from going for a profit. So I'm kind of torn on this one. What do you Think Ranjan.
- [04:43]
Ranjan Roy
All right, there's, there's three parts of this as I was reading this story. First, I think Musk might be within his rights. And it's tough for me to say that, especially when it feels like a kind of litigious move here. But again, he is one of the original investors. It's never made sense that they should be able to make this conversion based on how this entire company was built. But on the second point is it's still rich to me. Do you know what the current funding total was? Because we didn't even cover this On November 20, the big story that came out on Xai's funding, how much have they raised right now?
- [05:18]
Alex
I mean, it's amazing to me that we kind of glanced over this a couple weeks ago.
- [05:22]
Ranjan Roy
We glanced over it.
- [05:24]
Alex
So we, we went like wild talking about OpenAI 6.2 funding round, billion funding round. And Musk raised I think 5 to 6 billion for Xai, which is more than Anthropic's 4 billion the company just raised, which was like, what? Like, Is this the second largest funding round ever after OpenAI?
- [05:46]
Ranjan Roy
Almost odd that it barely. There's like, nobody talks about it. There's one Wall Street Journal piece and It's. They've raised 11 billion total. And I think that's only in the last 18 months. And yes, it was reportedly 5 billion. The company is now worth 50. Sorry, yeah, 50 billion. I mean this is a massive, massive capital event. And I agree, no one is really talking about it. It's just kind of Grok is still sitting there. XAI is buying up a bunch of like GPUs left and right. But I think the idea that it's hindering competition is a pretty weak argument when you are raising massive rounds like that. So I think again, it still makes sense. And remember OpenAI, this was a critical part of that last giant funding round that they have two years, I believe, to convert to a for profit corporation stipulated into the actual funding. So they're going to have to do this. We know they're going to have to do this.
- [06:45]
Alex
Unless you want to stop them from doing it.
- [06:47]
Ranjan Roy
Unless.
- [06:48]
Alex
And if they don't do it within that two year timeline, don't they have to give the money back with like an immense amount of interest?
- [06:54]
Ranjan Roy
I, but I wonder how does that work? Because we talk money. Yeah, exactly.
- [06:59]
Alex
So by the way, that's why Elon's filing the injunction, because he's saying that like if you don't stop them now, they're not going to have enough money to sort of repair some of the damages.
- [07:07]
Ranjan Roy
It's rare you hear completely extreme arguments that are both so right and so wrong at the same time.
- [07:16]
Alex
But can I just ask like I didn't even realize a non for profit can convert for a for profit. You know more about corporate structure than I do. What's going on here?
- [07:26]
Ranjan Roy
I mean in smaller instances it's not completely unreasonable. Again imagine you set up a 501C3, you're investing in some kind of like research and then you realize a for profit opportunity. Still typically rather than converting you would think that you would just create a new entity which OpenAI could have done at some point. I don't actually understand why this entire thing has to be so messy in terms of how they keep trying to push this. And I think I know why to.
- [07:55]
Alex
Be OpenAI Microsoft money because the Microsoft money has to be sort of tied up, accounted for. It put a lot of money in.
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Ranjan Roy
Yeah. And cloud and Azure credits as well.
- [08:05]
Alex
Yes. But yeah, not for profit.
- [08:08]
Ranjan Roy
I think it's going to continue to be an interesting one. It's going to continue to be I think one of the more interesting things in tech however though and we're going to be talking about Sora we're going to like ChatGPT just generally is a having been home and talking to more normal non tech industry folks over the week. ChatGPT still is the only brand that exists right now. Like no one else has heard about Perplexity or Claude out spread that I was talking to outside of people I talked to in tech. So I think there's still ChatGPT is well positioned but I don't see this really derailing anything in there. I think there's going to be a nice like little side corporate insider tech industry conversation but I the idea that like suddenly they just don't can't use that money anymore and that OpenAI will shut down because of some weird corporate structure thing I don't see happening.
- [09:08]
Alex
I don't want to glance over the fact that X AI that OpenAI has been preventing others from investing in XAI because yes, XAI didn't pull in that 5 billion and anthropic pulled in 4 billion from Amazon. But as we've talked about on the show in the past it is really difficult to get that size of money from anyone and so you're talking about a limited pool of investors that can actually invest in these massive AI companies and OpenAI I know for a fact has told investors that if you invest in ELON Musk's xai. You can't invest in us. If you invest in us, you cannot invest in xai. Now, I don't really know, you know, in terms of the legality of that. Like is that illegal or is that just business? But I do think that's like a legitimate gripe there. I don't think we should brush that off.
- [09:58]
Ranjan Roy
It is interesting though. Remember, I feel like in the good old days of venture capital that was actually standard practice, that you don't invest in the competitors of your key investments so as to kind of like help push their own growth against your own existing investments in your portfolio. So I don't think, think, I mean, again, the legality of that I think is probably okay, but we've talked about there's very few places that you can find $5 billion sitting around. But if anyone can find it, it's Elon Musk from the Qatari Investment Authority. He also had sequoia and a 16Z who, remember, actually had stepped away from the open AI. So I think it's kind of, again, as a bystander, this is kind of fun to watch in terms of like you're really seeing the kind of everything lining up in these different camps to see who's going to actually kind of come out ahead on this. And as a consumer, hopefully we'll get subsidized compute and keep generating all sorts of lines of code and poems and whatever else we want to do with our generative AI chatbots.
