OpenAI's New Video Generation Model, Zuck Returns Fire, Tesla's Fatal Crash

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) OpenAI's new video generation model Sora 2) Will Sora challenge Hollywood? 3) Does Sora understand physics or is it just spitting back video? 4) ChatGPT's declining user numbers 5) Gemini 1.5 6) Meta's new conceptual model of the world 7) Zuckerberg's Vision Pro review 8) Temu dominates the Super Bowl 9) Tesla's fatal, potentially self driving crash 10) A financial advice columnist put $50,000 in a shoebox and handed it to scammers. Would you? --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let's talk about Sora, OpenAI's new video generation model, along with plenty of AI news this week, including the stagnation of ChatGPT, Meta's new AI model, and Gemini 1.5. And, Ed, if that is not enough, we'll also break down Mark Zuckerberg's Vision Pro response and the wisdom of putting $50,000 in a shoebox. All that and more, coming up right after this. This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put a Gentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then, I sat down with Adam Mitchell,

• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside a large-scale Agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade-offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get frontier compute. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay? Akash is an open cloud that provides easy access, flexibility, and peace of mind. That's how companies like Razer were able to cut their inference cost by 15 times. Visit akash.network/alex for a free consultation. That's akash.network/alex for a free consultation. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition,

• 1:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  where we break down the news in our traditional, cool-headed, and nuanced format. Wow, wow, wow. Massive week of AI news and plenty of other good topics to talk about. Joined, as always, by Ranjan Roy of Margins. Ranjan, welcome.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  I try to underplay big news weeks in AI, but I think this actually is probably the biggest week, at least this year, but in a long time in AI news.

• 1:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Absolutely. So let's start with Sora, which is OpenAI's model that instantly generates eye-popping video. It's a video generation model. And this is what The New York Times says. "OpenAI has unveiled a system that creates videos that look as if they were lifted from a Hollywood movie. A demonstration included short videos created in minutes of woolly mammoths trotting through a snowy meadow, a monster gazing at a melting candle, and a Tokyo street seemingly shot by a camera swooping across the city."

• 2:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Now, this is what they say the implications are. The technology could speed the work of seasoned movie makers while replacing less experienced digital artists entirely. It could also become a quick and inexpensive way of creating online disinformation, making it even harder to tell what's real on the internet. What do you think about that assessment? Do you, um, do you agree with that? Like, they're editorializing pretty big in a news article, uh, right at the top.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  I think we need to break this down into kind of like different categories. You have the actual technological achievement, the coolness factor, the impact on jobs, and then disinformation. And I really want to start with the technological advancement and the coolness factor because, oh my God, if you saw those demos, I am so excited. This is what I like. This is probably the biggest advance I've seen in a while. Cause again, you go from mid-journey version five to six, Dolly two to three. All of those are still, I don't want to say incremental because they're still big leaps, but this is the first time in a long time that wow feeling that when I first used ChatGPT

• 3:33Speaker 01

  and I saw the text starting to stream across and actually answering my question and generating text, this is the first time I've had that feeling in a long time. And my favorite part of all of this is how OpenAI probably, I think they're throwing a bit of shade at Google on this one, that they make clear that these are all real demos and this is not just some research paper. Cause every time Meta and Google release this stuff, it's always just a new research paper and they'll get their headlines. This is real.

• 4:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, but let me ask you this. Is what we're seeing, okay, it's definitely a breakthrough, but is what we're seeing computers able, being able to understand more than, you know, they have in the past? Or is it just as simple as like we trained a Dolly-like model with video instead of images and they can do images? Because you saw that they were able to like, for instance, put pirate ships in a cup of coffee. So do you think these models like understand the fact that coffee is a liquid and a pirate ship is a, is a solid and therefore it would basically? Sail on the coffee ship, the coffee cup, the same way that it would on the water. And let's do it this way. So do you think this is increased understanding by the models? Or is it just simply like them taking the same process that they have all the time? Because that is a very big difference.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, that's exactly, that's perfect. That's, I think there's two layers to how big of an advancement this is. As you said, now physics are involved. Before the kind of physics, understanding of what, how things move and what's happening in an image is obviously not nearly as important. Still, how the boat would render, the pirate ship would render on the coffee cup and balance or whatever in that still image still mattered. But now how things move, even that, you know, the, the video they released, the first tweet with a woman walking in Tokyo, how they're walking, how things move around her, that's huge. And then you start to think about the processing power and kind of like overall processing

• 5:34Speaker 01

  advancement here. Generating one still image is one thing. Generating in a one minute video clip, essentially, I don't know, however many thousand frames with one prompt and doing it. I don't know how long this will take, how long it'll take to render this stuff. But I mean, that, that's a massive jump.

• 5:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  There was some like really fun stuff also with the mistakes that I made. Like there were a bunch of people trying to place a beach chair down in the sand and it just kind of floated and wobbled. And it's like, wow, like the, what does the model think a beach chair is made of? And what does it do? Like it does, it does show, I think, some emergent understanding of physics, like you mentioned, and that is really the interesting thing. We're going to see where it goes. I think I'm a little bit more freaked out now about what AI is and what AI can do than I was at the beginning of the week. And I'm curious, speaking of people being freaked out, what do you think Hollywood should feel about this? I wish we had Sharon Waxman with us again from The Wrap, talking about this stuff. Because the reaction from all the Hollywood trades is like, it's over, people pack it up.

• 6:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  But that being said, like, come on, like, this is not something, in my opinion, that can start to replace the feature length film.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're not going to get acting. Like, I think the entire art of acting is the most human thing imaginable and, you know, conveying human emotion in original ways is not going anywhere. I do think, I think all these kind of things, advertising is going to change a lot faster than feature films. I think this is the stuff that gets me excited, that small brands and creators are going to be able to create videos in ways that they never would have been able to before, and pretty quickly, because there's not as much, that's more just about doing it, setting the scene, communicating visually whatever you're trying

• 7:24Speaker 01

  to communicate. So I think feature-length films are nowhere near, you know, changing. But, okay, I take that back, because I think some changes you can see is maybe for B-roll, you know, like the little bits of film that, you know, are not involving an acting or an actor. I think that stuff might start to get generated, and it'll actually make movies potentially better, because you don't need to fly across the world to get one shot, and you'll actually be able to storytell in a better way.

