Sam Altman’s Reflections, NVIDIA’s Robotics Play, Zuckerberg’s Moderation

Summary

Big Technology Podcast: Episode Summary

Title: Sam Altman’s Reflections, NVIDIA’s Robotics Play, Zuckerberg’s Moderation
Release Date: January 11, 2025
Host: Alex Kantrowitz
Guests: Ranjan Roy (of Margins) and an unnamed co-host

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1. Sam Altman’s Bold Statement on AGI

Timestamp: 00:49 – 14:35

The episode kicks off with an in-depth discussion about Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and his recent declaration regarding Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Altman, in his post titled “Reflections,” asserted that OpenAI now knows how to build AGI as traditionally understood. He stated:

“We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood that. We believe that in 2025 we may see the first AI agents join the workforce and materially change the output of companies.”
(03:01)

This bold claim has sparked significant debate. The guest expresses skepticism, noting that Altman appears to be "moving the goalposts" on the definition of AGI. He clarifies:

“Agentic AI… is not that revolutionary or complicated. It’s just some kind of like taking something that used to be rules-based and letting an LLM try to apply a bit of logic or reason to it.”
(03:37)

Ranjan Roy counters by suggesting that Altman is signaling confidence in nearing AGI, even if it’s an “AGI-ish” interpretation. They predict that OpenAI may officially declare the arrival of AGI by spring 2025, transitioning the focus toward superintelligence:

“We are beginning to turn our aim beyond AGI to superintelligence in the true sense of the world of the word.”
(08:19)

The conversation highlights the tension between current AI capabilities and the more expansive visions of AGI and superintelligence, underscoring the industry's heated debates on these topics.

---

2. Anthropic’s $2 Billion Fundraising Surge

Timestamp: 14:35 – 21:53

Next, the podcast delves into Anthropic's ambitious fundraising efforts. The company is seeking an additional $2 billion, propelling its valuation to $60 billion—a more than triple increase from the previous year. Led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Anthropic is now positioned as the fifth most valuable U.S. startup, following titans like SpaceX and OpenAI.

The guest analyzes the sustainability of such a valuation:

“How do you work your way into that valuation? How fast do they have to grow their revenue?”
(16:11)

While acknowledging concerns about the rapid valuation increase, the guest argues that Anthropic's strategy of focusing heavily on the API side is a smarter bet compared to OpenAI's consumer-centric approach. He notes:

“Anthropic actually is taking the smarter bet versus OpenAI in this case.”
(19:00)

Ranjan expresses some reservations about Anthropic’s path to profitability, especially given OpenAI's dynamic revenue streams from ChatGPT. However, the consensus leans towards optimism about Anthropic's potential to sustain its growth through strategic focus on enterprise solutions.

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3. NVIDIA’s Expansive Robotics and AI Initiatives

Timestamp: 21:53 – 32:16

The conversation shifts to NVIDIA’s groundbreaking announcements at CES, where CEO Jensen Huang unveiled the company's plans to dominate the robotics sector—a projected multi-trillion dollar opportunity. Key highlights include:

• Humanoid Robots: NVIDIA is developing AI models tailored for humanoid robots, aiming to enhance real-world interaction capabilities.
• Partnership with Toyota: Integrating NVIDIA’s self-driving car technology to advance autonomous vehicle applications.
• Personal AI Supercomputers: Introduction of the Blackwell chip-powered personal AI supercomputer priced at $3,000, making high-powered AI accessible to researchers and students.

The guest praises NVIDIA’s innovative branding and strategic foresight:

“They have their branding... Jetson Thor and Groot (Generalist Robot 00 Technology) are like sci-fi references that make the technology feel exciting and memorable.”
(25:35)

Additionally, NVIDIA is venturing into gaming with AI-powered non-player characters (NPCs) that exhibit human-like intelligence and adaptability:

“These characters can use AI to perceive, plan, and act like human players, creating dynamic and lifelike game worlds.”
(31:10)

The discussion underscores NVIDIA’s multifaceted approach to AI, blending advancements in robotics, supercomputing, and gaming to secure a pivotal role in the future of technology.

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4. Mark Zuckerberg’s Content Moderation Overhaul

Timestamp: 32:16 – 53:17

A significant portion of the podcast focuses on Meta Platforms’ (formerly Facebook) sweeping changes to its content moderation policies, spearheaded by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The five major changes announced are:

1. Replacing Fact Checkers with Community Notes: Mimicking Twitter’s approach, Meta will utilize community-driven annotations to flag misinformation.

2. Simplifying Content Policies: Meta aims to remove restrictive topics related to immigration and gender, viewing them as outdated or out of touch with mainstream discourse.

3. Adjusting Automated Filters: The company plans to focus its AI-driven filters on illegal and high-severity content, delegating less critical moderation to user reports.

4. Reviving Civic Content: Meta will reintegrate more news and political content to boost engagement.

5. Relocating Trust and Safety Teams: Shifting these teams from California to Texas, possibly signaling a strategic alignment with conservative regions.

6. Collaborating with the Trump Administration: Meta intends to work with former President Donald Trump to resist global pressures to increase censorship.

The guest critiques these changes, expressing concern over the potential surge in abusive and hateful content:

“There are some other things about trans people. Trans people aren’t real. They’re mentally ill... letting these platforms amplify such voices can make them miserable and unusable for normal users.”
(45:27)

Ranjan suggests that Zuckerberg’s moves are both a PR strategy and a business maneuver to increase user engagement through contentious topics. They discuss the implications of reducing moderation:

“Does this make these things unusable for just a normal person who’s just like posting about their kids or whatever else on Facebook and then just starts dealing with just insane, insane comments?”
(44:16)

The conversation highlights the delicate balance Meta must strike between fostering open discourse and maintaining a safe, user-friendly environment, especially amidst increasing political pressures and evolving digital landscapes.

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5. Ranjan Roy’s Eye-Opening Visit to China

Timestamp: 53:17 – 59:40

In a more personal segment, Ranjan Roy shares his recent 15-hour layover in Beijing, offering firsthand insights into China’s pervasive surveillance state. He recounts:

“Every few seconds there was another flash. It was like in Australia there are speed cameras... nope, that is what they call eagle eye, which tracks everybody’s movement and does facial recognition.”
(54:35)

The guest relates by sharing his own experience from 2009, highlighting the relentless surveillance even before the digital era fully took hold:

“They did not speak any English and literally started asking me and yelling at me... the mentality of surveillance was there even before it was fully digital.”
(54:35)

Ranjan emphasizes the stark contrast between the technological advancements and the underlying societal control mechanisms in China. He marvels at the juxtaposition of ancient architecture with modern surveillance tools:

“You go from the Forbidden City… to every light fixture in Tiananmen Square having like a dozen cameras.”
(57:12)

The discussion underscores the complexities of China’s technological prowess intertwined with its stringent control measures, providing listeners with a nuanced perspective on the country’s current state and future trajectory.

