(Preview) What Memory Can Do for ChatGPT, OpenAI's Future and Google's Circles Past, What College Football Can Teach Us About Tech

Talking through the implications of memory capabilities for ChatGPT, the future of AI companionship, OpenAI's platform ambitions, and why Google Circles never found a market. At the end: College football, tech, and a bit of Bell Labs history.

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

• 0:00Andrew Sharp?

  Hello and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech.

• 0:08Andrew Sharp?

  To accordingly in the years to come. Matthew says Ben and Andrew loved the latest episode on Facebook's three eras and one thread jumped out to me. The way OpenAI is talking about platform ambitions publicly and in Sam's recent interview with Ben reminds me a lot of Facebook circa 2010 to 2012. Back then Zuckerberg talked about building an OS layer, SDKs, third-party devs, the whole thing. It felt like a big bet on becoming the platform everyone else would build on. And I'm starting to hear echoes of that same narrative in how Sam Altman frames OpenAI's role today. Some of this might be structural.

• 0:51Andrew Sharp?

  Venture-backed companies seem to get nudged toward platform strategies and it's a recurring ambition in tech, but one that often runs into the same walls. Do you see the same parallels or does OpenAI's positioning feel fundamentally different this time? Ben, what do you think?

• 1:09Ben Thompson?

  I thought this was a really interesting email that was very thought-provoking and you know, Sam Altman's discussion, I've, just for context, I'm critical of the OpenAI API, broadly speaking, in that I think it's a distraction. I think what it takes to be a good enterprise company, you have to maintain old standards, you have to, you know, backwards compatibility. And oh, by the way, I don't, OpenAI always talks about capacity constraints. Well, some of their capacity is being used by API customers or a lot of their capacity being used by API customers. I just think there's a real fundamental disconnect in pursuing a consumer company and trying to be an API company. I think those are two very, very different jobs.

• 1:54Ben Thompson?

  And I think it's a distraction and a waste of resources and.

• 2:00Ben Thompson?

  For a consumer company to be trying to be an API company as well. This is, this is where, in an ideal world, this is how the Microsoft relationship should have worked out. Where Microsoft is the API provider, that's what they do, that's what they're good at. And OpenAI is pushing forward. It goes back to the, I wrote an article like a decade ago about how the shame of mobile, and I think I was doing this in the context of the iPad, is the price to become a platform in this era is you have to build a great product. But all the skills that go into building a great product make you kind of a crappy platform provider for developers.

• 2:45Ben Thompson?

  Because the whole point of being a platform is you're letting them shine and make great products. And you're just being stable, you're not competing with them, you're maximizing what you can do for developers. And I'm like, the shame of it is that Microsoft is a much better platform company, but they suck at product. So they will not be a platform company in this era. Apple is a great product company and they suck at being a platform, but we're stuck with them. And in an ideal world, OpenAI would have internalized this and say, okay, if we're gonna really lean into being, to be the best possible product company we can be, by definition, it's actually good that we be a bad platform company

• 3:29Ben Thompson?

  because the skills and capabilities necessary are inversely correlated. And Microsoft is great at being a platform company. We can let them do it, let them do all the dirty work, do all the maintenance, all those sorts of things. They have the channel. And so we can basically monetize our technologies through them, not to the greatest extent theoretically possible, because they have to take margin too, but we can free ourselves of this burden and push forward and be the best possible consumer company we should be. That's my, that's my thesis, and I still stand behind it.

• 4:05Andrew Sharp?

  And it's not like that thesis forsakes their upside.

• 4:10Andrew Sharp?

  On the consumer side.

• 4:10Ben Thompson?

  No, it enhances it. That's the point.

• 4:13Andrew Sharp?

  Right.

• 4:13Ben Thompson?

  Like you, you can do more and do better. There's just the, the fundamental skills.

• 4:19Andrew Sharp?

  Like they're still taking the moonshot. They're just taking a smarter moonshot by offloading the really annoying, boring responsibilities.

• 4:27Ben Thompson?

  They're increasing the likelihood they achieve the moonshot because all their woods behind one arrow. And it's not just that it's different skills. It's different cultures. The culture of a platform API provider is fundamentally different than a groundbreaking product maker. And to the extent they need to be a groundbreaking product maker is the extent to which they are diluting their effectiveness and their long-term capability by trying to be a platform. So that's my overarching critique.

• 4:55Andrew Sharp?

  But I, I sense a however coming here in response to Matthew's email. Am I right?

• 5:00Ben Thompson?