- [11:05]
Alex
So we build entire businesses on that subsidized compute only for the subsidies to run out and then everything falls apart.
- [11:11]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah, but you know, you raise a bunch of money more and more and then cash out.
- [11:16]
Alex
Yeah, exactly. Do you think there's a chance that Musk pushes this to the point where OpenAI does hit that two year window and it just has to give the money back?
- [11:25]
Ranjan Roy
I think it was just yesterday we're at the two year anniversary of the launch of ChatGPT publicly. So two years, like two years is a long time in this whole, whole space. So where we are two years from now, I am not even going to try to pretend to predict.
- [11:43]
Alex
Did you see the coverage of the chat GPT 2 year anniversary? It was really weird. It was like there were some stories, one in Axios that stands out to me that was like chat GPT turns 2. It hasn't changed our lives. You know, it's like that's the beginning of that ROI conversation that you said, you know, very spot on. Is going to start to you know, hit on in 2025, where we've gone from magical. Oh, what does this do to like, what does it do?
- [12:06]
Ranjan Roy
Okay, so I walked away from last week more bullish than ever. And regular listeners will know that my kind of position on generative AI is overall incredibly optimistic and bullish, but still I have issues with kind of the way certain parts of the industry are developing. I walked away more bullish than ever, even. So my dad, my dad currently, he has Parkinson's, so he has trouble typing. I introduced him to ChatGPT with the voice interface, logged him in on my paid ChatGPT plus account. It was like you could see just the kind of light bulb brain exploding as he's looking at his phone and just talking to it and asking all sorts of questions about different medicines, about F1 results in past champions, about anything and just having this conversation. And it's just one of those moments that you realize we are still on the cusp of just. I mean it was with generative AI, these kind of profound, magical moments come every now and then. And that was one of those where you realized like most people are still not really using this technology and there's so much room and potential for it. So I think we're still two years. It's crazy to me that it's only been two years since that was released publicly. Like when I actually think about in terms of like overall timeframe of there was a long conversation about the lack of innovation through the 2000 and tens and the fact that like 2020 or 2019 looked the same as 2011. You basically still just were using some iPhone apps, you had some subsidized hotels and taxi rides, but not too much had changed. So the idea that in two years this much has changed, I think is still pretty incredible.
- [13:55]
Alex
Yeah. And the voice interface is really something that's like starting to spread because remember like the voice on ChatGPT, like the new voice only recently, recently came out and I just saw another example of somebody like in a hospital in a foreign country, like having to translate through three languages to get care and using chat GPT voice and the attendants in the hospital being like, what the hell is that?
- [14:19]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah, no, no. And I will again, to open AI's credit, the way they do their UI is still pretty impressive, like right now, even the way. And not to get into my complaints about Siri, which are regular feature here, like, it looks really cool. They have this kind of like globe looking thing that like gets bigger and smaller and then even the way they have These little, kind of like they insert these little phrases from the voice to make it sounds more natural. And again, I think I'm starting, this was one of the first times that I saw when I'm using these, it's still more kind of testing them and trying to, you know, like as a more technology professional, trying to see what I can get out of them. This was where it was just pure utility. Pure just. I am not trying to like understand this technology, I'm just trying to use it and, and it works. It works really, really, really well.
- [15:22]
Alex
So now that we've sung the praises of OpenAI, let's just go back to Musk for one more moment before we move on because should we also not glance over the fact that he is building a massive, massive infrastructure to train, to train AI models with that money that he's raised? And we've talked about it a bit on this show, a little bit, but the Wall Street Journal has a story inside Elon Musk's Quest to beat OpenAI at its own game. And it says there he's got this data center called colossus in Memphis, Tennessee. It was constructed in 122 days. It uses 100,000 GPUs making it one of the largest clusters of chips to develop and run AI in the world. And XAI has told investors it will use some of the 5 billion it raised to double the number of chips in Colossus and that it plans to raise more money next year. So of course we've talked about how there are limitations to the scaling laws in AI, but if you throw that much raw compute at this problem. And by the way, they're also telling folks it, they have exclusive data from Tesla. I don't know how useful that will be, but Twitter, that'll be useful. So it has two of like the core ingredients, data and compute size. And you know Elon Musk is going to find a way to get at the energy. Is there a chance that they, when they release whatever they're working on, either stand shoulder to shoulder with OpenAI or surpass it?
- [16:57]
Ranjan Roy
I don't think it's unreasonable. Again, betting against Elon Musk is never the ideal bet. And I think that's a good point that you're, they have the data, they have the compute and the capital. They potentially can like understand the underlying energy infrastructure better than others. So I think that makes a compelling case. It did make me wonder if I had gone home and my 79 year old dad was using Grok and that was like My learning from the week, I don't know how I would have felt about that. Yeah, he was like, hey man, I'm a full on GROK head. That's what I've been doing.
- [17:37]
Alex
Because Elon had like first portrayed the Grok as like the anti woke AI and it would make like all these like really corny jokes and just be like just incredibly cringe worthy. And so I do wonder putting all this money in, whether it starts to moderate the tone that it has or is it is he going to put 5 billion in and make it like conservative bot?
- [17:58]
Ranjan Roy
I still don't like. Okay, maybe the like the 4D chess idea here is GROK is just kind of like consumer facing, attention grabbing extension of what they're really building. And again I'm trying to be a little like try to read the tea leaves here a bit. But I cannot imagine that GROK is the like chatgpt for X AI as like what chatgpt is to OpenAI. Because it's still. Yeah, the way it's been positioned, it's around this anti woke chat bot. Like it's not has not been positioned as this like really life changing tool accessible to all people. So there has to be something else going on I hope.
