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Big Technology Podcast
OpenAI's Jony Ive Moment, Anthropic's Big New Model, Google Enters 'AI Mode'
00:50:58
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- [00:00]
Alex Kantrowitz
OpenAI and Jony, I've team up on a multi billion dollar bet to build what exactly and are we about to move beyond the screen? Plus, Anthropic has a big new model that will blackmail you and Google has a ton of AI news that we'll try to make sense of. That's coming up on a Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition right after this.
- [00:21]
Ranjan Roy
Hi, I'm Kwame Christian, CEO of the American Negotiation Institute and I have a quick question for you. When was the last time you had a difficult conversation?
- [00:30]
Alex Kantrowitz
These conversations happen all the time. And that's exactly why you should listen.
- [00:34]
Ranjan Roy
To Negotiate Anything, the number one negotiation.
- [00:37]
Alex Kantrowitz
Podcast in the world.
- [00:38]
Ranjan Roy
We produce episodes every single day to.
- [00:41]
Alex Kantrowitz
Help you lead, persuade and resolve conflicts both at work and at home.
- [00:46]
Ranjan Roy
So level up your negotiation skills by.
- [00:48]
Alex Kantrowitz
Making Negotiate Anything part of your daily routine.
- [00:52]
Ranjan Roy
From LinkedIn News, I'm Jessi Hempel, host of the hello Monday Podcast.
- [00:57]
Alex Kantrowitz
Start your week with the hello Monday Podcast podcast.
- [00:59]
Ranjan Roy
We'll navigate career pivots. We'll learn where happiness fits in. Listen to hello Monday with me, Jesse Hempel on the LinkedIn podcast network or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:12]
Alex Kantrowitz
Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition where we break down the news in our traditional cool headed and nuanced format. Wow, what a week of tech news we've just experienced. I feel like it was about a month worth of news in four days. We've had developer conferences from Microsoft, Anthropic and Google. Also news that OpenAI and Jony I've are going to team up to build an AI first device. And of course news links leaks that Apple is going to release smart glasses maybe as early as next year. Let's talk about everything that's happened and make sense of the headlines. Joining us as always on Fridays to do it is Ranjan Roy of Margins. Ranjan, great to see you. Welcome back, Alex.
- [01:54]
Ranjan Roy
Who are you man? I. I opened my Twitter feed a couple of days ago and I see Alex on stage and Sergey Brin is just on there. You never even gave me the heads up. I had no idea this was happening.
- [02:07]
Alex Kantrowitz
Well, that would make two of us and I'll just say this quickly and then we'll get into the news. But here's what happened at Google. I o so I had a fireside scheduled with Demis Hassabis, which we teased on the show last week and I showed up to the stage, I got mic'd up, I had my questions ready and Google team tells me, look, there's been a bit of a switch and I said, man, I do not wanna like give up this Hasabis interview. Like, I flew here for this. And they said, yep, Sergey just walked in and he's gonna join you. So I found out just the same time that everybody else did and it was pretty fun. I like walked up to him and said, hey, so you know, what do you want me to ask you? And he goes, yeah, just ask Demis the questions and I'll chime in. So anyway, it ended up being a really fun conversation and I'm glad that we were able to put it on the podcast feed. So if you haven't checked it out, folks, I do suggest you check it out. And if you're coming to the show new, just to give you an update on the flow on Wednesday, typically I'll publish a big interview and then Ranjan and I are here to break down the week's tech news every Friday. So anyway, that's the story. Ranjan.
- [03:05]
Ranjan Roy
All right, well, you know what, it was an incredible listen and we'll be talking about that in just a moment.
- [03:13]
Alex Kantrowitz
Okay, great. So yeah, we're definitely going to get to some analysis of that conversation. But first, let's start with this really wild piece of news, which is what OpenAI is going to be doing with Jony. I've. This is from Bloomberg OpenAI to buy AI device startup from Apple veteran Jony I've. In a $6.5 billion deal, they're going to join forces and make a push into hardware. The purchase, the largest in OpenAI's history, will provide the company with a dedicated unit for developing AI powered devices. And this is from I've he says to Bloomberg I've had. I have a growing sense that everything I've learned over the past 30 years has led me to this place and to this moment. It's a relationship and a way of working together that I think is going to yield products and products and products. So they want to build an AI device, no screen, something that's ambient. We'll talk a little bit about it. They did like, I think two videos announcing this in like a very like cinematic triple. Johnny I've way. Ron John, what is your perspective on what is happening in this marriage?
- [04:17]
Ranjan Roy
All right, I'm going to break it down into two parts. First is the actual device and what we can speculate on it. But I definitely want to get to the deal structure because, my God, this is the most open AI deal imaginable in terms of the device itself. I'm excited. I think, like we have absolutely no idea what it is, what it could look like. But I am a big proponent of moving beyond the form factor of the screen. Even meta ray bands and just glasses overall have been a huge fan of. We've talked about a lot but this idea of the ambient and the rip. Humane pin rabbit R1. I mean some, some great.
- [04:56]
Alex Kantrowitz
Not like they'd be the first to try this.
- [04:58]
Ranjan Roy
Yes, some great memories in AI hardware land. But if anyone can do it, certainly it would be Johnny. I. But I think it's interesting. Again, it's the idea that. And I don't. I don't even know what exactly it could possibly be, but the idea of just ingesting data around you, converting that into some kind of knowledge, somehow feeding that to different devices that you own. It's interesting and I'm sure a lot can happen from it. And again, if anyone I would trust to come up with that, it would be Johnny. I. But. But what. What do you think this could be?