• 7:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  I feel like they can already do that with special effects, though.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I think that's why the stuff has already been changing a good amount. So, yeah, no, I agree. You know, half the stuff is shot, even stuff about New York City is often shot in Hollywood, so.

• 8:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, exactly.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. So, so that's why, I don't think it's going to be, just pack it up, Hollywood, you're done. I think, I think this, this has a much bigger impact among smaller players, people, all that kind of stuff. The big people, the big players have already had a lot of this technology and access to it. It just makes it more readily available.

• 8:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I think we should also note that this is not going to be available anytime soon, at least from OpenAI. I mean, basically, they were making the announcement, showing that they got ahead of this model. I mean, their model is definitely far ahead of the other models that are out there, but... They are also saying that they're trying to red team this, basically find holes in the technology and that the general public should basically shouldn't hold its breath about getting it anytime in the near future.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I think they're, they're, they, to their credit, you know, you always say OpenAI is in the hits business.

• 9:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  They're pretty good at product marketing and they, and like, you know, again, going at Google and saying, look, these are real demos people created, it's here getting that excitement going, but still making sure and working on the product. I think they've shown that they can release products pretty well, certainly better than Google has recently. Meta doesn't even really have any consumer facing products in the same way. I think they have an image generator now, but yeah.

• 9:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  They do.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Microsoft has been all right, but, but OpenAI is still in this whole wave been the master of product releases and marketing. So I think they've started this one pretty well.

• 9:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And I do think just going back to our original reaction to it is that this is incredible technology and seeing some of the videos and the way that it, you know, video can really trigger emotion in people and seeing the way that it was triggering emotion in people across Twitter yesterday. And of course you had some people farming for clout, but like seeing a cow, a cat rolling around on a bed with someone was just like totally unbelievable. And if there was any question of whether the progress at AI is going to come to an end or slowing down, it doesn't seem like that's the case. It seems like we are really in for a year, another year of breakthroughs. And this is, I think, the first big one on the agenda.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  So what you're saying is Nvidia's valuation makes sense.

• 10:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, I'm not saying that. No.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  I think, I think I agree. I think this is, that's why I think this is a big week. This is, it, I, I agree that there's been a moment, the last few months almost have felt calm in a good way, that you can actually start trying to really use the technology and trying to figure it out. And then suddenly now it's like, oh, here we go. 2024 is going to be just as big.

• 10:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. But, and there's always a but, right? You mentioned that I think that OpenAI is in the hits business and here's why. It's that. This technology can become equaled and it's not and because it's so new and novel, it's not always going to take off. And there's some data that I broke in big technology this week with with a similar web, which is an online analytics company. Just looking at like where chat GPT stands, because I think you'll remember in the summer, chat GPT stagnated a little bit. It had a couple of real big dips in usage and people said, once students come back, it's going to go back again and surpass its highs. Well, the data that I saw from similar web, which measures, you know, web traffic across the

• 11:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  internet, found that not only have they not reached their peak, they're now 11% off the peak that they hit in May 2023, stagnant from mid 2023. And they declined in both November and December this year, key months where students are in school and the usage dropped. So basically, my perspective on this is that the chat GPT's growth has flatlined. And if you want to read more and see the data, I definitely encourage you to go to bigtechnology.com and check it out. And Ron, and I'm just kind of curious what your reaction is to this. I mean, we thought for a minute it was the fastest growing consumer product

• 12:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  in history, hit 100 million users in in about two months. And then we thought that, okay, it's such a cool technology that maybe it will continue to grow, but it hasn't. What do you think that means? What do you think the implications are for for OpenAI and chat GPT?

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's why this video text to video, maybe that's why they're pushing it even more right now, because personally, and we talked about this the other week, I have perplexity, I have Microsoft Copilot. And let's all remember that Microsoft Copilot for free gives you access to GPT four and Dolly three, whereas chat with chat GPT, you have to pay for chat GPT plus 20 bucks a month. So they have a lot of competition and I'll admit. I've been Gemini-ing a little bit in the last week. I have.

• 13:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Doesn't it feel great not to say barding?

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 13:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let's not beat a dead horse.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  No, but I'm gonna do this all year long, all year long. Thank you. And I'll never forget the name Bard because Gemini is great. I feel good saying Gemini and it's working. It's working pretty well and it's integrated nicely. At first, I was a little surprised they did not release a separate app for it. And it's actually funny. I asked Gemini, does Gemini have an iOS app? And still in a good old school Bard fashion, it returned to me Gemini, a crypto, the crypto trading app. And then another Gemini, it wasn't even self-aware about, I was asking if it self had an iOS app.

• 13:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  But then they did, the way they released it is in the Google iOS app, Gemini is kind of, you can like, uh, hit a toggle and switch to Gemini mode. I actually think it's smart because it gets you into the Google app itself, uploading images and these things are already built in. Like it, it's still really entrenches it in the overall Google ecosystem that everyone's already, you know, used to. So I actually think it could be a very, very smart consumer play. And a lot of people already have it on their phone anyways. And that means that they are going to be a direct competitor to ChatGPT. And so you have so much competition coming from every single angle that just being the

• 14:33Speaker 01

  first, it might not be enough for them.

• 14:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, okay, so one of the aspects might be competition, but the other aspect might be just the format is getting tired. I think that people were initially so excited about how well these bots performed, but started to lose the ability to find new things to ask them and the use cases. Like they're, they're like, there's like a desire to use ChatGPT, but also just sort of confusion in terms of what to do with it. Uh, after that initial novelty wore off, and I think that's another explanation. It's not just the competition because yes, Bing has ticked up, but basically you look at any of these, uh, bots. Compared to, let's say, a Google and you're just single digits, low single digits. Like, for instance, ChatGPT's web visits are a tiny bit more, maybe a few hundred million more than Bing's.

