RIP Blue Checks, The Open Letter To Stop AI, Startup Funding After SVB

Erin Griffith is a reporter at the New York Times. She joins Big Technology Podcast to break down the week's news. We cover: 1) The end of Blue Check verification on Twitter for notable users. 2) The open letter to stop AI research processing beyond its current state. 3) Whether we could stop developing AI technology, even if we wanted to. 4) Italy's plan to stop ChatGPT. 5) Police departments using facial recognition to make wrongful arrests. 6) The rising field of 'prompt engineers.' 7) Startup funding after SVB 8) The continuing wind down of SPACs. 9) Gweneth Paltrow's victory in her skiing trial. 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?

  This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put Agentic 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, 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?

• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  We are gathered here today to mourn the loss of a cherished symbol of status and credibility, the blue check verification on Twitter. For many news personalities, the blue check was more than just a badge of authenticity. It was a sign of recognition, influence, and prestige. It was a way to stand out from the crowd of anonymous trolls and bots. It was a way to show that their opinions mattered. But alas, all good things must come to an end. Twitter has made a sudden and drastic change to its verification system, leaving many news personalities in the dark about their status. Without any warning or explanation, they have lost their blue check verification and with it, their sense of belonging and respect. We understand this is a difficult time for those who are affected by this change.

• 1:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  We know that losing the blue check verification can feel like losing a part of your identity. We know that you may feel angry, betrayed, or humiliated. We know that you may wonder if your voice still counts. But we are here to tell you that you're not alone. You are not forgotten. You are not worthless. You still have your followers, your fans, your colleagues, your friends, and your family who support you and appreciate you. And you still have your talent, your passion, your expertise, and your integrity that make you a valuable contributor to the public discourse. You still have your dignity, your courage, your humor, and your grace that make you a respectable human being. The blue check verification may

• 2:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  be gone, but you are still here, and you're still awesome. Rest in peace, blue check verification. You will be missed. And with that, I want to welcome you back to Big Technology Podcast, Friday Edition, where we break down the news in our cool-headed and nuanced manner.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  And not dramatic at all.

• 2:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Joining us today is Erin Griffith of the New York Times. Erin, welcome.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  By the way, just full disclosure, that was written by Bing, so thank you, Bing.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Wow. Because I did have some quibbles with that. I mean, I think because of how addicted many of us blue checks are to Twitter, I'm not sure that we do have our dignity or our families.

• 3:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's all gone. It's all gone. I know. So how are you dealing with this? Are you gonna, are you gonna be paying? How's your emotional state?

• 3:23Speaker 01

  The thing is, I've been sort of stepping back from Twitter, I guess, over the last year, not even on purpose, just like I've noticed that my, I don't know if it's me, you know, my, my content's not too interesting anymore, or, but I'm just, I haven't been getting that much engagement out of it. And so, I mean, I've always mainly used it as a way to message sources. And so it is important for me, for, for them to know that I'm, I'm who I am, that I work for the Times, and that I'm not an impersonator. So that part of it is a little worrisome to me. I might have to find better ways to, to message people. But, you know, to reach out to potential sources. And other than that, I don't know,

• 4:06Speaker 01

  I'm not really in the mix that much. My tweets aren't finding their audience there like they used to. So I'm not, I'm not too sad about that, that piece of it. I am, I'm not famous enough to worry about impersonators either, so. That piece of it is, uh, is not a big deal, but it is, it is a really useful reporting tool for doing my job. So I am a little worried about that.

• 4:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  This is the thing. It, this, the status of the badge is gone. So even if you pay now, it's just like, it's almost like a reverse thing. You, you start to wonder what's up with the people paying for Twitter blue versus.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  I mean, I have noticed, even though ironically, the fact that, uh, you know, the whole reason Elon initially said he bought the, bought Twitter, which I mean, come on, we, no, that was kind of a farce, but that he wanted to get rid of the bots. I've noticed a huge increase in the amount of bots and that I have in my mentions, like crypto bots or just, um, things that are clearly just being generated from text. Like if you, if you, if you look at the replies, sometimes that seem really off. And then Google that exact text, you can see like 10 other bots that tweeted the exact same thing. So I've noticed a lot of that in my mentions and some of them do have the blue, uh, badge. So it, it like, the experience has been slowly degrading and it's just kind of a matter of how, people

• 5:24Speaker 01

  are still there. I'm still there. I'm still reading, following along, even if I'm not tweeting as much. And so it's just a question of like, how much can the experience degrade before they'll, we'll really see the impact of it. It almost kind of reminds me of, um, some of the legacy media brands and I've, I've worked for some of these. Um, it's like, okay, you know, these companies had such an important and credible brand and they've been completely gutted and now they're just a shell of themselves online. And it's like, how much can you actually degrade this, this brand and people will still think it's credible? And it sort of feels like Twitter's doing that a little bit too.

• 6:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  It was interesting to watch the, uh, the fact that Donald Trump was indicted on criminal charges. The first time it's ever happened for a US president. And it was, obviously the breaking news all happened on Twitter, but there wasn't such a discussion like there usually is on a breaking news event. And it did sort of feel like, okay, wow, something is, something's missing here in terms of what it used to be. But, you know, I'll say like, for, for my part, I'm paying for Twitter blue. Um, it's not about the verification. It's the fact that I'm a small publication and Elon has said, all right, if you do this, you're going to be able to get into other people's for you feed, even when they don't follow you. That's worth it to me. But also like, I like having other publications and other reporters. Surface there.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  And the fact that they're not going to make their way into For You because they don't pay, to me, does seem like you're spot on. It's going to degrade the experience.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, I, I don't look at the For You tab very often because I follow mostly startups and venture capital.