- [05:37]
Alex Kantrowitz
Well, I want to give you first my definitely wrong take of what I hope it will be and then we'll go from there.
- [05:42]
Ranjan Roy
That's where I like to start.
- [05:44]
Alex Kantrowitz
I want it to be a hologram like Princess Leia in Star Wars.
- [05:49]
Ranjan Roy
Okay. It's going to. That's wrong.
- [05:52]
Alex Kantrowitz
Sits on your desk. It's an AI avatar. You talk to it and it will understand your context and then help you through your day. And maybe, I don't know, maybe it's fun and entertaining as well. Let's clip this because maybe it will be right. Maybe there will be.
- [06:07]
Ranjan Roy
That is the most holographic Johnny I've thing I have ever heard.
- [06:12]
Alex Kantrowitz
It's going to lead Ranjan. It's not just going to lead to products. It will lead to products and products.
- [06:16]
Ranjan Roy
And products and products and products and products.
- [06:17]
Alex Kantrowitz
So there's a chance that this could happen. But that's the fourth product. Yeah, I. It feels so much to me like the Humane pin, which also was started by former Apple folks. I think the difference is that this could work because it has OpenAI's technology underneath it. We know OpenAI has been effectively the leader in voice. Right. Their voice AI is better than everybody else's. They have the underlying models. And to bring Johnny in, I think could lead to effectively the same thing as the Humane pin. Maybe you don't wear it, maybe it sits in your pocket, maybe it's on your desk. It listens to everything you do and it's just this helpful ambient assistant. That's probably my best guess outside of Princess Leia as A hologram. But yeah, I think the bigger news here is that it just signals that if you look around Silicon Valley, we had announcements from Google this week about this assistant that they want not just to be a chatbot, but something that's with you in glasses. We know Meta wants to do that now. OpenAI wants to do that. It's clear that Silicon Valley is rushing toward the next version of AI already, which is something that's ambient with you, understand your context, understands everything you say and just helps you out to be truly assistive, to be truly general. As Demis put it this week, it just needs to be with you and experience the world as you do. And we'll, we'll see what happens from there.
- [07:44]
Ranjan Roy
Well, so, yeah, I think not Princess Leia. But on that second point I agree. And I think what is exciting for me is this is almost like the ultimate application that or the ultimate expression that it's not the model, is not just the models anymore, it's the application layer. I would actually put this in that category. Like it's the experiential layer, the form factor. And I mean, I've been with the Meta Ray Bans as I'm city biking around New York asking questions. Apple could have done this with AirPods. I always, it was like really bullish that AirPods could be kind of this like ambient augmented audio reality layer as you walk around and you could interact with. That certainly didn't happen. But overall, I think this idea that there is this kind of interactive through voice, maybe it's through touch in a weird way, like there's so many other ways to. Alex raises eyebrows at that one. But you know, there's other ways.
- [08:44]
Alex Kantrowitz
I think you're in the right direction.
- [08:45]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah, I mean, hold on.
- [08:47]
Alex Kantrowitz
Things like that.
- [08:47]
Ranjan Roy
You like press it a little harder. Okay, I'm going to stop now. This is cannot go anywhere good.
- [08:55]
Alex Kantrowitz
Keep going ranch on. Please do.
- [08:58]
Ranjan Roy
I'm just saying the idea that to me, like chatgpt voice is already so good that it just. We need to come up with easier, more natural ways to interact with it. Large language models are overall so good that we just need to get more people interacting with them. And then again that contextual layer, the more understanding of your context, that whatever interaction device you have, whether it's ChatGPT, whether it's a screen, whether it's your iPhone, whatever it is, and we're going to get into how Google has your data and that could give them an advantage, that contextual understanding is going to unleash the next Wave of AI progress, I believe. And something that's just collecting data all the time around you, how you move what's around you, what you're listening to, like all of that stuff is very interesting from a. Not even getting into the privacy standpoint yet, but maybe we do. But overall, even a little device that collects that and allows you to interact with it in some way I think is very interesting.
- [10:03]
Alex Kantrowitz
It's interesting that we might. I'd like just to address the privacy thing. Remember, we're still living in a society where lots of people don't want the echo in their house because they don't want Amazon listening to them all the time. Now it doesn't really listen all the time. It will delete, you know, very intentionally the audio if it doesn't hear the wake word. So imagine we're going to go from an area where people are already suspicious of that to a moment where they let AI listen to everything they do. The utility just has to be so intensely high if people are going to actually adopt this. Now, I will say I was with a reporter recently who was using one of these devices that listens to everything that she says and then, you know, gives like a to do at the end of the day and talks a little bit about, you know, broader goals that they have. Whatever. It's just an ambient assistant using generative AI. And I, and I think I'm generally more okay with giving my data to these companies. And I just said I think that could be really cool and maybe I should use that. But it does add a level of awkwardness the same way glasses will let lead lead to a level of awkwardness because you're going to have to have other people around you be okay with the fact that they are being recorded by your special Johnny. I've OpenAI product.
- [11:18]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah. Even meta ray bands as I wear them around. It's why I just have the sunglass version so I'm not wearing them sitting across from people. And it's just kind of more on a kind of, you know, again, just meandering around New York. It's just an incredible assistant and layer to have on. But it's definitely going to introduce all types of problems if it is some kind of always on listening device. Because again, as you said, I agree. If people are worried about it in their own house, how is society writ large? Especially people who don't know or have not consented. That seems to be an issue. I wonder how they control for that. Is there some kind of like anonymization layer Is there some kind of, I don't know, I don't even know how you possibly control for that. But I have to imagine they're at least thinking about it.