- [18:47]
Alex
Yeah. And the story of this Colossus cluster in Memphis is such an Elon Musk story. So he was going to work with Oracle, he decided that they weren't going to meet his ambitions. This is according to the Wall Street Journal story. So he buys a decommissioned manufacturing facility in Memphis, begins construction in June, employees work non stop in 38 hour shift and they figured out the plan as they were going. Instead of plan it out ahead of time, which typically takes seven to eight months by the way. As it waited for approval from the Tennessee Valley Authority to get more energy, it put natural gas generators in the parking lot to power the facility. And local residents said they weren't told about the data center in advance and were concerned about pollution. And it's just like the typical Elon Musk story where it's like building things that typical processes would never ever enable to build but also do it like with effectively a disregard for like the local environment that he's in and, and just sort of operate with a level of controlled chaos where those you're doing the nonstop 8 hour shifts and also instead of planning just doing it and figuring it out on the fly, just like this is if you were going to say give a case study on how Elon Musk builds things, this is it.
- [20:13]
Ranjan Roy
I do wonder and maybe there is like something to this story that's even bigger is that like the ability of companies to scale data centers is going to become a core competency. Like up until now that's been something that again, OpenAI outsources and I mean I'm assuming Anthropic does as well. And Google and Microsoft, their entire like data infrastructures are things that have been built in very reliable manners, but still kind of more traditional manners. They invented this industry. So the way companies are able to more rapidly gain compute like this and scale their data infrastructure could be interesting. Like it could be something that we didn't think what right now all anyone cares about is how good are the models, how good are the tools that for people to use them. But maybe that does become a bigger part of this whole battle. And then I would agree that Elon Musk and Xai probably have an advantage. Both like he's, he builds physical infrastructure and that's what he's been doing for a long time now. And he does it differently than most. So maybe that could be a thing.
- [21:26]
Alex
Yeah, this thought that the ability to scale data centers is going to become a core competency is so interesting. And so I think spot on. And in fact, I am flying to Vegas tomorrow morning and tomorrow afternoon I'm gonna be sitting down with AWS CEO Matt Garman. And I think this has got to be one of the questions that I bring up to him because if anyone's gonna know how this battle is gonna go, it's him. So everyone can stay tuned for that conversation on the feed coming Wednesday.
- [21:52]
Ranjan Roy
I love when Alex drops the big name interview without any prior. And I walk right into it.
- [21:59]
Alex
I mean it was perfect setup. And also, I mean I think this show is on a roll. We had Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe on a couple of weeks ago. Benioff on, on Wednesday, which we're about to talk about. And now Garmin coming up. And then I think we have an even cooler interview that I'm also going to record next week that I'm not going to tease right now, but I think it's going to be awesome. So stay tuned for that. Okay, let's move right to Sora. Ronjan. You and I have been talking About Sora Open AI's video generation model and why it hasn't arrived and what's going on there. And then all of a sudden this past week we got a look at it because there was an I think anonymous group of artists that were testing Sora and they leaked it. They said we. This is on Hugging Face. They posted. They said, we received access to Sora with the promise to be early testers, red teamers and creative partners. However, we believe we instead are being lured into art washing to tell the world that SORA is a useful tool for artists. All CAPS Artists are not your unpaid R and D. We are not your free bug testers, PR puppets, training data validation tokens, skull emoji. And so therefore they put it out on Hugging Face for all to use. OpenAI subsequently shut down the access to Sora, but a lot of people used it to generate some, like, pretty unbelievable AI videos. And I'm curious if you got a chance to take a look at them, Ranjan, and what you thought about what we saw there and whether their protest was valid.
- [23:37]
Ranjan Roy
All right, so first, I definitely saw a lot of SORA videos coming up in my feed. They looked pretty good. I was actually surprised. Like, I'm like, okay, you know, there's been a lot of doubt around video. Generative video is hard and there's been a lot of hype around it. And I've played with, like, a lot of tools like Runway ML and others that are interesting, but definitely far from very good. They looked good.
- [24:05]
Alex
Can I pause? These videos are amazing. They are so good. And you have everything from like somebody in a video game. You have a world building map, you have a monkey doing a puzzle, you have a guy looking at a laptop, you have a cat in a pirate hat riding a Roomba. I mean, these videos are excellent. And they don't have, like, the deformities that you would typically imagine. And even it doesn't seem like this version came with any guardrails at all because there's a polar bear sitting in a snow with a Coca Cola can. And so you could imagine, like, what this does for brands and things like that these videos are incredible and that they're animated videos also that, like, you just, like, your mind gets going and you're like, oh, could this, could this be a way that people create new animated shorts or even full cartoons? Like, I don't see a reason why that wouldn't happen.
- [24:58]
Ranjan Roy
Okay, so what's interesting to me is first, the term art washing is my new favorite term. I hadn't really thought about it before I saw it in that statement. But the idea that these companies, again, using artists to kind of like add a veneer of credibility to whatever tool they're releasing and saying, you can test this and this is the reason. But the funny part to me is as you said, okay, I'll give you pretty amazing. The videos are. And in a way, if they were trying to avoid art washing, they just did it because now everyone is showing that these are pretty good videos. The videos that I were seeing being generated were from a lot of handles with like web3 and crypto and DeFi in them and like, and who were verified on X. So it was interesting that like somehow it worked as a brilliant PR move in the end because now suddenly everyone's like, oh wait, Sora, it's actually good. People can really use it. So I think OpenAI comes ahead in this one as well.
