OpenAI's Business Model Problem, Apple's Mixed Reality Vision, Ed Sheeran's Copyright Win — Techmeme Ride Home Crossover

Brian McCullough of the Techmeme Ride Home Podcast joins Ranjan Roy and Alex Kantrowitz for our weekly news recap show. We cover: 1) OpenAI's massive losses 2) Whether generative AI has a business model problem 3) The battle between open source AI and proprietary research 3) AI fears go mainstream 4) The White House hosts AI leaders amid worries 5) The AI PR industrial complex 6) The WGA strike and AI's potential to replace writers 7) The Fed pause 8) Apple earnings 9) Apple's mixed reality device 10) Ed Sheeran's copyright victory 11) How Sheeran's win might influence AI 12) Welcome to Brooklyn, Ed Sheeran. --- 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?

  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.

• 1:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition, where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. We are running this show as a crossover episode with the Tech Meme Ride Home podcast, so we're going to run it on Big Technology Podcast feed. We are going to run it on the Tech Meme Ride Home feed. I'm Alex Kantrowitz. We have a great series of story topics to cover with you today. We're going to talk about the OpenAI business model, the fact that it lost a lot of money last year, and whether its business is sustainable. We're also going to talk about the proprietary versus open source battle, and whether big tech is going to have a chance to compete with the open source community when it comes to artificial intelligence. It's actually a more competitive fight than you might imagine. We'll also cover some of the concerns about AI that came up this week, a lot of AI this week.

• 1:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  But hey, I guess that's the big story, and also the White House and other... Government initiatives to try to rein in some of the potential risks of that technology and then stay with us the second half. We're going to cover the economy. We're going to cover Apple earnings and we're going to cover, of course, Ed Sheeran. Yes, Ed Sheeran has been exonerated. He won his copyright trial. I actually think this is a big deal, not only for the entertainment and music industry, for the precedent that it sets for generative AI and all the different types of content that's going to come out of this new technology. Let me introduce our guests. Ranjan Roy is here with us as always on Fridays. Welcome, Ranjan.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Free Ed Sheeran.

• 2:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we also have Brian McCullough, who is the host of the Tech Meme Ride Home Podcast.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Yes, every weekday I do the tech news in 15 minutes. So Alex and I always like to say that it's a good compliment. We sort of, I'll give you the background every day and then on the weekends or whenever Alex will give you the in-depth, hard-hitting analysis. So yeah, thanks. Tech Meme Ride Home.

• 2:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, thanks for being here. Yeah, I agree. Like you can do Tech Meme Ride Home Monday to Friday. And you know, if you need a deeper or longer podcast, maybe go on Big Technology Podcast feed on the weekends or on Wednesday when I drop the flagship interview and potentially, you know, you could really round out your media diet with those two shows. Let's touch on our first story of the week. OpenAI just reported or information reported that OpenAI lost 540 million last year. That's double what it lost the year before. And this was before it became a household name like it is today. I mean, that is a lot of money. And it just leads me to believe that maybe this revolution that we're seeing with ChatGPT and Dolly and image generators, I mean, is it actually

• 3:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  going to even be a sustainable business any, at any time soon? I mean, it just seems like they're spending a lot of money. They're not making a lot. And the story picks up, picks up that even as revenue picked up, reaching an annual pace of hundreds of millions of dollars, weeks after OpenAI launched a paid version of ChatGPT in February, those costs are likely going to keep rising as more customers use its artificial intelligence technology and the company trains future versions of its technology. So like, here's the real question about this tech, right, is Let's say it replaces search. Is it so expensive to operate that it actually becomes a bad business that won't make money? And, you know, we might not even see it reach its potential because it's that costly to run.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  I mean, if that's all of last year, what you got to figure the last six months would be is what? Six times that number? Like, what's it was 10

• 4:30Speaker 01

  ChatGPT was only released November 30th.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  For one month of last year that the entire public was using it.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Right. So what? Maybe they've blown through the entire $10 billion? Although, remember, that's the point is the investment was not necessarily money. It was like kind of credits.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Cloud credits.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, um, I mean, that's an open question. I mean, one of the things in that piece is that, Sam Altman also says that he wants, he thinks they might have to raise $100 billion eventually. He told somebody this week that this might be the most capital intensive tech startup of all time. But remember, what he is doing is going after, um, you know, computers being sentient, right? Um, so he has like a different sort of, uh, if, if, if what the money that they're talking about is, is training models to get to the, the artificial intelligence of everyone's dreams.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Like, I can see that that would be super expensive. What you're talking about now is the, call it a product, call it a gimmick of ChatGPT right now. Is that sustainable? And I

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I think this is the biggest issue I had with the Microsoft investment that, you know, it started out sounding, it was $1 billion and it's $10 billion. And then you realize they're essentially just paying for the compute for every ridiculous ChatGPT query you make, you know, let's make us an article in the style of Ed Sheeran lyrics that would cost some money. And OpenAI is paying for it. And maybe Microsoft's paying it for it on the backend. So I think we are so far from understanding the actual unit economics of any of these queries, any of these searches. And, and I think this is one of those things that even with Google right now, when they're going after this. What is it going to look like? Is this going to be like ride sharing where no one ever figures out the economics of any individual actual transaction?

• 6:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  But we do have some numbers, right? So this is from Sam Altman himself. He was talking, I think, to Elon Musk. He said, "The average is probably a single-digit cent per chat," trying to figure out how more precisely about how we can optimize it.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Or per query.