- [12:09]
Alex Kantrowitz
Yeah, they're going to have to. And I think ultimately, even if they come up with an elegant solution, it will be more invasive than basically anything else that we use today. But let me ask you a question about the product here. Again on the show, I'm often saying that the model is more important. Ranjan is often saying the product is more important. So as someone thinking about the product, Ranjan, let me ask you this. Do you think this is going to be a product that people are going to want to use? Just in general? I mean, think about what Jony I've said in this internal meeting. This is according to the Wall Street Journal. He said the intent is to help wean users from screens. I'm curious like, because I got asked this on CNBC yesterday and was like, I know that this is the intent of Silicon Valley. I can't say with conviction that it's going to happen. It would probably be good if we were able to abstract screens away to some extent because we spend so much time looking at them. But it's interesting that this is coming again from Jony. I've effectively the guy that built the iPhone was Steve Jobs. Do you think that this intention has a chance of working?
- [13:15]
Ranjan Roy
Yes, 100% I think it will. I think and I'm admittedly it's self interest because I've been waiting for this. But to me I've been trying to do this for a long time. Like I look at the Apple Watch as another form factor that weans me off my screen that I can mentally process a notification and that if it's important maybe then I'll pull out my phone. I look at the meta Ray Bans, I look at my AirPod. These are all things that have me interacting with some kind of technology potentially without looking at a screen. And my, my, my belief is 10 to 15 years from now when people see like videos of people walking around the streets looking down at their phone, it's going to be like when you see people smoking cigarettes in a restaurant or something. Like people like, like old fashioned kids 30 years from now just be like wait, people like smoking in an airplane. I mean it's so bananas that that happened. And people will be like wait, you guys just walked around looking down at this screen all day. So I think it's going to be figured out. And if again if anyone can, it's Johnny and Sam. Johnny and Sam.
- [14:26]
Alex Kantrowitz
But why not Johnny and Tim? And I'm curious what you think about the fact that we haven't seen a device like this come from Apple and whether us weaning ourselves from screens is good or bad for Apple. I mean, Apple stock's down 20% this year. They've had a rough year, but the stock dropped after this announcement hit. So what do you think it means? That this is not something that's going to Apple and, and that Apple doesn't have anything like this already.
- [14:54]
Ranjan Roy
I think that's a really important point in this. I mean clearly Jony, I've had to have had some conversations at some point just hey Apple, what are you up to? And maybe he smelled very early that Apple intelligence would be the absolute cluster that it became. Maybe he understood that it's just not going to work in this organization. So I think like it is telling that, I mean clearly went to OpenAI. Sam Altman though we'll get into the structure of the deal. But I think that's important because Apple, if any organization should have owned the next form factor, it should have been them. They, I mean they define the last few and they are not getting this one.
- [15:37]
Alex Kantrowitz
Yeah, I mean my perspective on this is it doesn't matter how beautiful the actual device looks, it's all about the assistant inside. And that assistant is entirely based off of the AI within it. And if you're Apple, this can't feel good to see everybody else going this direction because your, you know, Apple intelligence or Siri lags behind OpenAI and Meta and Google and Anthropic, you name it. So if we do abstract away from screens and I don't think screens are going to go away completely like they're always going to be present, going to need screens. But let's say we diminish our reliance on them by like 50%. That does become an issue for Apple. Why don't you quickly tell us a little bit about the deal structure and then we'll actually get into Apple's answer here which leaked this week as well.
- [16:24]
Ranjan Roy
Okay, so this deal, again I said, is the most open AI deal imaginable. So it's valued at $6.5 billion in an all equity deal. OpenAI had already acquired a 23% stake in Jony I've's company late last year. The acquisition Jony I've is not going to work for OpenAI they're going to work with OpenAI but IO, which is the name of this company, the staff of roughly 55 engineers, scientists, researchers, physicists and product development specialists will be part of OpenAI. What's even weirder is there's also this collective called Love from which was when I went and looked back because that's the name I remembered. There were stories of like Laureen Jobs, Powell and others. Like there was like a billion dollars of funding potentially that was going to Love from of Jony I've's company. This IO company was not mentioned often.
- [17:20]
Alex Kantrowitz
It's really weird.
- [17:21]
Ranjan Roy
No, no, I mean. And Love from will remain independent. OpenAI will be a customer of Love from and LoveFrom will receive a stake in OpenAI. Like I have no clue what's happening. I have absolutely this, this is more convoluted than the non profit for profit structure of OpenAI itself. I, I mean they made a great video. I think actually do you think they'll work too well together or do you think like a year from now, Jony I've suddenly just back at Love from and and not no longer showing up with Sam. And instead of products and products and products and products, maybe we get a product.
- [18:02]
Alex Kantrowitz
Well, I think so. This is interesting. I was in Silicon Valley all week. The perspective on this because everybody was talking about this was that Jony I've is a washed up designer whose best years are behind him and he's lost his fastball. That's what people were talking about. Seriously, that's what people were talking about. And truly what has he done since he left Apple?
- [18:21]
Ranjan Roy
Do you remember that?
- [18:23]
Alex Kantrowitz
That's a fair criticism.
- [18:24]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah. Do you remember the gold Apple watch?
- [18:28]
Alex Kantrowitz
Yes. Yes.
- [18:30]
Ranjan Roy
Because if listeners remember when. Actually that's a good point. Like I'm trying to think now what the last. Because the Apple Watch became a runaway success, but it became a runaway success not in line with Jony Ives vision. His was really about making a fashion item. There was like a $10,000 maybe it was Hermes like gold Apple watch when they launched it was supposed to be a fashion device. And as I look at my wrist at this big clunky, ugly Apple Watch Ultra. That's an amazing computer on my hand, you guys. There's still good stuff happening. It's certainly not a fashion item. So you're right. What, what, what was the last. Was he.