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Conclusion

This episode of the Big Technology Podcast navigates through a spectrum of pressing tech issues—from the ambitious declarations of AGI by industry leaders to the strategic maneuvers of tech giants like NVIDIA and Meta. It offers a critical lens on the evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, content moderation, and global technological dynamics, enriched by personal narratives and expert insights. Listeners are left with a comprehensive understanding of where the tech world stands today and the potential directions it may take in the near future.

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For more insights and in-depth discussions, tune into the Big Technology Podcast every Friday.

Transcript

[Ranjan Roy]

Sam Altman says OpenAI now knows how to build AGI. Anthropic is raising another $2 billion. Nvidia looks to a robot future and Mark Zuckerberg says to hell with fact checkers. That's coming up on a Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition right after this from LinkedIn News.

[Leah Smart]

I'm Leah Smart, host of Everyday Better, an award winning podcast dedicated to personal development. Join me every week for captivating stories and research to find more fulfillment in your work and personal life. Listen to Everyday better on the LinkedIn podcast network, Apple Podcasts or wherever at your podcasts. Struggling to keep up with customers With Agentforce and Salesforce Data Cloud deploy AI agents that know your customers and act on their own. That's because Data Cloud brings all your data to AgentForce, no matter where it lives. Get [e-mail] data welcome to Big Technology.

[Ranjan Roy]

Podcast Friday Edition where we break down the news in our traditional cool headed and nuanced format. We have a great show for you today. We're talking about Sam Altman's new bold statement about AGI. Also going to cover the latest Nvidia news, the latest anthropic fundraising, Mark Zuckerberg talking about how content moderation is no longer as important to Facebook as it has been in the past and what that all means, whether it's just a play to get in the good graces of the Trump administration. And of course a little discussion of my visit to China and where the country stands today and where it's heading. Joining us as always on Friday is Ranjan Roy of Margins. Ranjan, great to see you.

[Unnamed Guest]

What better way to continue our 2020 thrive than having Sam Altman tell us AGI is here at least. AGI ish.

[Ranjan Roy]

I don't know about you, but I've gotten a lot of 2020 thrive texts over the past week. So I want to thank you and I want to thank you for introducing that to Big Technology and my life. Thank you Ranjan.

[Unnamed Guest]

I don't think my wife and family I think are definitely over me saying 2020 thrive, but I'm sticking with it. I'm stuck.

[Ranjan Roy]

I will admit I've been saying it as well. When someone talks about how this year is going off to a bad start, I'm like, just 2020 thrive.

[Unnamed Guest]

Don't worry about 2023. It's so easy. Manifest.

[Ranjan Roy]

All right, so someone who's manifesting is Sam Altman. He's talking about AGI. He wrote a very interesting post called Reflections. Just looking back at the last two years since ChatGPT has released say, basically saying, all right, it's new, the new year, and I got to look back. We're going to talk about a few things that he's written. But to me, the most interesting statement, one that got the most attention this past week, is this. We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood that. We believe that in 2025 we may see the first AI agents join the workforce and materially change the output of companies. We continue to believe that iteratively putting great tools in the hands of people leads to great brain, broadly distributed outcomes. I think that's a way of him saying that they're going to declare AGI this year. It got a lot of, lot of pushback in the popular press. I'm curious what you thought, seeing that from Sam.

[Unnamed Guest]

I mean, I got a lot of pushback from me as well, in my mind, because it was just ridiculous. It's again, at least I think we were correct that at a certain point he's just going to say AGI, he's going to move the goalposts to define it. However he wants to say that AGI is the first AI agents joining the workforce, in quotes to me, makes absolutely no sense because agentic AI, and we have discussed this, we can definitely dig more into it. But it means something completely different, at least in my mind and at least in the way most of the industry defines it, than how we've thought about artificial general intelligence for years. Because again, AI agents are simply using large language models to take some autonomous decisions in some kind of existing workflow or business process. It's not that revolutionary or complicated. It's just some kind of like taking something that used to be rules based and letting an LLM try to apply a bit of logic or reason to it. That is not, at least in my mind, the robots are taking over or we have developed some kind of super intelligence. If he starts saying super intelligence is now different than AGI, maybe I'm okay with it. But overall, this read like we need to raise more funds. To me.

[Ranjan Roy]

Well, okay, so I think there's something that I agree with in what you said and something I disagree with in what you said. I agree that he's moving the goalposts. I don't necessarily think that he's saying that agents are going to be AGI. It might have just been that he's like stringing these statements together. But he did talk to Bloomberg about what he thinks AGI is, and this is the way that he defined it and to me it seemed like kind of a lower bar. He said. The rough way I try to think about it is when an AI system can do what very skilled humans in important jobs can do. I'd call that AGI, he says. Then there's a bunch of follow on questions like, well, is it a full part of a job or only part of it? Sorry, is it the full job or only part of it? Can it start as a computer program and decide it wants to become a doctor? Can it do what the best people in the field DO or the 98th percentile? How autonomous is it? He says I don't have deep, precise answers there yet, but if you could hire an AI as a remote employee to be a great software engineer, a lot of people would say okay, that's AGI ish. So to me it seems like he's saying okay, basically we're, we're. If we're not quite there yet, we're almost there.

[Unnamed Guest]

AGI ish. That is the term of the week, of the month, of the year I think like to be able to say that it's kind of there. It's kind of, you know, what we've always promised but we're just going to check off that box I think kind of captures this perfectly. Again like replacing specific functions in the workplace. We're already there. That's what I don't understand. Like GPT4O is good, Gemini 2.0, Flash experimental is good. Most of these other foundation models can do a lot of what people already do. So you know this idea. The can it start as a computer program and decide it wants to become a doctor? It's really interesting how he sprinkles in these kind of fantastical statements within more just kind of monotonous like mundane things like yes, it can do a human's job slightly better than them or a skilled human's job or it could suddenly decide it wants to become a doctor. I think this is, it's so tough to me that I don't know how, how he's approaching this. I like it was a nice post. I like this idea of like taking some time to reflect. I think it was an honestly like a genuinely intentioned post that it's been two incredible crazy years and I want to look back on it but still just this whole again is very Sam ish in the way he's, he's approaching this.

