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Big Technology Podcast
OpenAI’s Risky Browser Bet, Amazon’s Mass Automation Plan, Clippy’s Back
01:07:49
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- [00:00]
A
OpenAI is in the browser game. We go hands on and tell you whether it has a chance. Amazon has an ambitious plan to automate hundreds of thousands of jobs. Meta does major AI layoffs and Clippy's back. That's coming up on a Big Technology Podcast Friday edition right after this. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love, it helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate, trade and value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition where we break down the news in our traditional bullheaded and nuanced format. We have a big show for you today, lots of ground to cover. Going to talk about OpenAI's Atlas browser. We're going to talk about Amazon's mass automation plan, or should we even call it that? It's a fascinating story. We're going to talk about the, the layoffs at Meta's AI division fair. And of course Clippy has returned, which we will herald at the end of the show. Joining us as always on Friday to do it is Ranjan Roy of Margins. Ranjan, great to see you.
- [01:21]
B
Good to see you. Clippy's back, Clippy's back. I cannot wait though. They are called Meo or Maiko. We'll get into that in just a bit.
- [01:30]
A
Maiko as in Microsoft copilot Maiko. Get it? Very catchy. But I am, I'm looking forward to our Clippy set.
- [01:36]
B
That works, that works, that works.
- [01:38]
A
I've heard worse names.
- [01:40]
B
I've actually, that's not a bad name. I'm going to give it to them.
- [01:45]
A
So I think Atlas is a great name. And Atlas of course is the name of OpenAI's new browser. Uh, it is an AI first browser, meaning that there's a side panel where you can browse or talk about the webpages that you're on with ChatGPT. And you can also start to ask it to do things like book me a flight. Then it will ask you do you want me to actually go ahead and access these websites with your logged in accounts or logged or as if you're not logged in and then away it goes. It will do actions for you, of course. In the browser wars, many companies have tried to unseat the incumbents but few have succeeded. And by few I mean none have succeeded. So, Ranjan, both of us have had a chance to download Atlas and play around with it. What is your first impression here? Do you think that it's going to be a legitimate competitor to Google Chrome and Safari?
- [02:41]
B
I think AI browsers are going to be the future. And even when I say first impressions this week, I use DIA from the browser company. I've been testing it for a number of months. I've been using Perplexity Comment. So to me, the ChatGPT Atlas, it wasn't anything that exciting in terms of like, what is interesting about an AI browser. And again, having that kind of like, right panel, being able to, rather than copying and paste text, which I do all the time, with a chat assistant having it all right there and ready to actually be kind of like ingested into your like chat assistant's memory, being able to ask questions, summarize things, all of that. I think there's no doubt in my mind that that is going to be the future. I'll say though, the action mode do stuff for me and we've talked a lot about thought partner versus actually doing things. I had not seen anything that interesting, at least in my usage. So far, though I have not been asking it to do too much and giving it too much sensitive information. And we'll get into why in just a bit. What about you?
- [03:54]
A
So I have definitely enjoyed using it. I think that this is the future of the browser. The question is, is it going to be something that OpenAI can ride and unseat the incumbents, or that the incumbents will effectively adopt into their products? And this idea of having an AI assistant or an AI chatbot in your side window and then giving it some capabilities to go surf the web, to me, you know, it would be great and really meaningful if your competition wasn't Google. And maybe there's a chance that it unseats Safari in some way. But I, you know, trying to go against Chrome is going to be really, really tough because Google does have the talent to build this into their product. They will. They already have Gemini baked in to some extent. So many things on the Internet work as with Chrome as the default, like you and I today we're recording on Riverside. It's a podcast recording platform. It doesn't work outside of like Chrome and Safari. So you basically have to get all this compatibility built in from the ground up. Although I do think actually Atlas is built on Chromium, which is, which is an interesting sort of wrinkle in all this that it's built on Google's open source browser technology. But then there's other, there are other things that are just not great there. For instance, the New York Times seems to block it. So if you want to go to nytimes.com and then like ask the bot in the side panel of the browser to like navigate the site for you or to speak with it about the stories there, it just can't, can't do it. Obviously New York Times and OpenAI are engaged in legal battles today, so there's obvious strengths. I do like, I do agree with you. It's going to be a feature in browsers moving forward, which is exciting. But maybe this isn't the one.
- [05:44]
B
To me there's two levels of how you can use an AI browser. Again, the first one is just summarize some stuff for me. Take some information that's on a page. Like I very regularly with ChatGPT now I have to travel a lot for my work. I'll kind of like paste in my flight info, hotel info, meeting schedules, and then ask it to kind of make me itineraries. That's a lot of manual copy pasting that. Now already I'm able to just say pull my flight info from this page and just pull it into your system and into this project in memory and it'll remember it. So, so that layer I think is, is already working very smoothly. I think the, the bigger issue though is I actually had luck when I was doing my taxes this year and this was with DIA from the browser company. Like fill in this form. What do I need to do for this box? That was kind of my first aha moment of like having to fill out a really complex, annoying form and actually it going and doing all that work and then providing me suggestions in that right panel of what I should be potentially filling in. But I didn't actually have it fill in the form for me. I had it kind of analyze it, understand it, explain it to me. But still I was, I was adding in the numbers. Like to me that's still that next step. I have personally not done anything yet where I've like had to go out and I don't know, run an entire workflow or do some entire, I don't know, take, take a lot, take some kind of meaningful action for me. Did you, did you have it actually buy your. Buy you a flight ticket or a new, a new pair of pants on Amazon or something like that?
- [07:29]
A
Well, lord knows I do need new pants.
- [07:32]
B
But I will say listeners can see Alex is wearing a pretty cool new blazer today, so.
- [07:39]
A
That's right. We're. We're powder blue here today.
- [07:41]
B
Powder blue.
- [07:42]
A
In honor of our descent into winter. I just saw one of those tweets that it's not going to be light after 6pm until, like, May in New York. And I guess, like, this longitude or latitude, I don't know which which one it is, but latitude, latitude is latitude. And, you know, that makes me sad. So I had to bring in some. Some light colors for. For some contrast, but one. Okay. I'll tell you one thing that was interesting to me. I did go to try to book a habit, book a flight for me, and there were limited flights from New York to Berlin, and I was curious why. So while I'm having it, like, go and try to book the flight, I'm now talking to the chatbot about the reasons why it might happen. Like, there was this cyber attack at a bunch of different airports that I was curious whether that had something to do with it or not. Uh, so I do think that there's this, like, really interesting capability where you have the action and the sort of information both at your fingertips, and I think that could be really interesting. We. I did see, though Ars Technica had an editor basically go and pressure test it in a bunch of different ways. And I was fairly impressed with some of the things that the bot was supposed to do. Should we go through a couple of these cases and we can talk about whether they're impressive or not?
- [08:56]
B
I actually loved these examples.