• 6:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Per chat. But he was saying per chat. But even if it's like just a conversation, I mean, it's a lot of money. You multiply that times a thousand and you think about like what people might pay for an ad rate. By the way, the business model here, and we've talked about this in the past, completely not figured out, right? So if you don't have a business model, you're spending more than a cost to deliver people from search. You know, it does start to, and by the way, I still think there's a lot of potential here, but people have made it, made it out to be that this is the inevitable future. And I'm just saying, maybe the companies that are running this don't have enough money to support these type of actions inevitable in perpetuity. And it might end up being that they will only be able to do, for instance, paid, which actually limits the amount of scale they can ever reach.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Well, you got to figure that the unit economics on this are going to come down. We assume that always in technology. However, there are other costs that are going to be coming in the near future. We also know that to run, to train these models could be like $50 million a model, right? So that's also a huge expense that's in the background. But there's another one coming, because they've trained all these models on data sets that they were able to get without paying for them. And as we've seen, people are aware of that now, and they're going to start charging. So if you want to do the next GPT-5, 6, 7, or whatever, and you need data sets that aren't Reddit, that aren't the freely available internet, you're going to have to pay up for the people to give you that data. So that side of the equation is also going up in terms of cost.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I believe Reddit now made their API paid for this exact reason, that they don't want people, which I actually do believe Reddit is probably one of the most valuable text data sets in the world. Now you have to pay for it. I mean, you commented on it earlier. When Sam Altman is saying, "We might need to raise $100 billion," proudly saying, "We're the most capital-intensive startup in history."

• 8:28Speaker 01

  That's a red flag for me. I mean, those are the statements I think you look back on years from now and you're like, what were we all thinking?

• 8:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Which is amazing, given the moment that we're seeing right now with every tech company, every startup is actually trying to go the opposite way, which is to say, we're not capital intensive and we can actually run a business with a profit. I mean, that's what we're looking at right now. And if you can't do that, then where, where, where does this lead to down the line? And I think this is sort of like the place where we should wrap this segment, but it's definitely a question that we need to ask. And that is, if this becomes so expensive that these companies can't run the businesses anymore, do we end up seeing this rollback from ChatGPT being what was the fastest growing consumer application in history to something that simply cannot continue to be supported by these companies? And actually, like, that would be the biggest argument for us being in a bubble right now, is that these companies are giving away, are subsidizing these chats

• 9:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  to the extent that simply they will have to roll back, or they're gonna go out of business.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  So this might be a seg into the next segment, hopefully to play a little bit of host here. But I was talking to someone deep in the, in the AI space this week, and they were saying, it's amazing how ChatGPT has quickly become irrelevant, at least in their eyes to the space. And one of the reasons for that is, is who needs pay when you have all of these free models and open source models running around? And there was a big piece that I did on my show today about, there's a leaked memo from a Google employee from April, where he's essentially saying internally to other folks at Google, we have been looking over our shoulder at ChatGPT. Meanwhile, what we really need to worry about

• 10:08Speaker 02

  is this open stuff, there is no moat here if all of this stuff is out there and can be run on people's laptops.

• 10:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So this is a memo from a Google senior engineer named Luke. Seren now, and I think that this is one of the most important memos that we've seen come out of Google, maybe in its history. And I know that sounds like big terminology and hyperbole, but as I read it, I was like thinking like, oh, my goodness, this is actually

• 10:34Speaker 01

  I was reminded of the Microsoft memos from the early 90s about, you know, getting the internet of religion and stuff like that.

• 10:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. So I mean, it's definitely what it sounds like. And let me read a little bit for listeners and viewers, so they can get a sense as to what Luke was saying. So he says, while our models still hold a slight edge in terms of quality, the gap is closing astonishingly quickly. Open source models are faster, more customizable, more private, and pound for pound, pound for pound, more capable. And they're doing things with $113 per M's that we struggle with, with 10 billion, 10 million and 540 B. And they're doing it, they're doing so in weeks, not months. This has profound implications for us. And so he goes on to say, we have no secret sauce. People will not pay for a restricted model when free unrestricted alternatives are comparable in quality. And giant models are slowing

• 11:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  us down. In the long run, the best models are the ones which can be iterated upon quickly. So if I'm getting it right, what Luke is saying to Google is that so much of the technology behind this current wave of AI is already out there, open sourced, and there's a community that's building upon it. And Google might think that it has a research edge because it's really helped push forward the status quo so much. And maybe that's something that you can look at retrospectively, look at the history and say, should Google have open source that transformer model? But basically what he's saying is the game is over right now. This is open source. You cannot win if you're going to hold things back because what you need to do is collaborate with that community to end up building the products.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think this is the single most important thing in the industry right now because what we're going to see is business problems that actually you need to solve, you don't need. What is 175 trillion parameters and the largest models, the DaVinci models that OpenAI has necessarily, even in work I've done, fine tuning smaller models, you end up with similar results when they're fairly straightforward business challenges. So I think the, what the actual overall monetization model looks like, so much of the work that will be done, will be able to be done by smaller open source models. Just go on the Hugging Face community and find models that have already been trained for very specific use cases.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  And I, I think this is exciting. I think this is probably maybe the dream of technological innovation kind of actually being dispersed throughout the business world in an equitable way. Maybe this is actually going to be it.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  So I also run the ride home fund and starting in December, basically everything inbound was like 90% AI stuff. And you would talk to people and they'd be like, either the, the big guys are going to own this, so this is not worth investing in. Or you see a flood of, take this image and put it into the AI and you can make a webpage coded for you or, or, you know, architecture plans or whatever. And, and that feels like investing in a website in 1996 or something, right? Like, but what I've been seeing lately, like, is this is where the energy is at. Like, these are the companies that I'm interested in investing in because it is sort of like this a thousand flowers blooming where it's like, if you,

• 13:40Speaker 02

  because then it becomes like varietals. I have to credit Chris Messina for this. But the idea that like, there's these large language models out there in the wild that people are tweaking. The way that varietals for wine, you know, wine tastes different based on the valley it's grown in and like the soil and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And so like, what if that is like, if, if that's the case, if this stuff has escaped the lab and people are just jamming on it, then this could be like the greatest like explosion of software and tech creativity of our lifetimes, certainly since web 2.0. Because it's like, if it's not going to be owned by the big folks and it's not just adding a chatbot

• 14:25Speaker 02

  to an Excel spreadsheet, then it is like, It's Figma's all the way down where it's like people can just tweak existing software models or blow no one's up.