[Ranjan Roy]

This is from AI skeptic Gary Marcus. At a conference yesterday, someone with very good knowledge of OpenAI said something fascinating more for what was not said than what was said. What was said is that we should expect to see GPT 4.5 soon. What was not said by the well informed source was that we should expect to see GPT5 anytime soon. Is it possible that OpenAI says we've reached AGI before GPT5 comes out? I mean, how.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yes, 100%, 1,000%. He's, he's setting it up for that. I think again, like we, we had somewhat said it in jest about him just kind of saying, okay, AGI is here, Microsoft contracts null and void. I think, I think they're completely setting it up for that. I think they recognize that to release GPT5, if it's not some massive step change in terms of like ability would be a huge problem. So I, I completely believe they're going to say AGI. I'm gonna say by the springtime, by spring, maybe April, May, as we leave the cold months, we will have AGI.

[Ranjan Roy]

That sounds right to me. Maybe sooner. And then I think the discussion is really going to turn towards superintelligence. So I think the past two years people have been talking about AGI. I think that like they're going to declare OpenAI is going to declare we've reached it or they've reached it and then superintelligence is going to become the new buzzword. And Altman also previews this. He says we're beginning to turn our aim beyond AGI to superintelligence in the true sense of the world of the word. We love our current products, but we are here for the glorious future. With superintelligence, we can do anything else. Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own and in turn massively increase abundance and prosperity. This sounds like science fiction right, right now and somewhat crazy to even talk about it. That's all right. We've been there before and we, okay, we are okay being there again.

[Unnamed Guest]

Abundance and prosperity. Our super intelligent future is just one of, you know, greatness for all. I think we're seeing it happening in real time right now. This distinction between AGI and superintelligence, which were conflated and now lowering the bar of AGI. And then I think that fantastical futuristic vision will be labeled super intelligence going forward. And it's, it's savvy, it's smart, it'll help on the fundraising side, it'll help keep, keep just kind of the general overall narrative and dream around AI in the Overall media, but I think we're very clearly seeing it happen right now.

[Ranjan Roy]

Ranjan's like, just give me an intelligent dashboard. And Sam's like, we're building super intelligence.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, well, no, I mean, okay, so I said it last week. I'm going to say it again. My theme for 2020 Thrive is there is such a disconnect between what the industry is saying and what actual customers want. Because the idea that any Fortune 500 business that has infinite complexity and systems and not clean data and relatively unstructured data is going to allow autonomous processes into their actual business anytime soon and allow it to be completely autonomous is a pipe dream in my mind. I think there's a lot of companies and a lot of steps along the way that will be able to take existing LLM technology and start doing incredible things. But I think like there's still such a disconnect. Everyone I talk to like normal, even business technology people are not asking for totally autonomous agentic AI. They're just asking for stuff that makes life a little bit easier. So I think like he's. I did one thing in the reflections I also liked. He did mention that they were a research house who kind of like almost backed into a business, which is something we've talked about a lot. And it's even more clear to me that OpenAI is still a research house that has a business tacked onto it. And I don't think that's the company that's going to win.

[Ranjan Roy]

Interesting. Yeah. Even in the Bloomberg conversation he talks about how they've had to protect research from like the standard wants of Silicon Valley style company and they have them in a separate location. So I think that's, that's true. And one more thing about this before we move on. So I want to just go back to this statement. We are confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood that. What do you think that path is? Is it just to continue scaling this stuff or. I mean, is kind of interesting that he winks at it, but he doesn't exactly say what to do.

[Unnamed Guest]

This is again where I think they've been incredibly savvy. But again, the Arc AGI. Arc AGI test that supposedly gave an 87.5% score to the latest, to the latest 03 model that's still private but being tested. That gave them enough credibility in the conversation to start saying we are close to AGI. But it's one of those things that even within the industry a lot of people say that this is not actually an Accurate test for kind of the traditional understanding of what AGI would be. But they have been able to say, look at the leaps and bounds of development we've done over the last just two years based on this one test and this one benchmark. So we're there. We know how to do it. It's done. We're good. Check.

[Ranjan Roy]

That's amazing. We'll see if this continues.

[Unnamed Guest]

One of the greatest salesmen of all time, I'll give him that.

[Ranjan Roy]

I don't want to spend too much more time on his reflections, but I did think that, as you mentioned, it was like a pretty good post. Talking a little bit about what's happened and the messy parts of it. And he's talked about his firing in this post, which I don't think is really worth rehashing, but I think he really just sums it up at the beginning. Building a company at such high velocity with so little training is a messy process. It's often two steps forward, one step back, and sometimes one step forward and two steps back. Mistakes get corrected as you go along, but there aren't really any handbooks or guideposts when you're doing original work. Moving at speed in uncharted waters is an incredible experience, but it's also immensely stressful for all the players. Conflicts and misunderstandings abound. I mean, maybe this is also just clever marketing from Sam, but even if it is, I just don't think you see this from high profile CEOs enough. Like being like truly honest about what it's like to build a company and not just being like, you know, full systems, go ahead. And we are like taking over the world.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, which is why I liked the post. I thought it was genuinely. I thought it was reflective. So being called Reflections was accurate. I thought he looked at it and it is. This is why I don't want to take away the technological marvel that they have delivered and kind of unleashed into the world over the last two years. It is something incredible. So to stop and take a moment to recognize that that's the part I like. I wish we could just take a little more time to reflect on that and use the technology we have currently rather than having to switch instantly into what's coming next.

[Ranjan Roy]

So, speaking of which, Anthropic is back raising more funds. They just raised a bunch last year. I think there is 4 billion last year and they're going to try to raise another 2 billion. This is from the Wall Street Journal. Anthropic is an advanced talks to raise $2 billion in a deal that would value it at 60 billion more than triple its valuation from a year ago. It's being led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and it would make Anthropic the fifth most valuable US startup after SpaceX, OpenAI, Stripe and Databricks. This is from the Journal story. Investors are excited about the potential of generative AI to transform how people work and live and are largely unconcerned that most AI startups are losing money because of the high costs of the technology, an intense competition. I mean it's sort of an interesting statement in there about like the concerns about being profitable from investors on this. I guess that's how it always works. But still like just to have this blanket statement that investors are unconcerned seems wrong to me. That being said, Anthropic hasn't really made a lot of noise recently. I think it's just been quietly building and we don't see these posts from their CEO Dario Amandei about, you know, reaching AGI the way that you see it from Sam Altman. He does work a little more, a little bit more quietly than the counterparts at OpenAI. But I'm curious what you think this means that Anthropic is going to raise another 2 billion can be valued so highly. It does seem like that amount today is something that AI research house will blow through in about a quarter but. But it is significant nonetheless.