• 15:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  But still Bing is just 3.4% of the total search market. So I wouldn't go as far as to call it a niche product, but it almost is there.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the chat interface itself, I agree, is limited and not people. Unless you get in the habit of understanding how to use it in different ways. I think it is a limiting factor. And again, going back to Gemini for the win, possibly. Integrating again is the chat part is just one part of the overall feature. But getting people to take a picture with their phone and directly tell you all about it. Google has had Google Lens for a long time and integrating the Gemini model directly into that is smart. I think starting with that blank cursor, the way ChatGPT has you do is definitely gonna keep it more niche than it otherwise was.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  So yeah, I think that they need to, but they have been better at like integrating, again, image generation, image understanding with text. But to me, the more I thought about it is like, again, there's the using large language models for knowledge retrieval or information retrieval and then using them to generate new content. And the first half is just search and, you know, perplexity is doing well. Copilot's doing well. Google is building their own search generative experiences. So that's something that will ChatGPT compete on. I don't think so.

• 16:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, now I'm gonna push back on this idea that this multimodal thing is something that people actually wanna do. Google's had Lens out forever. It has not broke through into the mainstream, which is that app that you could take pictures of and Google will search and stuff like that. And maybe there'll be some moments where you'll, you know, drop an image in and ask these bots to have a conversation with you about it. But it's hard to see that really being like the super use case.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Wait, what are you basing your Google Lens is not a mainstream product on?

• 17:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Just like, how many people do you actually see talking about Lens? Have you, just anecdotally?

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. What, traveling? I've seen, I've used it, it's a kind of a common thing. I remember it was actually a friend had told me about, oh, when they're traveling, especially like in countries with non-English alphabets, they go straight, any menu you open, any sign you look at, you pull out Google Lens right away and get it to instantly translate things for you. And after I heard that, that's how I use it myself. I'm Google lensing all the time.

• 17:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, all right.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  So you versus me.

• 17:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'll take your word for it. I'll take your word for it. So also on the Google front, just a quick note to hit. They released this new model Gemini 1.5 already. It's interesting to me, they have said that, you know, they're already, then they just released Gemini 1 and now they're already releasing 1.5. And the interesting thing about 1.5 is that it has 1 million tokens compared to 1,000, 128,000 for GPT-4 and 32,000 for Gemini Pro, right? And so basically, it's, let's see, this is what Sundar says. It's about 11, 10 or 11 hours of video, 10s or 10s of thousands of lines of code. So, and the context window, that's the tokens, means you can ask the AI bot

• 18:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  about all that content at once. That seems big to me, but it got basically no attention while everybody was looking at the, the Sora news. What do you think about that expansion at Gemini?

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's, it's tough because, well, Fran, first of all, I agree that, guys, take a breath, you're doing well with just the whole Gemini rebrand. We don't need 1.5 just yet. Save it so you can build some buzz around it, but they are doing it, so we'll talk about it. The token windows are interesting to me because one of the big changes that happened even in a lot of the work I've done is as these context windows and the amount of tokens you can use get bigger, that means in the past, you would do fine tune a model, meaning you would like train a model, a foundation model in a very specific way, and it took work and you had to write code and it was difficult.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Now you can literally make a prompt that's the size of a book and say, here's 200 examples. Now using those recreate this kind of text in this style. And but yeah, so it changes the way you actually build the entire process that now it's called prompt tuning. It's that you can actually get it to do exactly what you want and provide all that instruction just in the prompt alone because they're so long. So you can put in a whole book, but even in GPT-4 and use that to essentially on the fly, train that prompt and get it to respond in a specific way. The difference between that and 32 and 128,000, I don't even know what 128,000

• 20:21Speaker 01

  feels like. And you had a quote in here that was really good from Sundar. Or he says, it's about 10 or 11 hours of video, tens of thousands of lines of code. So what exactly you're inputting, I can't even fathom like, are you putting in 10 or 11 hours of video? I don't know what you do. Maybe you can put in entire code bases and get that to train to output code in a specific way. That gets kind of interesting, but but the size of it has been a major change, especially GPT-4, then Claude. All of these have been pushing the limits on how big these context windows are, and it changes the way we all can use LLMs in a pretty powerful way.

• 21:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  But is this out yet? Because there was somebody from Founders Fund that tweeted this guy, John Coogan. Google launches a new AI tool. I go to check it out. Wait a minute, this isn't a working product. This is just a blog post every time. Are we in that scenario again?

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Thank you, John Coogan, for

• 21:21Speaker 01

  outlining exactly what I've been trying to say in a much pithier way, in a good way. Because yeah, that's when we're talking about product marketing and releases like, again, why? Google always does this. They announce something way, way before it's ready. And they just fall behind even more. So.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  OpenAI is still for the win on product marketing.

• 21:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  But OpenAI also this week just released a blog post and everybody's gonna go nuts. So you can't be selective about that.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  No, no, but that's a, they were very specific that these are real demos created by real people. This isn't like a research process that we validated and something. This is, people, folks red teaming this are the ones who created these prompts.

• 22:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can I tell you what my favorite bit of AI news this week was?

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Nothing, not text to video and the complete transformation of reality?

• 22:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  No. It was Vjeppa. Did you see this about Vjeppa? So Vjeppa, let me see what it stands for. It stands for Video Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture, Vjeppa. And it's from Meta. And they released this model, or they've, they've announced this model. And they say it's a first step toward artificial general intelligence. Those are bold words. Now, why is it? Okay, so basically what it does is, this is from Fast Company. It learns by processing unlabeled video and figuring out what's probably happening in a certain part of the screen during the few seconds it was blacked out. So basically, if you have somebody playing guitar, like Mark Zuckerberg posted a picture of this,

• 22:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  and you blacked out the part of his hand that's actually strumming the chords, and you ask the model to create what's in that blacked out area, it can show the hand strumming the chords. And this isn't just like, you know, total video generation. It requires a true understanding of the world. And to me, that is very interesting. It's, you know, effectively saying that like, you know, I, the AI model, you know, I'm not just generating, but I am understanding. And that to me, and I think that's different from just generating a full video. It's figuring out what's missing. To me, it sounds pretty crucial and very interesting. And that's why Vjeppa to me is a, is the big news of the world. And this is what Fast Company says.