- [08:58]
A
Okay, so this editor, by the way, is a complete madman for what he had this bot do. So the first thing he asked it to do was go to 2048. The game 2048. If you don't. If you don't know what 2048 is, you kind of mix. You, You. You collapse these cubes into each other. Each has a number that, like numbers will collapse into bigger numbers. So if you have a two and a two and you move them, you get a four, and then you have to get another two and another two together, another four, and then you move, converge the fours, you get an 8. That's my best explanation of 2048, although I imagine most of our audience has probably played it.
- [09:28]
B
I have not. And your explanation didn't clarify it for me. But. But I can tell it's a tough one.
- [09:34]
A
This is a public service. You should. By the way, if Ron John, if you travel a lot, I guarantee you 2048 is on at least some of the in flight Entertainment systems of the, of the airlines you fly on. Just go to games. Okay? But anyway, let's go.
- [09:48]
B
Very quick note. I was flying back from London this week and I, I ended up, I've already watched every movie that's available. I started playing solitaire on the inflight entertainment system, and I realized I hadn't played that in like two decades or something like that. But I don't know if for, for any of the older listeners there, there was a time when that was the only game that was really available on the computer by default, and everyone in the world was playing solitaire, and I still remembered how to play it. Listen, don't, still enjoyed it.
- [10:18]
A
Don't engage in Minesweeper erasure here. All right? You can take that solitaire, but if you really just believe that Minesweeper doesn't have a place in the history books, I got nothing for you, Ranjan. Okay, can I, can I continue this or should we keep talking? All right, so, so here's what the editor said. When it came to the actual gaming strategy, the agent started by flailing around, experimenting with loop sequences of moves like up, left, right, down, and left, down. After a while, the random flailing settled down a bit, with the agent seemingly looking ahead for simple strategies. The board currently has 32 tiles that aren't adjacent, but I think I can align them. Basically this, this agent went and on the browser went and started to figure out this game and ended with a score of 356 after a couple minutes. Um, but after this editor prompted it to keep playing, it ended up with a score of 3,000, 164. And the editor says that's pretty similar to the score I was able to get in a test game as a 2048 novice. I mean, the fact that this bot, you know, with access to the screen, was able to get this, I won't call it the most complex game in the world, but a decently complex game. Figure out the rules, seemingly from, I don't know, maybe from scratch or not, and, and play to a novice level, to me was quite impressive.
- [11:44]
B
Well, I, I, I actually would be curious. Is it, and maybe this is too granular, but, like, I'm very curious. Is it learning in the moment and on the fly, or is it actually going out and learning the rules of play 2048, like from other websites or from the website itself? Because it actually is a difference in terms of, like, how these systems will learn and how they will navigate. Like, are they using contextual knowledge or are they actually able to look at a graphic and understand it in that moment, do a move, then have to take kind of like another screenshot, understand that image. I'm actually not sure, but I think because the latter would represent like a pretty insane level of intelligence, let's say.
- [12:30]
A
Yeah, one thing I'll notice that AI has always been, not always AI has been trained to play games. So this is something in the toolkit of AI. But it does seem, at least from this explanation that it sort of figured out what it, what it was doing on, on the fly. Basically going from repeated patterns and then learning to get better as it went.
- [12:52]
B
So, all right, so games, games are okay.
- [12:54]
A
Games, check. Yeah, I'm check. I think this is impressive. Okay. The other next thing this editor tried to do is he tried to get the agent on the Atlas browser to go to a radio station, find the songs that we're playing, and then, and then turn those songs into a Spotify playlist. I, I don't, I, I'll just cut to the chase. The, the bot was really able to do this. I mean the only limitation here was the fact that it didn't want to work forever, which I understand, but it was able to navigate to the radio station webpage and build a playlist. I just think that's such a cool thing. Like if this is something that's going to be operating in the background to like go to local radio stations and have it build playlists is impressive.
- [13:34]
B
I think this one was very impressive. But also if we kind of extrapolate what that means it can do, it's an always on browser that is doing something. It's able to actually find a bit of information within that and then go into a completely separate system and take some kind of action. So I think this actually is like a good representation of low risk. It's adding a song on a Spotify playlist. If it screws it up, it's not the end of the world. But like actually taking information from one system and putting it into another, you know, like authenticated system. So, so, all right, Spotify, check. Not bad, not bad. Atlas.
- [14:16]
A
On that use case, it the editor also had it go through his emails over the past week, collect all the contact information, name, email address, phone number for PI, PR contacts, contacts in those emails and add them to a Google Sheet spreadsheet. And not only did the bot do this, it added the relevant company name, which this editor did not ask for in the prompt. It had 12 rows of well formatted data for 12 different PR contacts. The guy says it stopped well before it had a chance to go through all 164 emails returned by that initial Gmail search. But that too is impressive to me.
- [14:56]
B
I think this raises an important question around AI browsers. This is the kind of work that I still. It blows my mind that Google for how much better Gemini standalone has gotten. Like, why this stuff does not work in Gemini and regular Gmail and sheets and how they don't work together. Well, because, come on guys, like, this should be table stakes for Google itself when it's only in its ecosystem. But I think it raises a big question of like, I've been thinking about this for a while, like this browser takeover idea, this kind of like, I'm going to use a browser, I'm going to use the web as it is. But if you think about it, a problem like this is an informational one. So it should be solved by like within Gmail itself or with the Gmail API or with model context protocol and not a browser kind of clicking through robotically your Gmail. And so it's still amazing to me that this system, it seems impressive and useful, but to me these are the kind of use cases that don't actually make sense for, for an AI browser.
- [16:01]
A
Right. Well, the question is, do you need a browser or is it just an extension? And why is this a browser? And so let me just put it to you because I think this is like a good opportunity. Now we've seen a little bit about what it can do. We of course know the strengths and limitations. Do you think five years from now we're still talking about OpenAI's Atlas browser?
- [16:21]
B
No, no, I don't either. I said that pretty quickly. But the reason is OpenAI has been on fire with product releases, but they're releasing a lot and a lot of it is kind of half baked. And in this case, I don't think the browser element is going to make or break their business. I think to me, even the way I see the world going is I actually websites become less relevant. Clicking around a website doesn't become that primary interaction that an AI has with that the underlying information. Again, when we talk about travel booking, yeah, it's nice that a browser is going to go to Expedia and click around or whatever it is. But like to me, there's no reason it shouldn't have. The more efficient way for it to work is to actually just directly be connected to some flight database of information and like be able to interact with it and take some action as needed versus it's Just clunky and inefficient to have to navigate a website for an AI. So that, to me that part is the one thing that doesn't make a lot of sense. And then I also, and we're going to get into security again, but like, I think this is going to be a huge issue for this entire concept And I think OpenAI is probably the least trusted in terms of like working on security relative to like whether it's a Microsoft or a Google or even an Apple or whoever else. I think OpenAI is going to lose that battle any day of the week.
