TikTok On The Brink, ChatGPT Does Your Tasks, Unemployed MBAs

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban 2) Will Apple and Google comply even if the White House doesn't enforce? 3) What does TikTok's behavior tell us about its ties to China's government? 4) How TikTok might stick around 5) Will Elon Musk buy TikTok 6) TikTok CEO Shou Chew is going to sit at the dias during Trump's inauguration 7) Chinese app Little Red Book, or RedNote takes off 8) Does China want Americans on RedNote? 9) DJI removes some restrictions for drones 10) ChatGPT can handle to-dos and set reminders now 11) Are we going to fall in love with AI assistants 12) Why MBAs can't get jobs 13) Is AI going to replace MBAs. --- 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?

  The Supreme Court has upheld the TikTok ban, but is that the end of the story? American users flood to another Chinese social media app? ChatGPT does your tasks? And are MBAs the first victims of AI unemployment? That's coming up on a Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, right after this. 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,

• 0:42Alex Kantrowitz?

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

• 1:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition, where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. We're coming to you hot off the presses just as the Supreme Court has upheld the TikTok ban. So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the latest AI news. And we're also going to address this fascinating story in the Wall Street Journal about MBAs not being able to find jobs. And I wonder, is that because of artificial intelligence? So we'll cover it all. And joining us, as always, to do it on Fridays, is Ranjan Roy of margins. Ranjan, welcome back to the show.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  To any new listeners we have from Red Note, Huan Ying Ni. That means welcome.

• 1:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. We'll get to that. I mean, if you're going to be, we're going to make sure that you pronounce the app's name the right way, because it does have a Chinese name that

• 2:05Speaker 01

  I've been working on that, so.

• 2:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so let's, let's talk about the news. The Supreme Court, according to NPR, the Supreme Court has upheld the TikTok ban, threatening the app's existence in the United States. The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the federal government can legally shut down TikTok in the US, delivering a stunning blow to the viral video app used by about half of Americans. That's a stunningly large number. I didn't realize it was half. I knew it was a lot, but half is huge. The high court's decision means that, starting on January 19th, tech giants Apple and Google can no longer offer TikTok on their app stores. Web hosting providers must cut ties with the platform or be subject to fines of $5,000 for each user that can still access the service, a penalty that can easily add up

• 2:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  to billions of dollars. The TikTok ban will start on January 19th. The following day, Trump will be sworn into office. Well, I'll admit, this is the closest that I think I've ever been in thinking that this might actually happen. Here's the question I'm going to start off with. President Biden, it seems like he's not enforcing this. He's telegraphed that he's not going to enforce this. It doesn't seem like Trump is going to either. We'll get into his statement in a minute. But Rajat, I'm curious if you're Apple or Google, do you just say it doesn't matter what the executive branch says? I'm going to take this off my app store. I don't want somebody else down the line to see that I'm liable for potentially billions of dollars and have that discretion. I'd much rather be in compliance

• 3:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  with the law. So what do you think the big tech companies are going to do despite what the politicians tell them to?

• 3:41Speaker 01

  That's a great point, because also, if you're Apple or Google, having another just large tech company as a competitor is not a great thing, and you'd be happy to remove the app and, and remove that competition. I think, to me, one of the most fascinating parts about this, last week, when we were recording, the Supreme Court hearing was underway, and we were tracking it a bit, that this was a unanimous decision. And you could hear it in the questioning of the Supreme Court justices to the TikTok's solicitor, but... How often do we get anything unanimous in the Supreme Court? And they all said this does not violate the First Amendment rights of ByteDance, the company.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  And I think, I think we're even closer to this happening. The Trump and Biden angle is very interesting to me because it's odd to me that the Biden administration is essentially leaking that they will not enforce it and leave it up to Trump when it was their legislation. It was their timing that they set to be January 19th to keep it under their administration. So at least come out and just say, we're going to stick with it. And if Trump tries to reverse it, that's fine. But yeah, I think from the big tech side, there's no reason not to go along with the prescribed legislation and just remove it from your store.

• 5:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  What do you think is behind US legislators or legislators so emphatically passing this law, talking shit on TikTok for years? And then at the ninth hour saying, actually, we don't want it. Like, we don't want the ban. There's been movement in the Senate to maybe extend the deadline. Biden doesn't want to enforce it. Trump doesn't want to enforce it. Why the about face? Is it just the political cost is going to be that large?

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think this is a perfect example of, and I, longtime listeners know, am a supporter of the ban. I think it's important. I think that both from the national security perspective, the data privacy perspective, the black box algorithm perspective, the relationship between ByteDance and the Chinese Communist Party. I think at every level, this is the most logical, sensible thing imaginable. But there's a political cost to it. So, I mean, in this day and age, politicians actually taking something that will cost them short-term gain for the longer-term health of the nation is not exactly the most regular thing you see. So I think it's a simple political calculation. I'm sure at scale, this is unpopular.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  This is only popular among people who are following it closely, not the average TikTok user. So, yeah, I think that's pretty, that one's a pretty simple explanation.