• 23:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  It is not a generative model. It develops an internal conceptual model of the world and then acts based off of that.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  If Vjeppa, if Vjeppa is working, if it actually is for real, that is a change because, you know, again, large language models with text work with trying to predict what is the most statistically probable next word or word that will fill in that blank space in the gap, images, similar, what's the next pixel, but to try to do that for video is, uh, if it can get that right, that does seem pretty profound. And maybe that is like a breakthrough as big as the 2013 computer vision breakthroughs, but I don't know. Jan LeCun, give us a demo, come on on the show and uh,

• 24:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  I know, I did invite him on the show. They said he was, I think he was somewhere making some speeches or something like that.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  He won, he won an award. I saw like in Dubai or something like that, but it was some like a global AI award.

• 24:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Listen, Jan, if you're listening, less awards, more big technology podcast, less awards, more big technology podcast. Simple as that.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  It's the formula for success. It's the formula for success.

• 25:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Here's what we can do. Black out the image of Jan LeCun, accepting that award in Dubai or wherever it is. And then have real, and then the model will figure out that it's him. Have real Jan LeCun come here and demo Vjeppa. But it is interesting because these models like, this is weird, right? We're talking less about predicting the next word, more about reasoning, more about understanding a, you know, the world conceptually, more about learning physics. Like where is this going to end? This is kind of getting scary, creepy, exciting, all of the above?

• 25:32Speaker 01

  I mean, it's interesting because Jan LeCun, I feel, and Meta overall, has been kind of actually in a pretty smart, safe, responsible place, especially versus OpenAI and others where Google might be too conservative. Or, you know, they're like open source, build guardrails directly in recognizing the need to be responsible while still progressing. Like overall, I think they've positioned themselves pretty well in terms of how these things develop, but. Yeah, and we, as we started this conversation, especially in this election year, how this stuff plays out and in the disinformation realm is gonna be pretty scary, interesting.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  We're gonna, we're gonna be living the, in real time, the potential impacts of these things.

• 26:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm way less worried about the disinformation and more of like, what happens if this thing becomes self-aware, which like, I don't know, it sounds more and more like that, that might happen in our lifetimes where before it seemed far-fetched.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  I'm more concerned about disinformation in the election than self-aware, artificial general intelligence. Choose your enemy.

• 26:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Pick your poison. It's only a matter of what kills you first.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, I don't know. Do we really need disinformation when we have Tucker Carlson out in a Russian supermarket talking about how great the cart return system is?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  That's fair. That's fair. It's the algorithm. It was always the algorithm.

• 26:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. By the way, that is a very innovative system, the cart return. You put the coin in, return the cart.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  I didn't say, I didn't actually even watch the video. I tried to block out the entire, I saw some of the memes, but I really tried to block out. Sometimes you have to make like a very concerted effort to not partake in something or engage with something. And this Tucker and Russia was one of those things for me.

• 27:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, I love how Putin said that it was like, and Putin goes, yeah, it was a weak interview. Too soft. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, let's talk about another comeback video, which is Mark Zuckerberg coming back and basically giving the Vision Pro a tongue lashing, saying that not only does he think that Quest is a better value because it's seven times less expensive, but also that it's the better product in general, period. And he makes all these different comparison, comparisons, saying the Quest weighs less, its controllers are better, it is more immersive, all of the above. And it was very interesting seeing

• 28:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  the reaction there. People really liked Zuckerberg taking that swing against Apple. Did you think this was a wise move? Do you think it was accurate? Have you tried the Vision Pro yet? Give us your thoughts.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  I have, I have, I have, and I actually, I don't think I'm going to buy one just yet, but it was incredible. I think I'm in the same exact place as you are, where I'm gonna give it, let it breathe a little bit, give it a little bit of time, but it was spectacular technology. I've not, I've tried the Quest 2, I've not tried the Quest 3. And we can get more into Vision Pro, but on Zuckerberg's video, I have to say, and I have a lot of issues with Meta overall and their products, and it's, but I respected this video. It was, it was great marketing, it was great, like, the way he did it casually, sitting down and just talking. It was a reminder that, like, Mark Zuckerberg, and I've heard

• 29:03Speaker 01

  this, I've read about this at many places, like, he's a competitor, and, you know, Apple is coming for them in many ways, and you've written well about how maybe Apple's actually helping them inadvertently, but, but he's here, he's here to play, and he's sitting on his couch and just looking in the camera and talking. And I do find it kind of like, you know, rich, that when there are headlines, like Zuckerberg coming out saying Quest 3 is better than Vision Pro, because of course, why wouldn't he?

• 29:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  But I thought, I thought the overall format was good, and great, in fact. I do also find it interesting that I've been using Threads more, and somehow, my algorithmic feed in Threads for a couple of hours was literally all fawning praise of Zuckerberg's video. And I really do wonder what, how Meta is tweaking that algorithm, the same way Elon did with Twitter, to favor themselves in particular ways.

• 30:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm sure there's something there. So, but, okay, here's the counterargument about the Zuck video, right? So, M. G. Siegler, who's a former Google, or I think he maybe might still be at Google Ventures, he says that Zuckerberg is running a real risk of this all coming back to bite him in the ass. Steve Ballmer laughed off the iPhone, but actually, his stance at the time was quite reasonable. The iPhone was too expensive relative to the market, so much so that Apple rather quickly dropped the price. But no one remembers that. They just remember the dismissive laugh. Is Zuckerberg in another Ballmer situation?