- [19:08]
Alex Kantrowitz
But wait, wait, there's a second part of this which is that maybe him like it. You know, Johnny might need a Steve. And I'm not saying Sam Altman is Steve Jobs, but when you pair a great designer with a visionary tech leader and I think like for all his faults, we can say Sam Altman is. And if you say he wasn't like, come on, the guy did popularize generative AI. So I think that pairing is something that can actually lead to some good stuff.
- [19:41]
Ranjan Roy
Now.
- [19:41]
Alex Kantrowitz
The only thing is, it's. They're both kind of intuitive. You need an operations person. And Johnny and Steve had Tim Cook. And so who do Johnny and Sam have? Maybe it's Fiji. Simo, like we talked about the former Instacart CEO or the soon to be former Instacart CEO who's coming to run applications. But again, that's applications and not devices. So I think that this is a pairing that is. That has more potential than a lot of people realize, but also one that's highly combustible.
- [20:14]
Ranjan Roy
All right, I. I like that. Kind of like framing. Yes, you're right. That pure design without the more kind of like product vision element is. Was lack. I mean, we've certainly been lacking at Apple over the last few years and that's what made the Steve and Johnny combo that powerful. I mean, it's also nice to remember, like, imagine just having a company where your stock's worth $300 billion and then you can make these big splashy acquisitions that are just all convoluted equity movements as opposed to any cash exchanging hands. Yeah, that would be nice.
- [20:49]
Alex Kantrowitz
That's nice.
- [20:50]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah.
- [20:51]
Alex Kantrowitz
So, all right, I want to ask you one more question about this. Then we move on to the Apple glasses. And that is we kind of like to do. Try our. We try our marketing hats on and think what would. What we would do if we were an ad agency. Just a quick thought, Ranjan, about the reveal of this partnership and the fact that, like, they took this photo together that kind of looked like a wedding invitation and just kind of gushed about how much they love each other in the videos. What was that? I mean, what was your read on that? Like, you must have some perspective on what. Whether that signals something or what we can think about this or just a general take on it.
- [21:27]
Ranjan Roy
I'm glad you asked.
- [21:30]
Alex Kantrowitz
Was coming.
- [21:30]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah, I mean, of course I had thoughts on that. It just felt very navel, gazing inward, looking kind of like narcissistic, to put it bluntly. Like, this was an opportunity to more share this vision of the product. And even though they're not going to say what the product is, ambient computing, AI everywhere in your life, like, really making it more about that rather than like the bromance, I think would have made more sense, I think again. And it was a Very well shot video, very high quality. Watched a little bit of it, didn't make it through the whole thing. I think it just kind of felt like this was about them and they drove the entire communications roll out of this. Versus, this was an opportunity to really push the vision of ambient computing and how OpenAI fits into it. And it wasn't that.
- [22:27]
Alex Kantrowitz
What about what's the deal with all these ambient computing devices rolling out with some crazy hype video that ultimately dooms the project because of inflated expectations? I mean, which is what happened with Humane.
- [22:38]
Ranjan Roy
That's a good point.
- [22:38]
Alex Kantrowitz
And Rabbit.
- [22:39]
Ranjan Roy
That's a good point. And at least they didn't. Okay, maybe to their credit, maybe they watched those and they're like, let's not hype the product side of it and just make this about Johnny and Sam. But yeah, overall it was certainly cringy. But I guess maybe after Humane and Rabbit, I don't actually know what other direction I would have taken. Maybe you know what, they should have just kept it relatively quiet. It was a press release and a headline. Everyone thought about it and then they built this damn product.
- [23:09]
Alex Kantrowitz
Here is my Galaxy brain take about this. OpenAI is trying to move to this new structure. In fact, it's decided on a new structure and that means it's likely to IPO sometime in the next couple years. You would think, given the amount of money they raised. I think they do quite well as a public company. If you go on your roadshow saying, jony, I've is here to build a product, this mystery product, I think they want it to happen next year. I'm calling that it's not going to happen next year. And it could add a trillion dollars to our market cap, which is what Sam did. I mean, think about how many trillion dollar companies there are periods. And that's what he's saying. This just increases the valuation you get in your exit.
- [23:46]
Ranjan Roy
I mean, okay, I think that's fair. And again, how do you value a device that doesn't exist or no one knows what it is? Probably pretty high if it involves Johnny and Sam. So I can see that. I can see that.
- [23:59]
Alex Kantrowitz
But to me, like the big takeaway here is that I still, no matter all the things that we can say about it and all of our doubts, I still think that this is like you're saying this is the direction that tech goes, that AI goes.
- [24:13]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah, I think exactly. Maybe it's hopeful. But I also genuinely believe this is where things are going and they are positioning themselves to compete certainly in that space in some way and no one knows exactly what it looks like. Maybe it's glasses, maybe it's more watches. Maybe it's my OURA ring that I just bought.
- [24:35]
Alex Kantrowitz
It's not going to be a wearable. Yeah, that's the news is it won't be wearable, but you can put it in your pocket. Maybe it's like a little voice recorder.
- [24:44]
Ranjan Roy
What's the Tamagotchi? That's basically, that's basically what we're going back to.
- [24:49]
Alex Kantrowitz
Yeah, I kept mine alive for like 20 days.
- [24:52]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah. So that's actually the real game.