- [26:03]
Alex
But it's interesting that the artists weren't really interested in the copyright things. They were just basically like, we do not want art, the creation of art to the value of the creation of art to accrue to a company. And they started putting out some like open source versions of video generation tools. That to me was interesting. I thought maybe this was going to be a moment where these videos are so good that all of a sudden, all of a sudden society takes a look and says, whoa, you know, we've been feeding these machines like some of our, you know, most esteemed work and now it's coming out and producing stuff that's like actually mirroring some of the best animation we might have seen or can create lifelike shots. And that's a problem. But no, it was just the fact that it's, you know, sort of accruing to corporations and it just kind of shows to me that this, this train has left the station and basically like this stuff, there's no turning back. It's just going to be a feature, it's going to be part of the world. You can't really push back against it. Fascinating.
- [27:02]
Ranjan Roy
This is something where I still lean on the side of like, I genuinely think it's net good for just allowing someone who is not a, you know, like a professional video producer to express themselves creatively. And I think it's the same idea that again, if in like, you know, before you needed a printing press to try to get your words out to the world and now you can just write a newsletter or you know, like write a document and each one of these are an extension that just allow more and more people to be creative. And I think that's a good thing. I think what are the copyright implications underlying a lot of these models? I still think there's work to be done and I'm curious, like it's. Everything is moving so fast that it feels like there Won't be some kind of answer around this, but I think there, there's been multiple news agencies that have sued Open AI in recent weeks. There's still, you can see OpenAI fighting against. There's a famous. It was the Italian plumber on Dolly because like, after there was one lawsuit, I think they were trying to block all kind of copyrighted image generation requests. But all you had to do, you couldn't say super Mario, but everyone was just doing a cartoon Italian plumber and it shows exactly Mario. So. And in some kind of compromising situations, let's say a lot of people got.
- [28:27]
Alex
Him into so, so messing with Mario. People don't mess a hard working cartoon plumber.
- [28:35]
Ranjan Roy
He's just trying to make ends meet, Save the princess. But so like, it feels on one hand that things are moving too fast and we're never, as you said, the genie's out of the bottle. But on the other hand, I do think there's still the possibility that in 2025 we see some kind of landmark copyright lawsuit that actually is resolved in some kind of interesting way that could change the economics of these companies.
- [29:05]
Alex
Yeah. And it's not lost on me that OpenAI had to approve every image that was coming out from these artists while they were testing. And that really pissed them off. And they're like, okay, of course, of.
- [29:16]
Ranjan Roy
Course, yes, come on.
- [29:17]
Alex
But that being said, I think our core takeaway both is that now that we've seen some of these videos from Sora, we're more excited than ever to actually use it.
- [29:25]
Ranjan Roy
So no, I, I genuinely get excited. It's like again, the first time making music on Suno, that was genuinely exciting and thinking about, what can I do with this? When I look at these videos, I enjoy a little bit of video editing and trying to make some funny little videos. This makes me think I can make some pretty cool stuff. And that's exciting for me.
- [29:51]
Alex
Definitely. I mean, sorry, go ahead.
- [29:53]
Ranjan Roy
I will happily do your art washing. OpenAI. Send me the link.
- [29:57]
Alex
Give us access.
- [29:58]
Ranjan Roy
Come on, send me the link. I will wash that art all day for you.
- [30:03]
Alex
As will I. Okay, so we have plenty more to talk about, including Ron John's perspective on Mark Benioff's view on agents, the social media ban in Australia, and how Teemu and Sheen factored on Black Friday. So that's coming up right after this.
- [30:18]
Gianna Prudenti
Hey, I'm Gianna Prudenti.
- [30:20]
Jamae Jackson Gadsden
And I'm Jama Jackson Gadston. We're the hosts of let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart podcasts.
- [30:27]
Gianna Prudenti
When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions like how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed?
- [30:34]
Jamae Jackson Gadsden
Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes.
- [30:40]
Gianna Prudenti
Each week we answer your unfiltered work questions.
- [30:43]
Jamae Jackson Gadsden
Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.
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Gianna Prudenti
And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Sanner.
- [30:52]
Alex
The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who will applies.
- [30:57]
Jamae Jackson Gadsden
Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like? You miss 100% of the shots you never take.
- [31:02]
Alex
Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself.
- [31:06]
Gianna Prudenti
Together we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of.
- [31:09]
Jamae Jackson Gadsden
Your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep.
- [31:14]
Gianna Prudenti
Listen to let's talk offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [31:21]
Alex
And we're back here on big Technology Podcast Friday edition, coming to you on a holiday weekend Sunday. Let's talk quickly about this Marc Benioff perspective on agents. So this is the way I put it in my recap of the interview, by the way. By the way, if you are interested in the interview, we of course will have it as the most recent episode in your feed. My conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. But this is how I put it in the summary. Instead of our own assistance, Benioff thinks all companies will build their own AI agents that will act on our behalf when we check in with customer service or need regular attention. And he's angling Salesforce as the data provider that will make it all work. Basically. Like our view of agents has been like, it'll be an agent that acts on your behalf, uses your computer on your behalf. And Benioff is saying, I have all your sales data, all your customer service data. When you need something from a company, you just check in with them. They're going to use Salesforce as the backend and that will be the agent that enables you to do more. So we'll be coming from the corporate side as opposed to necessarily the individual side. Rajan, I'm sure you have a perspective on this and I'm curious what you think about this. Is this the future of agents?