• 7:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  People and the stuff that has been going, it's not relevant to me from a news perspective anymore because it's just all these like life hacking or hustle threads of like, you know, I watched all of Mark Cuban Shark Tank episodes and here are the 43 takeaways or whatever. It's all that kind of stuff and not actual news or discussions that I, I care about. It's just like a lot of like designed to be viral kind of dreck. So I've only been, you know, looking at the, at the follow page and.

• 7:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  And you, you don't get Menswear Guy, do you?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  No, I think, I think, I think he was on my For You page and I was so confused and that was one of the many things that I saw where I was just like, I'm not going to look at this tab anymore. This is not, uh, this is not good information that I need.

• 7:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. Yeah, he might've done it. Yeah. For those listening. So if you're on Twitter, you've probably seen like Aaron and I have a tweet from Menswear Guy who's a dude who just tweets about fashion trends for men. And apparently he was on this list of accounts that Elon is like gassing up and promoting across the platform. So like, it's not an accident that everybody started to see his tweets, but we'll see. I do think that it is interesting. I think that like, there's going to be a lot of people that will lose their verification badges and make a big deal about it. I think there's been a lot of virtue signaling going on by publications who are like, we would never spend $8 a month for our reporters to get distribution on Elon Musk's platform. But we'll see, I think we'll see some come around over time and.

• 8:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Who knows, but the fact that this is happening.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  I don't even trust necessarily that that's gonna be a good way to get distribution.

• 8:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  So that's the question, exactly.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, he created this list of his favorites. It's clearly, there's, there's, we've done away with any pretense of like, this is a platform where the best content rises to the top. This is like, it's like clearly his just personal preferences of what's being promoted and what's not. So I don't know that necessarily paying means you're gonna get a fair deal.

• 9:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I'll report back and if it turns out that it's not the case, because now everybody can see the impression. So if it turns out they're not, it's not the case, I'll, I'll shut it off. But yeah, very interesting. He's also written down the value of Twitter, I think, to like about half of what he paid for it, which who knows where it goes from here. But this idea that it was gonna convert to subscription only and, continue to basically take away things like two factor authentication and the badge and that will like force people into using the app. That hasn't materialized or using the subscription package that hasn't materialized. So.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. It's, I mean, the, the news cycle around Twitter has gotten so noisy and, you know, the report, there's, there's so much good reporting coming out of it, but it's really hard to believe when you see headlines, the things that he claims he's doing, he either reverses on it immediately or just never does it. And so it's, it almost, you start to tune it out after a while because you're like, well, I'll believe any of this when I actually see it. And this is one that's actually happening, you know, apparently tomorrow. So we'll, we'll see.

• 10:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. April, April 1st is great timing for it.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  There's definitely gonna be some, some, another sort of Eli Lilly situation where there's, you know, impersonators or, you know, things that go viral. It's, it's gonna be a chaotic day, I imagine.

• 10:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Just as he wants. So another story that he's involved in is this open letter. So Elon is one of hundreds of people, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. That are they're calling for a six month pause on AI experiments in this open letter and if without this six month pause, we could face profound risks to society and humanity, they say, this is according to a CBS news report, but everyone's seen the letter, it's coming from the future of life institute. Aaron, what do you make of the fact that some of these folks, it's not just, you know, these, these business people, but also researcher like Joshua Benjio, who's one of the original deep learning conspiracy members are calling for this pause. Is this a PR thing or is there actual merit in pausing it?

• 11:06Speaker 01

  I mean, it's super interesting that they decided to do this. The logistics of it seem impossible to enforce. You know, they have suggestions as to how, you know, you're going to have to verify it, that, that you're not working on it. But I, I'm a, how, come on, like, don't you think it seems like crazy that, that even the people who say they're going to are, are really not going to? I mean, I, I think it still is a, is an important, like, line in the sand to have drawn or flagged a plant, whatever metaphor you want, that, you know, especially even though I think there is a personal element to this for Elon Musk, he was involved with OpenAI at the start and, you know, there's

• 11:48Speaker 01

  good reporting out there that shows that he left sort of because he was angry about his, the not being able to fully control the project. And he's talked about how he wants to launch his own AI thing now. So there's clearly a personal element for him, but his name on it, I think, added to the headline, you know,

• 12:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  factor of it. And everyone, you know, his name is in all the headlines. So that got a lot more attention because of it. And I think that's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, we need to be, everyone who's reporting on this stuff has this sort of background element of this is really scary. And I think it's worth highlighting that people are, are raising these red flags and expressing these concerns. I don't necessarily think that

• 12:34Speaker 01

  The letter itself is going to have that much of an impact, but hopefully it caused lawmakers to sit up and take, you know, maybe take some meetings with some of these people and listen to their concerns and maybe they'll move a little faster than they have on other tech regulations. Europe is obviously moving way ahead of us. So there, I think there is some value in this and there's definitely value in reporting it. And I think, you know, a lot of people are freaked out by this, but is a six-month voluntary pause really going to do anything? Probably not, but it is worth, I mean, it is, it is, I think, not a complete waste of effort for them to have done this.