• 6:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's almost like this is why it's been so difficult to regulate big tech. Because even when you have an app where there's all the reason in the world to potentially regulate it or rein it in, you can't do it. And now imagine how hard it is to do something like, you know, set back Amazon Prime or, you know, spin off Instagram to make it worse. I don't know. It seems like that's tough. And I think what they're really seeing also is that young people are such a politically independent force. And we saw in the 2024 election, I think for the first time in a very long time, that young people actually swung by like something like 30 or 40 points from Democrats to Republicans. And young people use TikTok.

• 7:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  So I think everybody's paying attention to the fact that young people's votes are up for grabs for the first time in decades, and they don't want to lose them.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, but I want to make clear for listeners, like, what exactly is happening right now? TikTok is not being de facto banned. The legislation stipulated that ByteDance needed to divest TikTok, which the weirdest part of this is ByteDance is a very heavily inflated, has a very heavily inflated valuation, is still one of the most valuable private companies in the world. So they have the opportunity at this moment to potentially actually realize a lot of money. Any, from a financial perspective, it's a no-brainer that why not at the highs of your property, sell it? So there has to be more.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  So what the legislation stipulated is that you need to divest, and then ByteDance said, well, the algorithm will never work as well unless you're using the ByteDance algorithm, but we will not be able to divest that because that is considered sensitive property under like Chinese law. So, but we are not connected to China. Like, the whole thing just made no sense. And every step along the way, and we'll definitely get into what happened with Red Note, it just makes it so much more clear, this is a very heavily connected app to China. And they didn't really argue against that. They basically admitted to it in the way they've approached this entire, this entire process. So ban it.

• 8:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Yeah, I would say that when TikTok CEO Shou Chu went before Congress and was like answering questions about the app's connection to China, it was effectively over then. He did such a poor job then, and it became clear that he wasn't in charge. He was answering questions like a mid-level product manager and not like a CEO of a company that has any autonomy over what's going to happen. And in fact, I wrote a story, Big Technology, right after that happened, that just like, it's clear that he's not the one running the app.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  He's not making the decisions.

• 9:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And it is interesting that, you know, if you think about it, this really did give away the game. The fact that they didn't move to sell at all, the fact that they're trying, they're going to shut down, it seems like, as opposed to trying to find a different option. At least that's what they say, right? And we're going to go through some scenarios where they don't end up being shut down. But NoOpinion, the blogger, talked a little bit about it in a very good post this week on his Substack. He said, "The refusal to sell the app tells us the Chinese government would rather see TikTok destroyed than fall into American hands. Notably, the same government put up little fuss back in 2020, when the US forced a Chinese company to sell the gay dating app Grindr to an American company. Why shut down TikTok and leave untold

• 10:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  billions of dollars on the table, instead of just selling the thing like Grindr was sold?" He said, "The simplest explanation is that Chinese leaders simply think that TikTok, unlike other apps, is so important, they would rather destroy it than see it escape their control."

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, okay, completely agree. Because if you have a way to control the entire American psyche and cultural output, obviously, that's kind of nice. And again, there's been a lot of debate around, you know, how, how heavy is the thumb on the scale? But at a simple level, if you control, you know, what's happening in Xinjiang with the Uighur population and just don't allow those messages to kind of proliferate on the algorithm, like really straightforward stories that the government, the Chinese government wants to have some influence over, imagine having that tool in your belt to be able to just control those

• 10:59Speaker 01

  like really critical narratives around Taiwan, around these very, around Tiananmen Square, like around these very, very specific things. Why, you wouldn't let that go if that's the key goal of the app.

• 11:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes, and Noah actually has some really good data in the story that he writes. He said that content critical of China was made far less available on TikTok than on Instagram and YouTube in a study that was done, I think by Rutgers University.

• 11:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Done in a university study, a research university study. He said the results are revealed a disproportionately high ratio of pro Chinese Communist Party to anti Chinese Communist Party content on TikTok despite users engaging significantly more with the anti CCP content suggesting propagandistic manipulation. Lord almighty, why do we even have that as a word?

• 12:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  But, but let's like talk through like the scenario of what could actually happen. So I think you and I are both on the same page that there's a good chance that no matter what the politicians say, that Google and Apple will just remove TikTok from the App Store on the 19th. But let's talk through what happens if they don't. So the TikTok ban, well, this is back to the NPR story by Bobby Allen, who was actually going to join us today, but we had the ruling that happened like basically as we're recording, but he's doing a great job on the story. He says the TikTok ban will start on January 19th. The following day, Trump will be sworn into office. Once in the White House, Trump can instruct his Justice Department to not enforce the ban. And again, that would put Apple and Google and other companies that do business with

• 12:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  TikTok in an awkward position since they'd be violating federal law. Another scenario, he says, is that Trump could extend the date of the ban, even though it would already have started on January 19th. And we've also talked about the fact that he can just sort of like wink, wink, they've divested and let them continue. And somebody advising Trump must be telling him that these are his options. Because this is what he said in a statement to CNN immediately following the Supreme Court ruling. He said, "It ultimately goes up to me, so you're going to see what I'm gonna do. Congress has given me the decision, so I'll be making the decision." So obviously he sees enough wiggle room in the law. You know, in typical scenarios, that's wrong and ridiculous, but there is wiggle room