- [32:33]
Ranjan Roy
I agree with Mark in theory. In theory, I agree with Mark. I think this idea, he's, he's exactly correct. He has the Correct vision that agents will be like built by companies to solve existing workflows and problems that they already have some like heavy processes around potentially a lot of people involved with. It's not going to be, there's like the augmentation side of it where you're actually helping an individual do an existing process better. And then there's the replace monotonous repetitive processes completely and remove people from them so they can do higher value work. I think the second scenario is the more likely scenario and probably going to be the better one because it both it, I mean and it's going to be disruptive. It will be completely disruptive but it allows, it's going to be more efficient for companies and their bottom line. Again like replace the repetitive monotonous workflows and processes with AI agents and I think it'll allow people to do more important work. And this is what we've seen, I mean through any kind of like disruptive transformation in how work is done from the factory line to computers coming into the workforce. And I think this is what's going to happen again.
- [33:56]
Alex
So what do you think that means for the plans from like ChatGPT from, sorry, OpenAI and Claude to build their own version of agents? You know they've had this like sort of platform attitude where they want to build the big platforms that will take over your computer, interact with every service on your behalf and their vision is that will be from the perspective of the consumer. I mean maybe their bots, the bots that they build interact with the salesforce bots. But you know, I'm curious what you think it means for like the broader vision from these consumer facing companies.
- [34:28]
Ranjan Roy
I don't think it changes that much because the split between enterprise and consumer is how this world of software works today. I think some of these companies made it feel like maybe there would be more of a blurring between the two, but this could just be a reminder that there will be some companies that are the winners in enterprise. Again, salesforces and servicenows are not companies that are on the tip of like the tongue of every regular person. So there are companies that clearly want an enterprise that don't touch consumer at all. And I think that's going to happen again because again businesses will have very, very specific needs where they need to build things that actually help them run more efficiently and do work better and make people more productive. And then individuals like the idea that an individual is going to let Claude take over their computer at work to try to figure out how to do Their own individual job better, I think is never was never going to be like how this works. There's always. There's too many different teams and functions and data sets and whatever else within any organization that no one person is going to be the one to build that agent. It's going to be like the company that does it.
- [35:48]
Alex
Fascinating. So this is a clarifying moment here. It's like basically Benioff has the right idea.
- [35:52]
Ranjan Roy
I think he has the right idea. I think Salesforce and Agent Force, it's interesting though like how they're approaching this is they're coming at this in a big way which has been interesting to me. Rather than just releasing it, letting people use it, showing the adoption. Yeah. And again, he's one of the world's greatest salesmen. But this, it's such a marketing heavy process. And this is going back to what I was saying earlier. Again, very long term, bullish, short term worried. This is the kind of promise in marketing where I do worry that when every one of these customers of Salesforce like sits down, sees some demo, hears some vision from Benioff and then tries to actually build what they're trying to build and realizes, wait, this doesn't just magically work like agents. The biggest disconnect I still see is the promise of agents is that okay, you have like 10 steps in some process. The idea is eventually the AI agent will be able to make a decision at every step of that process about what to do next. That is hard. That is going to. That. I don't want to say it's impossible, but that is going to be really, really hard versus maybe you take some. There's some like hard coded if then logic. There's some generative AI sprinkled into some layers. There's some things that people literally hard code into these workflows. I think that is a more realistic idea. But the way they're pitching this right now is you just plug it in. The AI knows what to do at every step of the way, knows where the data is. And that especially for large corporations, I don't see as realistic.
- [37:42]
Alex
$2 per conversation, if it can pull it off, is that a good deal?
- [37:46]
Ranjan Roy
That actually was a good deal. I liked you had brought up the pricing around $2 per conversation. So the price, 2 bucks. I think customer service is expensive. For anyone who calls and gets frustrated with any kind of retail customer service, it is pricey. It can definitely cost a lot more than that. So that I think is okay. But one thing that's interesting is pricing per Conversation I don't think is going to be the model. I think it's going to be pricing per outcome. And I've seen this from some other AI sales CRM transformation type companies that they actually until you pay for the resolution because again, the time spent and the number of steps it takes to get to the outcome is no longer as important as it was when it was a person dealing with it. So I think pricing per outcome is going to be the right business model, not for just having the conversation.
- [38:44]
Alex
Okay. And one last thing, I want to touch on Benioff's comments on Klarna and you also have some thoughts on the Klarna ipo. So let's do that and then we're going to move on to this Australia social media Bill.
- [38:55]
Ranjan Roy
Oh, so I loved the fact that you asked about the Klarna CEO talking about canceling Salesforce because Benioff replied they said they were canceling, but I didn't get their cancellation notice. All I saw was a lot of provocative statements. At the same time, they're also writing on LinkedIn about how they're loving Slack and rebuilding it. So I like, like again, Benioff, we just talked about how potentially overselling, but at least being very grand in terms of the vision that's being sold and him calling out and recognizing another CEO who's able to do the same.