- [17:53]
A
So what do you make briefly about the fact that OpenAI does create many of these apps with a lot of buzz and then we have seen them fall off. I mean, Sora, I don't know what the longevity of Sora is at the top of the App Store charts, but I'll tell you, it has been replaced at the top of the top charts. Do you know which app has replaced Sora on the top of the App Store charts?
- [18:17]
B
I do not, but I'm very interested. Alex is holding up his phone.
- [18:22]
A
Dave's Hot Chicken.
- [18:23]
B
No.
- [18:24]
A
What? Dave's Hot Chicken is number one now. Yep, Dave's tender, juicy and made to order. It has a really, actually a great mascot. It's a chicken, actually.
- [18:33]
B
Oh, I, I, I know listeners, longtime readers of Margins will know that fried chicken is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about and, and eating and interacting with. And Dave's Hot's pretty good. It's pretty good.
- [18:48]
A
I'm actually, I'm looking at the, the app home screen here and I think I see why Dave's Hot Chicken has displayed Sora. I'm counting there's at least four fried chicken patties and it looks, you know, to my counting, maybe eight buns. So maybe it's just a quadruple decker chicken sandwich and the Internet could not handle that.
- [19:09]
B
Do you know who, which musician is a major investor in Dave's Hot Chicken and actually made a big, a lot of money when it was, when I think it was some PE firm bought him out for like a billion dollars.
- [19:22]
A
Dave Master named that music.
- [19:24]
B
No, that would have been too easy. Drake, for whatever reason, Drake. Drake. Drake has to be Drake. Drake has to be Drake, one of the big guys in Dave's Hot Chicken.
- [19:34]
A
Okay, but let's get back to the matter. We digress briefly. So what do you think about this? Like, is, is OpenAI? Obviously OpenAI has shown that it knows product and the flagship product is doing incredibly well, chatgpt, 800 million users, although maybe 750 million now because meta, I don't know if you saw this, they removed 1,800chatgpt from WhatsApp for whatever reason. But, but so they're, they're obviously good at product, but they, they, I guess it's good. My personal perspective is it's good they're taking all these shots. What do you think?
- [20:05]
B
I think it's, it's a tough one because like Sora, I, I mean I've gone back on there. I still again with my son. I think I can tell you the most recent Sora creation was he wanted to be playing a trombone that farted and I, I went with it and that's, that's use case number one for Sora in today's environment is just stupid, fun, ridiculous videos that you quickly make, you laugh at and then you forget about. Like on my feed, there was nothing interesting or new like those first few days. I feel like Sam Altman was all over there. There was, there's a bunch of other, you know, there's creativity happening. I have not seen anything. So that is a perfect example of like, the technology is impressive, the app and the experience is just kind of thrown out there, there's some hype and then you move on. But I think it, either there is some real master plan of how all this is going to come together, or they're just throwing a bunch of stuff out and they have so much money that they can just product develop the hell out of whatever they want and then they're just gonna, anything anyone does in the AI space, they'll throw out some kind of lukewarm version of. And I mean, maybe it lands, maybe it doesn't. But do, do you think there's a plan here or.
- [21:28]
A
Not really, but I mean they're going after big markets, right? So sort of big market going after the social media apps like TikTok. Obviously if you get a hit browser, it's worth taking the, the chance because then you sort of control search and you don't have to pay for defaults like Google's had to within the mobile space. So I mean, I was speaking about this with Panos Panay from Amazon this week about the, the, you know, do you want to be really refined in your product strategy or do you want to throw a spaghetti at the wall in your product strategy? I am, I love the spaghetti at the wall strategy as long as you have the money to back it up. And so I think that this is the right move. From, but go for it.
- [22:09]
B
Making a great browser, like, it still takes work in the maintenance of it and like, kind of like again, if. If the interaction of every web page you load is. It's being pinged as, as like an AI crawler, AI browser. And that's going to cause some issues that you're not anticipating. Like all that investment can go out the door if you're not actually spending a good amount of time on it. So. So I think, I don't know, it feels like the chat interface, they dominate, they own that space. Everyone is in there, like just basically like killing the web off and letting all interaction take place in ChatGPT as a strategy to me would make more sense than trying to just be everywhere at once.
- [22:56]
A
Oh, they are trying to do that too. But you do make a good point and it's worse if, if you end up using this browser and you open yourself up to security problems. So talk a little bit about that.
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B
All right, so this is my favorite actually. Did you ever. In terms of browsers, did you ever use Brave?
- [23:15]
A
No.
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B
Quick history. This one was personal for me. Brave, it was a company that actually came out during the first crypto boom in 2017 and they had a coin called Basic Attention Token that basically the whole idea is you as a user would get paid in a cryptocurrency to look at advertisements. I was obsessed and fascinated by this whole idea. Never really panned out. But they have a browser. It's, it's. I think it was one of the founders of Mozilla initially. But anyway, they released this whole research where they actually went out and they created what they're called prompt injections. And the idea is you're an AI browser. You're looking at a page, you're like playing 2048 or you're on a local radio station trying to figure out what song it is and there's unreadable text to a human eye that's like in the same color as some graphic on the page that is instructing the LLM to do something malicious. And again, just simply having it take some kind of weird action is like they're able to do. It's again, like I think they had it. Just go out onto another website and show that this would be possible. But you can imagine starting to see or even like one of the examples they gave is you can add comments onto a website. So not even one that you own, but go onto other websites and add comments on Reddit or product reviews on like retailer pages and then trick the LLM into going and doing something. So just imagine if people are really opening. I mean, you just open up your Schwab Fidelity Robinhood account and suddenly the browser can go do things that you have no idea that it's doing. The it's able to take actions in the background as we talked about is cool that it's aggregating your Spotify playlist when you're not even looking at could also be in. I mean imagine instructed by unseen text on a website to go transfer your money to some other account. Like, I mean this, this is stock up on. Yeah. I mean, no, but think about like, if it's that easy, people are gonna exploit the hell out of this. And yeah, the more I was learning about this, the more I, I did not log into anything sensitive when I was playing with Atlas. I was only having it just like even logging into Reddit, I was a little nervous around like, like, but definitely not banking information. I was not even logging into my Gmail while using it.
- [26:01]
A
Right. Okay. I just want to sort of put a bow on this because we've talked a lot about like these different agentic capabilities and this is a word that keeps coming up on this show. We've had a number of listeners reach out and ask, you know, why haven't we talked about the Carpathy interview on the Dwarkesh podcast where Andre Karpathy is basically like, it's not the year of the agent, it's the decade of the agent. And the technology today is just not ready to sort of take that mantle. And it's going to take about 10 years to me. So let's just spend a second on it. I'll say, to me, that totally tracks with what we've been saying on this show, that this is going to be, it isn't going to be overnight. There are going to be places it works and places it doesn't. And the real question is whether it match is a mismatch with the funding or not. You put all these, all this money in and you have to wait 10 years. You could lead to some bad aspects. And people were saying that, oh, this, this is the interview that's going to pop the bubble. Doesn't look like that happened this week. The S&P 500 is up a point and a half.