• 13:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Absolutely. There was like an Aaron Levy tweet yesterday, CEO Box, who was like, "We are going to pause this existential threat for six months, and then in six months and one day, it's going to be safe for everybody."

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was part of it, where the letter is like, you know, once we know that, what the consequences are, and it's like, how? How will we know? It sort of reminds me a little bit of when the Trump administration was like, "Let's just have a ban on like, immigration from all Muslims until we know what's going on." And everyone's like,

• 13:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  What are you talking about?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  "When will we know what's going on? How, what does that mean? Like, how?" And so there's like this vagueness to it. That is like, I don't, like, logistically speaking, I don't see how this could possibly work, but it's great that people are raising these concerns. And that metaphor doesn't apply to that part.

• 14:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Now, some people have said, "Oh, this is actually," you know, they're saying, "Don't do any research on like, anything beyond GPT-4." And some people have said, "Well, this is actually great marketing for GPT-4, because dang, if anything beyond this is scary to the point that humanity is going to, you know, crumble, then my business really needs to put the generation right beforehand into practice somehow."

• 14:22Speaker 01

  It overstates the risk in a way that makes it seem scarier than it actually is. I mean, that's a great point, too, I think.

• 14:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So I wonder if there's, but it is interesting because Sam Altman from OpenAI did not sign on. So clearly he thinks like, "Let's keep going." Yann LeCun from Facebook, who we've had on, did not sign on. So there are, there are people who are like, "Well, we should..." We should just keep going and

• 14:48Speaker 01

  I mean, in what world would anyone who's actually working on this kind of stuff be like, oh, let's just

• 14:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Take six months off and stop working on it. That's not how capitalism works.

• 14:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  So some people have said like, this is like a good moment to say, okay, like, should we keep developing the tech? And, you know, I thought about that and said, is that even possible? Like, do we even have a world where we can say, you know, maybe we shouldn't and then don't. And there are so many reasons why I think that this will continue to go on, no matter what people's concerns are. Number one, like you're talking about private enterprise in the United States is going to just keep building the products unless they're forced to. Not an open letter isn't going to solve them. It's isn't going to, isn't going to stop them. And then there's the other question of, well, and this is what I've heard brought up.

• 15:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  If the United States stops or the Western world stops and China keeps going, you then put yourself at a strategic disadvantage versus China. So, you know, I think this idea, and it maybe is concerning, right? That, that we, we just don't know how to stop when it comes to discovery ahead of us.

• 15:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  And, you know, maybe there are concerning things here, but I just wonder if a pause is feasible.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I, I think that's a great question and I have no idea. And, and both of those points that you raised are very

• 16:16Speaker 01

  common arguments that I've heard talking to a lot of VCs and technologists about this. And there is a, there is an interesting argument from critics that basically says, these leaders, it is in their best interest to make this stuff seem inevitable, unstoppable. And that, and so we won't fight it and we should actually consider the fact that we can stop it. And so, I mean, And same with the China thing, like this is just a way to push forward the agenda that they want, which is like, I'm going to make a lot of money on this. And I believe that changes, that progress and change and, you know, technological disruption is important

• 16:57Speaker 01

  and inevitable. Like, that's fine. They have that belief and that is their sort of agenda. But using that threat of like, well, if we don't do it, China will do it. Like, that doesn't, that doesn't change the question of like, should we do it?

• 17:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Do we want this?

• 17:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  But it is, yeah, it's interesting, though, to consider because, you know, it doesn't change that question, should we, or, but it, but it does have an impact on whether we will. And that's the thing of like, you know, is there anything that, we develop nuclear weapons in this world, right? Everyone will always have a rationalization to develop the most dangerous stuff and just be like, well, you know, reason A or B. And I don't know, I guess, I'm curious what you think about the dangers of this technology, just to begin with, because I'm kind of questioning whether we, whether if we develop like GPT-5, we're actually going to be in such a threat, such a danger.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't think I have a fully formed opinion on this yet, honestly. I, like everyone else, was blown away when I was first starting to use these tools. And of course, your mind first goes to the possibilities of how this can change the world and how exciting this is. And then, of course, you start to see all of the weird and unimagined, no, you know, all of the weird and crazy ways that it's going wrong. And it's always going to do it in ways that are like, impossible for you to imagine. There's no way that we can possibly think of all the ways that this can be bad. It's the same thing that happened with social media. Like, it was like, oh, Arab Spring, revolution, like, look at all this, like, positive, great, progressive change that these social media networks are

• 18:37Speaker 01

  creating. And then, you know, later on, it was like, oh, misinformation, brain poisoning, like, look at all these, like, you know, flat-earthers, Nazis, look at all these terrible things that we never imagined could happen. And so I see us going down that path only so much faster and in a much more powerful way. So it does freak me out, especially on the misinformation part, like, we're all, you know, I, I miss the Pope coat thing.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  But I

• 19:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Just for the context, so for people who have who've missed this, someone put an image of the Pope into Mid Journey, which is one of these AI generation tools, in a enormous puffy, white puffy coat, and tweeted something like, "The boys in Brooklyn don't have this drip," or something like that. The Pope looked amazing. Let's just say it.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Yes, he looks great. Yeah, loved it.