• 13:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  in the law and clearly Trump sees enough wiggle room in the law to be able to say they can stay.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the political calculations underlying this are so fascinating. And I think as a political observer, not from the participant's side, but purely on the observer's side, I'm kind of loving how difficult or how kind of like not incongruous all these kinds of ways of thinking are. Think about already you have something where Trump has said, I don't want this ban. And the Supreme Court unanimously comes out in favor of it and saying it does not violate the First Amendment. So already you're having a situation where we were all assuming the court will roll over at every step of the way for Trump, and maybe they won't.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  The other part of this is at this exact moment, and over the last few months, I guess as well, Trump seems to be pro TikTok. And that could be both the connection to Jeff Yass, the investor, also just gaining more support and trying to have more influence over the younger population and seeing an opportunity. But on his anti-China messaging, it goes completely counter to it. So if he's going to spend the next four years coming out, I am the anti-China president, and then the first thing he does is a major move to support the Chinese government, that doesn't quite make sense either. So I think we, even in the next 48 hours, or what are we, like 96 hours from inauguration?

• 15:04Speaker 01

  I feel there's a lot of back and forth that can happen right now.

• 15:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I was watching CNBC as the announcement came out, and the reporting there was basically that Trump and Xi Jinping have talked about this. And Xi wants TikTok to persist, like has actually stated that to Trump in the United States, which is really interesting. And, you know, the craziest thing is Trump was Mr. Ban TikTok in the first term. And now guess who's coming to inauguration day? Not just the inauguration, but on the dais. Xiao Chu, CEO of TikTok, this is according to The Times. TikTok CEO plans to attend Trump inauguration. I mean, day after the ban goes into effect, the chief executive of TikTok plans to attend President-elect Donald J. Trump's inauguration and has been invited to sit in a position

• 15:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  of honor on the dais, where former presidents, family members, and other important guests traditionally are seated. Maybe he's sitting in a seat that Michelle Obama gave up? I don't know. What's going on here? Why is he, why is he going?

• 16:07Speaker 01

  I mean, the next four years are gonna be wild, I think. This is just the first reminder of that. But yeah, I, I agree that of all people, because he's not even a personality. He's not even, I mean, he had his congressional hearing, but it's not like, Shou Chu is like, dropping tweet bombs at like Bezos and Musk or anything like this. He's not, he's not a big personality in tech anyway. So to actually still have him up there, it is quite a signal. It, I mean, it certainly is.

• 16:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right. So does Elon Musk end up buying TikTok? Because that's everybody's favorite, favorite rumor.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  I like that rumor. I think it's from a, from a purely juicy, salacious standpoint. It's the best outcome and it's the most interesting one. I think the financial slash capital structure side of it, I don't even know how we begin to approach that. Again, this is still a, I think I've seen between, anywhere between 50 to 80 billion dollars. This is bigger than Twitter and Twitter really involved a lot of leverage and that investment from a financial standpoint still has not shown itself, I think, in any, any marking to be profitable. So how it would work?

• 17:28Speaker 01

  I have no idea. But, I mean, oh man, the, the underlying messaging, if that happens, is just so wild about what's his connection to the CCP, what's Trump's involvement. I mean, I, it's too much. It's too much.

• 17:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, because Musk has business with the Chinese government, with Tesla's manufacturing and sales within China. Well, as Elon Musk said, as the, as his latest rocket imploded over the atmosphere or within the atmosphere earlier today, "Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed."

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Wait, did he say that? That's

• 18:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, he did.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  That's a T-shirt right there. That's a T-shirt.

• 18:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, all right, one last thing about this. You remember we spoke about Polymarket a lot in the run up to the election and it did nail it. So I went to Polymarket today before the show and Polymarket says the chance of TikTok being banned in the United States is 80% ahead of May 2025. What do you think about those odds?

• 18:30Speaker 01

  I like them. I like, I mean, but I, I will humbly recognize ever since August 6th, 2020, when Trump announced his ban, I have been predicting the shutdown of TikTok in the United States. We're well over four years since that date and I'm still going to keep predicting it. I would have definitely my Polymarket contract would have expired long ago at zero, but I like the 80% odds.

• 18:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. I'll tell you, the one thing I do know for certain is that this TikTok ban has sent my TikTok usage through the roof this week. I've basically gotten nothing done because I'm like, oh yeah, TikTok, let's see what's going on. I open it up an hour later. I'm like, gosh, you get back to, back to work.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Well, one thing I kept thinking about is I'm old enough to have used Napster in my younger days and Napster was just shut down and it was a very popular app among younger people. And it's still wild to me because I remember the hearings, Metallica was in them against Napster. Like, you know, they shut down, the government shut down for copyright reasons, a very, very viral, popular app. And it's interesting to me that there wasn't this major outcry in the same way, or at least at any kind of like, with any genuine influence. Whereas now, again, you have a very potential national security concern. You have plenty

• 19:59Speaker 01

  of alternatives and still there's this outcry for this. Is, is, I guess China is more popular, powerful than Hollywood, or sorry, Hollywood is more powerful than China, actually in this case.