• 14:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  And he says, he says, this is a important quote, and I'll let you talk in a second, Ron John, but he says, "We need them more than they need us." And he says, "We can try to hold on tightly to our secrets while outside innovation dilutes their value, or we can try to learn from each other." When was the last time you heard someone from inside of Google or Facebook or Microsoft or an Apple say, "We need them more than they need us"?

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Maybe they've been saying this the whole time and those memos never got leaked. Because, I mean, no, I think the tide has definitely shifted and I think that's exactly the point that right now, as OpenAI losing $540 million and making bigger and bigger models internally, until people are actually building on those and using those in their day-to-day life and build, you know, for actually really specific use cases, it's not going to realize its value. So exactly, they need the entire developer community working on top of it. On the varietal wine thing, I kind of love this. I'm definitely, if I was a Thread boy, I think I would have to make which model would be which wine, because that's amazing, but...

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Get in touch with me, because Chris and I need to write this up and do it like that. Maybe we'll do it if you do guest posing. Let me, let me give you the counter argument, because I did give a counter argument on my show today. I couldn't bring up the tweet, so I can't give credit to the tweeter. But the counter argument is this, that what OpenAI is doing is what AWS has done and what Microsoft did in the 90s, which is own the developer ecosystem, right? And so that's your moat.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  If you can get people in your tooling ecosystem, then it kind of functionally doesn't matter, because if they're all creating, they're creating within your moat, right? So the thousand flowers blooming are still something that you, you know, can monetize in theory, if you can make the economics work, but so... I, again, I'm coming around to this idea that it is a wide, it might be the greatest wide open blue skies that we've seen in years, but there's a counter argument here that there are playbooks where people could still lock down their advantage.

• 16:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  The counter counter argument would be that developers could just use chat GPT and displace the functions that maybe OpenAI or Microsoft would would play. No, I'm, I'm in, I'm being a little bit facetious here, but I mean, this, this idea that you can use some of these tools to end up coding some of the backends or whatever you need. Of course, people will opt for convenience, but it'll be very interesting to watch this software end up participate in the creation process itself. And it'll be very interesting to see how, how that impacts the developer ecosystems and the infrastructure that they need to build on top of these tool.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think one more point on that. This is even more where the bigger the model that OpenAI is trying to train and build and the more expensive it is, if people don't need that or even know how to use it, it's just going to become more and more of a waste.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  And he says in his piece, like, that's not the point. Bigger doesn't mean better. If you can have a 20 billion thing that runs on your laptop.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  Like, you could take it to an office and you could, you know, train it on the, the drawings of an architecture office and you don't need the biggest model in the world.

• 17:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  So isn't this, this is a very interesting moment because what this also does is it puts into relief some of the big questions that we've had about AI safety, right? Like, how many discussions have there been? I remember when DALL-E first came out, for instance, people were just like, well, OpenAI is being very careful about the type of images that you can make from DALL-E. And then all of a sudden, what happens? The image, and this is one of the examples that the Google guy gives in, that Luke gives in his piece, is that. The underlying technology to make those images to do stable diffusion becomes available widely. The next thing you know, you're in a discord with Midjourney and you can create faces of Donald Trump and all different sorts of situations.

• 18:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  And it does, it's kind of interesting to see this. And you put it in contrast with what happened this week where Jeff Hinton, who was at Google, has left and his stated reason is that he's a little bit nervous about what the AI is leading to, and he wants to speak out about it. So it's very interesting because I want, it's these two very interesting stories come out of Google. One, we really can't control it. Two, I'm worried what happened if we can't control it. Like all of the discussions, all of the discussions about how you do good governance around this, how you set boundaries around this. All those discussions seem to go out the window if it becomes something that is so openly available that anybody can get access to image creation, video creation, audio manipulation and text. What do you guys think?

• 19:09Speaker 02

  The, this is probably a dangerous analogy, but you know, when people say that AI is, could potentially end humanity, life as we know it. They make the analogy to the atom bomb, to nuclear energy and things like that. But you don't have the ability, like you need a nation state. You need entire apparatus, trillions of dollars to create a nuclear bomb. A person, a 19 year old can't do it in their mom's basement, right? Problem with this stuff is it's out there and anyone can use it. And so like, we need to be thinking about this, I think, in different ways, which is, it's not just that the, the horses are out of the barn.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  It's that this is trivially easy for any 13 year old hacker to use or exploit, or create a great tool or business out of. So it's like, again, it would be great if it's not controlled by the gatekeepers, but also be prepared for if it's controlled by 13 year olds as well.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  I think the problem I have in the danger conversation is how, I mean, and I think Sam Altman kind of represents the epitome of this of walking around saying they fear AI taking over the world while trying to push and build the biggest, most capital intensive startup and invest 10 billion, hundreds of billions of dollars into the development of it. I still feel that. The leaders that try to push the narrative around AGI is going to kill us all, given they're the same ones controlling it implicit in that is we are the only ones that can save you. Because otherwise, why would you be working on it? Why would you be building a business on it? Jeff Hinton leaving, I think is interesting because at least it's someone who is saying,

• 20:55Speaker 01

  I will no longer take part in this and I want to be able to speak openly about it. But at least reading the Cade Metz and the Times piece, like, a lot of his concerns are almost more on the mundane side. Yes, disinformation will likely increase significantly. Yes, the inherent biases in these models are going to continue existing, but I mean, we can address those issues, but the idea that artificial intelligence will become more powerful than humanity and kill us all. I think, I don't know, I'm still struggling this one. I'm pretty cynical on a lot of things.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  There's a weird cultural thing to this where probably the three of us have been in these forums since the early 2000s, you know, where you're debating like the Fermi paradox and like what happens when AI takes over and Nick Bostrum's books and things like that. Like this has been the favorite parlor game. Sorry, circle jerk of of technology circles.

