AI’s Crucible Year, TikTok’s Lifeline, Manifesting Your Best Self

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Skydiving with the Meta Raybans 2) OpenAI's GPT-5 delay 3) AI's crucible year 4) We finally know what OpenAI's definition of AGI is 5) Was AGI just a financial thing all along? 6) Trump throws TikTok a lifeline 7) The best divestment ever 8) Meta changes its political leadership 9) Manifesting in twenty twenty thrive --- 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/ Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology 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?

  A major year for AI gets underway, but OpenAI's most anticipated model is beset by setbacks. TikTok gets a lifeline from Donald Trump, and why is everyone manifesting all of a sudden? That's 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, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside a large-scale agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions,

• 0:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  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.

• 1:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition, where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. 2025 is here, and so are we. We've got plenty of AI news, as well as some updates on the TikTok saga. And of course, we're going to get into manifesting and why is everybody doing that these days? Ranjan is going to give us so much more on manifesting at the end of the show. But first, let me welcome him back in for the first time in 2025. Welcome, Ranjan.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Happy 2020 thrive, Alex.

• 1:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  2020 thrive. We're just going to brand it the right way off the bat.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  I saw that on some random Instagram reel, and I've been saying that to my wife over and over, and she is not.

• 1:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm sure she loves it.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  She's worried about me. She's worried.

• 2:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Are you having good 2025 vibes?

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Um, we're two days, we're three days in right now, and it's been quite a three days, I think, at least in the world, in the news. It has not been a slow start to the year, so. At least for the podcasting world, it keeps it interesting.

• 2:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'll tell you how I closed out 2024. I jumped out of a plane with Meta Ray-Bans on and recorded the whole thing first person. And it was pretty interesting as I walked onto this plane. It was skydiving, of course. And the instructors immediately looked and they're like, oh, those are the glasses that can play music. And I said, yes. And they're like, oh, and take video? Because they're like, sell the video package for $150. And I just had these like, right on my face. And it's not like a traditional camera that you have to hold. So I ended the year finding one more use cases for this new smart glasses world that we're entering in.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Well, maybe. Do you know why I'm ready to thrive, Alex? Guess what I got for Christmas?

• 3:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  No way. Meta Ray-Bans?

• 3:06Speaker 01

  I got them. I have not. I'm going skiing next weekend. So that'll be my first real use case. I've been playing around with them. Even my drive home from Boston to New York was taking random video. Actually, do you know what impressed me the most? Actually, there are two things. One, the quality of the audio not being in ear, but being essentially kind of like speakers to the side of you. I almost like and prefer better to in ear when you're walking around. Just how like stereo quality, but I don't know, the ambience,

• 3:43Speaker 01

  the audio quality was blew me away. The second thing was, it really feels like the most revolutionary part of the product is, I started using it more to interact with my iPhone than Siri. Because we all know Siri is still garbage and Apple Intelligence was a flop, and is currently a flop. And Meta AI is pretty good. It's baseline good. So calling out to Spotify, making phone calls, even sending messages, starting to use WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger more than Apple Messages. I started when I'm wearing them, I am using it to interact

• 4:24Speaker 01

  with my phone more than Siri. So this could almost be kind of a Trojan horse for Facebook into your iPhone operating system versus Siri, if voice is the interface.

• 4:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  And now you see why Tim Cook has tried to kneecap Meta, right? These two are obvious competitors and that competition isn't talked about nearly enough. But this is just going to be another area where they're going head to head. And of course, we know that Apple has these new AirPods in development that have cameras on them as well. So that's going to be really fascinating to watch the two of them. You know, I'm sure Apple will find some reason to ban the Meta Rayban app or something like that. We'll see.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  2020 thrive, Tim versus Mark.