• 30:36Speaker 01

  He could be. I think he totally could be, but I think that, I don't know, he wasn't as dismissive. I thought he was like well rehearsed, at least spoken about, you know, here are the very concrete reasons I think this and not kind of laughing it off more. Cause he can't laugh it out. He can't say that headsets are stupid because the whole argument is our headset is better. So I, I don't think he's fully at risk. Do you?

• 31:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think that's, that's totally right. I think it is much more sensible. Yeah. For him to take this position than it would have been, you know, if he was in like the bomber spot. And they never had, they never really competed against the iPhone, right? I mean, they had the Windows phone, but that went nowhere. So they have the device that's been in market and it's been selling.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Have you, did you ever see a Windows phone?

• 31:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  I have, I have seen them for sure.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  They were not good. No, there's a reason.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  I saw a few Zunes, remember the Microsoft Zune?

• 31:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Their iPod competitor.

• 31:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, that was also bad.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  But there's a reason why they fell behind and had a lost decade. They just continued to ship total shit for years. And that's, that was a problem. They've rebounded, but.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  But now Satya is just rolling right now.

• 31:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Last thing on the Vision Pro. It's the Apple fans are returning them to the Apple store. This is from The Verge. It's no coincidence. There's been an uptick on social media. A Vision Pro owner saying they're returning their 30, 3, 3, $3,500 headsets in the past few days. Apple allows you to return the product within 14 days of purchase. And for the first wave of Vision Pro buyers, we're right about that point. Comfort is among the most cited reason for returns. People have said the headset gives them headaches and treasure triggers motion sickness. The weight of the device and the fact that it is front loaded has been another complaint. Okay. Here, this is amazing. The Verge's, the Verge's product manager said, uh, he thought that using the device led to a burst

• 32:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  blood vessel in his eye. At least one other person noted they had similar experience with redness. Do you think this is just people blowing social media chatter out of proportion? Or is this a real problem for Apple?

• 32:49Speaker 01

  I think that it's definitely a problem if it's if it's happening at any kind of scale. Actually, in that Verge piece, one thing that was interesting to me is you do note what platform all of these posts are on that when where they went viral.

• 33:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Which platform?

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Every single, every single hyperlink was on threads.

• 33:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, but that's also.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  I'm just noting, I'm just noting that, I'm just noting.

• 33:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's because all these Verge journalists are on, are on threads and they've given up on X.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  I'm just noting that coincidentally, stories about the Vision Pro being returned are going utterly viral on threads.

• 33:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, as the original Threadboy of this, this podcast, I would say, okay, somewhat vindicated.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I'm on threads now, I'm on threads, I'm using it, it's pretty good.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  But yeah, no, I think if this stuff is for real, if this is a genuine problem, if you start to see this not as one-off tweets and as like a larger narrative and, and again, people not on threads talking about it, I think it definitely presents a risk for Apple. But honestly, after trying the Vision Pro, I really came away in the same way and I, and I like it more in the context of like the Apple Watch, even the original iPad, the, the, we don't know exactly what the use cases will be, but we're going to get there. And it's, it's just such an incredible piece of technology that it's gonna, I'm very excited about it. Again, it's expensive right now.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  I don't know if I want to shell out the money right now, but it's definitely a big part of the future.

• 34:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I've been waiting for maybe the next generation or the generation after. It sounds good. We also have one Zune head in the chat, Noble Ackerson says, love the, love the Zune. I disagree. All right, sorry, Noble.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  I'm glad to have a proud Zune head listening to Big Technology Podcast.

• 34:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Did not mean to disparage one of your favorite products. I apologize, really regret the error. So did you watch the Super Bowl, Ron John?

• 34:58Speaker 01

  I did watch the Super Bowl.

• 34:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  I thought it was a great game.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a second overtime Super Bowl ever. The first one being Tom Brady and my Patriots, but still a great game.

• 35:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  It was excellent and the commercials were, I thought, just a highlight for me. Like the commercials have gone through like a bunch of like different iterations. They've been like the heartfelt ones, the preachy ones, the crypto bowl. But this just felt like a return to Super Bowl commercials that were just funny and goofy and star studded. I loved it.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  What I loved even more was the five Super Bowl ads. So many Super Bowl ads that it actually became somewhat of a meme on social media that you can, people continue getting them from Timu, the Chinese social app. Yeah, the team, this was the Timu Bowl. And also what was fascinating was just as a sign of this company that remains a mystery in so many ways. In the last Super Bowl, when they ran their first shop like a billionaire ads, the company in their ads pronounced it Timu. In this year's Super Bowl, they pronounced it Temu. They changed the, I saw, and I, it threw me off because I've said Timo and we've talked about it on the show.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  I've written about them a lot in my head. It's always been Timu. And then on the Super Bowl, I'm like, have I been saying it wrong the whole time? But then I looked up the old ads and they changed the pronunciation of their company's name just like that.

• 36:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  You think it's like a play to like the Midwest and the South that Temu is easier to pronounce?

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sure there was like some user research or something where they, or maybe they saw, yeah, Timu was more awkward. Or maybe, I don't know what it was, but they just, they totally changed it. But what's, what I think was really interesting is.

• 36:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's gonna be team, Timu, Temu in the program, Timu in our hearts.

• 36:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Sorry, go for it.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  I, uh, so what's interesting is this time the sheer volume, it entered the conversation. Like I heard so many more people talking about it than last year. And again, because this has been, they as a company and she and these have been kind of an obsession for me for a long time. It was fascinating to hear so many people talking about them more. What's also interesting is again, everyone's like, how much could they have spent? How much could they have spent? I think one thing I've been reading recently that was really interesting, Meta has been blowing out earnings. The amount of Chinese advertising on Meta went up from three billion to $13 billion last year. I think it was three billion in 2021.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  So in about two years' time, it almost quadrupled. So, and there's rumors that over, in last year, Temu, Timu, whatever it is, was three billion plus, even up to four billion.

• 37:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's crazy.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  In terms of spend. So these companies have gone in and it's this really interesting kind of like, uh, alliance almost that Facebook's blowing out their earnings. Timu is getting across the United States and letting everyone shop like a billionaire. So just this massive quiet onslaught of advertising money is taking place by a company that we don't even know how to pronounce their name.