[Unnamed Guest]

Well, the 60 billion is the part that's almost terrifying to me because how do you like work your way into that valuation? How fast do they have to grow their revenue when you're tripling, tripling your valuation from just a year ago? I think this is where I will say, like what you said around how Anthropic is basically doing this quietly. I like, I respect in a way it's almost nicely strategic that they're kind of riding on the coattails. Let Sam make all the noise and kind of be the hype man of the industry and then quietly build and Claude is other than its usage limits that you hit even as a pro subscriber is an incredible product. I think it's probably my most used generative AI product. So they, I think the way they're approaching it is very smart. I think all of these companies because what do you do at 60 billion? Are you IPOing? I mean when you trying to put together an S1 in public ready financials for a company that probably is not going to look too good, you're not ipoing anytime soon I think, are you? Do you just raise more Money at a higher valuation do you hope for an acquisition at that scale is getting more and more difficult. Remember when anthropic at 8 to 10 billion, plenty of conversation around a lot of buyers at 60 billion, that number starts to dwindle a little bit.

[Ranjan Roy]

Yeah. And I think that there's going to have to be a couple of really large flameouts given the amount of money that's been spent and raised and the amount of money you need to make to justify that. And I'm starting to worry a little bit about Anthropic, and I wasn't worried last year, but this year I am. I mean, you think about OpenAI, they, as we've said after looking at their financials, have gone. They are planning to make the most of their money from ChatGPT. ChatGPT, as Sam Altman noted in his post, hovered at 100 million users for a while and didn't seem like it was going to increase that much. And then all of a sudden it triples. It goes from 100 million to 300 million users and has all this new interesting functionality, including the voice stuff. And I think that that's important. But Claude is not catching on with consumers in the same way, despite being what I would argue is a better product outside of the fact that it lacks the voice capabilities. And so where does it go from here? Is it able to build a $60 billion business on API alone, despite the fact that, like, some of its best features are the fact that it can talk to you in a more human like way, in a warmer way, in a way that people have built these relationships with Claude, as I spoke about with Casey Newton a couple weeks ago. So I do worry a little bit about Anthropic. Is that, is that unfounded?

[Unnamed Guest]

While I said I worry about the valuation, I actually am not worried about that breakdown again. So revenue estimates, OpenAI is estimated around 27% of its revenue is on the API slash enterprise side and 73% is on the the ChatGPT side, which should include ChatGPT plus or. Whereas anthropic, 85% of its revenue is on the API side and only 15% is you and me paying for a Claude Pro. So I think they are taking the bet that people building on Claude, building on their foundation models is where they're going to make money. And I actually think that's a smarter bet because I do think at a certain point the consumer side of this gets more and more commoditized. I think Gemini and Google and kind of entrenched Microsoft and copilot on the what is my chatbot that will help me and be up on my screen throughout the day for the average consumer that's going to get kind of commoditized away into existing products, into existing ecosystems like Google or Microsoft. So I think Anthropic actually is taking the smarter bet versus OpenAI in this case.

[Ranjan Roy]

I would not be shocked if Anthropic comes out with $1,000 a month unlimited use version of Claude the same way that OpenAI came out with its $200 a month.

[Unnamed Guest]

Make it 100, I'm in 150. Maybe because I hit that Claude usage limit way too much and I get so mad.

[Ranjan Roy]

Right. But Altman said that they're losing money on the ChatGPT Unlimited subscription even at 200amonth.

[Unnamed Guest]

That was such a interesting thing to say. Again, ChatGPT, what's it? Pro or Plus plus or whatever the $200, whatever the branding they put on it when you're saying on a like consumer facing product. And again, if you're paying 200 bucks, obviously it's still going to be more business usage but still like on an individual per seat product, you're losing money at $200 a month. That and to say that out loud to investors when you're going to be asking them for more money, it's baffling to me. But it almost again, it still adds to this mystique that the amount of compute and power required for these services, there's something magical that none of you or us understand. I think that's the only reason I can see someone ever saying that when you're running a business that's trying to raise money.

[Ranjan Roy]

I think one of the things he might have been trying to touch on is the fact that this is so valuable to some people and maybe that means there's room to raise the price even more. That's why I think Anthropic is going to quietly take notes and release the thousand dollar a month version of Claude. But we'll see.

[Unnamed Guest]

What would you call it?

[Ranjan Roy]

We got Claude Pro Claude 1000 man.

[Unnamed Guest]

Claude 1000 and then Claude 2000 for super special usage. Yeah.

[Ranjan Roy]

Okay. So speaking of major opportunities, we had Nvidia at CES this week talking about robotics and calling it a multi trillion dollar opportunity. And Jensen Huang was out at ces which is like the super bowl for Nvidia and he's talking about how the robotics is going to be the next stage for the company's growth. He said he announced a new range. This according to The Financial Times. He announced a new range of products and partnerships in the physical AI space, including AI models for humanoid, humanoid robots and a major deal with Toyota to use Nvidia's self driving car technology during a keynote speech in Vegas. So to me, I think this is important because we've been Talking about how AI can hit a wall with LLMs and what comes next. And one of the potential things that comes next is real world understanding. So instead of just trying to understand the world through text and maybe video, it's AI models getting out there in the world and understanding how they interact with the world that we live in. And that can be done through humanoid robotics, which, you know, can understand and perceive and plan, you know, effectively a way through the world in a way that you just simply cannot do with a text model. And I found it very interesting in this, in this moment where we're talking about finally hitting AI, maybe hit AGI final, finally hitting a wall with scaling outside of that, that Nvidia potentially has this new way forward in robotics. What did you think about the Neutron John man?

[Unnamed Guest]

Can we appreciate what we have today for a moment again now even Jensen going and having to go to the next big thing. And I get you got to go to the next big thing. But to me, I do think if someone's gonna crack it, I think Nvidia would be potentially the one. I also have to say I love Nvidia's branding on the or the way they. We just came up with Claude 1000. Maybe it's good, maybe it's not, but they. So they have, they're gonna release a new computer called Jetson Thor. Jetson Thor. I mean just like a mishmash of futuristic things. And then the robots will be powered by Groot, which stands for generalist robot 00 technology. I mean basically Jetsons Groot just pulling in all these kind of like sci fi references and Thor as well. And they're very. So I got to give it to Nvidia for just making it a little fun, making it exciting, making it memorable. I do think, yes, in the medium term. This kind of idea of robotic progress, real world AI, physical AI, how you get things to interact in the physical world, it's going to be huge. Self driving is kind of the first real manifestation of that. And that's real. We've both ridden in a Waymo. It's very real. What are the other applications of that again in warehouses? Amazon for years has been able to use robots. There's lots of, you know, examples of like really special purpose robots already doing things in lots of situations. So I think it's a massive opportunity. I just wish we, it was not what we were talking about right now. We could all just, you know, try to build our first agent or two.