• 5:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  If you want to say one more thing, because we, we did get a comment from a listener. I think it's a valid comment being like, I'm surprised you guys are excited about the Meta Rayban's given Facebook's history of like privacy mess ups. And look, I don't think that we're gonna be excited about a product and therefore negate any concern we have about the way that the company has operated in the past. But I think what becomes clear as you watch this and as you use these things. And I'm curious if this was your experience, Rajan, that you just see that this is going to be a future method of computing. And like you can either choose to ignore it or you can give it a shot. And that's what we're trying to do. At least that's what I think.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  So, no, no, that, that is a very valid and fair question. And I'll admit, and as someone who, you know, has been very concerned around Facebook's privacy actions over the last, you know, now eight years, nine years. When you put them on, the idea that I was ever going to put, you know, glass, something on my face that captures everything in the world around me from Meta slash Facebook. I never would have thought, but I think it is a, and even when you have to allow a lot of permissions on your phone, access to always on location, access to contacts.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  I was going back and forth with each okay in that entire user flow. But I think it's almost a testament to, we call it the Zuckerberg rebrand. But the, or maybe Musk becoming the ultimate bad guy in, in tech. And like, when you have to worry about where is the evil part of big tech. But I definitely thought about it and. It's one of those where the trade off of the product is so good. And I agree, this is going to be part of the future of computing. And I'm excited to be part of that and testing that out early. And maybe that is where Apple will be able to once again

• 7:02Speaker 01

  kind of step in and become the privacy first example of this if they actually push out some kind of smart glasses. But to that listener, trust me, I I was feeling a little weird throughout the whole process, but I still went with it.

• 7:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and and look, I think that one of the things that we found is that, or that I think anyone who watches tech has found is that if the products work well, people are willing to, I'm not saying us, because our job is to analyze and criticize it when it when it's called for. But a lot of people will just look past whatever a company does when the product works. And I think you saw that with Apple. I think you're going to see that with Meta, and that means that this product is going to be a breakthrough product, in my opinion. And if we didn't test it out, we would be negligent in our responsibilities here. So we'll test it out, we'll criticize when it's needed. And before we move to the next section, I'll just say one more thing that I enjoy is the microphone.

• 7:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  And if I can figure out a way to pull it up, I'll play the audio of me getting hurled out of a plane from 15,000 feet.

• 8:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  That's a that's a good way to start the year. My way to start the year was just watching Dick Clark or whatever, one of those specials with my family, which is still nice, but.

• 8:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, it's a great way to kick it in. And one company that's going to struggle its way into 2025 is OpenAI. Because just as we were heading to break, there was a great story in the Wall Street Journal about the delays that the company has had with its GPT-5 model, which it's calling Orion internally. So we've talked a little bit about this, about how it's delayed. But I think this story is the best one that I've read in terms of sharing the details of what's actually going on within OpenAI, why we haven't seen GPT-5 yet, and when it might be coming. And I just think this is an important story to talk about because.

• 9:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  We're really gonna go into 2025 with massive stakes for AI and no one's gonna have bigger stakes than OpenAI and nothing within OpenAI is gonna have bigger stakes than GPT-5. So we'll talk about that in a moment. Let me at least say what happened. This is from the journal, "OpenAI has conducted at least two training runs, each of which entails months of crunching huge amounts of data with the goal of making Orion smarter. Each time new problems arose and the software fell short of the results researchers were hoping for. A six-month training run can cost about a half billion dollars in computing costs alone." So OpenAI has done these two large training runs. They've spent what looks like a billion dollars combined on them

• 9:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  and they're still not getting the results that they want. So Ranjan, I'm curious what you thought when you heard this news and what you think it means for OpenAI's future and whether it's gonna be a bad year in 2025 now that we seem to be on this path.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  All right, I've been thinking about this a lot in terms of what this year is gonna mean for the entire generative AI space. And it was actually interesting, I was listening to Casey and your predictions episode last week. And it was, he had mentioned, and I think it's correct, that to me, this is the year that AI needs to be productized. It's not gonna be, and we've talked about this a lot, like it's not gonna need to be just a power game, yet there's such a disconnect to me between what normal people want, what even enterprise business customers want

• 10:47Speaker 01

  and what tech companies and VCs are thinking and doing. And that from the tech company VC side, everything is about the next powerful model. It's about AGI, it's about, you know, like a massive, can we maintain current scaling laws and step changes? And then on the actual normal person side or even business customer side, it's can we just have things that are usable, reliable and work well? And there's this huge disconnect there. And I think- To me, OpenAI is almost, and again, it's a research house with a business tacked on to it. So they're always going to be thinking about what is that exponential step change