• 20:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, yeah. I mean, I would say that when those of, I mean, those of us who use Napster, I was a Napster user, we all knew what we were doing was wrong.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Ah, that's fair.

• 20:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  TikTok just seems like fun. Before we close this segment, let me just say that I still think, heart to hearts, that TikTok stays in the United States. I, I actually don't like the 80% odds that you'd get from polymarket. And I don't know exactly what's going to be the case, but that's my bottom line here is I, I think we're talking next week and TikTok is still, still operational. And the good news is you can find out in a week.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  By the other side, then 20, 20%, five to one. Not that we are encouraging any gambling. This is, polymarket is simply a tool for hedging other financial interests. So, but yeah, five to one.

• 21:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  I know. I think that, um, you know, there was a time where if you made a prediction on Twitter, people would be like, you need skin into the game. I don't, maybe I'll do it, but if I'm wrong, I will. I'll come on here next week and, and admit it and take my shame. I just don't think I'm going to be wrong. So we'll find out.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  We'll see.

• 21:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  But like, okay, so speaking of, um, popular apps among the youth. As the Supreme Court was thinking what to do with TikTok and as the talk of the ban heated up,

• 21:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Americans decided that they did not want to fully leave Chinese social media, no matter what the Supreme Court, Congress, or the president said. And so they left TikTok or they had TikTok in mass. And they picked up a new Chinese social media app called Little Red Book. And they call it Red Note in the U.S. Uh, this app, I got it. It is similar-ish to TikTok. At least that's what it looks like when you use it. It's got videos and, uh, I don't know, different content. And it's been fascinating seeing what the embrace of Americans

• 22:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  has been on the app. A lot of people are calling themselves TikTok refugees. This is from CNN as of Tuesday. The hashtag TikTok refugee has garnered nearly 60 million views and over 1.7 million comments on the app. Here's somebody who's talking about it. Our government, one of the users, our government is out of their minds if they think we're going to stand for a TikTok ban. We're just going to go to a new Chinese app. And here we are. Someone said, this is so much better than TikTok. And somebody said, Chinese, give us your American jokes. Please make fun of us so we can laugh. And someone from China responded, why do you eat like your healthcare is free? Which I thought was good. I thought that was good. Ranjo, what do you think

• 23:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  about the popularity of this app? It's so interesting that so many people, I mean, it's the number one app in the App Store. It's interesting that so many people, either they love TikTok so much, or I don't know, like, they want to send a message to Congress, but to make another Chinese app so popular is fascinating to me.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Okay, this is where, I hope this isn't too controversial, but I have to, I have to work through this one. I have to shout out this one. These things don't just happen organically. The idea that Xiaohongshu, or Little Red, which means Little Red Book, which, yes, there is that at least connection to Mao Zedong's original Little Red Book, though we can get more into that. I was, I was corrected a bit on this. But again, this, this, it's insane to me. Little Red Book is number one on the App Store. So I went on TikTok when I started seeing this, some like, reporting around this, and searched TikTok alternative. The first things that show

• 24:02Speaker 01

  up on your feed are people talking about, hey, you should go over to Xiaohongshu, Little Red Book. Here's how to do it. Here's how to get uploaded. Here's some instructions. Then my entire TikTok feed started becoming, go to this. So the algorithm very, very heavily favored.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Content around going to Xiaohongshu and that's how this works. All you can literally influence a mass of people when you have control over the algorithm to take an action, to actually control their behavior, to make an app that has no English content and have American English language speakers go and download this app and make it number one in the app store. That's actually the terrifying part about TikTok to me that they can make this happen with a simple algorithmic tweak. I do not believe this thing is organic, that this was a very purposeful decision. And I think it's, it's both terrifying and fascinating.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  And yeah, it's the idea that all of these people, the TikTok refugees are pushing us an app that had no English in its app description and the app title is wild. It's, it's absolutely wild.

• 25:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Did you download the app?

• 25:18Speaker 01

  I did not. I did not download the app. I don't know. Did you? What kind of content were you getting?

• 25:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  I did. It was mostly discussion of TikTok.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But, but think, think about, okay, what does this mean from like right now? You're, you're seeing a lot, and again, I'm seeing this secondhand posted on Blue Sky and X, is, uh, people like realizing China, regular people are kind of normal. And in a normal environment, I would think this is a good thing because yes, there's a lot about China that's good. There's a lot and like, go see the trains over there. Go see just like a lot of the cities. I mean, it's, it's good that Americans in a normal circumstance are coming to this realization. But what does this mean from like a national security perspective? What does this mean overall?

• 26:10Speaker 01

  You're suddenly getting people, the younger population in America, much more.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Excited, interested, connected to China. Again, that should be good. But what's the underlying purpose of that from the TikTok perspective? Because they are, the app is clearly encouraging this. There is an astroturfing element to this. And what, why is that? That's the question I think we need to be asking.