- [39:35]
Alex
One of the interesting things about that was Benioff mentioned that Klarna is going to IPO and they're going to have to show Wall street statements about workforce and statements about their pipeline and data and that stuff that's typically housed within Salesforce. And he's basically like, are you going to just throw that into a AI system and you know, have it spit out the answers? And he's like, basically like, I'd like to see them try. So I'm curious, A, do you think this is true? That they're really moving off given the fact that the IPO is coming And B, what do you think about the Klarna ipo? And Klarna, of course for folks is a financial technology company that lets people pay for things later, among other activities. Sorry, go ahead.
- [40:20]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah. So on A, what's hilarious to me is what Benioff is kind of accusing Klarna CEO of is exactly what he is promising is that there's going to be this new infrastructure that allows you to just take all the data that sits in your computer, it sits in your company and corporation and just have it all analyzed and run and magically execute these processes without having to have too much software. Of course, his argument is that the only software that will be able to do this for you is Salesforce. And Klarn is basically saying, okay, we just don't need the Salesforce layer to do this. We can do this ourselves using just any existing LLMs. But they're both pitching the same exact vision. Benioff's just saying that you need Salesforce to do it.
- [41:14]
Alex
Yeah, I didn't even think about it that way, but it's true.
- [41:17]
Ranjan Roy
In terms of the ipo I wanted to. I was reading Klarna's IPO I think is going to be a good bellwether for tech. IPOs have been far and few between. I think 2025 is going to be a really, really interesting year because there are dozens, if not maybe hundreds of unicorns, especially some very, very hefty valued unicorns that have been waiting to go public at some point. And next year is supposed to be the year and Klarn is supposed to be one of those. There's a number even within fintech. There's like Chime Brex, I think a few others ramp. They're all supposed to kind of be this new class of newly public fintech companies. So I think in terms of will we finally see the wave of IPOs that we got a bit of it in 2021 and it stopped. Are we going to start to see them again next year? We're supposed to. And it's going to be really interesting for the overall markets whether we do.
- [42:20]
Alex
And what do you think Klarna's chances are? And do you think all this AI hype that they're doing is part of their sort of sales pitch to Wall street when they come out?
- [42:27]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah, I think. I think they're playing this really well, I think. And again, I said it. I listened to your episode with the interview with the Klarna CEO and he gets what he's talking about. Like, there's no doubt. I was a little skeptical going in and I like that he did recognize it was that it was for the hype. But the way you can tell when someone is talking about like they've done the work, like they know this isn't just, oh, we are using GPT4.0 to magically transform customer service. Like he was actually talking about starting with certain simple things, scaling them, which parts exactly of the overall customer service process you can automate with an LLM. So he gets it. I think it's going to be a good part of their story. And it's, it should help them. I hope it does.
- [43:18]
Alex
Yeah. It's going to be interesting to see. I think as Benioff mentioned, like once they come out, like are they able to produce accurate data? They actually really canceled Salesforce. These are going to be some interesting questions that we're going to ask as they hit their roadshow. So in Australia, this isn't a story that's been percolating for a while and seemed to have a big moment last week. The country has passed a ban on kids using social media under 16. So under the age of 16, so 15 and under you are not able to use social media. It's from one of the stories. Under the new law, which are. Under the new laws from cnbc. Under the new laws which are scheduled to come into effect in about one year, children in Australia under the age of 16 will be banned from setting up accounts of popular social media sites including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. Australia's ban is wildly popular with voters. 77% support the move. And there's been some terrible things that have happened to kids in Australia as there have been to kids all around the world who have used social media and either felt bad about themselves or become obsessed with, you know, self harm and then gone and taken action. And if one of these platforms are found to have not been enforcing the age limit, their penalty could be as much as $50 million, I think. Sorry, $50 million Australian, which is 32 million US for breaches and I think that's per breach. So this could be quite costly if they don't enforce it. Of course there's some weird things about the bill like they're not allowed to check government IDs. So how are you going to know if a kid is actually 15 or under? I don't know how that's going to work. But I personally will say my perspective on this bill is positive. I don't believe kids 15 and under should be using social media. And I don't think you can really do this unilaterally as a parent. If you're. The other kids are using social media, you can't say my 15 year old will not because they become a pariah. And this is a place where government intervention is actually quite good because it just makes everybody ban it. What do you think?
- [45:24]
Ranjan Roy
I think this is such a perfect example of unintended or poorly drafted legislation that is has the exact right intention because again, I 1000% agree with you that the idea that especially like middle schoolers early High schoolers are sitting there and like social media and the algorithmic interactions behind it are actually driving their well being and how they're kind of like how they socialize. But I think this ban, it exempts YouTube and under the auspices that it's a health and wellness platform and education platform which yes, you can argue maybe, but again as I'm now reporting back from a week with the norm normies, my niece was just YouTube shorts all the time. Like and YouTube shorts is tick tock to teenagers or and she's 12 years old. So like and I've seen this with other friends, kids as well that YouTube shorts. YouTube has quietly defeated TikTok among younger people I think. And it, and it's the same thing. It's not, it's just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Tick tock is not a social network as much as Blake in the same way Facebook ever was. Even Instagram with reels is not a social network in that same traditional way where people are posting a photo of themselves in a nice situation and waiting for comments. Like all of these are moving towards pure, just kind of unhealthy media consumption platforms. And I think this misses the mark on by exempting YouTube.
- [47:08]
Alex
So your big thing on this is like good idea but it should go further.