[Ranjan Roy]

Right. But Nvidia, like the whole reason why Nvidia has gotten to the place it is is because it has been thinking two steps forward and everybody else has been stuck in.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, but they never said it before, like when that their genius was we have a good video game graphics card. Oh, by the way, we're not going to tell you and suddenly you're going to all realize that the entire AI revolution is going to be powered by something that only gamers would get excited about before. Like they didn't go out and just say it, they just did it. So I think that that's the part to me that feels different now than before.

[Ranjan Roy]

You know what's interesting for me was to hear Jensen talk about it as a multi trillion dollar opportunity as opposed to something scientific. Right. To me, is that like is this just a play to the stock market? Like do you think that's what's happening? I mean reading about it in the Financial Times, pretty interesting.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yes, 100%. But also I'll give like we're talking about OpenAI is a research house with the, with the business tacked on. Jensen Huang is a business person. Like, I mean he at his core. So he's a, he knows what he's doing. So I think on that side and I also, I don't see him as someone who, I think he's very savvy about signaling on this kind of thing, introducing this into the conversation. But I do have the confidence that there's a lot of real stuff happening if he is saying it, that really could make this a reality.

[Ranjan Roy]

Yeah, I'm pumped about it. I mean we're going to start to see so much more advances here, especially because with robotics you can now just like run simulations with robots and then do that in like the virtual world and then bring that to the physical world. And we're starting to see some pretty cool stuff with robotics. You know, speaking of the present, there was also some interesting news that Nvidia is also releasing a personal AI supercomputer with its latest and most powerful AI chip, Blackwell, which is going to allow researchers and students to run multibillion parameter AI models. This is from Financial Times locally rather than through the cloud. And it's going to be available at the initial price tag of three grand, which I think to me, I mean, the Blackwell chips, what they usually go for 40,000. So the fact that you can get your own personal supercomputer for 3000 and run your own experiments on it, I think is pretty cool.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, I actually, I thought this was more interesting than the humanoid robot stuff because one, I saw it and I kind of want it and I don't even know why I want it. So it looks kind of like a souped up Mac mini and just somehow it'll just empower you to do amazing things. So, but also Nvidia, to me, 3000 is still a consumer ish product. They say it's for students and researchers, but like, I mean it's real. I mean the vision Pro was 3000 and that's a pure consumer product. Like so to, to me this could be quietly. I mean, obviously graphics cards were very consumer focused, but like they might be entering the consumer market again.

[Ranjan Roy]

Yeah, I did a story recently about how universities are like all out of chips and basically cannot compete at all. And to me this seems like a bit of an antidote to that. I mean, I think that Nvidia really saw the need there and decided to go for it. And I think this is really positive news.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, I think anything Nvidia does, they still have, you know, kind of the magic touch that until they really flop on something, I think you have to just buy into whatever they're selling right now.

[Ranjan Roy]

Last bit of Nvidia news that I'm actually personally pretty excited about. Basically Nvidia is building these souped up NPCs or non player characters. Non playable characters in video games. And to me this has always been like one of the dreams. And I really regret not writing about it earlier because it's something that's been so obvious in development and that is that when you're playing video games there are these non playable characters that basically just kind of stand there and they're just like clearly like dumb video game stand ins. And the promise with AI is they can actually become much more human. Like, and that there's no more such thing, there's no such thing as an NPC anymore because every, you know, bot within a video game can be intelligent. And it looks like Nvidia is also working to power some of these new characters. This is according to the Verge, these characters that can use AI to perceive, plan and act like human players. This is according to an Nvidia blog post. Powered by generative AI, this new technology will enable living dynamic game worlds with companions that comprehend and support player goals and enemies that adapt dynamically to player tactics. The characters are powered by small language models that are capable of planning at human like frequencies required for realistic decision making as well as multi modal small language models for vision and audio that allow AI characters to hear audio cues and perceive their environments. I mean, I'm just thinking about running around in a video game and realizing that every character there is like, you know, quote unquote intelligent and has its own personality and feels a lot more like the real world. I think this could be really big for video games. I think this could be big for virtual reality. Heck, maybe it even brings back the Metaverse where we bring it back AI human. Like AIs that sit side by side with actual human players. I think this was pretty cool and it was very interesting.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, see this is the kind of stuff versus the medium term futuristic humanoid robots. This is the kind of stuff I like to see because this really, I have no doubt is happening and will actually just unleash really cool things and experiences just in the next year or two. I also noted my other, I think 2025 prediction. So they use small language model SLM. I've been seeing a lot of people in the Agentix space using large lams, large action models. I think everyone's going to start rebranding LLM into other kinds of, other kinds of terminology, realizing LLM branding is kind of a little played out, a little, a little restricted to when's GPT5 coming? So I think you're going to see every one of these companies start to come up with these alternative terms that are a little more focused. Slm, lam, things like that.

[Ranjan Roy]

Yeah, the branding and AI, it's just, it's always branding.

[Unnamed Guest]

It's all branding.

[Ranjan Roy]

Okay, so one last bit of AI news here and sort of the dark side of AI, which again we're constantly reminded that so much of this AI revolution is built on copyrighted materials. There's a tech run story that says Mark Zuckerberg gave Meta's llama team the okay to train on copyrighted works. This is coming out in a. In court filings that Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg cleared his team to train on Libgen, which is a data set. This is according to internal messages, a data set we know to be pirated. That may undermine Meta's negotiating position with regulators. And when that concern was brought up, this is according to the filing, they decision makers, the decision makers within Meta said that after escalation to mz Mark Zuckerberg, the AI team was Approved to use Libgen. I get the argument that, like, this is transformation of people's work. I do not fully agree with this idea that therefore companies can go ahead and ingest copyrighted works and use them freely for their purposes without a license. I don't know, it just seems wrong to me. What do you think, Ranjan?