• 19:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  And it went ballistically viral. It just went insanely viral. And only after the fact did someone say, "Yes, this photo that looks extremely real, that has the Pope's face, that, you know, seems like it's photorealistic, was developed by AI." So.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that, and that, that kind of stuff, it's, are we really going to get to the point where we can't believe anything we see? And, you know, there, there's already such distrust of the media. And so it does freak me out from that perspective, like we're, and there's so much bad info out there. Like, the, the, the volume of, um, of garbage on the internet, and the, the ways that people can use it to manipulate, to, you know, change people's minds or convince them of something that's not true. Like, it's, it's really scary to think about. So, so that, that does freak me out.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Um, I also see a lot of the positive benefits and amazing things that this could, could help us with, too. So I, I don't know. I, I have pretty mixed feelings about it right now.

• 20:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  So after the Pope image came out, I said, "Okay, I need to learn how to use Mid Journey Version 5." Because that's what it was. Mid Journey Version 5, for those listening, it can create images where the faces look realistic. It can even do hands, which is something that the prior, uh, things could not. And a very interesting thing is you can upload a photo and say, "Use this person's face in this type of photo," and it can do an amazing job of it. Now, it's a little bit difficult to use because it's all on Discord. So I went, I, you know, as one does when they want to figure something out in 2023, I went to YouTube and was like, "All right, please, show me. What am I supposed to do? I gotta figure this out." And figured it out, signed up for a paid, a paid account for Midjourney, which is how

• 21:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  you can access version five and just started creating tech leaders in puffy coats. Mark Zuckerberg sitting alone at a McDonald's in a puffy coat.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Oh, I saw these.

• 21:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Tim Cook at Apple headquarters in a big puffy coat. Um, I did Satya Nadella in a tank top. I did Jeff Bezos standing in a pool surrounded by rubber duckies. And the thing is freaking amazing. And, you know, and then today, just earlier today, um, I, I created something that like really just was completely different than the others and, and absolutely blew me away. So I, for those who are, who've listened, a few weeks ago, last week I had Kevin Systrom on the podcast. So I've just decided to start publishing the Q and As on, on these shows and got the Systrom interview transcribed and said, okay, I'm ready to publish it. I just needed some art.

• 22:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  So what I did was I uploaded an image of Systrom into Midjourney and I said, top art of a magazine profile using just the face. I just was like thinking, okay, like, you know, what would the art look like if you put it at the top of a magazine story? And Midjourney like took that instruction and drew this amazing magazine spread. And the image like looks like Systrom like in a, in a, you know, two-page magazine spread with like his hand on his chin, one of those like super realistic looking magazine spreads. And I was like, holy crap. Like, I was just looking for the art, but this image is like an amazing format that I'm now going to use for these Q and As.

• 22:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  And the, the power is just amazing. And previously I was like, oh, like, maybe, you know, this will help inspire graphic designers. And now I think in some cases it will just, because beforehand I was using Dolly art and I was like, haha, like you can tell that this is garbage AI-generated stuff. Almost does the job. And with Midjourney version five, I'm just like, oh my God, this is the future.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we used to all be really comforted by those stories. Like here's how you can tell if like someone's avatar is AI-generated, like their ears are messed up or whatever, you know, there was always like little tells and those are going away and it's, that's scary.

• 23:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you think, so I'm curious from your standpoint, I mean, you do a lot of reporting on startups, reporting on the finance of Silicon Valley. Is AI going to now become a bigger part of the stuff you cover? Because we all have to make these decisions, right?

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  As reporters, like what exactly? And of course, like now all Silicon Valley seems to be gravitating towards this stuff. How do you think about it?

• 23:45Speaker 01

  I mean, the first wave of stories is always about the money, like, you know, investors are just pouring money into this at a time when startups are not really having a lot of success raising funding for other projects. Certainly not crypto, you know, certainly companies that don't have a path to profitability. Like all, all the like, you know, maybe the second or third most successful company in each category is particularly struggling. So, but in AI, it's like a whole different world. And so, of course, you see tons of startups like pivoting or playing up AI or calling something AI when it's really just, you know, kind of like a boring old algorithm. And so, that is like the first wave of stories that you do. But you do that, which is like, oh, this is frenzy, oh, my God.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  And don't really think too much about like, okay, well, what does it mean? And so now I'm kind of taking a step back and being like, all right, so let's think about the ethics of these companies. Let's think about what they're actually doing and whether or not this is a good idea or what is a business model? Because that will ultimately determine, you know, the economics of it is ultimately going to determine whether or not they are successful businesses versus, you know, science projects that have been, you know, lingering inside Google for too long. So, those are all the big questions that I think everyone is, is thinking about now. And it's been interesting to watch some of the, the founders answer. Some of them are, are really thinking deeply about this and others are just like, you know, taking a more libertarian approach where it's like, you can't stop this.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  It's happening, so get on board and it may as well be me. So that's, that's been interesting. I mean, that's kind of the startup mentality that, that we've seen for the past decade, but it's, it's, it's never quite been applied to something this powerful, except for, you know, perhaps social media.

• 25:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Absolutely, and we have seen some regulators try to stop it, right? So Silicon Valley isn't going to stop, the tech world isn't going to stop. Governments are trying to stop it, and in some cases, they're going to use it. And let's focus on that for a minute, both sides of that story. So in Italy, for instance, this is just breaking news. The Italian privacy regulator on Friday today ordered a ban of ChatGPT over, and this is very interesting, over alleged privacy violations. And they say that it is processing data of Italian users, and it's a temporary order until the company respects EU's landmark privacy law.