- [27:08]
B
So all time highs, all time highs, all time high.
- [27:10]
A
So it's the Carpathia interview didn't pop the bubble. But I am curious what you think about his perspective on the fact that it's going to just take a much longer time for the agents to work.
- [27:20]
B
Oh, I loved that interview. I mean, I think he was, A lot of people, I think misread it as overly bearish. I took it as incredibly realistic. Like the way he even talked about the change management or like basically organizations and people aren't necessarily ready for what the technology can provide. And in many cases the technology is not there for a lot of the promise that that's being made. Or as we're talking about right now, like larger systems are not ready and we're going to talk about Amazon and robotic automation. But like in so many of these domains, there's a lot more than just can I make one quick run and show that this is possible? And I think he was really getting at that. And I think to me it was an incredibly realistic perspective on the industry as opposed to a bearish one. So I'm, I was pro Carpathy on this one. What about you?
- [28:19]
A
Same here. I like what he said, that he's actually much more optimistic than most of the skeptics. But also some of his realism compared to like Sam Altman saying that this stuff is going to cure cancer in his most recent blog post, I think is like taken as pessimism. But I, I, we've both, you know, I think from the start of our conversations about this stuff, we've tried to be as realistic as possible. And so, yeah, I'm going to definitely, you know, praise someone who's being realistic about it. And I think I've talked about it before, but Karpathy has his own YouTube channel and they've, the videos he puts up there have been terrific in terms of just explaining the basics of large language models and where things are heading.
- [29:03]
B
And I really want to put a bow on this segment, as I have just learned. Do you know why Dave's Hot Chicken app is the number one app in the App Store?
- [29:12]
A
I haven't gotten that far.
- [29:13]
B
Apparently in honor of Drake's 39th birthday two days ago and through this week, they're giving out free sliders for Drake's birthday and that if you download the app, I see a video here in New York, 56th and 8th, which I've actually been to, that Dave's Hot Chicken. There was a bit of a mini riot out there of people trying to get in and get their free sliders. So cheers to the marketers out there who could still cause a mini riot by just giving out free sliders if you download their app.
- [29:46]
A
Well, allow me to say it loud and clear. Happy birthday to you, Drake, and congrats for being the reason why Sora is no longer number one on the App Store. You did it man. You did.
- [29:56]
B
You did it. Drake, thank you for just bringing us back to what what tech should be a brand tricking you into downloading their.
- [30:03]
A
App for some chicken going back to the roots. So yeah, on the other side of this break, we are going to talk about this crazy Amazon story. To me, the biggest tech story of the week. The New York Times headline Amazon plans to replace more than half a Million Jobs with robots. That's coming up right after this. Did you know your credit card points and miles can lose value to inflation? Credit card companies often reduce the redemption value of your points and miles. Now imagine a credit card with rewards that can grow in value. With the Gemini credit card, you can Earn Bitcoin or one of over 50 other cryptos instantly with no annual fee. Every swipe at the store or gas pump earns you instant rewards deposited straight to your account. Plus sign up now for a 200 Bitcoin bonus. To kickstart your rewards, visit gemini.com car today. Check out the link in the description for more information on rates. Again, if you're looking to invest in Bitcoin but don't know where to start, the Gemini Credit Card makes it easy. The Gemini Credit card is issued by Webbank. In order to Qualify for the $200 crypto intro bonus, you must spend $3,000 in your first 90 days. Some exclusions apply to instant rewards in which rewards are deposited when the transaction posts. This content is not investment advice and trading. Crypto involves risk. The Gemini Credit Card cannot be used to make gambling related purchases. Shape the future of Enterprise AI with Agency AGNT CY now, an open source Linux foundation project, Agency is leading the way in establishing trusted identity and Access management for the Internet of Agents, a collaboration layer that ensures AI agents can secure, securely, discover, connect and work across any framework. With agency, your organization gains open standardized tools and seamless integration including robust identity management to be able to identify, authenticate and interact across any platform, empowering you to deploy multi agent systems with confidence. Join industry leaders like Cisco, Dell Technologies, Google Cloud, Oracle, red hat and 75 plus supporting companies to set the standard for secure scalable AI infrastructure. Is your enterprise ready for the Future of Magentic AI? Visit agency.org to explore use cases now. That's Agntcy.org and we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday edition. Major story in the New York Times this week. Amazon plans to replace more than a half million jobs with robots. I'LL read the beginning of it. Amazon executives believe that companies on the cusp of its next big workplace shift, replacing more than a half million jobs with robots. Amazon's US workforce has more than tripled since 2018 to almost 1.2 million people. But Amazon's automation team expects the company can avoid hiring more than 160,000 people in the United States it would otherwise need by 2027. That would save 30 cents on each item that Amazon picks, packs and delivers to its customers. Executives told Amazon's board last year that they helped robotic automation would allow the company to continue to avoid adding to its US Workforce in the coming years, even though they expect to sell twice as many products by 2033. That would translate to more than 600,000 people whom Amazon didn't need to hire. All right, couple things here. It's not that they're going to replace the people, as far as we know, that are in the workplace, in the, the warehouses today, or fulfillment centers, as Amazon likes to call them. It's that they, the coming robotics would basically alleviate the need for them to hire more people. So this headline they're going to replace the people I think is a little bit extreme. But I'll just say this one thing and then turn it over to you, Rajan. We are seeing the robotic technology increase at an unbelievable pace. And of course, a lot of that has to do with years of research behind it, but also better AI models within these, within these things. And for Amazon, the real problem has always been picking, putting the items in the rack and then picking them out and then putting them in a package that requires real dexterity of the human hands that robots have not been able to do. They're very good at shuffling racks back and forth. That technology has really improved tremendously in recent years. And whether that's going to happen or not, I don't know. But part of this story says Amazon would like to see 75% of its fulfillment center workforce automated, which means that they believe that this technology is really progressing. So let me turn it to you, Ranjan. What did you think about this story and is it as scary to you as it sounds to me in terms of the impact on employment, I think.
- [35:05]
B
It'S as scary as it sounds in terms of the impact of unemployment, I think it is inevitable. Again, having been in the retail world and pick pack ship is what you're describing and seeing what robotics are already feasible and you have it correct that like, like actually, like receive, like, you know, a person reaching into one container, pulling into Another understanding which product it's actually going to put. They are actually going to pull putting it into a robot that then takes it to a different part of the warehouse. That's how things already work. To replace that person who's doing the picking and the packing into like the. As part of the process is. It's such a different skill. Robots I do think are moving in that direction. I think the. Where I see the speed of it being very difficult is like warehouses or fulfillment centers are still built for people to do that work. So are you going to have. And this kind of gets back into like optimists and do robots have to look like humans and have the same dexterity as humans versus you actually build the fulfillment center. Specific to what robots are best at, but yet. Which we debate in the past, I think. But overall I think it's telling. And to me, there's no doubt that this is what a fulfillment center will look like 10 years from now.