[Unnamed Guest]

Well, we're. We're going to be talking about Mark Zuckerberg's announcements regarding the Meta platforms in just a moment, and I think there is going to be some significant copyright lawsuit resolution of some sort in 2025. Like, you know, the New York Times suing OpenAI already when stuff like this comes out is one of those that I really think from. Like, I like that this whole episode is basically AI is all branding in pr. But I genuinely believe that, like, you need to have the public on your side when this stuff comes out, because on one, it's so crystal clear that obviously there's copyright violations in all of this. I think everyone. It's hard to pretend that that's not the case. However, these products are so valuable to everyday users. It's like that when everyone supports you and is on your side. I think it's just okay enough that these things will resolve themselves. But I think, like, if the general public is turning against you, I think this is where there can be some real issues going into the next year, because I think we're going to see more and more of these lawsuits, and at some point there has to be precedent set because this is completely uncharted territory and we are going to. There's going to be some kind of court resolution that establishes some kind of precedent.

[Ranjan Roy]

Yeah, no, I'm with you 100%. I mean, ultimately, I get the argument that the AI companies are making and why they'd say it's fine to train on copyrighted material, but there's just something not right about it. And so far there's been, you know, a small public backlash, not really much of any. And I just think that that's going to come to a head eventually. All right, so speaking of meta, there's some new moderation policies that when we speak about them, we're sure to make at least half of our listeners mad, maybe all of them mad, and that we will not be daunted. We will discuss them right after this.

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[Ranjan Roy]

On Big Technology Podcast first half. We talked all about the latest in AI. Now we're going to talk about the second biggest story, I think, in tech this week, which is a meta full about face on its fact checking and content moderation policies. So basically, Mark Zuckerberg says they're going to take a whole new approach to speech on Facebook. He basically says there are five changes they're going to make. One, they're going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes like X. Second, they're going to simplify content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topic like immigration and gender, which Zuckerberg says are just out of touch with mainstream discourse. Third, they've had filters scanning for any content policy violation. They're going to tune the filters to focus on tackling illegal and high severity violations, leaving the rest to user reports. Fourth, they're bringing back civic content, which is a way to say that there's going to be a lot more news and politics on Facebook. And fifth, they're moving their their trust and safety content moderation teams out of California and to Texas. And they're also, this is like really a sixth thing. They're going to work with President Trump to push back governments on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing them to censor more. Basically, they've had other company, other countries lean on them to censor and they're going to try to work with the Trump administration to push back on that. So those are the big changes coming out of Facebook there's like more detailed stuff that we're going to get into. But just on its face. What do you think about these changes, Ranjan?

[Unnamed Guest]

I think Mark Zuckerberg has had an incredible PR turnaround over the last few years from back in the 2017, 18 Cambridge Analytica days. I think he's definitely risking all of that work with this to make this public statement because there didn't need to be him saying this. That was interesting to me. Like from a policy perspective, from an actual product perspective. They could have just done this to obviously. So saying it publicly is kind of, you know, presenting this to Trump very clearly. Kind of like presenting this to the world. But I think, and I'm curious your take. My, my possibly counterintuitive opinion is I think it's good in the sense that I have long been wary of misinformation on meta platforms. I think fact checking the adjust at that scale or the any of these efforts that have launched over the last six to eight years have been kind of terrible in a fool's errand anyways. So I kind of like just let it rip. As awful as that sounds like, it just. This is what this platform is. When you have an algorithm based content platform like this, this is the way it's always going to go. So to try to hide it and make editorial decisions or value based decisions was always going to be a problem and now they're just saying, sorry, we're not, it's not our, not our problem.

[Ranjan Roy]

Yeah, no. I think going from fact checking to Community Notes is a good move. I think Community Notes really works very well on Twitter. In fact, I'm impressed with how well it works and go ahead.

[Unnamed Guest]

I. Okay, sorry, I disagree on that. I don't think from an actual like efficacy standpoint that any of this is going to work well in terms of like creating a better town square or conversation. I just think it's the, the only real decision and it's actually the most honest one.

[Ranjan Roy]

All right. But I'm. Yes. And on this, I just think Community Notes is good. I mean it's amazing how many viral tweets that you used to see that would just go viral without any context now go viral with fact checks, even ads on Twitter when the advertiser is lying about their product, they get community noted. I mean, and it's not like, oh, the Community Notes generally seem like pretty level headed and often times we'll have links to like share further context. So why is this not a great solution here?

[Unnamed Guest]

Well, because. Okay, so we have to Separate. There's the kind of. There's the fact checking side, which to me was always kind of ridiculous anyways. Then there's the actual kind of like, abuse side, which also they've like, severely relaxed the overall restrictions of it, which again, if you say something awful that's not wrong or right factually, that is just something that is very like. And we'll get into things like immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit, which was one of the examples of now newly permissible speech. I mean, do we need a fact check? Yes or no? Like, so. So to me, the community note side, it does answer the misinformation slash, fact checking side. I do agree it's kind of. I love seeing an advertiser get called out with community notes, but to me, that's almost a small part of this.

[Ranjan Roy]

Well, I think that's a big part of it because it's on the fact checking. But then I think that you're right in pointing out that the abuse stuff is a completely different side of it. And that's again going towards where Zuckerberg talks about how, like, we're going to simplify our content policies and get rid of restrictions on topics like immigration agenda that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse. He says what started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it's gone too far. And like, while I think that's possible, it's kind of interesting to see what's now permissible on Facebook. I mean, you read like a few things and there are some other things about trans people. Trans people aren't real. They're mentally ill. Trans people are freaks. It's very interesting to me how, like, where Zuckerberg says broaden out the discussion really is just like, let's get into like, the most vile parts of our society and let them say the things that, that they want to say. Which I guess, like, yeah, you don't want to limit everybody's personal, you know, expression. Of course, I don't think any political opinion should be restricted. And I'm definitely not on like, the pro heavy content moderation side. On social networks, on the other hand, like, you are building a platform that does amplify stuff algorithmically. And like, you get to kind of set the parameters of like, the type of world you want to build inside. And it was just kind of interesting from like, you know, it's like Zuckerberg says, let's broaden out the political debate. And this is from platformer. This is from Meta's chief marketing executive. I feel that the actual shock of friends and family seeing me receive abuse as a gay man helped them understand that hatred exists and hardened support. Most of our progress on rights happened during these periods without mass censorship and. And pushing it underground has coincided with reversals like. That is an interesting idea, but the question is, how much of the negative stuff do you want to amplify? And I think Casey Newton, who wrote the story with this quote, pointed it out pretty well, which is basically just like Meta's moving to more of a for you feed, less of a people you follow feed. So the real question isn't exactly like, how much of this do you want to allow? It's how much of it do you want to amplify?