• 11:29Speaker 01

  style advancement we can push and leaving the customers behind. So I think overly, but they've also shown to their credit that sometimes they can really get products right. To me, ChatGPT, its virality was not because GPT-3 was so much better than GPT-2. I think that was part of it, but I also think it was a really, really good product and it was a fun product and they did a lot with the UI that actually made it exciting and usable. So I think to me, them overly focusing on GPT-5 could actually be the thing that

• 12:11Speaker 01

  hurts them even more because I don't think they're going to create some kind of model that magically solves everything. I think not focusing on the productization enough, it will actually be an even bigger mistake on their part.

• 12:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think this is going to be a debate between you and I for the entire year because if you don't have GPT-4 and you stopped at GPT-2, ChatGPT sucks. So it is those advances that have powered the better products. That being said, I'll give you this. In the story, there's a nice little tidbit. I call it the Ranjan call out. They say, as Orion installed, OpenAI started developing other projects and applications, including slimmed down versions of GPT-4 and Sora, its AI-generated, AI video generator. So yes, they realized that they needed to put the computing towards more practical things in the short run. So that was good. However, I think there are some pretty concerning details in this story

• 13:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  about AI's ability to progress beyond the productization that are important to cover. And so to me, the key call out here was the limitations of data, right? So this is from the story. To make Orion smarter, Orion, by the way, again, GPT-5, OpenAI needs to make it larger. That means it needs even more data, but there isn't enough. So the solution was to create it from scratch. It's hired people to write for our software code, solve math problems for Orion. Um, and these workers who are software engineers and mathematicians also shared the explanations of their work to Orion. However, GPT four was trained on an estimated thirteen trillion tokens.

• 13:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  And this is what it's going to take to get there in human scale. A thousand people writing five thousand words a day could take months to produce a billion tokens. So it does really seem like this data wall really is here. And this is the last part I'll read about the data. Once the training began, OpenAI researchers discovered a problem with the data. It wasn't as diversified as they thought, potentially, uh, potentially limiting how much Orion would learn. So this is really coming to the fore right now that there's a real data wall in AI and you can legitimately sit PhD and mathematicians down all day long. And they could basically do nothing but write content for these models.

• 14:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Uh, and they will not get anywhere near the amount of knowledge into them as has already been baked in unless they sit there and write for years.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  See, th- this is what I don't understand, though. Why would I want a PhD or an engineer to write fresh software code or solve math problems for their input data if I am not a coder or a mathematician? Like, i- is the assumption here that the, a mathematician, you know, helping a model solve math problems will eventually help me do some kind of business process better? Or just some kind of normal task with AI? Or help Apple Intelligence find your flight in your mailbox better?

• 15:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'll take my best shot at this because this is what OpenAI told investors, I believe, that it was aiming for. Because there are internal expectations for GPT-5. And this all was in context as they were raising their massive, largest VC round ever in history. This is from the Journal story. GPT-5 is supposed to unlock new scientific discoveries, as well as accomplish routine human tasks like booking appointments or flights. Researchers hope it will make fewer mistakes than today's AI, or at least acknowledge doubts, something of a challenge for the current models, which can produce errors with apparent confidence known as hallucinations. So basically, I think what OpenAI is saying

• 16:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  is that it has the, this is internally and to investors, I believe. What it's saying is, we have the capability to make these models step change smarter. And as they get smarter, they'll be able to handle more tasks because they're just going to be a much more brilliant model than the ones we have today. But the problem is, if you don't get there, then all that promise goes away and we come back to the big problem that we've been discussing up until this point, which is like, where do you go from here? Because you're not going to be able to raise again, if you're not going to be able to achieve what you've been telling investors.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Well, here's where I think the big disconnect is. All right, this is my 2020 thrive, 2025 thesis here. It's that this disconnect is really, could be a fatal one for OpenAI. Because, again, on one hand, that question right there, it's like, even simple things like booking appointments, current models are not perfect, and that's making people not actually use them. To me, the model becoming exponentially better is not the problem. It's, there's really simple things you can do on the product side to actually build systems and simple products to allow for these kind of tasks to be solved. But that's not what they sold

• 17:32Speaker 01

  investors on. They have to come up with this almost mythical or magical next model and this thing. So they have to keep working on that. So they can't actually solve the problems that customers want solved. While pleasing investors. So now that we're thinking more about this, that does put them in a pretty bad situation because they have to do both and doing both is always going to be more difficult.