• 38:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, they don't know how to pronounce their name in fairness.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Well, they don't either. Yes, yes.

• 38:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  It was interesting because Temu like, uh, has all these, see, I'm already on the Temu game. They already, they have, uh, all these like deals for like $1 or they'll ship you something for free if you sign up. And my favorite reaction was people saying, wait, they have the money for a Super Bowl ad? Like, where are they getting that money from? And someone's like, um, they paid for those Super Bowl ads on Klarna.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  But they must be making money and that might not make Amazon so happy, gotta say.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  Well, no, this it's it's not existential in any way, but it's certainly they have to be at Amazon really concerned about this because remember, Amazon almost it unfortunately, I don't I want to say like made the strategic decision to move to lower cost goods from Chinese suppliers, move away from brand oriented products, move away from kind of like direct to consumer and online brands and products that really are built around at least quality or inspiration and just what's the cheapest thing I can buy and get it to me fast. And that's what Temu, Timu, Shein, that's what all these companies are doing. And, and you

• 39:33Speaker 01

  know, we're seeing it in the Super Bowl, and it is interesting to me. And another thing that came out this week that was interesting, and especially in an election year, how are these companies going to kind of be brought up in the political context? Because I think Chinese ownership of the fastest growing e-commerce and shopping platform in America, you have to imagine when that's the one bipartisan issue is going to be brought up.

• 40:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And then, you know, you look at TikTok and further issues develop.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, TikTok. So this came out this week, and it's really interesting. There is a one of the female executives who was had moved up pretty quickly, especially during the COVID years, joined in 2019, had moved up to global, leading all global marketing initiatives for TikTok, had left, and there's an entire harassment lawsuit around this. But what's interesting is, in the lawsuit, it's very clear that it's executives out of China and ByteDance, who is still the owner of TikTok, that called the shots. And there's a great Matt Schrader, who covers

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Chinese business politics very closely. You know, he said it's in these lawsuits that are more about how Chinese employers treat American employees and they're just the entire standards are different and the way, you know, what's the expectations are different. That's where we actually start to find out how much is ByteDance really controlling TikTok? Because remember, the new CEO of TikTok, who is Singaporean, went in front of Congress and had a great viral moment where Tom Cotton looked kind of ridiculous because he kept asking about the Chinese Communist Party. And he kept saying, you know, sir, I'm Singaporean. I'm not Chinese. I served in the Singaporean Army. Like TikTok is doing everything they can do to distance themselves from its Chinese

• 41:32Speaker 01

  ownership with ByteDance and saying, we're a global company based in Singapore. Nothing to do. But then it's just a reminder that ByteDance still owns the company. And still in these situations, you realize runs meetings. There's been plenty of reporting around how, you know, meetings have to start a lot earlier in the middle of the night for American employees because they have ByteDance executives in those meetings, even though they're TikTok employees. So I think this, the TikTok story, Timu's going to be one big one this year around geopolitics and business, but the TikTok story I think is really going to get interesting, especially when the Biden campaign just awkwardly went on TikTok as well this week. I don't know if you saw that one yet.

• 42:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, definitely saw that. So, okay, Ranjan, tell me this. So first of all, what happens if like TikTok and these other Chinese companies go under the microscope in the US? Like, the US has done absolutely nothing. And also, like, are we finally going to just do away with this illusion that TikTok is independent? Like, it was very clear in not this past hearing, but the hearing before, that Cho Chu was taking orders from ByteDance and not really authorized to speak as a CEO. And so like, they keep making the claim that they're independent. They're not. We all know that at this point. And I just wonder like, okay, so further up. So everyone like puts evidence out like, oh, this is like a real discovery. But like, to me, it's old news.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  It's a tough one because when you say we all know, you and I, I feel, no, we're talking about it.

• 43:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Big technology readers and listeners.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Technology readers and listeners, no. But come on, the average person opening TikTok or thinking about TikTok, I don't think. Is associating as clearly what that means regarding like from a geopolitical standpoint. I actually think the Biden campaign, it was a tough decision. I imagine they're like, how can we not try to reach X million Gen Zs and teenagers or whatever? Like so still to go on the platform, but I think taking a stand on that actually would have been interesting and kind of helped solidify things is can the app get banned this year? I think they've set themselves up pretty well where it won't. And that conversation seems to have gone away.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  But yeah, I agree. Where this goes, I don't know, but I think it's going to become on the tip of a lot more people's tongues in the the next year.

• 43:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, you could say like, maybe if people like users themselves, like with big tech and in particular, it's users themselves that have all the power here. And you could say that, okay, users themselves might feel weird about it and decide to go to, you know, reels instead, and that might happen regardless. But it just, I think we've shown with social media companies and social media apps that users can deal with a basically unlimited amount of bull crap coming out, you know, about these companies and they will not change their behavior unless the product sucks. So it's gonna, I mean, if TikToks is going to go away in the US, it's going to be because American companies, you know, outcompeted it, not because the government is going to do anything. Maybe changing the perception a little bit will help, but I doubt it will make a huge difference.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  I think that's fair. I think that's, I mean, and it's sadly fair, but yeah, counting on users to make that switch is not going to happen. And could there be, actually, you know what? Hold on, I take that back. I here's, here's the bull case scenario, not the bull crap scenario, is that for democracy and justice is a no, but seriously.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  TikTok has to IPO and whether that like, is it going to be ByteDance that IPOs? Is it going to be TikTok actually spun off and IPO-ing? And in that process, every one of those investors is sitting on paper returns of ungodly amounts of money. It's definitely late enough in those fund cycles that they are going to try to like, try to realize some kind of return. The market is where it needs to be to IPO. And can that IPO be blocked? That is, can get very interesting. Can the structure of that IPO, will they not allow them to list in the US? Cause that's something regulators can have a lot of control over. And then that changes the entire conversation.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  You know, like where not being able to cash out and sell to public market investors. I think that's where the only possible point of leverage could be. I don't think TikTok's getting banned. I agree. I don't think people will stop using it, but they need to go public soon.