• 26:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  This is from Politico, the General Data Protection Regulation, otherwise known as GDPR, which up until this moment has been known as like one of the least effective regulations on tech.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Most annoying.

• 26:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  And most annoying, unless you love pop-up blockers. Because if you love pop-ups, you love GDPR. But it's very interesting that Italy is trying to block them with GDPR. What do you make of this? You think that will hold up?

• 26:36Speaker 01

  So they're using, I mean, it's, do you think that it's a way for them to just say, this is dangerous, we don't like it, and these are the tools we currently have in order to do this? I mean, sometimes that's the way that regulators have to do that with novel tech that there's no current regulation for.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  It is interesting, because that is one question that we don't really have the answer to, is where exactly, like, what is the exact sources of some of these images? We have some ideas, but no one that I'm aware, I could be wrong,

• 27:11Speaker 01

  has, you know, fully released what the source of data is that they're feeding into these large language models that's training them on the info that they then spit out to us. And so, you know, you have like all these examples of artists who are going in and saying, you know, do something in the style of me, and they're spitting out art that looks exactly like what they've done. So the language model has, or the model has clearly been trained on their art. Or you have the Getty Image watermark that's currently, you know, in a lawsuit right now. So these companies should come clean with where they got the info, and there should be an ability for us to opt out of like, I don't want my face or my photos or...

• 27:55Speaker 01

  You know, private things about my life being used to train these things. So I, I think that's like smart, but it does seem like a little bit of a cudgel to use GDPR for it.

• 28:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. It is like, yeah, it's not addressing it head on. I don't think so. We'll see how it plays out. I, I, I think that there's going to be a lot of people in Italy downloading VPNs. That's just my guess because from the user side, people love using these things, right? They use them for very interesting.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. A lot of students writing essays.

• 28:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. I mean, that's, yeah, if I was an academic and someone like I was doing like a literature course and we end up progressing beyond GPT-4, I'm going to get pretty scared. So like, we'll see what happens there. So the other side of this is that governments are already using AI in interesting ways and profound new ways and sometimes extremely sloppy ways. And one of your colleagues, a couple of your colleagues just wrote about, it's Kashmir Hill and Ryan Mac, wrote about how ClearView AI has been used to, to wrongly accuse somebody of a crime.

• 29:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  And they basically identified this person as someone who was stealing different purses or handbags. And they, the sheriff's office who identified them, identified this person and arrested them and had them in jail for a week, had been paying ClearView AI for $25,000 a year and had used terminology in describing the arrest, like we tracked it to this person, but also didn't clearly specify that this was a facial recognition mistake. And again, talking about this murky area with AI, right? If we don't have clarity from police, from police bureaus about the fact that they're using this

• 29:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  when they make mistakes without fessing it up, we end up in dangerous territory, don't you think? I mean, what did you, what did you think when you read this story and, and what do you think it's going to lead to?

• 30:00Speaker 01

  I mean, it's such an incredible story. They're amazing reporters. So kudos to my colleagues for, for this. And, and we're going to see so many more of these stories and we need these stories to keep coming up because there's going to be all these situations.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Where this kind of stuff is used and the people didn't even necessarily know it took them a really long time and a lot of dollars in legal fees to figure out that this is why this guy and I think it said that he then got arrested a second time later um using the same tools and so

• 30:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean how crazy is that?

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this stuff is currently being used and it's really scary and the lack of transparency around it is like the very bare minimum least that we should be demanding around it, you know, setting aside whether or not it should be it's good enough to be used at all, particularly um on people of color who are, you know, have been raising this flag for a long time saying like this is the stuff really messes up the most on us. So yeah, these are some, these are issues, but like it's similar to the social media thing, like it, it really is frustrating that it takes reporting to expose this stuff after the fact versus like preemptively anticipating like this could be a problem, let's like put in the guardrails from the start.

• 31:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, one last AI story, then we're gonna go to break and then I want to cover some of the more finance-y stuff that you like to write about. I don't know if you saw about, I don't know if you saw this, but Bloomberg has a story about prompt engineers?

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was interesting.

• 31:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Three hundred and thirty-five thousand to write prompts for AI. We almost had a, I was very close, I had a prompt engineer, the one named in the story, Albert Phelps, who works for Accenture, he was supposed to come on and agreed to come on and then Accenture's PR team, I think, nixed it because I got a message this morning saying, whoops, shouldn't have done that. But he's talking about, yeah, yeah, he's talking about how he has a history background and I read this story and he's like saying people with history backgrounds and literature backgrounds who are good with words are starting to become so valuable because they're able to talk to this AI in ways and express themselves in words and

• 32:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  talk to them in ways that um that they can, they can um get the most out of them. And I read the story and the first thing I was just like, aha, okay, finally, people have been saying a liberal arts degree is worth nothing, actually, they're wrong.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's a little hopeful.