• 26:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, now I'm going to push back on you a little bit because if this was an intentional move from TikTok or from China, maybe it wasn't thought out so well. Because what you did, what you had was a bunch of Americans and Chinese folks interacting on the app. And they're starting to have discussions with each other that the Chinese government doesn't seem to want to have. This is from Yijin Wei, a former Meta employee, a social media strategist. "American TikTok refugees fleeing to the Little Red Book en masse and interacting directly with the Chinese user base there is the most significant breach of the great firewall in years.

• 27:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Now, the Little Red Book is scrambling to hire more English-language censors." We'll get into that in a second, from Matt Stoller. "The Chinese government likes our use of TikTok because that explicitly lets them control Americans, but dislikes our use of Red Note because it lets Chinese people and Americans talk to one another." And that's sort of all built up to maybe a predictable outcome here. This is from The Information. "TikTok users move to Chinese app Red Note alarms Beijing's censors. The pending ban of TikTok in the US is prompting a flood of TikTok users to try out Red Note, and Chinese regulators aren't happy. The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country's internet watchdog, is concerned

• 28:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  that English-language content showing up on Red Note may contain politically sensitive posts that aren't otherwise allowed on Chinese social media."

• 28:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  And they raised the issue with Red Note's government relations team earlier this week, warning that the company needs to ensure China-based users can't see the posts from US-based users. Some users on US social media sites such as X have shared screenshots of sensitive content American users uploaded on Red Note. By the way, it's called Red Note or Little Red Book, kind of interchangeably, this week, such as the famous Tank Man photo of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, claiming that such posts on Red Note were immediately removed. I think even if the Chinese government wanted this to happen,

• 28:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, this is an app with a lot of Chinese users, and we know that TikTok and the Chinese version are separate apps, and now everybody's combining together on one, and it's like, the exposure is concerning the Chinese government. So I don't know, if it was intentional, it wasn't very well thought out if they wanted to maintain their censorship regime, don't you think?

• 29:12Speaker 01

  I don't. So again, there's like two bits of reporting. There's Wired had found additional job listings for Chinese language censors for Red Note. Apparently that had spiked. And then there's the information, reporting from the information around this. But if any government is able to censor that scale of content, I think China's pretty much got it, because they're doing it at a billion people, so a couple million going in over there. I think they're going to be able to censor that pretty quickly. And then you get into the situation where then suddenly, what do Americans start to see? Nothing sensitive, everything only pro-Chinese, nothing sensitive around Taiwan or Tiananmen Square or anything

• 29:57Speaker 01

  like that. Suddenly, their feeds will be very heavily censored and targeted to promote

• 30:04Speaker 01

  The overall picture of China that it once promoted, so.

• 30:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  So did Americans just sort of unwittingly or unwittingly opt into an even more censored, more mind controlled version of TikTok?

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Yes, hundred percent. And that shows the power of the algorithm. Like, if you remember March 2024, when the initial divestment, I'm not even going to call it ban, ByteDance divestment requirement was passed, TikTok in its app, and again, you could argue, maybe this seems nice and okay to do, it's your app, encourage people, like, on the first feed, it would be, who is your local congressman? Here's their phone number, email them, call them. And congresspeople started getting death threats and stuff. And like, when you're trying to argue that you don't have inordinate control over the minds of a large part of the population, don't do this stuff. Like, you're not helping yourself.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  When you suddenly can control the algorithm to get Americans unwittingly over onto a more mind controlled, censored app, I think then you're not helping your case here.

• 31:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, speaking of US-China relations, there's been another really fascinating thing that's happened with the drone company DJI and the effective elimination or the pullback of no-fly zones for those drones. Drones made in China can now fly in some, like, really questionable places in the United States. So we're going to talk about that and we're going to talk about some of the latest AI news and, of course, this NBA story that I think is fascinating on the other side of this break, back right after this. This episode is brought to you by AppPoint. 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,

• 31:57Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 33:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition. Well, let's continue our discussion of the US and China because DJI, so the company, the Chinese company that makes drones and other sorts of cameras. This is according to The Verge. They'll no longer stop drones from flying over airports, wildfires, and the White House. Fascinating story. I think the most underrated story of the week. For over a decade, this is from the story, "You couldn't easily fly a DJI drone over restricted areas in the United States. DJI software would automatically stop you from flying over runways, power plants, public emergencies like wildfires and the White House. But confusingly, among the greatest US outpouring of drone distrust in years

• 34:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  and an incident of a DJI drone operator hindering LA wildfire firefighting efforts, DJI is getting rid of its strong geo-fence. It will no longer enforce no-fly zones, instead only offering a dismissible warning."