• 46:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep, that is, that is possible for sure. Trying to think whether we should talk about this Tesla crash. Let's do it quickly. Okay, so there was a Tesla worker who was killed in a crash with inside his Tesla. His name is Hans van Oheen. And they found that the auto drive, okay. So the passenger was with him, said the auto drive feature was on and the car ran straight off the, off the road. At the scene of the crash, there was rolling tire marks and no skid marks, which means that he didn't hit the brakes. Now, the driver was drunk at the time, so his widow cannot get any lawyer to take up the case, saying that basically Tesla was responsible for this death.

• 46:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  But it all points to be, all, all signs point to this being a full self-driving death. And of course Musk said that he did not have it full self-driving on. And Musk said this in tweet, he was not on full self-driving. The software had unfortunately never been downloaded. I say unfortunately because the accident probably never would have happened if full self-driving had been engaged. And there's this big thing that's happening here because the. The car was in a remote location and apparently unable to send the data about what was on and what was not on, you know, back to the servers. And so therefore Tesla's saying, we don't really have any clue as to what happened. But the physical signs and definitely

• 47:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  the testimony from the witness there who was in the car with this driver seems to indicate that full self-driving was engaged. Now, to me, it was surprising, a few things were surprising. One, if this was just the first full self-driving death, that's unbelievable, given how many miles this stuff has worked on. And B, like, I guess it's gonna be just like, this is sort of gonna be the future of what self-driving in Teslas looks like, where like, there will never really be any like, full admitting from the company that its technology could be behind an accident like this. What's your read on it?

• 48:15Speaker 01

  First of all, I love that you said, let's quickly run through probably the most complicated, nuanced, difficult, serious, serious story of the week. But yeah, I think, so I was a bit confused because there's been a ton of reported deaths, many reported deaths, where they had full self-driving engaged in some way, like, and perhaps their hands were still on the wheel, or, so I was calling it the first known fatality was a little confusing to me because even I think the Washington Post has covered many other fatalities related

• 48:57Speaker 01

  to Teslas that had the technology on. But, but I think I was surprised, like Musk even said, you know, the software, if it had been downloaded, this would not have happened, like, trying to use this as almost a marketing moment was surprising to me. And it's what's also surprising about that is How that inconsistency exists where the Washington Post is writing this entire long piece about how full self-driving was engaged and then Musk is just saying he didn't even have it downloaded. Like that discrepancy is kind of.

• 49:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  But there could be semantics there, right? Like it could be already installed on the computer and you just have to activate it or something like that. So maybe he's saying it wasn't activated. He was an employee. He got it for free. There might not have been a purchase order. Like there is gray area around that.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  You think they're trying to leadlies their way out of this or?

• 49:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Potentially. But also, I guess like as someone who's a fan of self-driving and understands that people get killed in car accidents, you know, when they're behind the wheel as well. Like, do we, do we want every crash, even if it's fatal with full self-driving, to be something that could lead to a lawsuit that will potentially put the technology out of service? Like, is the cruise outcome optimal? Or do we need like a little bit of leeway with these companies to allow them to go ahead and, and do this stuff? And is that, I mean, maybe that's what Elon is, is doing here is seeing what happened to Cruise and saying like, you know, there's already been a recall of full self-driving and we can't have that happen to us and just trying to finesse his way out of it. But I don't

• 50:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  think it's necessarily a good outcome to have these companies be so responsible for what happens that they go out of business if they kill somebody, however terrible that is.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, but to me, the difference is, and I, I agree with the idea that, I believe that self-driving is the future and will be far safer than what exists today and result in overall less crashes, but there will still be road fatalities. To me, the issue here is simply, and it all comes back to, full self-driving as a marketing term is encouraging people to believe that the current technology is level four, level five self-driving and you don't need to be, you can get drunk and get in the car and that's totally fine because your car is going to drive you. That's the issue. And I think like, to me, Cruise, I actually.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  I almost felt bad about how everything played out and that's where I might feel be more in line with you that I think how aggressively and quickly everything was kind of pulled back. I think was because they approached things responsibly so far. They've been very, you know, coordinating with the regulators, transparent about everything, unlike Tesla, which is again, calling it full self-driving. How could someone not think that I can get drunk and get my car and I'll be okay. So I think to me, that's the issue. And, and I do worry that as long as Tesla is the dominant player and approaching things in this way, that's exactly where

• 52:08Speaker 01

  these lawsuits will be bigger or people will have more of an overreaction.

• 52:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And that's what the widow said. She said, you're told this car should be smarter than you. So when it's in full self-driving, driving, you relax. Your reaction time is going to be less than if it were not in full self-driving. So yeah, maybe it is just a branding issue and they have to change it, but you can, you can't imagine them going from, from like full self-driving to mostly full self-driving. Like it's just like,

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Kind of self-driving.

• 52:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Kind of self-driving. I mean, could you, could you imagine what the reaction would be for Tesla stock, which is already down. You know, it's 50% off its highs at this point.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think regulators should step in and force them to name it, rename it to kind of self-driving.

• 52:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Driving K K S D.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  K S D.

• 52:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. It's like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. No. Close. Sorry, K S. I just go to K S M. Anyway. Sorry.

• 53:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't know why I said that.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  And.

• 53:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  The final story of the week.

• 53:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Go ahead. This is a crazy one, too. This is also like one of our.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Introduce this one, Alex. Introduce this one.