• 17:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  And mythical and magical really is, I think, the right characterization here because the story also is like, well, what is GPT-5? Like, when are they going to call it GPT-5? Because we've had GPT-4, 4.0, 0.1. We're getting lots of different names. We're not getting 5, right? And they went from 2 to 3 to 4 pretty quickly. Here's what the Journal says. There are no set criteria for determining when a model has become smart enough to be designated GPT-5. OpenAI can test its LLMs in areas like math encoding, but it's really up to company executives to decide whether the model is smart enough to be called GPT-5, based in large part on gut feelings. Or, and this is my favorite line in the whole story, as many technologists say, vibes.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  I imagine if they went, iPhone stopped going like 16, 15, 14, just because it's not really a step change anymore. It's just a slightly better camera. And they started just completely 0.1, 0.0 max.

• 18:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, they do. They've done that for us. But, you know, everybody gets excited for 15 and 16. They don't get excited for like these.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Apple's still going for it, but maybe OpenAI just call it GPT-5, even if it's not much better. That should be enough, just like AGI, you know?

• 19:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. What I'll say is, the longer they wait, the worse this is going to get for them. Because now everybody's going to expect them to release like legitimately the creator in their model. And it's just not going to happen.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. No, that's why I agree as well. Like, if 4.0, they called 5. And again, you say multimodal, significantly cheaper per token for the same or higher quality. So like, we're creating, that actually, that's interesting. And then I'm waiting for 6. But already, I've gotten kind of lost because once you go 4.0, 4.0 mini, all these other things, then you start having higher expectations for when that next big number comes. So I agree with that.

• 20:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  One more bit here, because we've brought up Apple. So this is again from the story. Researchers at Apple recently released a paper that argues that reasoning models, including versions of O1, were more than likely mimicking the data they saw in training rather than actually solving new problems. The Apple researchers said that they found catastrophic performance drops if questions were changed to include irrelevant details like tweaking a math problem about kiwis to note that some form of the fruits were smaller than others. So this is the first, I would say, mainstream knockdown of reasoning as a methodology. And we've talked in the past here about how like maybe reasoning can be the next step

• 20:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  change, but it is interesting to see this research come out of Apple. Maybe it's Apple just saying like, you know, we're not the best, so let's take on the best. But it is a pretty bold statement to say that actually reasoning is effectively, you know, BS. What did you make of that study?

• 21:00Speaker 01

  I was wondering, again, Apple Intelligence, still not good. And again, I take knocks at Apple. I probably spent more at the Apple Store over the Christmas season. And my mother has an Apple Watch, my wife has an Apple Watch now. Like, there's more spent at the Apple Store than any other electronics retailer. But with Apple Intelligence, they are not doing great. They have promised a lot, they have overpromised. But on the other hand, they have the least invested in having to win this game, I think, out of the big...

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Like, Google has to win at generative AI for them to maintain dominance. Apple does not necessarily... It surprised me that they're pushing so hard because they don't have to. They could have sat back even longer and waited for the technology to be ready and good and then released a big hype to Apple Intelligence product. So I think it does make sense to me for them to kind of knock things down and kneecap the promises of OpenAI and others and Microsoft and whoever else and say, guys, this isn't going to happen anytime soon. And it actually only helps them.

• 22:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, okay, let's let's just end this segment like again tackling the bigger picture, which is I'm saying that this is a pretty important year for the AI field. I'm calling it a crucible year. I think that if the field cannot deliver on some of these bold promises, whether that's on research or productization, it's going to be a very, very tough couple of years following. Like this is like really like if 22 was we figured out what chat GPT was, 23 was experimentation, maybe 24 was continued experimentation and more proofs of concept. 2025, we got it, we got us, this has got to work. It's that important of a year. What do you think?