- [47:13]
Ranjan Roy
Yes, 100% they I mean YouTube. Oh here we go. YouTube. Maybe shorts cannot be accessible to a non verified teenager. I don't know. I get the verification side of it. It's going to be the most complex part of this. But it's as all these companies, they're all moving towards again Instagram with Reels, YouTube with Shorts, they're all moving to that same kind of passive consumption TikTok model and TikTok is not a social network in any normal sense of the word that we use it as. So I think, I think it has to be thought of as differently. This kind of like feels like if you took social media circuit 2017 and you were trying to come up with what is social media and how do we make it better? Which is something I've written about back then, this feels like something I would have thought then before TikTok changed everything.
- [48:09]
Alex
Yeah, I think if your main claim is that this is something that just needs to go further and I'd still sign on for it but I do think that it'll be really tough to take YouTube away from kids and especially from parents giving YouTube to kids because it's like YouTube on the iPad is the new pacifier and it's going to be very tough to like Take that away. And then you get into competition issues where it's like, well what about Netflix? You know, So I don't know, that's where it really gets a little bit difficult. But I think this broader idea of like let's use government power to sort of enforce some sort of limits on the, on kid use of social media, I think that's, that's quite good. And it's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out because I don't know, kids that young being having access to social media, it's, it's rough and it will cost these companies some business not being able to advertise to kids. So we'll, we'll see how that goes. But I don't think there's any perfect way to do this. And I think what the nice thing about, you know, tech companies often try, they test in Australia, right. It's like English language speaking and they're not going to tell anybody back in the US what's happening. So then you can have a control result and a variable result and see what's better. So let's test this one in Australia.
- [49:28]
Ranjan Roy
Testing nation.
- [49:29]
Alex
Thanks for doing this and we'll figure out how it goes. I am looking forward to visiting Australia this Christmas season.
- [49:37]
Ranjan Roy
So I'm thankful for Australia taking the hit on whatever, whatever these new features and test limits are.
- [49:46]
Alex
Exactly. Okay, one quick item I want to touch on. I just am sort of bringing this up because I think this is important and we should talk about it and it's going to have an impact in the tech world and we can just do like one or two minutes on it. But Huawei launched the first phone capable of running its new self developed operating system called Harmony OS. And this is with the Mate 70 which is basically has these new chips that put it on par with the iPhone. And I'm curious what you think about this because it could be a real big deal.
- [50:19]
Ranjan Roy
I think this could be a big deal. I mean we're already talking about Android potentially being spun out of Google. We know how much iOS has become critical to Apple's dominant position. So the idea that a fully self developed mobile operating system could come from a different company I think would be big. If this actually works and this actually gets rolled out properly. I don't know.
- [50:46]
Alex
Yes.
- [50:46]
Ranjan Roy
Why do you think this is such a big.
- [50:47]
Alex
I think a. We know that Apple has struggled to sell iPhones in China. What's the reason? Chinese developed phones have become much, much better. And so that's made, that's made A huge difference. And I think this could actually be a challenge to Apple. The more this comes, the more this rises, because, again, 20% of Apple sales come from China. Then you think about the global dominance and more and more in places like Europe, where they're allowed. Huawei phones are making an impact. And if they have better chips that enable them to run like an iPhone does, and they have a better. And they have their own operating system, this could be a real, not only area of a business challenge for manufacturers like Apple and technology companies like Apple, but a cultural challenge where you'll see certain apps preloaded, maybe WeChat become standard. I mean, I'm just spitballing, but I think this is something not to be ignored. The fact that China is starting to make some really good smartphones the same way they're starting to make some really good EVs.
- [51:47]
Ranjan Roy
Wait, that's a. Okay, I'm with you on that. That it's something that hasn't existed before. And as we'll talk in just a second, you know, like, expanding their own retail powerhouse companies outside of China into the rest of the world has upended the industry completely. The idea that this becomes really the first, like, way to take the Chinese Internet and expand it outside of China. Could it be WeChat as a default app, as you said? Or who knows? But I. But I agree. It completely changes how technology is distributed around the world. And that's something that America has been completely dominant, as every smartphone in the world is Android based at the least, if not on iOS. So that could be big. I also, I will say, did you ever see that trifold phone that Huawei released?
- [52:40]
Alex
Sure did.
- [52:41]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah. Apparently I just looked up they're going for 6,000 bucks on eBay. But if this. Maybe I will be using Harmony os if that price can come down just a little bit.
- [52:52]
Alex
All right, let's come for a landing this week talking about Black Friday, because, of course, it's Black Friday weekend. Moving into Cyber Monday. Is Cyber Monday even a thing anymore? Like, back in the day when there was the Internet and there was brick and mortar, we would do Cyber Monday. But something interesting has happened this year, which is not a surprise to our listeners, which is that Timu and Sheen have really gained, especially among young people. So where do people do their Black Friday shopping? This is according. This is from Modern retail and attest research. 80% said Amazon, 62% said Walmart, 37% said Target, 24%. Best Buy at the very end is Temu, 21%. And she and 14%. But then the numbers are quite interesting when it comes to Gen Z. Gen Z respondents said they plan to do their Black Friday shopping on Temu at 24% and then Sheen at a quarter. I think, wait, I think, you know, one quarter more than one quarter said Temu and 24% said she. And so you have these two Chinese really retailers making up effectively 50% of all Black Friday shopping for young people. One Comment and then a question to you comment is I had no idea that you could even do Black Friday shopping on a she and her team because I thought they were already discounted to the bone and there was no, you couldn't go further. So that's interesting to me. And the question to you is, is this a sea change in behavior or something that's more minor? Because when we talked about these two companies, it's always been like a push and pull between like, you know, are they actually a threat to Amazon or are they just like one tiny percentage? But seeing 50% of Gen Z doing their Black Friday shopping on these two sites cannot be something received very well within Amazon hq.