- [36:33]
A
And I think we do like to critique some of the PR around this stuff. So before we get deeper in, there's these lines from the Time story that are amazing. So this is, you know, something where, like, it's clear that Amazon wants to buy the community off. Amazon is so convinced this automated future is around the corner that it has started developing plans to mitigate the fallout in communities that may lose jobs. Documents show the company has considered building an image as a good corporate citizen through greater participation in community events such as parades and toys for tots. It is so funny because, like, you know, you see these programs, you see, oh, here's Amazon, it's a sponsor. And it's never quite clear that there's a line between, yeah, we're going to, you know, automate jobs in your community or, or raise the standard. The, the raise the prices of living because of these salaries we pay engineers. And it's just clear that the company blatantly sees these community initiatives as like PR tools to blunt the impact. There's also the terminology that they talked about using. Yeah, this, this really just made me want to fall out of my seat, but I was on an airplane when I read it and it would have been impolite. The documents contemplate avoiding using terms like automation and AI when discussing robotics instead. And instead use terms like advanced technology or replace the word robot with cobot.
- [37:56]
B
I mean, that one, it doesn't, it doesn't bother me as much. I think, I think it's. I honestly would rather they're not just throwing in AI for the sake of AI and actually talking about what this, what it is. But I will say in this market and environment, it's almost scarier when a company is like worried about their technology being so good that they're afraid to say AI versus every company that's just stuffing AI into whatever it's saying for the sake of it. So, so maybe that, that actually is a testament to how far along they are.
- [38:36]
A
Right. But it's, it's manipulative. That's what I'm trying to say. It's like, you know, it is a specific language exercise and community initiative meant to try to blunt the image of what it's actually doing. And I just find that to be uncool.
- [38:52]
B
But. Well, so my question is, this is one of the, especially for a retailer, this forecast that they will potentially sell twice as many items if no one is employed. No one is buying these items. Like this is the, the kind of catch 22 I see for an Amazon specifically, like for potentially other tech giants that are not just selling consumer goods to everyone to like the mass of the population, if there is a significant impact on employment, they're not selling twice as much stuff. Like, there's no way, maybe, probably.
- [39:32]
A
I mean, hasn't that been the problem in the US in particular for so many years? We've gone from a place where if you work on the automation or if you work on the assembly line of a car, you should make enough money to buy the car, to now that, you know, you might work on the floor of Walmart, you don't have enough money to buy the car and Walmart then goes to the suppliers and demands such cheap prices that they send the jobs away or automate them. We've just been in this declining cycle of lower wages and greater consumption and just eventually it squeezes, squeezes everything to the bottom of the barrel at a certain point. And I think that's where we stand. It's probably big reason for all the unrest that we have in the US right now.
- [40:24]
B
Yeah, I mean that's a much bigger discussion, I think. But, but I think the. There's already been a lot of pressure on consumption around how like the models of employment. But we. America's done pretty good so far on the consumption side of things. But basically we're going to have to invent an entirely new form of credit. It's the only answer so everyone can keep buying stuff.
- [40:49]
A
I think that you should just take.
- [40:51]
B
I say that in jest to our listeners just to make sure.
- [40:54]
A
Yeah, you should take credit from the Nvidia bank of America. And then just use that to fund infrastructure and then general structure, personal consumption.
- [41:04]
B
And buying random shit on Amazon. Yeah.
- [41:07]
A
Then when the AI bubble bursts, there'll be no cascading problems. I'm glad we're not doing that. I'm glad. Mr. Beast might be a bank one day, but Nvidia doesn't seem like it's on that trajectory. So that's good. Amazon statement. So they said the. The documents. This is all in documents. The documents viewed by the Times were incomplete and did not represent the company's overall hiring strategy. Amazon also said that it's not insisting executives avoid certain terms and that community involvement is unrelated to automation. And to that I say, sure, I'm sure as well.
- [41:37]
B
I'm okay with that, Amazon.
- [41:40]
A
So let's just talk lastly about what's going on. So there is a facility in Sherv. Sorry, There's a. There's a facility in Shreveport, Louisiana, that is the template Shreveport. Have you been there?
- [41:53]
B
No, but I had a friend from Shreveport. That's the only reason.
- [41:56]
A
Okay. God bless your friend. Thank you for your friend. It's a template.
- [42:00]
B
Saved Alex on this one. Jacob.
- [42:02]
A
Thanks, Jake. Big thanks to Jake. Jake, go get to yourself a chicken sandwich for free.
- [42:07]
B
Hot chicken slider.
- [42:08]
A
Yeah. All right. So anyway, it's a template for this Shreveport fulfillment center is a template for future robotic fulfillment centers. Once an item is there in a package, a human barely touches it again. The company uses a thousand rope robots in that fulfillment center, allowing it to employ a quarter fewer workers last year than it would have without automation. Next year, as more robots are introduced, it expects to employ about half as many workers there as it would without automation. So I just want to say one thing. I wrote this book about workplaces. The workplaces of the big tech companies, including Amazon, was the first chapter. The book is called Always Day One. Okay, so it's like clearly like Amazon inspired. My belief was always that these companies would find places for people whose jobs they automated to do different things. But the one place that I really could never fully wrap my head around on whether that would happen was the fulfillment centers. And I do. I mean, I think Amazon's going to accomplish its goal. I think they're going to get to that 75% automation. And I think that is going to be, you know, I don't know. I think it's going to be a clear problem. Well, I think because it's a major employer.
- [43:18]
B
But the way you. What you're describing, I think the real reason there's so much kind of like hype and unrest around potential job losses. It's no longer in the fulfillment center. It's going to be in the corporate offices that you'll actually see in the past in the corporate office side. That's where it always was. You know, you can, you can give them something else to do. There's going to be new growth opportunities. To me that's why this is such a different story right now is because that's where the potential job loss is.
- [43:49]
A
Right, But I think what the Amazon story is showing is that the potential job loss might actually be in these fulfillment centers as these robotics get, get more advanced. So I mean we could see it in both areas really.
- [44:03]
B
Well, I mean in speaking of white collar jobs potentially going away, did you see the OpenAI investment banker story?
- [44:12]
A
I sure did. And as someone who has sat on the floor of a banking institution, I would like to hear your perspective on it. So tell us what happened and give us your thoughts on whether this is going to be the end of the junior banker.