• 32:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  List all the history majors listening, there's there's hope yet, but just the fact that prompt engineering. I mean, I first heard the term. I was like, that's hilarious. There's no way that's real. And you go on LinkedIn and you start searching and it's just filled with jobs for prompt engineers.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, that's the thing you hear about this stuff. And when you start messing with it, you sort of realize too, like, oh, it is a little bit of an art to figure out how to get it to do the thing you want. You you have to, you can't just, it's not like a Google search that we all know how to do so naturally. Just put in the thing like the the the proper nouns or whatever we're looking for and spell it wrong. Google will figure it out. Like, there's an art to it, but I I think that will be very easy for the average person to learn. I mean, it was like a little bit hard for people to figure out how to use a mouse to click around on a website when it first came out, too. I think this is gonna become a commodity, but right now it seems really

• 33:29Speaker 01

  specialized and important and interesting. And then maybe for like some of the more B to B applications or the more technical things, there will be a demand for this, but it seems to me and whatever, I could be wrong. It seems to me that this is the kind of thing that it seems really specialized and important now, and it'll become a commodity soon. Once everyone kind of figures it out.

• 33:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Most likely, yeah. So some good pushback for for me on the live stream. We have Michael here who talked about, first of all, the job, the salary range was one hundred seventy thousand to three hundred thousand. Okay, so maybe there actually is trying to pay one seventy. In which case I apologize, but that's still a lot of money for writing prompts. And then there is, okay, a little bit of a technical side to this, which is that these people need to have at least a basic programming programming skills and comfortable writing small Python programs. Okay, noted. It's nice to have the audience fact check live.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Couldn't you get chat GPT to write those Python programs?

• 34:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think you can. No, you can. Okay, we had another. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You can. And we had a a comment from Michael earlier that, you know, given how good this stuff is at programming, you know, maybe you can autonomously hack something. So, you know, do I have good Python skills? No. Could I use chat GPT if I'm a prompt engineer to figure it out? Probably.

• 34:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  So.

• 34:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, let's take a break. We're here with Aaron Griffith of the New York Times. Thanks, Aaron, for coming on. We're talking about AI. We're talking about the blue checks. When we come back after the break, we're going to talk about how startup funding has been impacted by the fall of Silicon Valley Bank, maybe cover a little bit of the SPAC, the back half of the SPAC boom, which is the SPAC fall. We've done a little bit of that on this show, but we have some new stuff to talk about. And our fun story of the week is what we're going to end with. I'm not going to give it away, but there was a lot of legal news last week, and this is the lesser legal news item that we're going to talk about. Back right after this. This episode is brought to you by Avpoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now.

• 35:39Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 36:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Learn more at avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast. That's avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast. Violent threats against executives are growing at an alarming rate. When a company experiences backlash, executives are the first people blamed. When their address and other personal details are sitting online, this backlash can lead right to their front door. The team at Ironwell knows this better than anyone. They've protected some of the most targeted executives and individuals on the planet for almost two decades. As a white glove enterprise security service, they protect your people with continuous personal data removal, proactive prevention tools, and human-led emergency support. So when someone goes looking for your executives,

• 37:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Ironwell ensures they hit a dead end. So here's what to do. Go to ironwall.com/bigtechnology, fill in the quick form and request your free risk assessment. Their team will show you just how exposed your executives are and how to lock it down before a threat reaches their front door. That's ironwall.com/bigtechnology. Learn how to stop online threats before they become real world attacks. The link's in the show notes. And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Erin Griffith of the New York Times. Erin, great to have you. Thanks again for coming back, second time on the show.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 37:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  For a couple of years, I think you were the all time most listened to Big Technology episode.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Really? Who beat me?

• 37:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  You were just surpassed by Jan McKeon, but I think you're holding strong in second place.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  Wow. Well, I mean, it's not really me. I don't take credit for that. It's all Elizabeth Holmes. The interest in her trial was insatiable, so.

• 38:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes, but still a great interview. So appreciate you coming on. Let's talk about a recent story that you wrote about the fallout from Silicon Valley Bank.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  So obviously, it was like, kind of tough for startups to get funding over the past year in general. Then the bank goes away, which actually impacts the VC's, VC's ability to maintain credit lines, which then starting to impact startups in the process of getting funding. So everyone said, okay.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit.

• 38:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, all right. So fact check me on this one. But everybody said that, you know, okay, the depositors are safe. It's over. Actually, maybe there is some continual turbulence here. So how's that going to impact the tech industry?

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Well, the credit lines. So just to be clear, there's no real direct impact where it's like, the money's gone. Or like, if you bank with SVB, you're so screwed. There's no direct financial impact from what happened essentially with SVB to the actual, like, funding market. It's really more of a psychological thing. This has been.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  And VC investing is for, they maybe wouldn't want to admit it, but it is very psychologically. I mean, markets are so like the market had been in this like really bad downturn for the last year. And I think a lot of companies had been hoping that, you know, this year, the first quarter, or maybe the at least by the second quarter, things would start to kind of bounce back. We saw this with the pandemic, the first, you know, six months of the pandemic were terrifying and, you know, companies were doing major layoffs and it was, we thought this was the bubble bursting. And then all of a sudden, things bounced right back and low interest rates, all of that, like sort of excitement.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  People realized that tech was a recipient of the pandemic, not necessarily a victim of it. And things went crazy for a year and a half. And so I think people are sort of conditioned to think like, okay, well, we might have a little bit of a rough time, but like, don't worry, things will come, things will come soaring back any day now. And they were hoping for that this year. And instead, this sort of earthquake that happened, this SVB, you know, all of a sudden like, wait, my bank could run out of money? Like, that's not something that anyone had on their bingo card, you know?