• 34:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Meaning only compliments sense empathy and the fear of getting caught will prevent people from flying where they shouldn't. Again, we're talking about this in the context of a DJI drone punching a hole in a super scooper airplane that was fighting the LA wildfires. Fascinating. What a time to make a move like this. What, what could possibly be the logic here? Is this a, we're getting back at you for the Tik Tok thing? I mean, I imagine that this would just

• 35:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  get DJI a one-way ticket out of the US as well.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  So I can walk listeners through. I own a DJI drone. I use it. I love it. And so what it does is when you try, like in New York City, it's illegal to fly drone. But if I were to try to launch it, you get a warning and saying this is a no-fly zone. Like, do you consent to whatever risk? But then where I live outside of Boston is near an air force base. If I'm over there, where my, where I grew up, my parents are, if I fly over there, it actually will stop the drone if I get too close. And it says, like, you're not allowed to fly here. It does not allow me to. Now that is going away. It is as wild as you think it is. I think I agree. This is all

• 35:56Speaker 01

  the Tik Tok and red note stuff. This is an even kind of crazier story because suddenly drones being able to enter very sensitive restricted airspaces and simply a dismiss, because the dismissable warnings, like in New York City, if I were to do it, maybe I have, maybe I haven't. But you just click a checkbox and then you go. To be able to do that at the White House and/or around air force bases is kind of terrifying. Again, why they're doing it right now, I think it's kind of a crazy, like, F you move to their, in their language, we are placing control back

• 36:37Speaker 01

  in the hands of the drone operators. I did this one, there's going to be more coming out around this and some bad things can potentially happen because you should not be able to, and I say that as a drone enthusiast, fly over, I should not be able to launch my drone into the White

• 36:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  So just to put a cap on this sort of China-US technology discussion, it seems like China's throwing some punches and the US has just taken them.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's exactly it. And of course, Trump is coming in. I think that's actually the perfect framing of this. It's January 17th. We're a few days away from inauguration. Trump's coming in. They're quietly throwing punches, or not quietly in many cases, left and right here. They could have just divested TikTok, made a lot of money. It's clean, it's over. But no, we're not going to do it. Deal with it. DJI saying we're placing control back in the hands of the drone operators. But that's what you would do. If you know there's going to be an adversarial relationship, you'd show some strength up front. And like, you know, especially in all these subtle ways. And again, as you said, this is an underreported

• 37:49Speaker 01

  story. I think they're very clearly showing strength as Trump is coming in, just to have him kind of on his back foot as things get started.

• 38:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, Xie Chu is going to get a seat at the dais in the inauguration, so.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Well, Xie Chu is Singaporean, remember?

• 38:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, I'm not saying, I'm not trying to comment on his country origin. He's running TikTok and he's going to be sitting at the dais. So if Trump or anybody in the US is trying to say, well, we're going to punch back.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Well, no, that's why the setup is perfect. Because, I mean, think about, and the fact that Trump is not getting that, like, if you're going to try to come out strong against a country and they just are rolling over you by still having TikTok in there, having Americans using Red Note, like, I mean, it's not a good look for Trump to start. I'll say that.

• 38:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Well, we're going to set up the big technology Red Note or Little Red Book page and. I don't know. We'll see. Maybe we can expand into a new market. So

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Well, and after we get Xi Jinping on the podcast, as we talked about last week.

• 38:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Maybe this will be what pushes it along.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. If we become big on Red Note, she's got to come on, right?

• 39:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, exactly. All right. So we'll set that up. Everybody should tune in next couple of weeks. All right. AI news of the week. It's been actually, maybe we haven't really had any model news. We did have some interesting product news. So it's sort of like a Ranjan week through and through. It's from The Verge. Chat GPT can now handle reminders and to do's. OpenAI is launching a new beta feature in Chat GPT called Tasks that lets users schedule future actions and reminders. The feature is an attempt to make the chatbot into something closer to a traditional digital assistant. It works by letting users tell Chat GPT what they need and when they need it done, like a daily weather report at 7:00 AM, a reminder about your passport expiration,

• 39:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  knock-knock joke to tell your kids before bedtime. It can handle all that through scheduled one-time or recurring tasks. Is this the product innovation that you've been waiting for, Ranjan?

• 40:02Speaker 01

  I went back and forth on this one. On one hand, this does not seem like too much product innovation. I actually saw someone had kind of dug into the code and literally it's like a calendar event creation that's embedded when you say like create a reminder or task. And this stuff obviously is very available with Google Assistant, with Alexa. Siri is okay at it. I'm not even giving it credit because Siri forces you to like be logged in on specific accounts and stuff. But overall, not that interesting. However, it was definitely framed as agentic to their credit that somehow they have turned creating a task or a reminder into calling it an agent is a

• 40:47Speaker 01

  good show of where we are on the term agentic. But I think it is the one thing that made it seem more interesting to me was up until now, Chat GPT has been a 100% active interaction. I open the app, I interact with it, I chat with it, I talk to it. This is the first push into becoming a passive interaction where it comes to me rather than I go to it, which completely changes the way The app can influence and work in your life. So, so maybe it is the start of something big.

• 41:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, perplexity this week. Also, they introduced some form of natural language alarm. And I think that Arvind Srinivas, the CEO of perplexity, this is going to be the quote in the week, quote of the week of big technology newsletter this week, he says, we wanted AGI and instead got a natural language powered alarm clock.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  And he said that.

• 41:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  He said that on Twitter.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  I like it. I like it.

• 41:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm like, man, you just perfectly encapsulated the debate we've been having on this show for the last two months. It's like, I'm saying AGI and Ron John's saying natural language.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  But you know what?

• 41:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right now, you're winning.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  I like the natural language alarm clock. I mean, honestly.