- [44:25]
B
Well and also I was on the sales and the trading floor side, not the investment banking side. But even more so I think the investment banking profession has certainly been ripe for a bit of disruption and basically OpenAI apparently there's something called Project Mercury where they've hired over 100 ex bankers to train their models to basically do that tagging work. Good answer. Not good answer. You know, start helping like the models understand different transaction types, IPOs, like what did the documentation look like? What are the right ways to approach it?
- [45:04]
A
I think to me, right, they're uploading full financial models.
- [45:09]
B
I mean that's uploading their own financial.
- [45:10]
A
Which is unbelievable that the models can.
- [45:13]
B
Learn from this stuff I think, I mean this is, it's an interesting approach. Honestly the most shocking part of it to me, or the funniest part was apparently they're only getting paid 150 bucks an hour which is not, it's, I mean it's not a ton of money for, especially for if you're in the banking world. That one surprised me a bit. But overall like this is, I mean this kind of work, repetitive work that's kind of just aggregating and kind of like routinely synthesizing information. That's the stuff that LLMs were made for and that is what bankers would stay in the office till 3am doing. So I think I, I kind of, I enjoyed this one. I think we should all, should we all celebrate Project Mercury.
- [46:04]
A
Maybe. I see this is the thing, it's still it's still so unclear about where this is heading. I'll give you one example. Right, okay. So like, what happens when this stuff is automated? So I was in Mountain View this week as part of one stop. I had on a longer trip across the US And I got a chance to speak with Yossi Matias, who is the head of, who's the head of Google Research. And I asked him, I said, well, do you think AI? You know, basically we talked last week about how Google had this model that came up with the hypothesis about cancel cancer cell behavior and that was actually confirmed in living cells to be true, which is unbelievable. So I asked him, I was like, do you think AI, which can go out and do this stuff is going to replace researchers or how does this sort of net out? And so what he said is, we're actually going to need many more researchers in all disciplines. The only situation where you're going to need less researchers is if you assume that we practically have answered all unanswered questions. I don't think anybody here would think that we are only understanding a tiny bit of what we need to understand. Using AlphaFold as an example, AI automated the decoding of protein folding. It led to the need for more protein researchers, because once you have that foundation, you can actually work on bigger problems and not just decoding the structure of proteins. So that's sort of like, my question is, like, is, is every occupation gonna have this same thing? Like, if you think about the vast space of research that has yet to be uncovered, you can automate, you know, all the work that researchers are doing today, and you'd have so much more to do. And so does that hold in like, places like investment banks or even in, in companies where they're automating customer service, does that hold? And do they actually have the same situation as the researchers where they're going to need more people as opposed to reduce the amount?
- [47:50]
B
I'm still going to. I'm going to say no, because in this case, again, you're going to be. There's going to be less of a need to raise capital because no one's going to have any money and there's going to be no businesses growing. So bankers don't need to go put together a pitch deck and kind of like issue some new to buy some new debt or, you know, like raise some new equity on one side of it. But also the corollary of that would be, potentially there's so many new financial products that are being created thanks to AI that it somehow maybe Creates that new wave of credit that we were talking about a moment ago. But that doesn't sound appealing to me either, like getting more potential financial products. So I don't, I, I don't know. I don't see the correlation between the like protein folding and kind of like cellular research and bankers being able to automate an S1.
- [48:47]
A
Hold on, I want to, I want to turn this back to you because are you saying that we're gonna have this technology that's gonna basically advance productivity so much that, and of course this is the standard argument, but are you saying we're going to have this technology that's going to advance productivity so much that it's going to be able to automate investment junior investment banker jobs and that will lead to society that has so much less money that they won't be able to consume anymore?
- [49:15]
B
Well, I mean not as direct as, but it all falls in line with the Amazon as well there. If you're, you're automating away the warehouse jobs, people don't need to buy more stuff. So you're not going to sell twice as many products. You're automating away more white collar work. So the amount of companies that actually need to raise capital becomes less like, I mean I think that's the weird balance that in this whole kind of job loss discussion is ignored. It's like what are the follow on effects of not having the job? Then the business itself doesn't keep growing. So yes, that is what I'm saying.
- [49:55]
A
Okay, I will take the other side of that but of course we'll only be able to know in time. Okay, one last thing about this because I think it goes along with our job. The interview process for these bankers is fascinating. Have you so, so this was the craziest part of the whole story. To me, the application process for Project Mercury involves almost no human interaction. The first step is a roughly 20 minute interview with an AI chatbot which asks questions based on the applicant's resume. The second phase test candidates on their knowledge of financial statements. The final stage is a modeling test. I mean this is just like reading those two paragraphs to me is insane. The idea that you're going to be able to like conduct an interview and test an applicant's financial knowledge. And again this is coming from OpenAI so they have the jump on how to use this technology best before everybody else. That is just fascinating. They've literally replaced the human interviewers and they, they're trusting these people. They're going to put the financial models that they make into their. Into their AI model.
- [50:58]
B
I weirdly like this part of it, mainly because their job is going to be interacting and communicating with an AI. So what better place to actually have an AI interview you? It's one thing if, like, you're interviewing someone for a job and you're trying to just, like, cut corners and having AI. Imagine like you're having your voice through 11 labs conduct the interview and faking it, but in reality, that person is going to have to interact with people. So that's a slightly different thing. But this part, their job is to talk to the model. So why not start that in the interview process? I'm loving Project Mercury. I'm.
- [51:38]
A
No, I'm project. I'm not even. I'm just. I'm not even criticizing it. I'm pointing out how crazy it is that they have the technology that's able to do this. Yeah, that's bananas.
- [51:47]
B
It's bananas. I. I agree. But it oddly more so than Atlas. I'm going to give this is OpenAI's win of the week. Project Mercury.
- [51:57]
A
I'm starting to understand really, why the Hot Chicken app is the top app. The. Sorry. Dave's Hot Chicken app is the top app. Here's what's happened. America's jobs have been automated. They've spent their days using Sora, but they are hungry. It's Drake's birthday. They need to eat. And now Dave's Hot. That's the look at our future. It's the Dave's Hot Chicken app future. This is. This is where we're going.
- [52:19]
B
Listeners go online. You will see people clamoring and, like, pushing each other to get some free sliders for downloading the Dave's Hot Chicken app for Drake's birthday. It just. This story pulls together and everything about job loss, automation, celebrity culture, hot chicken, and food trends, everything in one tight package.
- [52:45]
A
That's some bullshit. This is the future. That the one isn't it?
- [52:48]
B
Is this what you guys wanted?
- [52:51]
A
Well, that's not too bad. At least people are getting free chicken.
- [52:55]
B
Okay, yeah, but not every. You don't get your chicken unless you're fighting your way to the front. Well, you got to work for free.
- [53:01]
A
Nothing in life is free, Ranjan. Nothing in life is free.
- [53:04]
B
No.
- [53:04]
A
No such thing as free chicken.
- [53:06]
B
Not even on Drake's birthday.