• 21:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right, now we're putting explicit on the podcast.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  For 20 years. And so I I'm with you in the sense that I get annoyed that this is the thing. Because people have been talking about this in forums for 20 years. That as as like a, oh, my God, like, let's get high and imagine the worst case scenarios. And now it's almost like it's the it's the savior complex where it's like, okay, now that's here. I've been telling you for 20 years it's coming. And so I was right. And and also you should only like, I feel like it. It fits into some of the worst cultural. Not even stereotypes, but like frameworks of of tech folks and how they think of the world.

• 22:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  But don't worry, because the White House and our politicians are here to save us. This week, the White House, according to the New York Times, gathered, I mean, and basically every other publication that covered this, gathered Silicon Valley chief executives, like Sam Altman and Sundar Pichai, to limit the risks and push them to limit the risks of artificial intelligence. And they call it the administration's most visible effort to confront rising questions and call to regulate the rapid, the advancing technology. And Joe Biden had some choice words for the group. Ron John picked them out on Twitter. He says, I hope you can educate us on what you think is most needed to protect society. I mean, obviously, it's going to be regulation that benefits the companies in the room.

• 23:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  But it is interesting to see this start to take, take hold in Washington and, and, and governments around the world. And in one way, I'm just like, okay, well, maybe there's something there. I mean, there's $140 million on new research devoted to AI that the National Science Foundation is about to get. And then I also wonder, like I have with most of the conversations around big tech, whether the government is actually doing anything. And, you know, it did seem to me in this case to definitely be more of a photo op than something that, you know, might actually, because whether or not that might actually help us, because whether or not these like, you know, getting high in the dorm room conversations are actually going to manifest.

• 23:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Like, there's obviously stuff that we need to worry about when it comes to this new technology. And the question is, is the government up to the task?

• 24:05Speaker 01

  I think while I was triggered by Biden's, you know, going to a room full of CEOs and saying, you guys are going to have to direct us to prevent us from the dangers of AI. And in a way, maybe that shows that their narrative of AGI killing us all is working. When the President of the US is asking you. To help save us, but Lina Khan's op ed in the New York Times, I was very happy with. I think her very explicitly laying out, here is what happened with Web 2.0. Here's what happened with social media. Because we were not ahead of the game, we fell behind and then things got out of control. And then we need to be proactive on this. And I think it has to be civil society, researchers, academics, leading the conversation

• 24:49Speaker 01

  just as much as the CEO of OpenAI or Microsoft.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  The UK regulators, I think it's the CMA, came out with the same thing the same day. Like, so this is not a case, I think I said on the show, that the regulators are sleeping on AI, that they see the revolution is coming like the rest of us. Let me, let me do another history hat for you, though. And I'm going to use the atomic bomb analogy again. One of the reasons that we have the Atomic Energy Agency is when all this stuff was happening, World War II was happening. So the government had extraordinary wartime powers. You know, the entire economy was on a war footing and like, you know, Ford was creating tanks, they weren't making cars, right? So if, if people really believe that this is an atomic bomb level moment, I don't know

• 25:35Speaker 02

  that, there's certainly not the, the appetite for that high level of regulation, like no one can do AI stuff or atomic stuff but the government. And I also don't think that there's any sort of laws in place, like this will be led by academia and corporate America. So the government kind of doesn't have a place.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Well, no, I mean, think about copyright, I think is going to be the first battleground in this, and it will be decided soon and there'll be definitely substantive legislation around it because it's huge. And we said, maybe that becomes one of the biggest changes in the unit economics, once OpenAI cannot scrape the entire internet or take every image and then recreate in the style of artist X. Like, I think this is where, it's such an actual realistic thing to deal with and go after. So I think that's going to be the first place. People look at, obviously, understanding the bias within models and trying to come up with some frameworks around this, I think is going to be important, too. Because we all completely, like, that stuff is so clear and obvious, and we've been talking

• 26:39Speaker 01

  about this for years now. So when this kind of technology becomes embedded in more and more day to day parts of our lives, I think the government's going to have to get involved. And I think they are, and obviously. Having a bunch of CEOs sitting around and asking them, what is your thought to save us is not necessarily the right idea, but at least they're doing something.

• 26:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I just hope they can do it without playing politics and, you know, they very noticeably did not invite Meta, which is pushing the standard forward. In fact, one of its models is part of this big open source movement that we're talking about. And when they asked the White House why Meta wasn't there, White House says Thursday's meeting was focused on companies currently leading in the space, especially on the consumer facing product side.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  I don't think that's political. I think that's just savage.

• 27:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  That is, well, maybe both, but you know, a little both there. So it brings me up to this, this one question that I have, which is that we're, we're in this moment that I call the AI PR industrial complex, which I wrote about on Big Technology this week. And it is quite interesting where like we are seeing substantive technological development, but we've also seen this flood of whether it is corporations or thread boys or thought leader grifters or politicians and regulators who are using this moment to say, okay, we are about to start to tackle these issues or get involved in these issues. And they make it seem like, you know, it seems like all you need to do is throw AI in your announcement. And much of the press just gobbles it up like completely without asking like, what the heck

• 28:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  is going on here? For instance, there was a bill from Senator Ed Markey and a handful of other members of Congress, including Ken Buck on the Republican side. They introduced legislation to prevent AI from launching a nuclear weapon. That was the head of, that was the headline of their press release. And it's just like, you know, first of all, it's completely implausible that, you know, that any government would allow AI to make that decision. Actually, it will never happen. Like if you know anything about government, and I think these guys do because they're in the government, you know that that's not going to happen. And then if you're trying to get like a press release out to say, hey,

• 28:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  listen, we don't want AI itself. We're trying to instruct the AI not to launch the nuclear code. I mean, I'm sorry, guys, but if you're relying on this bill to prevent AI from taking nuclear weapons and wiping out the world. You're not going to get anywhere.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, separate from nuclear weapons, you covered this too. I think the more hilarious, let's call it a press release was the report about IBM. Their CEO, Arvind Krishna, said that they would pause hiring for back office roles, 7,800 roles, because the type of roles that AI might replace.

• 29:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Now, everyone kind of approached this as, oh, look, here's one of the first signs that AI is going to kill jobs. I am looking at this as where is IBM in the AI race? IBM should have won it years ago with the amount of marketing they did around Watson. I honestly.