• 40:21Speaker 01

  That just shook everyone kind of to the core and, and, and everyone was already a little bit risk averse. But now I think even more so risk averse. So the dust is starting to settle and people are trying to get back to business as usual. But I think just psychologically, this has an impact where if you were already worried about taking risks, you're probably going to be even more conservative now. And I talked to a number of founders and VCs who, who told me that. There is a flip side to this and I had some VCs coming at me on Twitter because, listen, they got a thought lead.

• 40:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  I thought that's their main job is just to.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you should be investing steadily through good times and bad times, right? If you want to be a good, that's like money managing 101, like, and, and everybody on Twitter says like, the best companies were started during, are started during downturns. Like, look at Airbnb and Uber, they were created in the wake of the recession, blah, blah, blah. Okay, great. Yes, that is like a wonderful sentiment and it's true, but it is much harder, so much harder. And so, so many of the companies that were created or, you know, overfunded over the last year and a half are. Going to have to come to terms with that. And if they want to be one of those great companies that was created during a downturn, they're going to have to realize that their valuations

• 41:44Speaker 01

  are probably going to be a lot crappier. The money is going to be super hard to raise. They're going to have to be a lot more creative. Like, they can't just like, kind of buy their way into growth. And so, anyway, I think what happened with SVB just made it clear that this turnaround, or this like uptick that everyone was hoping for this year is probably not going to happen anytime soon. You know, companies are trying to extend their runway even longer, wait until end of the year or next year if they can to raise more, accepting down, like, just realizing that they need to buckle in because this downturn is going to last longer.

• 42:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. But it's also, I mean, the VCs, it seems like the VCs have clammed up a little bit. I mean, I'm just going to read a quote from your story to sort of support my position here. You have a quote from someone that says, it's just, it's a founder, it's just a brick wall, no one is writing checks right now.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's this person's experience. And I think that's, we'll see, you know, Y Combinator has their demo day next week, and I think it's next week. And I think that'll be a really interesting thing to see if we have, you know, if the companies are lowering their valuations, if they're just unable to raise, that's going to be an interesting moment that I think will kind of tell us like, how much this has trickled down to the very early stage, which had been kind of a little insulated from this. The biggest companies that are closest to going public are the ones that were hurt first. And then it sort of trickles down lower and lower and lower. And now it's like, VCs are going to be wary to fund companies that they don't think can get to the Series A, because the

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Series A investors are worried about the Series B, you know, all the way, all the way up. So it does, I have talked to other people that have, you know, said, oh, well, we're still writing checks. And like, no VC firm's going to say, we're not writing checks, we're scared.

• 43:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  They have to spend that money.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Well, they do. But they're a little gun shy, you know, they're, like, I don't think that it's gonna, I don't think that LPs are going to be super excited if you bring them a hot crypto token these days. I don't, you know, I think they, I think they're kind of thinking about the fact that they LPs, the people who invest in venture capital firms are digesting still. They've they put a lot of money into venture over the last couple of years and they're they don't really have a lot right now to deploy. And so VCs are also thinking about that like, okay, well, what if I can't raise my next fund next year? Maybe I'll like slow walk this one a little bit more. There is a very weird dynamic, though, where all the founders

• 44:24Speaker 01

  are saying, listen, there's more dry powder than ever. They have so much money. It has to go somewhere, right? They have to invest it somewhere. And VCs are kind of like, well, yeah, we're we're doing deals, but very cautiously, you know.

• 44:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  AI companies, maybe this is where it's gonna go.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, oops. I just lost my AirPod. Hold on.

• 44:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so as Erin gets her AirPod, I just want to say, for those listening, speaking of this question, this upcoming Wednesday, we have two VCs coming on to talk about the the opportunity when it comes to AI and what type of AI startups that they're investing in. So stay tuned for that. I'm going to do the interview on Monday. We're going to put it live Wednesday. We have Joe Marchesi from Human Ventures and Michael McNano from Lightspeed. So that will be coming up on Wednesday.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, AI is one area that there is a lot of deal making happening.

• 45:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, yeah, yeah.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  So there's an exception there.

• 45:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, character, I mean, character AI just tried to just did raise, what, $150 million? And the valuation was a billion, no revenue.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's tons of these companies that are, it's so binary now. There's seems like there's very little in between. It's either like feast or famine.

• 45:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. Get this quote up on screen from your story once more. It's just a brick wall.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was a guy. He had a great idea. I think a year ago or two years ago in the amidst the boom, he would have been able to gather up that money super easily. But everyone just kind of like pulled back and they're like, wait, we gotta, we gotta think about this a little bit more. And then the companies that are doing deals are facing a lot more diligence. And then, you know, Yeah, that is the ones that maybe didn't find product market fit and raised too much money and maybe weren't really real companies. Like, we're gonna see some of those like really struggling to raise as well. So be interesting times.

• 46:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  So let's just talk about what happens. You know, there was this moment where nobody wanted to IPO and we saw a lot of SPACs happen. We talked a little bit about SPACs on this on this show, but it seems like it's something that's worth, you know, oftentimes there's this boom of enthusiasm and people just forget about what happened. And, you know, SPACs, obviously, like, people know SPACs haven't gone well, but they continue to go poorly. And I do think it's worth spending continued time on it because people should know that, you know, what the consequences are for moments like this. So Aaron, why don't you enlighten us?