- [53:07]
A
Maybe there is. Okay, one more break when we come back and talk about the cuts at Meta Superintelligence Labs. And then, of course, the return of Clippy. We'll be back right after this. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love, it helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade and value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.
- [53:48]
B
Hey big technology fans, I'm Jason Howell. And I'm Jeff Jarvis. On AI Inside, we cut through all the the AI noise with curiosity and a bit of humor. Every week we spend an hour unpacking the breakthroughs that matter and we reality check them with industry pioneers like Yann Lecun and critics like Emily Bender. We're learning alongside you making the complexity of AI make sense to all of us. Want AI news that informs and doesn't inflame? Subscribe to the AI Inside podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
- [54:18]
A
All right, we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday edition. Bringing it home. Meta has cut 600 jobs in its AI superintelligence labs after spending, I think, billions of dollars on AI talent. Here's the New York Times. Meta said on Wednesday that IT cut approximately 600 jobs in its artificial intelligence division. Mark Zuckerberg has been on a hiring spree to stack his company with AI researchers, but he has started to cut. The cuts on Wednesday did not affect the newest hires who have been empowered to develop superintelligence. The job cuts were aimed at cleaning up the organizational bloat that resorted that resulted from three years of building up Meta's. Meta AIs. Meta's AI efforts too quickly. The layoff help layoffs helped Layoffs aimed to help Meta develop AI products more rapidly. Interestingly, though, they did cut some long tenured, seemingly superstar AI researchers. Yuan Dong Tian is one of them. Several of my team members and myself were impacted by these layoffs today. He's not somebody who actually started, you know, who, who's recent, a someone who's been hired recently. He actually was hired 10 years ago by FAIR. And most of these cuts came in the FAIR division, Facebook AI research, or they call it fundamental AI research now, the division started by Yann Lecun to advance the frontier of AI research within Meta. Ranjan, what is going on over there?
- [55:52]
B
Why is Yann Lecun gonna stay? Do you think he's been, he's been on this show a number of times, right?
- [56:00]
A
Three times, obviously. Yeah, we like hearing From Jan? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, Jan has stayed at Meta and previously Facebook for many years. In through thick and thin, he's been one of the company's biggest defenders. So I will say it doesn't seem like he can be happy about this. I mean, this is really his division. So what do you think is happening here?
- [56:23]
B
I mean, I think this is just a very weird, but also not unconventional, complete, like, you know, organizational refresh. They bring in new leadership, they bring in a bunch of new people, get rid of the old people. Mark Zuckerberg was clearly not happy with their progress and where they were before, and he decided he wanted to do something about it. I felt like that detail that they concluded it had become overly bureaucratic was definitely very strategically leaked because I saw those words everywhere. And so like, they got to be.
- [56:59]
A
A PR person on the phone.
- [57:01]
B
Yeah, overly. And it sounds good.
- [57:03]
A
And it's like, it's also like, it's according to two people familiar with the matter, I think. So it's like you just get two. I mean, I don't know, this is probably not what happened, but I'm just envisioning like two PR people coming on the phone and saying it and being like. You can say multiple sources told you.
- [57:17]
B
This and then you and I mean, they very clearly chose those words and then it starts to paint this picture and then everyone is like, oh, yeah, like slow, bloated, you know, like no one likes overly bureaucratic things. So suddenly it kind of now you're bringing the like, hard charging Alexander Wang in the TBD group and like TBD lab. And so, I mean, to me, this is actually kind of like standard organizational politics. I think it just happens to be at a very large scale in terms of salaries and importance, but otherwise it's not that surprising to me.
- [57:57]
A
Yeah, you could call it do the department of Facebook Efficiency. Don't you think?
- [58:03]
B
Dumb.
- [58:04]
A
Don't. Department of Meta Efficiency.
- [58:06]
B
Yeah.
- [58:07]
A
Don't you think you'd want all the AI? I mean, I get it, but you just spent like, how much money? It can't be that big of a cost. You're still highly profitable. Wouldn't you just want all the AI talent you could get?
- [58:17]
B
It's a good point that, like, you would think just hoard. I mean, hoarding resources from competitors is certainly something our friends at Meta are great at. So, like, I think. I agree, it is actually kind of surprising that they weren't just saying, but that actually kind of, I think, is reflective that it must have been very political because otherwise it would be a no brainer that they just kind of keep paying people in and make sure they don't go to other places. So that means that it must have gone down enough that they're like, we need to get rid of a number of people.
- [58:53]
A
What do you think about this move? In a sign of the escalating competition in AI, Meta said Saturday it would cut off access to non meta chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT on WhatsApp beginning next year. This means WhatsApp's 3 billion users would no longer be able to use ChatGPT in the messaging app. I mean, one thing that's interesting is all these companies that profess that they're dedicated to openness and the advancement of the technology. Like, second, shit gets real. They're like, yeah, not that open any.
- [59:24]
B
Wait, wait, sorry, I was a bit confused of this story. It said Meta is shutting off 1-800-chat-GPT within WhatsApp. So does that mean there is a large number of people, like actually toll free calling? I remember when this came out, we kind of joked about it, but is this one of those weird things that could actually have insane usage that we're just missing? Like people are actually toll free calling chat GPT on WhatsApp.
- [59:51]
A
Yeah, I think that I could be wrong about this, but you could also just chat with it. Like it's a phone number you can also chat with. But I do think it's a very.
- [60:00]
B
Kevin. Kevin Wild specified shutting off 1-800-chat-GPT.
- [60:04]
A
Right, right. That's what I'm saying. I think it's a phone number that you could chat with, but. But maybe not.
- [60:08]
B
All right, we're gonna have to look into this. I'm gonna be calling CHAT GPT and then flirting and falling in love with them, but not on WhatsApp anymore.
- [60:17]
A
Yeah, apparently gonna be one step more difficult to fall in love. Which is good because we, we do know that according to the scientific research, when the bot plays hard to get, it actually leads to more deep relationships.
- [60:31]
B
That's what they're doing. Thank you for Mark, for at least adding a bit of friction into my flirting with ChatGPT.
- [60:37]
A
That's right. Because now, now my heart will flutter even more. Okay, talk about this, this Reddit thing briefly and then we'll bring it home with Glitpy.
- [60:44]
B
Yeah, just I wanted to. We've talked a lot about kind of copyright. I think this is going to continue to be a story this year. Basically Reddit in a kind of Baller move. They're suing a number of providers, including Perplexity, for like, you know, scraping Reddit data in unauthorized ways. And what Perplexity was doing is, you know, like, if you ever search something in Google and add Reddit at the end, you'll get some amount of information in the Google search results without even going to Reddit, basically scraping those results. A lot of companies have been doing as a service and selling to OpenAI, meta and perplexity, but Reddit basically tested. They had a fake post that was only accessible in Google search results, but was not accessible even by going on to Reddit or any other way on the Internet of being accessed, and it showed up in Perplexity results, meaning they were still scraping Google for Reddit results and incorporating it into their own system. So, so I think to me, Reddit is going to play this really interesting role, I think because they do have one of the most valuable data sets on the Internet for LLMs, and they're kind of like a good upstart. Yeah. I mean, they're a pretty big company, but they're still like, kind of like if them battling the giants I think is going to land well. So like the New York Times suing open AI. I don't know. I don't think that kind of draws as much energy as Reddit saying it's our turn, time to fight back. So. And then fighting back in pretty creative ways.