• 29:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, marketing doesn't win.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. And my, my call is this is almost a marketing announcement because by saying we're pausing hiring in the future on these roles, because you're trying to imply we are so good at AI that we already know exactly which jobs it's going to replace and we can already afford replacing them. So I had a little problem with this announcement. I don't think necessarily the, the point of this was to get that headline and put IBM's name back in the running alongside everyone else.

• 30:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's like, all right, congratulations. You got some more headlines about AI. But like, what was astonishing to me is that on IBM's Watson page, by the way, Watson is still a thing. The company says that, um, let's see, it says that Watson helps free up employees to focus on higher value work. And now it's trying to tell people, actually, what we're doing is going to eliminate the need to have employees. So do you want employees to do the higher value work? Or do you want to eliminate employees? It's completely confused, which is just like total evidence, in my, in my opinion, that what this is, is just part of this AI PR industrial complex, which is that companies, politicians, thinkfluencers,

• 30:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  et cetera, will just say anything to get their name in the headlines and potentially a little bit of that AI shine. And I think that there is a latent understanding that this is going on. But I also think that it's worth taking a moment to pause to think about and identify just how insidious this is going to be and how prevalent it will be across the tech industry and government.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  Same as it ever was.

• 31:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  But worse.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  A few months ago, it was Web three.

• 31:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, but I think, yeah.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  And twenty five years ago, though, when the internet, again, putting the history hat on, when the internet came about, there was a good four or five years where it's like you could excuse any decision, any layoffs, any new division that you're launching or whatever. Well, we need an internet strategy and because most people, including journalists, including lawmakers, but also the the the general public and shareholders, didn't really quite know what the internet thing was yet. No one, none of us in this room quite know what the AI thing is yet and how it's going to change our lives. So you get a lot of cover for using buzzwords right now.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I I for me, the biggest problem I have with this, and I'm very glad you wrote this piece, Alex, is because I am incredibly bullish and I've been doing a lot of work with generative AI. And and I can be cynical about a lot of things, crypto. But I think for me, the generative AI space, the most important part is there is so much potential to do real things, and this entire hype cycle might completely destroy that. And I've been about this in the past, that can innovation actually be prevented from hype? And I worry because when everyone's expectations get so high that no, I don't need this to just do some

• 32:27Speaker 01

  simple task for me, I want to completely change my entire business. And that doesn't happen in six months from now. You get a little disillusioned when OpenAI cannot come up with a simple business model and will lose tons and tons of money and Google realizes that we can't embed LLMs into our search. Then it makes people even more disillusioned, it makes investors more disillusioned. So I do worry that the PR, AI, PR industrial complex could.

• 32:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it?

• 32:54Speaker 01

  AI, PR.

• 32:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  I try to find a better term for it, but I'm sorry, what your worry?

• 33:00Speaker 01

  What? No, I mean.

• 33:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  That it's gonna hold us back.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Like, I've actually, I've been laughed at when I brought up the idea because of my friends that like, they argue that technological innovation is inevitable if the technology is the right one and a good one. I genuinely believe that if the hype cycle overtakes the technology itself, it can prevent it from ever being like going off the ground. And AI is in that moment right now.

• 33:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  We are, but it's very interesting because like every now and again, the theory gets tested with reality. And we'll just do one more story to end this segment, which is that. The writers are on strike in Hollywood and you know, we had Sharon Waxman on a little bit a while, you know, go saying, could this stuff eventually replace the writers? And obviously it's just not up to the task yet. Like Hollywood is saying, we're gonna replace you with chat GPT and all the writers are like, come on. And it's obviously clear that AI isn't gonna, even the best generative AI tools, you can put chat GPT four point X or GPT four point X up against the writers. It's just not going to do as good of a job, even if you have studio executives bashing their head against the wall, trying to figure it out.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  I don't know about that. I don't know about that. Here, here, think of this analogy. I did a story this week about how one writer was saying, what I fear is someone's got a rom com script and they're like, we need to make this more Nora Ephron. So you put it into the Nora Ephron bot and you get that snappy, great, you know, 30 screwball comedy dialogue or whatever. And also like, so like, what if, what if the, it's doing passes on like, let's make this more exciting. Let's make this funny or whatever. And then the writer's job is to just come in and clean it up and like, just do edits on top of like, like, so it's, it's almost like, this comes back to what we're, we were just saying, the writers are using this buzzword as a fear tactic,

• 34:51Speaker 02

  as a negotiating tactic. In theory, I also think that they have legitimate complaints in terms of the business model in the streaming era. But there, I, I would argue that there would be a huge disintermediation between the creative process. If all of a sudden the studios are like, well, here, you do this, you put it in the machine and then your job is to polish what the machine does.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I, I think the more important point you just made was the business model. And I think trying to distinguish the, or look at this as purely a creative process or a content output versus the overall picture, because what's happened is, Think of every Marvel movie that comes out is derivative. It's just, I mean, in terms of what AI should be able to do is create the script for the next Marvel movie. A couple of witticisms here and there, some, some like, you know, recitations of character references, whatever else.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  You can make a good living just polishing scripts. Like a Jason Manzoukis makes a good living going into these Marvel movies and adding a one joke that makes it into the movie. But he gets paid six figures.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 35:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  But go ahead.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  But that, that's why to me, that's more indicative of the larger problem is derivative content has become the center of a lot of the media business. And that has put writers trying to create original content in a worse position. And this is the thing is that, again, if you're creating truly original, genuine content, it's AI is not going to replace that anytime soon. And that's where, again, the bullish case, you can use AI in your creative process to make you better and make you do more. Which I think, again, I think things should move in that direction. But if all the studios are looking for is just the same thing over and over again, which is kind of where the movie industry has gone. Yes, AI is going to be right in the middle there.