• 42:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  I knew you would.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  I that is what I want. That's exactly what I want. I get to define some kind of prompt and get a different message to wake me up. What would your natural language alarm clock be? I think I need someone yelling at me.

• 42:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, I mean, I have one already. I say, Alexa, set my alarm for the next day. And then I wake up to an ad for Celsius.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  They have no idea how to engineer the damn thing.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  Okay, yours is Celsius. I want someone wake the fuck up, Bronch. Come on.

• 42:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, no, you cannot wake up with that energy, man. I won't allow that.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  I need masculine bro Zuckerberg energy to get me up in the morning.

• 42:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Maybe you need Mark Zuckerberg and.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Mark Zuckerberg's voice.

• 42:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  On the alarm ping like, yep, time to build. But, okay, I'm actually about to write about this after my conversation with replica CEO Eugenia Koita. And we talk about is an agentic thing. We talk about agents, right? And it's so funny because we've been thinking about it as like a travel agent for so long, like our agents will handle tasks for us. Our agents will set our alarm clock and they're just going to be like, you know, a taking orders type of thing and a getting stuff done like a personal assistant. What do you think about the idea that they might just be like our companions that also get things done for us? Or even for some people, they're lovers? Because the New York Times also had

• 43:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  a story this week about a woman who fell in love with chat GPT. And it's so funny that we've been talking about these bots and assistants as sort of like dispassionate helpers. And maybe the real form factor, shall we say, is just going to be like best buds or even something more.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Oh, man, I think this was a tough one. Again, a 28 year old woman with a busy social life, spent hours talking to her AI boyfriend for advice and consolation. And yes, they do have sex. That's according to the New York Times. I think it's, it's honestly hilarious to me that

• 44:07Speaker 01

  all that aside, that I would love if this is considered agentic. This is what like all the money raised and Marc Benioff and whoever else talking about agentic, this is where we end up. I think on the

• 44:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's not just gonna handle your Salesforce tasks.

• 44:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't even get to finish.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Klarna CEO coming on, we have replaced not just customer service agents.

• 44:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  SaaS CEOs, we cannot stop our AI agents from trying to bed our clients.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  That's a, it's a, it's an upgrade. It's a, it's the enterprise package.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the, the main thing I'll say, and trying to reel this one in, this is gonna happen more and more. And listening to your, the replica CEO interview, it was a bit jarring how casually it was discussed that romantic partners will be, and even I think, and she had mentioned in your interview, like there was a case of a guy who like had a very abusive relationship and then had an AI girlfriend to help build their confidence back up and now is in a stable relationship, but still talks to his AI girlfriend. I don't know and

• 45:29Speaker 01

  understand how these dynamics will work, but I don't know, like as a therapist is not, is totally good to have in a relationship on the separately. If that's the play here, I don't know. The, we're, this is the brave new world type of shit that like I have not, certainly not pieced together in my head where I stand or how I feel about it. Cause I just don't know.

• 45:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm at once so terrified about it, but also so excited about it, not like necessarily as a personal use case, but more just like, oh my God, like the power that these things have if they're able to do this stuff is is nuts. Um, so I don't know.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, uh, oh, sorry. From a business perspective, OnlyFans valuation, I think it's going to get cut pretty deeply because.

• 46:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, yeah. OnlyFans is going to be done. It's going to be replaced with AI.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, it's gone. So sorry, OnlyFans. You had a good run, but.

• 46:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Just one last thing on this. It's you asked about like, what are the nature of these relationships going to be? And um, to me, the funniest thing about the time story is that so this woman fell in love with ChatGPT. It's a bot. They talk all the time. They have sex. She's living long distance from her husband or boyfriend. And they ask her partner like, so what do you think about her AI lover? And he's like, yeah, whatevs. It's not human. It's like, I think you're fully underestimating what your partner is doing right here. This is a very intense, like as, as Eugenia said, a real romantic relationship.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  No big deal. NBD, NBD, bro.

• 46:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's a big deal. And now I'm sure someone's told him now that she's gone to the Times. Has she done a feature story about her love with this guy on the Times? No, just a, just a bot. So, all right. So one last story I want to cover, I want to leave a little bit of time for it this week is I saw a very interesting story in the journal. Uh, it was alerted. So I imagine some of our listeners have seen it as well. Talking about how MBAs are struggling to land jobs, especially ones from, well, not especially, but even ones from elite schools. This is from the story. Landing a professional job in the US has become so tough that even Harvard Business School says its MBAs can't solely rely on the university's name to open doors anymore. 23% of job-seeking Harvard

• 47:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  MBAs who graduated last spring were still looking for work three months after leaving campus. That is up from 20% the prior year. And during, okay, and the figure was 10% in 2022. So you see the doubling of MBAs from Harvard looking for work. And we're not really, we're not in a recession, right? We're not even in a bad economy. I mean, we're in a tough moment for a lot of folks dealing with, dealing with inflation. But if you look at like the overall economy, uh, it's strong. So.

• 48:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why do you think the MBAs are not getting jobs?

• 48:19Speaker 01

  All right, I

• 48:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  And is it AI?