• 22:59Speaker 01

  I like crucible year, crucible year. I also my prediction, I think we might get some players that we have not been thinking about as much. Like I think we say the same names over and over again, but especially and maybe that could be, I mean anthropic or perplexity becoming even bigger than we have been talking about. But I think like it's the idea that it's OpenAI and the Fang slash big or big tech. I think there I think we might start seeing different names popping up, the ones who could actually solve the customer problem better.

• 23:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, okay. Now you're going customer problem. You know, that makes me think in a different way that I was gonna go right before. I was thinking maybe it's gonna be safe, super intelligence, but.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  You're all right. I'm team customer. You're team super intelligence.

• 23:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  That that really does describe the dichotomy here pretty well.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just just make it work. Make it work. That's all I want.

• 24:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, we've been talking about whether this was going to be the year that OpenAI was going to declare AGI and free itself from the constraints of Microsoft and sharing its technology with Microsoft. But also over the new year, we actually got some really interesting information. There's a pretty specific definition. This is according to the information that OpenAI and Microsoft have for when it's okay to declare AGI. And that is when OpenAI develops AI systems that can generate at least 100 billion in profits. And given that OpenAI is going the opposite way, it doesn't seem like it's going to be able to. Declare AGI, at least according to that definition anytime soon.

• 24:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  So does that sort of solve our worry here that OpenAI could basically just go out and say AGI and just keep the tech to itself?

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Well, this definition, it confused me even more because I would have thought the definition would be something more on the scientific or theoretical side rather than the like business side. So it's, yeah, this confused me even more.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Which is good for OpenAI because the more confusing it is, then the easier it is. Or actually, no, I guess in this case, it would be even harder for them because it's such a kind of like clear yardstick for them to have to achieve.

• 25:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can I say that maybe it was clarifying? You know, remember we talked a lot about how like this talk of AGI could just be like really clever branding? And all this like the world is going to end because of AI actually really served the interests of the research houses who wanted to sell this to like your typical SaaS company or your, you know, middling accounting firm who could maybe use it to build, move data from one spreadsheet to another because in the contract, right, saying AGI is just at 100 billion, doesn't that like kind of explicitly say, oh yeah, these promises of like magical AI, it's really just about the business?

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that's where, and actually now that I think about it, it really is actually Microsoft being pretty savvy in this because at the point that it has done that, then obviously Microsoft has already been able to reap whatever benefits for themselves and then happy to let things go off on their own. But, but again, then Google's ad engine or Facebook's ad engine or like these, these technologies, are they AGI then as well? Is anything that is the iPhone hardware AGI? Like, it's such a weird thing for me. Maybe, maybe because maybe like superintelligence or artificial general intelligence actually would not be a profitable thing.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  You know, like, and still actually work in the way that we have been promised by research houses it would. So this actually, when this be coming out finally, was even more odd and shocking to what is it already a very odd and shocking story?

• 27:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think it's a scientific term co-opted by businesses that told us they were about the science, but now we really know that they're about the business. And it's clarifying and refreshing in some ways to know that, yes, AGI is just about making 100 billion. It's not about necessarily propelling the next scientific discovery. It's making that 100 billion.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  I like your cynicism, Alex. I like it.

• 27:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's impossible for me to hold it back in this situation.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  I know, I know. No, but I'm with you. I'm with you. You know what? I agree. I would rather just get it out there. It's kind of, again, like we've said, don't call it OpenAI. Just don't call it like some mythical AGI that's a scientific concept. It's literally like a target on a profit margin or profit target. It's a profit target.

• 28:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes. And by the way, I think going to your previous point, going by this definition, yes, Meta's ad platform has been AGI for decades at this point, and maybe even TikTok. This episode is brought to you by Avpoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data, and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what Avpoint does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended

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• 29:16Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 30:01Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 30:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  TikTok right now is in a really interesting place. We're going to cover this story right now. So over the new year, Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to pause the TikTok shutdown. And it's going to be pretty interesting because there is a clause in this TikTok ban, which was passed bipartisanly by the US Congress, that allows the president to lift the ban if his administration determines the site is no longer under Chinese control. So basically, all the president has to do is... It's basically the same thing like we talked about of OpenAI declaring AGI, except this point, there's no dollar figure attached to it.