• 36:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  And in the meantime, it's going to be a bargaining chip. And that I think is important because the studios and everyone negotiating with, you know, content union, for instance, will always say, well, we could just use AI. And Mike Isaac from the New York Times wrote about this yesterday on Twitter, actually. He said, after talking to folks smarter than me, I wonder how much of a fixation on AI is a head fake from studios using, using it as a bargaining chip? That is to say they don't care about it while chipping away at the bottom line, which is the basics of the pay scale for the streaming era. So I, I think that that might be the case, well, definitely will be the case in negotiations from now on. We're here on Big Technology Podcast and the Tech Meme Riot Home Podcast feeds, doing this as a crossover show. Really glad that you're here with us.

• 37:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  We're going to go to break and, and when we come back, we're going to talk about the latest in the economy, looking at the Fed and jobs. We're looking at Apple earnings. We're going to see if we can touch on this Verge story about Andreessen Horowitz. And we're going to wrap up with the big news that Mr. Ed Sheeran has been held innocent. In the accusations that said that he was copying music, he was not, at least according to the courts. Back right after this. This episode is brought to you by AVPoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data, and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control.

• 38:08Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 38:50Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 39:33Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 39:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Ron John Roy, who writes margins on Substack, Brian McCullough, GP of the Ride Home Fund, and then also the host of the Tech Meme Ride Home Podcast. Let's talk about the economy. Why don't we? So it looks like finally the Fed is going to pause its relentless campaign of interest rates. They raised another 0.25% or 25 basis points, if you like talking in Fed speak. And this might be it. Jerome Powell said in the recent meetings that people did talk about pausing, but not so much at this meetings, but he says we're feel like we feel like we're getting closer or maybe even there. And of course, this has a huge impact on tech valuations and the business world as a whole.

• 40:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Ron John, is it time to celebrate for the tech industry to celebrate? Have we done enough?

• 40:38Speaker 01

  I think this is where I don't know if I'll ever know what a good, stable economy looks like again, because right now we should be excited that the idea that the Fed finally will pause should be the best news ever, but the Fed will likely pause. The banking crisis is at the center of all of this. The idea that the economy is still relatively unstable. So part of the reason to pause is to maintain economic growth. It's not because inflation has come down so much that we can just very safely say we're done. And I think that's the reason they're not looking to pause because everything's great.

• 41:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  They're looking to pause, in fact, because everything is not great.

• 41:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  They almost have no choice here because we've already seen Silicon Valley Bank and now First Republic is, is gone. I mean, First Republic is a big bank.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  And this was the quietest, I mean, eerily quietest bank failure I have seen at least. Because, I mean, if you can remember SVB when we were down at South by Southwest, that was just overtaking everything. First Republic just went down. And I mean, I guess when it's telegraphed and you've already seen one, it's a lot, it's a lot smoother. But still, to me, this is a reminder, and I mean, the Fed gets it that things are a lot more unstable than, you know, the headline numbers show, like the jobs number today.

• 41:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  And the question is how that cascades and you like look at it, you're like, okay, maybe it's we're going in a good direction. Right. Like even some of the big tech companies are like now, now, you know, they're showing growth again. Meta, for instance, showing growth again for the first time in a handful of quarters. Apple actually not having a sales decline, which we're going to get to in a way that that it was expected. But you also have bank failures, the need to pause rates. I mean, the jobs number was good. Actually, unemployment rate is now 3.6%, 3.4%. It was expected to be at 3.6%. But yeah, there's just dealing with all these factors at once. I think you put it perfectly like you sort of throw your hands up and you say, well, I hope this is fine because there's so much, it does feel like they're balancing those plates on a stick.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  Do you buy that narrative? Cause I've seen that as well, that one of the things coming out of this last earnings week for, for the big tech companies is that it's not that all of a sudden they turned around, but maybe people are like, well, it's bottom. We know where the bottom is and, and we should see things turning around right now. Do you guys buy that narrative that maybe it was just took 18 months after the COVID hangover and now cycles are returning, you know, people are starting to buy laptops again and things like that.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Not, not necessarily for me, because I actually think what the last earnings roundup showed us is that things are getting concentrated again. Cause I mean, the big five, big six did very well, but other companies are continuing to get slaughtered in the market. You know, like the medium sized to small sized, the small cap tech firms are still at the lowest that they've ever been.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  What about like the leaders of the last thing, like all the SaaS companies, like the Shopify's?

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Shopify is an interesting one. Like I think there's, I mean, they're still well down from their high, but the stock was up 24% yesterday. And the thing is in a good way, Shopify, they announced they're going to be cutting their logistics business completely. They're laying off, I think 20% of their people. So they're making huge moves and the market rewarded them for it. But it's a reminder that the companies that were able to actually adjust themselves out of the COVID related over investment.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Could be positioning themselves well, but that's, I think, the winner, the big winners are going to continue winning. And that's what the last few weeks have shown us. Whereas if you're, again, medium and small cap, I think you're in even more trouble than before. And the AI conversation fits into that, too, that investors are still leaning towards a Microsoft or a Google or a Meta, because they think that they have potential in this whole massive economy that could happen. So yeah, I think concentration as opposed to like, everyone is doing well again.

• 44:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  So yeah, let's talk about Apple. I mean, it's sort of a perfect segue. So their results were not as bad as feared. They were the last big tech company to report this week. They were expecting 5% decline in revenue. They only showed 3%. But lots of interesting details in that earnings report. And they have inventory of $7.48 billion at the end of the quarter. I mean, I mean, most companies on the stock market would be happy to have a valuation that high.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  That's unsold.

• 45:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  And unsold devices. Yeah. And so this is from Alexey Orskovic, who's an editor at Fortune. He says it's the highest level in at least five years. And he wonders whether it's the new VR and AR headset waiting in warehouses or unsold Macs piling up. I mean, there's definitely some unsold Macs, but like, it is a great mystery.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  The headset is $3,000. You wouldn't need a lot of them to add up.

• 45:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. So yeah, I'm just curious, like, so let's say it is the headset. I mean, obviously, that would have that would anticipate that they're going to sell a lot of these things. Brian, what do you think is actually going to happen? Because we're really close to seeing, hopefully, Apple give some more information about what these headsets are all going to be. What are you anticipating?