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, so the SPAC thing was, was, I mean, for a journalist, it was great because it's like, okay, companies have been waiting longer and longer to go public. We never really get real info about their performance. And then suddenly, everyone's going public with like almost no buildup. It's just like, kind of, oh, we struck this deal. Now we're public and now we're reporting. So we're getting this wealth of information about companies that were younger than had gone, been going public recently. So I love that. As it turns out, many of them were like, kind of, science projecty companies that had no revenue or had, you know, very little in the way of a hypothetical business model. SPACs are great for that because they are allowed to market like future growth versus in traditional IPOs, you are not really allowed

• 47:43Speaker 01

  to make forward looking statements that way. So anyway, a lot of these companies, surprise, surprise, investors are not too excited about them anymore in a down market because their whole sales pitch was like possibility. And right now, people want to see results. So.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  A lot of these SPACs now are trading at less than a dollar a share. And so the way that a SPAC works is that generally when they go public, it's the price is $10 a share. So that can tell you that a lot of these SPACs are trading off by like 90% or something. There was a Crunchbase article that came out late last year where they just picked 50 random SPACs and half of them were trading under a dollar. Holy crap. So there are a lot of companies out there that, you know, if they, I think private equity firms or anyone who has a lot of capital on the sidelines right now is looking around and seeing, okay, is there value here? If so, let's buy it. So, you know, we saw one this last week, a company sold that went public for a few billion dollars, sold for 300 million.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  And I've reported on a few others that have happened over the last year. And so I think we're going to start seeing a lot of this of just like private equity firms or investors taking private or snapping up these companies at a tiny fraction of what they went public at. And then, you know, that, yeah, so anyway, we're going to see a lot of those. And then the ones that don't, that there's no value there, that's gonna, they're gonna have some tough choices, I think. There's, yeah, that's, that's gonna be kind of crazy and maybe a little sad and weird to watch. I mean, there's some that are in danger of being delisted. Like if you trade under a dollar for too long, you know, you became a penny stock.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Like a bird, Scooters, which was once valued at two or 2.5 billion, I think. They've been trading, they're, they're trading at 28 cents a share. Oh my God, that low? Yeah. Yeah, I think they were, yeah, they were a spec, 86 million dollar market cap. So, you know, these are, these are rough. And then there was, I don't know if you want to talk about the succession, do you watch succession?

• 49:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't watch it. I will eventually, but I'm not into it.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  There was the the premiere last night or last week had an episode or had a scene that was shot in this house that was like an 80 something million dollar house that 20 something 28 year old founder of like a, I think an autonomous company that went public for something like 12 billion dollar market cap, which is now trading at like 2.4 billion dollars. They shot a scene there and it was an incredible house, but I'm also like, man, I hope that guy, you know, got his money out in cash and wasn't using shares, his shares as part of his like kind of collateral for his mortgage. But anyway, yeah.

• 50:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  So let's talk about one successful SPAC. Well, just kidding, but BuzzFeed where I used to work this week, there was news that they are using AI to write their articles completely. And BuzzFeed was trading at about 90, 86 cents on Tuesday.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, under that dollar range, maybe at risk of being delisted, this news comes out. BuzzFeed today, trading at a dollar 13, up 18.47% on the week.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  BuzzFeed lives.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Wow.

• 51:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Our final story of the week. Let's just talk about something fun. There's great news in the US legal system. Big news. Shout out from the hilltops. Gwyneth Paltrow is found not liable for the ski crash that happened in 2016. She was initially sued for, I think, 3.1 million dollars. The guy brought it down to 300,000. He lost. She ended up winning the countersuit for a dollar and on the way out of the course, out of the courtroom, walks by the guy, whispers in his ear, "I wish you well," and leaves.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  Ice cold.

• 51:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Very moment for our legal system. What were, what have your feelings been about this Paltrow case? Why has it captured the nation so? And whose side have you been on?

• 52:01Speaker 01

  I actually think it, maybe it's just my filter bubbles. Also, she's a startup founder.

• 52:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. Oh, someone had a meme that said, had her walking by the guy and she said, "Use code GOOP for 15% off."

• 52:15Speaker 01

  That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, I, I actually wish that I don't know what, how I have my news filter set up, but I did not get as much details of this trial in my fed to me as I would have liked, actually. I kind of, I kind of wish I had, I had seen more of it, unfortunately. Maybe I wasn't on Twitter enough this week, but yeah.

• 52:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's definitely, it's been top of YouTube for me. I've watched too much of this trial and I probably should have, but I'm glad that Ms. Paltrow's been exonerated and

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Justice prevailed.

• 52:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Justice prevailed and she can ski freely on the beautiful, bold slopes of this great nation without her project mark. Thanks so much for joining. Great to have you.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me. Yeah, super fun.

• 53:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Awesome. Thanks, everybody for listening and for those watching on the feed. Thank you. Thank you for your questions. On Wednesday, again, two VCs, we're talk about, we talk about the opportunity in AI. And then next Friday, Ranjan Roy will be back, back from vacation from Paris. Ranjan, I hope you've had a good time. I hope you're listening to this on the airplane back and thinking about how much you miss us here at the podcast. And that will do it for us. So again, thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. If this is your first time, please hit subscribe. We do these twice a week. Flagship interview on Wednesday, live podcast on Friday, covering the week's news. And if you're a long time listener and feel inclined, a five star rating goes a long way. Have a great weekend and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

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  In this life, you can't win.

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