• 31:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  All the president has to do is just say, "Yeah, it's not really under Chinese control anymore", and that congressional law is effectively nullified. And so now Trump is asking the Supreme Court, "Give me one more day, from January 19th to January 20th, so I can say..." And this is, I'm just reading between the lines here. "So I can say that TikTok has fulfilled its obligation to divest, and then this entire TikTok drama is over, potentially for good." What do you think?

• 31:29Speaker 01

  I like, again, we're going to be talking about manifesting. And essentially, we are saying that, you know, my, actually, now AGI has a more specific definition, but with TikTok, it could literally be Trump saying, yes, I believe that TikTok, ByteDance has divested TikTok, and that's all it takes. So, and if anyone could do that, I think Trump certainly, if simply saying something could be more important than the actual kind of underlying facts and matter, I think Trump is pretty good at that. So I would actually, that would be my favorite way for this to end. I think

• 32:12Speaker 01

  that would be the most incredible way where ByteDance in no way divests TikTok, but on January 20th, Trump says, I believe that ByteDance has divested TikTok. This is no longer a relevant matter.

• 32:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm fairly certain that's what's going to happen. I mean, not only does Trump have the backing and has he grown closer to Jeff Yass, who's a financier, who has a large percentage of ByteDance ownership, but he also knows that TikTok is something that young people use, and he had a surge in youth support in the 2024 election. And I think that, like, he's won the election, that happened, and he's just going to keep it around. He's just going to go up there and he's going to say, nobody divests like TikTok. They did the best divestment ever. You'll never see a better divestment than TikTok, and that's it. Game over.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Well, one thing I saw that was at least interesting was, imagine if he, and we only have 16 days for this to happen, at the last minute, it's actually, let's, they do need to divest, and Elon Musk will now buy TikTok, or XAI will become the owner of TikTok. That would be

• 33:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  It could happen.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 33:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  It could happen. And I think one of the things that we're going to talk about, actually, how the internet has changed with Ryan Broderick on Wednesday. So everyone should stay tuned for that. It's a really fun episode. But one of the ways that Twitter has changed is that it's become effectively TikTok. I mean, you scroll through Twitter now and it's just like a collection of for you tweets that want you to click into a short form video and then get lost in the feed. Like, that is effectively TikTok. And so, would the two work well together? Yes. So I do think that's one possibility. But again, to me, the most likely possibility is that Trump takes office, first of all, that the Supreme Court agrees with Trump. He takes office and he says, yep, looks good to me. This

• 34:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  project Texas or whatever they've done to wall off their data is just good enough. And we don't hear about a TikTok ban, at least for another four years.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  This is going to be the most fascinating story in the next two weeks. I think there's there's going to be a lot of twists and turns on the TikTok ban. I don't think it's going to be straightforward. I think maybe we will end up with the amazing, greatest divestment ever from ByteDance, even with no divestment. But I think in terms, there's going to be plenty of drama leading up to the inauguration. And the fact of the timing, again, this almost couldn't have been written better by the script writers to have it on the 19th with the inauguration, the 20th.

• 34:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let me ask you this. So if you are a, let's say you're a creator, or if you are a business that has a presence on TikTok, what do you do over these next two weeks? Do you just give up? Or do you continue posting as usual, hoping that your business will continue to operate just fine on TikTok moving forward?