• 45:55Speaker 02

  So I put this in the notes because I haven't been able to to use this anywhere yet. But I have a new theory about what they're going to do. And believe me, I'm not a Gruber. I'm not one of these Apple people that knows Apple very well. But it occurs to me recently that You know, everyone's like, well, eventually, Apple wants this to replace the iPhone. This is their 20 year play, right? However, it's a $3,000 product. And some of the things that we've been reading from the rumor mongers lately are about how you're going to be able to use it for work. Like, I could sit down here, put on the headset at work in an immersive, like, full screen. What else is a $3,000 device? A laptop or a computer? So I've been thinking lately, what if next month, at least for right now, obviously, they want to bring the price down eventually. They want it to be more mainstream.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  But what if that's what they sell it as right now for the launch is you're willing to pay $3,000 for a laptop? What if you could have a laptop that you could take with you all the time and do all your computing and sit on a park bench and have a completely immersive screen? Oh, and by the way, also, you can do games and exercising and things like that. What if that's what they lean into is a laptop on steroids?

• 47:03Speaker 01

  That is quite a theory. Yeah. But you know what? I wrote about this, I think in like 2018. When I first used the Magic Leap, it was one of the coolest technology experiences I had. Like, I remember using the Magic Leap headset and looking around me and just kind of being... I mean, it's funny, because all the talk about the metaverse and the idea of us sitting around a conference table with no legs and with a VR headset on was always ridiculous to me, because I was like, the technology, I already experienced something that was so groundbreaking.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Have you tried to N real? That, like, that's another one, too. And N real, and the number, the letter N real, I think it's a Chinese company.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Have you?

• 47:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's almost, I mean, they're thicker than glasses and it has to be connected to a thing, but it's a similar thing. I'm watching TV over here, I'm scrolling Instagram over there, but we're still in the same room and we're still talking to each other, yeah.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, to me, I think, and I kind of hope, and if anyone can do it, it's Apple, that the kind of promise of the metaverse that can be realized. The idea that, like, being in an immersive computed, computing environment, but that's also connected to the real world, that is kind of exciting. Like, I mean, if you take the Pokemon Go idea and then extend that times 1,000 or million, I think that's kind of cool.

• 48:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Every time I hear Pokemon Go, I just get this image of Hillary Clinton in my mind being like, Pokemon, go to the polls.

• 48:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  It will always be my association with Pokemon Go. That just killed. Trying to get the boat out. She might have. And by the way, if Apple ends up being the company that does the metaverse, I mean, how much would that suck for Mark Zuckerberg? All right, let's wrap this with Ed Sheeran news. So Ed Sheeran was on trial for copyright violation. And I don't think it was a criminal offense, but it was certainly civil. And he is accused of using Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On and copying that in his Thinking Out Loud song. And if you listen to the songs, there are some similarities.

• 49:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  But ultimately, what the judge ruled was that basically you are copying a stock chord progression in a normal rhythm pattern. And that is so standard in music that we cannot allow artists to sue each other over this. Because I would imagine the logic is that ends up stopping the progress of music. And I think it's so interesting because art, of course, emulates and improves. And, you know, we shouldn't have artists that go out and steal each other's music. But the legal question of like, whether this is a copyright violation is actually rather important. Because, I mean, first from a music standpoint, you have to draw a line legally of like,

• 49:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  where artists are allowed to borrow and improvise and build on top of existing music. And then, I mean, obviously Tech Show, right? Like, that has obvious implications for the use of AI, which could actually, generative AI could actually argue it's doing exactly what Ed Sheeran was doing with this song. And with these chords, saying that we're taking what's been created in the past and improvising on it and potentially improving it. What do you think the implications are, Brian?

• 50:26Speaker 02

  I mean, look, it is the, the a million monkeys on typewriters thing like there's only so many tunes in the world. There's only so many stories in the world. I mean, ever since, what the seventies and eighties, we've had this, this sort of legal debate or even cultural debate about like, what, what, is there anything new under the sun? Or is everything just a remix of your, your, um, the things that inspire you and the things that came before you and things like that. Um, I'd almost say that, uh, we were talking about the Marvel thing too. Like we're so stuck in this era where all we're doing is retreading what's familiar.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Like, I'm happy for Ed because it's like, it, it wasn't exactly like you would be able to, it would be an open and shut case if it was, you could tell that note for note, this is the exact same thing. But like, he had a different spirit and a different song from a different time with different inspiration or whatever. So like, you know, let's, let's be able to jam and mix on things.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  I, I still love the idea that if Ed Sheeran makes his way into the center of the generative AI copyright annals of history, that will be kind of amazing. Um, I think that for me, I don't know, going back to just the idea of copyright and generative AI in general and whether everything will be derivative. I don't know. I feel, uh, artists in general have to, uh, it's such a tough one because it's like, how do you get the new content coming out of this? How do you get new content that actually sounds different when everything is derivative of itself? When it's, uh, when anything can be fed in, you can have something in the style of Ed Sheeran instantly.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  Okay. I got one to throw at you. So, um, one of the many AI clone songs is Kanye doing Adele's Hello, right? Doesn't work because Kanye doesn't have the range of Adele, right? Now, we know that Whitney Houston took Dolly Parton's song and made it her own. Like the Whitney Houston version of I Will Always Love You is probably, we would all agree, the canonical version. What if in the future you find something like that where it's like, maybe there's somebody, you know, AI could be like, you know, who would really do hello better than even Adele is this person or whatever. Like, does that make it worse? It would be worse for the artist if someone comes along, but that already happens. Dolly Parton made a lot of money from this, so she's not sad about it, but Whitney Houston

• 52:56Speaker 02

  owns that song now.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  This is also where AI law could become very creative in the sense of like, the estates of artists being able to actually license out the voice gets very interesting. I saw a version of, it was Biggie doing a classic Nas song and it sounded great. But imagine if he actually, his estate actually got paid for it and was able to easily license a voice to Adobe or whatever other, other platforms are being used. That's kind of awesome for everybody.