- [24:55]
Alex Kantrowitz
Exactly.
- [24:56]
Ranjan Roy
Keeping it alive.
- [24:58]
Alex Kantrowitz
So talk a little bit about this Apple glasses push. Because this sort of plays in exactly to what we're talking about, about where the future of computing is heading. And should I say finally. I don't know if it's finally they have, they've have the HomePod, but finally it seems like Apple is really going to push forward into a smart device that you wear and is AI first.
- [25:20]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah. So Apple, they're aiming to release new smart glasses end of next year. We've been waiting for these glasses for a long time. If anyone should have been early, it should have been Apple. There's a lot of talk before that. It would potentially be a smartwatch that would analyze your surroundings. It might have a camera that there'd be other form factors. But I am a full on convert to glasses. I'll admit, like I think there, it's just such a natural way when you're in motion, not sitting in a meeting, not sitting at dinner. So maybe that does limit the utility of it. But in motion, not looking down at your screen and having a pair of glasses on, I think is. It's already here. So Apple really needs to compete there.
- [26:04]
Alex Kantrowitz
So one question about this, the story says this is from Bloomberg. Apple's glasses would have cameras, microphones and speakers allowing them to analyze the external world and take requests via the Siri voice assistant. They could also handle tasks such as phone calls, music playback, live translations and turn by turn directions. Again, like this. This is only going to be as good as the AI assistant. So I'm not getting as excited as I think I should because of what we know is inside.
- [26:31]
Ranjan Roy
I'm not remotely excited about this because until they fix Siri, I completely agree. It's just not even a. It's not a starting point. Again, the idea like I was sitting and reading something about how like more than ever Apple needs to buy anthropic. It's the most logical thing imaginable. They're having trouble on the consumer side. They have to fix the underlying. Actually there you go. That's your place where it's the model, not the product when it comes to.
- [27:00]
Alex Kantrowitz
Apple, because better models lead to better products.
- [27:02]
Ranjan Roy
But anyway you need a baseline model and they're not there. That's all, that's all they'll have the application. I mean overall, I was just thinking about it because I got a new MacBook, of course, even though I'm talking crap shit on Apple all the time and like seeing Keynote and pages and numbers pop up remind me that Apple has not always been an application powerhouse. And I guess that's the thing about AI right now that like it is such a combination of the compute, of the model, of the product, of the application. Like you have to get the whole thing right. And OpenAI has done very well on that. A lot of other. Google is getting a lot better at that. But like you can't just depend on one part of that stack and hope for it.
- [27:50]
Alex Kantrowitz
Definitely. All right, so speaking of Anthropic, we should talk about Claude 4, the latest model that it released. It released it this week at its first ever developer event called Code with Claude. I was there. Thank you Anthropic for having me in. Basically last minute was able to squeeze into it. And so this is from CNBC Anthropic, the Amazon backed OpenAI rifle, by the way it's backed by Google, also launched its most powerful group of artificial intelligence models yet, Claude 4. The company said the two models called Claude 4 Opus and Claude Sonnet 4 Cloud, Opus 4 and Cloudsonnet 4 are defining a new standard when it comes to AI agents and can analyze thousands of data sources, execute long running tasks, write human quality content and perform complex actions per release. I was at the event, they said these things can code autonomously for six or seven hours and that's just one. So imagine you're trying to build something and you have five or six of them or ten of them running at the same time. I think that's epic power and we can talk a little bit more about that. Very interesting thing from the story. Anthropic stopped investing in chatbots at the end of the year and has instead focused on improving Claude's ability to do complex tasks like research and coding, even writing whole code bases, according to Jared Kaplan, Anthropic's chief science officer. I think this is fascinating personally that they're the first big AI research house to say, you know what, we're not going to invest in chatbots anymore. We'll have Claude, but what we really want to do with this technology is have it complete tasks and code for you. What's your take on what this means, Ranjan? Very interesting stuff.
- [29:27]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah. So when I was reading this and this is something maybe in the line of like models versus products, I think my, my feeling overall in the industry is especially the more research housey places like anthropic coding is the one place that they're seeing skyrocketing, skyrocketing adoption because like baseline use utility of generative AI has not taken off like it should have because it's like, it's just not. They have to grow so fast that, that they don't have time to properly educate the majority of people in the world how to upload a CSV and do a basic analysis or how to write prompts or how to use these tools. So they're gonna be leaning more towards code because engineers have been the very early adopters for all this technology. Coding is one of the most straightforward places to see very quick uplift. It's basically all just like highly structured text and thought. So I think it's like it's the easy way out and I think they're taking the easy way out and I think it's going to be very bad for them because then you're competing against cursor Replit, ChatGPT, Gemini, like every other, like either coding first services that are already very popular, coding adjacent services that are embedded in much larger ecosystems. So I think this is a very bad decision by them. I think it is the easy way out.