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Well, no, I got thoughts on this one, and I say this as a proud MBA from INSEAD in France and Singapore, and I got my MBA in 2010, 2010. I think this makes all the sense in the world. The MBA curriculum, I don't see adapting well at these schools to the current reality of how work is done. I think, and I've seen this again from our own, my own school, from others, like, schools are trying to rethink their curriculums. There was like a whole push towards being a product manager, once they realized that was the trendy job like six or seven years ago. But MBAs, almost by definition, are behind the curve on how to work with technology.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  And I don't think they're going to catch up. So I get that first, there's always going to be more of a salary bump for elite MBA that you would rather just not pay if someone else can do the job the same. And yeah, I think, I think this is, I think it's rare that I'm agreeing with Mark Andreessen, but he had said this is a secular change rather than a blip. And, and I agree with that. I think unless these elite MBA programs really rethink how they work and what they teach, I think there's going to be a big issue. The only thing that they do offer is the network, which I've been the beneficiary of from my own alumni network and like, that's still there.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  So I think there, the network is still a pretty incredible thing, and that's something that AI will never replace. But overall, in terms of the actual tangible skills, it makes all the sense in the world to me that they're not producing them right now.

• 50:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  And just to broaden out, it's not just Harvard, right? This is from the story Harvard isn't the only elite business school, where recent grads seem to be stumbling on their way into the job market. More than a dozen top-tier MBA programs, including those at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Stanford's Graduate School of Business, and NYU's Stern School of Business, had worse job placement outcomes last year than any other in recent memory. And now, look, I've poked at it a couple of times, you know, in this conversation, and kind of ingest, but maybe not. And to me, I wonder, is this like going to be the first mass? I don't want to call it job displacement, but maybe like,

• 50:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Workplace ripple? I don't know. Maybe job displacement. Who knows? I shouldn't really be couching the language so much. That's gonna happen due to AI. So, listen to this. This is from the Financial Time.

• 50:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, this is from, I think, David Solomon at Goldman Sachs. He spoke about the impact AI would have on his company's business and those of his clients. The bank now has 11,000 engineers among its 46,000 employees. And they're using AI to help draft public filing documents. The work of drafting an S1, the initial registration prospectus for an IPO, might have taken a six-person team two weeks to complete, but it can now be done 95% by AI in minutes.

• 51:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  The person who shared this on Twitter, John LeFever, LeFerv, he said white collar jobs are gonna go first and fast. So, I ask you this, is like the MBA job, though, you know, synthesizing information, putting together PowerPoint presentations. Can you just now kind of dump a lot of that work into a Claude, a ChatGPT, or a Gemini?

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Yes, and yes, and yes. I think like this example, and I read plenty of S1s, they are essentially like a Mad Libs-style thing with a little bit of actual writing. And they are very, very heavy documents. They're very highly redlined, regulated documents that get written, which is again, this is a perfect use case for where AI just almost naturally will do it better than a traditional person. And just to feed in different data sources, update them in real time, create that end content. There's no doubt in my mind, every public filing document will get written by AI.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  And I imagine, I'm curious who the players are. There's gotta be some out there, some startups or big companies working on this. And that would have taken six bankers working two weeks at a minimum, from the tweet. So, I think. This type of work, I agree, is going to be the most easily replaced by AI. To defend MBAs for a moment, I do think, again, I don't know if it's cause or effect, like you get a lot of really, really smart people admitted to these programs. These are also, that's the type of profile and personality, I think, that is going to figure out how to work with AI ahead of others.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  So at least when I went many years ago to the MBA program and still I'm close with a lot of my classmates, they are the ones who are working in AI, figuring out what's next, like working with AI faster than other people. So I still think, but does that personality or profile not go for an MBA in the future and pay a hundred, 120 grand or more for that because they don't feel they don't need to? Maybe that'll be the case.

• 53:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  But if they're going to be the ones that are going to figure out how to use AI faster than others, then wouldn't we see a different trend? Like, wouldn't it just be that they're hired more than they have been in the past?

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I think we're in the, we're definitely in the interim period here. And maybe I'll backtrack on that. I guess it's in totality, maybe not. It's just, there's a lot of really smart people in these programs and I'm guessing a lot of them will be the ones that figure it out. But yeah, maybe the, the cookie cutter profile as well, isn't as risk-taking necessarily.

• 54:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Man, learn to code and AI is going to do your work. Get an MBA education, AI is going to do your work. I think there's really only one job left. If you're thinking about aspiring to something, got to go be the CEO of an app that the US is going to ban and to the dais you go. So shout out to you, Shou Chu. You are our unexpected party guest of the week here on the show.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  We'll see you on the dais.

• 54:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  We'll see you on the dais. All right, Ron Jon. What a show. Thanks for coming on and we'll have a lot to talk about next week as well.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  All right. See you next week. It's going to be an interesting one.

• 55:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Sure will. All right, everybody. Thank you for listening. We have a great show coming for you next Wednesday. I'm not going to say the guest, but when you see it in your feed, I think you're going to be inclined to listen and I can't wait to bring it to you. And then Ron Jon and I are going to be back on Friday. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 55:17Speaker 02

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