• 53:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, Grimes, actually, yeah, Grimes said, if my fans want to use my voice with AI and make a song, and if it's good, we'll split it 50 50, just like any other guest that comes on and collaborates with me.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  If I was a musician, I'd make that deal right now.

• 53:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, I mean, Nate, can I try to play this from my laptop and see if, if there's a resemblance? Is that microphone, is it going to destroy? Let's do it. We're, we're here live on, we're, we're making Nate shake his head. So we're here live on the podcast. Let's ruin the audio that he's worked so hard to portray. So here is thinking out loud from Ed Sheeran.

• 53:57Speaker 03

  Darling, I will be loving you till we're 17.

• 54:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Sorry, Nate. And here's let's get it on from Marvin Gaye.

• 54:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you guys see it?

• 54:17Speaker 02

  I hear the math of it. I hear how the notes are similar, but it's not close enough to me.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, not even close. I mean, it's close, but not even close.

• 54:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And I, it'll be very interesting. I mean, this is kind of like, I think it'll be a very interesting precedent case. For what we see with generative AI as this stuff moves forward.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  I'm more curious, in the stories, it talked about Ed Sheeran showed up in court.

• 54:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  With a guitar.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Tussled red hair and a suit and played with a guitar. Was this all just to get a free Ed Sheeran show?

• 54:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, if you're trying to woo a jury over to your case, like you definitely, and you're Ed Sheeran, you come in with that guitar and that's what you're doing.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  Not be, if I would object, I would strenuously object.

• 54:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Your honor.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  On the other side.

• 55:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  You cannot play that guitar.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  You cannot play that guitar.

• 55:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's very, very interesting. And you know, it's sort of like, kind of caught me by surprise how big of a case this was. But as I followed it towards the end, I was like, oh, wow, this is very, very interesting. And obviously, the music industry was, was watching it closely. And I think it's something the tech industry should watch as well. And I do want to note that after Ed was exonerated, he, is exonerated even the right word to use for a civil case? Anyway, after he left the courthouse, someone was like shouting Ed Sheeran lyrics at Ed Sheeran. And I think that it's a great welcome to him for New York because there was another New York Times story that said, Ed Sheeran is leasing an apartment in Brooklyn Heights, near the Brooklyn Bridge for $36,000 a month.

• 55:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I knew that New York real estate was getting out of control. But Ed, come on, man, you're making this difficult for the rest of us.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  You can rent apartments for way more than that. You could, there's New York City apartments that are six figures.

• 55:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, maybe what Ed was doing was just trying to anticipate losing this trial. And now he, he can upgrade from his $36,000 a month Brooklyn Bridge Park apartment. But whatever the case, welcome to Brooklyn, Ed. It's great to have you here. Let us know, and I'm sure you're a listener of the podcast, either Big Technology or Tech Meme Ride Home. Let us know if you want to hang out with us. We'll have you on the show.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  Just kind of the, the bike lane that's all along the water here.

• 56:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly.

• 56:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's two miles from here. Yeah.

• 56:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  And bring your guitar and we might find it in your favor. Yeah, we do need this demonstration on the podcast. Well, thank you so much, everyone for listening. Thank you, Trustless Media, for having us here in your studio. It's great to get a chance to do this in person with Ron, John and Brian. And great to, if you're watching on LinkedIn or YouTube, it's great to. Come to you in high definition and a great studio with great folks like Nate Skid here who's sitting with us and hopefully will forgive me after I played that music into the microphone without prior authorization. So, thank you for that. Thank you, Brian. This is awesome.

• 57:08Speaker 02

  Thank you, Alex. I appreciate you asking me to do this. This is better than when we do my show at my kitchen table with bad lav mics.

• 57:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hey, whenever you want to do it, we'll do it. And whether it's kitchen or whether it's down here, or you come to my house and we'll be right above a pizza place. So, there'll be lunch. Ron John, great to see you again.

• 57:27Speaker 02

  Good to see you.

• 57:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Thanks for doing this. We skipped, there was one story that we skipped, which was the fate of Andreessen Horowitz's media investments, Clubhouse Substack, and betting on Elon Musk at Twitter, which if you're listening still, I would say you're gonna, we'll cover next week when Ben Smith joins. Ron John and I, you've probably heard Ben Smith on podcast if you're-

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Andreessen invested in BuzzFeed News.

• 57:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, they did. Yes. So, that will be something that we'll cover. I think it'll be a great story to cover with Ben. He's coming on with Ron John and I next Friday. So, if you're just listening for the first time, hit subscribe. And if you're a regular listener, make sure to tune into that one because it won't be one that you want to miss. Ben's done a lot of interviews, as I was saying. So, we're gonna make it different. We're gonna cover the week's news with him. We're gonna cover some of this Andreessen Horowitz stuff. Talk a little bit about his book, Traffic. But Ben was also on recently talking about the book before it came out. So, hopefully it'll be a little different.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  He's gonna be on my show tomorrow, Saturday, if you're listening to this.

• 58:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right. Yes. Awesome.

• 58:30Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 58:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  And my former boss. So, once again, from Trustless Studios here in Brooklyn,

• 58:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  it's been great being with you for Brian McCullough and Ron John Roy. I'm Alex Kantrowitz. We will see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 58:55Speaker 04

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• 59:24Speaker 05

  In this life, you can't win.

• 59:27Speaker 06

  When the world gets you down.

• 59:28Speaker 05

  No!

• 59:28Speaker 06

  Escape to Pluto TV.

• 59:30Speaker 05

  This is objectively fantastic.

• 59:32Speaker 06

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free.

• 59:36Speaker 05

  Shwing!

• 59:36Speaker 06

  Even our news is uplifting.

• 59:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  You stay classy, San Diego.

• 59:40Speaker 06

  Watch School of Rock, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more.

• 59:45Speaker 03

  We're not worthy!

• 59:47Speaker 06

  The best things on TV really are free.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  You just have to know where to look.

• 59:51Speaker 06

  Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.