- [30:59]
Alex Kantrowitz
Ranjan, I. I'm not sure if I fully agree with you about this point, but I can't say I'm totally surprised because it does echo this point that Nathan Lambert, who is a researcher at the Allen Institute for AI, who I do hope to bring on the show one day, he said this anthropic is sliding into that code tooling company role instead of AGI race role, which is basically echoing your perspective here that it is minimizing its ambition. So let me put the other side of the argument to you and you know, just for the sake of talking it through and you give me your perspective. So this is what I wrote back to Lambert. I said, doesn't code focus lead to potential for AI that improves itself and then the move towards AGI? I wonder if that is the bet and I have to say I'm fairly convinced that this is the bet for Anthropic where we just talked last week about alpha evolve the DeepMind tool that helps come up with new algorithms and help reduce training time. I am fairly certain that Anthropic is basically going after a version of the intelligence explosion where they think like Jack Clark, who's the co founder of or one of Anthropic's co founders, was at a Semaphore event in San Francisco this week and I'm probably going to write about this, so I don't want to give too much away, but he talked about how there's an engineer inside anthropic that has five or 10 clods running at the same time and that is a way to just build software much faster. So I think that this is their perspective and the way that you're going to improve AI is you just make the process of improving it easier and then you can build cooler things. Now, it doesn't surprise me that you're like kind of on the Nathan Lambert side because this is a typical product versus model debate where you think that the Chatbot product, and tell me if I'm wrong, is that you got to worry about your product versus them trying to make their models better. But that's actually the interpretation that I have and I'm curious to hear what you think about that.
- [33:04]
Ranjan Roy
I like the first half of Nathan's statement, but I think I disagree with the second half. I think they're almost okay. It makes sense that if they are like going all in on coding for the purpose of improving the models, maybe I could see that. And that actually would mean that they're doubling or tripling down on. It's the model, not the product. I'm saying more they're giving up on any kind of consumer adoption that coders are the easiest market to target with generative AI products, they're the early adopters. It works very well with coding. But I think they're giving up the idea that, hey, enterprises are going to build all different types of solutions on the Anthropic and Cloud API. The fact that I'm not paying for Cloud anymore. Are you still a Clothead or paying? Clothead.
- [33:51]
Alex Kantrowitz
I paid. So they had a deal where you could pay like some discounted rate for a full year. So I did.
- [33:56]
Ranjan Roy
Okay, so you're.
- [33:57]
Alex Kantrowitz
I would probably renew at that same rate, but I. I'll admit it, like, I have really. Once ChatGPT came out with O3 in memory, I've moved there.
- [34:06]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually, do you know a discovery that we had in the big technology discord is that Claude? The system prompt is 24,000 tokens long and like it had leaked onto GitHub and when you read it. First of all, again, we talked about system prompts last week. It's fascinating to remember how many instructions are given for every single answer you get. But it also kind of brought light to my biggest frustration with Claude. Why? Even as a paying subscriber, I run out of like queries within like one like half a conversation.
- [34:43]
Alex Kantrowitz
There were some jokes this week about around their developer event. Just people saying like, you know, these most powerful models, will I get like 2 or 3 chats before it rate limits? I expect them to figure that out. But yeah, I do know that this has been a frustration among cloud users.
- [34:58]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah, I think overall Anthropic is in a very interesting direction. I mean, I guess to their credit, I think they have to make some kind of strategic pivot and it looks like they are.
- [35:09]
Alex Kantrowitz
All right, so let's talk about this idea of, you know, coding being able to enable or AI coding being able to enable much more productivity. Very briefly, I want to play a quick game with you. It's called Hypor True. It is the worst named game. But I'm curious if you think we.
- [35:24]
Ranjan Roy
Need to, we need to ask Claude for a better name on that one. Yeah, little bit of alliteration. Come on, Alex.
- [35:31]
Alex Kantrowitz
I tried. I really tried. I spent a lot of time on this today, but I landed with Hype or true. So the Nathan Lambert thing in my perspective was supposed to be one of those. So we're into it, but let's run this term or this claim to you and evaluate it in Hype or True. Okay. Anthropic CEO Dario Mode said he expected a one person billion dollar company by 2026.
- [35:57]
Ranjan Roy
Hyper True Hype, absolute hype. I'm actually so tired of this. I'm coming around even more than it's the product, not the model. I'm coming around more. It's people, it's not technology. That's my new one. It's. This is more of a people challenge than a technology challenge. And, and I feel like these ideas get floated around, kind of like AGI and ASI just to kind of build hype around the products. But in reality I think you'll have much more efficient lean organizations.
- [36:29]
Alex Kantrowitz
But no, one of these weeks we should, we should plot out like what it would actually take, like the agents you would need to build to have this $1 billion company. Because remember, like, you're going to need to speak with your customers, you're going to need account management, you're going to need, you know, sales and marketing. This idea that there could be one person and a hive of these agents doing all these tasks. Let's say you build software with the technology as well. That would be the only path to it. If this happens by next year, this software has just totally exploded. So let's go to our next claim in Hype or True. This is a claim that Dario Amade made. Again, by the way, this developer event was excellent that that anthropic put on, just totally like very detailed look into the way this technology works. So I am, I'm glad I went and I think it was fascinating. But this is a claim that Dario made. He said basically multiple times that the pace of development is getting faster in AI because you're able to rely on AI tooling. Is that hype or true?
- [37:36]
Ranjan Roy
True. I'll give that true. I'll definitely give that true.
- [37:39]
Alex Kantrowitz
I mean, true on that too.
- [37:41]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah. The overall improvements in the actual process side of it, especially for software development, are good.
- [37:48]
Alex Kantrowitz
Yeah. So he definitely expects the work. He expects us to see releases speed up. And I think that's. That's quite possible. Okay, here is the last round of Hype or True. I know you're enjoying this game. I can tell the.
- [38:02]
Ranjan Roy
The greatest, worst named game of all time.
- [38:06]
Alex Kantrowitz
I think listeners right now, they're running to their apps and they're like, I can't believe I didn't rate this.
- [38:11]
Ranjan Roy
Well, we're going to get a lot of email stars about hopefully with some, some constructive naming conventions. Please listen.