• 53:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Basically it comes down to this. It was the big talker on Twitter this week. A financial columnist for the New, for New York, for the cut, which is part of New York magazine, wrote a whole story about how she put $50,000 in a shoebox and handed it to scammers. And basically, she was called by Amazon who said like they're working with the FTC and there are corporate accounts that are opened up in her name and like the whole story she keeps going along and saying like,

• 53:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, saying like, oh, that seemed to make sense to me. And like, here, this is like, she's asking like, for, okay, so the FTC, this fake FTC agent connects her with the CIA, who's like, we need to give you a new social security number, and we need you to therefore give us your cash, and we'll give you a treasury check as we update your accounts. And she's, she's like, making some smart checks. She goes to one of the officers, I need to see your colleague's bags, badge. I'm just not going to hand $50,000 of my money to someone I don't know. And then the person on the phone says undercover agents don't carry badges. And, um, yeah, okay. And he goes, they're undercover. Remember, you're probably being watched. The criminals cannot know the CIA agent is there.

• 54:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  And she goes, in a twisted way, this made some kind of sense to me. Or maybe I lost my grip on reality so completely that I was willing to resign myself to a new version of it. And she goes, I met the SUV on the curb and put the money in the backseat. It was 6:06 PM. Even if I tried to see who was driving, the windows were tinted and it was dusk. He maybe wore a baseball cap. When I turned around, I could see backlit faces of my husband and son watching from our apartment nine stories above. As I walked back inside, one of the agents texted me a photo of the treasury check made out to $50,000 and told me a hard copy would be hand delivered to me in the morning. You'll receive a confirmation text shortly. Of course, that money never came.

• 55:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Everybody on Twitter is saying I would never put $50,000 in a shoebox and drop it in the back of an SUV to somebody I don't know without a receipt. But then again, these type of scams happen often to the point where Lena Khan, Chair of the FTC, said, listen, like, this is something that happens, there are billions of dollars that are stolen in these type of fake identity scams, I think, every year. So, so I'm curious what you made of it. Do you think that everybody's saying they would never get scammed is having, you know, false confidence, but, and also?

• 55:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  It just does also seem like she really got taken for a ride and should have known better, especially she's the financial columnist for the cut.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  I think the one part of the story that again, once she felt her like little child was in danger, that obviously will, you know, people will react in different ways. So I think that's the one part because otherwise I agree that overall you're like, how are you doing this? You're really going along like someone doesn't have a gun directly to your head that you see? And is this is all being done over the phone? But, but for me, I thought I'm actually glad this kind of went viral because the whole scamming topic, and we've talked about the crazily named, but very prevalent pig butchering scams that result from crypto that Zeke Fox's book is amazing at outlining and which is a huge industry of billions of dollars being scammed

• 56:31Speaker 01

  out of people. But honestly, in the last year, I've heard at least four stories from friends about parents getting scammed. And she makes the point in this that, you know, she's younger, she has a, is a financial columnist. So like, obviously it's not like, you know, someone, a senior citizen sitting at home, but the amount like, because the creativity with which these scams can now exist and the amount of data that's out there. In this case, they had her real social security number and probably all of our personal information is out there. Just, you know, it's just, it's an assumption. And it's, it's interesting too, because in the

• 57:12Speaker 01

  whole gen AI, like, obviously everyone's freaked out about when people can fake your voice and have it like send a panic call to your parents and stuff. But, but I don't know, like, how this stuff gets regulated and solved. But I feel, I don't know, the fact that I've heard four stories just recently about people even, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, not at this scale, but just people like getting convinced their computers are being taken over. And, and again, I would say almost actually all four of them were people I knows parents. So people well into their like 60s, 70s. But so this is just happening everywhere. Maybe this is

• 57:53Speaker 01

  any election 2024 candidate, this is your platform to run on. Cause this is quietly, yeah, stop the scams.

• 58:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  I heard about another one where people will get $2,000 or $3,000 in their Venmo. And the person like responds and says, that was an accident. Can you send it back? And what happens is they send it back. They've washed that money for them. And then when it go, the money goes to get reclaimed, it goes to the person that the money was sent to.

• 58:21Speaker 01

  I actually.

• 58:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Be careful, folks. This stuff is crazy.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  I, so I played along. And actually, I think what's helped me is because I worked in trading for a long time. There was so much, like, there are so many money laundering trainings and compliance trainings and stuff. So it was like programmed into my head. What's a red flag? You literally had to identify, this is a flag, this is a flag. And it was, I remember, so I was buying something on Craigslist, a guitar, and it was like 1,500 bucks. And I don't know if anyone, have you ever had the Craigslist cashier's check scam run on you?

• 58:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, no, what's that?

• 58:58Speaker 01

  So basically, it's like someone is like, oh, you know what, I really like, if you can send me $10,000 now, buy cashier's check, I'll send you more money. Or sorry, it's the opposite. Like you send them some money, and then they give you a cashier's check that of a lot more money and give you some excuse why they need to. And so obviously, I hear this happening. I'm like, okay, this is total scam. But I kind of kept it going just to see. I never met up with the person, but we had a lot of emails going back and forth. And again, anytime someone's offering you more money than you are supposed to give them just to, you know, they say there's some inconvenience, it's probably going to be a scam.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  But then I remember hearing from a friend from business school who was from India and came to New York City and got scammed out of two grand on something like this. And so like.

• 59:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  It happens.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  It happens. This very smart guy, you know, like very worked in finance himself and investment banking, but still got scammed out of it. So yeah. Stop the scams.

• 1:00:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Stop the scams. Hashtag. I mean.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  Hashtag stop the scams.

• 1:00:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Definitely a problem. I've had, I've like had some situations. Facebook Marketplace is filled with scammers. By the way, like I've had a situation where like, someone's like, they sent, they found my Google Voice number and they tried to like, reset it with two factor authentication, authentication. And they're like, here, just send me the number you got there. I'm like, I'm not sending you the two factor number, you idiot.

• 1:00:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, but anyway.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Stop the scams. He's running. Alex is running, folks. He's announced today.

• 1:00:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I'm here to unite America against scammers.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Yep. It's a good platform.

• 1:00:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it is. I mean, at this point, you know, potato could run and probably get a good amount of support. But anyway, we'll leave it there.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  We'll leave it there.

• 1:00:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right, Ron, John, great speaking with you as always. Thanks for coming on.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Have a good weekend.

• 1:00:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  You too. And thanks, everybody, for listening. Stay vigilant and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPact.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.