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Well, there is a, there's a good Wall Street Journal article, we'll get into more. But I think overall, it was saying that creators are not as worried as they were when the initial ban was announced, meaning that people seem to be thinking it's here to stay. I think traditional businesses are definitely

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Not worried because TikTok has never become a massive place for larger ad budgets. It's definitely grown well. It's grown in a big way and it's become an increasingly important part, but still it's small relative to the Facebook. Facebook Blue is still a huge destination for all digital ad budgets. Instagram is, you know, a huge part of that as well. And TikTok is still above the snaps and Pinterest of the world, but even like connected TV like Hulu and stuff like that have grown in importance relative to TikTok. So I think it's, it's not the same big ad budget spend for big brands.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  So agencies and stuff aren't going to be too worried about it. Like it wouldn't completely derail any of, any larger brands. I think smaller creators have to be a bit worried if that's where your entire following is. But that's the risk of any platform. Like if your following is there for people who left X, if they're, if they built a following there for years, at a certain point, if you have to leave it, then that's a risk you always need to take with a platform.

• 36:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. I mean, the last thing I'll say about this is it will be interesting to, you said it's going to be a very crucial two weeks on this story. It's going to be the biggest story. I agree. Uh, it would be interesting to me if we see some leaked uh, information about why the House and Senate in the U.S. wanted to ban this app in the first place. Like you do remember that this just came up as like a groundswell of senators and members of the House. They looked at some intelligence and they said, oh, now we have to ban this now. And then it very quickly moved and then Biden signed it. And we never really heard exactly what they had seen to made them, make them want to do this.

• 37:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  So if they feel that right now, uh, what happens as we predict does happen, that the ban is effectively shot down um, through a declaration of divestment from the executive branch. I wonder if we're going to see some of the things that they saw and if that may reanimate the conversation.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Okay, that would make this even more interesting because yes, I agree. And I had wondered about that. I do believe the, the national security risk more so than the.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Like, you know, the mental health risk and stuff I don't think is significantly different than an Instagram or Snap or any of any other social platform. And even YouTube Shorts, I think, is is just as much, if not more of a problem. I think, to me, it's always been the idea that it is still a very connected company to the Chinese government, which is currently an adversary, and it controls the entire national narrative, like, culture and essentially psyche of an entire generation with a black box algorithm. Like, that doesn't seem too crazy to me to be something that should be looked at a bit more carefully. And if there were things that actually came out that are not public that made that more

• 38:52Speaker 01

  concerning enough for them to sign the ban so quickly, for that to be leaked after the ban is overturned would be would be fun and interesting.

• 39:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  I would say, stay tuned. I wouldn't be surprised if it happens. By the way, interesting timing, Facebook today, oh, no, sorry, this week, just replaced Nick Clegg, who was running their policy team, with Joel Kaplan, who is their most prominent Republican. I mean, saying the most prominent Republican at Facebook is is kind of funny. It's like, you know, you don't find many of those there. But Clegg is out, Joel Kaplan, who is a Republican, is in, and I wonder if he's gonna try to be like, all right, Trump, like, you know, please actually do let this company get banned, and maybe they influence the product, the process as well. I don't think they're very happy with the amount of attention that TikTok has taken

• 39:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  and the challenge that it presents, although they've done a good job fending it off with with Reels to some extent.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  I always do wonder, with Mark Zuckerberg as like, the most incredibly cutthroat competitor there is, do you think he, because Reels has worked incredibly, Threads, they at least say is working incredibly, but I don't know exactly how much I Yeah, I don't believe that.

• 40:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Reels, yes. Threads, no.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  No, but reels, I mean, yeah, reels definitely, they transformed like through pure product execution. They transformed that into a very viable, if not like better TikTok. So, or at least TikTok for older people like myself. And all my friends, all they do now is share reels with each other. And even my mom is sharing reels from Facebook. So, so that short form video, like I wonder, do you think there's any part of his competitive spirit? That's like, I don't want a regulatory solution. I just want to crush these products with, these competitors with pure product chops.