  So what I think was compelling about what, what Sam said to me in that interview was this concept of they, there's a lot of product needs where they can't fulfill all of them. And this memory bit gets to it where could I take my memory? Could I take my, my AI persona? And bring that into other apps where you sign in, signing in with chat GPT doesn't just mean it's an identity login. It means you're bringing your AI,

• 5:32Ben Thompson?

  your circle into other experiences. And so like, take this recipe example. At the end of the day, again, I think the chatbot interface is underrated. I think text is the natural interface. I, I wrote messaging is mobile's killer app in like 2012 or 2013, literally the day before Facebook acquired WhatsApp. One of my like luckiest timings of all time, uh, where I basically laid out the rationale for this acquisition before, before it came out. So, so I'm on with, but, but at the end of the day, it's not the best interface for a recipe app. Like I want a recipe app that I could see on my phone very quickly in the kitchen or on a screen or whatever it might be. So I can interact with it. So wouldn't it be better for Matthew? If he could sign into like a paprika, like, like a, a great, great recipe app?

• 6:18Ben Thompson?

  That, that it's just there and it's manifested in a way that's appropriate to the use case at hand. I think that's a compelling vision. I will just note, I don't think Sam actually answered my concerns about the platform. That's a different platform business than.

• 6:38Ben Thompson?

  Random companies using our API. Now, maybe the argument is using our API, then we can layer in the login on top and it's all sort of ties together.

• 6:49Andrew Sharp?

  So they're maintaining their muscles in order to take the next step.

• 6:53Ben Thompson?

  No, I think what it is is backwards justification for the fact they started out as an API business and it's very difficult to kill. That's the whole problem with API businesses. Once they're out there, they're out there. And unfortunately, I think the relationship with Microsoft has probably diminished to the point where they can't just seamlessly hand it off or whatever it might be. But that vision of carrying your companion with you is really compelling. It actually fits with what I'm talking about. Part of the idea of the AI being with you is you're to limit it to one user interface, which is whatever OpenAI provides, is a constraint on that vision because my circles do not all live within one app. It would be nice to be able to bring that with me.

• 7:36Ben Thompson?

  And, you know, and this also speaks to, this is the Apple slash Google opportunity, which is the easiest way to have an AI with you is to control the underlying platform where you interact with all these devices. Like you can, Google and Apple can see everything on screen. They have access to memory on your device. They can insert themselves in any and all conversations in a way that ChatGPT needs to get all these partnerships and sign up people to be able to bring it in is much more challenging. That, that, no, I think that part of the vision is compelling. I, and that is an update on my critique. I still stand by my critique, but I do think that idea of carrying, and I think memory solidifies that vision

• 8:21Ben Thompson?

  of carrying your AI with you to different experiences is, is a good one. And also, they're the only ones that can do this. They're the only ones that are large enough, have enough users where they could go to everyone and say, you should add a sign in with ChatGPT button.

• 8:36Andrew Sharp?

  And it's all potentially a lot more valuable and compelling than being able to take your Facebook profile with you anywhere you go on the internet. So in that respect, like OpenAI's position. May actually be

• 8:49Ben Thompson?

  Right, because that that gets back at our initial critique, which is like, why do I want my friends and family with me in this app?

• 8:55Andrew Sharp?

  I don't want to sign in with my Facebook account back in 2010 when I was it was full of drunk photos for my college years. But good email, Matthew. And with that, we have one other question on ChatGPT. John says, regarding Ben's take on ChatGPT memory, didn't Google try to do this with Google Circles? The colored ovals that comprise the different facets of Ben was what Google Circles was trying to do as a social network. You could present different aspects of yourself to different circles. I thought it was a cool idea, but it didn't seem to catch on. Was it because the tech just wasn't ready yet?

• 9:34Andrew Sharp?

  Or because we weren't yet so ubiquitously online that we all had to adopt different personas for different forums? Today, for instance, one person's posts to Facebook are different than their posts to LinkedIn and different than posts to a group chat with a bunch of college fraternity brothers. Ben, do you have thoughts for John? A little Google Circles history here?

• 9:56Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, no, this this came up at the time I wrote this article. This was a lot of people responding to this. So so the because, yes, that is the idea of Google Circles, and it was a great idea. The problem is, success is about more than ideas. I'm actually looking back at my I did a follow up daily update to social networking 2.0, which I just clicked through here. And my section on this is called Circles and Timing. Like, like, timing matters. You need at that moment in time, number one, there wasn't the the the cognizance of this to to sort of which which John sort of admitted. There's also the bit that Google Circles had no social network.