[Unnamed Guest]

Well, I. But I also think that in the end, the, up until now with Facebook and Instagram having relative kind of like social network monopoly positioning, this is the only thing that the average person like you and I are very online. I've dealt with plenty of abuse, especially on Twitter over the years. And it's fine. I, you know, like, I am online, I deal with it. I know how to deal with it. Like for just the average Facebook user, which I'm guessing Facebook Blue has gotten more normie than ever. How are these people going to respond when they start getting flamed with just, just vile remarks and just feeling horrible? Do they still. Do they stop using the platform? Do they use it less? So I actually think to me, and I kind of hope this resolves itself from an actual kind of product and business perspective, maybe that's like overly capitalistic of me, but I do think that these platforms will become just miserable and unusable. The more, again, for me, I know you, you're still anti Blue sky and still strong on X, but like, I.

[Ranjan Roy]

Mean, I wouldn't call myself anti Blue Sky. I just don't think there's a big, bright, you know, bright future there.

[Unnamed Guest]

Well, no, but I like when I go on X now, it's wild. Like, it's crazy. I mean like the UK grooming stuff and just like, like. And I've been going on it less and less and less. And then when I go on just the outright like insane racism, not even like, kind of like subtle or even funny or whatever.

[Ranjan Roy]

I mean, just, I've seen that as well just.

[Unnamed Guest]

And so, but the more that happens, the less I inclined to use it. And I, I mean, that's why I'm even think Blue sky is a chance that I, for my own behavior. I use it more and more and more now because as the other alternative becomes less and less usable, so. So I do think it's going to be interesting to see with, to see where this goes from an actual business and product perspective, because it all sounds good right now, but is this going to make these things unusable for just a normal person who's just like posting about their kids or whatever else on Facebook and then just starts dealing with just insane, insane comments?

[Ranjan Roy]

Well, I did have an observation from the business side of this as well, because it's interesting to me that they're bringing back politics. I mean, the civic content thing, I think, to me is the most undercovered part of this entire thing. And I think they know that news and politics give gives their products engagement they just can't find elsewhere. And so I was sort of question whether, like people flaming each other and blowing each other up in the comments is bad for Facebook's business. In fact, it seems like Facebook Blue was at its height when the flame wars existed and people would go after each other and they'd be talking about news and politics. And whatever it is today doesn't have the same urgency as it did before. So I think that, like on its face, this is absolutely, and I think in truth, this is absolutely a move of Zuckerberg to align Facebook with the current political administration as it has always done. It always aligns itself with the political conventional wisdom in the country and I think across the globe. And Zuckerberg has said point blank, our job here is to just reflect what people want. Like, we don't have anything higher purpose than that. What people want, we give them. People said something in the election, Trump won and therefore he's aligning himself with Trump. However, second order right now, I think is largely it's a business thing as well. I think he realizes that to give Threads a chance against Twitter and to restore urgency to Facebook, you need news. News equals engagement. And I've said it a thousand times on the show, when you have news, when you have politics, you have engagement, you have urgency. And I think what Zuckerberg is doing is bringing that back into the platform and all the horrible things that come with it in order to revive what is a platform that seems to be on its way to irrelevance in Facebook and certainly there in threads.

[Unnamed Guest]

Well, I also think what he's doing, which is cynically savvy, is announcing this just a few days before. And Today I was January 19th, the deadline for TikTok needing to be divested from ByteDance and listening today to the Supreme Court hearings about the TikTok ban. Suddenly it went from Trump, you know, supporting TikTok, again being against a ban, to now Mark Zuckerberg is fully aligned with me. He sees it, he knows it's happening. And I mean, you can start to see suddenly. And I was listening to the hearings, like, even the conservative justices seem to be edging towards a ban. So if Trump does not step in on this, I think this could actually be the, the, the thing that could push over the ban to a reality.

[Ranjan Roy]

Do you still see that? Do you see the ban happening?

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, yeah. Okay. So today, listening to the Supreme Court hearing, the most fascinating thing, I mean, in this day and age, the nine justices on the Supreme Court seemingly being aligned on anything, I think is almost non existent. They all seem to be leaning towards. And again, it's not a ban. And actually the fun Amy Coney Barrett kept saying it, but then also Justice Jackson on the liberal side was saying it. They're all like, this is not a ban, it's a divestiture. Like, all you have to do is divest from ByteDance. Why can you not from a, you know, a foreign adversary like a company. Why can you not divest? And then the Solicitor on the ByteDance slash TikTok side keeps saying, this is a matter of free speech. Speech. And like, no, it's not speech. Just divest. And it's the fact that everyone from both sides, even Clarence Thomas, is like, what is exactly? What is tick tock speech here? I don't understand why restriction on ByteDance, a Chinese company, represents a limit on TikTok. So I think Zuckerberg's move might actually be the defining, like, push, where Trump suddenly is like, okay, I don't have to worry about meta on Instagram right now. You know what? I can now go after China. Let it rip. Let it rip.

[Ranjan Roy]

Yeah, that's really interesting. And I think, again, like, we've talked about this on the show, but if TikTok ends up just shutting down and not divesting, then that's kind of the game right there. In fact, this is probably a good test to be like, you know, are you going to try to divest or are you going to shut down? I still, heart of heart, don't believe that this thing is going to get shut down or sold or, you know, maybe there'll be some declaration of divestment and that'll be that. However, if it goes through and TikTok says, All right, we're done, it's like, okay, you are a tool of the Chinese Communist Party.

[Unnamed Guest]

But they've already said that all they had to do like to say, we are not going to use the ByteDance algorithm and completely divest our data, our algorithm, the business from ByteDance. That's not a completely impossible, unreasonable thing. Like, that's the part to me that still is almost like confounding. Like, why can't they just do that? And that's what you heard it even in the justices when they were talking again across the aisle, everyone's like, why. Why can't you just do this? Like you're saying it's free speech. You're doing all that. Like, it's not unreasonable that the foreign adversary of like an opaque company that we don't know exactly the relationship with the Chinese government. You should not be controlled by them. When you control the narrative of American media. Like, and they. There's no good answer to that question. Why can't they divest again? We're only nine days away. It's going to be a fun crazy next week's show. Yeah, I think. I think we're gonna get. All it's gonna take is one Trump Truth. Truth. Social. I don't even forget what are they called again through social to say that? Look know. But what's the actual post called if.

[Ranjan Roy]

It'S a. Oh, I'm not. I'm not that far down. I still call X posts tweet even though they call them posts. So.