- [54:42]
Ranjan Roy
On your first point, I will agree that I did go on Timo. I did not actually shop on there on Friday. These sites are so heavily discounted I could not even tell whether there was any actual sales going on or whether it was some other like dark pattern UX trick to try to make me think. But when Temu, if you go on it any, any normal day, literally it says 100% off on the order is the banner up top. And then there's a bunch of like little customer journey tricks that it takes you on on some crazy path and if as you're just trying to buy something. So yes, I don't think they're giving real sales. What's interesting though that and Reuters had reported on this is that TEMU was bidding on terms like Walmart Black Friday deals, Kohl's Black Friday Bed Bath and beyond on Google search and then increasing the actual cost per click for each of those searches for the original retailer itself. So they are going head to head with America's largest retailers and trying to pull away business. And again this kind of like competitor keyword bidding is not, not unheard of at all in the retail world. But they are moving in aggressively on this and but given their existing prices, I did, there's one line it was saying we are witnessing the death of Black Friday. A Bloomberg Opinion contributor said, not because people stopped shopping but because they never stopped shopping. And I think that's actually the biggest takeaway of this is that they have made shopping at severe discounts something that we would wait for Friday for as the norm for a lot of consumers. And that does change this whole thing. That's why Amazon now is not Black Friday. It's Black Friday week and everyone, it's Black Friday weekend. It's no longer just one day. You get these deals.
- [56:38]
Alex
Is Cyber Monday still a thing?
- [56:41]
Ranjan Roy
Do you know Cyber5? So in retail originally there was Black Friday, then there was Cyber Monday. Then because they noticed people start were shopping from Thanksgiving to Monday. There's a few years it was called the Cyber five, basically the Thursday to Monday shopping period. And now I think everyone is just looking at this like, you know, it's weeks. I'm sure your inbox has been clogged up with Black Friday promotions for many, many days now. And people are shopping. I think Salesforce, their retail segment released some numbers. Shopify released numbers that overall this is supposed to be a pretty good Black Friday. And Timo and Sheen did not steal all of Walmart and Kohl's business. But overall, yeah, I think consumers now it's the idea that it's just a Friday is long, long gone.
- [57:37]
Alex
Right. And we did a big Black Friday sale on big technology substack. So if you're a subscriber, check your inbox and maybe sign up. Maybe you'll, you'll have one last big Black Friday purchase left in you. And I might have one in me because Ranjan, I'm about to maybe do something crazy.
- [57:52]
Ranjan Roy
What are you going to do?
- [57:54]
Alex
Well, I just went to Temu.com and I saw a beautiful thing.
- [57:59]
Ranjan Roy
What'd you say?
- [57:59]
Alex
E bike for adults, 400 watt motor, 20 mile per hour to 25 mile per hour range. It has a 14 inch tires. It's a big boy. It looks like a motorcycle. Originally on sale for $2,042.96. Black Friday deal, $311 and 20 cents. An 84% discount doesn't say whether it will burn your house down or not, but this is a beautiful looking ebike. They've sold 1.2 thousand. It's the number nine bestseller on the site. It has a 4.5 star rating. This is Baby J in the U.S. i love it. I got it to commute to work and had my first day with it and everyone loved it as well. It's low key, sexy as heck, defined my style and definitely worth the money. Another user. Ta star star star 23. Excellent. I bought this for my husband for our anniversary and even with him being 6 4, it's very comfortable and has amazing power behind it. Great for the cost, meets expectations. And I'm looking at here, I'm thinking about adding it to the card at an 84. Discount me on the. I don't even know if it has a name.
- [59:18]
Ranjan Roy
Wait, does it have a name? That's what I was gonna ask the.
- [59:22]
Alex
TEMU mobile coming to a street near you.
- [59:27]
Ranjan Roy
I just went on Temu and searched E bike for adults as well. And I see the Corona 750 watt adult electric scooter that has a photo of an E bike with a little puppy in a basket kind of on the underside of it, which is the most odd picture I've ever seen. However, I will just note that this also says it's discounted by 60%. But then when I Google the same name, I see the same item on Amazon for the same price. So I think this is a reminder that everything inflation is over.
- [60:05]
Alex
Since we like to bet probabilities, let's end with this. Yeah. Over. Under 50% chance that this thing burns down your house.
- [60:13]
Ranjan Roy
Oh, I would take the heavy over on heavy over this thing. It's basically. Yeah, that poor puppy at the bottom. That does not look look too Safe.
- [60:24]
Alex
The insurance fraud 4000 stored in your garage and cash in within 90 days.
- [60:29]
Ranjan Roy
That's the real value here.
- [60:31]
Alex
All right, Ranjan, well, I'm wishing you a happy Cyber Sunday. Moving into a Cyber Monday. Great to see you and thanks again for. For being here.
- [60:38]
Ranjan Roy
Well, I'll see you next week on my new T Mobile.
- [60:41]
Alex
Okay, I'll bring over the insurance fraud 4000 and then you and I can record in person. All right, everybody, thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on big technology podcast.