• 10:36Ben Thompson?

  You needed that. That was the prerequisite to like, yes, ideally, I could sort everyone in my life into these circles and Google's plus would handle that. But none of the people in my life are on Google Circles like that. That's that's a real obstacle to this. So the, yes, there's but there's a lot of examples of tech history like this, and tech is not enough. And Google's not a social networking company. That's not they don't have the right culture. There's so many pieces that go into this being the case. And what there's a broader point about complex systems versus design systems.

• 11:13Ben Thompson?

  We talked about this in context of like manufacturing and tariffs and all these sorts of bits and pieces. I'm very skeptical of attempts to design perfect systems from the top down. Complex systems are emergent because there's so many things that go into them and making them work that matter. And in this case, it makes sense. If a Google Circles came along today, like a lot of people have manufactured this using group chats, using different social networks, or in my case, even using different personas. And so something like that would make more sense today. But then you still have the things like, well, no one's actually on Google Circles, right? And this is where the question of the opportunity and everyone goes back was why everyone wants to be a platform.

• 11:58Ben Thompson?

  Like the lower down the stack you are, the more you could theoretically manifest and show these sorts of things. But it's kind of like the old debate about why aren't there super apps in America when they're in, when they're in China? And X the app for everything or whatever. It's like, that's never going to happen because the nature of how this stuff came to market in the US, where you started out, most people had PCs, they're going from PCs to smartphones. And there was already this real bifurcation of different communications channels and stuff. Whereas China, most people's first computer was their smartphone. And it was much more viable to create the everything app because it was the first thing people got. And that was a natural place to build it out.

• 12:41Ben Thompson?

  You didn't have that, that path depend, the path dependency really matters. That path was closed to the US. That's why we ended up with a screen full of apps. And again, I think another area where, where Mark Zuckerberg really got this wrong, you know, going on and on, no one wants a bunch of apps. They want to be centered around the people. No, actually that's wrong. They do want a bunch of apps because that's where we were at. You know, go back to the Facebook phone in 2012 or 2013 or whatever it was. It's like, no, it's too late. If the Facebook phone existed a decade ago, maybe, but it didn't. Whereas in China. That was how it emerged because people were getting their first smartphones in 2011,

• 13:22Ben Thompson?

  2012, 2013, whatever, and WeChat was there and that was the killer app right away. And there it was the opposite. It was easier to launch something in WeChat, which everyone had, instead of expecting people to go get apps. A- a- and path dependency matters hugely. And it matters to this discussion and this, this point John is raising. Google Circles was a great idea. The great ideas are one piece of many. A- and it also, just to circle this back to ChatGPT. Being where they are, when they were, getting all that consumer mind share, opens up all these possibilities to them that are not open to anyone else. If ChatGPT does not become this companion with you that goes everywhere

• 14:06Ben Thompson?

  and is tied into all these apps, it's not going to be any other foundation company. It's not going to be Anthropic. It's not going to be Grok. The only other possibility is that it's one of the phone companies, Google, Apple or, Apple or Google. But even there, they're constrained to an extent by virtue of just an Android or just an iPhone. That's, that's why I, I, I, I'm so strident about OpenAI going for this. And why I say this has the potential to be the biggest company since Facebook, because they're the right place at the right time. And those are actually the rarest possible qualities.

• 14:43Andrew Sharp?

  And when you say it's just not possible for a company like Anthropic, just to tease that out, it's because they lack the scale of users to make it a meaningful.

• 14:53Ben Thompson?

  Right. There's nothing technologically why it couldn't be Anthropic. The problem is they have like 30 million users and, and ChatGPT is 800 million users. Just because ChatGPT was first and they captured that.

• 15:03Andrew Sharp?

  Is getting to a billion users and Google Circles, maybe Google Circles could have succeeded if they had gone back in 2003 and launched a social network that took the entire world by storm.

• 15:15Ben Thompson?

  If they owned your identity, like I'm talking about, and then could help you parcel out your identity, yes, that would be compelling. They didn't own identity. Facebook did. It was already too late.

• 15:24Andrew Sharp?

  All right, and that is the end of the free preview. If you'd like to hear more from Ben and I, there are links to subscribe in the show notes, or you can also go to sharptech.fm. Either option will get you access to a personalized feed that has all the shows we do every week, plus lots more great content from Strategery and the Strategery Plus bundle. Check it out, and if you've got feedback, please email us at [email protected].