[Unnamed Guest]

Okay, all it's going to take is.

[Ranjan Roy]

Maybe they're called truths. I don't know.

[Unnamed Guest]

Truths. Truths. That sounds good. All it's one truth saying let tik tock. Let. Let it shut down and then it's over. And I think he's going to be leaning on that way. Could be leaning in that direction. Given Zuckerberg's announcement, given just overall he's going to need anything that makes him look weak on China is always going to be problematic. And so this was always going to be kind of a delicate situation anyways versus cleanly saying I don't want China involved in anything. Shut it down.

[Ranjan Roy]

Yep. So speaking of China, should we close on the fact that I spent 15 hours in Beijing on Tuesday on a layover back home and just found it very interesting to be in China. You know, you've been there as well. To me, the thing that really stood out was the fact that it really is a surveillance state. I mean there are cameras everywhere. And we were driving. Myself, my wife and a guide, we were driving out of the airport on our way to the Great Wall to start the day pre dawn. And it just felt like every few seconds there was another flash. And I was like, oh, like in Australia there's lots of speed cameras. And of course I knew about surveillance in China, but I was like, is that like a speed camera? It's like, nope, that is what they call eagle eye or sort of the nickname for it that just tracks everybody's movement, does facial recognition to see who's in the car. And if you do things that are wrong, they will get you. And in some places, like in Tiananmen Square, there were every light fixture seemed to have like a dozen cameras or more affixed to it. And it's just this incredible thing that I don't think, you know, you fully grasp until you see it, that like wherever you're go, wherever you go, you're being watched. It was very interesting to see in person.

[Unnamed Guest]

Well, I. So I spent three months in 2009 in Beijing and I like lived there. I was taking a language class and that, that just reminded me the surveillance. So 2009, not quite digital, but it's such a different mindset in the sense of. So it was around the time of swine flu and so like already there was like a lot of pandemicy behaviors going on. And I went out, I went out one night and I was a bit hungover the next day and I didn't feel like going to my class. So I emailed the teacher. Alan, feeling a little sick, don't think I can make it today. Two health officials showed up at my door and yeah, yeah. And it like literally and I did. They did not speak any English. I. My Chinese still is not very good and at the time was non existent and literally start asking me and yelling me, yelling at me, asking me all these questions and that, that, that entire mentality of surveillance and like kind of collective watching even in the pre fully digital era was there. So I can't even fathom what it is like right now.

[Ranjan Roy]

Yeah, it's pretty incredible. Like I, at one point I was like, oh, where's my phone? Of course it was in my pocket. And the guide was like, don't worry if you left your phone like a few steps back, you know, it'll still be there because the cameras will make sure that nobody took it. And if somebody takes it, we'll be able to find out where they went with it.

[Unnamed Guest]

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[Ranjan Roy]

Oh my goodness. But you know, I mean, outside of that, I just think that it was like a really great visit, honestly, to be able to see China in person. And it's just like, it was pretty cool to see, you know, just a culture that has been, you know, ongoing for so many years. Just reflected in the modern, modern day. As you like walk around Beijing, you could really see it with the architecture and sort of like the dress. It was, it was just super cool and obviously like getting a chance to see the Great Wall, which is just like one of the wonders of the world, was, was really special. So I, I got a 10 year visa to go and so 15 hours of those 10 years are in the books and I definitely plan to go back.

[Unnamed Guest]

Did you download Douyin the Tick Tock, the original TikTok based out of China?

[Ranjan Roy]

I should have the thing. I tried to download Alipay and I did get it, get it to work, but they still had some problems with it. Like you can literally not pay with.

[Unnamed Guest]

You need a local phone number, right? Probably.

[Ranjan Roy]

I think that's what it is. Like.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, in Taiwan, I have to deal with the same thing with. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ranjan Roy]

So couldn't use, could not use credit card. Everything is, is Alipay. There are so many EVs all, all around. Like you see the EVs with the green license plates and there were so many brands that I'd never seen before that are just driving around. It was almost like sensory overload to like see all these things that we had, like, you know, read that I had read about in the press, like the surveillance, the EVs, the mobile payments, you know, Soviet influence even like you go from the Forbidden City, which is all ancient Chinese architecture, into Tiananmen Square and then you like look around and there's like the Great hall of the People, which is the most important building, I would say, in the country where all the government meetings are held. And it's like, oh, that's just like straight up Soviet architecture. And so it's like you're there, you're there, it's real. Yeah, you're real Soviet themes in the flag. You know, you go to the market, there are like sculptures of, of Ayatollah Khomeini, like, okay, that bond is real. You know, it's just, just a very, very interesting trip. And I think like I wrote this about this in Big Technology this week, but there have been some debates on like, whether, you know, it's worthwhile to travel. And I just find those debates, like, so absurd because not only do you get a chance to meet people from different backgrounds when you go. But you also are left with so many more questions and a little bit more context of all these things that you see. And so I'm strongly on the affirmative side of go out and see the things that you want to understand. And I'm not going to claim to be a china expert after 15 hours in the country.

[Unnamed Guest]

No, you should, you should.

[Ranjan Roy]

Unlike most on Twitter. But it certainly opened a lot, a lot of new questions for me. And, you know, it was really, really helpful, I think, to see this in action.

[Unnamed Guest]

Are you going back?

[Ranjan Roy]

Yes.

[Unnamed Guest]

You got the 10 year visa, so.

[Ranjan Roy]

I will go back as long as, like, things stay kind of calm between the US And China. I hope they do. But, yeah, we'll see.

[Unnamed Guest]

I might have to. Big Technology live in Beijing. Not sure how that would play.

[Ranjan Roy]

Yeah, maybe.

[Unnamed Guest]

No, we're not coming back.

[Ranjan Roy]

I don't think Xi is going to allow that. But it's a good idea. All right, maybe.

[Unnamed Guest]

No, maybe he's a listener. Maybe he's a listener.

[Ranjan Roy]

I do know. Yeah, that's one of the things that Xi Jinping enjoys.

[Unnamed Guest]

If you're out there. Xi, come on the podcast.

[Ranjan Roy]

Yeah. I would love to have you on. All right. I mean, could you imagine our first head of state is Xi Jinping? I don't know. I think we'd have people asking questions. All right, Ron, John, great speaking with you as always. We'll see you next week.

[Unnamed Guest]

See you next week.

[Ranjan Roy]

All right, everybody, thank you for listening. We're gonna be talking Replica on Wednesday, so that'll be a really fascinating in conversation. And then Ranjan and I will be back next Friday. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.