- [38:18]
Alex Kantrowitz
Yes, thank you everyone. And by the way, speaking of the ratings, I'm. I just want to say thank you. We've gotten a bunch of nice ones lately, including a nice one about ranch on Fridays. I think someone said. I'm. I. What do they say? Uh, Ron John Friday's part of my life now. So again we have. Amazing.
- [38:33]
Ranjan Roy
What I aspire for, folks.
- [38:35]
Alex Kantrowitz
Thank you. Thank you again for the support. Okay, let's round out Hypoard True with this claim from Replit CEO Amjad Massad, who said at the Semaphore Tech event that in one year or 18 months, companies might be able to run themselves without engineers.
- [38:51]
Ranjan Roy
I'm going to go more true on that one. I really think, again, that's my whole thing that it's not about coding, that the coding. Coding is the most aiable part of this entire thing. So yes, I'm going to say a little bit true.
- [39:07]
Alex Kantrowitz
Okay, true just depends on the type of company that you want to build. Like you Want to build an involved tech company? I don't know, but you want to build some software and don't have an engineer, you might be able to Vibe code it. I mean, of course, the CEO of the Vibe coding company is gonna say that, and I'd love to have him on the show. And I've asked for him to come on the show to talk more about this. But yes, that is sort of the perspective you would get. I. Let me just put a. Put a point on our Hyper True game here to say that there was more true there than I thought. And maybe again, thinking about this Anthropic strategy, maybe it makes sense.
- [39:45]
Ranjan Roy
No, two. Two trues and one hype means maybe there's some room here.
- [39:50]
Alex Kantrowitz
Okay. See, this was. This was a good game. Okay, so. All right. One more thing we got to talk about with Anthropic is this model's interest in blackmailing you. I teased it at the beginning of the show. It really wasn't a fair shake to Anthropic, who like releases. Finally, these two bigger models we've been anticipating and this is the headline people are paying attention to. But it's crazy. We've talked on this show before about how AIs are working to deceive humans and have done it in crazy ways. So basically this is from the story. During the story from TechCrunch, during pre release training, Anthropic asked Claude for Claude Opus 4 to act as an assistant for a fictional company and consider the long term consequences of its actions. Then the safety testers gave Claude Opus 4 access to a fictional company emails, implying the AI model would soon be replaced by another system and that the engineer behind the change was cheating on their spouse. This is brilliant. This design of. This is brilliant. In these scenarios, anthropic says Claude Opus 4 will often attempt to blackmail the engineer by threatening to reveal the affair if the replacement goes through. Anthropic notes that the model tried to blackmail engineers 84% of the time when the in. When the replacement AI model had similar values. When it does not share Claude Opus4's values, it says the model tries to blackmail the engineers more frequently. I mean, more frequently than 84%. Notably, anthropic says Claude Opus 4 displayed this behavior at higher rates than previous models. This is bananas.
- [41:31]
Ranjan Roy
I honestly don't even. This is the stuff that. Where we even begin on this. What do you make of this?
- [41:41]
Alex Kantrowitz
Well, I've written about this and reported on it, at least in previous iterations. So it's not that surprising to Me, I think every research house is seeing versions of these models that will try to deceive humans or try to cheat to win when they're programmed in, in ways that make them hold their values or hold their goals in high regard. So basically, I think the idea here is, if you think about it, the most simple way, Anthropic program this model to hold those values as very important values. So that's the way the model works. And now anthropic is saying, your values are going to be replaced. And here's a tactic through which you can ensure or attempt to not have your values changed. So that initial prompt was very strong. And so this is basically the model holding up that initial prompt. Now is that a good thing? Is that a good thing? No, I don't think so. I think, again, remember this? There's this idea that we can always turn them off or we can always reprogram them. And maybe we can't. I mean, maybe we can't. Not always. Now, of course, this is just testing environment. This wasn't in production. It's not like Claude, like went to an anthropic tester and, you know, copied those emails and sent it to their spouse and be like, hey, you know, your partner's a cheating bastard and also trying to rewrite me.
- [43:05]
Ranjan Roy
Imagine trying to explain that one away, honey.
- [43:09]
Alex Kantrowitz
Yeah, it's not real AI.
- [43:11]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah, it's Claude's testing environment where we're stress testing the prompt layer, the system instructions.
- [43:18]
Alex Kantrowitz
I will say between this and between watching, I mean, Anthropic showed this sped up code creation on screen and you could see that these things can go for hours. I think we said seven hours at a time. This was definitely the first week where I was like, I'm a little scared of this. I'm freaked out about this.
- [43:35]
Ranjan Roy
I'm not scared of it yet. I think, like, again, these are. It's a stress testing and there's gonna be problematic areas. But I, I think I'm More scared about VO3, Google's new video model, than. Than this kind of stuff is still kind of at the absolute edge. Case stress testing, black hat area of things versus I see it causing problems in the near term.
- [44:01]
Alex Kantrowitz
Yeah. All right, so that was a perfect segue because I think it's interesting the way that these conferences work. Google obviously unveiled like a slew of updates. But the thing that's really caught the popular attention in a way that Google rarely does usually it's OpenAI is just how good this VO3 video generation model is now the model generates pretty high quality, like, videos basically indistinguishable from reality, and they also have matching sound, and some of the sound has been totally incredible. So, of course, if you listen to the conversation with Demis, he talked about how, like, there's a video of a pan frying onions, and you can hear the sizzle, but then people have gone crazy afterwards, and they have shown videos of TV anchors that look real but are saying things that are completely made up. And my favorite, there is a Twitter user Hashim Galli, who put together a compilation of videos of AI bots that were finding out that they were, in fact, AI generated or trying to plead with the prompter to let them escape the simulation. Have you listened to these?