• 40:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I, I think that's, there's definitely some of that there. But also like, given the threat that TikTok poses, and I think that threat has been neutralized to some extent. I think they'll probably take whatever help that they can get. So, uh, because, because I, you know, like you mentioned, a lot of culture is starting on TikTok, including this manifesting thing.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. So, the same way Donald Trump might be manifesting the divestiture of TikTok from ByteDance. I was reading a Wall Street Journal article about the TikTok ban. And it started in the lead, it mentioned in account hot high priestess, a girl named Sarah Pearl. A creator who primarily monetizes on TikTok. And her whole thing is about manifestation. And now manifestation is the idea that positive thinking and visualization can bring people closer to their goals. Manifestation began in the 19th century new thought movement and does have a kernel of truth to it. Our thoughts can in part shape our reality. This is all from Business Insider.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  The latest trend had gained traction since the height of the pandemic. But modern manifesting remains a broad term covering a range of practices. It can cover meditating and journaling as part of a spiritual practice. As well as posting memes about achieving great fortune. So I started going down the Sarah Pearl rabbit hole and watched a few hot high priestess TikToks. And again, it's a new year, we're doing new year's resolutions, maybe manifesting could be part of it. And I saw things where you do things like you whisper out loud the name of your crush or who you want, the boy you want to text back and things like this. So it was all kind of like, this is what I assume is very Tik Tok-y.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  But then my favorite part was she equated manifesting with not just posting, but actually becoming one with the algorithm. She said, I view manifesting almost like the for you page where you put your attention is where your life will end up going. If people dwell on negative content, that's what they will be fed. But if they like videos with a positive outlook, TikTok may give them more. And that was the most odd, fascinating and depressing thing I think I've ever read, where someone is now new age thinking is basically saying to become one with the algorithm

• 43:27Speaker 01

  and live your life like a for you page and let and feed the algorithm positively rather than negatively. And this is where culture is heading into 2025.

• 43:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes, I think this is so spot on and it really is true. If you hover on good content on the for you feed, you'll get more good content. If you hover on divisive content, you'll get more divisive. If you hover on stuff that makes you feel bad, you'll feel worse. If you hover on stuff that makes you feel adventurous, you'll go do dumb things like jump out out of a plane with a meta ray ban on. But I, I really do think that, that there is truth to this and I love that she's made it so accessible to the masses who are obviously catching her on TikTok. So I'm all about it. I'm, I'm manifesting, yeah, good vibes. I'm gonna have a 2020 thrive in 2025 and I'm, I'm all about this.

• 44:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  So I, I can sense some skepticism in your, in your tone here, Ron John, and I think you should direct your algorithmic energy in a more meaningful direction.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  I literally, this is where, this is why this was such a. Again, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about this, Alex, because

• 44:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's great. Just admit it. It's great.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Well, no, because the more I thought about it, I'm like, holy shit. This is, this is correct. This is, this actually is like, like actually capturing the spirit of every new age thing, or even a lot of religious things over the, like, over centuries into the modern day equivalent. But, and then I'm picturing a bunch of people sitting around, like, eyes closed, just trying to manifest positivity into the algorithm for likes, I guess, or for engagement, or for just better content, more followers. But yes, this is manifesting for the algorithm. The, the algorithm controls us all, the beautiful algorithm of life.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  And all we can do is stay on the positive to get more positivity. Thank you, hot high priestess, as we go into 2025.

• 45:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  I, I am so on board. And yeah, I think this stuff, I think manifesting works. It's not the be all end all. But if you sort of start to channel that good energy generally, like, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. So, I don't know. I'm feeling, I'm feeling the vibe and I might need to create a vision board for my 2020 thrive thoughts this year.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Longtime listeners are wondering what happened to Alex and Rajan over New Year's.

• 46:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Look, we had some time off and it obviously, you know, worked in some ways and other ways set us back. But anyway, we're happy to be back.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  We're happy to be back. We're thinking positive thoughts and podcasting only brings out the positive vibes.

• 46:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes, and we're so happy that you're all here and that you're manifesting your year together with us. And speaking of manifesting, all the five star reviews that came through in 2024 really did lead to such a great group of guests at the end of the year, including Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, Matt Garman, CEO of AWS. And we have plenty more coming this year, some really, really great guests. In January. So if you want to help us get more, get more top tier guests and help get the show in front of more people, which will ensure that we can keep doing this. Five star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify will go a long way. And I promise you, we didn't do the whole manifesting segment, just so I could set that up. But again, thank you for being here. And

• 47:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Ranjan, great to be back on the line with you. Happy 2025. Here we go. Here we go. See you next week. See you next week. All right, everybody. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 47:21Speaker 02

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