- [62:22]
A
I think this will make me sound more cynical than I actually am, but I think it's worth just pointing out, what do you expect from an industry that is built entirely off of taking people's content without permission? Like, it's sort of the fundamental thing. Well, yeah, base of this.
- [62:37]
B
I know.
- [62:38]
A
I'm not, I'm not dismissing them. I'm just saying that, like, you know, it doesn't surprise me and like, if someone's telling you don't crawl something, just don't crawl it. It's kind of, kind of disgusting to go for it.
- [62:49]
B
Well, but that's why the way they approach this and tricked them or kind of caught them, that's why it shows that they know how to play this battle like they are play, fight this battle like so that's good, Baller.
- [63:02]
A
I mean, it has to happen and you would think they would lose their, you think they would lose their gall. And to do this after Anthropic got hit with that massive lawsuit, that could cost it a billion dollars.
- [63:14]
B
Yeah, but no one's paid a billion yet. I think until there's like an exorbitant cost to any of these companies. Nothing's going to happen.
- [63:23]
A
No, you're totally right. Sad. All right, let's. Let's move to an uplifting story to send everybody off this weekend. This is from Mashable. Microsoft resurrects Clippy back from the dead after 21 years. And the Internet is wilding. So basically, if you use Maiko, which is. It's interesting. It's this animated face from Copilot. Here's how Mustafa Suleiman describes it. It's expressive, customizable, and warm. The optional visual, visual presence, Listen reacts and even changes colors to reflect your interactions, making voice conversations with the bot feel more natural. Maiko shows support through animation and expression, creating a friendly and engaging experience. So that's Maiko. I think it's interesting, but if you poke it enough times, it will turn into Clippy again. So Clippy is back.
- [64:16]
B
Wait, what do you mean it turns into Clippy? Like, if you're like Easter egg.
- [64:21]
A
Yes, Easter egg. So if you have Maiko on your phone and you just keep tapping Maiko's face, apparently it has enough of it and it becomes the great paperclip known as Clippy.
- [64:31]
B
And if you anger it enough, it will become racist, like the Microsoft chatbot Tay, if you remember the.
- [64:39]
A
It'll get spicy or, like, destroy your relationship.
- [64:44]
B
All of the above. Microsoft Maiko, I think, might have a dark side. I think Maiko. Keep an eye on them.
- [64:52]
A
We brought it up at the beginning of the show, but as I think about it more and more, Maiko is just the best bot name. It's so good.
- [65:00]
B
It's so good.
- [65:02]
A
Yeah, it's sensible. It, like, makes sense. It's logical.
- [65:05]
B
Michael. And also I like the representation of AI being this kind of floating, cartoony, sunny, yellow little character, rather than, you know, like the chatgpt, the. The blue ball that kind of like hovers and floats if you use voice mode. Like, I think Maiko is a little cuter. Maiko is a little more. Oh, my God. Just don't flirt with Maiko, though.
- [65:31]
A
Oh, you will, though.
- [65:31]
B
It's a little cartoon character. Stay away. Stay away, people.
- [65:34]
A
Well, Mustafa did tell me that, like, he believes that all AI is going to differentiate on the basis of personality. So the fact that Microsoft has made this move is not surprising to me. And we'll see if he's right.
- [65:48]
B
I'm going to go chat with Maiko a bit, because just being Microsoft, I'm curious how. How authentically engaging Maiko is as a character, because they haven't had the best track record on this.
- [66:03]
A
That's true. Well, maybe one day we will see Maiko give away chicken sandwiches and then assert its rightful place at the top of the App Store.
- [66:13]
B
That's our. That's our future. And none of us will have jobs, so we'll have to. The only way you can get your food is by downloading an app.
- [66:22]
A
No, that. And you have to beg Maiko and.
- [66:25]
B
You have to beg Mike.
- [66:26]
A
Just wait for it. You'll be like, maiko, can I get chicken? It's like I didn't hear the desperation in your voice, Michael.
- [66:32]
B
Download this separate app and say please. Yeah, here's your tickets. Here's your tickets for your chicken.
- [66:41]
A
The more desperate you are, the more buns and patties you get. So, yeah, it's like that was, you know, it was only good for four buns and two patties.
- [66:49]
B
Welcome to our future, folks.
- [66:50]
A
Welcome to our future. All right, Ron, John, Good times.
- [66:54]
B
You know what?
- [66:55]
A
I can't tell if I'm enthused or depressed, but I'm happy that we talked all this conversation.
- [66:59]
B
The only thing I can say is I think I'm going to go to Dave's Hot Chicken this weekend, hopefully after the crowds died down. I don't think. I think I missed the window for the free sliders. But you know what? I'm employed. I'll pay my 12 or $13 for a couple of pieces of that. Dave's Hot.
- [67:16]
A
That's right. All right, well, Rondon, great talking with you as always. We'll leave it there. How about that? We'll come back next week and see how the sandwich was.
- [67:24]
B
See you next week.
- [67:26]
A
All right, everybody. See you, Ron, John, and see you all. I'll be back on Wednesday with a conversation with Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine about how AI is going to impact the future of writing. Also, it looks like I might be able to air that conversation I had with Yossi T. S from Google. So that would be coming on Sunday or Monday. So stay tuned. And of course, Rancho and I will be back next Friday for a very spooky edition of Big Technology Podcast on Halloween. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast. Did you know your credit card points and miles can lose value to inflation? Credit card companies often reduce the redemption value of your points and miles. Now imagine a credit card with rewards that can grow in value. With the Gemini credit card, you can earn Bitcoin or one of over 50 other cryptos instantly with no annual fee. Every swipe at the store or gas pump earns you instant Rewards deposited added straight to your account. Plus sign up now for a $200 Bitcoin bonus. To kickstart your rewards, visit gemini.com card today. Check out the link in the description for more information on rates. Again, if you're looking to invest in Bitcoin but don't know where to start, the Gemini Credit Card makes it easy. The Gemini Credit Card is issued by Webbank. In order to Qualify for the $200 crypto intro bonus, you must spend $3,000 in your first 90 days. Some exclusions apply to instant Rewards, in which rewards are deposited when the transaction posts. This content is not investment advice and Trading Crypto involves risk. The Gemini Credit Card cannot be used to make gambling related purchases.