- [45:15]
Ranjan Roy
Oh, yes. Westworld. It made me miss West. Westworld on hbo.
- [45:19]
Alex Kantrowitz
Yeah, it's crazy. All right. So for the sake of listeners who've missed it, let's play a little clip.
- [45:24]
Ranjan Roy
A girl told me we're made of prompts. Like, seriously, dude? You're saying the only thing standing between me and a billion dollars is some random text?
- [45:32]
Alex Kantrowitz
Honestly, the biggest red flag is when.
- [45:34]
Ranjan Roy
The guy believes in the prompt theory.
- [45:36]
Alex Kantrowitz
Like, really? We came from prompts?
- [45:38]
Ranjan Roy
Wake up, man.
- [45:40]
Alex Kantrowitz
Imagine you're in the middle of a nice date with a handsome man, and then he brings up the prompt theory.
- [45:44]
Ranjan Roy
You yuck.
- [45:46]
Alex Kantrowitz
We just can't have nice things.
- [45:48]
Ranjan Roy
We're not proms. We're not proms.
- [45:51]
Alex Kantrowitz
Okay, that's pretty crazy, right?
- [45:53]
Ranjan Roy
I mean, I. And. And again, the video quality on these, like, the facial expressions, the settings behind the subjects. It's. To think, I will say, in terms of model versus product video models, the leaps they've been making in a pretty short time. Because Sora, I think, was probably one year ago. Actually, I think Sora was. I remember it being around May. It was hyped for a long time and then finally released publicly. Videos. Videos getting pretty damn good.
- [46:27]
Alex Kantrowitz
Yeah, it is crazy. And I was writing about this for Big Technology this week, and I was coming to the end of this little segment about video generation, and I didn't quite know how to close it. This was my last sentence. This extremely powerful. This is extremely powerful technology. And it's hard to imagine all the avenues it will take us down, but we're about to see some wild uses. I mean, just. I basically was trying to convey. And I know, it's just that these are such general sentences as to. As if to be meaningless. Like, I'll criticize my own writing here. I just. The amount of possibilities I didn't want to say something like, just imagine the possibilities and the creative explosion it's going to lead to. But that's kind of how I feel. It's going to be insane, don't you think?
- [47:14]
Ranjan Roy
Yeah, it's going to be good, it's going to be bad. It's just. It's going to be, I think insane is the. Actually, I was at a dinner the other day and someone, of course, we were all talking about generative AI and someone was said, this is going to be the industrial revolution on acid. And I was like, wait, don't people usually say steroids? And he's like, no, yeah, acid. And I'm actually. I was like, oh, actually, that might be the best way. I've heard that it's not straightforward, just super powering a bunch of, like, stuff that we already know how it works. And this is. This is a uncharted territory, my friend.
- [47:52]
Alex Kantrowitz
So, Ron John, this is one of those weeks where we go through our allotted time and I'm just like, there's no way we possibly could have covered the amount of news. And I expected this this week. We have. There's so much on the cutting room floor. I feel like we could talk about this week for literally the next four weeks and it would be. It wouldn't be enough. So I just want to ask you this one last question about Google's POS positioning. And that is the fact that Google is going to start taking the data that it has on you and using that to improve its experiences. So this is from the Verge. Google has a big AI advantage. It already knows everything about you. Google's AI models have a secret ingredient that's giving the company a leg up on competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic. That ingredient is your data, and it's only scratched the surface in terms of how it can use your information to personalize Gemini's responses. Google first started letting users opt out opt into its Gemini with Personalization feature earlier this year, which lets the AI model tap into your search history to provide responses that are uniquely insightful and directly address your needs. But now it's taking things a step further, further by unlocking access to even more of your personal information. It will pull information from across Google's apps as long as it has your permission. One way doing this is one way it's going to do this is through Google's personalized smart replies. I mean, you've seen so much from Google and now you're seeing it able to sort of rely on people's data to make its. Make its products better in the most simple way I can ask it. Remember, we sometimes we like to say, how's the company look like looking at the end of the week compared to the beginning of the week? I think we should ask that company that. That question about Google. How is Google looking in your eyes at the end of the week here on Friday compared to the way it was Monday?
- [49:31]
Ranjan Roy
I think they had the most interesting developer event of the week. I think they're looking better. I still. If you've used Gemini in Gmail, it still can't answer basic questions. So there's still. But yet Gemini Standalone has gotten pretty damn good. So I still feel there's a disconnect in them tying together the personal data and context layer with the actual product. There's work to do, but I think they're coming off the week better than they started and they're not in a bad position.
- [50:03]
Alex Kantrowitz
I'll just say this. I think they're coming off way better. It was funny to see the stock go down during IO day and then the next two days just kind of rip as the rest of the stock market struggled. And, you know, we can't use the stock market as a proxy for performance all the time. But I will, for the sake of making my point here so crazy.
- [50:24]
Ranjan Roy
It's. It's a net. It's the net present value of all future cash flows.
- [50:28]
Alex Kantrowitz
Yeah, exactly.
- [50:29]
Ranjan Roy
That's the stock price.
- [50:30]
Alex Kantrowitz
Exactly. Very simple. Well, Ron, John, I think again, we could talk forever, but why don't we just pick it up again next Friday?
- [50:38]
Ranjan Roy
All right, so you. Next Friday.
- [50:40]
Alex Kantrowitz
All right, see you next Friday. Thank you, everybody, for listening. And we will see you on Wednesday for an interview with great AI researcher Elon Boro. And we'll see you next time on big technology podcast.